by Max Barry
Jones says, “This is a lot to take in.”
“I wish I could give you a few days to consider it. But I can't. You're either with us or against us, I'm afraid.”
“You're offering me a job? As what?”
Klausman holds up his palms. “I just do vision. Eve, take Mr. Jones somewhere and fill him in on the details, will you?”
Eve tips Klausman a wink on the way out, and Klausman says, “Be gentle with him,” and they both laugh, which concerns Jones somewhat. Eve slips her arm through Jones's and marches him down a corridor. “Want to get some sun? A few hours in this place at a time is about all I can stand.”
Jones says something in response, but can't remember what, because Eve's left breast is snuggling up against his bicep. When she reaches for the elevator button, her honey-brown hair brushes past his face, and the scent invades Jones's nostrils, heads straight for his brain, and starts fooling about with his controls.
“Sometimes you can wait here for five minutes,” Eve says, looking at the screen. “They won't stop unless they're empty. At lunchtime—ah, here we go.” She steps inside. Jones follows. In the elevator's mirrored walls, he can see himself and Eve, Eve and him, all the way to infinity. “I have to say, I am deeply impressed by how quickly you found us out. Most people who work at Zephyr are dumb as cattle. I mean that. It's numbing. Some nights I go home and just stare at myself in the mirror until I remember I'm not one of them.” She grins.
“What are you? What's your position?”
“Well, what do you think? How do we control Zephyr Holdings?”
Jones thinks. Then he catches sight of the button panel, and the answer is obvious. “Human Resources. They're not a real department. They're part of Alpha.”
Eve smirks. “Actually, no. Human Resources is just like that. We gave them a lot of freedom to evolve on their own, and this is what happened. You should read the reports; they're fascinating. HR staff actually grow to hate people. No, Alpha works by placing agents throughout the company. There's only twelve of us. Most of the time, all we do is watch. But when we want to study something in particular, we pull a few strings in the background to make it happen.”
“And nobody in Zephyr knows.”
“Right.” Her teeth gleam. “Now, if you see anyone you know, act natural.”
“What?”
The elevator doors slide open.
Eve starts across the lobby floor, her heels clacking. Jones hurries after her. He feels incredibly self-conscious. Gretel gives him a smile and a wave, and Jones is too rattled to return it properly. Does Gretel know? He catches sight of the security cameras in the corner of the ceiling and suddenly understands how pervasive they are. They are in every room in the building. Until now, he never thought twice about them.
The lobby doors whoosh apart. Eve digs in her purse and then the beautiful Audi convertible is boop-booping and Eve is throwing the keys at his face. Jones catches them, startled. “You can drive a shift, right?”
“You're not serious.”
“I am serious.” She unlatches the passenger-side door, levers her long legs into the car, and drums her hands on the dash. “Come on, gawky.”
Jones takes a moment. He thinks: Am I really about to drive this car? Then he thinks: Yes. I am.
He opens the driver's-side door and slides his butt into the seat. The leather whispers approvingly to him. He puts his hands on the steering wheel and takes some deep breaths.
“Are you one of those people who are really into cars?” Eve says.
“I had thought not,” Jones says.
She laughs. “Let's go.”
“I'm not talking yet,” Eve says, “because you seem preoccupied with the car.”
Jones shifts into fourth and the car leaps forward. What impresses him is how much the Audi trusts him. His old Toyota, currently parked on sublevel 2 of the Zephyr lot, doesn't respond to the controls so much as take their advice on board for consideration. This car reads his every twitch as gospel. Jones is having trouble maintaining a steady speed because it is listening to the thumping of his heart through his business shoes.
“Interesting, isn't it?” Eve says. “How you need to be more disciplined to operate a high-performance piece of machinery. More machinelike yourself.” She stretches in the sun. Jones wants to glance at her, but doesn't trust himself not to wrap the Audi around a street sign. “Damn, this is a beautiful day. Someone tried to tell me the other day that the only habitable place in America is California. But I just don't understand how you could spend your life restricted to summer outfits.” She slides something onto her hair, pulling it into a ponytail that leaps and twists in the wind. “Okay, let's get down to business. You seem like a smart guy, so I'll spare you the sales pitch, all right?”
