Holy shit, you are such a dork.”
“I know.”
“You were talking to him for like an hour.”
“I was.”
“And you didn’t recognize him.”
“I did not.”
“Holy shit, man.”
“Yeah.”
“Holy motherfucking shit.”
“Yup.”
Once upon a yesterday, there lived a boy called Sigmund.
“Holy . . . You showed him our game!”
And a girl called Em.
“Yeah.”
“Dude!”
“Yeah.”
“Dude!”
It wasn’t like Sigmund didn’t know he’d been in the running for World’s Most Influential Loser since circa 1990. He’d been himself for over twenty years now; things like that weren’t exactly a surprise.
“So, like. What did he say?”
Monday. First day back at work after Christmas break. Outside was hot and bright and humid. Inside, Sigmund was getting the third degree from his best friend. One of them, at any rate.
“Um. He was pretty cool, I guess.”
“You guess?”
Sigmund shrugged. That was the best he had. Hale had been nice. Personable, talkative. Polished. The guy was a goddamn CEO for Christ’s sake. Sigmund figured he probably knew how to make small talk with the plebes.
“Dude. He’s like the richest man on the planet. How did you not recognize him?”
Third richest. Sigmund had looked it up.
“I dunno, man,” he said. “He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. And was, like, talking to me. It’s not exactly something you expect, y’know?”
“Dude. I swear . . .”
Sigmund held up his hands to stop whatever felt like coming next. “I know, I know,” he said. “Believe me, there’s nothing you can tell me I haven’t already told myself.”
A litany of excuses: It was twilight, he’d been drinking, Hale looked younger in person. And taller. And spoke with a slightly different voice. And what it all really boiled down to was the fact that guys like Sigmund didn’t get accidentally chatted up by guys like Hale. Didn’t sit in the grass for an hour, nursing lukewarm beer and getting their nerd on over shitty hobby RPGs. Not with the owner of Utgard fucking Entertainment (among other things), one of the most awesomest game development studios on the planet.
In the car, on the way home from the party, Sigmund’s dad had been oddly silent. Sigmund had expected him to freak, to hassle Sigmund over not, like, getting Hale to be his buddy on LinkedIn or whatever. (Not that it would help, given Sigmund’s stunning lack of a profile on said service.) Or maybe he’d been expecting Dad to be angry, yell at him for wasting the CEO’s time and getting them both fired for his trouble. But Dad hadn’t done any of that. He’d just been quiet, and they’d driven home and gone to bed, and by Saturday it had been as if the whole party had never happened. Dad hadn’t mentioned it, and neither had Sigmund, and now here he was. Back at the office. Not fired, not noticed. Not even gossiped about, at least not until he’d opened his big mouth to blab to Em. Just another average day in the Basement.
It wasn’t the literal basement, of course: It was the seventh floor. But it was where IT lived, so Sigmund figured it was going to end up being called the Basement no matter how high it was above sea level.
Not that the seventh floor was very high, particularly not compared to the exec offices, sitting way up above the skyline. LB was not a modest building: a thing of status and towering glass, one that seemed to get rebuilt every few years, get a new look and new floors. Sigmund figured that must cost LB a fortune, but the company was like that. Sigmund could hardly complain. Not when he got to spend most of his day nestled in the enormous expanse of light and glass and green. Lots of green: It was impossible to sneeze in LB without blowing snot all over indoor plants or “living walls.” Or whole actual gardens, trees and all, on the lower levels. Some environmental initiative, staff health or whatever.
LB loved things like that. Break rooms full of hammocks and beanbags and Inferno consoles. A gym. Even a day care in one of the annex buildings. And a chef in the cafeteria, responsible for at least ten percent of Sigmund’s body weight. (Because seriously: Best. Burgers. In town.)
It was a pretty sweet place to work, even for go-nowhere plebes like Sigmund Sussman.
Sigmund, who worked in IT ops. Third-level support stuff, when turning it off and on the first two times wasn’t enough.
