Company

by Max Barry

  That is, they did. Since the network went down, the phones have begun to ring again. Things have changed, Corporate Supplies is realizing. They are still a twelve-person department with a laughable budget, but it may just be that the glory days are here again.

  Throughout the building, Zephyr Holdings is slowly getting back to full operating speed. Not because the network has been fixed; oh no. The east wing of level 19 remains a barren wasteland. No server lives there. No hub can flourish in 19's harsh, inhospitable conditions. Dry, gasping network cables search for data they will never find. IT is dark and dead and will not recover.

  But there is work to be done, network or no network. Two weeks ago the network went down; soon after Senior Management assured the company it would have the problem fixed within a few days; now everyone is realizing it is never going to happen. Work-arounds are springing up everywhere you look, like new grass after rain. In the absence of e-mail, employees are discovering the art of speaking into phones. They are realizing that discussions that previously required three days and six e-mails can, with phones, be settled in minutes. Spam and computer viruses, both of which IT claimed were unsolvable problems, have vanished. The plague of e-mail jokes, funny at first and then not, has been eliminated. The pressure to forward chain letters under threat of personal catastrophe has lifted. In-boxes no longer fill with desperate sales pitches from co-workers trying to shift their cars, or kittens.

  To transfer documents from one location to another, workers tighten their shoelaces and stretch their legs. People pass each other in the corridors, papers in hand, exchanging happy greetings. Their brains dizzy from unexpected exercise, they stop to chat and laugh. No one realized there were so many people in Zephyr. Until now, you never saw them. Until now, most people arrived at work, planted their buttocks in a chair, and the twain didn't part until five thirty. Now the corridors are like maternity ward waiting rooms, filled with excited voices and good cheer. Lower-back pain is clearing up. Color is rising. Workers find each other more physically attractive. And nobody receives suspicious looks for leaving the department anymore, not so long as they're clutching a sheaf of papers.

  Network—what was that thing ever good for? The workers shake their heads in amazement. Good riddance! Zephyr Holdings may not be the world's greatest employer, the workers agree; it may have a sadistic Human Resources and an incompetent Senior Management; the company's purpose may be a complete mystery and the CEO an out-of-touch eccentric whom no one has seen in person—all this may be true, but at least it doesn't have a network.

  Q4/1: OCTOBER

  FREDDY RETURNS from running a set of folders up to Business Management and starts doing stretches. “Anyone want to go to lunch? I'm so hungry lately. Do you think it's the extra exercise?”

  Holly says, “Just let me finish these printouts for Sydney.” Holly's computer is the only one connected to the departmental printer, so whenever anyone else needs to print, they have to see her. Her computer has developed dark smudge marks around the disk drive's eject button and the CD drive is making an odd, tired whine.

  “Hey.” Freddy stops stretching. “You know what we should do? Start a dead pool. Everyone can put in ten bucks.”

  Jones says, “A what?”

  Holly says, “Are you serious?”

  “Why not?”

  “It's sick, that's why not.”

  “What's a dead pool?” Jones says.

  “We bet who's getting fired next. Come on, it'll keep things interesting. I'll even let you have first pick, Holly.”

  She hesitates, and glances at Jones. “Hey,” he says. Then Roger arrives from West Berlin with a floppy disk in hand. Holly reflexively puts out her hand, but he makes no attempt to give it to her. “Having some kind of bet, are you?”

  “A dead pool,” Freddy says. “Ten bucks and you're in.”

  “Sold.” Roger flips open his wallet. “Who's taken?”

  “Nobody yet.”

  “Wait,” Holly says. “You said I could pick first.”

  “So you're in?”

  “I—well, if everyone else is doing it. I'll take Jones.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because . . . no reason.”

  “I'm going to pick myself,” Freddy says. “If they fire me, I'll have something to take with me.”

  “I'll choose Elizabeth,” Roger says.

  There's an awkward silence. Freddy says, “Why Elizabeth?”

