Maxi stepped out into an office she had seen before, but only via computer monitors. It was the corporate goon who had announced the lockdown for a raid against the antitrust lawyer. He was sitting at his desk as if he had been expecting her. Meanwhile, her glasses were flooded with messages, notifications, and all sorts of game information.
The first were panicked messages from her Office Pool inquiring as to her whereabouts before the raid, others were requests to join other Office Pools, congratulations, and other encouraging words, but it turned dark quick. From the time stamps, she could tell that she had been gone for at least a week.
During that time, she had gone from Company hero to town pariah. In addition to the mostly indignant messages from Daisuke, people were messaging her to call her a coward, selfish, and other terms that would curdle the words in her mouth if she said them aloud, and Maxi wasn’t the type to hold back language when the situation seemed appropriate.
However, the hate that the internet seemed to dump on her in a deluge of insults and death threats had dried up as quickly as it started when they moved on to throwing shade on a player who was caught charging his Office Pool for use of their resurrection chairs even during the raid.
And on the topic of the raid, it was successful. The Antitrust Lawyer was defeated in two days after Maxi had found the loophole in his defense, with the Power Twelve leaving some impressive damage totals.
Most of the flurry didn’t bother her, but there was a series of messages that did sting. It was Farhad.
It started with, “Hey, the raid is starting.”
Then turned into, “Are you okay?” and “Is everything alright?”
And ended with, “That’s cold. I thought you were better than this.”
She checked the date. It was the 3rd of October. The month was already over, and while her Pool was safe from elimination, the lowest performer was dead. She was about to check on her team and her new levels, as it seemed she was not only getting experience while she was in the other dimension, but also had completed the Printer of Never Jamming III, a quest called Goin’ Off Grid and Run for Your Life. She was now currently on the Printer of Never Jamming IV, which outlined her next goal as finding out what happened to her father.
Before she could explore her screens further, she realized that the man in the chair was patiently waiting for her to check through her messages. Once he saw that her eyes were focused on him, he stood and circled around his desk while he said, “Relative time can be a little disorienting at first, especially for someone who had their 15 minutes.”
“15 minutes?” Maxi said.
“Andy Warhol? Never mind. I’m Lo Key.” He extended his hand.
“Loki? Like the Marvel character?” Maxi laughed and didn’t take his hand.
“I was thinking more the trickster god, but I do suppose there’s a TV show. My surname is Key,” Lo said, leaning casually on his desk.
“That’s unfortunate. I’m sure school was a bundle of sunshine and rainbows.”
“Had I grown up in this dimension, I’m sure it would have been.”
“You’re from that world. The one that was overrun.”
“I’m from a world, and I was transferred here after mine fell. The multiverse is more vast than you can possibly imagine.”
“So this isn’t Albuquerque?” Maxi asked.
“Why were you going to Albuquerque? But no, I had your elevator diverted here as soon as you came back on grid.”
“Right. So who are you and what do you want?”
“Direct and to the point. Just like your father.”
“You knew my father?”
“Knew him? He married my sister. The bastard is family.”
“Whoa! Whoa! No… no! My uncle died, along with my grandparents, in an accident.”
Her knees became weak, and Lo offered her a chair. She plopped down as her brain fired off in many directions at once. Her mom’s maiden name was Key, but just because they shared the same last name didn’t make the guy her uncle. She also figured that she would have remembered something if she had been born in another dimension. However, it had all happened when she was too young to remember anything, and even if she had, it would likely have been traumatic enough for her to lock away memories she’d rather not relive.
There had been something off about her parents growing up. She sometimes remembered them talking about TV shows that never existed. Tara had even insisted that the caped crime-fighting billionaire was Ratman, not Batman.
There were tiny little things her entire life that she chalked up to her parents being either eccentric or weirdos, a badge they wore with pride. She never celebrated Christmas, but rather Present Day. Maxi even remembered her mom saying that Present Day usually happened in the dead of winter, right when it seemed that winter would never end and people needed a holiday to cheer themselves up.
