Bob's dark secret.

After the HR meeting. Bob came back The next day and. had a one on one with the cat 9 kid.

This is what happened. and the agreements that were made

Bob knew what he had to do, so as he came in that day, he looked up at Waldo and said Waldo, please let The cat 9 kid know I'd like to speak with him and you.

Waldo screen went to a microphone and an your live symbol and it went bright green.

Bob had looked and checked to make sure that Larry and Trevor weren't in yet.

Last night, Bob snapped. He had been given a gift by Waldo, went home and played an MP3 file that. had been loaded onto it. onto Anna MP3. player from the front of the store for him as a thank you from the company He was told it was a podcast. and he might just be interested in it. And it was a way of introducing him to the Abyssal Co life a little bit more.

At first, Bob took this as his own little piece of magic but he hadn't slept all night because as he found one of those files more appeared on the MP3 player, but not only after he listened to the first one or the next one, they just they kept on coming and he kept on listening and he realized he was in the middle of a damn dungeon and that someone that sold his soul to a dungeon that could eat him. This changed everything because Bob had very few rules in his life, and that's how he screwed up. But the rules he had were not just absolute. They were. worth dying for all. his belief in his soul. Maybe not. the same God as everybody else. But his soul was his and no one else's. And to have someone say something is one thing, but to have a dungeon actually be able to eat his soul this. did not go over well.

When that record symbol went green, Bob just. smiled and said Waldo cat 9 kid. I respect you immensely, but you can go **** yourself and I'm going to burn this **** building down right now. If you think I'm giving up my soul. Now I will hopily work for you, but in that contract it said soul. I swear to God and everybody that you deal with, I will burn this place to the ground and then you can have it from my cold, dead corpse. And I bet you have no problem with that. But **** me if I'm not going to go out with a swinging. You threaten my family, my friends everybody I know with these comments. Can we work something out or is there no room for negotiations due to the fact that I never signed anything personally? I would. walk away in my mind from this job right now, but I would lose so much of the magic. I would love to stay here, but not if it means my soul Those are my terms.

So the following happened. so quickly that. Bob didn't really see here or feel anything until the first chord started wrapping around his neck and then his arms.

To put the area into context, you come down a set of shelving to get to a small area with no shelving that has on the wall a monitor underneath the. underneath the monitor is a couple of desks right up against the wall and there's a little office off to the right. If you're looking at the monitor Trevor's little office is like a little staircase up and off to the right. Bob's got the open area with all the little desks, and Larry has got the office down the hallway. That's part of the other building, but still has access to the back area. So when this happens, no one is in to see the cat 9 kid literally come from the ceiling tile area above the desks. There's no ceiling tile, so it's just rafters. So a 250 pound snake of a piece of cat 9 cable comes down as it touches the ground. It's silent as a murderer. This assess. snake just coils up behind him.

Once it's all down. and it's coiled up behind Bob. It hasn't even touched him yet. It then brings its monitor down to look at Bob's back of his neck as he's saying these things to Waldo. as soon as Bob has finished. and Waldo comes up with the Please hold symbol instead of the green mic recording symbol.

The cat 9 kids. tail, which is? thicker than a rope that you would have hung someone within the old days. Comes up right behind Bob's neck, grabs him around the neck,

The cat 9 kid very politely, but with. so much force that well, Bob's wind was mostly taken out of him because, well, someone is holding by the throat And then the cat 9 kid put Bob down. and they had a talk. because this is not their first rodeo and they were honestly had a bet going. Which one of the three is going to be the 1st one? The loser shouldn't do this. And it happened every time. So basically, Waldo was looking down. on these two and trying not to crack up. But the cat 9 kid could see that Bob had spun around as soon as he let him go to see the cat. 9 kid. But Waldo is watching laughing or trying not to show his little symbols on the screen. That was failing. So the jig was up. Cat 9 kid wasn't going to harm Bob, but I had to have AA conversation here because some of the **** he just said could not go without having a conversation minimum.

Bob, your soul is your own. I will have that in writing. We are not going to take your soul and I know it's in there, but that's just in case someone tries to kill you. We have the right to bring you back. And yes, we've done it before, but we did it wrong before. So we put that in there. Now we're not going to change it. And you don't have to sign it for us to have the right to do that. But no, your soul is yours when it dies, it goes to whatever God you believe in. Not going to change that or **** with that. That's you on man Now burning down the building. Let's have a talk about that.

