odd decision.

The dress shirt he wore to the meeting was pulled out, the top two buttons undone. In the heat of the afternoon sun his forehead was damp. His suit jacket lay on the bench next to him, its pockets filled with notes. There were few thoughts in his mind as he finished his sandwich, making sure the corners of his mouth were clean of food.

The bench he was sitting on was outside the building he worked at. Most lunches he took indoors between meetings, or in his car on the way to another one of the office buildings In the silent moments between bites he allowed his thoughts to wander away from his job.

His wife Mary was also at work, in some other building in the financial district. She was probably on her own lunch break, which she took with her friend Nancy or in the break room, with however happened to be there. She loved her husband and sometimes called during her break, to see how he was doing. He usually was fine but needed to get back to work, not sure how he was going to finish everything by 5 PM.

He ate his lunch and stepped up from the bench, heading back towards his building. He walked through the front door like he would for the next fifteen years. Later he would be promoted, and with his wife have three children. They would continuing living this way until he realized it was all a mistake. He would realize eventually that his wife and his children were not in fact his own, but instead the products of millions of people he never met, people who died before he ever had the chance to meet them.