Gemotions

The coffee tasted like ash. Mark, unshaven and his shirt crinkled, crumpled the rejection notice into a ball and tossed it into the overflowing wastebasket. The prototype, a sleek, compact device for instant language translation, sat on his desk, mocking him. He slumped in his chair. He felt like his bones had turned to dust. The patent, someone else’s. He hadn’t even realized there were others working on the same thing. He just thought he was the only one in his corner of the world. He shut his eyes, the world spinning gently.