by Nino Cipri
Dirk wanted power, Derek realized. Not respect. He didn’t want to lead or be part of a team; he wanted control, and there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to get it. He hadn’t shown an ounce of squeamishness when killing the defekta, and Derek didn’t think he himself would rate much more.
“Oh, you are good,” Dirk said. He smiled bleakly at Derek. “You managed to get me monologuing. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
The wicker basket settled a few inches behind Dirk’s heels, and Derek realized what the SVINLÅDA wanted him to do, a series of flashes that were strange enough for him to realize that they hadn’t originated in his own mind.
Derek pushed a little of that desperation out, the way he had earlier when he’d broadcasted some telepathic warning signal to the other defekta. Derek had no idea if it worked the same way on a human, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. “Behind you!”
It seemed to happen in slow motion, the moment when Dirk believed him enough to look. His head moved first, jerking backward over his shoulder, and when he didn’t see anything, he shifted his weight and went to take a step back.
He knocked into the wicker basket, which was only a few inches below his knees. Just enough to unbalance him and move the INVENTERA’s sights to Derek’s left. Derek slapped the gun even further away, then shoved Dirk hard in the chest, sending him toppling over the basket, which went flying.
Derek snatched up the suddenly exposed SVINLÅDA and ran for it, ducking around the corner and sprinting, for the second time that night, down one of the twisting walkways that meandered through the sales floor.
There was a chime in his ear, and then Darkness’s voice. “Derek? Can you make it to the customer service desk? I don’t know what Dirk’s—”
Their panicked voice was cut off. The SVINLÅDA had reached one pincered arm forward and plucked the earpiece out. After a momentary examination, it stuck it in the open cavern of their chest, muffling Darkness’s voice.
“What are you—”
The SVINLÅDA pinched his arm, and Derek dropped it onto the ground with a clatter. It started racing ahead, clacking at Derek impatiently as if to hurry him on. It had apparently, at some point, grown an extra set of legs, and was moving fast.
Derek followed the SVINLÅDA through a series of rooms, through shortcuts Derek hadn’t even known about, until they landed in a smaller one-room showroom, a tiny house set up with a nomadic chic atmosphere. The SVINLÅDA leapt up onto a sleeper sofa that had been left unfolded.
“What are you doing?” Derek hissed. He could hear footsteps growing closer.
The SVINLÅDA patted the thin mattress with its claw, like it was inviting Derek to have a friendly chat, or coaxing a twitchy cat to sit next to it.
Derek sat. He tried to leap back up as the sleeper sofa folded up over his legs. Before he could pull himself free, the sofa had drawn him back into itself, pressing over him in a way that was claustrophobic, distinctly uncomfortable, but not actually suffocating. The sofa seemed to sense his fear, and rumbled gently against Derek at a soothing frequency, a sub-audible purr. Almost despite himself, Derek began to calm.
The footsteps approached at an enraged clip. The sofa had silenced itself, and Derek held his breath. Dirk’s footsteps paused for one heart-stopping, silent moment, and then moved on.
Derek let out a wheezing breath of relief.
After a moment, the sofa silently unfolded, and Derek wriggled free of its embrace. He looked from the sofa to the SVINLÅDA. “Thank you,” he whispered.
The SVINLÅDA tiptoed next to Derek, reaching its spindly arms up to him. Derek held still as it touched its little pincers to his face—where the table runner’s blood had splattered on him.
“Oh, I’m fine. It’s . . . it’s not my blood.”
The SVINLÅDA seemed to shrink a little, retracting its arms back into the little drawers on its side. The sofa wheezed sadly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t—”
He’d been about to say, I didn’t know, but ignorance couldn’t excuse this. He’d joined a team to exterminate them.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I wish I could stop them, but I think it would be easier if we . . . if we ran away.”
He could hear the doubt laced through his voice. Once the words left his mouth, he had to consider the fact that while he had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of interior design trends, furniture assembly, and customer service, he had almost no idea what away encompassed. He couldn’t remember ever leaving LitenVärld’s parking lot or looking beyond the surrounding fields where his container sat.
Still, he was fairly sure that away contained a non-zero chance of him surviving the night, which became more doubtful every moment he spent inside LitenVärld.
Derek could just barely hear a muffled chime from inside the SVINLÅDA. It opened up its chest and extracted the earpiece. He took it and stuck it back in his ear, shooting a quick look around before unmuting it.
“Derek?” Darkness said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“Good,” they said. “Now what the fuck is going on?”
“Where’s Dirk?”
“Heading into the children’s section. He’ll probably circle back my way in a sec. Can you get out of sight of the cameras?”
“Downstairs in receiving and assembly. Those camera feeds are only accessible from the manager’s office.”
“Good enough,” Darkness said. “Be quick, I’ll try to meet you down there.”
He nodded, then muted the earpiece again.
“If I can get the delivery doors open down in assembly,” he whispered to the sofa, “you can take the cargo elevator down, and we’ll escape through there.”
