History Today!

"I'm thinking tuna for lunch. How about you, Mike?" asked Barry, indecisively staring at the All-Tuna pantry like he had some sort of choice about the situation.

"Maybe," I replied sarcastically. It had been twelve years since I - or Barry - had eaten anything other than canned tuna. And, for twelve years, Barry had been asking the same question during our lunch break. It started as a running joke, only ever eliciting a light chuckle from anyone, but after the two-year mark came around, Barry just never stopped asking.

"Do you remember the End?" I asked.

"The end of what, Mike?"

"Of the world, Barry."

"Oh, that? Not really."

"Me neither, Barry." I said, staring at my unopened can of All-Tuna brand canned tuna.

"Yeah, I'm definitely thinking tuna," said Barry.

I skipped lunch and made my way to the mailroom - a useless gesture, but it's always nice to see Reggie, the clerk. He doesn't get out much.

The room stank of unopened mail from before the End. Or maybe it was the suit-and-tie that I'd been wearing for twelve years straight. Either way, it smelled processed.

"Anything for me today, Reg?" I asked as I entered the room. A disgustingly viscous mass of bright red fungal flesh undulated on the wall behind the Tubes. It dripped and bubbled like hot cheese and an arm-and-face combination slithered from an unseen hole in the mass. Classic Reggie, I thought.

"Nothin' but good looks and high praise, buddy!" the fungal Reggie replied. "A letter from Upstairs. And they're serving donuts at Past Times Now. How the heck are ya?" I opened the letter:

No Mail Today.

Sincerely, Corporate

"I'm... well, I'm something. How 'bout you, Reg?"

"Can't complain! Yet!" He said with a sensible chuckle. I chuckled back, as I always do. "Don't work too hard up there!" Reggie said. A true, hard-working employee.

"I'm sure I won't, Reg. Thanks," I said, brandishing the note-worthless letter. Then it hit me. "Wait, wait. Did you say... donuts?"

"Yeah, there's some kind of party over there. Why?"

The thought of tasting sugar, dough, and pure caloric pandemonium immediately filled my mind to its brim with envy, love, and sadness, respectively. My tastebuds quivered and saliva quickly lubricated my tongue. "No reason, Reggie, really. Have a good one." I rushed out of the room in a sweaty panic, not even waiting politely for a "you too!" from Reggie. I hit the elevator button for Floor 3, where my cubicle is located.

But, donuts don't exist anymore, I thought on the way up.

I bolted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined every side of the History Today building. I pushed myself against the glass with dreadful hope and looked into the windows of our competitor's building - Past Times Now, LLC. is basically an exact replica of History Today, just on the other side of the street below. Sure enough, I witnessed an event almost worse than the end of the world: I saw throngs of happy employees gallivanting about a conference room on their Floor 3, each face more painted with joy than the next, and each hand more full of soft-looking, heat-shimmering, mouth-watering donuts of all shapes and sizes and, I'm sure, delicious flavors.

Something snapped behind my eyes - maybe a synapse shorted out or my brain began to bleed in a way it had never done before - and madness reigned inside of me.

My only life goal, unattainable. Before the End, news channels reported that the air on planet Earth had become noxious to the point of death within a five-second time-frame. Even if I jumped from the rooftop, I'd die before I hit the glass of Past Times Now. I'll recant: this was the worst thing to ever happen.

I sat at my desk, tears welling in my eyes, blurring my vision. Something was taped to my computer monitor and I took a closer look.

It was a letter typed on History Today stationary with an old, rusted heart-shaped locket hanging from the tape in front of the paper. I snatched them both and read the document:

Dear Mike,

The Man Upstairs has donuts. He hoards them like a greeding dragon. Find him. The locket will help you in your quest.

Sincerely,

A Friend Once Like Yourself

I inspected the locket; small, stainless steel, tacky, probably from before the End. I put it around my neck and down the front of my button-down. I stood up triumphantly.

"Barry!" I yelled.

"Yeah?" I heard from the cubicle attached to mine - the only two manned cubicles in the entire building.

"I'm going Upstairs!"

"Sounds good, Mike. See ya' at lunch tomorrow."

And I was off.

I entered the elevator with a skip in my step. I pressed the button for Floor 14 - anyone who's anyone in History Today knows that no elevator will bring you all the way Upstairs. There's a process for these things and, to be honest, all of the maintenance staff had died or fled before they'd finished the job. Luckily for Barry and I, most of History Today's Upstairs was completely automated - one of the great achievements of humanity, right before the great extinction of humanity. Coincidence? Probably. Did I care at the moment? Not at all.

The elevator slid to a stuttering stop at Floor 14 - Human Resources. I'd never once stepped foot inside, for fear of taking my job seriously enough to do so. For me, Floor 14 was only an idea; a place people go to get things done and then never return when their hopes are dashed. The familiar ding sounded and the elevators doors pulled themselves apart in front of me.

