The hall was overly long, a sterile pathway as bare as it was bright.
An intentional design choice meant to intimidate any who were forced to walk along it, the lack of distraction and unnecessarily extended travel time meant to leave one’s mind open to obsessing over whatever they had been called in for, the bright glare meant to encourage the formation of a migraine that would undermine one’s mental preparations and defences, the annoying sound of one’s footsteps clicking on the sterile, white tiles covering the floor meant to enhance that feeling of time passing ever more slowly, yet still keep in mind that the unwanted journey would eventually come to an end, that with each seemingly overly-loud step, you were taken closer and closer to that end.
Benny Yamada had always admired the concept before, never having had to experience the effects of it on himself. Not truly. Whenever he had a need to come down here, it had always been to hunt down the occupant of the office ahead of him—his boss, technically—to review and finalise end-of-week reports and so on. Tedious work that neither of them enjoyed, hence the run-around. The intimidation was meant for the grunts of the company, the people he and the others in similar stations to himself stood above.
But now that he was subject to that effect, he was, for the first time in a long while, feeling somewhat empathetic with the common man.
He quickened his pace, the need to get this business over and done with as soon as possible spurring him on.
A pace then brought to a sudden stop as a gunshot rang out from ahead of him, the sound of it bouncing off the bare walls around him, the echo sharp enough to invoke a moment of pain within his ears as it impacted them.
Benny froze, his mind momentarily incapable or unwilling to register what he had just heard.
When he was finally able to process it, he still did not move, this time from indecision rather than shock. He was a businessman that dealt with financial reports and overhead, not…whatever that was.
Benny turned to look back down the passageway he had just come from, his mind locked between obeying his orders to come here and the biological instinct to flee for his life.
The door to the office opened, then, the near-silent panels sliding into the wall as the sensors detected someone approaching from the other side. Two someones, in fact—a stretcher between them. Automated much as the doors were, the thing moving along on small, squeaky wheels without need for direction, the two men, before and behind it, tenuously holding onto the moving device as they travelled mostly out of having nought else to do rather than for genuine need to.
Benny backed up into the wall to his left as he watched them pass by. He did so out of fear, for the black bag borne upon that stretcher, and for all that its existence implied, but mostly for fear of the two men who paid him little mind as they moved by.
They bore all the markings of medical personnel, but if anything, they were a parody of such, the heavy armour and equally heavy firearms adorning the two precluding them from being part of any service Benny had ever heard of.
No, they were more likely a pair of company cleaners. He had thought their existence merely a silly rumour before, a trite bit of clichéd fiction that movies liked to cling to, the real world of corporate business far too mundane to warrant such extremes. Or so he had always thought. But… if there was any word befitting the description of those two men, it would be extreme.
Watching them head off to wherever their path took them, Benny hesitated only a moment longer before resuming his own journey, not wanting to end up like the man in the bag.
Approaching the black, glass-like doors barring him from the office interior, Benny waited for the sensors to register his presence.
“Announcing, please wait,” an artificial voice called out, frightening him despite having already expected it.
The system would inform whoever lay within as to his wish to enter, the programming such that it would recognise not only who he was but also be able to guess as to his purpose here. Most of the time.
He had been summoned, of course, but that had been by…
A shiver ran through him. Benny tried to clear his mind of unnecessary thoughts.
“Enter,” an unknown voice echoed out from some unseen speaker above.
The door slid open with that same cold efficiency with which it had done for the two men earlier and Benny stepped forward like a man heading towards the gallows.
To look at it, the office was high-end, but rather generic in design. A replica of those upon the upper floors of this facility, a holographic display behind the superfluous panoramic window at the rear of the room offering a false view of the city above, the sight near perfect enough to elicit a sense of unease in those susceptible to the fear of heights.
The room was as it had always been, its decorations minimal yet extravagant. Mostly wall decorations, the floor left wide open, with neither the presence of plant nor animal to clutter it—nothing to pollute the room with noise or waste, as some of the other department heads within the were prone to do.
Everything in its place and a place for everything.
