Giant Solidarity G/T

Chapter XVI. Take your Human to Work Day

I'm unsure how long I sat alone in the breakroom before a figure approached me. It was Harley, good news for my blood-pressure. "Vic, there you are man. Been looking for you ." At first glance, Harley looked overworked, odd for a guy who wrote music blogs for a living. Noticing my own haggardness, Harley asked "Who died?"

         "Nobody, unfortunately," I said, uncharacteristically cold, glaring at the folder in front of me, with Petra Smith printed on the tab. "Look at this shit." I passed him the comic storyboards I'd been forced to interact with all morning.

         "Who is Long Piggy?" Harley questioned, rifling through the pages. "What... ugh... This... is disgusting! Petra greenlit this?" He dropped it back on the square table, like a poisonous spider.

         "The woman who referred to your tiny new girlfriend as "it" and a "thing"." I summarized. "Yes, it was her, big fuckin shock."

         "Well, that literally defines immoral content." Harley shook his head at the folder. "Petra can't make you work on-,"

         "Apparently she can!" I interrupted solemnly, rubbing my temples. "Basically, she threatened my job." I dropped the file back in my briefcase, wishing it were a wastebasket. "If Rey, Crystal, and Alma ever see this published with my name, they'll kill me, rightfully so. I'm gonna get murdered at least three times, Har!"

Clearing his throat, Harley sounded apprehensive saying "Now that you mention Crystal. She's sort of why I was looking for you."

         "Did she call you?" Eyes and ears perked up as I looked Harley in the face. "Did Rey's size restore?"

         "Slow down chief, not that," Harley said, now sounding urgent. "Vic, to cut to the chase, Crystal's lost."

         "Lost?" I repeated, throwing my lunch trash away and grabbing my briefcase. "So what? Your house is like a fortress for tinies. If she's lost there, she'll-,"

         "Not at my house, here!" Harley almost shouted, clearly antsy. "Here, Crystal's lost here."

         "Here, as in the magazine?" I asked, foolishly pondering any other, less lethal context for "Here" which may have soared over my head. "Or here as in... your soul, I hope you mean?"

         "At Hitherto!" shouted Harley, causing a nervous double-take from a passing temp in the hall.

         "Crystal's here, right now?!" I said, almost dropping my briefcase. "How's that possible? We checked our stuff before we left. Every nook and cranny she could have snuck into-,"

         "Uh, she didn't sneak in." Harley rubbed the back of his neck. "I smuggled her in my hood. Vic, she guilt-tripped me!" He raised his hands at my angered facial expression.

         "And you don't know where she is now?" I looked around the tile floor, to the carpeting over the threshold. As if I expected Spitfire to serendipitously be there. "When's the last time you saw her then?"

         "An hour ago, after my lunch break," said Harley, following me out the doorway. "I cut up some leftover chop suey for her and a capful of cola. She was in the netting of my workbag when I sat back at my desk. Wrote for like half an hour, looked down to check on her, she was nowhere in sight."

         "Damn that girl's wanderlust." I'm not sure Harley heard me as I led the way through the maze of cubicles and offices. "Colony humans, man... You probably shouldn't have given her caffeine, Har." Keeping my voice down around uninformed coworkers, I kept my eyesight as low to the ground as possible, without being suspicious. Only movement I caught down there were heels and shoes.