Every day when he went into the office, Ryan was careful to open the door with the cuff of his shirt. This was important, as the main entrance to the complex faced directly east and the black metal of the handle was always hot to the touch by 3pm. Given that he went to work every day with a brief case and a sack lunch, the procedure of rearranging his belongings to grab the door-handle, tended to make him feel clumsy and inadequate. Yet it was still better than simply grabbing the handle, as it made typing a painful process for the rest of the day.
After his ritual adjustments, Ryan opened the door and entered the foyer. He felt the skin protected by is sleeve jump toward the cusp of burning. The insubstantial cloth of his sleeves was barely adequate to function as a shield.
“Waiting for summer to be over, hey Ryan?” asked Cynthia, the receptionist.
There was neither mirth nor grim satisfaction in her tone. Cynthia must have said this same half-joke to him three times a week, and now seemed to be very bored with the whole ritual. Ryan wasn’t even sure he had the privilege of being the only person with whom Cynthia shared this joke.
Cynthia was not yet thirty, but had the sort of world-weary sunken-eyed look of a person who has been doing the same menial job for so long that they feel, by argument of induction that as each day would be the same as the one before, that they are now mentally seventy-years old.
“Yeah, we’ll have about a week in fall where it’ll be comfortable enough to touch before it freezes.” At least when you opened the door with your sleeve in the summer it didn’t leave a weird rectangular wet spot of moisture. Cynthia ignored his reply and answered the telephone.
“Thank you for calling TeleServices, how may I help you?” Ryan supposed that if you tape-recorded Cynthia saying this several times in a row you would be hard pressed to differentiate one iteration from another. Even a computer might be hard pressed to spot the difference.
“Yeah… I’m nervous for the Knowledge Team meeting.” Ryan said.
Cynthia favored him with a smile that lacked the cold fire of hostility or the warm caress of concern. He barely even existed, the smile said. Why bother trying to have a conversation?
Ryan cleared his throat, and was about to exit the foyer and enter the building, when someone very large pulled the door open behind him. Ryan would have said the man was somewhere around six feet eight inches tall… however he always bad at guessing heights. It did seem as though he ducked when he entered the foyer.
The giant’s hair was whitish, appearing to have been forcibily wrung of all its vibrant gold coloring either by long hours in the sun or exposure to dangerous chemicals. His eyes were a fierce blue, like lightning out of a clear sky. His jaw was masculine, and sharp. Like his face had once been the head of a hammer and it had been used to smash granite.
“Mr. Shores?” The man asked.
Ryan stood there, slack-jawed. Then he remembered himself and said “Yes… um… hi!” He held out his hands. The lumbering giant reached out and swallowed Ryan’s hand with his own, and pumped it twice. It felt like he had briefly placed his hand inside a glove made of oak and sandpaper. It hurt worse than grabbing the door would have.
“I just wanted to introduce myself,” said the giant before politely brushing past Ryan and entering the building.
Ryan took a moment before passing his sack lunch to his free hand. He looked over at Cynthia. She was still busy answering phones.
“Did you notice whether or not he used his hands to open the door?” he asked.
Cynthia shrugged.
That was the first time Ryan met the Thunder God.
*****
As with most very significant events, Ryan forgot his meeting with the Thunder God almost as soon as he was in his office three minutes later. After all, he had invested three years of his life at TeleServices so that he could spend three hours a day approving timesheets. That meant giving at least cursory audits to login and logout times. This task occupied him well into his first break.
In that entire period of time he had come to one stunning conclusion that he felt justified his entire salary:
Logging off the phones three minutes early was fine. Logging off four minutes early was crossing the line. If you logged out five minutes early? Well… just don’t do that three or four times in the same month. Or there would be warnings.
Thus fulfilling his official obligations as a “manager” Ryan left his office to walk the floor. He felt it must give the agents a little boost of morale to see their manager walking the same floor as them… although he was often afraid that most of them were so busy taking calls from angry customers that they really had no idea who he was.
