When Gibson saw his manager’s face for the first time in what felt like years, it was only as an abstract concept that he recognised him. He’d grown used to seeing a man of about thirty or forty with grey hair and a beard; one who could easily pass for an old hippy or a middle class businessman if not for the fact that he had no such facial features, and yet had retained the youthful appearance of a young man in his early twenties – though perhaps Gibson himself might have looked more like that were it not for the bags beneath his eyes and the thinness that seemed to stretch from his scalp down into his neck. It was strange to see him in a full length suit, but Gibson would recognise that face anywhere. His eyebrows twitched when he saw him, his mouth opened slightly, and he couldn’t help the small sigh that escaped him before he spoke. “So, you’re not dead then.”The other man let out a soft laugh, almost as surprised by Gibson’s words as he’d been by his appearance. “No, I am not. T

Whenever Gibson wasn’t home, his boss would come over to the house and do an interview with him about the nature of writing a story. She wanted to understand the process and he knew she was just being polite but it made him nervous. The idea that this woman was actually going to read the story that he wrote every night in bed terrified him. If she ever found out it would be the end of him. And if his editor ever found out… Well, the editor would probably be happy enough with her article in the Sunday newspaper that would feature some sort of ‘creative piece’ on what they were publishing as a result of Gibson’s work. They would have no choice but to let him quit. Or, worse yet, they would want to get rid of him altogether and start publishing stories written by other artists. The only reason why he kept doing this job was because of his family, because he loved the art and wanted to create something special for them but sometimes he wondered if that love had blinded him to something so

Gibson sat in his office and watched the world go by, waiting for it to turn red at some moment that might be meaningful to him, but never was. It was all just colorless noise in a grey world. He was bored. And when he wasn’t bored, or when something had caught his eye, the words wouldn’t come, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. He hadn’t been able to figure out how to write anything since before Pearl Harbor, before it ever began to become a war, because there was no one who really knew what he was doing except for his father, but he wasn’t going to tell him so much as the barest idea of how to get off this boat and get back home to DC, to his apartment where he felt safe, and even though he wasn’t supposed to say such things, he wondered if the man still thought about him every day. Every time Gibson thought of Mr. Kaplan, he thought of what would have happened if they could both have made it back home, but Mr. Kaplan had died a few weeks after Gibson went missing. He could

When Gibson sat down at the table next to his brother and sister, he was exhausted. The early autumnal chill of a late November morning had settled over them as they were waiting for him at their local cafe. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked around them as though he expected to see someone else there. It was their fourth year in university, and it was already their fifth meeting with him in the last month. His sisters would get used to it eventually, but Gibson could tell this visit wouldn’t go smoothly for either of them. They hadn't heard from him since their last Christmas at home when their mother had called them in and said that their father wasn't doing well. That evening they'd stayed up with her until after midnight talking about what she wanted for Christmas - a new sofa or a new computer - and how things had been going at work, and then they fell asleep on their beds. And now, five weeks later, he still hadn't contacted any of them. They hadn't been abl

Gibson couldn’t connect the dots as the manager of his company stood in front of him, a man in his late twenties whose grey hair was streaked with silver and who wore a suit and a tie that were both too tight around his face to be comfortable. The fact he didn’t look at all familiar to Gibbs didn’t help matters, but he would have recognized the look on the man’s face if he had seen it before. Gibbs frowned at the young, attractive man in front of him and said “Mr… what did you say your name was again?” The man blinked at him owlishly before answering, “Dr. Ziva David, Mr. Gibbs. I am an assistant professor at the University of California here in Los Angeles. Your associate hired me to evaluate the health of your company and its employees for the foreseeable future.” He paused, as if waiting for some kind of reaction from his employer, before saying, “He informed me that you were also looking for someone to take care of your children. We are going to go over the procedures he prepare