Maxi had just thought it was parents doing weird things like grumbling about the timing of Christmas, or mixing up historical facts or pop culture, but now there was room for doubt. This man could really be her uncle, and she could be a refugee from another dimension. But there was also a part of her that wanted to believe it was an elaborate hoax, just more of the Company bullshit meant to obfuscate the truth.
However, no matter how hard she tried to wrap her head around it, she had a hard time with the scam theory because there are easier ways to manipulate people. They could have kidnapped her mom and held her hostage until Maxi came back with the Printer of Never Jamming.
The simplest solution was that this man was her uncle, and he was telling her the truth, but that still didn’t mean she had to trust him.
“Why didn’t my mom tell me?” Maxi asked.
“Tara didn’t want you to know. It was already hard enough on your family, losing everything, our parents, everyone we knew. There were only a couple hundred to survive the collapse of our world, and the Company did what it could to relocate the families who survived. We picked this dimension because it was one of the newer locations. It was founded in the 1980s or so.”
“The 80s?”
“The magic elevators can only travel through elevator shafts, thus why every new dimension is roughly at the same technological level. It’s also why zombies, killer printers, killer ooze, rust creatures, and all the nasty things that wander through the cosmic elevator shafts weren’t a regular occurrence before the invention of the elevator.”
“But what about the Knights Templar, ancient secret orders, all that?”
“Conspiracy theories. A good way to keep people from the truth is to give them a good conspiracy theory that is bullshit. Let people unravel threads and go down rabbit holes so long as it keeps them further from the truth.”
“Okay, so if the magic elevators are the same mechanism that gets monsters to this world, turn it off. I’d gladly give up a transportation system I didn’t know I had in exchange for a monster-free world.”
Lo Key chuckled. “If it were only that simple. Monsters have been coming to this world for ages, granted its rare without an elevator shaft. What do you think is the source of most of your myths and legends? This world was lucky to have survived long enough for the Company to set up here. One highly aggressive, fast replicating monster, and its lights out for the local population. So, yes, tethering to shafts makes the creatures more frequent, but that also allows us to send in the cavalry.”
“Are you saying a dragon traveled through an elevator to get here? That must have been some elevator.”
“The whelp the PIs use for their trials?”
“That was a baby?”
“An adult would have turned you to ash, and not even the most advanced chairs can bring you back from that. But no, that was another world. You did travel by elevator to get there.”
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“There isn’t a bathroom world, is there?”
Lo chuckled again and said, “No, the bathrooms are in this building, and the doors won’t open except for designated emergency responders. We value our employee privacy.”
“If you value your employees so much, then why make them pay for toilet paper, time off, and give them a capsule to sleep in?”
“Because we don’t want to lose anyone else!” Lo’s cool exterior was broken. “From the ground level, I know it doesn’t appear that we care, but we do. The capsule rooms, the office pools, they are all reinforced. If the Grutomatons or any other threat overrun this world, most of our workers will be safe, at least long enough to get them out. The Company is not the bad guy here – we are doing the best we can with the limited resources we have. The alternative is for there to be no Company. No one to save people when something crawls through their elevator shaft. Those were real people you saved.”
Maxi wasn’t so convinced. When she had browsed the free market, she saw the kind of credits that exchanged hands. The most powerful players had credits to spare, while the majority of employees seemed to have barely enough credits to survive. However, she didn’t want to jump to any conclusions yet. Perhaps what her uncle said was true, and it seemed better than the alternative, considering that she didn’t know the full picture yet.
However, if the Company cared so much about the workers, why not have a place for their families, too? Should an apocalypse break out while Maxi was in the capsule room, she would fight like hell to get to her mother, and she imagined everyone else with family on the outside would do the same.
She was about to voice her concern when Lo said, “Is the Company perfect? No. Is there room for improvement? Of course. But between just keeping people alive, and all the other multidimensionals trying to take us down–”
“Wait. What? There are other companies?”
“Yeah, what do you think the Antitrust Lawyer was? It was another firm trying to take us down.”
“That was real?”
