January first. A brand-new year, a brand-new me.

That’s what I told myself every year.

January second: business as usual.

I lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling. Things were going to be different this year. Then reality inserted itself into my life in the form of my alarm clock blaring right in my ear, bringing with it a whole host of necessities. A shower, coffee, and the dreaded commute to work.

I grunted, rolled out of bed and stood up to stretch. Just like every morning, my joints popped and groaned in protest. It seemed like my body made more strange noises every day, and sometimes it was hard to remember that I was only forty-two and had the rest of my life ahead of me—even though it often felt like I’d missed out on the best years of it.

I smacked the alarm clock to get it to shut up and headed out into the kitchen to turn the coffee pot on. While the elixir of life brewed, I hopped into the shower and emerged again to a robust odor that never failed to give me a boost of energy. Like a true Seattleite, my body cried out for caffeine, and I headed into the kitchen to fetch a cup and pop some bread into the toaster.

I waited with my hip against the counter, sipping burning-hot coffee and shuddering at the painful pleasure as it scalded my insides on the way down. That was how I knew it was working.

My gaze wandered around the kitchen and landed on a stack of mail in the middle of the table. I jerked my eyes away and pretended I hadn’t seen it. Bills and junk mail and local advertisements. Nothing I needed or wanted or had even a vague interest in.

The toaster flung my toast halfway across the counter with a horrifying CHUNK and I scrambled to catch it before it slid onto the floor. Once the slices were layered with a liberal amount of peanut butter, I ate them quickly while the peanut butter melted, oozed and dripped.

Licking my fingers clean, I allowed myself a moment to feel smug about the lack of manners required for single living, something I had discovered as a teen after leaving for college and finally escaping my mother’s strict rule. No one was here to judge me for it.

No one.

My mouth suddenly tasted sour. I swallowed thickly and went to wash my hands, then headed back into the steamy bathroom to finish getting ready for work. A dress shirt, a nice jacket, and a pair of decent slacks that would need replacing soon, since the seat was getting worn out from sitting on my ass all day. Being a programmer would do that.

Programmer. Computer technician. Web content creator. At least us nerds had better words to describe ourselves these days, ones that almost sounded impressive until you realized that the actual job involved sitting in a cubicle farm for eight hours a day, while spending at least half of that searching for the one transposed number that had fucked everything up.

Don’t be bitter, I reminded myself. Programming had treated me well. I’d be an idiot to take my livelihood for granted. I wasn’t one of those young punks half my age who bounced around from job to job to get experience while never actually learning anything at all.

I winced as I realized that I was starting to sound like my grandfather.

I checked my phone, a force of habit now more than anything. I still had time before work, and I hated to waste it staring at the wall. As I left the kitchen, a flash of white in the corner of my vision stopped me.

That damn stack of mail, sitting in the middle of my rarely-used kitchen table. The stack that which would only keep growing each day no matter how much I ignored it.

I sighed and looked sadly at my book, lying neatly on the coffee table in the other room, with a Fortnite bookmark keeping my place. I turned away with a pang of regret and went back to the kitchen table, pulling the stack of mail closer to me. With another glance at the time, I started sorting.

Several offers for credit cards I would never use, a city newsletter with no useful information, bills, bills, more spam, more bills, and…

I paused with my fingers hovering over a pair of oversized square envelopes. The addresses on the outside were handwritten, one in painstakingly neat calligraphy, and that was enough to set them apart from the others.

“The hell?” I muttered, and picked up the top one. The name on the return address was vaguely familiar: Calvin Gray. He worked at the same company as me, on the same floor.

But that was about where my familiarity with him stopped. Calvin was half my age, and he muttered under his breath while he worked, an abominable habit.

Why had he sent me a letter?

I tore the envelope open and pulled out the contents. The texture of the paper gave away its purpose immediately, and I pulled it all the way out and laid it on the table like a piece of delicate china. The expensive, pale, creamy-gold stationery was heavy, unnecessarily so, to my eye.