“Thanks.”
“If you don't join Alpha, your career is over.”
Jones swerves a little. A white Ford honks at him. “Can I have the sales pitch?”
She laughs. “If you join Alpha, you'll start at $125,000 a year, be on the cutting edge of global business management practices, and get the kind of experience money can't buy. Instead of spending your days with the pencil pushers and clock-watchers, you get to play with the big boys. You get to have fun.”
Jones risks a glance at her. “What do you mean, my career would be over?”
“What happens if people find out Zephyr is fake?”
“I guess . . . the experiment is ruined. You'd have to shut the company down.”
“So we can't have you telling anybody. We would take steps to ensure you didn't.”
“What sort of—”
“‘Stephen Jones was a competent and productive member of staff, except when using the Internet to download animal-related pornography.'”
“Jesus!”
She laughs. “I'm kidding. Kind of. But you get the idea. You wouldn't want to put us on your CV. You can come up with some story to explain the gap in your employment history, but still, that's the kind of thing that makes employers wary. If it comes down to you and someone who didn't mysteriously miss out on every major graduate intake program, I know who I'd hire.”
“What if I just promise not to tell anyone about Project Alpha?”
“We prefer to play it safe,” Eve says. “There's a lot at stake.”
Jones doesn't say anything.
“But don't focus on the negatives. The important thing is the opportunity. So just say yes.”
“To what? I don't know what you want me to do.”
“Same as the rest of us: become an agent. You keep your official job, but you also run projects for Alpha. If Klausman likes your ideas, you get your own project. Maybe it even goes into the next edition of The Omega Management System. It's very rewarding. Occasionally we go into other companies to present our findings, tailor a solution for their special circumstances. That's the best. You fly around the country, stay in five-star hotels, bill everything to the client . . . I'm telling you, Jones, it beats the crap out of filing someone else's expense forms.”
“But no one in Zephyr would know what I'm doing.”
“No.” Eve snickers. “No, Jones.”
He pulls up at a red light and looks across at her. She has one arm hanging out of the car and is looking at him through dark sunglasses and smiling. Despite this, Jones says, “I don't know if I feel comfortable spying on my co-workers.”
“Urrrr,” Eve says, as if she has heard this a million times before. “Okay, look. Companies spy on their workers. They have security cameras. They monitor e-mails. Employees know they're being watched. We're just more organized about it than most companies.”
“There's a difference between a security camera and sitting next to someone pretending to be their colleague.” She doesn't say anything, so he adds, “Don't you think?”
“Honestly? No. If you see a co-worker ripping off the company and report it to your manager, is that wrong? That's what we're doing: we're looking out for unproductive situations and try
ing to fix them.”
“But—”
“Do you want the ethics speech? Because we have one. It's on video, this whole spiel about how we're improving business efficiency, creating jobs, and building a stronger America. By the time it's over, you'll think anyone who doesn't like what we're doing is a Communist. We hand them out to our more religious investors. You're not religious, are you?”
“Well, not really—”
“It's kind of a joke. When someone asks for the ethics tape, we know they've already decided to invest. They just want some reassurance so they can feel good about it, too. That's the thing you learn about values, Jones: they're what people make up to justify what they did. Did you take business ethics in college?”
“Yes.”
“They teach you people's behavior is guided by their values, right? That's a load of crap. When you watch people like we do, you find out it's the other way around. Look, I believe in what Alpha does, I really do. But do I worry about whether every little thing we do is ethical? No, because you can rationalize anything as ethical. You talk to a criminal—a tax dodger, a serial killer, a child abuser—and every one of them will justify their actions. They'll explain to you, totally seriously, why they had to do what they did. Why they're still good people. That's the thing: when people talk about the importance of ethics, they never include themselves. The day anyone, anywhere, admits that they personally are unethical, I'll start taking that whole issue seriously.”