It was a job. Not what he’d imagined doing as a kid, maybe, but money was money, and money turned into comic books and video games. Particularly given they were located, like, five seconds’ walk from Torr Mall, right smack bang in the heart of Pandemonium City.
Pandemonium. People got used to the name, growing up there. Some mining accident from the 1920s or whatever, back when there’d actually been a mine. Back before LB had taken over the place, like some enormous silicon cancer, gobbling up council and economy alike. Now everything Panda was LB, and everything LB was Panda. Anyone who wasn’t employed by the company itself was in some kind of support industry, like baristas at the coffee shops, pulling lattes for executives. Or barristers, pulling lawsuits for the same.
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And Sigmund, turning things off and on.
----------------------------------------
Mornings were spent talking to Em, and then, when the boss emerged, flicking through the help desk system, looking for easy wins. Tickets Sigmund could send back to first or second level. That the monkeys could do, and should do, and would do, if they weren’t all a bunch of part-time kids who didn’t give a shit. Mailbox restores, profile resets, distribution-list creations, desktop reimages. Jobs that Sigmund would rather send back with a snarky thousand-word how-to guide in the comments field than touch himself.
That was all maybe an hour’s work, and fifteen percent of the overnight queue. The rest of the morning was the ten-minute stuff: anything Sigmund could knock off without a phone call to a customer. Server reboots and process kills. Log checking and clearing. Reporting. Un-fucking fuckups made by the n-minus teams.
Low-hanging fruit. It was Sigmund’s system, and it worked. So long as anything more difficult—anything involving talking to anyone, or thinking about anything—could hold over until after lunch. Or, preferably, tomorrow.
Or, today, after the team meeting. Not one of their usuals, something New and Exciting, which left Sigmund grabbing his phone off the desk when his calendar started chiming. Team meetings always sucked. He figured he could at least get some Minecraft in while pretending to check emails.
The meeting room was down at the other end of the floor, near the kitchen. It was round, and made of glass, and Sigmund supposed the intent was to be “creative” and “hip.” Everyone on the floor called it The Box, said it was where the supervillains were kept after hours. A life-sized cardboard cutout of Darth Vader lived in the room when it wasn’t used.
The half a dozen people of Sigmund’s team were already assembled: Chewie and Boogs, Van and Steph, Michael and Divya. Plus Harrison, their boss.
And, today, someone else.
“Okay, so as you can probably already tell, we’ve got a new starter coming on board,” Harrison, standing in one half of the glass cylinder, said new starter at his side.
The rest of them were sitting on the seats ringing the opposite side of the circumference. From his left, Sigmund heard Van mutter, “I didn’t think we were hiring.”
“This is Lain,” Harrison continued. “Lain, uh—”
“Laufeyjarson,” Lain finished, patient and smiling like he got people stumbling over his name a lot.
Tall, skinny. Coppery hair hanging in loose waves down to his chin. Freckles, attractively understated piercings, bright green eyes, and the edge of a tattoo peeking above his collar. Sigmund heard Steph whistle under her breath.
“Right,” Harrison said. “Lain’s got a background in ops, same as the rest of you, but he’ll need some help getting on his feet in the company. He’s gonna need a buddy.”
Hands shot up, accompanied by giggling. Most of said hands had long slender fingers and brightly manicured nails. Sigmund got it. Lain was hot, this was IT. The women would take what they could get.
He flipped out his phone, checked it was on mute, and launched Minecraft.
Which was about when Harrison said, “Sussman. There’s a free desk next to you, right?”
Sigmund looked up. Everyone was staring at him, new guy included.
Crap.
“Uh . . . yeah. I guess.”
Crap. That was his desk. Except, well. Obviously not his his desk. Just . . . the desk between him and anyone else. The Buffer. Window on one side, no one on the other. Meaning no one to see Sigmund playing Minecraft, or watching Let’s Plays on YouTube, or reading comics. Or programming Saga, line by painful line.
Not that Sigmund would be doing that sort of thing. Not on company time.
