It is 3:45 p.m.

Not to be confused with its hopeful future (3:46 p.m.) or its dead cousin (3:44 p.m.) with whom he became deeply acquainted less than a minute ago. It is simply and adamantly 3:45 p.m. and there is no penetrable layering or soft undergrowth to prod, no argument persuasive enough, to shift it from being true. This is how he counts time at his desk, ergonomically assessed to best place him in relation to his keyboard and monitor, as long as he remembers to sit primly upright all day with his ass to the back of the seat and his feet side by side and flat to the floor. It is a desk tailored to a man, and a man tailored to a company.

It was lunch that did it. That always did it. Stopping for lunch. What a ridiculous thing to do. A sudden jolt into the shrieking veins of commerce, peppered with glossy reminders that people, on billboards and in streets, are better for not remotely resembling you. Prior to lunch he was fine. The brutal stand-off with the alarm and the well-rehearsed bus ride only ever roused him enough to perform the basest of physical functions, allowing him to operate in a sort of warm coma that tickles his ears and echoes in his tendons when he stretches his legs. Don’t misunderstand - only now and then does he ever fall completely asleep, eyes batting and watering, head growing heavier against the palm of his hand until his eyes surrender and his head lurches forward and the sensation is like falling gently from a cliff top and he wakes with a violent shudder, conscious of the breath as it escapes his lips and the noise-sucking hum of the office walls.

Then there is always paper. The occasional bit of petty administrative intrigue, open to interpretation, which might divert him for 10 minutes, or perhaps 20 if it’s a real zinger. A real unusual case, worthy of a half-raised brow. Something that temporarily disguises him as a skilled professional, raising precedents to form arguments with the other desk-sitters, a thoughtful pause or two shared between them for good measure. He can fake it as well as the rest of them.

But mostly he thinks about shit. A great deal of time and concentration he devotes to the careful writing and proof-reading of emails to a random assortment of people, encumbered with their very own desks in their very own glass towers, all of whom he would reluctantly describe as friends. There is nothing wrong with them. It’s just that they are quite linear and docile. They are resigned, programmed, affected. They are very much like him as he appears to them.

Of course, they are not enough to fill all 480 minutes of every day. He spends a great deal of time inventing excuses to leave early that he will not use. Food. Cigarettes. Sex. Sex is a big one. How cunningly it sneaks into his head and lodges itself into the narrow folds of his consciousness, encouraged by its own bad timing. And there it remains, ticking away, scrambling his thoughts. It’s possibly the restrained civility, the cold, expressionless exchange of data and advice. He cannot be sure what triggers it (outside of sheer exasperation), but something about the office inevitably sets his mind to fucking. But there are only two desk-sitters in the entire building worthy of appraisal, and they live on levels 2 and 4. He is level 3, and pickings are slim on level 3.

And yes there are days when they sell it and he buys it. When he actually allows them to convince him there is some sort of pride to be had in ‘contributing’, and so he will sit, engaged and stricken, at his desk, looking through the glare ahead at the snaking mass of work that slips beyond the horizon before its ends can be traced. He opens himself up to the hysteria, the pervasive gravity of importance etched on the faces that visit his desk and change like a holograph one after the next, files slapping down, again and again, until he is convinced that such things might matter. He might actually have to account one day. Someone will pull at the threads, uncover past foul-ups, it wouldn’t be hard. They’ll all know the truth sooner or later. That despite his very best intentions, his struggles to remain focused, diligent, awake – most of it had just been a touch-and-go dance to keep them all fooled. And that’s when he remembers. He’s not alone. They are all unqualified dancers, none with the time to seek out evidence of another’s incompetence. How could they when they were so busy juggling to keep hidden their own? The place is a cesspool of cheerful frauds, likeable liars, adjusting slowly along their trajectory into mediocrity, into the crunching confines of a conventional life... No, the conventional life. The start-at-nine, white-collared, voicemail-optioned, break-for-lunch-at-one, who-stole-my-stapler confabulation of every nightmare conceivable to a man not long ago a boy whose mother had asserted him numerous times as exceptional, different, bound for greatness. Instead he had become his father and every other characterless face who began and ended at a desk, stepping into that long line of ghostly worker ants who lived and died, nameless and forgotten, their legacy a computer number, an access pass, a shadow in an old work-party photograph, a disorganised inbox, eventually cancelled and relegated to the virtual graveyard.

He looks at the time.

It is 3:46 p.m.