Mr. Ahern was standing by the window. His back was turned toward Daimhin and his hands were twined into each other behind his back. Without turning around to face Daimhin, he said, "Daimhin. You are late."
" Traffic," Daimhin joked.
Mr. Ahern continued looking out the window, across the silver snowy expanse beyond the glass. "You do realize things are not looking too good for you now, so if I was you, I would drop the attitude."
Panicked Daimhin wondered if they had found the glitch in the system. Did they realize by now that Taylor should have been dead? He supposed they would have noticed her existence earlier if she had a lot of friends and she was impacting more people than only her close family. As it was her mother should have taken a different path. She would have made different choices and lived a completely diverse life. A life without Taylor.
Mr. Ahern turned back to face Daimhin. Slowly he walked across the office and sat down in the high back white leather executive chair. He leaned his elbows on the white table between Daimhin and himself and as he held his hands, palms pushed against each other in front of him, he announced, "I have received important news for you, Daimhin."
The brilliant light from the window made it difficult for Daimhin to distinguish Mr. Ahern's features. Uncomfortably Daimhin shifted in his chair.
Mr. Ahern continued, "I have received notification of your deliverance hearing."
Shocked Daimhin sat back in his chair.
" You are fortunate your deliverance hearing date has come so quickly. There are people here who have waited a lot longer than you, so I must wonder if you have higher connections?"
Daimhin said nothing. Mr. Ahern was not expecting an answer to his rhetorical question. Nobody here had higher connections. They did not have the correct clearance and it was above their pay grade, so to speak. He knew everybody in the office and in the offices around the world believed there was a higher power, but nobody has ever met the Chief Executive Officer of AoD, except for a few privileged souls, whom nobody had met either. He knew there was a higher power, because he had spoken to him on his first day here and he was offered a job personally, but that is the only contact he had ever had with Head Office. As it was, he was not even sure if it was the big boss he had spoken to that day. It was only a voice in the sky.
Daimhin tried to decipher the face of the man sitting in front of him across the desk. The silence lingered as Mr. Ahern studied Daimhin's brightly illuminated face. "The hearing will be next week, before the audit and the arrival of the Chief Operating Officer. This will be the first time he will be visiting our office and I want everything to run smoothly. I want this apparent glitch in the system sorted." He paused dramatically. "And Daimhin if I find out you had anything to do with this, which I have a funny feeling that you did, you can kiss your freedom goodbye. I will make sure you do this job far and beyond eternity, and it will never be in my position. It will always be out in the field. You have been here such a short time. A blink of the eye of humanity. After a couple of millenniums, I promise you it could become very tedious."