Excerpt: Guardian of Balance

A tall, smartly dressed woman is riding an elevator to the top floor of an office building. After getting off the elevator, she walks towards the glass doors of the only office on the floor, it covers the whole floor. The name on the door is “The Order of Things.” She stops at the reception desk, collects the mornings packages that were delivered. She steps around the reception desk and looks out over the large floor where dozens of teams are working. Instead of individual cubicles the teams work in work areas that have half a dozen desks that face each other. The soft sound of activity wafts through the air, everyone is busy with the tasks that have been assigned to them. She sorts through the packages and hands them to various teams as she winds her way to her office.
Her office, along with several others, lines the outside wall of the floor. All of them with the exception of the private offices of her boss have floor to ceiling windows on the inside as well as the outside. It is set up this way to allow natural light in the whole floor no matter where the sun is in the sky. Even though the office is downtown Phoenix the office stays comfortable, the outside windows are made with the same technology that is used in photo changing glasses.
She puts her things away, gets herself organized, then walks towards her boss’s private office. She glances in the window to see what they are each doing. It is up to her to make sure that everyone is working efficiently and effectively. As she gets to the next office, the woman inside motions to her and asks for more forms. The tall woman takes out her PDA and texts to the supply room, “Mrs. Wantons needs more forms for her readings.” She walks on towards her objective, her boss. It is up to her to keep the office running smoothly and to keep her boss on schedule as much as possible.
She finally arrives at her boss’s door, it’s marked private, and knocks softly, then walks in. In never ceases to amaze her, her boss is never sitting at her desk, it’s always that gorgeous man that never leaves her side. She knows that what they have is only a deep friendship, yet she wonders if there had ever been anything more between them. She wouldn’t mind having him all to herself for a little while. She hears a soft laugh and realizes that once again she let her guard down and what she was just thinking was picked up by not only her boss, also the now blushing man behind the desk. She at least has the decency to blush as well.
“Good morning Angela,” says Kaleen. “You need to practice on keeping your emotional thoughts better covered.” Kaleen giggles softly to herself again.
“Good morning Kaleen, Andrew,” Angela says, she knows that she needs to be careful about keeping her thoughts guarded around this office, she usually does much better, until she gets to her bosses office, then she needs to be even more on guard. Kaleen can pick up on the slightest breach in her defenses without even trying, and so can Andrew. “Your schedule for the day is rather busy, you have three private meetings. The first is at nine am, the next at one pm and the third at four pm, then there is the meeting with several financial advisors at eleven am. And I’m sure that you will be adding to this schedule.”
“Yes I will be modifying it a bit,” Kaleen says. “Please move the meeting with the financiers to next week, what they need from me isn’t as urgent as they believe it to be. Andrew has some new assignments for the teams that are finished with their current projects. Also, ads need to be run everywhere, the ads are to be the usual ads. That we are looking for those who want to understand their dreams, and ones that are looking for people who believe that they may be psychic and would like help in developing their abilities. The ads to be run in the cities where the next batch of research is to be for counseling after a family tragedy. The teams will know how to contact the people in these files. You should also expect some unscheduled visitors over the next few days.”
The ever efficient Angela has been writing down all the instructions, “I will make sure the appropriate ads are run, the meeting with the financial advisors is moved to next week, and these new assignments are given to the appropriate teams.” She walked over to the desk while she was saying this and when she stopped in front of the desk to get the new assignments, she looked Andrew in the eyes and once again blushed. At least this time she had kept her thoughts to herself, the blushing was the only sign of what she was thinking. She turned and hurriedly walked out of the office to perform the tasks that she was given.
After the door shut behind her, Kaleen giggles again at the blushing of both Angela and Andrew. “She really does want to get to know you better, and it has nothing to do with talking. In fact I think that words really have no place in her thoughts of what she would like to do with you. If it weren’t for the troubles that are coming, I would not object to the two of you fulfilling some of those fantasies.” Andrew knows that she would allow them to develop whatever kind of relationship that they would care to explore, Kaleen has done so in the past. Just not during a time of coming crises. “Maybe after the storm has passed,” he thinks to himself.