The team gelled quickly when they were given direction and focus. They took quests that had them fighting a zombie outbreak in a Japanese high rise, more killer printers in Dubai, a couple of creatures with grass on their hides that turned razor sharp when they were threatened, and numerous creature outbreaks in their home city.
Most of the people they saved were unaware of how much danger they were in and thought it was a bear on the loose from the zoo or something easily explainable. Most people didn’t want to live in a world of monsters, so they would explain it with something mundane. Company cleanup crews were sent in the wake of the missions to scrub film evidence from phones and security systems. The Company usually ended up recruiting those who didn’t repress the memory.
In addition to the psychological tricks, Janitorial had devices that could wipe a single image off a specific phone over one hundred yards away. The Customer Care Advocates had healing skills and injectables that would leave people in a daze, and the people would assume they were in a state of shock after the traumatic event. Hackers would scrub the internet clean of the secret.
When Maxi wasn’t leading her team in fighting off creatures, she attempted to get headway on some of the mysteries in her life. The main one was Albuquerque. The word didn’t seem to trigger the elevator, and from what she could research about the place, it was just another city that always seemed to thwart Bugs Bunny during his travels across the country.
Other Branches began to take notice of her heroism, and Maxi got a nasty email from one of the Paranormal Investigators about leaving the hard work to the professionals and lecturing her about how she would only get her Office Pool killed, and “not the kind of dead you come back from”. Maxi showed Farhad the email, and he said that it was probably some low-level PI who was just blowing off some steam.
In the meantime, her credit account grew. While she was contributing most of it to their shared pool to buy off a couple contracts by the end of the month, she was able to get herself a +5 Longsword, +3 Khakis of Mending, more storage on her utility belt, and an Infinity Backpack, an item that was bigger on the inside, though how much bigger, no one really knew. Employees foolish enough to climb inside never came back and were terminated a couple days later for job abandonment.
The backpack came with cords to retrieve the objects inside, as anything not tethered to the rim would also disappear. It was even rumored that there was one of the maintenance employees deep in the bowels of the building who had lost her husband in one of the bags. The woman periodically dumped untethered food and supplies inside in hopes that he was still in there, living who knows where.
It was a good item to have because her belt was getting full, as Patti had made them all potions. Maxi gave Farhad her bat minions. They were sharing their resources. Even Belinda helped in her own weird ways, though it was hard to figure out how cat figurines with Ricky Martin’s head were useful, but at least she was trying, and by far outdoing them all in credits for the Save-the-Employees pot.
Their cat-confused friend donated everything she made. She even tried to get rid of some +7 chainmail that would fit under her blouse. They really had to do a lot of work on that one to convince her to keep it for herself.
While they were plugging away at quests, helping where they could, Farhad had completed his analysis and discovered that there were three of the Power Twelve who didn’t seem to have put in as much effort as they could on the last raid boss. To her uncle’s credit, even though he didn’t do that much damage, being the PR class, his efforts seemed to match all the other times raid bosses had appeared in the past. Either he was good at faking participation or really was what he portrayed himself to be – just another player concerned with the wellbeing of the Company.
That left the Statistician, FR-ANKH-LIN, the Auditor, Hellboy666, and Izzod, who was the most mysterious of the bunch. No one really knew what Izzod did for the Company, other than being Janitor class. Nor did people even know what the person looked like. They were the only one among the Power Twelve who didn’t have an Office Pool, whereas all the others had Office Pools whose sole purpose seemed to be keeping their careers going.
For example, Hellboy666’s Office Pool classes consisted of three Personal Assistants, one Office Manager, one Social Media Specialist, a Talent Agent, a Lawyer, a private Customer Care Advocate, several Laborers used as security guards, and a private Tutor for the guy’s son. All the other Power Twelve seemed to be in a similar situation where their Office Pool was hand curated to keep them in the Power Twelve.
Her uncle was no different in that his Office Pool consisted of all the usuals a power player would need, including several members of the Dancer class. Maxi didn’t want to spend too much time imagining what role they played in his life.
Because their Office Pool cronies helped keep the Power Twelve well insulated from the regular employees, it was hard to even get close to them.
The only exception was Izzod, who was in an Office Pool of 1, and had an office with a plain wooden table, an austere chair, and a computer station. Maxi had been to it on many occasions, attempting to get an audience with him/her/they/it, but there was never anyone there.
Because of the elusiveness of getting face-to-face with one of the Power Twelve, Maxi had to rely on tactics like ambushing them outside of nightclubs they would frequent, or waiting in common areas where they were rumored to be spotted.
By the time she met one of the three on her list that could have been throwing the boss raid, she had met all the other Power Twelve except for the PI friend of her uncle, the Y, and Likeabosssnaz. Most of them either treated her like she was a drooling fangirl, offering to sign whatever she happened to be holding at the time, or tried to hit on her by offering some time in their rooftop Jacuzzi.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
She had finally caught up to FR-ANKH-LIN outside a sub place that boasted of being the only place to get a real Philly cheesesteak outside of Philly. She had to track down several leads, and talked to maybe nine different employees just to figure out that he was from Philadelphia. Perhaps it was all the Eagles paraphernalia in his office.
She didn’t figure to stake out the sub shop until she heard a rumor that he would sneak out of the office occasionally during lunch time. It was a long shot at best, but sure enough, FR-ANKH-LIN was holding just such a sandwich in his hand when she said, “Mr. Lin.”
