The room had seemed larger almost thirty years ago--his first room of his own. Now, not unlike his future, it seemed to close around him, this space in his mother's house. He had stopped calling it his years ago, long before his marriage had dissolved. Regardless, the detritus of his boyhood muttered at him from corners and from under the bed; rolled up posters of Steely Dan and Warren Zevon were replaced by unfurled prints by Jasper Johns and Jackson Pollock, held up by the very same thumbtacks that had first penetrated the virgin drywall. The same gunmetal gray office desk on which he composed high school English themes carried the same Selectric typewriter given to him on his sixteenth birthday, then ripe with the promise of literary career, now as out-of-date as the man who still tapped away at it. While the river of Heraclitus changed with every moment of passing time, this room seemed a cesspool: static, reeking, stagnant.

It's like a prison. Foucault would say so. It's all like a prison, like a cell, and everyone sees no matter the thickness of the walls or the littlenss of the windows. It's like a prison, even if it's only a prison in the mind. Which might make it the worst kind of prison of all.

It’s 2 am as I write this. She’s asleep. Has been for hours. All I can see of her—above the quilt her grandmother made for her—is her tousled blonde hair. There’s something so safe-feeling about this precise scenario: Late night, her asleep, me, quietly tapping at the laptop. I think that I feel able to take more risks on the page, knowing that when I’ve come back to earth and put the computer away for the night, I can crawl back into the bed beside her. She will make a little whimpering sound, but she will move over to make room for me.

Rubbing the back of her neck, Chris looked up from her laptop. “How the hell should she respond to that bastard?” she wondered. Leaning back in her desk chair, she gazed around the small room that served as her home office, at the stacks of papers she liked to pretend were organized scattered around the desk and the floor. Here and there bits of paper her cat had nibbled off the corners of a memo lay on the ground like leftover confetti, blending in with the pile of binder clips that had fallen off the desk and spilled onto the floor. The Giants cap she’d thrown across the room in jubilant celebration after last week’s game still lying in the corner. Her eyes traveled higher and a smile curved her lips as she gazed at the bookshelves lining the room, filled to the brim with books. Fat books, thin books, tall and short books, some green, some white, some yellow, others black, the red ones jumping out from the others, calling for attention. One pile nearly falling off its shelf, were it not for the little stone gargoyle placidly holding them in place. Some were lined up evenly on the IKEA shelves, others tucked haphazardly on top of the neat rows, waiting for the day she added another bookshelf, though where she could possibly fit it she had no earthly idea. Perhaps she could replace the small shelf nestled between the two large wood ones? No, she decided, the small bookshelf only highlighted the picture on the wall above it: one of Tolkien’s own illustrations for The Hobbit. She found that she liked watching Bilbo sailing down the river, awkwardly straddling his barrel. For a moment she looked longingly at the battered green and blue recliner in the corner, snuggled under the old wood floor lamp, and the novel that had fallen to the floor, inviting her to abandon the problem, to dive into another world. Turning toward the pale sunlight just starting to enter the room, she spotted the fat gray and white cat sprawled amidst the ferns spread around her window ledge. Tired of shredding paper, Horatio had dozed off, leaves drooping over his head, his little pink tongue just sticking out between his teeth. “Hunting in the jungle again, cat?” she asked, and he opened one eye to gaze at her steadily. “Me too,” she decided, and turned back to her computer, the offending e-mail still accusing her on the screen.

Where's the goddamn confessional in this place? For chrissake. And when do these producers tell me that I get an exemption from the freakin' boardroom tomorrow? Anymore I can't tell the difference between Dave Eggers and Mark Burnett. So I'm completely fine with his death. And that guy Updike? How many times d'ya think that guy's ever been in a fight? I'd like to witness him and Tarantino... No. Him and Saul Bellow really slugging it out. But I'll never get the chance since he got his ass kicked last week. You know who else got their ass kicked last week? Daniel. With prose as patently purblind as his, I mean, I heard backstage that the annual percentage rate of interest on his talent loan is 237.760%. So he’s definitely overspending. And one final note: Although N. and I have been seen together quite a bit off set, I'd just like to say that we're merely close friends and I enjoy N.'s company. We are not pursuing anything more than that. And we are certainly not forming any kind of alliance. Rumors like those I’ve been hearing can get out of hand quickly, so I just need to put a stop to this crap right now.

Lacey looked at the beige walls of her windowless office and wondered whether anyone else had come in to work this early. She had tried to improve the decor by bringing in some prints that she taped above the monitor of her computer - Matisse's Calla Lillies, a picture of an old French Poster she found at Tar-jay - but it didn't do much good. The office was bleak. She supposed she should be happy to have an office and not just a cubicle. Looking at the indoor/outdoor rust carpeting on the floor, though, she just couldn't convince herself of that.

Lacey was trying so hard to advance at Pink and Persimmon Publishing, and she knew that all it would take would be for her to find just that one manuscript, that one gem of a best-seller that would push her from Editorial Assistant to Editor. But looking at her desk - strewn with papers, horrible manuscripts, office supplies run wild, a half-full can of Diet Cherry Coke and her morning Venti Latte from Starbucks, Lacey felt like she'd never find that gem, that diamond in the rough.

If only something would happen; if only she could get that break that she needed. Just at that moment, she heard a knock on her door. It was the devastatingly handsome and rich Jarod Jefferson, IV, and he had a stack of manuscripts in his arms for her to review. Maybe one of these would be it.