With the exception of its two new occupants, that is.
A man, his eyes a dull brown, his hair a dirty blond, sat behind the desk, paying Benny little mind as he entered, the man’s eyes enraptured by a tablet in his right hand. A woman stood to the man’s left—Asian—doing nothing in that way that bodyguards did, motionless and threatening, despite the woman seemingly paying Benny no mind as he walked forward. A sight not as threatening to most if you did not know any better, but Benny noticed barely visible scars along the woman’s collarbone leading up to the rear of the neck, one clean cut on the left underside of her jaw indicating the presence of a company ‘All-purpose’ communications implant.
Though he could not see the rest of her body, he had little doubt that she possessed more. Most likely the standard augments made available to VIP security members if the quality of those scars were anything to judge by. All fine work that indicated that this woman was to be feared far more than those two outside. Work he would have normally have been delighted to observe the sight of…normally—his speciality being within the same field—before his promotion to manager, that is, but now, knowing whom exactly she was here to guard the unknown man sitting behind the desk from, the sight of her sent a chill down Benny’s spine, and he averted his gaze from her as insecurity overcame his mind.
Finally acknowledging Benny’s presence, the man, without removing his eyes from whatever he was reading, pointed to the chair opposite him, saying, “Sit,” with none of the ceremony or civility as was expected from those within the corporate culture.
Benny promptly sat, any trace of his well-earned ego or instinct to not be ordered around long squashed by the sight of that black bag earlier.
They sat there in silence for a good minute, neither of the two on the other side of the desk showing any further sign of acknowledging his existence.
An obvious intimidation tactic. And an effective one.
Eventually, the man swiped his hand across the screen of his tablet towards Benny, the information on it then displaying itself upon the black surface of the desk before him in a bright blue text.
“Am I to understand that this is correct?” the man inquired.
Benny leant over to read the information, his blood running cold as he did so. Everything; it was everything he and Sam had done for the past ten years. Expense reports, the real ones, call logs, meeting notations that should have been deleted…everything.
Benny’s eyes shot up, his mouth opening to say something.
The man pressed a finger to his lips twice, silencing whatever Benny had been about to say.
“The answer would be ‘yes’,” the man stated.
The floor felt as if it had fallen away, the world beneath Benny’s feet vanishing as he saw his future disintegrate before his eyes.
A silence once again fell over them, then.
The man stared him straight in the eyes for an uncomfortable while before continuing.
“A decent effort. Had we not already been monitoring you, we probably would never have been the wiser,” he remarked.
The side of Benny’s lip twitched, a mocking laugh failing to make it past his now-dry tongue.
“Now,” the man started, “my purpose here is to dot the I’s and cross the T’s. A job largely completed thanks to your former partner…”
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The man’s words were spoken casually, as if he were discussing something as mundane as the weather, but the threat was more than obvious.
“…so, I’m going to need you to go over everything. In your own words.”
He knew it was over, but Benny let his eyes dart around the room in a vain search for some way to escape his current predicament. There was none, of course, but regardless, he still found his eyes momentarily resting on the silent woman to the side. He had never been one to focus on race before, but desperation drove his mind to hope that he could form some improbable kinship with her over their shared heritage against the one white guy in the room. Not that he was even certain of her heritage; Born in South Dakota, Asian was the extent of his knowledge of the East and those from it, and that was assuming the woman herself had not been born locally as well.
Surrendering to his fate, he told the man everything, then, speaking only the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The company was not one to waste resources; if they were of a mind to, they would ensure that being shot would be an act of mercy in comparison to some of the things that they could do to him.
Several years ago, in some out-of-the-way bar that no longer existed, Sam and he had come up with a brilliant plan over one too many drinks. As a joke…at first. Then, it became a way to vent their frustrations, something that they could brag about doing any time they pleased, with only their loyalty to the company staying their hands. Then…well, then they were doing it.
Millions made from hocking very good parts for less than good ones, with no one the wiser. Or so they had thought.
