Tails Over Tea

Tails of A Futuristic Mystery

"Come on, work already, you stupid machine!"

*ACCESS DENIED*

"Oh, I'm soooo.... ready to bre----"

Just before that full-of-grumps blue Protogen was going to destroy the poor card reader (again), I was quick to sneak from under, and swipe down my blue ID card for the single entrance glass door to retract into the right wall. This, thank goodness, prevented the ultimate destruction of the card reader.

"Cheer up, Zay! No one likes a grumpy robot on the start of the day."

He scoffed, "Hmph! You should try struggling to open this damn door for 1800 seconds then! And also,"

"DON'T CALL ME A ROBOT!"

And with that, the grouch of the office stormed through the door frame with his digital head visor showing the 'angry face' on it (Which is what makes him so easy to be interpreted). And letting him through, I followed his swishing, long fluff tail of midnight-black from behind, and into the building.

As if climbing the cement stairs up here, and being stuffed into a cramped Monorail Transit wasn't tiring enough, I still had to deal with this... Thank goodness it ended before it got any worse, which, in turn again, means the untimely destruction of the card reader.

Walking inside the air-conditioned entrance lobby, the door slid behind and I went for my biometric scans from the presently unoccupied main desk nearby. During that, the flustered 'robot' (still calling him that anyway) was fidgeting and getting impatient from the sluggish-sped registering of the machine, which was clearly apparent from his further mumbling and groaning. 

"Zay, you should really try to relax." I suggested, which quickly earned a glowering glare from the projected emotion of his head visor (and also his lowering orange-patched ears). But slowly, the agitation he was experiencing, reduced to a depressing, hollow sigh.

"It's just that... " He stood silent a while, following the machine's instruction to lay his finger onto the scanner, "Nothing, it's just that 'case' that's been bugging the company." 

Indeed, the juicy gossip this week was about this particular 'case', especially within the clerks' circle ever since it was first received and recorded this Monday. And this intensified when one of the Investigators was rumored to had disappear without a trace, but as always,  I suspected that the office ladies were just spreading conspiracies. Funniest thing? That  investigator was Zaiden HAHA!

But still, the gossip was admittedly stuck with me, since my nosiness is always much more emphasized than my own good...

"Oh look, it's done finally." Zaiden announced from the other side of the empty hall. And indeed, a monotonous, AI-toned voice came from the system that assured the completion of his registration.

And while mine was slowly processing, the half-artificial (robot) left through a nearby right-side door, probably going on his own way. 

After finishing mine, I went the opposite direction where the left sliding door was retracted by my ID scan.

"Oomph!"

It wasn't long, but honestly pretty much expected for someone to knock into me (literally) from the badly-positioned break-room doors, and smash right into me. And for this case, it was... a tumbled-down red panda.

As we both fell down onto the slippery, cold-white marble floor, a long metal crashed onto my stomach which made my guts hurt like heeeeeeeeeeeelllll...

"Oh, Echo! I-I'm so sorry!"

Seeing their red-white face, it was Kayla, an infamously clumsy, fellow clerk, that unfortunately bumped into me. Knowing what just happened, I was quick into 'damage-control' mode and held her up with the metal crutch she had, speedily picking her up and slotted the heavy metal into her right underarm.