I am no longer conscious of the piles of paper around me, nor of the chaotic yells of the police and protestors over my walkie-talkie. Only victory. Only full knowledge that our “Puppets for Peace” march has succeeded. Hundreds of people surround me, but I only see the news cameras and microphones in front of me, waiting for my message to a public hungry for truth and knowledge and action. Gentle springtime breezes stir the blossoming cherry trees, providing the perfect backdrop to a view of the 15-foot puppet behind me, trailed by its Tibetan liberation strings. This will be tonight’s lead story on all the major networks! Mother Jones and the Utne Reader will get to ask the first questions, though.

Globally unconscious sophomores file into the classroom, lighthearted in their springtime cottons, unaware that those popped collars were made by 8-year-olds working 15-hour days and earning only $2 per day. They sit there, their sweatshop sneakers on the chair backs, laughing as they blearily recall last night’s drinking – kegs of mass-produced swill. Settled in her second-row desk, quickly scanning her response paper on Althusser and Nadine Gordimer, Macie scoffed under her breath, “They don’t get it. They haven’t seen what I have seen.” She caught a quick glance at her neighbor’s Greek letters, smoothed her mudcloth skirt, and dreamed of returning to the village she left that summer.

At first glance, the space appeared spacious, bright and airy: about 40 meters on a side, with high ceilings and tall windows. As he stepped off the elevator, though, Detective Larroquette's impressions began to shift. The light that suffused the area was not the wan early-morning sunlight that illuminated the scene outside, but the flickering glare of endless banks of flourescent bulbs overhead. And the open sensation that had greeted him was an illusion as well, for, looking down, he saw that the space had been meticulously partitioned by movable walls approximately five feet high.

He set off down a narrow causeway between two rows of wall segments. As he walked, he glanced into the cubes on either side. The fabric walls were gray as prison stone, the cubes themselves roughly the size of cells, their furniture just as uniform and institutional as the benches at Leavenworth. Like inmates, the workers had tried to add some variety to the chambers where they spent so many hours. Some were lined with posters with inspirational sayings; some decorated with plastic toys and action figures; many housed desperate, stunted plants. As he passed each cube, Larroquette made a mental note of the name on the wall and the contents (Dorian Garcia had an epipremnum aureum and a chlorophytum comosum whose leaves were yellow from underwatering).

In one corner, an actual office had been carved out of the open area by building two walls of glass and metal, and it was towards this office that the detective was making his way. Halfway down the row of cubicles, though, he came upon a small alcove that held a refrigerator, water cooler, and an ancient and well-used coffee machine. He glanced in and spotted a photograph hung on the wall. It had evidently been taken at a recent company picnic. Two-dozen employees were arranged in two rows, the ones in front squatting in the wet grass. The man in the center would have to be Adams: 50ish, stout, pointy-haired, wearing a suit at a picnic. The sullen expressions on the faces of his employees were little help. Any one of them looks like they could have done it and not lost a wink of sleep, thought Larroquette grimly. He studied Adams' face minutely. From what the Sergeant had told him over the phone, he didn't expect those features to be recognizable when he met Adams in person.

Reaching the door to the corner office, Larroquette glanced back down the aisle toward the elevator. He had learned a great deal just by walking those thirty paces, but one thought still puzzled him. The walkway between the cubes was only a few feet wide; how had they gotten the wood chipper through here? His musings were interrupted as the office door opened. "Morning, detective," said the CSI tech, removing his gloves with a wry smile as he emerged. "We've got a messy one for you..."

“How did I get here?” Jane wondered to herself. Aware of a muffled voice making unintelligible announcements on an overhead speaker off in the distance, Jane looks around and tries to quell the wave of disappointment threatening to wash over her. The cold plastic seat was uncomfortable enough to keep her from dozing off and forgetting the hellishness of the past three hours. Jane stares at the carpet, a mixture of lavender and green stripes while pondering her options. A very fine pair of brown leather loafers with tassels stops a short distance in front of her. She follows her gaze past a pair of expensive Italian silk trouser socks and finds a tall blonde man with gray eyes. He is overloaded with a very heavy briefcase and looking rather confused. After a moment, he finds what he needs in the pocket of his suit jacket and moves on.

Jane watches as he briskly marches past the tiny ATM, with several teenagers crowded around it. He moves quickly past the bookstore and the pizza counter, pausing only briefly for a mother with a stroller and two kids in tow to pass and then continues on his way. Another minute or so, and Jane loses sight of him. Her bags are strewn across the two seats on either side of her. Defiantly, she looks off in the distance when the mother of two approaches and waits expectantly for Jane to clear her belongings so the family would have a place to sit. Feeling unforgiving, Jane ignores them until they wander off to another section with plenty of empty plastic seats.

The buzz of people moving to and fro is all just a blur. Her one chance to take Tex Carter up on his romantic encounter and she misses her flight. Her crushing disappointment threatens her vision with a rush of tears while she hopes for a standby seat on the next flight to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

{note to producers: I think in all fairness...west coasters should get until Noon PST} --Sorry for the delay...very busy week. -N

The woodgrain of the desk is false, though the man, dressed carefully in a three-piece suit classically cut, continues to trace its veneer as though it will reveal some mystic's insight. A briefcase, edges worn and of uncertain quality, sits open, the lock tinged red as though only through a thousand turns of a bloodied thumb did he recover the final digit that opened the tumbler with a humble click. He continues his soothsaying, although oddly ignoring the glass globe - could it be a crystal ball? - that appears more suitable for fortune telling, though it bears the imprint of some poor unfortunate soul's smashed skull, a swirl of red and white accented by a wooden stand, perhaps oak. A set of dice, showing snake eyes, gazes openly, without judgment. Within that briefcase, if we could peer just so over the tracing man's shoulder, lies a single folded piece of paper. Folded so intricately, and marked with arcane symbols, a quick glance tells us that it bespeaks entire worlds, waiting to be unfolded in as many ways as there are possible paths to choose.

A mouse, unmoving and tethered, watches with an unblinking red eye.