  Roger shrugs modestly. “Just a guess.”

  Sydney's door clacks open. Everyone's head turns. Sydney, wearing an ensemble that is so dark it is difficult to make out individual pieces of clothing, stomps into East Berlin and up to Holly's desk. “Have you got that report?”

  “It's in the printer.”

  Sydney pulls Holly's report out of the tray, then notices Freddy and Roger frozen in the act of exchanging money. “What's going on?”

  Freddy clears his throat. “It's a dead pool. We're betting on who leaves Zephyr next.”

  Sydney's green eyes fix on Freddy. “Who told you someone was leaving?”

  “No one. No, it's just a game. It's just . . . if someone does.”

  “Oh. I see. In that case, can I join in?”

  Freddy looks at Holly, then Roger, then, hopelessly, at Jones. “Well . . . it might not be . . . I mean, since you can fire people, that might not be fair.”

  Sydney looks amused. “You're not suggesting I'd fire someone just to win your game.”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “So?”

  Freddy swallows. “Yes, sure. Sure, then, that's fine. It's ten dollars.”

  “This sounds like fun. All right, then. All right. I'll choose Jones.”

  “Actually . . . Holly's already picked Jones.”

  Sydney's button nose wrinkles. Roger winces. “So?”

  “Everyone has to choose someone different.”

  “Why can't Holly pick someone different?”

  “Well, she already picked, so that wouldn't really . . . be . . . fair.”

  “Oh. I see. I see. Well, then, has anyone chosen Holly?”

  “No.”

  “Then I'll take Holly.” Sydney smiles, first at Freddy, then at Holly. She digs into her black pants and produces a note. Freddy takes it as if it might bite his fingers. No one says anything until Sydney has gone, and no one says anything for a while after that, either.

  “Thanks a lot, Freddy,” Holly says.

  “It's just a game,” Freddy says. “She probably . . . it's just a game.”

  Jones hurries after Sydney. Roger wanders back to West Berlin. Holly blows air out of her mouth and says, “I'm going to lunch.”

  “I'll come with you,” Freddy says, rising. “Just give me a second—”

  “I said I'm going to lunch.” She walks away.

  Freddy deflates back into his chair. He looks around, not sure what to do, and notices that his red voice-mail light is blinking. This is odd, because it wasn't blinking a minute ago. Someone has sent him a recorded message.

  He picks up and presses for access. A deep, liquid voice spills into his ear:

  “Good morning. This is Human Resources. We have received your disability application. We have some questions. Report to level 3 at your earliest convenience. Thank you.”

  Freddy goes to put back the handset, fumbles it, grabs it again, and slams it down. His hands tremble. His application was meant to disappear into the bureaucratic pit: to slip through the cracks and be processed without adequate review. Instead he's attracted HR's attention. He has fallen under the beast's scorching gaze. Pretending to be stupid suddenly seems like a very stupid idea.

  For a second, Freddy thinks about ignoring the summons—maybe he can claim his voice mail didn't work! But this is madness. Nobody escapes Human Resources. He can only face his fate like a man.

  He decides to leave his suit jacket on. He'd climb into a suit of armor if it was available. He scribbles on a Post-it note and sticks it to his monitor:
GONE TO HUMAN RESOURCES.

  This way, if anything happens to him, people will understand. Holly will know. Freddy forces himself to walk toward the elevators. He feels tears prick his eyes. Dead man walking! We've got a dead man walking here!

  The elevator doors are closing by the time Jones gets there, and he has to lunge forward to stick his arm between them. The doors crash to a halt and reverse direction, revealing the tiny, imposing form of Sydney, standing with her arms folded. “In a hurry?”