If he couldn’t imagine a life outside LitenVärld, he had no idea what a sofa would do. Maybe they could go to the Goodwill down the road? Did other employers let their workers live onsite? Derek wondered if that explained the strange looks he’d gotten when he mentioned living in one of the empty cargo boxes in the back parking lot.
Disciplinary Report
Employee number: D - 64598 - 01 - 2 - 45 - 100
Designation: Dex
This is a:
( ) Step One
( ) Step Two
(✓) Step Three
( ) Termination Level Offense (please check one)
Please describe the infraction:
I hate everything about this job except for my teammates, so I ran away and lived in an abandoned El Buckarito for a week. When you assholes came to drag me back, I broke at least one person’s nose and made you chase me into a swamp. Then I sang Queen’s “We Are the Champions” as loud as I could on the drive back to HQ, over and over. Nobody but me appreciated it, so I guess I need to practice more.
Managers: please describe the disciplinary action taken at this time (check all that apply):
Verbal warning
Written warning ✓
Change or reduction in wages
description:
Change or reduction in duties
description:
Change in team structure ✓
description: We will be moving forward with restructuring the Inventera Division, due to high attrition, low quality of work, and persistent attitude problems among the remaining team, as demonstrated here. Our next phase will concentrate on fostering better discipline and internal regulation, and incentivizing higher standards of work. Dex has been made to understand how his actions have sped up our decision to move forward with this restructuring.
Forced isolation/suspension ✓
Public apology and recantation ✓
Participatory shaming
Corporal punishment
description:
Termination and/or discontinuation
Do I feel as if I adequately understand the severity of my infraction:
Fuck you.
Do I feel as if this punishment fits my infraction:
FUCK you.
Do I unde
rstand that under LitenVärld’s progressive disciplinary process, I will face increasingly severe punishments, up to and including termination and/or discontinuation? And that progressive disciplinary process may be skipped in the face of particularly egregious infractions?
I fucking look forward to it. (Also FUCK YOU!!!)
From LitenVärld’s Employee Files, Inventera Division
Chapter 7: When “Don’t Be Evil” Fails, Try “Don’t Be Boring”
As he made his way down to receiving and assembly, Derek felt every doubt that flooded into his brain weighing on him. He’d never been a leader; he had literally been designed to follow orders. He had no power here, no weapon, and since Dirk must have told the others that he was a defekta, no other allies beyond a sofa and a toy chest shaped like a pig-crab. What if his memory was faulty, and everything he knew about the locations of the security footage was wrong?
He was so stupid. Why had he thought he could do this?
Oddly, it was Darkness’s words that came back to him; he knew exactly what he’d been made for, but he could choose what he wanted to be. He couldn’t go back to who he had been two days ago, the Sales Associate of the Month with a 4.74 customer satisfaction rating, the employee who lived and breathed the LitenVärld ethos. He was discordant, defective, but he’d already known that, hadn’t he? In the great, humming machine of LitenVärld, he’d always felt misaligned and out of step. Even before he knew the truth, he’d known that much. Now he had a choice.
Derek felt the bandage over his throat as he slipped through the showrooms, making his way quietly to the spiral staircase that led downstairs to receiving and assembly. The pain had stopped when he’d gotten away from Dirk, but the bandage was itching like crazy. He paused long enough to roll down the collar of his turtleneck, dig his thumbnail under the corner of the adhesive, and peel it off.
The next moment was like his mental sinuses cleared. The same way he had broadcasted his prayers to both the other defekta and Dirk, when he focused on listening, it felt like his nerves extended far outside his body, past the normal range of his senses. He could hear Dirk’s furious footsteps stalking back north, back toward the customer service desk, where Darkness was pacing back and forth. Two sets of lighter footsteps that Derek identified as Dex and Delilah were moving toward the central hub of the sales floor. The sleeper sofa and the SVINLÅDA were making their cautious way to the cargo elevators, keeping to the fringes of the showrooms.
But he could hear more; dozens and dozens of defekta in hiding, stealthily moving through the store on their impossible appendages. They were slipping through the shortcuts between rooms, curling through gaps between the modular walls or just silently unbolting them, moving them around.
Stay safe, Derek thought. Stay hidden.
A ripple of acknowledgment made its way back to him.
The tight spiral staircase that led down to receiving and assembly was hidden behind the false wall in the Hipster Nursery, with its mural of ironically ugly cartoon monsters. It was only for employees, and like everything out of the public eye, was aesthetically awful and liberally interpreted the safety code. Derek slipped carefully down it, wary of every squeak and rattle. He paused at the bottom, long enough to sigh and rest his head against the wall. He’d made it this far. He was leaving. And he’d get two of the defekta out with him.
His earpiece chimed, startling him. Derek flinched, then unmuted it, but didn’t say anything, still too jumpy.
“I managed to convince Dirk that you’ve avoided all the CCTV cameras, and we’re all splitting up to hunt you down,” said Darkness.
It took Derek a few seconds to find his voice. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“I’m on my way to you,” Darkness said. That wasn’t an answer, Derek noted. “I’ll be there as soon as I find my way through these fucking showrooms. I swear, they keep changing when I’m not looking.”
