Rogburd declared the fax would come soon. When the machine squealed into action, it would print out instructions for what to do about the menace outside.
“HQ has to approve our course of action. I wired them over the code for which I felt was best. They should respond within the next few minutes, unless they’re busy with more important matters.”
Outside, our cars were being thoroughly trashed. A group of people had arrived mid-morning and demanded entry. They said they were cold and just needed a place to warm up for a few hours before their bus arrived. Rogburd had asked corporate for permission to let them in and they’d responded “N” which stood for No, or Negative, I’m not sure which.
Everything we did outside of the usual purview of the daily operations of our office had to be approved by HQ. Fax was the way to go, because they said it was a more secure line. Of that I wasn’t sure, and in any case, why did we need to waste an entire piece of paper often for a single letter, or a letter followed by a handful of digits? Couldn’t we put the same page back in and print out multiple responses on the same page? Rogburd said no. As soon as he read the response, he had to shred the paper, then wet it and place it in the garbage disposal, where it was further mulched.
The people outside did not like our answer. Rogburd had Kaulthy apologize and say it came from HQ, because she wasn’t afraid to say stuff like that whereas Rogburd would never, so he used Kaulthy to say that which he could not when he deemed it appropriate. Other times, he sent me, because he knew I could handle delivering basic information without messing it up too badly, and that I didn’t care when people got angry with me about it, because I’m 6’ 8”, 240 pounds, and workout as pretty much the only thing I do outside of work.
In hindsight, he regretted not sending me instead, but he’d never asked me to say, “This came from HQ,” before, even though I would’ve been fine saying that. He sent Kaulthy because she had a charming and calming demeanor, and he thought that would be enough to make the crowd disperse. She even said they could sit on the benches by the building while they waited, which Rogburd had not said to do but ultimately didn’t mind.
The group had responded by savagely beating Kaulthy, which was really unpleasant for all of us to watch on the little monitor in the break room, which is there because sometimes we have to buzz someone in.
The group also savagely beat Joufthan, who was nearby and tried to intervene. Both lay unmoving on the gray pixelated sidewalk as Rogburd said, “That wasn’t optimal.”
It was then suggested I go out to deal with the crowd. There is something in the Handbook of Strategies at our company that states something to the effect of, “Send the strongest person in the office out to combat the assailants. If the crowd is large enough and personnel allows it, send more than one strong person to combat the assailants.”
For our office, I was it, so I was chosen and tasked with finding some sort of weapon suitable to drive off the dozen people who had just beaten our coworkers to death after the bare minimum of provocation. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly psyched about it. But to be fair, I hate being asked to do anything at work, and hate work itself, and only do it because it would be impossible to live without doing it. In any other case, I wouldn’t do it, or wouldn’t exactly do what I currently did, that’s for sure.
I’d probably go back to being a professional athlete, had sports not been relegated to competition between generated opponents, due to pushback and widespread distaste for injuries incurred in the sports after they became more violent and less regulated to maintain viewership. I had not really lasted in the league long enough to be armed in the way the generated competitors are armed these days, but I’d experienced a taste of it, and my thought was, “Ok, this isn’t football anymore. This is just fighting.” But if things could go back to the way they were, when it was just about running and throwing and catching a ball, then yeah, I’d do that again.
I found an old chair and broke off a piece of it. I smacked my palm with it a few times to test whether it would hurt to be hit by it, and I concluded that yeah, it would hurt a good amount, so that would be my weapon. We aren’t allowed to have guns anymore now that only law enforcement machines are allowed to be armed, unless you have a militia permit, which aren’t difficult to get but you need at least 5 people to sign on to get one, and corporations are not allowed to be militias at the same time, which is a rule meant to encourage the hiring of militias.
My company’s militia had all gone on strike just before the menace happened. Not literally right before it, but a few days before it. They wanted 10x more salary, but they were already getting paid 10x more than anyone else in the company, so HQ said no. They thought they would return to the bargaining table eventually, because when a militia is not employed by a company, they tend to be targeted more often by other militias. The government really only intervenes in militia disputes between companies, not freelancers.
In any case, our building had no security at that time outside of what we could physically lock and deploy through the structure’s self-protective system, which was minimal, because HQ did not see fit to invest in both that system and a militia, which to be fair had been a higher grade bunch.
I was it, and as soon as the fax whined its way over to us, it was official. Down the stairs I went and over to the lobby. I paused at the sliding doors before opening them. I saw my colleagues on the ground about 10 feet out, large dark puddles spreading out from them, freezing fast. Not good, but maybe the cold will help them, I thought. Or no, maybe that just slows rotting. Then I pressed by face up to the glass and rotated left and right in order to see as best I could if anyone was hiding by the doors, waiting for someone to walk through.
I was right. There they were, split into even groups, backs against the wall. I tapped on the glass and a couple looked over at me.
