I don’t want to look, but I have a feeling I will regret not doing so.
Creeping to the ledge, I peer out over it. Something really is in the garden. A large dog, I think? I breathe a sigh of relief. I wasworried that it was him. Dr. Seek. I laugh at myself a little. Of course it’s not an elite scientist poking around by the trash cans. He wouldn’t, I don’t know, get my address from HR and then come and look in my windows, would he? He’s got better things to do.
My imagination is getting far too overactive.
Post-clunk, I make a decision.
I’m not going back to Z-Corp. I don’t care how many hot melting doctors they have there. I don’t think I could face Simon again anyway after just letting him have sex with me. I guess I got a little power back with the melting, but it still doesn’t feel great.
I remember the feeling I got in the lab, the sense that if I stayed there, I’d never really get out again. There are urban legends about that place too. There are a lot of stories about Z-Corp doing terrible things to people. I took the job because I didn’t think they’d happen to me. Then my boss’ face fell off and I reconsidered.
I decide to draft and send a short resignation letter so I don’t just become a no-show. It’s important to be professional even when you’ve just let yourself be ravaged by your boss.
I pull up the recruitment email I got a few days ago and hit reply.
“Sorry, Veronica, but I don’t think I am the right fit for the documentation project. It’s highly complex and involves technologies outside my wheelhouse. I think it best if I refer this to one of my colleagues who will be able to handle the task in a swifter and more accurate way.”
I’m going to send this job to my rival, Melody Firth. Melody would do anything for a job like this. She loves tech, loves innovation, and I think she melts men for fun, so she won’t be bothered by a man melting for her. Maybe.
I send the email, and I get a message back almost immediately, which surprises me. What admin staff is up answering work email at 11 p.m.?
“We expect to see you at the lab at 9 a.m. —V.”
I bristle indignantly. I don’t like being talked to as though I am owned. Who the actual fuck do these people think they are?
“I’m an independent contractor, and I’m giving notice. Thank you.”
“We will see you at 9 a.m. V.”
“You won’t though,” I mutter to myself.
* * *
I am at the lab at 9 a.m.
I’m not even sure why. Emails can’t tell me what to do. But I have that hollow guilty feeling at the notion of being expected somewhere and not meeting that expectation.
“Miss Barnes?”
A woman in her mid-forties with the shiniest blonde bob I have ever seen cut to viciously precision sharpness just between her chin and her shoulders approaches me with her hand outstretched. She is wearing a Chanel-style suit that just happens to be in the same shade as the company logo. Her shoes match too. Someone has spent a lot of money on her wardrobe. I doubt it was her. She almost looks sponsored.
I have to assume this is Veronica Valentine, the famous V who both hired me online, and refused to let me quit last night. I didn’t actually have an in-person interview, just a phone call. The hiring process was so lax I was quite surprised by it, but the contract they had me sign when I accepted was anything but. I think I had to initial about two hundred pages just to be allowed in through the front door.
“I wasn’t going to come today,” I say after shaking her hand. “I think I should leave my notes with you, though, for the next writer to continue with.”
“Yes, I’m aware. We believe you’re highly competent and very suited to the task. We’re sorry if you didn’t feel supported in the role, and we look forward to finding new ways to help integrate you into our workflow.”
She ignores my comment about returning the notes.
There’s something about this woman that unsettles me. She speaks like a robot, but a lot of people do that these days. Corporate speech has been a thing for a long time. There’s something extra shiny and extra smooth about her.
I want to walk out the front door, but I don’t, because I know that will seem unreasonable and unprofessional and thiswoman’s smiling features suggest she will leave negative reviews wherever she needs to in order to ensure that costs me.
“We’re very eager to retain you,” she says. “We’re prepared to offer an extra ten percent on your original offer, and a hundred percent completion bonus payable within the next nine months.”
“Why?” My question is so blunt it’s almost rude, but I am working in a place where people melt. So I allow myself a little rudeness.
It’s not what you’re usually supposed to say when someone offers you a great deal of money to do the job you already agreed to do, but I am curious, and concerned. Z-Corp has a lot of money.