Government Employees by Paige Hatcher

Restless and bored, the astronaut-ballerina in cubicle 1023 ascends to cubicle 3159, where the doctor-celebrity is eating his cereal.

Let's go for a walk, she mimes, so as not to be heard by the neighboring librarian-dictator.

Together, they stroll past cubicle 3228, collecting the geographer-general, but not before summoning on the telephone the flight-risk-groupie in 1025, who's currently trembling in indignant dismay at the machinations of the passive-aggressive-hippie-fascist in 1026.

The quartet ambles without aim through several corridors until the geographer-general freezes abruptly to exclaim, "Just where the hell are we going, exactly?"

The astronaut-ballerina, lacking the precise coordinates, and therefore unable to soothe her comrade, leads the group to a row of windows. Across from cubicle 3612, occupant unknown, rows of pennies march across the sill. Their numbers have been increasing steadily over the last several weeks. Their purpose: a mystery.

The doctor-celebrity lets out a guffaw. The flight-risk-groupie stares in mute bewilderment. The geographer-general yawns. The astronaut-ballerina theorizes that it's the work of a troubled artist-genius, a commentary on the megalomaniac mermaid idol whose face towers over the neighborhood, two blocks away, looming over the pittance in the window.

"I'm going home," the geographer-general pivots to leave, "and by the way stop sending me porn on my email." The flight-risk-groupie follows. A potential patient commandeers the doctor-celebrity for a diagnosis, and the astronaut-ballerina is left alone again.

Remembering that a certain pirate-professor has a secret compulsion to flip over pennies he finds on the street, our heroine pirouettes down to 2545. She finds him feeding his fish, and his eyes take on a glassy sheen as she recounts the scene upstairs.

The astronaut-ballerina meanders back to her desk, pilfering candy from more than one drawer on her way. Back at 1023, she is politely informed that administrative assistants should stay at their desks. "If I see one, I'll let her know," she replies.