Unfolding it, I saw the same general template as always on the inside, listing names and events and times for those events underneath a distastefully frou-frou floral graphic.

A wedding invitation.

With a sigh, I leaned my head against my hand and stared at the paper. I received several of these every year, and I absolutely hated them. Never mind that it was just an excuse for a vulgar display of someone else’s good fortune and happiness. It also reminded me of what I didn’t have, what I had missed out on my opportunity to have.

I rubbed my forehead and took another look at the invitation. This time I took note of the person Calvin was getting married to. No one I recognized; at least, no one from work. I wondered what kind of person would be able to put up with someone like Calvin. I hadn’t really ever given him much thought, beyond the fact that he was far too annoying for any sensible alpha male to ever settle down with him.

Malcolm Carlyle will not be attending.

I pushed the invitation aside and turned to the other envelope and opened it with a measure of trepidation. Even through the thin white paper of the envelope, I could see the bright cheerful colors of the contents, and knew what this one was going to be.

My suspicions were confirmed when I pulled the invitation out a little and saw, in swirling blue font, the words “Welcome, Baby!”

I checked the name on the envelope and noted that this one came from someone I was even less familiar with than Calvin: a cheerful omega named Ian who had flirted with me on his first day in the office. He’d caught my interest until I realized that he flirted with literally anything that breathed.

Good for him, I thought, although it made the bitter taste in my mouth come back to know someone like that had found love and happiness before I had.

Typical.

Malcolm Carlyle will not be attending.

That was enough for one day. I dumped everything back into the middle of the table and grabbed my car keys. Another day, another commute. Same as it ever was.

I locked the front door behind me and then checked again to make sure I had done it, another habit that had been ground into my head by my mother. I always thought it was strange how the people we knew stayed with us even beyond their appointed time, their memories intruding whenever there was something remotely associated with them. Maybe that was why I’d chosen the career and hobbies that I had, where facts and strategies left no room for emotions or doubt.

I stepped out onto the lawn, where the frosty grass and winter-hard soil crunched beneath my shoes. The wind was bracingly chilly, stirring my clothes around my body, tugging me toward some unknown whim.

I stopped and looked up at the sky, threaded with puffy gray ribbons of cloud, and sighed as I watched my breath mist and drift away. Ever since childhood, this was the kind of weather I’d always loved. When I was a kid, it meant crisp mornings, soup and hot chocolate, and curling up with a blanket to watch cartoons. Never cold enough to make it unbearable or uncomfortable, but just enough to be cozy and warm in your own little world.

When I’d moved out on my own, weather like this meant wrapping up in a blanket cocoon, grabbing a cup of something hot and unhealthy, and plugging into a virtual world. While reality melted away, it was replaced by whatever I damn well pleased. From the very first pixelated games, where half of them didn’t work and the ones that did were nearly impossible to beat, to the polygonal storytelling of a decade ago, to the larger-than-life fantasies available now, they all went well with a chilly afternoon spent indoors.

But that was yesterday, and this was today, and my toes were getting cold.

Traffic was terrible, as always, a stuttering start-and-stop flow that didn’t provide any mental stimulation, while also not being relaxed enough to let the imagination wander. What resulted was a sort of bumbling daydream state made up of disjointed fragments of scenarios that didn’t make any sense. Not exactly what I wanted, but better than nothing.

I’d been working at Future Industries since I was an unpaid intern. Twenty-four years of doing the same thing was a long time. Longer than I liked to admit, and there had been a world of changes. The only thing that hadn’t changed? I still didn’t have my own parking space.

Like everyone else, the company had seen hard times, layoffs and stock plummets, and a few mysterious staff reshuffles that were never explained, but it had also seen some prosperity in the last decade. Well, not some. That was being modest.

Future Industries had gone from being something like the one hundred and sixteenth wealthiest company in Seattle to now being the fifteenth wealthiest. Once, we had looked at the skyline from a dumpy office building that badly needed new plumbing; now we were part of that skyline, located in one of the bright silver towers we all used to envy so much.

