"Oh, you know, this and that," Philip said in a manner, which sounded thoroughly convinced such an answer would satisfactorily explain everything his companion might possibly want to know about his employment. He was not the sort typically inclined toward guarding the private details of their life in stalwart fashion. The intimate and tragic was often freely offered, especially in situations where it might work toward his benefit. Yet, this was not one of those cases where a well-played sob-story about the difficulty of the economy and his heroic - as they would undoubtedly be heroic in his interpretation of events - struggles to make ends meet while between jobs would have gained him anything but suspicion over how he could still afford to stay in so nice a place as Pax. Therefore, in lieu of honesty, Philip had opted for an abundance of confidence. He flashed a smile, and just as quickly, redirected the conversation to safer topics.
"Say I read in the paper once that more power outages were caused by squirrels than lightning in the past few years, and that in some places, those numbers are on the rise," Philip mused. "Maybe one of them got friendly with one of the power lines. If the problem's as straightforward as that, all this really shouldn't take too long to fix. But then that wouldn't away the backup generator not kicking in, if this building has one, which I think I heard someone say it does. Wouldn't that be a coincidence if they'd both gone down at once?"