Daniel: Primary Assignment

Everyone spoke about Daniel as if he were still part of the team.

They referenced his notes, forwarded his emails, asked if I’d seen him that morning. I answered carefully at first, assuming I’d missed something obvious. A sick day. A schedule change.

But Daniel’s desk had been empty for months.

At first, I checked the obvious things. The shared calendar. The internal directory. His name still appeared everywhere it was supposed to. Assigned tasks. Comment threads. An unread message timestamped two weeks ago, addressed to him, marked urgent.

I asked HR if Daniel had moved departments. They smiled, the kind of smile meant to close a conversation gently. “He’s still here,” they said. “If you need anything, just loop him in.”

After that, I stopped asking directly. Instead, I watched.

In meetings, people paused as if waiting for him to speak. Someone once nodded at the empty space beside the conference table and said, “Daniel raised a good point earlier.” No one questioned it. I didn’t either. I wrote it down like the rest of the notes, my pen hesitating only slightly before continuing.

The strange thing was not that everyone acted as if he were present. It was how smoothly the absence fit into the workflow.

His chair was never moved. His mug stayed in the same place, ringed with old coffee stains. When the cleaner wiped the desks, they skipped his, as if it had already been done.

Once, I tried sitting there.

Someone cleared their throat.

“Oh—Daniel usually uses that,” they said, without looking at me.

I apologised and returned to my seat.

It started with small corrections.

I caught myself hesitating before finishing sentences, choosing words that left more room than necessary.

When I wrote his name down, I paused. Then erased it. Then wrote it again more neatly, as if the first version might have offended someone.

I reread messages before sending them. Not to fix mistakes, but to make sure they didn’t sound final.

Certain phrases began to feel wrong in my mouth.

Used to.

Was.

Gone.

I avoided them without deciding to.

When I did slip and use one, a thin embarrassment followed, like I’d spoken too loudly in a quiet room.

No one pointed it out.

No one needed to.

The correction had already happened.

What bothered me most was that I could no longer remember when Daniel had last spoken to me directly.

I could picture him clearly. His handwriting. The way he leaned back when he was thinking. The half-smile he used when he disagreed.

But every memory ended just before sound.

As if my mind had edited him for clarity.

I searched my inbox for anything written to me. Anything personal. There were plenty of emails with his name on them. None addressed me.

It was as though our conversations had been rerouted through the room itself. Filtered. Processed. Reduced to only what was necessary.

I began to wonder whether Daniel had stopped replying.

Or whether I had stopped noticing the replies.

The first time I saw Daniel’s name in a performance summary, I assumed it was a clerical error.

The quarterly report listed his contributions in neat bullet points. Process improvements. Risk mitigation. A successful client intervention I distinctly remembered handling alone.

I stared at the screen longer than necessary, waiting for the correction to load.

It didn’t.

During the review meeting, my manager smiled at me. “You did well supporting Daniel on this,” she said.

Supporting.

I nodded.

There was no opening to dispute it. No space in the conversation where disagreement would make sense. The sentence had already been filed away as fact.

After that, it happened more often.

Tasks I completed appeared later with his name attached. Decisions I remembered making were referred to as “Daniel’s call.” Once, a junior analyst thanked me for “continuing his approach.”

I asked what approach they meant.

They looked confused. “You know. Daniel’s.”

I said nothing.

I began receiving fewer direct questions. Fewer confirmations. People spoke around me instead of to me, looping me in after decisions were made, the same way they had always looped Daniel in.

Sometimes emails arrived addressed to both of us.

Only one of us replied.

It wasn’t always me.

I started proofreading my own messages for tone, then for intent, then for permission. Statements softened into suggestions. Suggestions thinned into observations. Anything that sounded too decisive felt incorrect, like I was overstepping.

Once, in a meeting, I interrupted someone mid-sentence.

The room went quiet.

Not sharply. Not angrily. Just enough to register.

I apologised without being asked.

No one corrected me. No one acknowledged it.

But afterward, I noticed my name was missing from the minutes.

Daniel’s wasn’t.

After a while, people stopped saying my name.

Not consciously. Not in a way I could point to. It just… fell out of use. Instructions were phrased around me instead of to me. “Can this be handled today?” instead of “Can you handle this?” Emails arrived without greetings. Meetings moved forward as if I’d already agreed to things I didn’t remember agreeing to.

When someone did say my name, it sounded misplaced. Like a whisper in a hurricane.

I started noticing how often Daniel’s was used in my place.