He took his break for fifteen minutes, walked back to his office and continued to check login times. Two hours later he ate the lunch he ate every Wednesday, which was a Turkey and Cheese sandwich, with a bag of carrots, a plum, and a 12 oz bottle of coca cola. He saved the coca cola for Wednesdays because it was a little treat that would see him through till Friday.
Someone asked him about the referral incentive program while he had a mouth full of sandwich. He replied that yes, if you recommended someone who lasted at the job for more than six months that you would receive a cash bonus in the amount of five hundred dollars.
It was five-thirty in the morning when Ryan’s shift finished. Although three years was a long time to have worked in a call center, he had not yet vested enough time to be the day manager.
Ryan walked back to his economy car. He turned the key in the ignition. He went back to his empty two-bedroom house. And dreamed of the man who had asked him about the referral program. In his dream the man was seven feet tall and had to duck when he left the cafeteria. In his dreams the man held a hammer and rode a bolt of lightning like a chariot.
Ryan heard the sound of thunder from out of the clear sky. He did not know why it sounded like a hammer strike.
*****
Jodi was always nervous. Ryan did not know whether or not this made her a good trainer, but he did know that as long as she was nervous she never failed to report any kind of developing disaster to him. While many of these turned out to be false alarms, Ryan figured it was better than being completely taken by surprise when something horrible actually did happen.
When she burst into his office that night, she was practically shaking.
“Have you seen the new class?” she asked, the words coming out in one long rush. Jodi hated night classes, as people willing to occupy them tended to be more “eccentric” than the people on days. Eccentric usually being a synonym for degenerate
Ryan sighed. “Don’t tell me we have another bunch of unemployable junkies.”
“Junkies! I wish! They all look like criminals!”
“What? What do you mean they all look like criminals?” Ryan sincerely hoped Jodi didn’t mean that they were all black, because then he was going to have to report her to human resources… and that was going to be a nightmare of paperwork.
“Just come look! I’m afraid to go into the room!”
Ryan rolled his chair back. It hit his office wall just before he had room to comfortably stand, but as this was not unusual he managed to get up anyway. The office had never had enough space and he had long ago adjusted to it.
“All right, Jodi let’s go and take a look.”
They walked past the agents in their cubicles, taking calls. Ryan thought he saw a big blonde head grin at him from way in the back of the building, but it was far enough his eyes couldn’t be sure. He shook it off and continued to follow Jodi, who he realized had not stopped talking since they’d left his office.
“-and then I just came in and you can only imagine my surprise! The shortest one of them is almost seven feet tall! And that’s counting the women!”
“Uh-huh.” Ryan replied. He was still thinking about their first call resolution statistics. If they couldn’t get it raised three percent in the next week, they were going to lose their bonus. Then heads really would roll.
“I don’t know what Jim and Jessica are doing over in HR. I don’t know and I don’t care. All I can say is ever since they got married, they have been letting some pretty shifty characters through the interview process. I shouldn’t have to put up with this! I’m a trainer, not a jail warden! I mean… it’s… it’s absurd!”
Ryan stopped when he walked into the training room like he had just been sprayed down with a fire extinguisher.
Jesus, he thought.
Jesus Christ.
Jodi was right…. or almost. Even the women in the room were huge, but they weren’t much bigger than six and a half feet. The biggest of the new hires sat in the center aisle toward the front. Fingers the size of bratwursts wrapped around the armrests of his chair. Legs like tree trunks spilled from the seat of the chair onto the ground. His nametag read in bright green, all capital letters, “C. Cullen.”
A lithe black woman sat in the back. Ryan couldn’t see what was on her nametag, but she looked decidedly like she did not want to be in the building. As if she were bigger than not just the room she was in, but bigger than the concept of rooms. As if nothing but a flat plain under an open sky could contain her.
A sandy haired man stood up. He was more well-groomed than the others. “Do we have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Shores?”
Ryan nodded dumbly.