“That’s settled then,” Harrison said, and it was. “Lain, you’re with Sussman. He’ll show you the ropes. Now, for the rest of you . . .”
Team meetings. Lain sat himself down on the edge of the circle. Sigmund tried not to make eye contact.
“So, um. This is a pretty nice desk.”
Half an hour later, after the too-long, too-boring trip ’round the team, everyone spewing out as much as they could think of to try and impress Harrison with their corporate indispensability.
Lain had a satchel. Some hip distressed thing in army green. That described a lot of Lain, really: hip and distressed, from his skinny jeans to his unseasonal scarf. All he was missing were the nerd glasses.
Sigmund, at least, wore the latter because he had to.
“Yeah. It’s okay.” It overlooked Osko Park, the faintest smudge of lake glimmering just beyond. Then, because silence was awkward and small talk was coming whether he liked it or not: “Where were you before this?”
Lain waved a hand, something halfway between two gestures. “Around,” he said. “I kinda . . . went traveling for a while after uni, you know how it is.”
No, Sigmund didn’t. And neither did Lain.
Because that was the other thing, Sigmund’s Real Actual Talent. The thing he never got to mention. The one thing that maybe, just maybe, made him special. Just a little.
Sigmund was never fooled by lies, and could pick them, every time. Like now. Nothing in Lain’s voice or in his posture. Just a scratching at the back of Sigmund’s mind. Something prickly. Something wrong.
“Oh. Cool. I never did any of that.” Calling the new guy a liar within moments of meeting him? Probably career limiting. Sigmund decided to lay off.
“Never got the urge to see the world?” There was something loaded in that question, maybe. Something sharp in Lain’s strange green gaze. It was hard to meet that gaze. Like Lain was always focused somewhere two inches behind where he should be, beneath the skin and bone.
Sigmund looked away, throwing himself down into his chair, watching Lain unpack the requisite minimalist hipster office possessions from his bag: a tablet, a phone, a charger, some headphones.
“Nah, not really. I mean, it’s so fucking far away, you know?” And, yeah. Maybe not so cool to swear in front of the new guy either. But Lain didn’t look like he minded, so: “Some guys from high school did the whole Contiki tour thing. Saw the photos on Facebook, never really appealed.”
“Hm.” Lain spun his headphones around on his finger. “I guess I traveled a lot when I was younger. With my brother, mostly. It does get old.” And that, at least, was true.
Sigmund couldn’t help himself: “Brothers or traveling?”
Lain barked laughter, a single sharp snap. “Both,” he said. When he grinned like that, his canines hung over his bottom lip. Just a little.
“Well . . . I wouldn’t know about that, either.” Sigmund’s own grin was apologetic. “Only child.”
Lain flicked his eyes up, then back down. Bit his lip then finally said, “Me too, at first. But I, ah. I ran away from home pretty young. My ‘brother’ . . . we weren’t related, you know? He was older, and looked after me.”
“That’s . . . nice?” said Sigmund. Except it wasn’t. He could tell it wasn’t. Something in Lain’s voice, in his posture. Some awkward stiffness.
“Yeah,” said Lain, running a hand through loose curls. “We had fun. Maybe too much fun. And sometimes, too much fun . . . We were always gonna end up dead or in jail. And, well. I’m not the one who’s dead, am I?”
“Oh, man,” said Sigmund. “That’s harsh, man.” Because what else were you supposed to say when some guy you’d met only five minutes ago confessed to being an orphaned ex con?
Lain must have picked up on the hesitation, huffing laughter and looking away. “Sorry to dump,” he said. “It’s just this is an office. People talk. I just . . . wanted someone to know the real story first.”
Sigmund pushed his glasses up his nose, blinking and trying to focus on anything but Lain.
Lain, who added, “But, look. Hey. I did my time, did my cert, got snapped up by LB on the outreach. So”—he grinned, gesturing broadly—“here I am.”
“Yeah,” said Sigmund. “Here you are.”
Oddly, only that last part had been a lie.