“Daniel will follow up on that,” someone said, looking directly at me.

I nodded.

It was easier than correcting them. Easier than explaining why the correction felt inappropriate, like interrupting a process already in motion.

Soon, I wasn’t sure which tasks were mine anymore. Work appeared in my queue already shaped, already justified. I completed it because it was there. Because that was what you did. When I finished, the confirmation didn’t come back to me. It went somewhere else.

Daniel’s inbox, I assumed.

One afternoon, I caught my reflection in the darkened monitor. For a moment, I didn’t recognise myself. Not because I looked different, but because I couldn’t remember what expression I was supposed to be wearing.

Behind me, Daniel’s chair remained untouched.

Waiting.

I tried to remember when Daniel had started waiting.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

The chair had always been empty, but now it felt reserved. As if occupying it required approval I didn’t have. When I walked past it, I caught myself slowing down, adjusting my steps, the way you do near something fragile.

I checked the badge logs that evening. I wasn’t supposed to have access, but no one stopped me. No alerts triggered. Daniel’s badge had been used that morning. Same as every weekday. In at eight-thirty. Out at six.

I scrolled back.

Yesterday. The day before. Last week.

Consistent. Clean. Predictable.

More predictable than mine.

The next morning, I arrived early.

Earlier than Daniel ever did.

I stood by his desk, watching the office wake up around me. The lights flickered on in sections. Screens hummed. The cleaner passed, nodded to me, then carefully avoided the chair.

I sat down.

Nothing happened at first.

Then my computer woke up.

Not my desktop.

His.

His folders. His shortcuts. His open documents, mid-sentence, paused exactly where someone might stop to think. A cursor blinked patiently, waiting for permission.

I didn’t touch anything.

A notification popped up.

Daniel, you’re running late today.

I looked at the time.

8:47.

I stayed where I was.

Across the room, someone glanced up and smiled. “Morning, Daniel.”

I opened my mouth.

No sound came out.

The cursor blinked.

Waiting.

I stood up slowly.

The chair made a sound when I pushed it back. Too loud. Someone looked over.

I smiled, reflexively, and stepped away.

The screen went dark.

By mid-morning, the messages started arriving.

Not questions. Reminders.

Daniel, following up on this.

Daniel, looping you in.

Daniel, just flagging.

I didn’t respond.

An hour passed.

Then two.

A meeting invite appeared on my calendar. No description. No organiser. Just a room number and Daniel’s name.

I didn’t go.

When I returned to my desk, there was a note waiting. Printed. Placed carefully on the keyboard.

Just checking in. You seemed a bit off today.

No signature.

That afternoon, my access changed.

Nothing dramatic. A permission here. A file there. Tools I’d used for years now required approval. Requests sat pending longer than usual, eventually resolving themselves without me.

Daniel’s files stayed open.

At five-thirty, my manager stopped by.

She leaned against the desk, casual. Concerned.

“Are you feeling alright?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You’ve been quiet today,” she said gently. “That’s not like Daniel.”

She smiled, as if that explained everything.

“I’m not Daniel,” I said.

The smile didn’t fade.

She waited.

I felt the pause stretch, soft but insistent.

“Sorry,” I said. “That’s not what I meant.”

She nodded, satisfied. “I know.”

When she walked away, I noticed something new on my screen.

A draft email. Unsent. Written in my tone.

Signed with his name.

The next request came through the system.

Not an email. Not a message.

A prompt.

Please confirm Daniel’s availability for the remainder of the quarter.

There were two options.

Yes

Yes, with notes

I stared at the screen, waiting for a third. Decline. Question. Escalate.

None appeared.

I clicked Yes, with notes and left the field blank.

The system accepted it anyway.

Later that day, a meeting ran long. Someone asked for Daniel’s input.

The room waited.

I felt it then. Not expectation. Permission.

I cleared my throat.

“He agrees,” I said.

The words came out easily. Too easily.

No one questioned it. Someone nodded. Someone typed. The meeting moved on.

Afterward, my inbox refreshed.

A thank-you.

A follow-up.

A task assigned to Daniel, routed through me.

I didn’t correct it.

I didn’t hesitate.

That night, at home, I tried to remember the sound of my own voice before it learned his cadence.

I couldn’t.

The request arrived at the end of the day.

Not urgent. Not marked important.

Just routine.

Please update ownership fields before end-of-quarter lock.

I opened the document.

Two columns.

Primary.

Secondary.

Daniel’s name was already filled in under Primary.