Derek muted the earpiece again. He thought about running now, asking the defekta to lead Darkness away from him, buy him enough time to run for it.
But the SVINLÅDA and the sofa were still making their circuitous route down to assembly. He’d promised to get them out as well.
And he wanted to trust Darkness. He didn’t want to be alone. He felt a bond with the defekta, but the belonging he’d felt—or at least the potential to belong—when surrounded by people who understood him down to his DNA was too much to give up. The memory of that feeling held him in place.
If only Darkness’s and Dirk’s footsteps didn’t sound so similar.
Derek lost his nerve, retreating back amid the tall shelves. He wished miserably for a weapon, or that he’d taken his chance to run; this felt too much like getting drawn into a trap. Darkness came down the stairs slowly, cautiously. The INVENTERA wasn’t in their hand, but within easy reach in the holster strapped around their thigh. Derek’s nerves crackled with remembered pain.
“Derek?” they whispered.
“I’m here,” he said. Don’t come closer, he thought. The fear felt like it was lashing out of him.
Darkness winced. “Oh, that is weird. I’m just gonna get off the stairs, okay? Feels like this whole thing’ll drop if I lean on it wrong.”
They waited, and Derek realized they were asking for his permission to come any closer. He tried to calm down a little. “Okay,” he said. “You can come down.”
As they did, he moved a little further back. He lost sight of Darkness, but all of his senses still bent toward them, focusing on the creaking leather of combat boots, the rustle of heavy-duty twill, the faintest sub-audible whine from their INVENTERA, the smell of sweat and pine-scented deodorant—
“I really thought Dirk was bullshitting us,” said Darkness. Their steps were soft as they came off the stairs and onto the concrete. “He said when you spoke it was like someone scratching words right into his brain.”
Derek retreated further back into the shadows of the room. “I didn’t even know it was happening until he yelled at me about it.”
“He said you were defective. Not just discordant, but . . .” Darkness trailed off.
But what? thought Derek.
“But you still seem like one of us,” Darkness said.
Derek bit his lip, feeling a pathetic thrill at being included in any kind of us. “It’s my throat. There was something weird in it. Then it was outside of it, too.”
Darkness mulled this over. “The bandage on your neck. You didn’t cut yourself?”
He hadn’t cut himself. He hadn’t hallucinated the feeling of something opening in his throat. It felt like a relief to finally admit it to himself. Something was wrong with him. “It just opened up,” he explained. “And any time I said something just because someone wanted to hear it, it hurt—”
“This is so fucking weird,” Darkness said, putting a hand to their head. “It’s like it’s resonating, somehow. I can see why Dirk called it hypnotizing, but I’m pretty sure that’s because he’s a sociopath who doesn’t believe other beings actually have feelings.”
They started to take another step forward, then hesitated. “Can I come closer?” they asked.
Derek could still hear the mosquito whine of the INVENTERA on their hip. “Could you,” he asked, then faltered. What if this was what made them turn on him? “Can you put your gun away? The INVENTERA.”
They unstrapped it from their hip and tossed it carelessly into one of the oversized garbage cans. “If you do hypnotize me, please make me do weird and horny things.”
“I’m not—I wouldn’t—!”
Derek could hear the grin in their voice. “I know, Derek. Might be fun to try sometime, though.”
Darkness rounded the corner of the aisle he had been hiding in, spotting him crouched behind a tower of boxes. They approached with their hands up, like Derek was a wounded animal. He supposed he was: his throat felt a little better, but his arms throbbed from the table runner’s claws and the INVENTERA’s shots.
His new senses lit u
p at Darkness’s approach; he could feel the tremors in their fingers, betraying their nerves, the way the air stirred at their breath, even the heat that their skin gave off. “Can I see it?” they asked. “Your throat.”
Derek felt a prickly heat along his limbs, embarrassment mixing with the same touch-hunger he’d felt when Darkness had checked him for a concussion. He was still trying to understand the unfamiliar shape of wanting. He wasn’t practiced in it, since his material needs were all met.
(Weren’t they? Derek thought of how often he’d awoken feeling crushed under the weight of his own solitude, and wondered.)
“Sure,” he said hoarsely. “If you—I don’t mind.”
Darkness smiled slowly at him. “Wow. You really can’t control it—the broadcasting, I mean.”
Derek groaned, but let Darkness steer him down to sit on a pallet of shelving units.
They glanced up as they crouched, and Derek flushed even more, mortified by everything he was feeling and undoubtedly—what had Darkness called it?—broadcasting. But Darkness’s smile was friendly, understanding.
Darkness gently pushed Derek’s jaw up, tilting his head back and exposing his neck. Derek swallowed convulsively as Darkness rolled down the collar of his turtleneck, their fingers soft as they brushed against his flushed skin.
Derek had never considered himself desirable. If asked about his best qualities, he would have said that he was a hard worker, a good listener, reliable, organized. His body was made to be useful: to assemble furniture and flatpacks, to ring up customers, to go and do and be anything that was asked of it. His pleasure came from the completion of a task, a job well done. It didn’t come from his body, just what his body could do in service.
So he had no frame of reference for what he felt, being touched like this.