Mark spent all of his of his time working, even when he wasn't at work. In a peculiar sort of way, he felt more at home in the tall, shining office block in the Northern part of Tabor. Sitting prominently tall among all the other attempts at grandeur, it was home to the firm to which he was married. Its main interest was stock speculation and arbitrage and so, it was also his.

Guessing at fluctuations in prices between shares, businesses and markets and hoping to profit from being right. Though of course, it was never guessing. Every deal had already been made. Every possibility considered and amended for. It was simply an exercise in appearances, making things look status quo for everyone else. For those who didn't know how the World really worked. His empathy for them became pity, wasting their money on what they were ordered to buy, being who they were instructed to be. A uniform which they wore, undoubtedly because of a fear that if they didn't, they may one day wake up, turn into nothing and fall off the face of the planet.

You pull your seat belt tighter when you're the passenger in a car that's going too fast. It might crash. It might keep you safe. His family's wealth afforded them to learn that you could open the door and get out if you didn't like the ride. From Pillsen, they saw he never went hungry. A somewhat distinguished lineage which could be traced back at least three generations into Mega City's history.

He felt at least fortunate that he at least did what he did because of love. His other marriage being to a fragile yet fierce -- a European girl who had emigrated to the City in her early twenties when her law firm opened its Mega City branch and recruited for associates in order to finance it. She shared with him that for the longest time she had longed to visit it - a dream which she was blessed to be able to fulfil. He had never been particularly religious and neither did she appear to be, though on particularly joyous or grave occasions, she was prone to using such terms. The attention it garnered perhaps suppressing those expressions for the rest of the time. A basic understanding of why you went to Church when someone was born, and - again when someone died made him permissibly theistic. Mark had never seen the appeal in looking any further.

Knowing that each night she would be there, each time as happy and buzzed about seeing him as the last had been more than enough for him to force himself to keep up the work. Still only in his late twenties, he was one of the youngest project managers of the firm, having risen at an astounding rate from a junior assistant. Those nights had become fewer though. Working late most nights in order to avoid confronting the fact that he was no longer the same guy, the same person he once was. What he did had become his very definition. Up until... somewhere, he had been able to remain objective. It had tried time and again to enrapture him. Unsuccessfully but never giving up, it drew him closer. Tightening its grip each time he pulled away. He had to remember what was important.

He wanted to be hungry for something - sick of being fat, sick of being fed.

(To be continued...)

The club was always open late. In fact, it never closed. Well, more of a bar but the fact it always had a band playing qualified it as something more. Where before, he had found respite and solace in getting ahead with paperwork, processing reports and communications from all over, it could no longer be found. At least here, there was something. Inexplicable in a way but still there. You could reach out and hold it but if you ever turned that open palm into a fist... if you tried to grab it, it would disappear.

He had first visited it on a night out with some of the senior partners, in celebration to the closure of a very influential account. "Holdings and Investments something or other." The name was still reminiscent as it had been a particularly shady deal, he had remembered. Considering his upbringing, not something he was unused to but never on such a large scale as had been, then.

Remembering having thought then what he did now. Finding comfort in the fact that there was still an entire community still awake. That not being asleep when the standard TV programming finished didn't make him any less standard, even if a little different.

For the first time since he could recall, however, he enjoyed something. Actually having a good time. Though the constant twinge that such things never lasted never allowed him to fully immerse himself in it. In anything. And --

"Mark!" "It's been too long -- welcome back!" "How are things at the firm?" *censored* who is this? A hand half covering his face, hoping there was another Mark in the room and if there wasn't, that one would just now come to life.

Thudding down into he chair opposite, the bartender sat with a slightly out of breath grin, having sprinted over from behind the bar counter, waiting for a response.

"Oh, hey... um..."

"Job! My god, has it been that long? You were here with some of the execs', right? The International Holdings and Investments deal." The breath uttering the second name undoubtedly laced with an uncharacteristic articulate smoothness.

"Hey." He smiled weakly back at him. "Sorry, I didn't remember. Been so- -"

"So long, yup!"

Though this person was a stranger, it was still a person. Something you could trust in him. Maybe because everyone knows you can talk to barmen about your worries and it never goes any further.

"Things have been... well, not great, Job."

"Awww. Well that sucks, huh? What seems to troublin' ye."

"I mean I love what I do, I love Lacey, it's just.... Ugh..."