  He steps inside. “I'm sorry, I didn't know you were in here.” Which is a lie, of course, but Jones has realized that you don't get anywhere with Sydney by disrespecting her. In this way she is similar to Roger . . . and, now he thinks about it, pretty much every manager he has met so far. Does this mean that Roger is destined for management? Is it possible to predict who will rise up the corporate hierarchy simply by picking out the people most desperate for public recognition? This train of thought distracts him until Sydney pulls out her cell phone and begins pushing buttons. “Oh!” She looks up at him expectantly. “Sorry. The thing is, I've been wondering what it is that Zephyr does. I mean overall, as a primary source of revenue. I can't find that out from anywhere. Isn't that weird?” He laughs.

  Sydney looks back at her phone. “That's the thing with cogs, Jones. They don't need to understand the whole machine. They just need to turn.”

  “Right. I see what you're saying. But if one of those cogs wanted to understand the whole machine, and got so distracted about not knowing that it stopped turning properly—”

  “That would be a very bad idea,” Sydney says. She still doesn't look at him.

  The elevator doors slide apart. Sydney begins to cross the lobby, her heels clack-clacking rapidly across the Zephyr logo tiles, but Jones has a good ten inches on her in height and easily keeps pace. “It's not a secret, though, right? What the company does?” They pass the reception desk—Gretel, Eve, Eve's tower of flowers—and Jones begins to sweat. “Is it?”

  “Of course not. Have you read the mission statement?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You do realize we're a holding company?”

  “Yes,” Jones says, getting frustrated, “but that tells me nothing. Look, if it's not a secret, why can't you just tell me what Zephyr does?”

  Sydney stops walking so unexpectedly that Jones nearly collides with her. The lobby doors jump apart anyway. It's a warm day outside, and a taste of it blows into the lobby and over Jones's face. “Jones. You're not listening to me. It's not a secret. But asking that question betrays a lack of focus. Think about it: What happens to this company if every employee wants to understand our strategic direction? If they want to second-guess Senior Management decisions? We can't run a company with eight hundred CEOs. It's not your job, or my job, or the janitor's job”—here she gestures to a man with a mop in one hand, who is leaning over the reception desk to chat to Eve Jantiss—“to formulate corporate strategy. If you can't understand that, you can't be a team player.”

  This accusation, Jones knows, is as vicious as it gets. He has seen the motivational posters.

  “All right?” Her sharp green eyes flick between his.

  “Fine,” he says, and before the word is completely out of his mouth, Sydney is out the lobby doors. Deflated, Jones drifts back toward the elevators. Then he remembers something, and detours to the reception desk. Eve Jantiss and the janitor look at him with some interest, but Jones's question is for Gretel. “Did you find out how I could get an appointment with Senior Management?”

  “Oh, yes! The answer is you can't.”

  “I can't,” Jones says heavily.

  “They suggested you speak to your manager, or, failing that, use the suggestion box. Do you know about the suggestion box?”

  “So, let's see.” Jones drums his fingers on the counter. “I can't get to level 2 without an appointment. I can't get an appointment because I should speak to Sydney. And Sydney could answer my question, but she'd sack me for asking it. Have I got that right?” Jones hears his voice growing loud. No one answers him: not Gretel, not the beautiful Eve Jantiss, not the silver-haired janitor. “What do you think would happen if I camped out in the parking lot until someone from Senior Management arrived? They have reserved parking spaces, right—what would happen if I went down and sat on a BMW?”

  “I think they'd call Security,” Gretel says.

  “Ah! Of course! And while the guards dragged me away, they'd probably lecture me about proper channels. Meanwhile, nobody in this company has any idea what it does!”

  The janitor says, “There's a mission statement hanging right on that wall, son.”

  “Sssss,” Jones says, which is the sound of air whistling between his clenched teeth. Then he spots something: across the lobby, the stairwell door is wedged open by the janitor's trolley of cleaning products. The stairwell doors are normally locked—Jones knows this as a result of the August blackout. His eyes flick between it and the janitor. He begins to walk toward it.