The absolute tears rolling down Bob's face with the smile on them. He was like, whatever. I'm good then. Thank you.

The cat 9 kid just made a disk noise. And looked up at Waldo and it just sent two out of two Waldo just got the bet. You owe me. So I guess the cat 9 kid wasn't betting on Bob. I guess he was betting on one of the other two.

Now, speaking of burning down the building, Bob, we will be. having a security cat sent in to. you are to leave the cat alone. And then if you think of harming the building Yeah, we'll have lost management. Have a talk with you. And you've never met them yet. Trust me, you don't want to.

But starting today, we're going to be bringing it in. stuff to be disposed of your welcome packages are. on one of the shelves work with Waldo to get them undone and wear your uniform properly and to solve the problem of what to do with some of the items. One of the items in your welcome package will upgrade the new compressor. So you guys don't have to worry about it. It'll basically make sure anything that goes in there is broken down. So. how I'll tell you the truth. A long time ago, the void 8 something like a planet's. every once in a while. There's an area like where that planet was. But it's just dead and things get dumped there. We just dump all the nasty **** there.

What's left is just some pellets of basic materials that can either be thrown out or reused. We don't give a **** that will be actually one of the jobs we'll be giving to you because you are or were one of our best employees so far We're going to give you the first option to look through it and see if you wanted anything. And that's the kind of the benefit to this job that not a lot of people have figured out. There's going to be a lot that goes into the garbage. And if you want to buy it off of Abyss Co, we will do a barter system right now. We're doing a couple extra hours in return for a couple extra abyssko dollars. We can basically work out trade. We just want it gone. And it's been dumped in a place that needs to be empty Every so often it all has to just get emptied. And if it doesn't get emptied, it just, it's not good. We've done this, I think, 7 or eight times now. And before you ask, the first thing we did was set up your group, the three of you, your retirement plan. So if this all goes to crap in the next year or 10 whatever. Well. we'll see how much work you can get done before. there's too much on the other side and it explodes. You basically are the timers.

The more you work, the less we have to worry about. But at the same time, we have to find it. So we have another crew out there finding it and sending it to you. It should have the first batch of material landing on your dock today, tomorrow, the next day. I'm still waiting on the paperwork from the other crew And trust me, you don't want to meet them. So whenever they show up, there will be a slot or some paper will come through. So the pallets after you've verified how many there are and if there's hazardous symbols, we're going to have a hazardous materials area set up and you're just going to pallet Jack them off the vehicle and into one of the areas and if in the morning there are just some shelves that have stuff already put on there, don't worry about it. We have a system to help you out. As you have seen already. Just. we have to figure out what to do with all the stuff.

So every day your job is to come in figure out what's on the shelves, what's coming in for shipments and then we throw it through the recycler to deal with it 1 way or the other. If it's something special and we can get it back to one of its homes, then we're going to give it back to the people that put it where it should not be and we can return it to them violently if necessary. but we try not to upset the locals.

That was one of the reasons why Waldo got permission to let you have access to the podcast. We have some mail for them and from what we can see, they're working with some of the people that. we have messages in mail for and we're not messages. service. We got it on offload this so we're going to see if we get them involved in helping you with your job a little bit on the outside world but for right now after what happened today you're on probation Bob go go have a coffee and get the **** work and I swear I'd also I guess I should let the other two know too because they were might be a little bit worried again sorry about the soul thing Bob said the cat 9 kid.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

And with that, the cat, 9 kid, basically went up into the Raptors and disappeared.

Waldo just had a happy face. emoji up on the monitor and said thanks. Go open your welcome package. I add help design. it for you. I think you'll like it. Let's. get to work. I can't believe you threatened. you threatened to burn down the cat. 9 kids building. Wow. I've been around a lot, but that was stupid and ballsy.

What just happened basically just sunk in and the adrenaline that Bob was hard pumping through his veins hard stopped and he froze. He stopped he just his brain didn't work for a couple of 10s of seconds and. Waldo thought he had broken Bob and it wasn't until Bob kind of just went into autopilot that he realized that Bob was well. hadn't slept all night, probably was freaking out and didn't think he was going to be strangled this morning. So yeah, little. more than normal for a morning and without any coffee. How could they right?

