The office was a happy office. Matthew was dropping around the little prizes, which Katherine had organised to help raise the productivity of the staff, using his little fairy steps. The most productive received a tee-shirt, identical to what they were all currently wearing, white with the days of the week inside red small offset squares in perfect order and eternally circumnavigating their bodies.

At the moment, he was handing out the prizes of tea towels for yesterday's minor accomplishments. Katherine ensured that all of her staff each received the tee-shirt prize at least once every three weeks, whether they had or had not accomplished anything special. It simply made them happy workers. Like an under-five's running race, everyone gets the same prize, no matter what the contestants accomplishments were.

Katherine's first student entered the door for her to organise towards an interviewer. He isn't as young as the usual interviewee, possibly in his mid to late twenties, very tall, well over one eighty five and lanky to the point of thin, all muscle and sinew.

He is wearing a faded red, now turned into a dirty pink, long sleeved cotton shirt, with the sleeves rolled to half way up his forearms and denim jeans, which aren't so much fashionably faded and torn so much, as just old and used to death. The frayed cuffs hung over a pair of tortured brown riding boots, which looked like they had seen very little walking yet have a badly cracked and scored arches.

His face and hands are so brown, they are almost black. Above his wrists his arms are almost pure alabaster white and from just below his hairline up his skin is white tainted with red dust plastered on by perspiration.

He looked at her straight in the eye by habit, and his eyes are blue yet so pale to be almost colourless with squint lines from smiling and the need for looking into the distance into harsh sunlight.

'Those eyes!' she thought, 'I know, Paul Newman!'

She loathes Paul Newman.

He looked over towards her desk which had a little sign saying, 'see me first'. His gait was as if walking wasn't his normal mode of transport and he wasn't comfortable doing it. He leant against the wall holding a sweat stained red dust covered bushman's hat in his right hand and lifted his left booted foot to prop against the wall. There is no chair so as to not encourage dilly-dallying.

Katherine sharply commented to him, "Have some manners when you interview, stand politely young man so I can place you."

He looked at her with his colourless eyes, he didn't appear to be a person who did anything fast, stood as if to do as she instructed, and wandered out the door closing it behind him again, not saying a word, with little expression on his face outside a small, almost invisible smile on his sundried, regularly split thin lips.

This was the second day of University registrations this year. It should be so busy at the moment you can't move in here with young people standing in lines and in small knots. Only three students have entered and it is now eleven in the morning. Katherine went out to the office information staff and they were sending people away in a steady stream.

Richard Walcom, prefect of this department, was talking quietly with a small satisfied smile on his face to Ikara Idenhoun, whom Katherine herself had placed, as she was so efficiently female.

"Richard, Ikara, we are very quiet today, only three new students. Have we got a problem here?"

Ikara replied, with what can only said to be some confusion, "Oh, no, Katherine. After that first student told me you weren't interested in interviewing, today, I have been sending them away to come back tomorrow. The only people who have been seeing you, are the ones who bypassed me. I apologise for that."

"What do you mean? Of course we're interviewing. Who said we weren't?"

"The young man with the hat, covered with dust."

Richard seemed amused, "I was here Katherine and I had a very nice chat with him. He hitchhiked in from near Broken Hill and spent two days in the back of a utility arriving in town about six this morning."

"He had earned his credits for enrolments via correspondence, and he said that seeing God was a woman, She must be having her period at the moment, because She was acting like a bitch and has decided that he is ten years old. He said he'll come back tomorrow when Her first flush was over and would treat him like he is an adult human. You must have got off on the wrong foot with your first interviewee. He was using capital letters whenever he said, She or Her and I didn't even know that could be done."

"I will not be talked to like that, Richard! I will not be rudely treated by a young scruffy male. If you think you can treat me this way, I will speak to my union rep and see if she agrees!"

Richard still had the half smile on his face and her threat didn't seem to phase him. "Kate, I'd see how you go with this girl."