They were not alone, of course. You could not have done what they did with just two people, but they had ensured that everyone else involved would have more to lose than either of them if they were ever to be exposed, so they were assured that it would be unlikely that any of them would have ratted him or Sam out.
And Benny still did not question that assessment, the man had said that they were already being monitored, and there was…had been too much money going around for anyone to feel the need to turn them in, so he was not going to surrender to some last-minute bit of paranoia and try to push the blame onto those people working with him. If he could somehow work his way out of this, alienating his division would only hurt him in the long run, and turning on them would likely gain him nothing substantial if he did so.
There was little else to add to what the man already had in his possession, though, only the finer details having eluded whoever had assembled the information, and what Benny could add was largely as superfluous as the windows in this room.
Finishing, the man across from him nodded once, then said, “I see.”
Benny waited for him to continue, but the man once again allowed a pall of uncomfortable silence to descend, just for long enough to draw out the build-up of stress within him, but not so long that Benny could fully surrender to the inevitability of his predicament.
“This corporation of ours, Mr Yamada…it hires the best of the best, the most intelligent and skilled people in any and every field—people such as yourself” the man told him, his words, though seemingly complimentary, having a certain taint to them, “so we expect a certain level of stupidity from time to time. An unfortunate cost of doing business.”
He allowed Benny a moment to try and process his words before continuing. And the man did so after seeing Benny frown.
“You are not the first employees to think themselves smarter than everyone else, nor will you be the last. Normally, we allow for a certain level of…ingenuity, a way to grease the wheels to keep everything running smoothly. In rare cases, such independent thinking has even helped to generate profit with its unorthodox scheming.”
The man’s face, formerly rather disinterested in the whole affair till this point, grew grim.
But…you cost us, Mr. Yamada. You cost us a lot.
Benny shrank at those soft words, like a child before their father, the disappointment in the man’s voice more damaging than any scream or threat.
The man then breathed in audibly, the resignation in his next words indicating his unspoken disagreement with whatever he was about to say next.
“Now, it has been deemed by those higher than you and I that a man of your particular skillset is valuable enough to consider overlooking this indiscretion…”
Benny looked up, desperate hope then appearing across his face.
“…but…you did hurt the company, Mr. Yamada. Restitutions must be made; a demotion, of course, garnishing of wages until such time as all monies have been paid back in full…to start. But this is on the condition that we witness some form of repentance, Mr. Yamada—giving us the name of the corporation you sold…?”
Head shooting up, Benny yelled, “I would never betray the company!” The woman to the side exhibited the barest of movements, then, the first sign that she was indeed alive and not some living statue.
The man’s brow furrowed in obvious annoyance.
“Come now, Mr Yamada…”
“I would never, I swear!!! We never even traded in unassociated territories the company had even a passing interest in; we never went outside of the company, I swear! We were just greedy!” Benny implored.
“Y…,” the man stopped mid-sentence; a barely perceptible movement of his head and a twitch of the eye to the left telling Benny that someone was communicating with him. His brow furrowing, the man’s eyes looked to Benny, then, formerly so eager to dismiss him and his words, they now studied Benny with an eagle’s sharp gaze, to then briefly shoot left to the woman, then to nothing as the man in front of him visibly began to consider…something.
“Mr. Yamada? I’m going to need you to explain a few things—starting with your last project.” He raised his tablet to appear at its screen. “The…,” his brow furrowed once more, “…the comprehensive…black server spinal support platform?”
“A working title,” Benny blurted out defensively. “People pay less attention to dull names.”
“Yesss…I see,” the man replied. “And that project would be?”
“To put it simply, a spinal implant. We remove, grind down, or drill into the native biomatter to replace or combine it with an adaptive support structure and framework for the hosting of…well, whatever system you desire. In this case, all segments were each dedicated with a task-focused computer for the purposes of operating as a…mobile server, mobile research assistant…black-project support unit…things of that nature.”
“And…you believe this implant to be a viable product worth producing? Or should I say, an idea valuable enough to allow you to enact your little money-making scheme?”
