1: A Carefully Constructed Life
“I can’t keep waiting for you to be ready,” Jeff’s girlfriend Anna said, zipping her overnight bag. Late afternoon light slanted through the living room’s west-facing window, catching dust motes disturbed by her packing. The radiator clanked and hissed, fighting November’s early chill, but the old apartment never quite got warm enough - one of the many small imperfections Jeff had learned to live with.
He watched her pack the few items she’d gradually brought over: her toothbrush still wet from morning use, the chipped coffee mug with its faint lipstick stains, the dog-eared copy of The Hours by Michael Cunningham that had lived on her side of the bed. Each object disappeared into her bag with quiet finality, leaving empty spaces - a bathroom counter too clean, a kitchen shelf too bare, a bedside table collecting dust where her book should be.
“I can change,” he said, but even he could hear the hollowness in his voice.
“No, you can’t. Or won’t.” She paused at the door, adjusting her scarf against the draft that always crept under it. “That’s the thing about you, Jeff. You’re so afraid of making a wrong move that you never make a move at all.” She reached up as if to touch his face, then let her hand fall. “I hope someday you figure out what you’re so afraid of.”
The door closed behind her with a soft click. Jeff stood in the living room, all the words he should have said settling around him like dust.
He retreated to his computer desk, the familiar glow of multiple monitors offering their cold comfort. Here, at least, things made sense. For months he’d been working on a side project in his free time - a program to help small non-profits match volunteers with opportunities. He’d started it after Anna mentioned her mother’s struggles coordinating volunteers at the local food bank. With Anna gone, would her mother welcome a call from Jeff if he finished it?
It didn’t matter. What was important was the code, which welcomed him back like an old friend. Variables behaved according to clear rules, functions returned predictable results, algorithms either worked or they didn’t. No messy emotions, no complicated expectations, no disappointment. Just pure logic, clean and safe.
Hours slipped by as he lost himself in the work. Only when his stomach growled did he realize he’d missed dinner. The apartment had grown dark around him, city lights casting familiar shadows. He’d been automatically adjusting his code to account for different time zones, making sure volunteers and organizations could connect across geographic boundaries. Something about that tickled the back of his mind - a pattern he’d seen somewhere else, recently, at work maybe.
He nuked a TV dinner, though the food tasted like ash. Then he stripped and slid into his bed, which felt too big that night, Anna’s side already cold. He reached automatically for her, finding only empty sheets. The radiator knocked once, twice, a syncopated rhythm that usually lulled him to sleep but tonight just emphasized his solitude. That pattern in the code kept nagging at him as he drifted off - something about connections, about systems talking to each other across boundaries.
He bolted awake at 3 AM, the realization hitting him like a surge of electricity. The volunteer matching system used the same type of cross-boundary protocols as Incredible Solutions’ client database. And if his security measures for the volunteer system were necessary, then surely the same vulnerabilities must exist in the work system.
Sleep eluded him after that. He spent the pre-dawn hours documenting his thoughts, the rising sun finding him surrounded by notebooks filled with diagrams and calculations. By the time he headed to the office, stubble-faced and over-caffeinated, he knew exactly what he was looking for.
The fluorescent lights of the cube farm where Jeff worked buzzed overhead as he hurried to his desk. His cubicle, wedged between the break room and the emergency exit, was filled with the competing scents of burnt coffee and printer toner. The drone of office life surrounded him: keyboards clicking, phones ringing, the soft whir of the ancient HVAC system that never quite managed to regulate the temperature. Phil the Third, his long-suffering philodendron, drooped on the filing cabinet, its leaves edged with brown despite Jeff’s careful watering schedule.
His hands trembled as he traced the pattern on his monitor for the third time. Taped-up documentation and network diagrams covered his cubicle walls, their overlapping patterns now seeming to scream of vulnerability. The morning’s coffee sat cold and forgotten beside his keyboard as he spread printouts across his desk.
When he was sure beyond a doubt that he’d figured out where the code broke down, he gathered his diagrams and walked over to his supervisor’s office. He spread them out and pointed to the pattern he’d discovered. “Dave, we have a problem. See these dependencies? The entire codebase is compromised. If someone found this, they could access any client’s data.”