Bob. Have some coffee and. that's when Larry and Trevor came in. He just looked over his shoulder as he was pouring his own cup, grabbed two more cups and started pouring as Trevor watched Bob do this and Larry watched Trevor looking into the break room.

Larry came up behind Trevor and looked in and saw three mugs and was like. okay, what happened already?

Around that time, all three other phones got an email. And Bob just looked over his shoulder and said, I threatened to burden down the the building because they took my soul, I bet you that email is to deal with that. And I'm on probation. I **** **** And also, they don't want my soul, but they gave us a retirement fund and a way to bring us back from the dead. And we're all going to die in a year or 10. Oh, I'm going to go up back and have a smoke. Can you make out a hoot on them? Could really use a joint. 0 and then if you get any shipments coming in from Abisco, do not interact with the drivers. They may be infected. They are driving in the abyss, collecting stuff to bring to us the. compressor has been upgraded or will be upgraded today to prevent anything from **** with us. And we are to destroy **** that is just nasty. And it actually gets sent to another world. What actually might be where our retirement place is? I don't know. Let's and this is when Bob just. collapsed in on himself, grabbed his coffee and sat down on the floor. The other two came in, grabbed their coffees and sat in chairs and just watched Bob Shake a little bit on the floor. They both opened their emails and read the memo.

Subject: Important Update Regarding Bob’s Status

Hey Trevor, Larry, and Bob,

This is just a quick note to update everyone on what went down with Bob today. As you’re aware, Bob had some concerns regarding the soul clause in our contracts. After an intense exchange (which, let’s just say, escalated rather quickly), Bob expressed his frustration by threatening to burn down the building.

Fortunately, after a very direct conversation with the Cat 9 Kid (and a small physical intervention), we’ve come to a resolution. To be clear, YOU’R soul remains his own—it will not be claimed by Abyss Co. That was never our intention, despite the contract language suggesting otherwise. We’ve clarified that in writing for future reference.

Bob is on probation now and will have specific responsibilities moving forward. Some of those include dealing with incoming shipments from Abyss Co (please avoid interacting with the drivers; they may be carrying hazardous material) and processing various items through our new recycling system. There will be a new compressor installed today, and it should prevent most issues with the materials we’re receiving.

Please check your welcome packages when you get a chance; they contain updates to your work requirements, including details about the "retirement plan" for all of you. If you’re curious about that, feel free to ask. We’re still figuring out the details ourselves, but it’s important that we stay in the loop.

One last note—Bob is fine, despite the dramatic scene. I’ve assured him that no one is trying to steal his soul, and we’ve put additional safeguards in place.

Thanks, and let's get back to work.

Best,

ABYSS CO HR

The look on Larry and Trevor's face was absolutely ghost white when they read about their souls. Once they were done reading it, Trevor just pulled a flask that he had been hiding in his jacket. It hadn't even taken it off yet. He just poured some in his ports him in Larry's went over to Bob and ports him in his drain the whole thing to the three of them Larry just was so done already. He didn't even know where to go with this. So he just downed his whole coffee made a holy shit that was strong. Like gagging and. went to his office.

Within 5-10 minutes Trevor and Bob had gotten their shit back together, and they were in the back, looking for the new employees package. And it was kind of cool, because it was on 7.5 G and. what was inside of it was the following.

* Three named tags, one for each of them.

* 3 chocolate bars

* 3 sets of safety glass’s

* 3 hi vis vests

* A small metal tube with a screw on end

* 1 small silver plaque with the word "RECYCLER" carved into it with double sided tape on it

Bob. Took his vest and put his name tag on it. And he handed Trevor. He's and Larry's name tags save. glasses and hive is vest. And when they got to the chocolate bars. Bob just put his in his pocket and do the other two to Trevor. They. both looked at each other and just gulped a little bit.

It wasn't until Bob put on his vest with his badge. Did he realize what was happening? Because the moment he put it on, the velcro did itself up, and it kinda not snugged itself on, but it fit perfectly. It it it was beautiful. It was weird His name was perfect. It just, it was good. And he knew something was weird cause it didn't. It was just a vest. Why was this such a good thing But it just was, and he didn't understand that. But he's like, OK, we got this. So he then takes the goggles, and he puts them on, and the moment he does that, he just looks around. He can see these. are AR. Glasses. These are actual artificial reality virtual glasses that work in the real world. Everything has got he can see everything. He can walk up to a shelf and get the name of the item from the part. And he literally walks up to a shelf in the back that's got a brass fitting and it shows all the information that there's no tag on. It's just a stupid brass fitting with nothing. And it's got all the information from the size, the price, the aisle number, everything at the tip of his fingers. Just by looking at it. This is too cool.

