Casper Piver was one of those lonely people who populate the world but go unnoticed, having no family, friends, or loved ones. He’d been placed in an orphanage at two, where he stayed until he graduated high school. When high school was over he was greatly relieved, and anxious to get out into the real world. Not that he had any great expectations, but anything would be better than the State Home. Thankfully he’d taken some vocational courses and found he had an aptitude for bookkeeping. It didn’t hurt that he was suited for it, allowing him his little niche, finding comfort in the straightforwardness of it all. He went to a placement service and was hired as a temp at a downtown industrial supply firm. Things seemed to be mutually beneficial as he was still employed there some twenty years later. He’d even shown some initiative by augmenting his skills at a local business school, auditing several basic accounting courses, which earned him a full-time promotion to head bookkeeper, and made him invaluable to his boss, Mr. Peters. Not a boastful man, he basked in this modicum of success; he was infinitely more secure and confident at work than he was in any other part of his life. Deferential but not obsequious, he got on fine with the handful of employees at the firm.