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of a gray-haired woman with the face of a thirty-year-old, enjoying life with no sexual side effects and only a slight risk of a seizure, stroke, or death. His job was more likely to kill him than this little Blue Pill.
    “Come on, kick in,” he muttered. He looked at the shiny brass name plate on his desk—facing him, not the door. It read “Hugo Talley, Executive Producer.”
Executive.
What he wouldn’t give to be a good, old-fashioned, everyday news producer again. But with the pay he had now.
    He wondered why he had an office at all. It was a square box with a fake wooden door and an all-glass wall that served no purpose at all. The former executive producer, who’d died of a heart attack last January, thought a glass wall was a good idea so he could keep an eye on everything. But in reality, it served only to keep a hundred pairs of eyes on him.
    He guzzled more water, hoping to get that tiny pill dissolved. That was the other mystery, why the color of the pill was so important in the commercial. “Are you on the Blue Pill yet?” it asked. Maybe he should be on the Red Pill. Or the Purple Pill.
    Hugo hunched over his desk, trying to look like he was too busy to be disturbed. He’d learned long ago in this all-seeing office that if he looked even the least bit unoccupied, one person behind a pair of those hundreds of eyes would feel the need to come in and occupy him.
    It had not been a good afternoon. The news meeting had gone poorly, and Chad Arbus, Hugo’s boss and the station news director, had made sure everyone knew how unhappy he was about it. But Chad was unhappy in general, and there were times that Hugo had actually thought about slipping one of his Blue Pills into Chad’s coffee.
    But anxiety wasn’t really young Chad’s problem. The problem with Chad was that he was a jerk. He was probably born a jerk. He probably soiled his diapers at all the worst places and times, just to see his mother have to try to clean it all up. That was the kind of man Chad was, and Chad was half the reason Hugo needed the Blue Pill.
    The other half was Gilda Braun. Gilda was an icon. She’d been doing the news for thirty-five years. There was even a statue of her at the airport. Gilda was the reason that every nursing home within the station’s viewing area watched News Channel 7. Channel 7 couldn’t boast about much, but it could boast that it was the most-watched news channel among the geriatric population. Unfortunately, even their voice-over guy couldn’t make that sound favorable.
    Instead, they boasted about their hard work. “News Channel 7…Working Around the Clock to Bring You the News.” Their logo was a clock, an indication that any time the news was appropriate, they would have the news. So there was the morning show, which lasted two hours, until the national morning show came on. Then there was an hourlong noon show, a four-thirty, a five, a six, a six-thirty, and the Big Daddy, the “tenner” as they called it.
    And that was where Gilda came in. She’d been the ten o’clock news anchor since Hugo was a teenager and before Chad was even born. And she had a lot of clout.
    Hugo’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice on his speaker phone. “Hugo, in my office now.” Chad hung up, and Hugo could only assume Chad knew he was in his office because he could see him. Hugo sighed and slouched toward his door and into the hallway. It irritated him that Chad continued to call him Hugo. Maybe Hugo was old-fashioned, but there were things that he expected. He called superiors and co-workers Mr. and Ms., and expected to be called the same. And he dressed up for work, complete with a tie and pressed slacks. Chad, on the other hand, was on a first-name basis with everyone and thought buttoning two of the four buttons on his polo was dressing up. Hugo had even witnessed him wear a cotton shirt tucked in only at the belt buckle to a board meeting before. It was hideous.
    Hugo held his ground on it, though,