How was he able to and why did he keep finishing his senten --

"Not enough, something missing. I hear ya." The wrinkled face nodded, looking up to the the band that was playing that night." Before turning back to him. "Hey, they're good aren't they? I'm thinking of re - booking them."

Well, thinking on it, it's what he would have said anyway.

"They're..."

"Hey, you should come back too. We do a special every third, actually.", the chuckling hand passing a flier along the table.

Every third? What in the heck did that -

"I'd better get back, though. Make sure you enjoy yourself, eh?"

"Thanks." Mark laughed unnaturally, thoroughly bemused and caught off guard. Below the surface. Intrigued.

However well he had hoped to hide, there was no disputing that he felt more at home in the tall, shining office block in the Northern part of Tabor that he ever did when his work there was finished, which... it, actually, never was. Another lonely, late night only compounded the isolation. Lost in the absence of anything solid or whole, a sea of thoughts encompassed most waking moments which weren't spent at the glass walled office complex in the Southern part of Tabor - visible on a clear day just over the horizon if you stood from the aqueduct in Westview. The weeks, months and years which she did spend behind her solid oak desk went without advent or occassion, could some of the - time - pass quicker than others.

However, she enjoyed it. It had after all, allowed her to concentrate on what was really important. Her friends, family and Mark. Glad that she was in a position where they took priority and a life which secured their positions as such.

Why, then, was Mark not at home - his other home. Whatever he missed; whatever he couldn't find; so vital that everything else was now secondary. Obvious to any who risked placing their gaze upon his shadow. So easy to find comfort in the darkness.

The flickering light from the televison interrupting it. Its glass walled screen now more transparent than ever.

Each new colour a recycled dye. He didn't like his suit anymore.

Each new tune a re - recorded hymn. His tastes in music were changing. What was once held as sacrosanct was now being questioned.

Each new emotion completely alien. The heretical mutant of each new phase.

Each new position never having been rehearsed with the coach. All to play for. Mark could not shake the feeling that if he were the last person alive aware of an apparent want to escape what was left of this fabricated normality, his acceptance of its rapture would spell the end of what he and his company stood for. You play the game: " 'Eet ees but a game." as one of their most generous clients had smiled. In the face of losing millions of dollars. In the back of gaining billions more; on the off chance of a fluke, this had been the client's response. Their reassurance. He couldn't help but wonder, what if you forget you're playing, or that he was ever able to. What if If. If If. Why so many "if"s in the process of such certainties...

What lay ahead of him was unknown; an unknown which instilled in him more fear than certain death. Or perhaps it was the certainty of the pitless stomach that had swallowed him whole. Ever hungry; ever insatiable in its greed.

Without having the time nor energy to reapply a bandaid, each old wound; completely raw.

Mark vowed a vow for the first time in his most recent life. He concated to find an answer; discover its collective truths, no matter how relevant or ir they may be. Adopting the words of another; comprehending an understanding of what is not meant to be: would be his best bet.

Such a sensory insecurity. Or was it caution...

(Thank you for the kind replies and messages of y'all who have been reading so far. Quite a large departure from muh usual writing style, too; very very introspective and focused on the world supposedly left behind. Glad you have enjoyed reading as I have, writing.)

As the rhetoric is recited; perhaps the greatest truth of all is that there is none. Anyway, Mark was pessiblt theistic, as he had already remembered, so this most recent of revelations did not dissuade him in the slightest. Infact, it gave him greater hope than ever that there was one. If not, then he would create one. Not simply mould those which already were in his own shape; that would be too easy and unsatisfyingly incorporeal.

Out of the window lay more forethought and insight but it was also busy and so far more complicated than one individual could ever hope to comprehend. Instead, he saw in it a reflection, and it had been a lifetime until such a clear view was made apparent to him.

The world outside was obvious and clear, and would be of no problem for him in which to join. However, this also required that he bring something to the table, else has be cast aside as an unwatned entity. A leech on the burgeoning millions that saw fit to populate people with themselves.

It wasn't that he hated them, it wasn't even that he saw it as ill done. Just that it was misguided and unpreferrable to what he had come to know. To embrace the image past the convoluted shape before him would require he subject himself to itself. No easy task to swim further, deeper into the pool of recess of memory and collective experience, especially when noone knows you're there, especially when noone will, with certainty, throw you a life jacket or buoyancy aid incase you drown.

Though peraps somewhere inside he wanted to not be able to breathe the crisp, clean air of truth and share her inhale of the smoky, uncertain - half.

Maybe both.

((As always; Amazing writings, X.))