11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Adam Fluxelright

Normalcy. For Adam Fluxelright, life and reality had been quite stable and regular for as far back as he could remember, at least on the surface. He had assumed that his life was pretty normal, and this gave him a degree of shallow comfort. However, normalcy was becoming increasingly unsatisfying for him.

Deep down, he was yearning for radical changes. He was yearning for a truer understanding of himself—an expansion of himself. Was there more to life? Was there more to what we call reality? He wondered occasionally.

As he typed away at his routine desk job, college life was slowly becoming that of a distant memory. College wasn’t always the best fit for him. He enjoyed his studies and had a close group of friends that he associated with, but he never felt that he had the full “college experience” like many of his peers. They all seemed to know exactly what they wanted out of college, and more importantly, life. Adam got solid grades and internship opportunities, but it still felt so…empty. He lacked purpose.

He has been a tall and slender guy for as far back as he can remember, sticking out in any given crowd like the sorest of thumbs. His well-mannered and easygoing nature, the byproduct of a rather traditional upbringing, has given him an advantage in many platonic and professional situations. Additionally, his clean-shaven and sharp facial features, and jet-black ivy league haircut with texture like a kind of spiky, silky grass, always seemed to attract the more mature and classy women of his college. He dated a few of these women—almost always a few years older than him—but the relationships would fade quietly into the wind as those women felt overwhelmed in the relationship or moved far away to start their post-graduation careers.

There was no woman in his life. Everyone around him was busy getting engaged, or at the very least committed to a long-term relationship. They were experiencing true love; he wanted that feeling, and he wanted it badly. True love was something that had been evading him since the day he first desired it. Something deep-seated about his personality seemed to always turn women away in the end, but no matter how hard he thought, he could never figure out why. It was time for a change…It was time to wake up.

Strange phenomena that he couldn’t quite explain have been occurring with rising frequency prompting him to deeply introspect. When it came to certain situations, usually social, he felt as if his surroundings would briefly slow down or speed up randomly, and he had no idea why. Maybe it was just in his head, or he was going crazy. Either way, what he was experiencing was not normal. Relatedly, his confidence wasn’t always the best, so when it came to making an important social-related decision or thinking of a new idea or solution, he would often begin to doubt himself. This self-doubting had to stop, and it had to stop now.

Leviatrope, the company Adam has been working for, was a monster. Its headquarters was one of the tallest buildings in the entire city. He felt lucky to work for such a massive company; all of that unpaid interning through college definitely paid off. Now, he works on the 21st floor. He’s getting up there, but there’s still a long, grueling way to go before reaching the top.

The ambience of ringing office phones and professional chatter constantly filled the building’s tightly condensed air. Despite the dense number of workers, the building is able to provide everyone, even summer interns, with their own independent workspace of varying shapes and sizes. Most of the male workers wear a plain-colored, buttoned shirt with a tie, and dark-colored slacks. Less the tie, this outfit was often casual attire for most of them, including Adam.

With his lunch break looming around the corner, Adam had been hungrily focused on finishing his final task for the past hour in a feeble attempt to make that clock tick faster.

As he was preparing to go to lunch, a young, fashionable, co-worker named Zach calmly called out, “Hey Adam, there’s a package that just arrived for you in the mail room.” Adam nodded his head in a slightly confused acknowledgement before hibernating his computer and gathering a few of his other belongings.

“A package?” Adam thought to himself in shock. He doesn’t receive packages often at work, so he was a bit surprised as he headed down towards the lobby floor to pick it up. The ride down felt too long. Most people who work at the company take the elevator, which can sometimes cause quite the wait.

Suddenly, Adam felt a fuzzy vibration in his right pocket. It was an out-of-the-blue text from his younger brother, Jake Fluxelright, asking how he was doing. He prefers to be called “Jacob,” but Adam had a habit of calling him by his nickname going all the way back to when they were kids. Whatever the reason for the text, it had to be urgent, shocking, or both.

They hadn’t spoken in many years, never really seeing eye-to-eye on many things, so there has to be something deeply motivating him to reach out.

Their relationship wasn’t bad…just different. He was never as ambitious as Adam, and often times, he found himself involved with the wrong crowd. His life was random, unorganized, and spontaneous--nothing was stable—including his relationships with the people he cared about. He had dropped out of college and was in and out of jobs, but despite this, he still managed to be independent. He could be an extremely sensitive guy at times letting his emotions get the better of him. Adam wasn’t sure how to respond to the text just yet—he’ll do it later.

Adam headed towards the rather large “employees only” section located near the receptionist desk in the lobby area. He passed by one of the receptionists, Betty, whom he was fond of when he first started working at the company. Unfortunately, she is married. She smiled and greeted him warmly, and he responded in kind.

Inside the employee’s mail room, there was a light-brown box about the size of an average microwave with his name and company’s address on it. The lack of a return address and origin struck him as rather odd. “It’s probably from my brother,” he confidently thought to himself aloud. Jake was never one who paid that much attention to detail in the past, but at the same time, he never really sent Adam any packages. Maybe this was his way of shyly trying to reestablish a bond after all these years?

With the anonymously sent box tightly tucked under his arm, Adam quickly made his way out towards the parking lot. Betty smiled at him again as he headed out, which he returned in kind.

To his delight, he managed to park near the entrance, which meant for a longer lunch break.

He has grown quite fond of his four-door hybrid car. It still had that new car luster to it, even though its metallic-blue paint had been showing some signs of wear for some time. For Adam, it was more than just a regular car; it was a symbol of achievement. It represented finishing college and starting life as a full-fledged adult. He quickly popped open the trunk and placed the box inside the very back as best as he could. It was a little disorganized inside to say the least, but this was something he was used to.

At last it was on towards his favorite diner, The Median, to tame his growling stomach. As usual, his alternative and classic rock playlist queued up via the car’s wireless sound system. Morning commutes have had a tendency to blur together as he’d get lost in the catchy vocals and rhythms of his favorite artists.

As he drove, he calmly began grooving to the rhythms and bobbing his head like a slow-moving bobble-head figurine. While waiting at a traffic light, an older couple in the lane to his right glanced over at him with a sense of endearment as they all waited for the light to turn green.