Thursday afternoon bled into evening. Jenna had struggled to focus ever since her argument with Felicity. Mr. Ternal’s files were still on her computer. She moved on to another project to try to clear her head and make some semblance of progress, but the twisting knot in her stomach refused to relent. Felicity did at least apologize before she left, as had Jenna. But now she sat by herself in a slowly darkening office with absolutely no sense of closure. She let out a long sigh and decided to take Felicity’s parting advice to just leave it till tomorrow.

As Mr. Ternal settled back in the chair and finally seemed to relax, Jenna initiated the recording program. She noticed right away how much feedback Mr. Ternal’s sensors were providing. Her training told her that this meant he was either very alert, very nervous, extremely intelligent, or some combination of the three.

“Yeah, that tracks,” Jenna muttered to herself.

“I’m sorry?” Mr. Ternal responded.

“Ope! Sorry,” Jenna quickly replied. “Just adjusting some settings.”

Jenna sighed. She was just settling into week three of her new job and the excitement of learning the computer system and other requirements had all but worn off. She looked around the office. The open work floor she sat in contained several banks of workstations. Little walls divided the cubicles for a sense of privacy, but if she stood up, she could see across the room. She was on the side opposite the bank of windows. She actually preferred it because when the day was warm and sunny, those window desks were sweltering.

It was one of this year’s many rather-mild-late-winter-days, and me and the fam were meeting some friends at Bellevue’s riverside American Heroes Park. On one hand, I had heard very good things about the park and its features. On the other hand, it’s a playground – how great could it be? No one told me it was a super-awesome-over-the-top-something-for-everyone playground with the power to bridge the ever-widening socio-economic divides which threaten the very patchwork fabric of modern America. Okay, that last part might have been inferred by my own personal observation, but still.