The nametag of the sandy blonde read “Mr. du Lac.” He stood next to another man named “Mr. de Lyoness.” In fact, one whole corner of the room had risen at his arrival. Four others were named Mr. Gawan, Bedivere, Pelleas, and Kay.
“Umm….” said Ryan.
“Yes?” asked Mr. du Lac, the picture of etiquette.
“Well… welcome to the company. How many of you have worked in call centers before?” This was a typical question, and usually Ryan could count on half a dozen raised hands. After, he could count on the questions of “Oh, where did you work?” Maybe trade a few jokes about different companies.
No one raised their hand. In fact, one man in the back whose nametag simply read “Cagn” went so far as to spit on the carpet. While this was generally something worth raising a fuss about, Ryan decided to keep quiet.
“No one?” Ryan asked, realizing that he was laughing hysterically from nervousness and fright. A rockstar energy drink was clasped in one hand. He had carried it all the way from his office without thinking. He put it down on the table, feeling suddenly very embarassed.
He was willing to bet none of the people in the room beside himself had ever had a thirst for “energy.” What the hell did he do that required “energy” anyway? Hype people up about first call resolution?
“How are you guys liking training so far?”
C. Cullen picked up what looked like a walking stick and began to inspect it…. except it was six feet long…. and were those barbs? The rest of the group seemed to have the same level of interest, except for the group led by Mr. duLac who all stood at patient attention.
“We like it well enough sir,” said someone named “Al.” Ryan suspected this name might be short for something longer and much more foreign, shortened out of courtesy for his western tongue. Ryan felt like Al’s eyes were pulling him apart from head to toe, turning out every pocket, and searching through his wallet. He thought that this might be racist, so he suppressed the feeling.
“Any questions? I know a lot of people get nervous about their first day on the floor.” They were all looking at him as if here stupid. “… especially since none of you have ever taken a live call.”
Cagn exchanged glances with C. Cullen. They started to grin. Al saw their tight-lipped grins and started to smile. The group with Mr du Lac saw and burst out laughing. Ryan felt the blood rush to his face. He turned to look behind him. The tall man with the white hair was standing in the doorway.
“I see you all found your way then.” The big man snorted.
“How could we miss the place with your big head so easy to see, the world over?” Cagn asked. “You stand out worse than your hammer… Odensen.”
The group shared another round of laughter at the mention of the name.
“Ain’t much like home, is it?” C. Cullen asked, glumly.
Odensen nodded. “No place is these days.” The blue eyes turned to Ryan. “Still up for that referral program Mr. Shores?”
At this Jodi rubbed her eyes again.
“What’s that?” Ryan asked, feeling as if he’d been left out of something.
“That’s another thing, Mr. Shores. They all list him as their referral.”
Ryan blinked, and started to count heads. That was… given everyone in the room, even those who had yet to fill out nametags. That was something on the order of fifteen thousand dollars.
“Let’s all just hope you last six months,” Odensen laughed.
Odensen looked at the clock on the wall. Ryan reflected that a clock would be little more than wristwatch on Odensen’s massive hands.
“All right, I have to be going. My compliance has to be over ninety-five percent for me to get my bonus.” Odensen had a rockstar energy drink in his hand, and for a moment Ryan thought it was his own. However, it seemed as if Odensen had procurred his own from somewhere else.
Odensen left.
Ryan took this as his opportunity to follow suit.
Jodi watched him go, turned back to the new hire class… and swallowed.
*****
Cynthia informed him that she had a date as he was leaving. He stopped long enough to congratulate her, then stopped again.
“Is it someone from the new hire class?”
“Nah, he’s been here for like a month already. Said he’d take me somewhere nice.” She shrugged. “I figured it’s okay since I can just TiVo all the stuff I was going to watch when I got home. It’s even a plus when you consider there won’t be any commercials.”
Cynthia was not very attractive. She was not even very intelligent. She was also very uninteresting. Ryan knew this to a dead certainty, because while he was still a red-blooded American male he had never fantasized about her once.