“Entertainment,” Benny blurted out without thinking, his previously lowering levels of stress then shooting back up as he realised what had just escaped his lips.
“Explain,” the man asked amiably, now more than eager to hear what Benny had to say.
“Uh…Sam, he always sa…used to say that we were in the entertainment industry; we’re just supposed to amaze the boardroom so that they keep funding us. Whether they decide to approve anything we show them is another matter entirely.”
Their ideas had worth, but it did not matter how viable a product was if there was no interest in it, so they had to prioritise the ‘wow factor’ over practicality, the reigns of their budget always held by people who had neither the intelligence nor interest to understand even a fraction of what they did here.
The man across from him gave him a small, meaningless nod.
Benny went on, more out of desire to gain back lost ground than having anything to say, “Not that it’s not a viable product, mind you. Technically, we just copy already existing concepts—nothing we’ve done here is original, technically…”
The man twitched again.
“Explain,” he repeated, this time a little more seriously.
“Not from other companies!” Benny once again blurted out, “Sam takes…took ideas from media…movies, games, comics! Whatever he could find! Then we just matched them up with any existing technologies. Our current line, uh…there’s this game, tabletop…with the little figurines and dice? In the story, humanity hates technology—A.I., rather—so much so that they ban everything related to it, but they still need computers and such, right, ‘cause their spacefaring? Well, in the game, they turn people into—I hate to use the term, but…cyborg zombies…”
“Zombies?”
“…yes, uh…and they use them for everything. Toasters, calculators…everything.”
The man gave Benny a queer look.
“It’s a game, of course; a horror game, or dark comedy. I can’t remember specifically, but…”
“Wait-wait,” the man interrupted, “you said you mimic these ideas? But your indentured personal seem perfectly coherent and not…undead, where does the mimicry come in, and how does this relate to this…spine implant?”
“Uh…no, umm, their tasks generally require higher thought functions for their given tasks, which precludes us from debilitating them too greatly. As far as where the technology comes in, we literally just copied the ones already being made,” Benny replied.
“Eh…,” the man gave him another weird look, and, with a voice full of doubt, asked, “I have never heard of this type of product. Who exactly is producing these cyborg zombies?”
“Uh…drug dealers…whore houses. The whore houses on the bridge lobotomise their stock, put…uh—use various neural assistants meant for Alzheimer patients and such with a little tweaking to keep them manageable and somewhat interactive.”
“I’ve never heard of that!” the man said, shock evident in his voice, as if he were supposed to have.
Benny himself knew only because he had grown up on the bridge, only escaping thanks to a company scholarship—a twinge of guilt then running through him as he remembered how he had repaid that gift.
He made to continue, but the man held up a finger, clearly in another unheard conversation with whoever else was listening to them. So, Benny waited.
“…and the spine?” the man asked again, a moment later.
“Hm?” Benny started, “Oh, right, uh…Sam had,” Benny noticed the man’s jaw tense at the mention of this office’s previous occupant, “he uh, had this idea—again, taking it from games: In shooting games, you get these missions where you babysit an A.I.—an engineer type character or something, generally. You take them to a specific spot, a broken door, machine, whatever, and they begin to pretend to fix it while a timer starts and waves of enemies begin rushing in…”
The man just nodded; computer games, at this point, needing about as much need for explanation as to why water was wet or why Choco-Choco hated Berry-Bear.
“Well, after looking into the company’s areas of expenditure and development, specifically towards combat operations that matched such a scenario, we found that the company has spent nearly nothing in their development—on the tools of their trade, yes, but nothing on the people themselves. We’re still doing what everyone else has been doing since forever: finding the rare people with the talent for whatever skill we need, sending them to class, and hoping they prove themselves more profitable than not.”
The man across from him nodded as he listened on.
“And in the cases where such individuals are compromised, the missions generally fail. Usually outright. Current practice is to have everyone learn a bit of everything so they can try to cover for each other—and we do have implants to assist with that—but that in turn hampers them from focusing on their own skill sets, and again, it comes down to talent, cost and so on and so forth. Ultimately, a weak point that has remained unexploited because everyone suffers from it, but no one has any real way to deal with it.”