He just looked at Trevor and said, put that fucking down and put on the glasses now.

And with Bob losing his stuff, Trevor didn't have to really be pushed too far And he put on the glasses, but nothing happened. And then. he's like, OK, what about the vest in the badge? So he put on just like Bob and he put his vest on the moment the vest went around him. The glasses kicked in. It was just three things became one.

If Bob and Trevor had looked up, they may have seen Waldo kind of gritting, knowing that his care package of a bulletproof vest identification security badge, communication badge, baton lights. stick. and Stockroom glasses would help him do their job and not die. And the cool part is the vest also acted against. Well, if something got gassy, a gas mask could be pulled from the neck upwards and it would unfurl so that you could put it over your face and breathe for a couple seconds. Get the hell out of the building. That's how they had lost one of their crews a while back. So Waldo remembered and didn't want to go through that again. So the badge. should tell them to throw up their mask if it's bad. So as long as you're wearing their P. P. E. They should be safe. That's all he wanted. He didn't want to see any to lose more friends.

After Trevor had his wow, this is so cool moment. He basically went in, showed it all to Larry, who then started using it around the store to look. at staff and the customers and realized how much trouble they could get in if they've abused this. So they told no one and he abused it immensely. It was great.

The best part for Larry, it didn't just show the price. It showed the price of every storm within like 100 miles. What their prices were. So all he had to do is write down some of the ones that he could tell were just so out of whack. And they had so much stock. It's like we got to sell this, this, this off. He would look great to corporate for the next couple of weeks. And he had been told that they weren't going to be building the big infrastructure after getting an email from Abyss Co's lawyers saying no, don't go nuts. Just. work with us to see if we can work with this store before you go nuts. And they had agreed. Larry had his job for the next little while making the store very profitable and making him some money. So he was going to get his bonus for the month

Trevor had immediately gone out to his car and started looking at different parts because no one knew this, but Trevor was a fucking car guy and his muscle car that he always drove to work was his car. He had been building for years and it was showing him little things like where the frequencies were bad or were parts had been loose or were bolt was missing and it wasn't until he came back in. Did Waldo told him not to take company property off the. company property and this. came up and Trevor. and Trevor's a. R. Glasses. It says. don't take your gear off. Leave it inside the store, please. Thank you. You will be charged to replace it and you don't have enough money. Deal.

Trevor just kinda gulped and said as he was passing by the monitor, if I asked to take them to the back to look at my car and bring him right back, would that be maybe possible?

A little text across his glasses, as said, we'll talk about it. I don't see that being too unreasonable. Bob wants some things in return for doing good work. Is that one of the things you want for doing good work?

Trevor was actually quite happy with that because the. front of the house had an auto garage and they shut down at night time. So if he wanted to maybe do some night shift work, he could probably bring the car and have it up on the lift there and he could do some work with the glasses inside the building. Yeah, He had to ask Larry if he could maybe rent out the lift for the evening and how much that would cost him because to have access to that car and to know exactly what he did wrong or how to change it, he could tune the damn thing to as a race car. Not it costs a lot of money. So yeah, it's very much worth it. So it was a plan that put a smile on his face. And when Waldo saw all that, he knew he had him.

Trevor wanted stuff for his car. Larry wanted to make money and go back to being with his family. And Bob, well, Waldo had told the cat 9 kid what he had found. Bob was lying to everybody about having a wife. His wife actually left him about a year ago and he didn't have any family, and he had actually started relying on this job to be his last bit of sanity because. he was actually assisted. statistically, the highest likely to commit suicide. And that's actually why they picked this building because he had nothing left to live and it was they always lost someone. So they picked someone well. the right person for the right job. And what they didn't really realize was that they picked someone that was loved and until he got angry and in pain. But they had ways of fixing pain. And if they could bring back the happy that Waldo found in all the photo album was online in the videos, then maybe just maybe when it was time to get rid of some of the more rare stuff and get him back to a very select clientele on this planet. Maybe just maybe. they could have a very long business relationship this time.