Monday, June 6, 2045
Day 1
Kaden stepped off the bus into the heart of the City. Butterflies rose in his stomach as he took in the skyscrapers. The bus door swung shut. He glanced back as the antigrav bus pulled up and away into traffic.
Today was the first day of the internship program. His insides seethed with anticipation. Part of him still could not believe his good luck. Against almost impossible odds, he had secured a job at the world’s most powerful and secretive company. And that company’s secrets would soon be his.
Kaden breathed in deeply and let it out slowly. Looking up, he found his destination ahead of him: the Tower, global headquarters of the Company. One hundred stories of brilliant glass and steel rose into the blue sky, a singular monolith of corporate power. None of the surrounding buildings came close to its height. Behind the towering, gleaming façade, Kaden knew he could find answers to his questions. And revenge, he reminded himself.
"The Company will pay," he muttered.
Checking the time, Kaden decided he could afford to take a short side trip. He walked two blocks north and stopped at another bus stop. Kaden’s father had died here under the bumper of a City antigrav bus. He took a moment to reflect on the events that had led to this point.
The past year had been difficult for his family, and doubly difficult for Kaden to watch from afar. His family’s business had been acquired and then shuttered by the Company; then his father had been crushed under a bus just two blocks from the Company’s headquarters – all while Kaden was away from home performing his mandatory selective service requirement for the Army. Every paranoid fiber in his being screamed at him to find out the truth of what had happened to his father and family business.
In Kaden’s eyes, the official narrative did not add up. But any digging he did only led to dead ends. The police were less than helpful. News organizations could not be bothered. Kaden’s attempts to gather information from the Company itself had been successfully stonewalled. His attempts to discover the truth of what had happened had stalled out completely – until he had found a way to join the Company and continue his search from the inside.
He reflected on the truly gargantuan size and scale of the Company. They had products and businesses in almost every industry across the whole world. Across the street, an advertisement for the Company’s clean energy affiliate CleanCo glowed brightly, with the tagline “Powering the Future – For the Greater Good” reminding everyone of the Company’s monopoly on its wireless clean energy grid. The antigrav engine in the City buses came from the Company; the flatbed truck parked across the street was unloading a large HVAC unit with the Company logo emblazoned on the side; the crane preparing to lift the unit in place also used the Company’s antigrav technology.
Still, the Company was far from a panacea for all of society’s ills. The news these days seemed to be nothing but war coverage for one of the many active shooting wars across the globe, but there was zero coverage of the Company’s role in supplying weapons to both sides of most of those wars.
Kaden’s eyes fell on a homeless man curled up in the corner of a building shaded from the early morning sun. He had talked to him on multiple occasions, trying to find out if he witnessed anything the day his father died. All he got was a confused litany of conspiracy theories about the Company, of which Kaden had become depressingly familiar.
If you knew where to look, it was easy to find story after story on the internet of deaths and disappearances on or near Company property. Unexplainable accidents; flashing lights; loud noises in the middle of the night, and glimpses of strange creatures near Company R&D facilities. But nothing was verifiable. No mainstream news outlets ever published anything negative about the Company, nor did any social media company allow negative posts to circulate for very long without being removed. There was a wrongful death lawsuit at a Company construction site that had popped up in the news cycle recently, but it had disappeared just as quickly. Nothing negative about the Company stayed in focus for very long.
He sighed and gave the homeless man a one-hundred dollar bill before turning to walk to the Tower. He was now running a little bit late and needed to hurry.
The Company’s corporate campus extended all around and under the Tower, with additional buildings and an extensively landscaped park. Tightly trimmed green hedges, meticulous flower beds, burbling water features – the grounds around the Tower were beautiful and immaculate. The clean, clear and polished appearance of the Tower stood in sharp contrast to the dark secrets Kaden hoped to expose.
As Kaden neared the entrance, he craned his neck up to take in the full height of the Tower from close up. He could barely make out the roof line at the end of long raceways of aluminum mullions and tempered glazing. A massive hologram of the Company logo – two triangles linked together in the shape of an hourglass – hung in a neon haze on the front of the building. Every time he saw the logo, it reminded him of the black widow, one of the world’s most deadly spiders. Like the black widow, he knew the Company was sneaky and deadly.
