The Empath Cycle: 2010 Carpe Diem - Book 1

"My name is Annabelle or Ann, for short, then."

"All right. Up and at it, girl. From what I hear, you've got your work cut out for you."

"Yes, sir... I mean yes, John. I'll read the document over lunch and bring it to you after."

"Lunch! Ha!" He guffawed. "I'll see you later, sucker."

Since her door was open again, Ann looked in Ms. Tremblay's office as she passed by. She was hunched over a blueprint spread over her desk and was explaining something to a youngish man. He had long unkempt hair and sported what must be a five-day beard. He was wearing acid washed jeans and a tie-dyed t-shirt which contrasted with Ms. Tremblay's ecru raw silk blouse and tan cotton skirt.

'These people seemed to have a relaxed dress code.' Ann made a mental note to find out more about it.

She turned to her office and gulped at the sight of the mound of files on it. It had doubled while she was gone. Even with Mr. White's extension, Ann had quite the challenge in front of her. Once she got past the shock, she gawked at the office. In the half hour she had been gone, the empty, bare office had undergone an incredible transformation. The old computer tower and cathode screen had been replaced by a sleek top of the line computer with two twenty-inch flat screens set on a second desk at right angle with the original which now sported a flowering potted plant, a Darth Vader bobble head and, amazingly, a framed picture of her family. The old wobbly secretary chair had been replaced by a well-padded swivel chair. Looking up, Ann saw a laminated copy of the Xena and Gabrielle poster which had adorned a wall in her bedroom since she was a kid.

She had tears in her eyes when she turned around to see as eclectic group as you could imagine standing in the doorway to what could only be her office, singing 'For she's a jolly good admin', mostly out of key.

"Welcome home, Ann." Ms. Tremblay said as she hugged her. "Sorry for the reception, but we have a reputation to uphold, after all. My name is Sylvie and this is our team. You'll meet them individually soon enough. For now, they will return to their desks since they have work to do." She mock growled the last, giving the people a fierce scowl.

Once they had left with much laughter and uncomplimentary comments on her management style, she turned back to Ann.

"And to think nobody believed I could keep a straight face when you got here. Ha! I should be on the big screen. As you may have guessed, that was your first test. Believe it or not, in the last three years, two admins never made it past Mr. White's interview and four more never came back the next day. From what I heard, and believe me when I tell you we've had our eye on you for months, you are exactly the person we have been looking for. Sorry for the time you spent in the marketing division. Yes, that was our doing. I should have said that was your first test and you passed with flying colors. We don't need yes men or women. I for one can't stand them and they don't contribute to the level we require."

"Do you mean I had to suffer all that harassment as part of my interview process? Maybe the rumors are true and you are all crazy."

"Well, yes and no. I lost fifty bucks because you were too much of a nice girl. I had you at three days before you cracked, but your final solution means there are five hundred dollars more in the office party fund. Nobody bet on that particular resolution of the problem."

"Sorry, ma'am... er... Sylvie."

"Don't be sorry. Instead of a buffet for the next office party, we will have a catered hot meal."

"Then, I'm glad I exceeded your expectations, though it was for my personal satisfaction even if I was sure it had cost me my job."

"You won't have that problem here. We are a tight knit group of respectful people. And I'm speaking of the whole division, not just my team. We never accept direct applications. We choose our people very carefully and the few bad apples who make it despite our screening never last long before they are escorted off this floor."

"In that case, I'm flattered you chose me."

"As you should be." Sylvie grinned. "Now, you have to show us that we were right in doing so. Of course, I don't expect you to be done reading those reports by lunch or even the end of the day, but I do expect a report on them before you leave on Friday. The first two are projects that are already finished. The third is in its first phase. It's the most important. The others are only to give you an idea of how the division works."

"I will ma'am. May I ask a question before I get back to it?"

"That's the single question you should never ask around here. We want you to ask questions. We encourage it, in fact." Sylvie said seriously. "So, what do you want to know? A if I had no idea." She grinned.

"Where did you get my family's picture and this poster?"

The woman laughed. "I told you we've had our eye on you for a while. I'm sure you can figure it out by yourself."

