Dystopian world

Patrolling the skyscraper

  "Okay, so patrolling is the most chill job you can get here" Alex said with a friendly smile, "It's easy: people stay out of your way, and it isn't too hard to sleep on the job undetected."

I giggled from hearing that.

"Okay Alex, seems pretty fun. Let's get to it!" I said with excitement.

  "Sure thing mate, but first I got to tell you the rules to this 'extremely hard' job" he said, pausing for a moment before continuing, "The rules are simple. What you have to do is pretend to be super alert when someone is around. Then we obviously have to patrol the building though I usually skip the stairs. There are way too many of those things anyway. Oh and I've worked out the schedule of the others so I know when to start patrolling and when to slack on the job. Sounds good?"

Alex gave me a little wink and I nodded, "Yes sir! I understand completely. Let's get started!"

Alex nodded with approval and motioned for me to follow him.

I walked down the flight of stairs with him to the level below our floor and followed Alex through the door, wondering what we had to do here.

  "There should be my timetable here somewhere" Alex mumbled as if to answer my question, going to the chests and opening each of them one by one before stopping at one and pulling out a piece of paper and waving it around in celebration like a little kid.

  "Got it!" Alex exclaimed with a little laugh, "It's a good thing Mike hasn't gotten to this otherwise he'd have killed me long ago"

  "Hah you're so amazing dude" I smiled, high fiving him, "So anyways, mind if I have a look?" I inquired, wanting to see the fruits of Alex's labor.

"Oh not at all bro, you know me" Alex replied, handing me the paper.

  I have to say I was really impressed with all the effort Alex put in to this. Like, really, all the hard work that must have gone in to this.

  One column per person, and the times where he was going to be, and what he'd be doing. This in itself was amazing, but what was even more amazing was that Alex had even divided the building in to sectors with each having an individual name, as well as the exact locations of everyone at those times!

Alex was a pure legend.

"Okay so, we're good to go then?" I asked, handing him back the paper.

  "Yep, we need to get a move on. Let's go" Alex answered, grabbing the paper and stuffing it in his rather big jeans pocket.

***

  As far as patrolling went, I had to say it was really fun. It was pretty exciting, even though one might have said it was just walking up and down stairs and looking in places. I think I had already taken a liking to this job, patrolling.

  Another thing which I liked about the job is that I got to explore the entire building from top to bottom. Not the rooms, because almost all were locked, and when I tried to open the only one aside from our room and the storage one which wasn't locked, it didn't move an inch. Alex informed me that he had tried but there seemed to be something jamming the door from the other side.

That had been a little bit of a letdown, but I guess I could always try another day.

  Our patrolling started from the very top floor, and we were to continue descending until we reached the bottom level, and then go back up to the very top.

  The roof was part of the area inscribed for us to patrol, but I insisted to Alex not to go because of the last time I went there and nearly embraced death.