The day was especially quiet—not that much happened in those cubicles anyway but on this particularly bland day when even the clouded sky tried to blend in with the monotonous gray of the city's concrete jungle. The office was so quiet, Julian thought he'd even hear the synchronized blinking of an entire floor of expendable office workers he ignored the names of. He would have tried to give them funny nicknames like 'big tiddies' or 'total dick' if they had not all been so perfectly identical.

The throughput of employees in this company was so high he didn't even bother to make social bonds with any of them. He categorized them by the gray tone in their eyes which seemed, he had found, a reliable indication for how close to being vaporized a colleague was. A term he had found fitting for the seemingly complete lack of trackability of his former colleagues once they left the company or were fired to be replaced by their younger, yet equally expendable twins, triplets or however-many-a-plets with eyes yet still fiery and filled with the vibrant colors of ambitious youth. Fools.

Julian had proven particularly resilient against the utterly boring blankness of his desk job. He attributed his stamina to the fact that he had graduated from an excessively mediocre college (as much as this description sounds like an oxymoron, it's true) unlike many of his shorter-breathed comrades in the daily battle against frustrating amounts of mental idleness. In fact, another close correlation found by him in his daily quest for mental stimuli was that the term 'crippling debt' often associated with high-ranking colleges indeed earned its name, for the pressure for quickly climbing into positions with barely acceptable salaries had a strong tendency to break the endurance of its victims, given these boundary conditions.

The ringing of the phone yanked Julian out of his daydreams and startled him enough to make him tear the wing of this morning's twenty-third origami crane he was folding from the paper that blended in perfectly with the gray of the antique cathode-ray computer screen and the cubicle walls. At least, the Bostitch stapler was in a different shade of gray, as was the keyboard. Julian mused whether he'd ever see as much as fifty shades of this expressionless color in his cubicle as he picked up the phone which was surprisingly black—or almost; dark anthracite, to be precise.

“Jansen,” came the surprisingly melodious female voice of Jessica Jordan, his boss, “My office. Now.”

He breathed into the mouthpiece. What could she possibly want from him? Had he really not noticed the change of color in his eyes over the past few weeks? He did fail to remember the last time he had looked into the mirror, that much was true, since he found a boyish, albeit small pleasure in feeling a rebel with a week's worth of stubble on his face, contrary to his exemplary slick-shaved male colleagues. For all he knew, even his female coworkers shaved their faces daily for the sake of completely blending in and not attracting negative attention.

“When I say 'now', I mean 'now' or do you want me to come down to your office and find all the decorative paper foldings you've so neatly placed everywhere to make this place more jolly, apparently, and burn them on your desk in front of your eyes as my last goodbye to you? I'll have you know I'd derive a great amount of pleasure in destroying what keeps you distracted from your eminently important work while signing your dismissal papers, Jansen,” Mrs. Jordan reminded him of his place.

Julian made sure his sigh was audible by the other end of the line and slowly strolled to the elevator, a suppressed crooked grin on his lips as he thought about how the greatest distraction at work was not his penchant for the Japanese art of folding paper but rather his boss' delectable derrière and the cleavage she appeared to be sporting every time she bent over his desk to lecture him about his work ethics. He had realized, however, how she only seemed to berate him for his misconduct and no other employee. No wonder, considering all his co-workers were obedient sheep.

For all he cared, he wouldn't miss his job, should he get fired, but he would resent losing the interaction with Jessica—the sole reason, in fact, that had kept him from quitting since day one. Not only did was she true eye-candy, but also, she seemed, for whatever reason, to refrain from firing him despite his obvious shortcomings as a mildly punkish, yet productive employee.

While his mind was spinning around what skirt the singular colorful item of his company might be wearing, whether he'd see the panty line through it—or the lack of it (cheeky snicker)—and to which button her blouse was opened (as she seemed to be particularly open-hearted around him as far as his hormone-biased observations went, at least), he whistled the solitary tune of freedom of all care into the emptiness of the elevator.

As Julian entered Jessica's office, he began playfully, “What can I do for you, Jessica?” and just as quickly backpedaled as he saw the two ominous-looking suits with expressionless faces which made him marvel about the fact that, in the upper floors, a basic requirement for climbing the ladder apparently was that one looked even grayer and samer. They were even so alike he failed to determine their genders—every politically correct HR's wet dream. “Er... uh... Mrs. Jordan,” he corrected himself, adjusting his tone to a timbre bereft of any emotion.

“Meet our CEO and the head of the executive board, Mr. Jansen,” Jessica coldly stated, waving her hand into their general direction.

Julian remembered where he failed to recognize these two faces from, the second round of job interviews in which he had expertly downplayed any ambitions of breaking out of the norm and made adamantly clear he would be direct all his energy into becoming the grayest and samest cubicle employee of Graysame Consulting Inc., thereby posing a serious threat to any top manager of the firm.

“Mr. Jansen,” came a steely, androgynous voice deprived of any tonality, skilfully distorted as if coming from a sixties' sitcom robot. “On Mrs. Jordan's behalf, we have decided to promote you to be her personal assistant.”

“You will, from now on,” chimed in the second, even eerier, more monotonous voice, causing Julian to cringe, “share the office with her and act as her right hand and consult her in important decisionmaking.”

“In proper terms, I'll be her secretary,” Julian replied, casually throwing his left arm over the backrest of the chair he had sat down on and crossing his legs, which earned him a scornful look from Jessica and two well-synchronized irritated, yet not too conspicuous buzz saw-like harrumphs. Julian enjoyed how his subversive, rebellious acts pushed the incarnation of the company's corporate identity to the boundaries of its comfort zone.

“We prefer the term personal assistant,” was the unanimous retaliation that painfully ground into his eardrums from the dissonance of the superimposed mechanic voices.