“Hey, I can see you hiding there. So you’re not hiding anymore, actually,” I said.
After a second of deliberation, they relaxed from the wall and walked into view. I could see they were shivering and their teeth chattered as they spoke, making them sound like something other than all-the-way human.
“Come on out, big guy. Come join your friends,” one said. He was a fairly tall guy, maybe around 6ft and not too scrawny. The others didn’t seem all that tough, but then when you get jumped by a group, it doesn’t matter so much how tough everyone is, especially if they know how to go for your knees and soft parts. Once on the ground, your head and neck and ribs are easy to wail on.
I knew I’d have to do something in a way that reduced their advantage, so I made a choice that Rogburd would not approve of. I walked over and opened the sliding doors, but only partially. Then I stood a couple feet back and waited.
“They’re not my friends,” I said. “They’re just coworkers. You can come in if you want. I don’t care about this company or its rules. I am a loner and people stay away from me. I don’t care about anything anymore. My dog died and that was the only thing I’ve ever loved. Come in and get warm. What do I care.”
I tried my best to sell it, but I thought I lost it on the dog lie. I’ve never had a dog. I like them, I guess, just never had one. The other stuff was true enough that it was easier to sell.
I could tell they were thinking it over. On the one hand, they knew me only opening the doors partially was significant, on the other, they were terribly cold and now they could feel the warm escaping our building. I imagined it was like how the scent of a pie carries in a cartoon, and it uplifts the one who smells it and they go floating toward the window sill on which the pie cools.
“Open the doors all the way. We wouldn’t even need to come in then. We could just stand here by the doors,” another one said. A lady a little shorter than the guy, but not by much. Nice long legs. Thick calves too. She might be an athlete herself. Would probably hurt like hell to catch one in the soft parts from her, and the ribs would be goners.
“Ok. What do I care. I don’t care about anything anymore. You could kill me if you wanted to and I wouldn’t care,” I said, really trying to sell it. Then I walked over to the panel that opens the doors and pretended it wasn’t working.
“Something’s up,” I said, and pretended to mash all the buttons. “It’s stuck.”
I walked back over and gave them a huge shrug, which I hoped would be final. It was.
“Fine, we’ll come in, but you have to back up,” the guy said.
“Sure,” I said, even though I wish he hadn’t. It would’ve been so much easier to hit him if I was closer. But I knew he’d get suspicious if I didn’t move, so I took a couple big steps back.
“Farther,” he said.
“I can’t,” I lied. “I’m required to stay only this far away when non-employees enter the building.”
“I thought you said you didn’t care about anything,” the guy said, halting his timid step forward in mid-air.
“I don’t, but there’s a chip in me that will release poison if I don’t follow this rule. And while I don’t care if I die, I don’t want to die slowly and painfully, which is how I’d die if the poison was released.”
I didn’t know where I came up with that one. I was just on a roll, I guess. But I don’t think the guy bought it at first. He fully withdrew his foot. But I knew it didn’t matter. He felt how good it would feel to be inside and now he couldn’t resist.
“Fine. Whatever,” he said, and took a full step in. I didn’t shift, knowing he’d be sizing me up just then. I waited. He angled his chest and squeezed his way through the opening, and just when his weight had shifted fully, I threw the chair leg as hard as I could at his head.
Bullseye. The rotation timed perfectly and cracked him on the forehead. I was so happy about that, because I’d never done anything like that before, not even in my football days. It just felt instinctual to me, what can I say, I’m a natural at throwing stuff that can also be used for hitting people, I guess.
He went unconscious immediately, and now he was lodged in the doorway, stuck between the inside and the outside. I walked over quickly with a few big strides, squatted to pick up my weapon, stood upright, then cracked him full force in roughly the same place as the original wound.
His skull split open perfectly, and large chunks of different things, brain and bone or just one or the other, spilled out. I smiled. I was really pleased with how I did that in one try. Then I looked up and saw the other people, and heard their reactions, which were largely negative, I’d say.
Some cursed me, others said stuff that made think this guy was important to them, husband or dad or whatever. Others were clearly just upset in a general sort of way, because even I have to admit it looked bad, the way his head opened up, so much of it, all in one instant. It was like cracking an egg more than skull. Much less resistance than I’d expected, less heft.
Then they all started making noises that were not sounds I’d heard before. It reminded me of birds and bugs and other animals when they’re wounded or just pissed off. I didn’t like that. It didn’t seem right that they could make those sounds. Could I make those sounds too? I tried joining in, just to give it a shot, but I don’t think I got it right.
Then the guy I’d whacked lifted his head up at me, which made instinctually take a step back.
“That all ya got?” he said, and his voice was really off-putting to me, not normal like it was before. The others were jumping up and down, screeching away still.
“What’s going on here?” I said, but they didn’t hear me, so I kind of waved at them to shut up.
