“All the real news is on the World Wide Web. That’s where you find the real scoop and not what the government wants you to hear.”

I nodded, staring down at my document.

“The government just took over a family’s island, just took it over, because this family wouldn’t sell it. The government offered $29 million, but they’d owned it for 72 years, and they didn’t want to sell it!”

“And they were Japanese?” I said, confused by the direction of the conversation.

“No, Americans. I know; this country has a history of squatters, and who knows how this family got the island to begin with, but after 72 years, we can safely say it was their island, and the government had no business taking it away from them. Now they’re homeless! But that’s the government.”

“Sounds like a lawsuit’s imminent,” I said dryly.

“The government has taken over every aspect of our lives! It’s 1984, like it or not.”

I didn’t reply. How many times had pundits, corrupt executives, and schizophrenics told me the same thing? I’m sure our rights to privacy have been irreversibly invaded, but what does that monolith known as “the government” do with all that trivia? It reminds me of Russian censors during Tsarist and Soviet times, the way they’d cross out the obscenity while retaining the satire.

“The way the government controls our lives, I’m not surprised that people want to blow it up.”

I blanched. I suppose I would have expected that conclusion had I been following the conversation with any acuity, but I was just a glorified proofreader trying to complete a redline.

“Not that it’s something I would do, mind you! Not something a woman like me just getting by on temp work would do,” Chris said.

But who better to do it? I thought.

I gathered my pages and told Chris that I was going out to one of legal secretary desks to complete my redline and to page me if she needed any help.

“You’re leaving us?” she said.

“Yeah, this thing’s due by midnight, and then I have to fax it to Indonesia,” I said.

“You left a piece of rice on the table, but I’m sure the next person will pick it up.”

She pointed to the single grain lying at my corner of the table, the lone remnant of my prik king dinner. She had to raise herself from the chair to finger it.

I don’t like you! I thought, as I plucked the rice piece from the table and flicked it into the trash.

During the final hour of my 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift, I manned the word processing desk to cover for the lead word processor, who had taken her “lunch” break. The place was dead. I found a month-old copy of Entertainment Weekly, a double issue featuring “The ‘It’ List, the 100 Most Creative People in Entertainment,” with Uma Thurman on the cover. It should have been titled, “The 100 Flavors of the Moment,” given that most of the featured faces were stars on mildly successful Fox TV dramas, gay-themed independent films, or CBS miniseries events.

Video gunfire startled me from my tabloid revelry. I looked over the word processing counter to see Chris at one of the computers playing what seemed to be a computer game. She immediately turned around.

“I’m practicing my typing!” she said.