Tend Towards

Tomorrow and the Percolator

They've always told her, 'Don't leave to Tomorrow what you can do today,' and she was fairly certain it was a sick a play on her name.

Tomorrow checked the time on her screen, and narrowed her eyes at the hour. "Somebody must me toying with me."

She idly chewed on her pencil while observing the stamped digits, and when the seven rolled over to an eight, she sighed, tossed her pencil on the desk and leaned back in her chair.

Her eyes were burning, her head ached, and her back was cramping. She had worked for hours, but the clock told her that she had been here for no more than ten minutes. Hardly possible, given the mountain of work she had powered through.

But then again, she did have infallible motivation.

She rose from the chair, decided to kick off her heels - not like anybody would come stumbling in at almost nine in the evening to admonish her on appropriate work-wear - and shuffled over the staff kitchen.

There, sat atop the counter, next to the buzzing fridge, was her one hope for a happy life - the percolator. If she was going to die in - she checked her watch - six hours and twenty-two minutes, then she was going to make damn sure that she died on a caffeine high.

She filled the percolator with water and replaced the coffee, switched on the machine and strolled back to her desk. Usually management would frown upon the amount of coffee she planned to consume, but they weren't here.

Besides, what were they going to do? Fire her? Stick a notice of termination on her caffeinated, twitching corpse? She'd love to be alive to see that.

She flopped down in her chair again, eyed the stack of paperwork, and sighed. If she didn't do it... it wouldn't make much of a difference, probably, but she was doing it anyway. She had the time, six hours and twelve minutes, in fact, so might as well be productive. 

She prepared her work, looked for her pencil - it had taken her a few minutes to realise it had rolled off the desk - and finally glanced at the clock one last time before digging in.

She frowned, and tapped her computer monitor. "You're wrong," she told the screen, pointing at the time. "It was almost nine almost ten minutes ago. How are you telling me it's only half-past eight?"

She waited, almost expecting a reply, but none came. She checked her wristwatch, and, indeed, it was only half-past eight. That gave her, what, six hours and forty-nine minutes left to live.

Something very odd was happening here. She observed her wristwatch, just to make sure that time was moving in the correct direction. It seemed to be.

Tomorrow eventually conceded that she must have simply confused herself. She supposed she might be more inclined to make a mistake than the laws which governed the universe.

Not that the universe was infallible. Oh no. The universe had made its fair share of mistakes too. Stealing her time, for example. Shoving her into a vessel destined to die when she was promised a life a live. Capitalism. All great mistakes by cosmic folly. 

But, then, the universe did have its perks. Like overtime pay. And coffee.

She set down the last of the small stack of papers, stamped it 'PROCESSED', and shoved it into a file. Maybe she punched it a bit skew, but in - check the time - seven hours and six minutes she'd be past caring.

She slapped her computer. "That's not how time works, you silly machine!"

Her wristwatch agreed with the glorified calculator. Again, time was moving the way it was supposed to and her mind was racing.