Shivering just a little, Kaden squashed the uneasy feeling in his stomach. Straightening his tie, he pushed his way through the doors and into the lobby of the world’s most powerful company, his new employer.
Here we go, he thought. Time to squash some spiders and steal their secrets.
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“Name and ID?”
“Kaden Chen, I'm a new intern,” he said to the guard at the security desk as he handed over his government ID.
The multi-story marble lobby hummed with early morning arrivals. Kaden marveled at the ornate plaster frieze on the wall behind the security desk. Men and women looking like Greek gods fought mythical monsters with swords, lightning bolts and fire. The detail and craftsmanship were exquisite.
“Here’s your ID and your temporary badge for today,” the guard said as he handed Kaden his ID and a red badge on a lanyard. “That badge will get you to the auditorium on the second floor. Please proceed to the visitor check-in line on your right.” Looking over, he could see a long queue already forming in the visitor line, but all the regular employees badged their way through security checkpoints on the way to the elevator bank without any delay.
Kaden realized everyone in this line appeared to be about his age (early twenties) and had red badges the same as him. Aha, he thought to himself. The competition. Studying the group a little more carefully, he picked up a clear pattern – nervous fidgeting, ill-fitting department store business suits, shoes that were just a little too clean to have been worn more than once or twice. Typical business school grads. B-school brats.
A woman in line behind Kaden walked by and went to one of the other lines for employees only. Despite having the same red visitor badge as Kaden, she tried to go through one of the open turnstiles and was quickly denied. Instead of walking back to the end of the line, the woman strode over to the head of the visitor line and cut directly in front of everyone else to proceed straight through to the other side.
Kaden looked at the clock behind the security desk - 8:55am. Everyone at the back of the line was at risk of being late; and anyone with any business sense knew that it did not pay to be late on your first day. Following the first woman’s example, a couple line cutters moved out of line and strode to the front.
He rolled his eyes and looked around for other options. He did a double take as he noticed one of the line cutters.
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Wait – Mariko? Can’t be, he thought.
A petite, Japanese-American woman dressed in a black pants suit glided to the front of the line. That effortless way of walking – she could balance a book on her head – that was definitely Mariko. Also – the same bob haircut as she had worn since middle school. But why here and why now? Was she also part of the intern program? Kaden wanted to find out. He almost jumped forward to follow, but held himself back. I don’t want to be that guy, he thought.
A conversation on his left caught Kaden’s ear. A distinctly deep voice in a calm SoCal surfer accent carried across the lobby. A tall, lean middle-aged man with a shaggy head of blonde-tipped hair was having a conversation with the security guard.
“So Cliff, like, help a bro out, dude. Any other way up to the second floor? Don’t want to be late, you know?”
Kaden could almost feel the guard’s eyes rolling from ten feet away.
“Stairs? For real? Which way? You’re a lifesaver, bro. Have a great day!” the tall guy said as he walked the opposite direction around the corner.
He had a choice – stay in line and be late; cut in line and be a douche; or follow mystery surfer dude up the stairs and hopefully arrive on time and not have to backtrack.
Figuring he would be late anyway if he stayed in line, he decided to try the stairs.
He walked past the desk and around the corner to the other side. There was a very short line moving quickly through a security checkpoint to a bank of stairs on the opposite side. He scanned his badge, went through the metal detectors and hurried to catch up with the tall surfer bro.
“Hey,” Kaden said. “Are you here for the internship program as well?”
Surfer bro turned as he pushed open the stairwell door.
“Yeah man, sure thing! You too?” he said.
Kaden nodded. “I’m Kaden,” stretching out his hand for a handshake.
“Call me Bill!” he replied, accepting the handshake. “Let’s get to the auditorium. We only got a couple minutes.”
They hurried up the stairs, through the doors, and quickly joined a steady queue of other interns flowing down the hallway into a massive speaking hall. Soft beige carpet with red accents lined the hallway. Unlike the lobby, it was much quieter here, with a hushed and elegant atmosphere.
Once inside the room, Kaden saw that it could easily seat at least two hundred. The room was already 75% full and filling quickly. He grabbed the nearest open seat.
On stage at the front of the room, two figures, a man and a woman, stood conversing quietly. The woman wore a burgundy blazer and matching pencil skirt with a white blouse, her brown hair pulled up in an old-fashioned bun. Despite seeming relatively young, she definitely gave off crusty old school-teacher vibes.