Dave barely glanced up from his phone, the blue light reflecting off his glasses. “Write up a patch.”
“That’s just it - we can’t patch this. The whole system needs to be restructured. I’ve documented everything here.”
“Look,” Dave cut him off, “the quarterly review is next week. Just keep it running until then, okay? We can deal with infrastructure issues later.”
That evening, bone-tired from arguing with Dave, and struggling to find a patch that would hold, Jeff trudged home through the early darkness. Red and yellow warning tape fluttered in the wind around his building’s entrance, a harsh splash of color against grimy brick. Construction dust from the high-rise site next door coated everything - the sidewalk, the stunted street trees, the line of trash cans waiting forlornly for pickup. Each gust carried the metallic taste of approaching winter, mixed with diesel fumes from the idling police cruiser.
Two officers stood by the entrance, next to a yellow notice taped to the door.
“Sorry, sir, this building has been condemned,” the taller officer said. His nametag read ‘Baptiste.’ “Structural damage from the construction next door.”
“But I live here. Apartment 3B.”
Baptiste checked his clipboard and handed over an envelope. Inside: a notice from his landlord, a voucher for a week at a local hotel, instructions to call about finding a new apartment.
“You can take one supervised trip inside to collect essentials,” Baptiste said. “That’s all we can allow.”
Officer Baptiste’s boots left gray footprints on the worn carpet as they climbed to 3B. The hallway’s familiar scents - Mrs. Kumar’s curry from 3A, the super’s cigarette smoke, the lingering mustiness of old radiator heat - felt suddenly precious, soon to be lost forever. Jeff’s key stuck in the lock one last time, the familiar sideways jiggle required to open it now a farewell gesture.
A stack of flattened moving boxes leaned against the hallway wall - the landlord’s one concession to his displacement. Inside, his apartment felt both intimate and strange. Early evening shadows stretched across the scratched hardwood floors where his furniture had left permanent impressions. The kitchen still smelled faintly of last night’s microwave dinner, dishes left unwashed in his numbness after Anna’s departure.
Jeff began with his computers, wrapping each monitor in blankets before placing them in boxes. The machines represented thousands of hours of careful collection: salvaged parts, upgraded components, each one rescued and restored. Like the gaming rig he and his college girlfriend Madeline had built, staying up all night to get the cooling system just right, her laughter when they’d finally powered it up and the fans had sounded like a jet engine.
He shook off the memory and moved to his books. Computer science textbooks from Columbia, programming manuals, tech magazines - each one marking a different phase of his career. The box grew heavy with knowledge that hadn’t prevented this moment. His clothes took less time - he’d never been one for excess, even after Madeline tried to expand his wardrobe beyond hoodies and jeans.
Officer Baptiste helped him carry the boxes downstairs. Six boxes, two suitcases, and three garbage bags - his entire life Tetris-ed into the back of an Uber XL. The driver looked annoyed at the number of boxes but helped load them anyway.
“The Newton Hotel,” Jeff said, sliding into the back seat. Through the window, he watched his building shrink in the twilight. Four years of careful routine, of building a space that felt safe, all reduced to what could fit in the back of a stranger’s SUV.
The Newton Hotel had seen better days. The red brick Victorian mansion still wore traces of its 1890s grandeur: elaborate cornices, tall bay windows, and an imposing front door flanked by grimy stained-glass panels. Decades of neglect had turned it shabby - paint peeling from the ornate trim, concrete steps crumbling, iron security gates installed over the once-elegant windows. A neon “VACANCY” sign buzzed and flickered in a second-floor window, casting intermittent pink light over the building’s worn facade.
Jeff’s first-floor room faced the busy street, every passing truck making the thin windows rattle in their frames. The bedspread, a faded floral pattern in browns and oranges, held decades of other people’s misfortune. A water stain on the ceiling resembled a map of Florida, and the mini-fridge hummed off-key, competing with the wheeze of the ancient wall unit that pumped in air that smelled of mildew and resignation.
He laid his suit - the good one, the one he’d worn to his last three job interviews - across the room’s single chair, trying not to notice the cigarette burn on the armrest. At least he still had his job. He set up a single computer and fiddled with his charity project for a few hours. It calmed his mind, so he was able to push away his losses and try to sleep on sheets that smelled of industrial bleach and strangers.
