I William Henderson felt a sense of dread. Though what he was afraid of he could not quite tell. It was a subconscious fear, one that he felt in his chest and throat. He was running down a long dark corridor. There were doors on either side of him, but he keep running and they passed silently by. Soon he found he could see some light at the end of the hallway. It was a tall narrow slit of light that he soon realized was a door left partially open. He reached the door and swung it open and at once found himself in his office on a particularly sunny day. Henderson relaxed a little. He walked behind his desk and sat down, trying to control the fear and anxiety that he felt so deeply. Suddenly he remembered the phone. He was supposed to call someone. The dread came back. He was sure that the phone call was what he had forgotten. Coolly, he picked up the phone on his desk and leaned back in his plush office chair.

“You’ve made a real mess of things Henderson,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

Henderson’s fear returned and he sat up straight in his chair, his spine rigid and the back of his neck sweaty.

“The extremists have taken your plant,” he continued.

“That’s only a couple blocks away.”

“Figure out how you’re going to fix it.”

The call cut out as a flash of light blinded Henderson. When he next opened his eyes he was in his New York apartment. He let out a sigh of relief. It had only been a dream. The sweat, though, was entirely real. He sat up and took his drenched nightshirt off. It was one in the morning. He flung the sheet off his legs and enjoyed the cool wind from his air conditioner. Once it had dried him off, he rolled over to the other side of the bed, pulled the sheet up to his chin and closed his eyes.

As he fell asleep, he imagined what it would be like if he had time for a girlfriend. Maybe she would have asked what had woken him and then he could have told her that it was just a ridiculous nightmare. It wasn’t even his office that he had been in, and what kind of extremists would take a plant anyways? Maybe she would have comforted him and helped him fall back asleep. This thought comforted Henderson and put a smile on his face as he drifted off.

II

It was a dry and dusty day when Henderson moved into his new corner office. It was the nicest office in the entire water management complex, but it still was nowhere near as nice as the New York office he had been promoted out of.

He had been promoted to the head of water delivery services for the whole colony of New North Africa. His predecessor had recently passed away after holding the position for nearly forty years. Upper management had decided that Henderson was the man for the job because he knew nothing about the colony. In fact, unlike most of his colleagues, he had never even visited.

Henderson sat down at his new desk. All of his belongings had been moved for him and were arranged on the new desk just as he had left them on the old one. The only thing that had changed was that there was now a disposable tablet resting in the middle of his desk. He turned it on and was greeted with a wall of text. It contained all the information that he would need to start his new job. It included the regular things, names of all his new colleagues and what facilities were under his control, but it also included some alarming statistics. In the last ten years, the amount of water that was unaccounted for had risen dramatically. A fully efficient distribution system was, of course, impossible. Some water was bound to be lost because of small leaks and the intense heat. But the amount that had been lost in the last ten years was suspicious.

Henderson moved the relevant information from the disposable tablet to his personal one and then pressed the self-destruct button. The tablet fizzed and crackled as the screen went black. Henderson dropped it into the disposal slot at the end of his desk.

He was determined to find where the water was being lost.

III

When Henderson came to he found himself face down on a carpet. His head hurt and his ears rang. He pushed himself up on his hands and knees and his head throbbed. High enough he decided. As he moved slowly forwards he decided that he must be in an office, there was a desk with a large window beyond it. After looking around the room and discovering that there was no door Henderson decided to make his way towards the window. When he had finally crawled across the room he discovered that it was in fact not a window but a missing wall. Cautiously Henderson crawled into the desert outside the office. By the time he looked back at where he had come from the building he assumed had contained the office he had crawled out of was gone.

He crawled through the sand for what seemed like an eternity. As he crawled he passed through craters of hot glass. Bombs must have been dropped here, he thought. The heat of the explosions melted the sand and it had solidified into glass, which in the desert sun had become hot enough to burn his hands. The glass sparkled and sometimes blinded him. At times, the only sensory input he could make use of was the pain in his hands and knees.

His eyes were relieved as he crawled out of a glass pit and onto the sand. In the distance, he saw a wavering black line in the sand. He immediately recognized it as one of the water distribution pipes. This discovery filled Henderson with a will to live. With all the effort left in him,  he pushed his broken body towards the pipe. When he drew closer, he saw that there was a large hole in the pipe. For a while this gave him hope, but, as he drew nearer, doubt began to creep into the back of his mind. When he reached the pipe, he was certain of what he would find. Of course he was right; he found a dry, empty pipe. Now all hope was indeed gone from his body and he laid down in the small amount of shade that the pipe provided. He fell asleep.

