For Internal Use Only - Please Do Not Forward

Email Surveillance

And froze.

There, open on her screen, was an email. The subject line read:
"For Internal Use Only – Please Do Not Forward"
Sent: 11 hours ago
From: Ryan Howard

Sloane looked away quickly, pretending she hadn't seen. Her spoon scraped the bottom of the yogurt cup, but she was no longer focused on it. Her eyes found the wall ahead of her desk.

Ryan exited out of the email and straightened up.

"I was just—there's a scam going around," he said, too casually.

Sloane didn't answer. She didn't look at him either. Just looked back down at her half breakfast.

Ryan lingered for a second. Then, realizing she wasn't going to push it—or maybe because she wasn't pushing it—he backed away and returned to his desk.

She finally moved—licking the last of her yogurt off the spoon with sharp, absent-minded focus. Her eyes flicked back to the screen. Then to him.

She didn't ask. And he didn't offer.

Michael emerged from his office like he hadn't just unleashed chaos. He strolled out with a self-satisfied grin of a man who had no idea what the temperature in the room actually was.

Oscar, who was standing by the copier immediately pointed his gaze to him.

"Hey, what's the deal, Michael?" he asked. "Why are you spying on our computers?"

Michael didn't miss a beat.

"Oh no, everybody!" he announced, dramatically wide-eyed. "Oscar's gone crazy! What other ghost stories do you have for us?" He waved his arms. "That I'm a robot?"

He stiffened his limbs and launched into a jagged march, lowering his voice an octave.

"I will destroy everything in my path. Beep. Bop."

Oscar opened his mouth to respond.

Michael doubled down.

"Bommmm. Bop. Onk onk."

He locked his arms into a rusted-looking pose and whined in a mechanical falsetto.

"Oil can... oil can."

Oscar just blinked, looking for an exit.

"Tin Man?" Michael offered brightly. "Anybody? No?"

Oscar finally interjected. "Actually, we just got a memo from IT. It says you're doing email surveillance."

Michael froze for a beat. "What? No. No. That defeats the whole purpose."

Dwight perked up from his desk like a meerkat. "So it's true?" His eyes narrowed. "You have access to our emails?"

Michael sighed and turned to the room like a professor trying to explain a very simple concept to a group of incredibly difficult children.

"You know what the problem is?"

Stanley, without looking up from his paper, said dryly, "I think I do."

Michael ignored him.

"The problem is that when people hear the term 'Big Brother,'" he said, gesturing dramatically, "they immediately think it's scary. Or bad. But I don't."

He smiled, sincere and tone-deaf. "I think, wow... I love my big brother."

_

Sloane walked up to reception, arms crossed loosely as she stopped in front of Pam's desk.

Pam looked up to Sloane already looking at her. "...Hi," Pam grinned unexpectedly.