Jae receives a summons to the office-does this mean a place on the inside track in an organization where position is everything? Slipstream fiction set in the 'bureaucratic gothic' universe of the novel Hollowmen.

This story is included in the collection Fluctuation in Disorder.

Susan Maxwell is an independent author and scholar who has had short stories and poetry published in magazines and anthologies; has published a short story collection (Fluctuation in Disorder) independently; has had one novel (Good Red Herring) published by Little Island Books, and a further three (Hollowmen, And the Wildness, and A Wild Goose Hunt) published independently; has served on fiction and non-fiction juries for the British Fantasy Awards; has a PhD in Archival Science and writes on themes related to archives and fiction; reviews regularly for Inis (the magazine of Children's Books Ireland); is influenced most by speculative and modernist fiction, being particularly fond of Flann O'Brien, Calvino, Beckett, and Woolf.

When not writing, or painting, or being an archivist, the author can be found in the vegetable patch, listening to music, reading books, watching old detective series, or catching up on sleep.