> The skin is dead. The shell is cold. Inject a new pulse.
He slammed the laptop shut. The office was suddenly too quiet. The green dots were back. The corporate blue was back. But he knew what lay beneath the skin now. And the scariest part wasn't the loneliness, the rage, or the grief he’d seen.
The fluorescent lights of the office hummed a low, monotonous funeral dirge for creativity. Arjun stared at his screen, the crisp, sterile interface of the corporate LAN messenger, “SwiftTalk,” glaring back at him. It was the same shade of lifeless corporate blue and institutional gray that every other workstation, every other form, every other soul seemed to exude. The default theme: “Arctic Standard.”
