The heat in the tiny SAT office at the Garita was thick enough to chew — the kind that made you wonder why you bothered putting clothes on in the first place. Miri adjusted her holster, not because she expected trouble, but because that cheap-ass faux leather had basically married her sweat-soaked shirt and was refusing a divorce.

  Another magnificent day of shuffling papers while Mexico ate itself alive outside. Real detective work. Truly inspiring stuff.

  Miri stared at the monitor, heroically typing a report about a hijacked avocado shipment — because someone had to protect the guacamole — when the printer decided it was done with life and jammed the second she hit "print." She hollered for Jorge, her so-called colleague and full-time professional disappointment, but twenty minutes passed and the man had apparently evaporated.

  Shocking. Truly. A man who contributed nothing had contributed nothing. Again.

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  How Jorge still had a job was a question that kept philosophers up at night. She checked the clock: 2:00 PM.

  "Siesta. Of course. The prodigal idiot is somewhere out there, aggressively doing nothing," she thought. "Fine. I'll fix it myself. As always. Obviously."

  She cracked the machine open and found the problem immediately — the office had bought the cheapest ink known to mankind. The kind that dried up, murdered the printhead, and turned a budget cartridge into an expensive piece of plastic garbage. Fantastic procurement, guys. Really top tier.

  Miri was done. Cooked. Finished. If the entire system was broken beyond repair, she refused to be the idiot holding it together with her bare hands. She hauled her heavy, dust-caked boots onto the desk with a deeply satisfying thud and lit a cigarette — premium tobacco, menthol filter, the one thing in her life she refused to compromise on.

  Cool mint drifted through the office. With one lazy boot she sent the "No Fumar" sign flying off her desk — a thoughtful gift from her supervisor, a man whose greatest achievement in life was laminating that sign. Walking to the designated smoking area could absolutely go to hell.