  He makes most of the distance before anyone reacts. It's Eve who seems to realize what he's up to first. “Where are you going?” There is something strange in her tone, something not quite like fear and not quite like menace, and it inflames Jones's determination. When the janitor says, “Hey!” Jones breaks into a run. He kicks the trolley out of the way, which bounces off the wall and topples over, sending plastic bottles of colorful liquid spinning across the tiles. Entering the stairwell is like stepping into a freezer; it's a good twenty degrees colder than the lobby, is full of deep echoes, and smells like concrete. Jones pulls shut the door behind him, which makes the kind of satisfying click that tells him it'll take the janitor a lot of fumbling around with keys to get it open again. Then he begins leaping up the concrete steps two at a time. It's funny. He doesn't feel like he's destroying his career.

  Freddy arrives on level 3. It's so high in the building he feels a rush of vertigo and his knees tremble. Or maybe it's not vertigo. Maybe it's the sign before him:

  HUMAN RESOURCES

  Everything looks different here. The lighting is muted. The walls are a dark blue, not the ubiquitous cream. There are no motivational posters, no orange-and-black logos, no taped-up printouts of pie graphs. Everything is soft and shadowy. As Freddy walks down the corridor, his footsteps completely swallowed by the carpet, he could almost believe the walls are breathing in and out.

  There is a reception desk, but no one staffing it. It is black and smooth, devoid of clutter. There's not a phone, nor a notepad, nor a ceramic bear in sight. No RING FOR SERVICE bell. Freddy looks around nervously. Two identical doors lead off from reception, one left and one right. Maybe this is some kind of test. Maybe one leads to Heaven and the other to Hell. Or, since this is Human Resources, maybe they both lead to Hell. Freddy bites his lip. He thinks he'll just stay where he is.

  The door on the left clicks and swings open.

  “Hello?” He walks up to the door and peers through it. It opens onto a long, empty corridor with half a dozen identical doors on each side.

  He clenches his jaw, puts one foot in front of the other, and walks through the doorway. He half expects the door to swing shut behind him—snick—and the lights to go out and someone (or something) to begin cackling maniacally in the darkness, but, of course, none of these things happen. He is simply walking up a corridor in Human Resources. Still, he has to fight against the urge to flee back to the elevators.

  All the doors are closed. None are labeled. Then one to his left clicks, and Freddy stops. The door swings open. Beyond it is a dark meeting room. But there's no table, just a plastic chair in the center of the room. Freddy steps inside warily. “You want me to sit in the chair?” There is no response but silence. He walks over and sits. He realizes he is facing an enormous mirror.

  The voice comes out of nowhere, the one from the voice mail. “Your name,” it says. “State your name.”

  Passing by a stairwell door marked 15, Jones notices a certa
in weakness entering his legs. By the time he reaches 10, his legs are visibly shaking and his shirt is stuck to his back. At 5, he misses a step and decides to go with it: he half sits, half falls onto a concrete step, and takes the opportunity to suck air into his burning lungs. As if waiting for this, his forehead jets sweat, which Jones tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to mop up with his sleeves. He realizes he is not going to make the best impression on Senior Management.

  A sound bounces up the stairwell from below. Jones sits up. It comes again (or is that an echo?), then he hears voices. One says something like, “Up or down?” and the other replies, “Gotta be up.” Jones wonders if this might be Security, tracking him down, and then one of them yells, “Mr. Jones? You're not permitted in the stairwell. We need to take you to Human Resources. Are you there? Mr. Jones? It's best if we get this done quickly.” This settles the issue, and Jones hauls himself to his feet and starts climbing again.

  A few minutes of Herculean effort later, he is face-to-face with a stairwell door marked 2. The Security guards are still behind him, but at least five floors lower. Jones reaches for the bar to open the door . . . then hesitates. He looks up. Level 2 is Senior Management. But level 1 is Daniel Klausman, the CEO. Jones thinks: Why settle for second-best? He has come all this way.

  His legs lodge an objection, but Jones overrules them: he staggers up one more set of concrete steps. And then he is facing a door marked 1 with nowhere else to go.