“Of course, it’s real. It’s all real. Multidimensional law is complex, and even I don’t know all the ins and outs, but a long time ago, an agreement was reached so that, rather than having corporations flooding in from the multiverse, taking out the competition and murdering all their employees, it would all be done by raid bosses. When a government thinks we are too big, or a powerful player wants to sue us, or our competition wants to throttle us in our sleep, they send a raid boss over, and if they win, rather than having them just kill indiscriminately and loot recklessly, we decide in an equitable way who stays and who goes.”
“But you're killing these people!” Maxi yelled.
“It’s better than some powerful corp coming in and killing us all,” Lo said. “Look, I get it. I was once young and idealistic, too, but there are some corporations out there that exist purely by raiding and pillaging other corps and other players. They don’t care who they hurt if they are making money. Multidimensional law, raid bosses, it all exists now to help those like us who want to make a difference be successful and not get trounced by a company whose sole mission is just to devour other companies. When we lose, they take a cut of our assets, and we have to downsize.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to kill them.”
“Trust me, euthanizing terminated employees is much more humane than what would happen to them otherwise.”
“What happens, then?” Maxi demanded.
“Torture, medical experimentation, sex slaves, you name it. Multidimensional companies offer the option for a buyout of a terminated employee’s contract. If the employee has the credits to buy out their contract, we’ll let them. Most can’t afford it, so death is a better option.”
“You can price them lower, so people can quit if they want to!”
“Employee contracts are valued at their earning potential. Anything less would put us out of business and let any corp that doesn’t care what happens to the local population set up shop. The fact of the matter is that with an infinite combination of worlds, you’re gonna have an infinite combination of value systems. What may seem inhumane and downright heinous to us may be morally right to them, and they think we have it wrong. It doesn’t mean that all of them are evil. There are a lot of dimensions that have values similar to our own. Our homeworld was about as close to Earth as one can get in the multiverse. Why do you think we requested to be transferred here? But even Earth can’t seem to agree about how to treat the average worker, so why do you think the multiverse would be any different?”
Maxi still wasn’t convinced. It sounded like the man was feeding her a line – our fucked up system is better than the alternative, so just go with it, keep your head down, and maybe you might not get dead. Still, she couldn’t do anything about it, and knowing that there were other worlds out there waiting for a chance to flood into the one she thought of as her home, she wasn’t quite sure anymore if tearing the Company down was a good idea.
If there was even a small chance that some corp out there in the multiverse used humans as the main ingredient in their meat pies, then the Company was the better alternative. At least people here had some semblance of choice, even though it seemed like the choices were just various piles of shit.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s better than some other corp setting up shop in this world. Multidimensional law only allows one company to set up operations in any given world, so for better or worse, we are the only thing that stands between Earth and its annihilation,” Lo said.
“And the printer is the only thing that can save us,” Maxi said.
“You're catching on.”
“Why me, though? I mean, I get nepotism, but if the fate of the world is at stake, why a low-level employee?”
“Low-level? Low-level? You're level fifty-four! Setting an all-time Company record for the most levels in your first month. You single-handedly brought your Pool to Tier 9, thus sparing any of them from the termination clause.”
“Yeah, about that. Kinda fucked up, killing the low performers.”
“Better than the end of the world because we spent our resources trying to level someone who doesn’t want to level themself.”
“There has to be a better way.”
“When you think of one, I’ll put it to Upper Management.”
“You aren’t Upper Management?”
“I’m the Spokesperson class and number 9 of the Power Twelve, but no, I take my orders like everyone else.”
“Who is Upper Management, then?”
“I don’t know. I just get emails. When I do talk to someone, it’s through an intermediary. The one time I actually did talk to one, their voice and face were obscured with AI. I’m not going to say they are perfect, but they want the best within the constraints that they have, just like the rest of us. They aren’t the threat here. But one of the Power Twelve wants you dead.”
“Me? What did I do to them? They got all the rewards from the last raid for a technique that I devised.”