“What’s going on here exactly?” I said. “I don’t get it.”
The guy was still hanging between the inside and the outside, his head still pulsing out congealed blobs of stuff.
“This building will be our new nest. We are cold. We will enter and we will make it our new nest, which we will line with your skin and heads.”
I’d heard of these things but never met one before. They’re not people, and not birds. I don’t think they have a name, because no one bothers to name stuff anymore, especially not stuff like that. They’re just some other kind of thing, and it’s not even clear if they’re really alive and natural or generated or both. There’s a lot of stuff like that now, too much too often to name.
But I knew they weren’t good things to have around. They do stuff like they said, making nests out of skin and stuff. Not good, because unlike what I told them, I actually enjoy being alive and do care about that, even if I don’t care about much else besides working out. These days, anyway.
“No thanks,” I said.
“You’re afraid. I can hear the fear in your voice. Good. You will taste even sweeter for it,” he said, and then he started laughing, I think, and they all started making that sound too, which I really didn’t like.
I walked right over and whacked him again, even harder than before. They all stopped laughing when he did. It was pretty quiet after that besides the sound of me hitting that thing’s head over and over again. I wanted to make sure it was gone. I didn’t like what it said or the thoughts it had or the way it laughed. I wanted to make that part of it go away forever.
When I was done, I was pretty winded. I put my hands on my thighs and just heaved for a while. Then they all started screeching again. They weren’t happy about what I did to their main guy, I guess. Not waking back up from that one, I don’t think, is what I thought.
They all rushed the door then, started trying to pry it open, but it wouldn’t slide further because it’s a decent quality door, so they started climbing over him. As they did, I stood there whacking their heads. Some of them threw up their hands and blocked some of the shots, others I caught pretty well, but it wasn’t going so great overall.
There were too many of them and they were too wild. Soon, they’d all spill in and we’d all be in trouble. I don’t think anyone else in the office would put up much of a fight. They’d just hide for a while until they broke down the doors. Oh well, I thought, everyone’s got to go some time. I tried my best and came up short. Can’t feel bad about that.
I took a few steps back and watched them struggle to squeeze through. The only thing delaying them was how eager they all were to get through. They kept getting stuck, then pulling back a little and trying again, then getting stuck again. It went on that way for a while, but then they finally figured out they should go one at a time. But then, they’d calmed down enough to organize a line.
The first one hopped onto their guy’s dead shoulders and started sliding through when I heard a noise I hadn’t heard in a while. It sounded like a buzz and a whistle. It was a missile from one of the Personal Detonation Cannons. They fire out very localized explosives. On some, they can be small enough to burst a blood vessel.
This wasn’t one of those. I tried to stagger back a bit further but was too slow. A quick thumping THROWWWWWPPP boomed and all kinds of bits and splatters popped all over me. The one coming through the door’s head was totally gone, even more gone than the guy I’d worked over.
It was our militia. I guessed they’d come by to continue negotiations or to form a picket for a while, even though they knew no scabs would ever bother to replace them, because that would kick off a faction war in the area immediately.
Still, they’d come by and showed up at a great time, and yeah, they thought they were scabs at first, but then when they got closer, after blowing up that first one’s head, they saw they were some other kind of thing. Then they really gave them hell. Seemed to me like they were trying out some new stuff they’d bought since I last saw them. One thing twisted one of those thing up like wrung out towel. Their blood burst out of all their holes and made some new ones in the process. It was pretty gnarly, but impressive.
After the group of whatever those things are were disposed of in a big fire in the lot, which was kind of a fun bonfire type situation even though the smell was awful, Rogburd got the ok to continue bargaining with them for a new contract, which was settled at a 4x increase over their last salary. Everyone seemed happy about not being skinned alive, even Rogburd, who got approval from HQ to make the rest of the day a casual day, which meant you could hangout or go home. Everyone stayed to hangout, but I think it had more to do with being afraid there might be more of those things out there.
In any case, it turned into a pretty great day, and the militia guys even said they were impressed at how I got one with my smart idea about the sliding doors. They said if I didn’t want to work at the company anymore I could join up with them. They said it’s actually pretty fun to be in a militia and they all hangout after work, sometimes even going on group trips together to fish or fight with other militia.
Well, I said yes. Honestly, whacking that one thing on the head over and over kind of inspired me. It was like, oh yeah, I miss stuff like this. And being in a militia is even cooler than being an athlete, because you get to use much more advanced and destructive weapons, and you’re way better funded than any sports team ever is. You get to wear cool uniforms too. But more importantly, for me, is the camaraderie. I realized what I was really missing since my athlete days was a real sense of community. With my militia brothers and sisters, I have found that, and life is a lot better overall.
I also got a huge raise obviously, so that was great too. But yeah, mostly it’s the friendships.