22:59

05:00

Roger Stone was already awake when the alarm clock rang.

He shifted his gaze to the clock, as if expecting to see something new there. But, as with every morning for the past ten years, it showed exactly 5 in the morning,

Another working day lie ahead.

The new orthopedic mattress did not even budge when his wife got up, and once again he thought that it had not been in vain that he had chosen this exact model, even if it had cost him the equivalent of his monthly salary. Turning over onto his other side, he just managed to catch a glimpse of how Sandra entered the bathroom pulling her robe tighter around her. A second later the noise of flowing water could be heard.

Roger closed his eyes for a moment and registered his emotional state. He felt a little tired and a tad under-slept. The muscles in his lower back were slightly pulled after yesterday's workout. Apparently, it had been to no avail that he had begun to increase the amount of weights despite the ban by his coach. For the same reason, muscle fibers were torn apart by the hard training and caused pain in his muscles. Roger tried not to move so as to concentrate on something else. Unpleasant sensations in his stomach area caused him a second of fear: what if it was due to nervous tension, caused by the transfer to the new position? He inhaled and exhaled deeply five times and attempted to relax and entertained the thought that, in reality, he should just be hungry.

Roger sat on the bed, raised his shoulders up and then back and again shifted his gaze to the clock. The two zeros had managed to replace themselves with a one and a three.

Still damp after a steamy shower and freshly dressed in light blue jeans and a white T-shirt on which was a barely noticeable "Medicol" emblem, he entered the dining room where Sandra and breakfast were already waiting for him, the latter as usual, carefully prepared by his favorite restaurant and delivered right on time.

"Is Lily still sleeping?" He asked, kissing his wife on the cheek.

"I'm thinking of keeping her at home today. Yesterday evening she had a headache again." Sandra mumbled the words so softly that Roger had to stop stirring the sugar in his coffee to hear her.

"Are you giving her the pills? Maybe you should take her to the doctor and increase her dose?"

"If it doesn't pass today we'll go tomorrow," Sandra raised her almost translucent eyes to her husband. She had had a fight with Emilia and was still upset over it.

Roger sighed and all but collapsed into the chair, the suddenness of his movement causing coffee to splash out of his cup, leaving two spots on his jeans.

"You need to talk to her more about dealing with emotions. You know how dangerous they can be."

Sandra was silent, picking at the already cooled omelet with her fork. She was used to his nagging and grumbling and it no longer caused her to feel any emotions. Probably, this was learned, having lived so many years with one person. Or was it the effect of the psychotropic medications that Dr. Sagewick had prescribed for her?

They finished eating in silence.

It was already five forty when Roger walked briskly out of the house and got into his car. The old gasoline powered BMW only started on the third try and Roger thought that perhaps it was time to fork out the money for a new electric car. The problem was that he liked the BMW. He had gotten the car from his grandfather. Passing it down from generation to generation had become a kind of tradition, like with gold jewelry or a family business. Roger loved the smell of the old leather, worn down to such an extent that no one could remember what color it was, he also loved the frayed braid on the steering wheel that held the prints of the older generation of his family and he loved the slight smell of gasoline in the interior. He seemed to be transported to those times in which neither he, nor his father, nor his grandfather had even been born.

Roger glanced over his shoulder and backed up into the street. He then turned right and accelerated to the maximum posted speed. He was late.

His route was through a green suburb, in which everyone who had enough money preferred to live. The return to nature was dictated by the prescriptions of doctors.

"Nature is soothing," they said.

Yes, Roger himself noted more than once that it was in this part of the city that ambulance sirens were heard less and less, something which could not be said for the city center, an anthill of offices, where you could see dirty red spots on the asphalt every five steps and every five minutes see blue and red flashing lights. It was because of this that all the slums on the outskirts of the city had been demolished to give way to luxurious houses with gardens and yards, which were gloriously sculpted by landscape designers who became some of the highest paid members of society. The city's tenements were now being rebuilt to resemble cheap motels, where rooms could not be bought but instead rented out at ridiculous prices.

Having entered the city, Roger, as if falling into an ice-hole in the dead of winter, plunged into the prickly world of glass, concrete and disintegrating sidewalks caused by the construction work that was ongoing along almost all the streets. The government had apparently also drawn conclusions and implemented a "green" program for commercial and industrial areas. Under the directives wherever there was enough space, they were supposed to start planting trees and shrubs and break up the concrete to make way for flower beds. Now, still at the preparatory stage, the city seemed like nothing but ruins, it was a pitiful sight to see. Throughout the city, all day and all night, the pounding of jackhammers could be heard as the asphalt was torn apart in pitiful attempts to get to the earth below it. The authorities had promised that the city would be filled with oxygen from growing trees last year, but so far things had not progressed in that direction.

Many of the leading companies operating in the market supported the new green initiative and had begun to create entire gardens on the rooftops of their skyscrapers, albeit hiding them under large glass domes. Roger had even participated in a survey that his company was conducting called "Garden Themes." All employees were asked to choose from five options: the first was a Japanese-style garden with crooked trees, small ponds and red lanterns; the second option was akin to a tropical rainforest and in fact was almost a jungle with vines, ferns and even a small zoo with monkeys; number three was called "Paradise Beach" with white sand, flowers, palm trees and even parrots, only without a sea; and finally the fourth option was something like "a return to the village" with apple trees, pear orchards and strawberry patches. Roger voted for the fifth option, a mixing of the styles, four-in-one.

Roger turned right one last time and pulled into the parking lot. Third level space number 313, at the very entrance. He was especially given such a spot so that as few employees as possible breathed the exhaust of the old gasoline wreck he drove. Roger turned off the engine, glanced at the time again, and smiled. He had made it.