The next morning, there was a note on his desk asking him to report to Sharon, the director of HR, before he got started on his day. He left his coat on the chair and walked down to her office, which felt too warm after the cold outside. The heat made Jeff’s shirt stick to his back as he sat across from her.
“Jeff.” Her voice carried practiced sympathy. “Last night the executive team sat down with the work you passed on to Dave about system vulnerabilities. They made a decision based on your findings.”
Hope flickered briefly. Maybe they’d finally listened.
“We’re outsourcing the entire development team. Starting fresh with an overseas contractor.” She slid a packet across her desk, ‘Termination’ stamped across the top. “Your position has been eliminated, effective immediately.”
Jeff's mouth opened, then closed. The words he should say pressed against his throat: about the system's vulnerabilities, about how an overseas team wouldn't understand its quirks, about how they were putting people's data at risk. For once in his life, he had every right to speak up, to fight back. But Sharon's practiced sympathy, so much like his mother's careful silences, drained the fight from him before it could begin.
He walked back to his cubicle in a daze. Boris’s posters advertising Russian punk bands were already gone, while a white envelopes sat on Claire’s desk like a tombstone.
Dave’s office door stood open, his desk cleared except for a company-issued monitor. How many people had his discovery affected? Five? Ten? All those lives upended because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about the system’s flaws.
His own cubicle felt suddenly foreign. He pulled down his diagrams with trembling hands, each one a testament to his obsession with perfection that had somehow led to this moment. The small Columbia lion that Madeline had given him their senior year still guarded his monitor, its blue ribbon faded but intact. Into the cardboard box it went, along with a picture frame from the Metropolitan Museum of Art holding a photo of the two of them mugging for the camera.
A coffee mug with the Aether logo followed. It was the first piece of swag his friend Shaheer had commissioned to promote his new business. His collection of jump drives, each one holding information from past projects that he might need to refer to. He carefully placed Phil the Third on the top. Somehow the bedraggled plant had somehow survived three office moves.
At the bottom drawer, he paused. The group photo from last year’s holiday party caught his eye - everyone smiling, unaware their jobs would disappear because of his need to fix what was broken. He closed the drawer without taking the photo. Some memories were better left behind.
The elevator’s mirrored walls reflected his face from four angles as he descended - pale, shocked, clutching his cardboard box. The security guard who had greeted him every morning for two years now watched him walk out, just another casualty of corporate restructuring.
Wind whipped between the buildings as he started his walk back to the hotel, carrying the salt-tang of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal mixed with diesel exhaust and decay. His shoe caught a crack in the sidewalk - the same one he’d stepped over every day, now registering for the first time. The cardboard box grew heavier with each block, Phil the Third’s remaining leaves brushing against his chin.
His mother’s voice echoed in his head: “Bad news always comes in threes, Jeffrey. Best to get them all at once and be done with it.”
Anna leaving. The building condemned. Now this.
That's when he saw the dog - golden fur catching weak sunlight, eyes watching him with impossible understanding. But more striking was the scent that followed it: warm cinnamon and fresh bread, so real he could almost taste it, so out of place in this industrial wasteland that he stopped walking. The dog tilted its head, then turned and padded away, glancing back as if expecting Jeff to follow.
Without thinking, Jeff did. Through narrow streets and past shuttered warehouses, following that incongruous scent of warmth and comfort. The dog led him to a weathered brick building, where a hand-painted sign hung above a door: "The Smiling Dog Café." Light spilled from its windows, golden and inviting, and the cinnamon scent grew stronger.
The dog slipped through the open door, but Jeff stood frozen on the sidewalk. The wind picked up and he clutched his box tighter, feeling the weight of his carefully constructed life crumbling around him. Twelve years since he'd let Madeline board that plane to California without speaking the words that might have changed everything. Twelve years of playing it safe, of keeping his head down, of avoiding any risk that might lead to pain.
And where had it gotten him? Standing in the cold Brooklyn wind, staring at a café door that promised warmth he didn't deserve. Thunder rumbled overhead as the approaching storm gathered strength, but Jeff remained rooted to the spot, caught between the safety of his silence and whatever waited behind that door.
