The man stumbled forward and fell face first on the floor. He had silky chai skin and dark, wavy romance-novel hair. Blood pooled around his body, staining his yellow shirt. The others glanced at him for a moment, then returned to their workstations.
Maxi jumped up and yelled, “Isn't anyone going to help him?!”
Daisuke glanced down at the pooling blood. “I wouldn’t waste the credits on that.”
“He’s dying!” Maxi yelled.
“Dead,” Yancy said. “Technically.”
Maxi glanced down at the guy. He had stopped breathing. His eyes were glazed over and staring into the void.
“Flav, it’s your day for dead body duty,” Daisuke barked. “Could you take care of him before he starts to stink?”
“It’s surge pricing on sorting duty!” Flav protested.
“And it’s your turn on body duty! Now do it before Janitorial shows up.”
“They make you clean up the bodies?!” Maxi said. “What kind of messed up place is this?”
“Janitorial will do it for a fee,” Yancy said. “But the whole Office Pool is charged for the service, so we do all our own cleaning to avoid the charge. Regular wipe downs of your station and taking out your trash each day will keep them out of here. Just don’t forget the trash. I’m serious. Daisuke will kill you.”
Maxi couldn’t believe how casual they were about the whole thing. Sure, the guy had probably saved all their lives from the chopping block for another month, but they could at least have some respect for the dead. She helped Flav drag the guy back to his cubicle, and they placed him on the chair.
Once the body was seated, Flav whistled a tune, strolled over to the elevator door, and called the lift. He sauntered inside, and Maxi heard him say, “Supply closet”, as the doors closed. He emerged a short time later with a mop and bucket reeking of bleach.
Patti yelled, “Dude, did you overfill again? That costs credits ya know!”
“No worries,” Flav said, as he sloshed a wet mop on the floor. The bleached water mixed with the blood on the white tiled floor, turning it pink.
Yancy saw Maxi’s look of horror and explained. “The company allots each Office Pool a certain amount of supplies each day. Any overages are charged to the pool, so don’t use too much soap. Same goes with toilet paper.”
“So that’s how you go to the bathroom?” Maxi said, after shutting the eyelids of the deceased and sitting back in her cubicle. “Just press the button and say 'bathroom'?”
“Yep, mailroom, cafeteria, supply closet, and sleeping capsule are all free destinations,” Yancy said. “They’ll charge you for anywhere else unless it’s for a quest.”
“Wait?” Maxi said. “Sleeping capsule? We sleep here?”
“You didn’t read the–” Flav began.
“Terms and conditions,” Maxi finished. “But what about my mom? My family? My life?”
“You can purchase vacation days,” HR Terry said from her computer. She had left the chat window open. “They are subject to surge pricing, and the current rate is 831.5321 credits per hour of time off.”
“Per hour?” Maxi yelped.
“There’s been a worker shortage, so time off is rare these days,” Yancy said.
“Because you keep murdering them!” Maxi huffed. “What about a phone call or a text? Can I at least let her know I’m not dead?”
HR Terry responded, “Texts are currently 41.24 credits a character and a phone call is currently 234.516 credits per minute. I’m afraid you have insufficient funds to make any calls.”
“I suppose you are charging me for the WiFi, too,” she said, remembering that she had connected her phone to an open WiFi network labeled “Company Employee”.
“The Company App is always free to use, however the ongoing rate for personal WiFi access is–”
“Never mind,” Maxi interrupted. “I’m going to the mailroom.”
Flav was mostly done with the cleanup duty, but she was still careful not to walk in any of the wet spots out of respect for him. If her Office Pool was responsible for at least some shared resources, she didn’t want to piss anyone off, at least not yet. She glanced at the man's body that everyone seemed to be ignoring and wondered who was in her chair before she got here.
She went to the elevator and requested the mailroom. After a few moments of travel, the sliding metal doors opened to reveal a mailroom that was quite bustling. There were many players, most in yellow button-up shirts, dashing in every direction. It was more crowded than a subway station at rush hour, but just as weird.
