Give My Love to HR

"There's something clarifying about burning bridges you never intended to cross again. The smoke helps you see which direction you're actually walking."

My mobile vibrated with aggressive certainty against my thigh the moment my feet found solid ground in the study, my body barely finished reassembling from the particular dissolution of Portal transit before the device demanded attention. The reconnection to Earth's mobile network was instantaneous and unwelcome—a jarring reminder that this world kept spinning regardless of what happened in dimensions it couldn't perceive.

The abruptness of the buzz against my leg felt obscene. Seconds ago, I'd been standing in an alien landscape watching my brother process revelations about Guardians and murdered sons. Now, my phone was chirping at me like nothing more significant than a delayed meeting was at stake.

"Shit," I muttered, the word escaping as barely more than breath as I fished the device from my pocket. My hands were still trembling slightly—residual adrenaline from everything that had happened, from Joel's impossible half-life to the confrontation with Jamie to the admission I'd made to Paul. My fingers left smudges of Clivilius dust on the screen as I swiped to read the message.

Jen: Hey Luke, hope you are doing okay. Where are you? Call me! – Jen

I stared at the text, watching the words blur and refocus as my eyes struggled to adjust to the mundane reality of workplace communication. My manager. Checking in. Wanting to know why I hadn't shown up for work.

Work.

The concept felt so divorced from my current existence that it might as well have been written in a language I'd forgotten. Somewhere in the cascade of the past days—the Portal discovery, bringing people to Clivilius, Jamie's infection, Joel's death and apparent non-death—I’d simply stopped thinking about the fact that I had a job. That I was supposed to sit in an office and stare at spreadsheets and attend meetings about things that had never mattered less than they did now.

I don't really want to go to work. Or talk to Jen.

The thought crystallised with a clarity that surprised me. The outside world—with its schedules and deadlines and performance reviews—had become something foreign. Something that belonged to a version of Luke who no longer existed, who'd been replaced by whatever I was becoming in the strange crucible of Clivilius.

There were more pressing matters demanding my attention now. Finding Cody. Getting answers about Joel. Figuring out how to navigate the wreckage of my relationship with Jamie. Sitting in front of a computer screen for eight hours a day, pretending to care about project plans and status reports, wasn't on the list. Couldn't be on the list. The very idea felt like a betrayal of everything that actually mattered.

The realisation settled over me with the particular weightlessness of a burden being released. I was done. Not eventually, not after proper notice periods and exit interviews and the careful management of professional relationships. Done now. Done completely.

My determination for whatever came next—uncharted and fraught with both freedom and fear—distilled into a reply that took mere seconds to compose:

Luke: Oops. Sorry Jen. I forgot to tell you. I quit! Have a nice day.

I hit send before I could second-guess myself, watching the message disappear into the digital ether with something approaching satisfaction. The bridge wasn't just burning—I'd doused it in accelerant and struck the match myself.

Her response arrived almost instantaneously, the phone buzzing again against the cold granite of the kitchen bench where I'd set it down.

Jen: What?!?!?!

I rolled my eyes at the screen, a flicker of dark amusement cutting through the exhaustion that had settled into my bones. The simmering frustration of the day—all of it, from the lies collapsing to Jamie's accusation to Joel's impossible condition—bubbled up into something that felt almost like defiance. The phone's persistent vibration was insistent and impossible to ignore, demanding engagement with a reality I was actively trying to abandon.

As much as I generally enjoyed working with her—she'd been fair, supportive, the kind of manager who actually listened when her team had concerns—the thought of explaining any of this was exhausting. What would I even say? Sorry, I've discovered I can open portals to another dimension and I've been secretly building a settlement there and also my partner's son was murdered and then came back to life, so I really don't have bandwidth for project milestone shit right now.

I leaned against the cool stone of the bench, feeling its chill seep through my shirt—a shirt that still carried dust from another world, still bore the sweat stains of carrying a corpse that refused to stay dead. The kitchen, usually a space of morning routines and comfortable domesticity, felt too bright, too aggressively normal. Everything about Earth felt wrong now, like wearing clothes that no longer fit.