Someone honks. Jones realizes the light is green. He jumps the car forward, almost stalls it, then gets it under control.
“You know, I'm surprised,” she says. “I don't understand why you're not jumping at this. Are you afraid of challenges? I guess that would explain why you took a job at Zephyr, a company you'd never heard of.”
“No, I took the job because—” Jones starts, but this is not a sentence he wants to finish. “I'm not afraid of challenges.”
“Then say yes. I mean, come on, what else are you going to do with your career? Do you really want to spend the next ten years working your way up to a middle-management position? Ninety-five percent of all jobs suck, Jones. That's why people get paid to do them. We're offering you one of the 5 percent. This work is exciting. And it pays really well. Anyone in Training Sales would slit your throat for it. What's to think about?”
The phrase “ten years” gets him. This is scarily plausible: Jones can imagine himself slogging through a decade of corporate politics and day-to-day drudgery, steadily losing his enthusiasm until he is experienced and mercenary enough to qualify for the kind of position that Eve is offering him right now.
“Heh. You're cute,” she says. “It's like you're broadcasting your thoughts right there on your face.”
Jones gets flustered. He pulls the Audi over to the side of the road. He actually feels bad about having to kill the engine. After a minute he says, “Okay. I'm in.”
Eve grins. “Good. I'm pleased.” She puts one hand on his thigh and squeezes. “Now we'd better get back. I need to cancel the computer-porn story.”
At 4:00 P.M., the Credit department implodes. Until now, Credit's job has been to make sure that before any Zephyr department accepts an order, the customer has both the means and the inclination to pay. The customers are all other Zephyr departments, of course, but some manage their finances better than others. There have been cases where departments—there's no need to name names— ordered something then tried to delay payment. These are Credit's mortal enemies. To defeat them, it wields a terrible weapon: the Credit hold.
When successfully deployed, it cripples the victim, leaving it unable to carry out the critical, life-supporting task of buying things. Poison floods through its fiscal veins. The only known way for a department to cure a Credit hold is to persuade Credit that its finances are in terrific shape—which is difficult to do while its operations are paralyzed. Every department ever infected with a Credit hold has perished. Which, as Credit has pointed out, proves how prescient it was to deploy it in the first place.
A lot of money has been wagered around the company on which will happen first: whether Credit will strangle Human Resources or Human Resources will sack Credit. This battle of the superdepartments has been a long time coming, and warning shots have been fired over the bows of both sides. Last month, Credit issued a warning on certain bloated Human Resources expense accounts; in response, Human Resources trimmed Credit from twenty-eight employees to twenty-six. Tensions escalated. Alliances formed in darkened meeting rooms. A rumor began circulating: Senior Management was thinking about downgrading the Credit hold from company policy to a simple advisory. If true, war was inevitable, because Credit would have no choice but to attack Human Resources while it could. A lot of annual leave was being hastily arranged in the Credit and Human Resources departments.
But all this is now moot, thanks to two hundred missing sheets of letterhead. On Monday morning, these sheets, fresh from Corporate Supplies, vanished. They could be replaced for a little under three dollars, but Credit's manager declared the theft to be not merely criminal but an assault on that most sacred of principles: teamwork. He issued a department-wide demand for the return of the pilfered papers. Inquiries began. Staff were called in for one-on-one discussions. Work records were studied. Desk drawers were opened and their contents carefully sifted through. As the investigation heated up, careless accusations were thrown. Employee morale, already strained from tensions with Human Resources, fell to bitter new lows.
This morning, Credit employees arrive at their desks to find a memo from the manager. It upbraids three people for shoddy work practices, which were uncovered as a by-product of the recent investigation. It stresses the importance of completing two major projects. And finally, off-handedly, it says the manager has located the missing stationery, which he misfiled in his desk, so that matter is closed.
