Four miles west of where Andrew Cook received his 2nd coffee, James Sallis climbed the set of stairs that must've cost at least 2.5 million dollars to design and construct. He thought of the principle of spending that much on just a stairwell. Of course this was no ordinary 

stairwell

. It was a wide, expansive tower of 

glass

and 

steel

, embedded within a concrete 

monolith

. 

He couldn't recall precisely when he had learned the cost of the stairwell alone. Lately he overheard so many discussions regarding how much some architectural project costed or how much some firm landed by winning a bid or how much some entrepreneur had secured in funding that he couldn't place each conversation to the right moment. Instead the information became a flurry of soundbites that all amounted to the bigger picture: that 

Westcity

was booming.

Well, at least a subset of it was. There was still the left-behind generation. Folks who had worked in factories during the manufacturing boom of this country who didn't know how to adjust to the 

information age

. And there were the 

service industry

class. People perpetually trapped to serve those better off than them coffees, drinks, and food.

But besides those people, Westcity was indeed booming. A small number statistically, but in the places and faces Sallis encountered, it seemed like it was the entire city. Maybe he lived inside a 

bubble

, as his

social justice warrior

brother liked to coin it.

He climbed up the stairs, the light peering in. He would be five minutes early to the meeting. He always showed up on time, which where he came from, meant being there at least five minutes prior. He had heard that some football coach had once said that being five minutes early actually meant that you were already late. Such principle felt 'nice' to him. He wished he could be such a principled person. But he also understood that such an axiom came from a different time. A time before 

smartphones

and high resolution scheduling. Back then you might make the same amount of plans for the entire week that somebody in today's time might make in one day. And when you had that few plans, it made sense you might want to show up earlier than five minutes early.

When he arrived at the third floor, he was surprised to see that the glass cube of a meeting room was already filled with everybody in the meeting. Damn, was he already late? He checked the time on his phone. No. everybody else had shown up uncharacteristically early. Sallis slipped in quietly. Nobody made any explicit hello to him as everybody was busy talking about one thing.

Usually the chatter at the beginning of a meeting was small talk. What had everybody done over the weekend, what were their plans for tonight. Who was going on holiday when? But today everybody was in an intense discussion about the results of a recent 

hackathon

.

A cough came in from the only person who was standing in the room. It was their senior 

project manager

, Gordon Bannister.

"I hope everybody can know what this means for us at FlyTech."

The room went silent. Everybody on their seats, fingertips nursing their paper coffee cups, waiting for their boss to explain what it meant.

Instead Bannister turned around and stared out the cube, out the glass, towards a view of the park that was located just outside the Monolith.

Sallis looked to see if there was a coffee for him, but the delivery-cupholder was empty. That's when he noticed for the first time that they had a guest in the room. It was a woman in her early 40s. She put her drink down and gave a soft cough before saying, "maybe we should contextualize things for the team."

Gordon turned around slowly, his eyes red, the bags under them more apparent now. Or maybe Sallis was paying closer attention to signs of fatigue in his boss. "Yes, let's. Would you please do that, Briana?"

Briana stayed seated as the room turned their attention to her. Gordon Bannister remained standing, instead bending over with his hands on the table to concede the room to the woman.