She's been a good manager to me. The thought tugged at my conscience, a small voice suggesting I was being unfair, impulsive, burning relationships I might later regret. And technically, I hadn't actually quit—not properly, not in the way HR required, not with the formal documentation that would make it legally binding.

But as the phone vibrated again, its persistence a reminder of the professional obligations I was abandoning, I knew I couldn't keep pretending. The decision had been made the moment I first stepped through the Portal. Everything since then had just been delayed acknowledgment.

Picking up the phone, I swiped to answer, the cool surface of the device grounding me in a reality I was actively trying to escape. "Hey, Jen," I said, my voice steadier than I felt, laced with the resignation of someone who's already decided how this conversation ends.

"Luke! What the hell are you talking about? When did you quit?" Jen's voice crackled through the speaker with confusion and frustration that were palpable even through the digital compression. I could picture her at her desk, probably having just spat coffee across her keyboard.

"Umm. Just before, when I sent you that last text message." I leaned back against the doorframe, letting the solid surface support weight my legs were increasingly reluctant to carry.

"What! You can't just quit with a text message. I won't let you quit. Besides, HR will need it officially in writing." Her voice was rising now, managerial concern tangling with genuine bewilderment at this breach of professional protocol.

"Well, actually, I can just quit with a text message. I just did." A rebellious smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth, even as a knot of apprehension formed somewhere below my sternum. There was something almost liberating about the deliberate destruction of a life I no longer wanted.

"No, you can't!" Jen's insistence was like a tether, trying to pull me back to corporate realities that felt increasingly irrelevant.

"I just won't turn up for work then." The words felt heavy with finality, laden with implications that extended far beyond employment status.

"Then we won't pay you." Steel had entered her voice now—the professional boundary being drawn, the consequences being outlined.

"That's fine. I quit anyway."

I let the words hang in the air between us, transmitted across whatever digital infrastructure connected my kitchen to her office. The definitive end of something. The closing of a door I'd walked through for years without really thinking about where it led. A shiver ran through me—fear and exhilaration competing for dominance. I was stepping off a cliff, leaving behind the familiar handholds of routine and expectation, trusting that whatever came next would catch me.

The kitchen suddenly felt both emptier and more expansive, as though the walls themselves had shifted to accommodate this new version of me.

A huff of deep frustration resonated through the speaker, Jen's exasperation so visceral I could almost feel her breath across the digital divide. I pulled the phone away from my ear instinctively, as if her disappointment might somehow be contagious, before catching myself at the absurdity of the gesture and sheepishly returning the device to my ear.

"Look, Jen, you've been a fantastic manager and I've loved working with you. Immensely." My voice wavered slightly, sincerity clashing with the abruptness of my actions. She had been good to me—defending me in meetings, advocating for my projects, creating space for me to work in ways that suited my particular needs. "And I really want to thank you for everything you've done for me. I know you'll go far in the future, even farther without me."

The words felt hollow even as I spoke them, an inadequate balm for the professional wound I was inflicting. I could hear her stuttering on the other end, her demeanour unravelling as she tried to process my impulsive declaration. Even by my own standards—and I was self-aware enough to recognise that my standards for impulsive behaviour had shifted dramatically in recent days—my logic was sounding erratic.

My ending wasn't exactly my proudest moment. "Give my love to HR for me, won't you? Cheers, Jen. Bye."

The words tumbled out in a clumsy rush, an awkward attempt at levity in a situation that had veered into territory neither of us had expected when she'd sent that initial text. Before she could respond, before I could hear whatever combination of confusion and recrimination was forming in her throat, I ended the call.

The click of disconnection echoed in the kitchen with a finality that seemed disproportionate to its source. I placed the phone back on the bench, its surface cool against fingertips that were still trembling slightly. The silence that followed lasted exactly four seconds before the device burst back into life, vibrating with an insistence that seemed almost personal.

