Scheduled time-off–especially Day Off mornings–were Sacredtime.  Ronald Yukon, aspiring writer, dogged runner, responsible employee fought with himself on all three fronts.  Get up and write, get up and run, get up and go back to work.  He could usually rationalize not choosing the third option.  Except today.  Today he had decided to run and bang out a sequence of the Banal he was writing.  The sequence was important because it did not include a sit-down nutrition break or chance games on the logic memory board.   Yet on the verge of a break through in his craft, he had been ordered to report to work. 

I wanna run, I wanna write, I don’t wanna get removed.  What to do?  Like the hair- trigger on an ice-gun, he snapped an answer to himself.  I’ve got clothes at the office.  I’ll run to work, shower, change and get their freezin’ assignment done.  Someone can bring me home in a chute and I’ll still have time to work on the Banal.  It was pleasing that the path to work would take him through the woods, across the meadow and along the creek.  The grounds of Candelabra Enterprises were only a few steps from the meandering creek that occasionally sported fin-fish and bird-frongs.

It was common knowledge that the reason Candelabra Enterprises landscaping looked so fertile was that the maintenance men pumped water from the community’s blue-green creek to irrigate the grass and plants.  The community governor was on them about it, but no one had ever actually seen it being done.  Candelabra caused things like that.  She intimidated, extorted, stole, lied--.some said she even sent people to their final destination, but she did it all with a charm that was irresistible.

Ronald Yukon was earth-forty, but on Planet Jabex, he felt twenty-five.  He adored Candelabra like everyone who worked for her.  He was working on a manuscript about his life with Candelabra Enterprises on Jabex.  He wanted to see his love for the company and in particular, Candelabra, spelled out in detail and distributed by a Legitimate Proclaimer, sometimes called a publisher on Earth.  Once in awhile it was frustration like being called in to work on Day Off Time.  He thought about leaving the Enterprise and loving it from afar.  Until he had enough credit-debits though, he needed a pasta check and other benefits, so he forced himself to comply with the order to report.  Curses.

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.  Some of his work mates made fun of his routine. Push-ups before running?  Yet he had been doing them for as long as he could remember.  He secured the apertures of his house and pinned his code-key to his running shorts.  He shot out the back of the house and a hundred feet later he was running along the trail by the woods in back of his house.  He followed the trail into the woods.