The work wasn't chaos. In fact Keith liked it. There was some bitter that came with the new fruit. Nearly half his previous coworkers were laid off. And he was doing double the work as before. But he was barely doing anything before. So the doubling didn't affect him much. He still could fit a decent

coffee

break into his days.

These breaks where he'd drink the coffee slow. Slow enough that he could appreciate. Feel the dark liquid gliding across his enamel and down the back of his tongue. But not too slow that the drink was cold by the time he reached the bottom of the cup. One might say the coffee was lukewarm by that point. But not cold. He got this timing down to a tee with the ceramic mugs they served at his favorite 

cafe

.

Most people got 

to-go cups

. Disposable cylinders of paper that they would get and throw out few times a week. Some of them he knew got one each working day. What a waste he thought. That's one thing he enjoyed about 

Spacecity

and the lab he was working at. Neither tolerated waste. Well the latter tolerated waste for awhile. But it had finally tightened the belt. Promoted the right people. Himself being one of them. Did he miss a lot of his previous colleagues. Yes. But he also appreciated the new reliability that the smaller, tighter team featured.

Ezekiel was gone too. The last time he'd heard of him was on a routine search through 

LinkedIn

. He'd look for Ezekiel maybe once every month. It looked as though Ezekiel had found a new job out West. This was good. Although Keith was kind of enjoying imagining his former supervisor suffer. Keith would've liked to have him suffer a bit longer. But

schedenfruede

aside, Keith was glad to hear that Ezekiel had finally found himself some stability.

He sighed while looking down at his empty cup. It was time to head back to the office. He'd be there in about seven minutes if he got up right now.