With that, she left, still laughing.

Ann spent a long moment looking around her office thinking that she had fallen down the rabbit hole and seriously wondering what she had gotten myself into. Eventually, she shook herself and got back to work.

Chapter 2

Around noon, a couple of Ann's co-workers staged an intervention when it became clear she was so concentrated on her work she would skip lunch. They literally picked her up from her chair and, despite her protestations, carried her to the cafeteria/playroom/breakroom part of the floor and sat her on a comfortable chair before setting a low table in front of her. On it was a turkey wrap, a boxed garden salad with French dressing on the side and a can of Coke.

"That's the least I can do since I made a bundle on you in the office pool." The hippy Ann had seen earlier -- his name was Jean-Luc -- told her. "You can bring a lunch from home. We have plenty of room in the fridges and a few microwave ovens. Or you can buy from our well stocked vending machines. The company which fills them belongs to a member of Mr. White's family, so the food is always fresh. Also, we can choose our favorites. So if there's a snack or lunch item you prefer, just let me know and I'll pass it along. If you wonder how I selected your lunch, I was at the lunch counter on the ground floor a while back and saw what you ordered. If you want coffee during the day, there are always a couple of pots warming up. Finally, everything to eat or drink is really cheap since we only pay cost, except for the coffee which is free. Anything else you need to know, just ask."

On that, he left before Ann could reply. A young petite woman leaned from the chair beside hers and put her finger under Ann's chin to close her hanging jaw.

"You'll get used to him." She laughed. "I'm Anne-Marie, by the way. Jean-Luc thinks in 5G while the rest of us are still in 3G. The only one who can keep up with him is Sylvie. In fact, she's the one who recruited him, a few years back, straight out of the U de M Physics Faculty as soon as they gave him his doctorate. I'm told the dean threatened to sue us for poaching him. He also has a eidetic memory, so he probably heard you order lunch months ago."

"What's a Physics PhD doing in an engineering firm?" I asked.

"You know this is the Special Projects Division, don't you? We have all sorts of unexpected people working here. Especially on Sylvie's team. You see, engineering isn't only roads and bridges, or civil engineering. It's electrical and computer engineering bioengineering, mechanical engineering, and more. I'm working on a doctorate in Materials at McGill myself. We also have a mathematician, two programmers and a physicist, as you know. There are some other specialists who consult with us when we need their particular knowledge. Heck, we even had a neurologist and a psychologist off and on for a couple of months, a few years back."

"That's not at all what I expected. The only people I met before were either engineers of supports staff."

"Of course, most of the staff are engineers, but Sylvie's team is the most diverse. She works on really special projects and she's so good I heard the firm indulges her only because they're afraid of what she could do if she started her own engineering firm as they found she was getting ready to do when she got her second doctorate."

"She has two doctorates?" I exclaimed.

"I heard she could have three, but she left the U de M Physics Faculty once she learned all she wanted from them. Jean-Luc says MIT and Harvard both tried to recruit her, but she turned them down. And she doesn't even have a Bachelor's degree. She only audited the courses she wanted so they would have to let her in the most advanced classes. She took the exams just for fun. If she had registered as a regular student, she would have maintained a 4.0 average. And that was while she was doing her Bachelor and Masters in Electronics Engineering at the Polytechnique. While she did her doctorate in that field, she went back to her first love and did a second one in Mechanical Engineering. By that time, she was working full-time here."

"She was?" Ann asked incredulously. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Again, she wondered what she had gotten myself into.

"Indeed, though, to be fair, I must admit she was only doing forty hour weeks then."

"She was? And now?"

"Who knows? Do you know the Phantom of the Opera? Well, some think she's the Phantom of Special Projects. There's a legend that if you come here late at night, when it's quiet, you can hear her walking the corridors mumbling about some project or other." She laughed as she got up and left.

Ann ate her lunch in a daze. When she walked by Ms. Tremblay's office, there was a beautiful older woman sitting across from her and they were eating a succulent smelling diner at her desk with real plates and cutlery. They even shared a half-bottle of wine in two fine glasses. By the look on Sylvie's face, the woman must be very special to her, so Ann hurried by and got into my office.