My name hovered in the second field, faintly outlined, waiting.

I didn’t remember being listed there before.

I hovered over it, expecting a warning. A tooltip. Something to explain the change. Nothing appeared.

Someone leaned over my shoulder. “Can you finish that before you head out?”

I nodded.

The cursor blinked.

For a moment, I considered closing the document. Letting it time out. Pretending I hadn’t seen it.

But the system doesn’t like hesitation. It never has.

I clicked Save.

The page refreshed.

My name was gone.

No error.

No confirmation.

Just a cleaner layout.

Primary: Daniel.

That night, my access badge failed at the building entrance.

I stood there longer than necessary, holding it against the scanner, trying again.

From inside, I could see Daniel’s desk.

Still empty.

Still waiting.

The scanner blinked red again.

I lowered the badge, suddenly aware of how tightly I was holding it. Around me, people passed through the doors without slowing, badges chirping green as they went. No one looked at me standing there.

I tried once more.

Red.

A security guard approached, not hurried, not alarmed. “Badge issue?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. The word came out softer than I expected. “It worked yesterday.”

He took the badge, examined it, then glanced at his tablet.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came.

He waited, patient.

“Daniel,” I said finally.

The tablet chimed.

“There we go,” he said, handing the badge back. “You’re active. Might’ve just needed a refresh.”

The doors unlocked.

Inside, the office looked the same. Desks. Lights. The low murmur of people finishing their day. No one reacted to my return.

At my desk, an envelope waited.

Plain. Unmarked.

Inside was a single sheet of paper.

Role Alignment Summary

Effective immediately, responsibilities have been consolidated to reduce redundancy and improve continuity.

My name appeared once. Under Former Assignment.

Daniel’s appeared everywhere else.

There was a line at the bottom.

Acknowledgement not required.

I folded the paper carefully and slid it into my bag, though I wasn’t sure why. Habit, maybe.

As I shut down my computer, Daniel’s files remained open on the other screen. The cursor blinked steadily, no longer waiting.

On my way out, I passed his chair.

For the first time, it was occupied.

I didn’t look closely. I didn’t need to.

At the door, my badge worked without hesitation.

Green.

The following morning, my alarm didn’t go off.

I woke anyway, the way you do when something has already decided you’re done resting.

My phone showed a notification from payroll.

Direct deposit update successful.

The amount was correct. The name wasn’t.

I stared at it longer than necessary, waiting for the shock that never came. The correction instinct flickered, then died. It wasn’t my place to question backend systems. I’d learned that much.

At the office, my desk was gone.

Not moved. Not reassigned.

Gone.

In its place was a plant. Low-maintenance. Artificial. The kind no one remembers watering because it doesn’t need it.

No one reacted when I stopped in front of it.

People stepped around me the way they do around furniture.

I checked the directory again.

Daniel remained.

So did everyone else.

I wasn’t listed under Former Employees.

Or Contractors.

Or On Leave.

There was no category left to misfile me under.

I walked to HR.

The door was open. The lights were on. The chair across from the desk was empty.

I stood there for a full minute before realising no one was coming.

On the desk sat a printed form.

Exit Confirmation

No date. No signature line. No instructions.

Just a checkbox already marked.

Processed

I didn’t remember signing anything.

That didn’t matter.

On my way out, I passed the conference room. A meeting was underway. Through the glass, I saw Daniel speaking. Calm. Confident. Familiar.

Using my words.

Someone laughed at a joke I remembered thinking of weeks ago.

He caught my eye.

Or maybe I imagined that.

He nodded once.

Not a greeting.

A handoff.

Outside, the air felt thinner. Less resistant. Like the city had adjusted its weight distribution.

My phone buzzed one last time.

Access revoked successfully.

No follow-up.

No survey.

I stood there, long enough for the building doors to close behind me automatically.

People passed. Cars moved. The system continued.

I tried to remember what I used to do next, at the end of a workday.

Nothing came to mind.

So I kept walking.

I don’t know how long I walked.

The city adjusted around me easily, the way systems do when something unnecessary has been removed. Storefronts reflected a version of myself I didn’t recognise well enough to correct.

I tried to think of someone to call, but every name felt conditional, like it required approval I no longer had.

Somewhere behind me, Daniel was finishing the work I’d started.

Ahead of me, there was no instruction. No redirect. Just space where intention used to be.

I kept moving because stopping would have implied there was still something waiting for me to do.

By the time I realised no one was tracking my progress anymore, I had already been successfully replaced.