For the most part, people looked frazzled, overworked, and too much in their own heads to pay her any mind. There were some who stuck out from the throng. They wore plate, chainmail or power armor, and some had obvious cybernetic implants or bionic upgrades. But there were also wizards, archers and knights. Even some that were mixtures, like a warlock with Terminator eyes, or a barbarian with a battle axe and a plasma rifle. It was like fantasy and cyberpunk smashed together in a beautiful cacophony, with yellow shirts forming the backdrop.
“Fuck,” Maxi said. The yellow shirts were obviously the cannon fodder or red shirt ensigns from Star Trek. It didn’t take long to discern a power player from her cubemates in the bottom ten. It was too late now. The sale price of the shirt was pittance compared to what she had paid. She sighed and saw a sign for counter service.
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There were corridors jutting off from the main room with endless numbers of PO Boxes. The PO Boxes came in all shapes and sizes, from ones that would only fit mail to ones that were large enough to fit a suit of armor. She saw a guy in combat fatigues pulling a gleaming sword from a box that seemed no bigger than the space that would fit it. The blade kept coming out of the small space as if it was impossibly deep.
She eventually made it through the maze of PO Boxes to a counter with twelve queues. They were labeled Tier 1 through 12, with the line at 12 being the longest, and pretty much no one in the top tier lines. Being that her pool was ranked Tier 12, she was going to have to wait a while, figuring the clerks wouldn’t help her in any other line.
However, the queue moved quickly as the packages were delivered by bored clerks in yellow shirts. She was about halfway up when she noticed that regardless of which line people waited in, the clerks went to the same back room, but it was too late to experiment with another line. When Maxi got to the front, the guy didn’t even look up at her and said, “Well?”
“Well, what?” Maxi said.
“QR code?”
Maxi pulled out her phone and loaded the company app. She futzed around for a few moments looking for a QR code until the man said, “Name? It will go quicker for me to look it up. They pay me by the transaction, you know!”
“Office Maxi,” she said, and he turned to his computer. The people behind her in line were visibly irritated by the hold up in the flow. By the time she found the QR code to pick up her order, the man had found it on his computer and punched a few buttons. He went to the back and came out with a sword in a cardboard sheath, a yellow shirt in the package, khakis, and the belt. As soon as he handed them over the counter, a message appeared on her phone about the items being added to her inventory.
She exited the line and made haste to the door. Just like the counter, there were a dozen of them, each labeled with a number. The twelfth door had the longest line, and the first had none. She went to the door without a line, figuring an elevator ride wouldn’t hurt, and a man seemed to phase in from the surrounding area as if he had been in a cloaking field. He wore a silver bodysuit like a Golden Age superhero. He had goggles with variable lenses that seemed to expand and contract like the pupil of an eye.
“Are you trying to get PKed on your first day?” the guy said, and pulled her away from the door.
“How’d you know it was my first day?” Maxi asked, and yanked her arm free.
“Longsword, utility belt, yellow shirt. Everyone buys that on their first day. At least the ones who aren’t stupid enough to cash out their tutorial credits, or buy the leather armor and a letter opener.”
“I did contemplate leather and a dagger.”
“Naw, you always want the utility belt. You live and die by the items.”
“This doesn’t look like a PVP zone…” Maxi said, in reference to the earlier comment. It wouldn’t be bad to befriend a more powerful player. Maybe even join another Office Pool when she was at a sufficient level to ditch the losers she had gotten stuck with.
“Every place is a PVP zone,” the guy said. “The only reason newbs like you aren’t slaughtered the moment they step outside their Office Pool is that XP and rewards follow the law of diminishing returns. Think of it this way – if the richest person on the planet bent over to pick up a quarter off the street, it would cost them more to pick up the quarter than its worth in terms of how much money they make per hour. However, a Power Twelve wouldn’t hesitate to incinerate you if you cause them to wait in line for the door. The door you use in public spaces is based on your Tier.” He pointed to the long lines and the lower numbered doors and turned to leave.