When he awoke, he was once again in his house, the memory of his trip through the war-ridden desert gone from his conscience, a dream forgotten.

IV

To begin his quest for water accountability, William Henderson ordered an inspection of all the pipes for leaks or illegal taps. He hired an external group to do the inspection, taking the same philosophy that his superiors had taking in hiring him. What they reported alarmed him; spigots had been found. Along several of the smaller pipes, they had discovered places where water could be drawn unpaid, unregulated and unaccounted for. In his first major act as head of water distribution, Henderson had every pipe fenced off up to the collection meter. All the spigots found during the fencing were removed, which reduced the amount of water unaccounted for to practically zero.

Work began to calm down. He reverted to doing paperwork and looking out the window while at his desk. A couple weeks passed in this way, and his days became repetitive. Always the same forms to fill out, always the same requests to deny, and always the same people begging for water at the street corner framed in his gigantic window. Under a tarp, they sat on metal canisters into which generous drivers might pour a little of their car’s reserve. Henderson would turn his head every time he saw this. It made him uncomfortable. As the number of beggars grew, Henderson looked out the window less and less. Eventually, he just lowered the blinds and focused on his work.

He was relieved when water started going missing again. It meant he had something to do. As soon as he was sure it wasn’t a statistical error, he started taking action. He was reasonably sure that it wasn’t being taken directly from the pipes, but to be sure he sent the inspection crew out again. As he expected, the crew didn’t find anything. He had made a list of the different weak points in the distribution system, places where the water could be most easily stolen. Quickly, he decided that the best course of action would be to replace the meter inspection teams. In fact, the meter system desperately needed an overhaul. In the colonies, they were still using manual inspection. Barbaric, thought Henderson.

He knew that this would not be easy, but it had to be done. Theft was not acceptable, and an automated system was going to save time and money. It was the right thing to do and Henderson was sure of it.

V

Henderson awoke from under the pipe. Someone was shaking him. He was surprised to be alive. The hunger was finally gone, but his thirst and the ringing in his ears were ever present. The man who woke him was wearing a pair of torn jeans and an olive polo. Henderson recognized the outfit; it was one of the meter inspection workers’ uniforms.

The man’s lips moved, but Henderson couldn’t make out what he was saying. Henderson pointed to his ears and shook his head. The man tried yelling, but it was of no use, Henderson’s ears were totally shot. Finally the man shook his head and handed Henderson a flask. Henderson made an inquisitive face and the man motioned for him to drink. Henderson closed his eyes, put the flask to his lips and tilted his head back. Instead of the water he had expected, sand filled his mouth. His eyes shot open and he spat the sand out . He looked around, furious, but the meter man was nowhere to be found. He couldn’t even find the flask that the sand that now filled the cracks in his tongue had come from. Discouraged and weak, Henderson’s body gave up. His fit of anger had used the last of his strength.

VI

Henderson awoke drenched with sweat. He threw his covers off and sat up on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands. It was four thirty in the morning, early enough for him to feel exhausted, but not so early that he could go back to sleep. Being determined to make the best of his misfortune, Henderson got up and took a cold shower. It helped take the edge off the summer heat and cooled his nerves. Slowly, but purposefully, he got dressed and had breakfast. Imported fruits over yogurt and granola. The breakfast of champions, he thought to himself.

When he walked through the main entrance at the Water Authority, he was about an hour early. The front desk was not yet occupied. Henderson thought this was strange, but dismissed it as a product of his arrival time. He was surprised not to see anyone on his way to the elevator, and this he found more alarming. By the time he had reached the corridor that led to his office, he was running. He reached his office and was blinded for a second by the intensity of the low morning sun coming through his floor-to-ceiling windows. Driven by the anxiety that the empty building had caused, he ignored the pain in his eyes and moved quickly towards his desk and the tablet that lay on top of it. For a moment he relaxed. He had forgotten to listen to the radio on his drive in to work. Maybe there had been an announcement over the government radio that he had missed about a day off. He sat down in his plush office chair and turned the tablet on. The screen was white, then displayed his home page. Leaning back, relaxed, he tapped the news icon.

Water Distribution Center Taken By Extremists
Bomb Plot Unfolding

The headline made Henderson’s anxiety return, and he shot up. The back of his neck was sweaty and the collar of his shirt was tight.

That’s why everyone is gone, he thought. They might be coming here next. The distribution center is only a couple blocks away. Oh, you’ve really messed things up this time, angering the locals like that. How are you going to fix this?

He was blinded by a brilliant flash at the same time that a shock wave burst his eardrums and broke his windows. He was thrown against his bookshelf and knocked unconscious.