He had never even thought about what she’d look like naked until that moment. He tried to imagine her nude, and then even his imagination shrugged. She was just so… plain.
It couldn’t be? Could it?
“Are you going out with Odensen by any chance?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Kinda weird looking, but I figure it’s all right.”
Ryan wondered how anyone could look at Odensen and call him “weird looking” but Cynthia’s chick pea vocabulary had somehow arrived at that combination of words.
Ryan realized this was the most personal conversation he had ever had with Cynthia, even though it only concerned a date and TiVo. Still, he had to ask “Has Odensen liked you for a while or something? You two talk a lot?”
Although he could not say why, he was profoundly confused.
Cynthia shrugged.
“Nah. I think he was just bored. Works for me. Free dinner, you know?”
“Oh” said Ryan, and then suddenly feeling as if everything he knew about the world was wrong, he turned and walked to his car. He was so bone shiveringly terrified that the only sign he gave of it was to turn up his collar, lest he give the fear another inch and begin a free fall into madness.
One thought kept him awake all night. It nagged at him even worse than the issue with Cynthia. What could Odensen possibly do with fifteen thousand dollars?
What did someone like Odensen need money for?
*****
No one would ever understand his obsession with Odensen, so Ryan told no one about it. Everyone else was focused on the new hire class anyway. Their classroom posters covered the hall. While posters drawn by new hire classes usually just had bullet points listing all the different calling plans offered by TeleServices, the posters made by the new hire class were altogether different.
Grand epics drawn in smelly markers covered a whole wall of the building. Knights on horseback did battle with giant dragons representing churn, or customer turnover. Warriors with spears tamed an elephant that represented self-service options. What looked like caveman drawings worshiped around a powerful flame that represented the all-important first call resolution.
Their were other stories coming from the new hire class. C. Cullen had shown up to work one day covered with bruises on the same day that a gang of sex traffickers in New York had all turned up dead in a warehouse. Their hearts had been ripped out of their chests by something with five by five tines. Of course it was on the other side of the country, and while everyone realized there was no way C. Cullen could be involved… they still looked at his walking stick and wondered.
Someone had called Cagn the n-word during lunch. Instead of turning it over to HR, Cagn had turned to the man and winked. Later that night the man’s house was swallowed by an earthquake. A fault had literally opened up in the earth and swallowed the house whole. Then it had closed and crushed the timbers. The man did not have earthquake insurance.
A woman had asked Al if he was a terrorist lover. The woman went to go home that night and found her car missing from the lot. When the police drove her home, they found her entire house stripped bare. Someone had even stolen her curtains. Her insurance documents could not be found. Not at her house, or even with her insurance company. Someone started to look a little deeper, and they realized that she wasn’t even a citizen anymore because no record could be found of her anywhere. All electronic data had been erased, and all hard files could not be found.
Ryan found this nowhere near as fascinating as Odensen’s love of BBQ potato chips. In order to keep track of empty cans of rockstar energy drink, Ryan had made a point of walking through the entire building. That was not all he found. There were wrappers from those muffins you get at Costco. The ones that were so full of starch you could use them to patch holes in the Hoover damn. There were five of the wrappers on Odensen’s desk. If it contained cholesterol, Odensen was eating it by the truckful.
Odensen’s stats dropped to average. He was taking too much time between calls to eat. His compliance was borderline, and he kept logging out three-and-a-half minutes early to go home a figure that frustrating to his boss. Bob, one of the night managers, began to complain about Odensen’s lack of enthusiasm.
“We should just fire him now, so he can’t get that referral money. Give him a couple more weeks and he’ll be in the red as bad as any of the work release guys.”
But Odensen had leveled out at mediocrity. He was between the land of green and red, which was the sickly territory of fever yellow.
Ryan engaged Cynthia in a conversation every night about her dates with Odensen. They were apparently a study in boredom. There was no sex of any kind so far as Ryan could tell. Unless it was so lackluster that Cynthia didn’t even think to have any emotions about it. Ryan knew it was very creepy to wonder about this, but it didn’t stop his mind from turning it over and over again.