“We trust you will learn the necessary set of skills from Mrs. Jordan and will thus become our favored candidate for his position in case of her promotion to upper management,” one of the undefinable voices explained in empty phrases Julian knew were only meant to make the position seem more attractive although it only served no other purpose than to put him under direct observation. It reminded him of the old proverb: 'If it doesn't fit, use a bigger hammer.'

The other perfectly identical twin stole a glance at its wristwatch. “Unfortunately, we have other, more pressing matters to attend to. We wish you a pleasant day,” as both of them stood up and shook hands with both Jessica and Julian in turns.

As they stepped towards the door, Julian commented, “Thank you for your consideration. I'm looking forward to working with Mrs. Jordan more...” artistic pause for emphasis, “... intimately...” Another pause to see how two swappable faces turned to him. “...on a professional level, of course.”

As the door shut and Jessica and Julian were alone, he commented with a depreciative tone, “Wow, these were even more stuck up than I remember.”

“Julian,” Jessica sternly addressed him. “You are aware that I've only proposed you for promotion so I could keep a close eye on you, yes? You might be a valuable asset to the company but I'm sticking out my neck here so you don't get fired over your unwillingness to comply with our work ethics.”

Julian, obviously ignoring her advice, suggested, “It's almost lunchtime. Wanna go eat and bond with your new personal assistant? I hear the first few helpings at the canteen are an especially unappealing shade of gray and are even more tasteless. I could use something to eat.”

Jessica rolled her eyes, stood up from her chair and straightened her skirt; definitely no panty lines, Julian thought. She sighed. “Sure, let's go but I'll pass on that crappy cafeteria. Let's go to Gianni's.”

“Awesome,” Julian replied. “I could use some actual food. Wine included?”

An ever so brief smile flashed over her lips as she threw in, “Exceptionally, since it's your first day,” which sounded more like 'thought you'd never ask.' Her smile was quickly replaced by her signature thin-lipped pout—an all-too-obviously terrible mock of the grimace required in higher management and one of her personal attributes he found comically attractive.

They remained silent on the way to the elevator, not wanting to attract any investigative looks observing who was calling it an early lunch to avoid the timely, near-half-hour queue at the canteen—an utterly disdained act of unacceptable rebellion.

As soon as the elevator doors were closed, Julian, wearing his self-confident smile, said, “Thank you for inviting me to your office, Jessica. I really needed to get out of this horrible cubicle.”

She chuckled, “Well, you've proven yourself worthy and have shown plenty of times that you were fed up with office work from day one. And your pranks like smuggling some food coloring into the canteen kitchen—loved it! Or the hate glitter you sent to some of the newbies? Hilarious!”

“Who else besides you knows?” he asked laughing. “I heard they fired poor Andrew over this.”

“Oh, they just needed a pretext to fire that dick,” she replied. “You just played right into their hands. That's also, so I hear, one of the reasons why some people would love to have your expertise on how to frame unwanted personnel while others would prefer to have you under observation.”

“Hint taken,” he snuffled just as the elevator came to a sudden halt and the lights went off.

“Holy crap, what's happening?” Julian exclaimed as he felt Jessica grab his arm.

Contrary to the shakiness of her hand and the stiffness of her grip, her voice sounded calm and under control—courtesy of yours truly, management training. “Blackout and we're stuck between two floors,” she speculated just before the dim emergency lighting lit up.

“Drat, I forgot my cellphone upstairs,” Julian cursed, throwing a hopeful glance at Jessica.

“Shit, me too.” She made a face and tried the emergency bell button. As nothing happened, not even an LED lighting up anywhere, she tried again, giving the button a healthy punch.

Both stood there watching as a thin sticker peeled off the button console and fell to the ground, revealing the purpose of the sticker was solely decorative.

“Looks like we're gonna be locked up in here for a little while,” Julian sighed. “Let's just hope they won't take too long to find the cause.” He made a discontented frown and asked, “Any suggestions on how to kill the time?”

Jessica replied with raised eyebrows that asked for the most outrageous act in the secure confinement of a stalled elevator in a public building accompanied by her hands sliding up her skirt to show Julian the real reason why he hadn't been able to see her panty line, making his eyes open wide in realization.

In a single, well-trained motion, his belt, button, and zipper came undone and his instant erection sprang free from the waistband of his briefs. Without hesitation, her hand took hold of it and began pumping it while his hand found her steaming crotch and their lips landed on each other in a tongue wrestling match that defied all grayness of this office building. Quickly, touches led to gasps, gasps became moans and moans became the plea for a proper fuck.

Julian lifted Jessica's ass on the elevator handrail and guided his cock into her hungry pussy which devoured his shaft with a grip telling volumes about long-repressed hunger. With her arms and legs wrapped around him, she moved up and down his rod along with his deep, hard thrusts. Every time his hips hit against her buttocks, a cacophony of two voices reverberated from the narrow walls. Even as the lights came back on and a characteristic quake indicated the elevator had resumed its downward journey, they kept their pace towards their mutual orgasm.

Just as the ping-sound indicated arrival, Julian thrust his hips one last time against Jessica's ass and unloaded a torrent of his cum into her as she too came, crying out his name. Only as the elevator doors were standing wide open and they were coldly greeted by two specific androgynous-looking (and sounding) exact clones of each other, Julian put Jessica back on her feet and clumsily put his shrinking glory back into his pants. In the company of the CEO and the head of the executive board were two strikingly similar figures who, to demonstrate the superior economic power of their company, were dressed in even grayer and samer suits.

As Jessica and Julian left the elevator in close observation of those four corporate creatures, he said, “Good luck with the business negotiations, fellas.”