Denise Roman hadn't fallen asleep at her desk since high school. Back then, getting up for 7:00AM and working eight-hour shifts every weekend day felt like an intense schedule. Even in her spirited youth, she sometimes could not resist the sandman, even when putting her head on that cozy, long-lasting melamine-sealed particle board.
Of course, maybe the class was just that boring. How these teachers could make math sound so uninteresting, they must have possessed a real talent. Denise loved math, mostly because she had a knack for it. This is what lead her to a career as a financial examiner for a reasonably large financial corporation.
Denise's schedule over the last year was much tougher than the last time she'd slumped over exhausted at her desk, and there was no school bell to awaken her this time. Everyone at her company was working like crazy to meet a certain goal for the year. Unlike more sensible institutions that ended the financial year in March, her company went by the calendar: January 1 to December 31.
This is why Denise had gotten in early, about six in the morning, to try to reach her personal goal before year's end. She hadn't procrastinated; the team could barely keep on top of it. Denise worked from six to... she couldn't remember. She didn't even know what time it was now. She didn't even remember finishing or setting her head down.
Denise brought her head up from her desk, tucked so comfortably in her folded arms. Her bracelet had left a divot in her cheek. She shifted her glasses to rub her eyes. It sure was dark in the office now. All the office lights were off except the emergency lights, a little street light trickling in from the windows... and her monitor. Half her screen was her open email client, a blinding field of nearly completely white. The other half was her empty desktop and the colorful picture of distant space from the Hubble telescope that she had set as the wallpaper.
She threw her arms into the air, fingers interlocked, reaching out far above the prefabricated cubicle walls. She scratched the back of her head and looked around her desk. There was something new that wasn't normally there. It was a plastic disposable plate with a cube of chocolate cake on it, a plastic spork sitting beside it. A blue sticky note was next to that. The note read, "happy new year," with a tiny heart drawn next to it.
Denise chuckled. Did she have a secret admirer who couldn't restrain themselves for the six weeks to do it on the proper day? No, this was the handwriting of her assistant Julienne. Always one to catch things that she might have missed, or remember things that had slipped her mind, Julienne had apparently secured a slab of cake from the New Year's Eve celebration downstairs before it was all consumed. Julienne left it there for her to discover once she awoke. She'd even got her a corner piece with a complete strawberry standing up off it like one of the domes in St. Basil's Cathedral... because Julienne knew how much Denise loved strawberries.
Before she could pick up the spork and take a well-earned celebratory bite of cake... Denise thought to herself, "What time IS it?" Sleeping in the evening had left her completely disoriented. She looked at the little clock at the bottom-right of her work monitor.
The time was 10:27PM, on December 31.
To an outsider, this might not have sounded like a particularly scary time, but it sent a bolt of fear right through Denise's heart. Yes, she had done the work and qualified her and her team for the bonus... but there was one more thing she had to do before the year came to a close.
Denise looked under her desk. Her handsome leather work bag was there, undisturbed by Julienne or anyone else. From within, she retrieved her laptop. This wasn't one of the flat, featureless IBM Workpads that her office would issue. This was a hefty laptop with lots of pointless angles and red accents that made the lid look like the hood of a sports car. This was her personal laptop for private use.
She slid away the office computer's wireless keyboard and set her laptop in its place. As she turned on the laptop and waited for it to finish booting, the fan already whirring away, Denise got herself ready. She pulled the hair tie out from her blonde hair and loosened it around her shoulders. She dug in a hidden compartment in her bag and found her contacts. She put them in before adding some dark eye shadow and glue-on fake eyelashes.
The laptop was ready, and now so was Denise. She loaded up her broadcasting software, seeing the laptop camera's picture of herself looking back at her. It really was surprising how different those lashes made her look.
In the modern era of 'streaming,' some of the hosts made the resolution to stream every day. It was a good way to build an audience and to prove to someone that they were serious at turning this hobby into a side hustle. At the start of the year that was about to conclude, before this yearly bonus was hung over her head at her full-time job, Denise had decided to start a stream of her own. The service promised those who streamed every day their own bonus at the end of the year.
There was about ninety minutes left in the year. By her calculations, it took Denise about a half-hour to drive home, which would not leave her enough time to do the hour-long stream she had promised. And she certainly couldn't do it while driving.
Needless to say, the previous year didn't contain that much leisure time. She took her vacation time like normal, but never traveled far. She had to be able to loose up at least one hour a day to get back to her home and laptop and entertain her audience. She didn't work at the office on Christmas, but she DID stream for anyone else lonely on that day. And yet so close to the finish line, she'd almost blown it by working herself too hard at her other job.
There was still time, she thought. She just had to broadcast... from her office. She turned on her VPN and logged into the office Wifi. She might not normally expect the office's Wifi to support video streaming, based on how her 'virtual meetings' were filled with dropped calls and terrifying video glitches... but with nobody else using the network, it should work fine. (The same logic made her think that MAYBE she could actually get home in time for an hour stream if she sped, but the police would surely be out in legion waiting for drunk drivers tonight. She couldn't take the chance. She could stream inside from her car, but the Wifi coverage was too weak in the giant concrete parking garage.)
Denise looked again to the preview window on her laptop. The background was a sea of black. Nobody could tell where she really was. The monitor from her work computer was lighting her up nicely around her laptop screen... though it was accentuating the bags under her eyes. She pulled out a silver canister a little larger than lipstick and applied something under her eyes to help reduce this. The box it came in described its purpose as 'anti-aging,' which didn't make Denise feel great, using such a thing in her twenties.
Then again... the reason she had attempted this marathon in the first place was to make as much as she could in her youth... especially before her beauty faded beyond what the Internet appreciated.
Denise turned back to her laptop. The bags under her eyes were less noticeable. With the limited lighting, there might not be anything else she could do. But she couldn't waste any more time. The clock was ticking.
Before the countdown was finished, Denise noticed the webcam on her work computer was still sitting on top of her monitor, staring at her. Rather than clip the privacy shield down, she reached behind her computer and unplugged the USB connector from the back. This way, she could neither be seen NOR heard by the computer.