“…and your plan to correct that was?”
“Well, we couldn’t exactly give them a health bar, nothing beyond what we already provide to combat operations, at least, but, well, for lack of a better term, we wanted to see if we could create a real zombie. Something that could continue operating even when compromised, even if their body has to be dragged around by the rest of the squad. Preferably something that could be mass-produced in-house without having to resort to…”
Benny nodded his head towards the unseen city. The other city.
“I see,” the man replied noncommittally.
Still desperate to try and please, Benny went on unasked.
“We also had another pitch for the same technology. A proverbial Swiss army knife; we take one of the indentured and turn it into the perfect secretary slash lover slash computer…all-in-one…everything…”
“Entertainment,” the man summarised.
“Uh…yes,” Benny admitted.
“Well,” the man said after a moment’s contemplation, an edge that Benny recognised as doubt in the man’s voice, “that’s all very…interesting—and it will be noted, but there are still elements here which you have failed to explain,” the man declared.
“…uh, what do you wa…I don’t..?”
“I realise our skill sets differ, Mr. Yamada, but I do know my way around a bio-schematic,” the man stated as he held up his tablet, “and according to this, the spinal implant remains separate from everything else; very hard to cover for other systems if they’re not connected, so why?”
“I…I was told that it was a security measure! That the implant needed to be isolated and equipped with an insurance policy to keep it from falling into outside hands, yet also be able to keep the other, more common components relatively recoverable…I…I, it’s not my area of expertise, it…was just what I was told…”
The man held up a hand, signalling for Benny to calm down, “Okay, okay…it was what you were told…; But—and this is the most important question—if all this was merely supposed to be glorified entertainment…”
Benny really wished he had not let that slip.
“…what warranted the ordering of seventeen of them? A bit much, wouldn’t you say?”
“What?” Benny asked. “Oh…no, no, we ordered thirteen units. The implant, like the spine, is segmented in order to remain viable. You see, the torso is the target of choice on account of the larger mass being easier to hit, and…”
“No,” the man said as he held up a finger to bring Benny to a stop, “noooo, listen—why did you order seventeen of them?”
Benny needed a moment to try and figure out what the man was trying to ask him, only realising a second later that what the man had said was exactly what he meant. Seventeen units had been ordered. Not the units meant for each spinal link, but the entire package meant for seventeen packages in total.
‘Oh gods,’ he thought.
“We didn’t! We would never order that many, the monitors would have flagged us immediately.”
The answer did not seem to please the man across from him, his jaw visibly clenching as he heard it.
“I swear! It must have been a shipping error, we didn’t order that many,” Benny implored.
The man held up his hand again, then took a moment to listen to the unseen voice. After what seemed like forever, the man said, “Yes, sir.”
With a grimace that spoke to a throat full of bile, the man returned his focus to Benny and told him, “Mr. Yamada, the parameters for this investigation have changed; you are to return to your apartment immediately—there will be a guard upstairs to escort you there. You will not speak to anyone, you will not attempt to leave on your own, any and all errands will be handled by the company, if we deem them necessary. As of now, you are officially on probation. Do not waste this opportunity.”
Benny asked no questions and offered no further defence of himself, all but running out of the room then in his eagerness to latch on to the one thread of hope offered to him, his journey only delayed by the need to let the automated door open.
The man leant back in his chair and sighed as he watched Benny leave.
“Yes, sir. No, maybe not the entire truth, but he was being honest. Possibly. Yes, sir,” he spoke with resignation. “My earlier actions may have been hasty, but they were not incorrect. Unlike Mr. Yamada, the man was a trained negotiator—all his readings came back obscured. Even with hindsight, I would be hard pressed to not believe in his guilt.”
A moment passed as he waited and listened.
“Yes, sir. Yes, I understand.”
Call seemingly finished, he tried to lean back further into the comfortable office chair.
‘It’s going to be one of those days,’ the man realised as he felt the early twinge of an oncoming headache.