"It's a good thing you don't have class this evening or you'd be late"

Ann jumped at the voice. It was Ms. Tremblay. She was leaning on the door frame and looking at her with a wicked grin.

"Go home, Ann, and get some sleep. You're going to need it if that's the way you work. I saw you carried out at lunch, but you were back twenty minutes later and I haven't heard a peep out of this office all afternoon."

"I'm sorry. I didn't hear everyone go out and I wasn't looking at the time."

"That's all right. I too often need to be reminded that there's good food and some loving to be had at home if I can pull myself away from work."

"Do you think I could bring some of these files home even if I forgot to bring the initial confidentiality agreement to John?"

"Nope!" Sylvie deadpanned. "There is work and then there is not-work. When you are here, I will expect a hundred percent from you, but you will be of no use to me if you burn out from exhaustion. So, go have some fun and games, some rest and relaxation. I have it on good authority that you're in the enviable position of having as much of those as you want or need. So go home, get some good food -- I believe it's Italian night -- and I'll see you tomorrow at 8:00am sharp."

Again Ann was left with her jaw hanging as Sylvie turned and walked away.

'How could she know that?' Ann wondered. 'I need to have a serious talk with my roommates about my privacy. And soon.'

The day before, Annabelle had been early because she wanted to make a good first impression and had hardly slept from sheer nerves anyway. That day, she was just too keyed up and woke well before her alarm went off.

As expected, Ms. Tremblay was already hard at work but she greeted Ann cheerfully when she walked by her office. They chatted a few minutes and shared a good laugh when Ann told Sylvie she had found out that one of her roommates was going out with a good friend of hers and that she was the one who had given away so much of Ann's personal information.

Ann was vaguely aware when others began to arrive around 7:30. Later, when Anne-Marie stopped by to pry her from work for lunch, the petite woman laughed at the sight of the empty packaging of a couple of wraps on the corner of the desk.

"I understand you want to prove yourself, but you won't do anyone any good by burning yourself out. You should take some time away from your desk and not only for lunch. You saw some of the games we have and you already know there's a gym in the basement. Don't try to keep up with Sylvie. Nobody can and even she gets a couple of hours working out before she arrives in the morning. We all think she must have some zombie blood in her since she can't sleep more than a few hours a night to keep the schedule she does."

"That's all right. As soon as I'm up to speed, I'll get into the rhythm of things."

"Don't bet on it. If you don't make a conscious effort, you'll be working all the time. So, come with me and we'll distract you for a while."

"I really shouldn't. I'm only into the second project and I..."

Anne-Marie came to her and took her hand, pulling Ann away from the desk. She almost protested, but the contact had sent a jolt up her arm. Fortunately, the woman had already turned away so she didn't see the reaction.

'What the hell?' She thought.

Her friends always spoke of their gaydars and how they could spot a lesbian from across the room, but that had never been the case for Ann. You had to hit her on the head with the fact. So, was Anne-Marie coming on to her or was she simply nice, the touchy-feely kind of person?

She certainly never had that reaction to a casual touch before. In fact, Ann had never been in a serious relationship, probably because she flip-flopped so much between her feminine and masculine sides. Her only lovers had been 'friends with benefits'. She always turned down offers from women wanting more.

Anne-Marie walked her around the exterior walls of the floor, explaining that the floor plan was made specifically to optimize the separation between the working and the relaxation spaces. She also explained that the lighting had always been good, but that it had been enhanced in recent years so that nobody suffered from seasonal depression.

She showed her the multiple internet sockets for personal use. "If you want to play on the Net, answer your private emails, watch porn or whatever, take a break and come here. Nobody will think worse of you." She said.

Ann had seen the mini-food court, but she was amazed by the recreation area. There was a foosball table, a skittle pool table, five pinball machines, an X-Box console with a fifty-inch screen, multiple wireless controllers and a stack of games, a few chess and checkers sets, plus a professional looking card table.

This was their idea of a workplace?

Again, Anne-Marie put her finger under Ann's chin to close her mouth.

"Stop laughing at me. When do you ever find the time to work with all this here?" Ann asked, not believing her eyes.

