Prolouge

He sits and stares at that cup of coffee all morning. The alarm goes of in Harold’s bedroom and it wakes him from his near slumber. He walks to turn it off finding that he is once again late for work. Fifteen minutes later he downs his coffee and walks out the door, within five minutes he comes back into his apartment and grabs his keys off the hook.
On his way to work he stops off at the local coffee shop and orders two double espressos, He downs them both before pulling into his parking lot. He walks into the building clawing at his burned tongue, says Hi to the receptionist who just shakes her head and walks into the mass of cubicles.
“Harold! Damn it, don’t we pay you to come into our building at eight precisely? Don’t say anything Harold; you can’t keep doing this to us. I try to be the nice guy here but even I can’t keep holding out for you.”
“I’m sorry sir,” Harold walks past his boss and walks to his cubicle, within fifteen minutes he’s asleep in his chair.
“Harold!” Harold sits upright and garbles out some sort of grunt and he goes to work at his keyboard. “It’s 11:20, there’s a staff meeting that started 5 minutes ago and you were supposed to be there. Yet once again I find you asleep. Go get yourself a cup of coffee and come into the meeting.”
“I’m sorry sir,” Harold gets up and staggers into the break room, he pours the coffee and then takes hold of his cup like a shot glass and gets down the coffee in one fail swoop. He pours himself another glass and walks into the staff meeting room.
When lunch rolls around about an hour later he staggers out and finds his friend’s car ready to take him. He hops in the back seat and acknowledges his two friends.
“So Harold,” says Leo Richmond from the passenger side of the car, “Have another long night last night?”
“Uh, I think I got thirteen hours of sleep.”
“Shit,” sighs Johnny Victor from the driver’s seat, “You should go to the doctor about this guy, I’ve never seen you awake in your life.”
“I know guys, look I don’t know what it is either, hey, and here we are.” They pull up to the local Moon Burger and each order their usual meal. As they sit down they have a usual conversation among guys, about girls they like but don’t dare speak to, video games and what sundown73 said on her blog the night before.
They all go back to work just like any other day, do everything to minimal performance and head on their way home. Harold stops off at the local coffee shop once again and orders a double espresso. He makes his way home. He walks into his apartment throws his stuff on the floor, drinks his espresso gets on his computer and writes a blog about how girls don’t understand him and goes to bed.
He does this 250 days a year, almost always without any differences. He sleeps for roughly 3000 hours of those 250 days and downs about 2000 cups of coffee. His life is a routine, until that is that one day, that was just like any other day, only just a little different.
Harold walked into his apartment after a long days work, put his espresso on his desk as he sat down at his computer and turned it on, he took a sip of his coffee and ran it through his mouth, but this coffee tasted a little odd. He swallowed it with a quizzical look on his face and then exclaimed to himself, “Is this tea?” He took the lid off and took another sip; he swished it around to make sure, “They gave me tea?” He put down his cup and looked at his reflection in the computer screen, it was a face of utter distraught. Yet, he was too tired to go back and get a new one, so he gave in and drank the tea, but did so with scorn. As he finished the cup he backed his head to get the last couple drops and something wet and solid fell on his upper lip. “Gah!” He proclaimed as he grabbed what fell on his face, it was a tea bag. “They even left the tea bag in the drink?” He grabbed the tea bag and looked at the label, it said, “Squeeze for true power.” He looked at it with confusion but being the as how he was a part of the lemming generation he squeezed the tea bag.