Before he left her entirely, she asked, “Why are you helping me?”
“My class is Customer Care Advocate,” he said. “I get a bonus for helping other players, and penalties for PKs. If you want to survive, pick Customer Care. It’s like the cleric. No one wants to be one, but everyone needs one in their party. Also, get Customer Service as a skill. People can be assholes, but you won’t survive without them. The name is Benson, by the way. Now, if you'll excuse me.” Benson pressed a button on an arm pad for his silver bodysuit. He shimmered and melded back into the background. Maxi couldn’t even see a distortion effect from the cloaking. A few moments later, door 4 opened and closed as if someone invisible stepped inside.
She stepped in the line for door 12. She pulled up the Employee Handbook and found the chapter about ranking. “Tiers are based on the same 12-point system, and then each level is broken into 12 segments. Certain items, abilities and quests are only available to certain Tiers. Certain privileges unlock at higher Tiers – for example, individual performance can allow a person to cut the line, whereas good group performance (Cumulative Tier) can get discounts in the Company Store, allow certain activities, and yield better raid rewards.”
While she waited in line, she heard more than one person request the bathroom as the door shut. She asked Terry about them and learned the bathrooms were single rooms rather than a common space. Since her “home” cube wasn’t private, she elected to use the bathroom to change when it was her time in the elevator. She hit the button, and moments later, it opened to a room with a single toilet, sink and shower. Someone had helpfully written, “No more than two pumps!!!” on a sticky note by the soap dispenser.
In the shower, there were three dispensers – one for body wash, another shampoo, and the third conditioner. Feeling sweaty in her power suit, she elected to shower before putting on her yellow shirt. However, she first asked Terry how to lock the bathroom door, and Terry said, “The elevators will not arrive to an occupied bathroom unless overridden by authorized emergency responders.”
It made her a little nervous to shower with a magic elevator door as the entrance to the room, but since she didn’t have much of a choice, she started to strip.
***
After the room was sufficiently steamed and she felt clean, she dressed in her yellow shirt, khakis, and utility belt. She slid the sword between her pants and belt and made a mental note to buy a scabbard. She tossed the complimentary towel in a bin marked “towels” and went to the door. She pressed the button and the door opened. She said, “Office Pool”, and off it went.
When the door opened, all her coworkers were standing in formation with weapons at their side. Daisuke frowned and yelled, “Where the hell were you? Did you take a shower? It’s almost time for the raid! Get in line!”
“Raid?” Maxi said. “You could have told me about the raid!”
“You could have checked the quest log,” he said, and turned to Patti. “You have healing prepared?”
“Yeah,” Patti said.
“Pens?”
“Yeah!”
“Staple remover?”
“I got it! I got it,” Patti said. “Trust me.”
She noticed they were all in yellow shirts Flav’s armor was still at his desk. Daisuke had ditched his suit for a yellow shirt.
“Why aren’t you wearing your armor?” Maxi asked.
“Such a newb question,” Daisuke huffed.
“Repair costs,” Flav said and caressed his armor. “My baby girl costs a lot of credits to look this good. Since raid bosses will most certainly damage it, and it’s not going to protect me any better for something so overpowered, it makes sense to wear armor that I can easily replace. Besides, items will make more of a difference during a raid.”
That reminded Maxi about her uncommon item back in her cubicle. She went to retrieve it, but noticed something was wrong. The body that she and Flav had dragged to the chair was gone, and it wasn’t like it was replaced by a chair covered in plastic guaranteed to have all the blood out. The chair was still there, covered in blood.
It didn’t take her long to locate the missing body. It was standing in the corner of its cubicle in its bloodied yellow shirt. Maxi was about to inform her crew of the impending zombie attack when it whirled around to face her.