Odensen was a remarkable man. It was written in every groove of his face. In the thousands of life experiences that must have wrenched all the color from his hair. Why did no one else stop to wonder?
“I don’t know who the guy thinks he is,” said Bob. “He ain’t got a degree of any kind. His work experience is for shit. You tell me what he thinks is so great about himself.” Although Odensen talked to no one but the new hire class so far as Ryan could tell, Bob had decided that Odensen was arrogant.
“Eats like a goddamn slob too. You know what I figure? He’s spending almost a third of his check on food from those damned vending machines. You should hear what Nick tells me when he empties the garbage. The guy is drinking six energy drinks a night. I’m surprised he doesn’t piss caffeine rocks.”
He paused by Odensen’s desk when he made a circuit of the building. The man ate with no relish. It was as if he hated the muffins. Hated the energy drinks. Hated the chips, but ate them as if he were doing it as an act of self-punishment.
Ryan kept expecting to show up to work sometime to find that Odensen had disappeared. No traces, no goodbyes, no forwarding address of any kind. Just gone. He began to hope for this as he had once hoped for promotions. If he went to work one day to find Odensen gone, then the world be right agian. All he knew was that every time he went into work and saw Cynthia dispassionately typing, knowing that she was with Odensen was more than flesh could bear.
It was wrong! Could no one see! The natural order of the universe had been turned on its head. He wanted to scream and punch someone, but a lifetime of timidity was too hard to shake.
Sometime in late August, Odensen started to visibly put on weight. His hairline was also noticeably thinner. His muscle tone was disappearing.
Ryan watched this with murderous fury.
*****
Odensen’s problems were not faced by the new hires. They remained as vibrant as ever. All of them seemed oblivious to the fate of their friend, who was dying not even inch by hard fought inch, but millimeter by surrendered millimeter. It was like Odensen had taken a chisel to the exquisite granite of his soul in an effort to carve a statue of nothing.
The new hires all had amazing stats. Not just in their call handle times, their first call resolution, or in their self-service options. The benefit of their presence was felt all over town.
There had not been a rape in town since they had arrived. Spousal abuse had disappeared. There were no robberies. Endangered animals at the zoo started to reproduce.
Ryan could have cared less.
He was looking at his calendar waiting for six months to roll around.
What the hell did Odensen want with fifteen thousand dollars?
He drank his coffee and waited to find out.
*****
It was worse than Ryan could have imagined.
He had imagined that their was need for costly spell components to close a hell portal. He had imagined that the new hire class needed gold to sate the appetite of ravenous and demonic dwarves. He had even wondered if Odensen was going to buy a stockpile of automatic weapons to overthrow the government and create a new kingdom on Earth.
It was so much worse than that.
When he found out he literally puked and had to pretend he was feeling sick.
Odensen had used the money to put down a deposit on a condominium…. and he used what was left to purchase a big screen television, lap-top computer, and sofa.
Ryan wanted to tear his hair out.
*****
“You know you can get a free gym membership when you work here, right?” Ryan asked. It was time to stop watching. Odensen had a paunch now, and was almost fully bald. He had also shrunken a full foot. Ryan didn’t know why he was the only person who noticed these things, but he was.
“Eh, I don’t have time. Probably costs too much anyway.” Odensen shrugged. The fire was gone from his voice. He sounded downright timid.
Ryan slammed the brochures on the table with a force that surprised him.
“You actually won a competition. It’s all paid for. You have a personal trainer for six months.” Ryan had paid for this himself. He’d researched the best gyms in town. It had cost him a pretty penny, but the gym membership was there waiting.
“Any chance I can sell it back to the company? I’m looking to buy a new car. Something economy.”
Ryan ignored this and put another pamphlet down on the table. “This is a free health test. They’ll give you your body mass index, cholesterol levels… the works. It’s yours.”