"You'd be surprised. Some of our best ideas have sprouted during play time. It's the best thing to do when you're stumped and your mind keeps going in circles. It's a great bonding environment too. Are you a gamer?"

"Not really. I'm more the outdoors kind of girl. In the summer, I used to take long drives on my Harley, but I didn't bring it from home because I don't have a secure place to park it. In the winter, I used to do the same on the extensive snowmobile trails back home. Some of my roommates are serious gamers, though. They play on line in multi-player games."

"You have a Harley? So do I." Anne-Marie exclaimed, surprizing Ann who would never had thought of her companion as a biker. She was such a femme. Barely five-two, plump with just the right amount of flesh to create very feminine curves, long lustrous brown hair that framed her delicate features. The day before, Ann had noticed her full lips, fine perfect nose, expressive hazel eyes crowned by precisely trimmed eyebrows and cute dimples when she smiled, which seemed to be most of the time. Her light make-up perfectly accentuated her natural beauty. She was wearing comfortable sneakers and what Ann a white cotton summer dress with only a thin silver chain around her neck and a stylized ankh.

"You mean your boyfriend has one, surely."

"I hope that's a compliment of some sort, but I assure you it's mine. I have Electra Glide. Not the Goldwing type they sell today. It's a 1972 chopper I rebuilt myself. It was a mess when I found it in a barn when I visited a friend in the country."

"You what?" Ann took the woman's hands in hers and looked at her palms. "These aren't the hands of a mechanic. I know. Look at mine."

"I'm sure you earned every callus and every scar the hard way, but I wear mechanics gloves when I work on my bike or on my 1969 Firebird."

Anne-Marie was grinning from ear to ear at Ann stupefied expression as she once again closed her gaping mouth.

"Where were you all my life?" Ann exclaimed before her brain could filter her words. "I mean, I could have used a friend like you when I was younger."

"Nice recovery." Anne-Marie laughed. "That can't have been so long ago. You can't be much over twenty."

"Twenty on the nose and you can't be much older yourself."

"Remember, I told you I'm working on a doctorate. I'm twenty eight."

"I forgot. You look so much younger."

"Thank you. This time I'm sure it's a compliment." She laughed as Ann blushed at being found flirting, which she hardly ever did.

"I'm sorry. I just meant that you don't look you age. I didn't mean..." Ann stammered.

"That's all right. I certainly don't mind. Actually, I find it funny when I'm carded at a club."

"That must happen often." Ann couldn't resist. "You're so beautiful and you look so young."

"Thank you. You're not bad yourself. Not bad at all." Anne-Marie said. Her voice had lowered, gotten husky, and her eyes had acquired a gleam that hadn't there before.

'What's happening here?' Annabelle wondered. 'Is she coming on to me? She couldn't mean what she said.'

At five-nine, one thirty, Ann had too much muscle to be considered lean. In fact, she had always secretly wished for more curves. Her dirty blond hair was cut above the shoulders, just short enough to be out of her way most of the time and still look feminine and long enough to be tied in a ponytail when she worked in a dirty environment or played sports. She knew she was plain looking and hated the ugly bump on her nose. Her best feature, she thought, were her light blue-grey eyes. She had never trimmed her eyebrows and never wore cosmetics. To top it all, Ann was wearing a denim shirt, pale with wash and wear, black jeans and her old biker boots, though they were freshly shined.

"I... Thank... Thank you... I..." She stammered in confusion. "I have to get back to work."

Ann almost ran to the safety of her office. She was tempted to close the door, but didn't want to offend Anne-Marie any more than probably just had since every door was open.

She stayed there, looking at a file without really being able to make sense of what she was reading. What had just happened? Was she reading too much into it? Oh, she had been hit on before, but it was always obvious that the woman was a lesbian. In this case, she was mostly confused. Could she be her opposite, her complement? A femme with butch tendencies to her butch with femme leanings. Was she even a lesbian? Ann definitely didn't want to make the mistake of coming on to a straight woman because she misread the situation and one disastrous experience with a bi-curious girl in College was enough to last her a lifetime. Ann also had heard enough stories about workplace trysts gone bad to be weary and her only on her second day in this division.