I declined the call.

The decision felt like a small rebellion, a fleeting moment of control in a day that had slipped so far beyond my grasp that I could barely remember what control felt like. The silence that followed was both relief and burden—a space where the echoes of my choices reverberated, leaving me to contemplate the isolation of the path I was carving.

The phone vibrated again. And again, I declined. There was something almost cathartic about the gesture, each refusal a small assertion of the new reality I was constructing.

Opting for a less confrontational medium, I tapped out another message, my fingers moving across the screen with the particular confidence of someone who's stopped caring about consequences:

Luke: Jen I quit! Jamie and I are getting married and I am finally moving to Paris! Yay!

The lie materialised on the screen before I'd consciously decided to tell it. Marriage. Paris. The kind of explanation that would make sense to someone like Jen, who inhabited a world where people quit jobs for comprehensible reasons like love and adventure, not because they'd discovered inter-dimensional portals and were building settlements in alien realms.

Part of it was even true. I had wanted to marry Jamie. Someday. Paris was pure fabrication, but it served its purpose—providing a narrative that would satisfy curiosity and close the professional door I was so determined to slam shut.

Jen: OMG Congratulations you guys! Why didn't you just tell me that?????!!!!

Her enthusiasm punctuated with excessive question marks and exclamation points felt almost surreal in the context of our previous exchange. The pivot from frustration to celebration was so abrupt it nearly gave me whiplash. I'd handed her a story she could understand, and she'd grabbed it with both hands.

Luke: We're keeping it quiet. Only a few people know.

It was the truth, or at least adjacent to it. The real truth was messier—tangled in a web of decisions and deceits that I wasn't ready to unravel for anyone, least of all my former manager.

Jen: HR will still need your official notice in writing.

Even in my quest for a clean break, the old rules persisted. A reminder that some cords couldn't be severed with a simple text message, that bureaucracy survived all attempts at dramatic exits.

The phone vibrated yet again, Jen's persistence apparently undimmed by my announcement. And again, I ignored it.

What part of "I don't want to talk to you" does Jen not understand?

The question cycled through my mind, a silent plea for the space I desperately needed. I had a murdered-and-resurrected son of my partner lying in a tent in another dimension. I had a relationship crumbling under the weight of lies I'd told. I had a brother who now knew I was something called a Guardian. And I had to find Cody before whatever had happened to Joel happened to someone else… or worse, to me.

HR's documentation requirements were spectacularly not my priority.

Jen: Luke answer your phone!

The message appeared with the particular energy of someone who'd been told exciting news and was determined to discuss it regardless of the recipient's preferences.

I pressed my palm against my forehead, the gesture one of sheer, exhausted exasperation. My skin felt gritty—Clivilius dust still clinging despite the dimensional transit. I probably looked like I'd been rolling in dirt, which wasn't far from the truth. Everything about me was wrong for this reality, for this conversation, for the pretence that normal life still applied.

What more can I do to help her understand?

The silence I sought seemed as elusive as ever, the digital ties to my old life proving harder to sever than I'd anticipated. Every buzz of the phone was a reminder of the person I'd been before—the office worker, the reliable employee, the man who showed up on time and completed his tasks and didn't build secret settlements in other dimensions while his partner recovered from infection.

With a sigh that carried the weight of everything I couldn't explain, I pressed the power button and held it until the screen went dark. The device in my hand became inert, a rectangle of glass and metal that could no longer demand anything from me.

I just want to be left alone.

The thought was a whisper in the hollow of my skull, a simple desire amidst the complexity of everything else. The quiet that followed was both relief and harbinger—a momentary peace before I had to turn my attention to the actual reason I'd come back to Earth.

Cody. Answers. The truth about who had killed Joel and why he wasn't staying dead.

The phone sat silent on the bench, one loose end tied off in my typically graceless fashion. Now I just had to deal with all the others.