The Great Japanese Thermostat War II (or There's a ninja in the house?)

Let me tell you about the day I died.

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So here's where I have to decide how reliable I'm going to be. I mean, you weren't there and I'm generally a lying bastard, but there's something about talking about your own demise that brings out the Boy Scout in me. So here goes: this is 178.3% true. Trust me. Scout’s honour.

Like most offices, this place is divided into areas. There are cubes in places, meeting rooms in others, offices for the high and mighty in strategic locations. Then there's my desk. My desk was not the scene of my final soliloquy. It's just the place I sweat the most ‘cause the damn office air conditioner is set to lava mode. It is where this story begins, though, so let's start there.

X was in recon mode, scouting the hallway after coming back from the toilet. She paused at my desk. “It was 27 degrees again,” she said. I detected a barely concealed snarl in her voice.

I shook my head in disbelief. How many times did we have to capture this damn flag?

“It’s 23 now,” she said. “Fixed.”

“Awesome.” I went back to collating cat pictures, looking forward to a breath of cool 23 degree air, grateful that x was on the job.

A few minutes later I was admiring the image of a particularly fine looking Siamese riding on a duckling when it occurred to me that I was yet to feel the breath-mint coolness I'd been waiting for.

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(Umm..so I couldn't actually find that pic. So you'll have to visualize the kitten part. Oops!)

Grumbling, I crossed the short distance to the corridor where they'd located all the air conditioning controls.

A quick glance told me that each panel remained dark (which meant no one had touched them in the last 30 seconds) but every single one of them had been set to 27 duckling degrees (this is the PG version, please register your ire by upvoting). I paused. Literally only one minute had passed since x came to report on her 23 degree triumph, yet here we were back where we started. I sniffed the air. Not even a whiff of perfume to indicate that our arch-nemesis the OLs (‘office ladies’ who are the only creatures who could possibly feel cold when it's warm enough to poach an egg) had been by and meddled (as they do) with the controls. The hallway was as deserted as the ‘penguins-only’ entrance at a leopard seal convention. It just wasn't possible for anyone to have walked past and changed the settings.

“Now,” I hear you object. “Maybe the temperature setting is being centrally controlled?” To which I reply, “Yep…I actually had not thought of that.” (But, since that doesn't help move this along any, I'm going to ignore your awesome suggestion and continue on as if I hadn't been so rudely interrupted.)

Where was I?

Ninjas. It was the only answer that made any sense (the ONLY answer). The battle was ratcheting up. They'd brought in professional ghosts.

I felt a cold prickle between my shoulder blades and glanced around expecting to feel the cold steel of an office stapler pressed against my skin at any moment, but the quiet of the corridor was broken only by the soft hum of the air conditioning.

I pressed the control panels, returning each panel to its rightful 23 degrees. Or so I thought. The sound of rapid steps from behind me brought me to a stop.

“Thinknzombie-san! You were trying to change the office temperature?” The tone was clearly “I gotcha”.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned to face my accuser. It was Ms Y from Finance.

“Yes,” I said. No point trying to hide it. And so what if I was? The place was hotter than s Turkish bath.

She tittered the way only an OL in a story could, raising her horrifically manicured fingers to her face (I mean it looked like tutti frutti had a fling with a mango and then crapped all over her nails. No. Just no.) “You forgot to press the ‘enter’ key to lock it in,” she said.

Loud guffaws of horrible (simply horrible) OL laughter erupted from around me where the killing squad had gathered, their trap complete and me successfully caught within it.

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I barely felt the blow to my ego that sent me down, but down I went into the darkness.

So that's how I ’died’. (What? You didn't actually think I'd really died did you? I told you I was not to be trusted!)

When I finally came to, x was watching over me. “They have at least one ninja,” I said.

She nodded sagely and gave my hand a squeeze. “It's time to fight back,” she said.

Exhausted, I let myself relax into the sick room mattress.

“I have a plan,” she said. And she did. But that's a story for another time.