Meeting Room 3 had never looked particularly sinister before, but on this day it radiated a bureaucratic doom. Alan approached it the way a condemned man approaches a final door: slowly, resentfully, with the sense that fate had been both inevitable and deeply unfair.
On the walk down the corridor he conducted yet another autosermon, this one of the motivational, kamikaze variety.
Right, he thought. If they’re firing me, I’ll get in first. I’ll tell them exactly where to shove it. “You can stick your job up your arse — I resign before you fire me. You don’t get to ruin my life, I ruin it myself.”
He practised the speech under his breath, adjusting the cadence like a man tuning an instrument he did not know how to play. “This is a resignation, not a termination, thank you very much.” He wasn’t convinced by the wording, but he admired its spirit.
When he pushed open the door, he was wearing the expression of someone preparing to take a bullet with dignity.
The man inside — Ross from HR, a genial sort with the emotional depth of a saucer — looked up and blinked.
“Alan… ohhh,” Ross said. “You look...preoccupied. You OK?”
Alan opened his mouth to deliver the first line of his heroic speech — something about sticking something somewhere — but Ross cut him off with a weary flick of the hand.
“Oh, you think it’s… no, no, no. Fuckin’ ’ell, mate. Not, it's not....that. No. It’s good news. Good news.”
Alan froze.
Ross swiveled a monitor around as if presenting the results of a raffle.
“New role. New office. New salary. Thirty per cent up from what you’re on now. And it’s closer to your house, apparently. No more forty-minute commute. Congratulations.”
For a moment Alan just stared, blinking like a man who had misheard the verdict.
“Thirty per cent?” he repeated.
“Yep.”
“And… closer?”
“Yep.”
“And… not being fired?”
Ross sighed. “No, Alan. You’re not being fired. Quite the opposite. Though if it helps, we CAN fire you later if you insist on it.”
Alan laughed — a high, almost girlish laugh he didn’t recognise — and sat down before his knees gave out. The universe, fickle bitch that it was, had finally spun his way.
That evening, the house glowed with celebration. Melinda had laid out two glasses of champagne — the expensive kind normally reserved for birthdays and spiritual breakthroughs.
“So,” she said, eyes shining. “Tell me everything.”
Alan told her.
New job.
New office.
Thirty per cent more.
Closer to home.
Melinda clasped her hands together in rapture.
“Oh Alan,” she breathed, “I manifested this.”
He blinked. “You…?”
“At SoulCraft 5,” she said, deadly serious. “On the final day. Celeste told us to ask the universe for what we deserve. And I asked for abundance. I asked for prosperity. I asked for your burden to be lifted. And here it is. The universe answered.”
She waited — clearly expecting gratitude, admiration, possibly worship.
Alan hesitated for exactly half a second. Then, with the resignation of a man who knew resistance would only complicate things, he nodded solemnly.
“Yes. Well. Thank the stars. Thank Celeste. Thank the universe. And thank you for asking it.”
Melinda swooned into his arms.
“Oh Alan, I love you so SO much.”
“I love you too,” he said — and for a brief, floating moment, he felt it: the sense that balance had returned to the world, that fate had jolted back onto its rails, that perhaps he was not destined for the hatchback after all.
He kissed her, finished his champagne, and allowed himself — for one night, at least — to believe in abundance.