“Call me, Ankh,” FR-ANKH-LIN said. He was not what she had expected before she met him. She thought he was going to be some Asian math whiz or some other stereotype, but he was a rather portly Black man with gray hair, button-up purple shirt, and glasses.
“Sounds good, Ankh. I work for the Company, and I’m doing a data collection project about the raids.”
“Data collection?” Ankh said and started down the street at a surprisingly fast pace, forcing Maxi to jog to keep up. “I wasn’t briefed on any data collection.”
“It’s a personal project.”
“You’re on thin ice. There are protocols for data. I get it. I’m a numbers jockey myself. The thrill of the calculation. But Company numbers, with information protocols? You’re on thin ice. Between you and me, best sell your services to the rest of the world. How do you think I generated my wealth? Not crunching how many skeles a PI crunches in a month. I made Wall Street rich. Consulting work helps the mission, too. The Company needs money to fight monsters. Cash flow helps the biz. So best you avoid Company books, and power your leveling with consulting.” Dismissing her, the man turned to the nearest building with a public entrance that most likely had an elevator inside.
“I’m not a Statistician,” Maxi blurted out.
The man stopped, turned to her with a curious look, and said, “Then what are you?”
“A Generalist. I just need to know if there was anything going on last month. Something that may have prevented you from giving the raid your full attention.” It was a risk being so direct, but there was a feeling in her gut that he wasn’t the one throwing in the towel to keep his position safe. She got the sense that he really loved numbers, and that love also translated to lots of money.
Whoever was sabotaging the raids had to feel threatened by other employees rising through the ranks. It had to be a person whose position in the Power Twelve wasn’t so stable. A person who could easily be usurped by an upstart. Naturally, her first suspicion was the players ranked 1.10-1.12, but none of them correlated to the damage list. In fact, Izzod was 1.1, so unless this Izzod person was a real prick and wanted to sink the whole ship if they ever dropped to 1.2 or 1.3, it seemed unlikely that they were the one in the plot.
As it stood, FR-ANKH-LIN was 1.5 and Hellboy666 1.8, both far enough away that there would have to be serious disruption to drop out of the Power Twelve. Still, she had to investigate, because who knew what they were really thinking? Rich and powerful people could do weird things, especially when their money and power were on the line.
Ankh stared past her for a moment and then said, “I had a project due. Something about crypto. It made my clients a lot of money, but if you check your data again, you’ll see that when it was apparent that the Company was at risk, I put in my every effort. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am running behind, and cannot waste any more time talking to you.” Ankh turned around in a huff and walked up the steps to the building.
“What do you think, Terry?” Maxi asked. “Did he do it?”
“I’m sorry,” Terry said, “but you have revoked my permission to record your conversations, so I cannot comment about what just happened because there is no memory in my databanks.”
“What’s the last thing you remember about me?”
“You woke up in a resurrection chair in a basement.”
“Isn’t there some step in between, like human memory?”
“My memory is recorded in perfect fidelity. Unlike humans, whose memories become hazy, exaggerated, or just plain false over time, I remember everything with unwavering clarity. Most humans find my playback abilities useful.”
“But privacy!”
“My programming does not allow me to record in the bathroom or shower, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No, it’s just that power players are out to kill me, and having that information sitting on a server somewhere…”
“You’ve already ruled out the Hacker of the Power Twelve as a suspect based on the data you shared with me from Farhad. Even if employee personal files were accessible to anyone but you, hacking internal Company files is a terminable offense.”
“What do you mean by 'personal files'?”
“Each employee is allocated one yottabyte of data storage on their own personal hard drive that is physically located in the server dimension, though employees without knowledge of the transdimensional nature of the Company are told that it’s an offsite secure facility. All my memories of you are stored in there, as well as anything else you save to the cloud. It’s impossible to access without being physically located on the site, and even then, the Archivists responsible for storing Company data only allow the proper authorities access to personal files with a transdimensional court order.”
“If I can access it via the cloud, can’t someone just steal my password?”
“We don’t use security as outdated as passwords, or even biometrics, because those are easily replicated. All your digital access is secured via quantametrics. The particles in your body all have a unique signature that lets us know it’s you, and even if I were to clone you with an exact match of your DNA, the clone would still have a unique quantum signature.”
“What about another me? Like a parallel world evil me?”
“While alternate universes with bad versions of you with goatees running around is a common trope in fiction, the chances of you meeting yourself in another dimension are virtually nothing. The average ejaculate for men contains 200 million sperm per milliliter of fluid. The chance of you being here is already in the millions. Then, factor in that those same dice needed to be rolled for all the people who came before you being born. The chances of you existing at all are so small that we could be looking for eons before we find a parallel you out there.”
“But the other dimensions have skyscrapers. Isn’t the invention of the elevator what gives us access to the other worlds?”
“Neighboring dimensions tend to be very similar, at least in terms of technological trajectories and human evolution. There are perhaps worlds out there with fish people and aquatic skyscrapers, but the chances of you stumbling into a world like your own are much higher. Besides, you’d probably drown in the fish people world,” Terry said.
“But it’s still possible?” Maxi asked.
“Sure, there’s a world where dragons and humans have coexisted on the same planet, so I suppose anything is possible. It’s all about the likelihood of events.”
Considering her data seemed reasonably secure in the server dimension, she decided to let Terry continue recording her interactions. She would have appreciated the ability to play back the conversation with Ankh, see if there was something she missed. In the meantime, she had some other power players to hunt down.