Odensen met Ryan’s eyes, and although Ryan could tell the eyes were tired and that the fire inside them was almost dead he flinched to see the rage in them. There were only sparks of the once great inferno, but they could still burn.
“I think these might be better off with someone else.” Odensen said flatly.
“They’re yours.” Ryan insisted. Odensen’s hands balled into fists. The fingers crunched.
Ryan smiled, closed his eyes, and waited for the blow to land.
Nothing happened. Ryan opened his eyes and frowned.
Odensen shrugged grabbed the pamphlets, and put them in a lunch bag. “I’ll give them to Cynthia as a present. We’re moving in together.”
Ryan didn’t know he had slapped Odensen across the face until the deed was done. By then he had already punched Odensen in the face with the other hand, and kicked him in the chest.
Odensen lay on the floor, still unmoving. Ryan pounced, punching.
“Get up!” Ryan screamed. “Get off the ground right now! Fight me! Strike me with your hammer! Send me to the underworld!” He got back up and started kicking. The ribs didn’t break and Odensen didn’t so much as grunt but Ryan refused to let up.
“Get up, damn you! Get up and fight me!”
Cagn grabbed Ryan from behind. Mr. du Lac pushed him the supply closet. C. Cullen held the walking stick to Ryan’s chest. Al put a knife to his throat. He was unmanned and pacified in less than three seconds.
“It’s too late” said Cagn, so close to Ryan’s ear that he was almost biting the lobe as he spoke. “He battles the worm now, and we may not interfere. It is the Law.” They released him.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Ryan asked. “It’s really him.”
Cagn did not even nod.
“Not for much longer,” said Al.
Ryan sat in the supply closet for a long time and wept.
*****
When winter came, Odensen was five and a half feet tall. He was fat and his male pattern baldness made him look like the world’s most pitiful man. Ryan saw him on the way into the building, using his shirt sleeve to open the frost covered door. He was struggling because he was also trying to carry a bag and lunch sack.
Ryan came up behind him and opened the door. He didn’t let the cold bother his hand, and was surprised he had ever let such a minor injury ever bother him. It was… beneath notice. Ryan would have marveled at this recalibration of his priorities, but even that was beneath his notice. He felt much stronger than he had in previous months.
“How are you doing, Odensen?” Ryan asked.
“Good, Mr. Shores. And yourself?”
Ryan smiled, as they entered the foyer. Odensen bent forward and kissed Cynthia on the cheek. She did not give him any attention, instead focusing solely on her call. Ryan and Odensen entered the building together.
“How much longer?” Ryan asked.
He didn’t feel angry or sad anymore. Cagn had said it was the law that Odensen be left alone. Ryan liked laws. He liked rules. If he couldn’t help Odensen, then that was that.
“Not much longer, I think.” Odensen chuckled, rubbing his stomach. “I never thought… when I was younger, you see… I never thought the worm would be like this. I never thought it would be computers, bad food, and poisoned love. I wanted it to be… well… I guess we all have to grow up sometime.”
Ryan felt his stomach fluttering. “Where is it? I’d like to see it, even if only once.”
They both knew what Ryan was talking about.
“You wouldn’t be impressed. It’s just a hammer now. It even says Craftsman on the handle.” Odensen paused as they went to part. “I’ll see it gets sent to you if you’d like… you know. After.”
“I’d like that.” Ryan replied.
“One more thing,” Odensen said “you might want to get a class of new hires going. My friends are leaving at the end of the week.”
Then they went their separate ways, and instead of wondering about login times Ryan spent his day on the internet looking for another job. He also planned a vacation.
*****
No one could remember how many steps Odensen managed to take when it happened. Ryan tried to ask them if it was nine. No one could say. Maybe it was five, maybe it was twenty. How the hell could you cound steps at a time like that? They wanted to know if they could get time off for bereavement. Ryan restrained himself enough not to stab them with scissors.