Not that it made that much of a difference when you worked in a windowless cubicleland with dozens of others, all performing the same tasks as you day in and day out.

The staff parkade was across the street from our bright, shining building, and I shivered as I stepped out into the cold wind again and it sliced like knives over my cheeks. I ducked my head down and jogged across the busy street, barging gratefully through the front doors of the building.

Warmth surrounded me. I shuddered again as the heat hit my face and made my hands itch. A small crowd had gathered in front of the elevator, and I sighed as I took my place among them. I recognized most of the faces in that crowd, although I couldn’t have named them even if I tried.

Some of them nodded to me and I nodded back, same as it ever was. A few people up toward the front were talking animatedly about their weekend, while the rest of us remained silent. In fact, their chatter was the only human sound to be heard in the vicinity. The heating thrummed, a vibration felt more than heard, and the faint echo of typing fingers, accompanied by the whirring of a printer spitting out papers, flowed underneath their conversation.

A seamless cacophony of mundane tasks. And that was all until the elevator arrived, disturbing the peace with an obnoxious chirp. The doors parted, and the crowd shifted to make room for the people exiting.

There wasn’t quite enough space for myself and several others around me to get in, and there were already more arriving. Some switched over to the other elevator, as if hoping to improve their chances. I could only imagine their disappointment when the doors in front of me opened again a second later and I was able to get inside.

I pushed the button for my floor, then glanced to the side at the others filtering in. “Floor numbers?” I prompted.

A flurry of numbers came to me in response. I pushed them all, earned some muted and disinterested thanks from far fewer than had thrown their demand at me, and stepped back to enjoy the ride. There was no music, only the sound of breathing, shifting, clothes rustling.

Quite soothing. I liked other people. I liked the stability of my job.

I just didn’t like annoying people, there being far too many of those in the world.

The elevator stopped several times, and then I arrived at my floor and stepped out, while a trio who had been waiting all crammed themselves into the single spot I’d left unoccupied.

I headed down the hallway to reach the Cave. We’d given the area this nickname, not out of some strange affection for it, but out of necessity. Sometimes it was easier to laugh at these things.

It was a large, windowless room in the middle of this floor that had been divided into featureless cubicles. Featureless was actually a good word for the location. There wasn’t even any artwork on the walls, aside from the standard corporate-approved motivational posters that were supposed to convince us that teamwork and core values were what kept Future Industries running.

Fat chance. Each employee could decorate their cubicle with a maximum of five items, all of which were screened to make sure they weren’t 1) distracting for others, and 2) harmful to personal productivity.

The only thing that really gave the Cave any personality was the lighting. It was normal office lighting, and we had confirmed as a group that there was nothing either good or bad about it. It always seemed distinctly dull.

The glare of so many computer screens had that effect, and that was why we called it the Cave. Other, typically younger workers called it the Farm or the Factory, probably thinking they were clever, but anyone over thirty knew it was a Cave. It just… felt that way.

I took my seat, turned on my computer, and got to work. My current project was to create a program that would train others in the proper use of the company’s program. Very meta.

All around me, others were working on different parts of the same program. United, yet separate.

Pulling up my programs and files, I performed a quick scan to familiarize myself with what I’d accomplished the last time I’d sat here. Then I sank into the world of code.

Eight hours of coding, testing, reworking, and coding some more passed by in the blink of an eye. I hardly remembered the breaks I’d taken, the conversations I’d had, the lunch I’d eaten. Had I eaten lunch?

It was difficult to separate one day from the next when they were all so identical, and after two decades … it was all starting to blur together.

A drive back home along the same route. The same stop-and-start traffic, and the same disjointed daydreaming.

I fixed myself a quick, healthy dinner and ate in front of my computer, checking out the latest video game news. There were some new tournaments coming up, and I signed up for them, thinking idly of the cash prizes for winning. I’d won several in the past, and had the certificates and awkward winner's photos to prove it.

I didn’t need the money, but it all funneled into the nest egg I’d been maintaining over the years.

