The "cold war" with Steve from Accounting settled into a tense, bureaucratic stalemate. Alexander signed his expense reports with the air of a monarch signing a humiliating peace treaty, and Steve continued to gently re-categorize "inspirational goose-related expenditures" into more sensible accounts. A fragile routine had returned.
Which, in the world of Alexander Wilde, meant disaster was imminent.
It happened on a Friday afternoon. The air in the office was quiet, filled only with the gentle hum of the orchid-misting system and the soft click of my keyboard as I drafted an email to Alistair Finch about the ethical implications of the ebony slab's shipping carbon footprint.
A sudden, sharp gasp shattered the calm.
It came from Alexander's office. It was not a gasp of surprise, but of profound, existential horror. I looked up to see him frozen at his desk, staring down at his blotter as if he'd just witnessed a murder.
Sterling materialized at my elbow. "Code Ambergris," he murmured, his voice grim.
"I'm sorry, a code what?"
"Code Ambergris. It denotes a missing artifact of significant sentimental and aesthetic value." Sterling's face was graver than I'd ever seen it. "The dolphin is missing."
Before I could process this, Alexander's voice rang out, trembling with emotion. "Sterling! Miss Chen! A crisis! A theft most vile!"
We entered his office. Alexander was standing, one hand pressed to his heart. He pointed a shaking finger at an empty spot on his vast, shrouded desk. "There. It was there. My paperclip."
I peered at the spot. There was nothing. "Your... paperclip, sir?"
"Not a paperclip, Miss Chen!" he corrected, aghast. "The paperclip! The one fashioned in the sublime likeness of a leaping dolphin! Sculpted from a single piece of polished titanium! A gift from the Countess of Monaco in recognition of my work on sustainable oceanic data streams!"
I tried to keep my face neutral. We were in crisis mode over a novelty paperclip.
"It must be found," Alexander declared, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Its absence creates a void... a disruption in the feng shui of this entire floor. I can feel the creative energies draining away as we speak!"
Sterling was already on his tablet. "I am initiating Protocol Siren's Call. All non-essential personnel on this floor are to remain at their stations. Movement is restricted."
"This is not a simple misplacement, Sterling," Alexander said, pacing now. "This is a targeted act. An attack on the very soul of this office! Who would do this? Steve from Accounting? This has his fingerprints all over it! A petty, bean-counter's revenge!"
"Sir," I interjected, trying to inject some sanity. "Perhaps it just fell? Maybe it's on the floor?" I started to glance down.
"Don't look down!" Alexander commanded. "Not yet! We must approach this with method! With reverence! This is an archaeological dig, not a scavenger hunt!"
He stopped pacing and outlined the plan. We would conduct a grid-based search of the office, quadrant by quadrant. We would use the specialized, non-magnetic titanium tweezers from the hydration alcove to handle any potential finds, so as not to "bruise the metal's spirit." Sterling was assigned the "atmospheric search," which involved standing perfectly still and "feeling for the artifact's unique vibrational frequency."
The next hour was the most surreal of my life. On my hands and knees, armed with absurdly expensive tweezers, I combed through the deep pile of the office rug, searching for a titanium dolphin the size of my thumbnail. Alexander directed operations from the center of the room, offering unhelpful guidance like "Search with your soul, not just your eyes!" and "Think like a dolphin! Where would you leap if you were made of metal?"
Sterling stood like a statue by the ferns, his eyes closed, ostensibly sensing the universe for paperclip-shaped disturbances.
We found nothing. Dust bunnies. A lost contact lens that Sterling identified as belonging to a marketing intern from six months prior. But no dolphin.
Despair began to set in. Alexander slumped into his chair, the very picture of a broken man. "It's gone," he whispered. "The Countess's trust... the dolphin's joyful leap... gone." He looked genuinely heartbroken.
It was the genuine emotion that got to me. Beneath the theatrics, he truly valued this silly little object. I stood up, my knees aching. "Sir. May I suggest we check the most obvious place?"
He looked at me, his eyes hopeful. "Where?"
"The shredder bin."
A flicker of fear crossed his face. "The jaws of oblivion? You think...?"
"It might have gotten caught on a document," I said, heading for the sleek, silent shredder next to my desk. I pulled out the bin. It was full of a confetti of Garamond-typed memos and rejected blue-ink accounting reports.
We all peered in. There, nestled amidst the thin white strips of paper, was a tiny, metallic glint.
"There!" Alexander cried.
With the ceremonial tweezers, I carefully extracted the dolphin paperclip. It was unharmed, its sleek form gleaming under the office lights.
Alexander took it from me as if receiving a holy relic. He cradled it in his palm. "You are safe," he cooed to it. Then, he looked at me, his eyes shining with something that looked suspiciously like gratitude. "Miss Chen. You have averted a catastrophe. Your logical mind... it cut through the emotional static. You are the Watson to my Holmes!"
I didn't point out that Watson was the emotional one. I just nodded. "Happy to help, sir."
He placed the dolphin back in its sacred spot on the desk. The office, somehow, did feel more balanced. Or maybe I was just getting Stockholm syndrome.
Later, as I was packing up to leave, Sterling spoke quietly. "That was well handled, Miss Chen. The last assistant who failed to find the dolphin during a Code Ambergris was reassigned to verifying the authenticity of imported Scandinavian lightbulb filaments. It is... tedious work."
I looked at him, then back towards Alexander's office, where I could see him happily fiddling with his dolphin paperclip. I had just spent my afternoon on a high-stakes, spiritual quest for a piece of bent metal.
And the strangest part? Finding it had felt like a real victory. I was learning the rules of his world. And in his world, a lost dolphin paperclip wasn't an inconvenience. It was an epic. And today, I had been the hero.