She hadn't meant to kill three people. She hadn't even meant to harm or frighten three people but there it was. The carpet color was where it all began to go wrong. The office buildings hadn't been updated properly since the 1950s. She'd been chipping away at it a little bit with the leftover funds every year taking it from ghastly grey dungeon to a place that people would actually want to work. New furniture that didn't leave you with a sore back and aching wrists from improperly placed keyboards. More power outlets. Wifi that actually worked (she'd never seen her employees so happy as the day that they weren't all scrabbling to tether their multiple devices to the network).

The improvements hadn't gone smoothly though. The building was under multiple safety code violations which made the contractors difficult to work with. They always wanted to add more and more expensive things to the budget. Surely the fire sprinklers should be coming out of the building owner's budget. Then there were electrical problems and structural problems. But changing mundane things like those things didn't make for happy employees. Tangible comforts did, and so that was what she pushed for.

The latest round of renovations had been exasperating. The carpet installations had been delayed half a dozen times. The new blinds for the conference room had been lost on a UPS truck somewhere in Pennsylvania. And the project manager she had been relying on simply stopped returning calls. Hearing that the carpet had finally shown up was a pleasant surprise that made her a little less hellbent on getting home to a migraine pill and a cold beer. But it was the wrong color. The wrong fucking color. How hard did this have to be?

"Why didn't you text me?"

Her right hand employee was surlier and more tired than usual and appeared to be assing off on some website transcribing War and Peace for all she knew.

"It's the same carpet."

"It's NOT. It's lighter. Much lighter. Come here and look."

They stood on the offending slightly-too-brown squares in the conference room where the apologetic carpet installer had already been raked over the coals.

"Maybe the rest of it's just dirty."

"Don't be silly it can't be that dirty."

She didn't know why she bothered. All she had wanted to do was make a change. Make an impact. She wanted to use these last two years before she retired to achieve what she had dreamed of for thirty-five years of workforce drudgery: being a boss that people would remember as really getting something done. And every irritating simpleton she was working with had to argue with her or try to impede things.

"So the carpet's the wrong color and this thing...this damn thing is still here," she grumbled yanking on the tattered old window blind. The din was resounding and she would have stared in wide-eyed shock if she hadn't had to snap her eyes shut from the cloud of dust that now permeated the room. Her right hand employee was doubled over coughing and the carpet installer was completely coated in debris. The window blind had finally given way after forty or so years of use and had come crashing to the floor, bringing a small cascade of ceiling tiles with it, several of which cracked as they hit the floor.

She fulfilled her dream that day, but not in the way she had expected. She would be remembered as the boss that made an impact, mostly by the families of the carpet installer and her right hand employee whose lungs had now been permeated with a twisting fibrous miasma of asbestos.

The texts came fast, now.

Hey baby, I've missed you. / I missed you too. I just saw the new AvX movie. /I saw that last week! It's so good! / I didn't like it much. / Yeah the end was dumb but the first big fight! I'm worried about moving to the north side. Crime rates are supposed to be pretty bad there. / If you get nice neighbors it won't be a problem. Try introducing yourself before you move! Ask them abt area.

The deal was that someone would give up on dating services, text into Dotted Line Profile, and get a nonsexual text back from a supposed girlfriend. Cara was a girlfriend between two in the afternoon and midnight, minus three short breaks, for an average of a hundred men. She'd had an aunt go into prostitution many years before and from the way the older woman talked about it the work was similar.

"Men don't just want a hole, Cara. If they wanted a hole they could cut one into a mattress. They want somebody to take their problems seriously, like they're people. None of these guys are getting that at home."

Boss wrote me up 4 being late again!!! So mad!!! / That sucks : ( Wanna talk about it? / I wasn't even late this time! He's faking the timesheets!

There were a lot of people, men and women, doing this work, and the response times had to be kept low. Cara didn't have time to read more than the last two or three messages from any one person before she had to move on to the next, and the next, and the next. She wouldn't ever see these conversations again, and if she did they were so far along (and the names so generic) that she would never be able to recognize it. It was the same faceless man few thousand times a day.

I saw a roach / GROSS!! / Yeah :( not a fan. / Did you kill it???

She usually tried to do her work in coffeeshops or bars, parks or museums. Anyplace where she could look up from the keyboard and see other human beings close enough to smell and hear and if she really, really wanted to, close enough to reach out and grab by the shoulders to pull in for a full contact hug. She didn't really want to, though. Sometimes when she looked away from the clients she stared at the bathrooms and tried to spot wetness on people's hands, residue from a ritual done correctly, safely. She didn't like to touch people she didn't know or open doors herself. She saw a blank window pop up, a first time customer, and then-

R U a bot?! / Not at all, I just like to sell people viagra as a hobby ;P

That one bent the rules on sexual content but they were encouraged to be playful, especially with the B-word in play. Other services used Elizas or some other, newer bots, and it's true most people couldn't tell the difference. Most people didn't care about who was listening as long as they were speaking. But Cara's employer did care, very much, and they did not want anyone getting the wrong idea or starting any rumors.

Just heard about the coolest band, u got 2 check them out! Senin Bir Kitap! / ok I'll search it now!

Someone else would send the next message but Cara dug the headphones out of her pocket and did a quick search in another tab. The band came up right away, a bunch of middle eastern guys singing about not knowing any of their grandfathers' languages while they played decked-out middle eastern guitars and extra-wide synths. The beat was poppy and familiar despite all of the obtusely foreign elements and she smiled in spite of herself, turning on a playlist. The next song was called "never seen a tea leaf" and the album art featured a teacup with a pot leaf on the side.

Hey bb u want sum fuk?

Block.

I've been thinking about hitting the new AvX movie. Have you heard if it's good?