The egg that I would never need to hatch, at this rate. What did I have to spend money on? Other than video games and occasionally upgrading my equipment and consoles, I never spent a lot of money at once.

All of this, my entire life, seemed to be on a plateau … or maybe it was a salt flat.

I pushed my dinner away and reached for the computer mouse, wanting nothing more than to drown myself in the thrill of battle, when my phone buzzed. Startled and annoyed, I glared over at the couch where I’d thrown it when I came in.

“What the hell?” I grumbled, and went over and grabbed it. I was pleasantly surprised to see my younger brother’s name, and my finger stabbed into the screen to accept the call. “Tom, what’s up?”

“Hey,” Tom replied, sounding as chipper as always. I found myself smiling, even just having heard that single word. Maybe it was because he was my brother, but his positivity didn’t annoy me like it often did when others showed the same trait.

Or maybe it was because I knew that his positive nature wasn’t blind and false. He looked for the good in every situation, and wasn’t above causing mischief or playing tricks to get the result he wanted.

If I weren’t so set in my own ways, I’d probably try that outlook out for myself one of these days.

“What are you doing?” he went on. “Are you at home?”

I glanced at my computer. “Yeah, I was about to settle in for the night. What are you up to? You haven’t called much since you met that girl.”

“Lacey? Yeah, we’re quits.”

I winced. “Damn. Sorry to hear that. When did that happen?”

“Today. Hey, don’t go feeling sorry for me. It wasn’t anything serious. At least, I didn’t think it was.”

And what about her? I wondered. As much as I loved my brother, his search for fun sometimes came with the bad habit of ruining one good relationship after another. It made me flinch whenever he called or texted with an update, because I knew the only news he had would be bad.

If I’d been able to make half the bonds he did, I’d be the one sending out overpriced, over-designed wedding invitations and brightly-colored baby announcements.

“Anyway, I didn’t call to go on jabbering about old news,” Tom said. “Since I happen to find myself free tonight, what do you say to a beer or two? We can shoot the shit, shoot some pool, and drown our sorrows together.”

I looked at my computer, the long list of available games on the desktop just begging me to play them. “I appreciate the offer, and I’d love to see you, Tom, but you know I have work tomorrow.”

“Yeah? I happen to know you wouldn’t get drunk even if the world was ending at midnight. You could just come chill with me and relax. Let me be your wingman.”

“Wingman?” My heart sank a little. The last time Tom had set me up with someone, I had wound up sitting across from a guy who still lived in his parents’ basement while he’d chatted up a blonde at the bar. No dice. “Yeah, I’m not really in the mood for that. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, come on. You know you won’t find anyone all cooped up at home like that.”

That was true, sure. I was also pretty sure that I wouldn’t find anyone even if did go out. I had spent all my time setting up a steady life and career, and now there was no one to enjoy it with.

All the omegas, and even betas, my age who were even remotely compatible with me were already settled down. Some of them were already welcoming grandkids into the world.

I was alone.

“Like I said, I’m just not in the mood tonight. Sorry, Tom; I know you’re itching for an excuse to go out, but I’m not it. Are we still on for this month, though?”

Each month, we met up at our favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner to catch up on life. We’d been doing it ever since our mother died, and I wasn’t about to cancel that.

Tom sighed in my ear. “It’s your loss, Mal. And yeah, we’re still on. I guess I’ll go drink alone, like a pathetic loser.”

I smiled a little. “We both know you won’t be spending the whole night alone.”

“Not if I’m lucky,” Tom quipped. “Kill some plebs for me then, huh? I love you.”

I chuckled. “Love you, too. Drink a beer for me.”

“Already on it.”

The line went dead. I tossed the phone back onto the couch, settled into my chair, and reached for the mouse again, to hover the cursor over the more competitive games listed on the screen.

I started to click, and then stopped. My heart felt heavy; I was suddenly more exhausted than I had initially thought. Maybe I’d had my fair share of conflict today, even if most of it was internal.

I switched over to an RPG and buried my head in thick, complicated lore, an ostrich of a man trying to hide from his frustrations.