“And your Office Pool was compensated in prestige for its contribution to the Company, thus why you are collectively in Tier 9. At the Power Twelve level, it’s not about the rewards anymore, since you’re already on top. All of the Power Twelve are there because they love their job.”
“Must be nice.”
Lo ignored her snark. “That’s why they’ll do anything to keep it. Including throwing a raid here and there to keep people from getting too close to their rank.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. Losing a raid here and there only weakens the Company. But it also thins out the ranks of players below them. Tier 9 becomes Tier 12, Tier 8 is now 11, and so forth. People have a lot higher to climb to get to Tier 1 if you eliminate a fourth of the workforce.”
“But it’s not like Tier 2 becomes Tier 3 after a raid.”
“True, but it does thin the ranks of the people in Tier 2, and the people who are lucky enough to remain in Tier 2 after a failed raid suddenly have to do more to keep their standings, and all the demoted people start coming for them as they fight to get back to their previous rank.”
“But isn’t it the same for Tier 1?”
“That’s just it. The people below us are so busy fighting and screwing over each other that they ignore us. It’s the oldest trick in the book. Divide and conquer. If people are too busy fighting amongst themselves, they don’t stand a chance against you. Losing out on raid rewards is nothing compared to the rewards of being in the Power Twelve. Power corrupts some people – they’ll do anything to hold onto it once they have it.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re at the top.”
“That’s exactly why we need you. I needed someone I could trust. A person who wasn’t resting on their laurels. If I tasked one of the Power Twelve with that quest, they would have made the printer disappear.”
“But that’s suicide. I’ve seen what the grutomaton virus does to the world.”
“That’s only if you care about what happens here. If you’re only here to extract what resources you can and move on to the next dimension, then it’s perfect. The Company throws money, prestige and perks your way to fight the grutomaton menace. You cash in as long as you can, and when the world falls, you move on to the next one.”
“That still doesn’t explain what they have against me.” Maxi said.
“Breaking company records, defeating the boss they had planned to flub. If you don’t believe me, check the raid records. Before your power play, the Power Twelve were not doing their fair share of damage.”
Maxi scrolled back in the raid logs and found something curious that caught her attention.
“Why didn’t you do heavy damage?” Maxi asked.
“Because I’m a Spokesperson,” Lo said. “All my skills are social. Filter the skill tree by my class if you’d like. In combat, I’m useless, but rousing speeches, handling the media, convincing people – that’s where I shine,” he said with a smile.
“How do I know you’re not using one of your skills on me right now?”
“You don’t. But while I can be persuasive, my powers aren’t mind control. You need to make the decision yourself. Now, I have a meeting coming up. You don’t need to decide now. I’ve arranged a special quest you’ll need to accept. But I do need an answer soon. The other Power Twelve know you went off grid and know that one of us helped you.”
“That was you?”
“Well, Terry’s idea, but yeah. Terry was my Office Pool’s TERANCe model before he was upgraded to be this world’s AI HR assistant. Even though he is supposed to remain neutral to all employees of the Company, we all know that people in HR have their favorites, and bots do too.”
“Terry was your bot?”
“Your father's, too.”
“Terry knew my father?!”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself. Now, please return to your Office Pool. The special quest will account for your time off grid.”
The elevator door opened, and there was the silhouette of a Paranormal Investigator inside. The trenchcoat and fedora were a giveaway.
Lo Key’s grin slipped into a frown. His whole demeanor changed in an instant. “Please don’t make a habit of it, because I can’t help you every time you shirk your duties.”
“Shirk my duties?! I woulda died!”
“That’s no excuse for not participating in the Company raid. What part of 'everyone' don’t you understand?”
Maxi was taken aback, but then realized he was putting on a show for the newcomer.
“Fuck you! You think you can just sit in your office, high and mighty, handing out edicts! Real people are dying! At least I’m doing something about it.”
Maxi stormed away with her two middle fingers raised over her shoulders. She pushed past the figure of the person who entered the room but didn’t get a good look at them. She wasn’t quite sure how much her gesture was meant for her uncle versus the mysterious guest who interrupted their meeting.