Enraged Credit employees storm the manager's office. The manager is lucky to get to the door in time; he locks it and takes cover behind his desk. As the workers outside shout and bang on the glass wall, he stabs at his phone for Human Resources. He wants to lay off the whole department, he says: all of them, all of them! Human Resources is happy to oblige. Within two minutes, a dozen blue-uniformed Security guards step from the elevators.
By the time the last employee is dragged away and Security has begun to clean up, Human Resources has issued a company-wide voice mail. It announces that Credit has chosen to lay off all but one employee as a cost-saving measure. And since a group of fewer than ten people does not qualify as a department, the entity Credit no longer exists. Forthwith, Credit holds will be issued by Human Resources.
“Where did you go?” Freddy says. “Someone came around to look at your computer. We thought you'd been sacked.”
“Someone looked at my computer?”
“Yeah, some guy from Security. But it turns out he was just installing new drivers.”
Jones says, “How do you know?”
“That's what he said.”
“Did he install anything on your computers? Holly?”
“You know, Freddy's right,” Holly says, heading for the watercooler. “You are getting paranoid.”
“Don't you think it's weird that—” He stops himself. “Sorry. You're right. Sorry.”
Freddy waits until Holly's left. “Speaking of weird, I heard you went for a ride with Eve Jantiss!” He smiles. It looks painful.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Wow.” Freddy shakes his head. “I have no idea how you managed that.”
Jones realizes that this is as close as Freddy can bring himself to asking what the hell Jones is up to. “Oh, I just, you know, we got to talking about those flowers, and she thought maybe I'd sent them to her, and I said no—”
“She thought you'd sent them? But I started sending her flowers before you even got hired.”
Jones starts to sweat. “Oh. Well, that's weird.”
“How could she think they were from you?”
/> “I guess—anyway, I said they weren't, but I might know who sent them. And she was like, ‘You have to tell me.' I didn't, of course”—Jones injects, because Freddy now looks to be on the verge of a heart attack—“but she wanted to find out, and she offered me a ride in her car, so . . . that's how that happened.” Freddy doesn't say anything, so Jones adds, “She's really intrigued by the whole flower thing. I think you should tell her it's you.”
Freddy stares. “Maybe I should speak to her.”
“Exactly. Exactly. Get to know her a bit, then when you tell her about the flowers, she already knows you're a nice guy.”
Freddy nods slowly. “Thanks. Thanks, Jones. You know, at first . . . I thought maybe you were moving in.” He laughs.
“No, no! Come on.”
Freddy smiles: genuinely, this time. “You're a good man, Jones.”
“Come on,” Jones says. “Come on.”
At seven fifteen in the morning the lights of the Zephyr building burn in the fog like the port windows of a sinking ship. Tendrils of dawn sunlight leak into the night sky, but it makes no difference to Zephyr Holdings: inside, thanks to the eternally vigilant fluorescents, it's always 9:00 A.M. Turning off the lights, after all, would imply that employees are expected at some point to leave. So at Zephyr the lights stay on regardless of whether anybody's home.
Jones walks across the parking lot, gravel crunching under his shoes. He is surprisingly alert for this time of the day, considering he hasn't had a coffee yet—but then again, he is en route to his first secret Project Alpha meeting. He enters the lobby and squeaks his way across to the elevators. All four cars are open and waiting for him.
Jones steps inside and sets down his briefcase. Eve gave him specific instructions on how to reach level 13, these being: (1) choose an empty elevator, (2) swipe his (upgraded) ID card, (3) press the 12 and 14 buttons simultaneously, and (4) press DOOR OPEN when the elevator is roughly level with 13. This doesn't sound too complicated in theory, but Jones expects to spend a bit of time bouncing between floors before he's nailed step four, which is why he's here fifteen minutes early. But he gets it right on his first attempt: the screen flashes up 13 and the doors open on blue carpet and muted lighting. Jones feels mildly proud of himself.