The commotion had started an hour into the shift, the very day after the new hire class disappared. Odensen stood up, clutching at his left arm. Bob told Odensen that if he wanted personal time he needed to ask for it first. Odensen walked a few steps, and then dropped dead. Heart attack.
Ryan had tried to revive him once the commotion reached his office. Bob was clumsily trying to do the same thing when Ryan arrived and pushed him violently out of the way. He’d been expecting something like this. He’d even brushed up a little bit on CPR, but when he went to blow air into Odensen’s waxen lips, he knew it was over and gave up.
They called an ambulance. The paramedics zipped Odensen up in a black plastic bag and took him away. Ryan already knew Odensen would have made arrangements to be cremated so he didn’t bother to ask.
Cynthia seemed very confused as to how she should feel when they rolled the stretcher by her. She told Ryan she believed Odensen was going to propose to her. She also said she had never really loved Odensen, and that she’d just been grateful someone was with her. She said she thought Odensen felt the same way. Ryan gave her a hug. She stared to cry into his shoulder. Full sobs.
“He was different when he first came here… wasn’t he?” She asked, as she cried. “I can’t remember… but I think he was different when he first came here. Am I right? Ryan? Am I right?”
He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
Then he let her go, waited for the site manager to arrive and tendered his resignation.
*****
It came in as regular a cardboard box as you could imagine, and true as Odensen’s word the handle said Craftsmen. Ryan held it, and said “Well ain’t that just a bitch?” He gave it a few expiramental swings, and decided that if he ever wanted to kill any Frost Giants he had better find a different weapon.
The handle was covered in a black rubber grip that had started to corrode with age. The neck of the hammer was blue and the head was silvery black and pitted with age. Ryan got drunk and used it to fix some cabinets later that night.
He brought it with him on his vacation to Norway. He’d always wanted to go back to the place where his grandfather had come from. He had a cottage in the country, and he liked to go for walks through the greenery.
Ryan took the hammer for a walk, not feeling at all ridiculous to be out and about with a pair of shorts, a tank top, and a hammer. He took a walk on a dirt path that surrounded the community. It ran along next to some cornfields. He walked for several hours, relishing the feel of the dirt beneath his feet, the sun on his face, and the smell of freshly watered fields.
He thought about the new hire class, and wondered if they were all going to die one by one the same way as Odensen. He wondered if they would keep dying until the worm died with them.
“Nice hammer.” Said a woman jogger. She paused, having taken out one of the earbuds of her iPod. “Say… you’re not that American serial killer are you?” Ryan liked this about Europe. The way people would just come up and strike up a conversation.
“Nope,” said Ryan. “I just like it.”
The woman was athletic and voluptious. Her hair was black and her eyes were green. “Want to hold it?” Ryan asked.
“Wow, you must say that to all the girls.”
“Just the ones I meet in the middle of dirt paths next to fields.”
The woman held it, turned it end for end, and handed it back. “How old is that thing anyway?” she asked.
Ryan shrugged. “Old, I think. I got it from an old family friend. Someone from around here actually.”
“You could just buy a new one, you know. They make ‘em by the hundreds these days.” She said. Ryan realized as he looked over the woman’s shoulder why he had actually taken the hammer with him out on the dirt road.
“I think you’re right. I think I might just leave it here.” Ryan walked past the woman and crested a small hill. He heard her following him, although she said nothing. The tree atop the hill had been split some time in its infancy by a bolt of lighting. There was a distinct “V” shape at its base. Ryan put the hammer there and stepped back.
He knew without knowing how that thousands of years ago this was the first place lightning had struck where men had thought to make stories about it.
The woman was standing next to him.
“My name is Brunhilde,” she said, then added “don’t laugh.”
He shook her hand.
“Brunhilde, I’m Ryan.” He turned to face the horizon. There was a new shopping park being built a few miles off toward the center of town. He had always wanted to own a travel agency. He wondered if they had those in Norway.
“Tell me,” Ryan asked, “have you ever wanted to live an extraordinary life?”
