Menopausal Fury: Wall Street Apocalypse

The air on the thirty-seventh floor of the Morgan Building was stagnant as glue. The central air-conditioning system hummed dully, sending a steady stream of cool air through seventeen filters to the trading floor. Fluorescent tubes cast a ghastly white light between the aluminum suspended ceilings, illuminating rows of displays with flashing data. Numbers pulsed, curves meandered, and countless capitals were flowing, multiplying, and dying in these square inches. Diana Crane's fingers hung above the keyboard, trembling slightly. Not from nervousness-at least not entirely. That familiar burning sensation rose again from the base of her spine, like lava crawling slowly. "Crane, are you done checking the data on the S&P futures?" Mark's voice came from the other end of the partition with its usual impatience. She took a deep breath and hit the enter key. "It's being transmitted to you." The display suddenly flickered and the numbers twisted into a jumbled mess. Diana frowned and re-entered the command. A subtle crackling sound came from inside the chassis. "Damn..." She cursed under her breath, tapping her fingers heavily on the keyboard. A wave of static electricity ran from her fingertips and the display went completely black. The figure of Rogers, the CFO, appeared in the cubicle entrance. "Problem?" His suit was ever-so-straight as if he'd just taken it out of the box. "Hardware failure." Diana avoided his gaze, "It'll be back up in ten minutes." Rogers' gaze swept over her sweaty forehead. "I hope you remembered to turn in your quarterly forecast today. The board is waiting to see it." He left with a breeze, and Diana smelled the vague scent of anxiety under his cologne-a recent ability to sniff out other people's emotions. Another "gift" of menopause. In the pantry, the coffee maker purred. Lisa was pouring a third cup of black coffee into a mug. "Another lecture?" She knew it was Diana without turning around. "Regular program." Diana unscrewed the mineral water bottle and the water was inexplicably hot. Lisa turned around, the dark bruises under her eyes standing out in the fluorescent light. "I heard the layoffs are announced next week. I dreamed last night that I cried in the elevator holding a cardboard box for the entire thirty-seven floors." "Dreams are all the opposite." Diana replied mechanically, her throat tightening. The burning sensation was spreading to her limbs, like a million tiny arcs of electricity traveling under her skin. When she returned to her seat, her computer miraculously returned to normal. But there was something odd about the way the numbers bounced across the screen-they no longer followed the familiar pattern of fluctuation, but instead turned suddenly like a school of frightened fish. "Have you seen the yen exchange rate?" Someone at the other end of the cubicle exclaimed, "It just fluctuated two hundred points instantly." The trading floor grew noisy. The phone rang incessantly, and the keyboard tapping became more and more urgent. Diana tried to focus on organizing her statements, but the paper curled and yellowed slightly between her fingers. She looked down at her hands - a vague blue light coursing under her skin like distant lightning. "Crane!" Rogers' voice cut through the noise, "Where are the numbers I want?" She bumped over the pen holder as she stood up. The plastic pens rolled and suddenly all stood up, their tips pointing in her direction in unison. "In a minute." Her voice was strangled and hoarse. As she walked toward the printer, the overhead lamps began to strobe. Somewhere along the way, she saw a different colored halo around each person-Rogers was a manic scarlet, Lisa a failing gray-blue, and Mark a greedy gold. The printer paper rolled so hot that it almost burned. The data prints were blurred, the ink swooshing across the paper like drops of blood. "What the hell is this?" Rogers snatched up the statement, his pupils suddenly contracting. Diana followed his gaze. The blurry numbers were slowly reorganizing themselves on the paper, arranging themselves into completely unfamiliar sequences-exactly predicting the market crash of the next three hours. "Explain?" Rogers' voice was taut as a string. She opened her mouth, but no sound could come out. The hall was suddenly plunged into darkness as the red light from the emergency lights splashed down. With a gasp, all the displays burst into dazzling blue light at the same time. Heat waves exploded out of her. Computer mainframes were billowing blue smoke, phone lines burst into sparks, and the automated trading system sounded a piercing alarm. People were running around like headless flies, turning into silhouettes under the blood-colored emergency lights. Diana stood still, feeling the power sweep through every nerve like a tsunami. She raised her hand, and the arcs of electricity leaping from her fingertips illuminated the fluttering pages-the ones filled with numbers were burning in the air, turning into hovering ash butterflies. The fire protection system finally kicked in, and a curtain of water fell from the sky. But the water droplets evaporated into mist around her, lingering into a shimmering aura of vapor. Through the haze of water, she saw the elevator indicator lights jumping wildly. There was a dull thumping sound from inside the metal box, as if a giant beast was about to break out of its cage. Numbers flashed on and off in the mist, like stars being born and annihilated. The last sequence she saw was burned into her retina - the string of numbers that predicted destruction was reorganizing and distorting in the watery mist, eventually coalescing into a dazzling golden trajectory that pointed directly into the depths of the elevator shaft. The elevator light settled on the thirty-seventh floor, glowing with the fiery light of molten gold. Unusual heat seeped out from between the door cracks, and the metal began to redden and distort.