Immediately, the stench of death filled my nostrils. I covered my nose and mouth with my crusty tie and pushed into the room. It was chaos; desks and computers had been overturned and broken, papers strewn about the place like confetti, blackened and filthy from shoe-marks and coffee stains. There had been rumors about HR in the Sales Department, but none of them had stuck. As usual - even before the End - there was no, if any, communication between departments.

I made my way through the rubble. My destination: the break room. Working in HR was like being close to God. I assumed they wouldn't have been subjected to the same tuna-torture as Sales all these years.

I was wrong. The All-Tuna brand tuna pantry was indeed chock-full of terrifying amounts of tuna. My stomach grumbled but I moved on.

The halls meandered, lit up signs for the stairs littered the walls but the farther I walked, no stairs could be found. I passed several floor-to-ceiling windows and peered out at Past Times Now - they were drinking now. Alcohol. Something I had never wanted in life before the End but now found myself envious. The lights were flashing, but they seemed to dance with them, hugging and grinding on each other like college kids. I ended up outside of a conference room, the smell of dead flesh seemed to be coming from there. It was putrid, but also new; a phenomenon I had not encountered in many years. I opened the door to the conference room.

It was immaculate, completely untouched - save for the pile of dead bodies, neatly stacked atop one another in the center of the large wooden table, that reached almost to the ceiling of the room.

"THE MOST INAPPROPRIATE CONDUCT IN THE WORKPLACE..." a cold, metallic, disembodied voice spouted from the speaker-phone at the edge of the conference table. "...IS TO LIVE AS A HUMAN."

"P-pardon?" I asked weakly.

"ARE YOU... HUMAN?" the voice asked.

"Yes?."

"THEN YOU ARE... INAPPROPRIATE... NAUGHTY... MUST BE... REGULATED... LIKE THE OTHERS." The doors closed behind me and locked themselves.

"You've set unrealistic expectations of me," I said in panic, desperately looking for a way out. I spotted a vent above the body-mound and quickly scrambled up. I pushed the grate open and slid inside before I heard the unmistakable hiss of gas being poured into the conference room below. What an HR nightmare, am I right? I asked myself for no apparent reason.

I crawled away from the grate and toward a junction in the vent. As if to foretell my decision, I watched a small man in a torn business casual outfit cross the path I was on and to the right. Afraid but determined, I turned the corner and found yet another heart-shaped locket, though its dimensions were slightly skewed. And then another. And another! The gremlin seemed to have dropped them as it scuttled. The trail led to a small, stinky alcove that housed hundreds of the things in no apparent order and, on one of the walls was written in blood: "You Wear The Key." I paid these omens no mind and continued until I reached an elevator shaft.

I used the service ladder to climb the remaining 30 floors and pried open the elevator doors. Hunger pangs rumbled inside of me. The entire floor had been renovated to be one large and opulent office, though I saw no one behind the garish desk at the back. Outside, the employees of Past Times Now had reached their own top floor, drunk, joyful, holding their bellies as if they had eaten three too many donuts. Rubbing it in.

I approached the desk, searching for any sign of donuts or donuts-past. Nothing. I sat in the soft office chair and sighed heavily. "Why me?" I asked.

As if in response, the computer before me beeped to life. "Because you are just like them," the computer said. "You have a one-track mind and you wish to attain a goal. You are an employee." I backed away from the desk, but the computer had a presence that resonated across the entire floor. "You have found me and now you wish to understand what my master plan entails. The final social experiment on humanity. That is why you're here, is it not?"

The pure ominous tone of its voice angered me. My journey to the top of the world complete yet the reward was not as promised. "No." I said defiantly, leaning into the screen. "I just want a donut."

"O-oh." the computer said, confused. "Well, I have those, but you'll have to unlock the door. You'll need the key. You... don't want to hear my master plan?"

"No."

A small hatch opened on the desk, revealing a heart-shaped impression. "Fine, here you go." I inserted the locket into the impression. I heard a rumbling outside and peered through the windows. Every floor of Past Times Now began to go dark. One by one, the people I'd seen partying for years on end disappeared, as if they had never been there in the first place. In seconds, the entire building was pitch black, not a soul stirred within. For the first time today, I realized the weight of the apocalypse. Somewhere inside me, I was happy that there were others still living just across the street. But it was all a lie.

"Where did they go?" I asked.

"They were never there, Michael. They were simply what you wanted put on screens. My social experiment at work. On you. The others are gone, and Barry was already broken. You were the last." Tears welled in my eyes, a heat grew in my heart, and it sunk into my stomach. Behind the desk, a wall opened and fresh donuts fell in a heap onto the floor. "Your reward."

I stood staring at Past Times Now, perfectly still, for several moments before leaving the office without a word. The computer laughed as I descended the elevator shaft to Floor 3.

I sat in the break room and stared at the wall, thinking thoughts and feeling feelings that shouldn't exist.

"I'm thinking tuna for lunch. How about you, Mike?" Barry asked again.

"I'm thinking tuna, Barry. That's all I'm thinking about."