Next to her, a dark-haired man with horned-rimmed eyeglasses, aviator watch, a tailored blue suit and gold tie gestured to someone at the back of the room and then strode to the middle of the stage. To Kaden’s eyes, he did not look particularly impressive from a casual glance. Middle-aged, clean-shaven, a little gray / white in his short-cropped hair; this guy looked like every other middle management drone on the streets of the City. But somehow this man exuded confidence and charisma, and as he reached the lectern, it was as if he turned up the volume on his presence in the room. Immediately the entire room fell silent and all eyes looked to him.
A rakish smile broke across the man’s face.
“Good morning. Welcome to the Company,” he said. A voice like late-night radio rolled across the room.
“My name is Alexander Wolfe. I am a Senior Vice President of the Company and this year’s executive sponsor of the Intensive Internship Initiative.”
He turned to his right and gestured to the woman standing respectfully to the side.
“With me today I have HR Specialist Carol Roche, who will be your primary day-to-day contact for those of you who participate in this year’s program.”
With this, Alexander paused for a moment and looked around the room, making eye contact with a number of eager, expectant faces. Alexander’s face and tone became serious.
““I’m sure you’re all familiar with the amazing line of products the Company has developed and produced over the past twenty years. Products and services that changed the world: clean, renewable energy; anti-gravity engines; batteries that last almost forever; powerful weapons of devastating power and complexity. Those products have made the world a better place than the world your parents grew up in.
“That is our corporate mission: to power the future, for the greater good of humanity."
Alexander paused for emphasis.
“All that we do here at the Company is for the greater good, and yet, the public face of the Company that you know is just the tip of the iceberg. You know nothing about what truly happens here or why the Company exists.”
Kaden’s heart pounded. This is why he was here; to learn these secrets and uncover the corrupt power behind the curtain.
“And today, some of you, but not all, will gain access to that knowledge.” Alexander let that sink in.
“There are more than two hundred of you in this room. You represent the best and brightest that the top universities in the world have to offer. However, I have to tell you that not all of you belong here.”
Looks of uncertainty and feelings of dread passed through the room.
“Allow me to give you some advice. First of all, this program is a competition. At the end of the summer, the Company will select only ten of you for our management fasttrack program. It goes without saying that most of you will not make it.”
Kaden looked around the room at the assembled group. Mostly B-school brats, maybe a few super ambitious undergrads. He did not like the way they were all being pitted against each other from the start, but even so, he was feeling good about his chances. If it’s a game they want us to play, Kaden thought, then I will play to win.
“Secondly,” Alexander continued, “in order to succeed, you will all need to demonstrate successful results. Again – the results you deliver from this day forward are the only thing that matters, not what brought you to this point.”
If that’s true, Kaden thought, then that’s good news for me. Looking around at the rest of the room, he knew he didn’t belong with the rest of the Ivy League and super educated crowd. His path to this role was the non-traditional remote testing route, which did not take any resume or past experience into consideration.
“Lastly, it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Only the strongest and most capable will survive.”
That… was a creepy thing to say.
With that, Alexander leaned back and glanced at his watch. He turned to look at Carol, who nodded.
“I am truly looking forward to telling you more about the Company and the exciting internship program we’ve put together this year, but unfortunately we must pause and take care of some paperwork. Please proceed through the exit door on my left, where our HR team has prepared our standard non-disclosure package for each of you.
“As you may have guessed, the Company is quite protective of its confidential information… and we go to great lengths to protect it.”
Kaden nodded his head. He expected something like this. There had to be some reason why it was so difficult to find out about the inner workings of the Company and its operations. It made sense that information was carefully guarded, compartmentalized, and protected.
Glancing again at Carol, Alexander added, “Oh and I’m told by HR that I’m obligated to tell you that proceeding with the NDA process is completely voluntary.” The rakish smile returned. “Those of you who wish to leave may do so at any time prior to completing the NDA.”
“Good luck!” he said, and strode off the platform and through the waiting open door.
The room slowly filled with quiet conversation. Seat neighbors looked at each other and asked affirming questions about what to do next. Slowly a line of people formed leading through the open door. Kaden noticed that the blonde-haired line cutter from the lobby was first in line out of the room.
Kaden made his way into line.