Stan was in the make-shift media center at the center. Debra had arranged his wheelchair so Josie could frame the shot with her one good hand. The laptop screen displayed the rule-of-thirds grid she had been teaching the media club for 2 months. She waited to see if Josie would recall the hundreds of repetitions and exercises they had done to acquire this skill. Josie looked at her and signed "ready." Debra started to reach for the camera but the laptop showed Stan's head located in exactly the right intersection to the left side of the screen. She stood up and gave Josie a hi-5 and signed "great job! you got it in exactly the right spot!" Josie beamed. Mike came forward and handed Debra the cue cards he had carefully lettered for Stan to read. "I finish yesterday. They are good!" He nodded affirming his own assessment. Debra wished they could just use Mike for the PR department's request. Stan's stammer was very off putting, but he had been practicing and they had carefully chosen words that he found less nerve-wracking. The extra note in the work order request Debra had printed from the web form was a nose tweak. "This time, can we PLEASE have them dress like someone who lives indoors. Pity might raise money but we need to do better than that." As if she could choose their clothes for them. Samantha Deizler was such a see-you-next-Tuesday. Debra seethed inside, thinking about Samantha and Conrad. How could he prefer that cold piece of plastic over her? Her visual imagination replayed all the ways she had thought of killing him, and that evil PR witch. Debra returned her attention to the media club and the project. The lines Stan had to read out loud were total inspiration porn, intended to make the clients look like poor little lambs and the donors feel like they were saving the world by sending their tax-deductible duckets. She felt like throwing up. They were wrapping up when the door swung wide and Samantha floated in with an elderly couple behind her. She did her usual waving hands routine with the smooth voice and just enough wriggle in her pencil skirt to get the old geezers all leery without alarming their wives. Debra's mind flashed all the gory murder images again. And again... and again... She looked at Stan in his wheelchair. That thing weighed about 400 lbs. with both batteries on board... Debra thought about the ramp at the back of the building. It was almost time for the vans to come pick everyone up. The image resolved and she could see the mangled remains of Samantha at the bottom of the wheelchair ramp. She vaguely wondered if the counseling center would be available to help Stan recover from the experience. Driving home that day she began to flesh out the details. Finally. A reason to look forward to coming to work.

"So... who's dying today?" Renata swiveled in the old leather desk chair she stole from the 3rd floor. "No list yet. Is Frank still off?" Henry looked over at his co-worker and wondered how much longer he'd have to look at her spiked hair and tired black nail polish. "I think so. I guess we make our own list." She started to access the round filing cabinet labeled North America. "Oh c'mon. Not that again. Can't we start somewhere more exciting?" Henry scooted his stool over to Africa. "Sure, but you know the rules. They can be FROM Africa, but they gotta kick it in North America." "I know. I know." He grabbed a random file and shoved it into the scanner. Elijah Ben Gaharidin. A card flipped out of the scanner and landed in the catch tray. 250 additional cards later they had culled at least 120 tourists in the North American continent visiting from places as far away as Friesland. The airlines would have to give discounted tickets to far more people than they expected. "I wish we could pick out HOW they kick it. We have no creative control up here." Renata looked at the blank wall and imagined a window looking out over the Manhattan skyline. She didn't exactly miss Manhattan. But she liked the idea of it. "Bobbie in Rework told me she gets Frank to let her pick all the time." Henry was rubber banding the stack of cards for dispatch. "Is she blowing him? Because that old codger wouldn't let me pick the creamer I wanted for my coffee, let alone how someone was going to shuffle off their moral foil, or whatever."