Chapter Text
Miss Peggy looked up at me expectantly when I walked in the door. “Mr. Linden asked to see you when you came in,” she said.
“Sam?” I asked. “Or Shax?”
“Kent Linden?” she said. “Your boss?”
Something about her telling worried me. I wasn't sure whether there was danger in her voice or simply annoyance that I didn't recognize his last name.
“OK,” I said, trying to appear nonchalant, “where is his office?”
“Top floor, northeast corner.”
Top floor? Wait a minute… "I thought the top three floors were locked?” I asked.
Miss Peggy typed something into her computer, looking back up at me perhaps half a minute later. “Looks like you have access,” she said. She then returned to whatever she was doing on her computer, and I took that as a dismissal.
I climbed the eight flights of stairs, finding myself sweaty and winded at the end. It occurred to me as I reached my ring for the scanner on the door that I probably should have tested floor six before climbing the remaining two floors. To my immense relief, however the scanner flashed green and I was able to open the door.
“Identify! Identify!” Proclaimed the Daleks.
“Go fuck off to Gallifrey,” I told them, my inner geek protesting as I said it that I knew that was the plan at the Time Lords came from and not the Daleks.
That seemed to do the trick, however and while they continued to mumble “Identify! Identify!” they still moved out of my way and let me through. I was pretty sure that the entrance to this building faced the south, and I remembered that Miss Peggy had said Kents office was on the north side, but not whether it was east or west. So I strode down the hall and turned left, ignoring the naked female bodies that cringed away from me. There was an unoccupied and locked office there, so I turned around and went down in the other direction.
***
The office in the northeast corner was occupied by Kent and three naked females leashed to a panel on the wall with five loops arranged like the Olympic rings. I noticed that one was blonde, one was black, and one was Asian, but they all seemed to be of a type. I didn't even realize you could find East Asian women who looked in their natural state like they had had boob jobs, but Kent had somehow managed.
“Ahh, there you are Clark!” he exclaimed. Then he looked at me. “You took the stairs?”
“I assumed the elevator was disabled,” I admitted, “or at least that I would require a key.”
Kent laughed. “Nah, you just need to scan your ring or watch to call the elevator, and it will take you to whatever floors you have access to.” Before I could ask the obvious question, he answered it. “We've got two dozen people here, and six of us—now you’re number seven—have access to the virgin floors. Plus we've got cameras. If anyone lets the foxes into the henhouse, we will figure out who the foxes were and who let them in pretty damn quick. Anyways, how was the job fair?”
It took me a minute to process the question, so sudden was the whiplash of the change of topic. “Oh,” I said, “I got to talk to a few groups that I think are relevant to our operation, and I learned about a few more.” I proceeded to tell him about my conversations and some of the inferences I had drawn from them.
“Good, good,” he nodded. “I definitely think drawing up those org charts you mentioned would be helpful. Ask Sam about getting you on the Expara node, or Shax, if you catch him in a good mood.” We sat there in silence for perhaps a minute as it seemed like he was either lost in thought or ogling his three naked sex pets. Then, he spoke again. “You are citizen level two, right?”
I nodded. “To the best of my knowledge, yeah.”
“That's a mistake, wouldn't you agree?” My heart sank. It had seemed like it was all going well with him, but was he already proposing demoting me?
“I'm afraid I don't understand how levels are assessed well enough to judge,” I told him.
He nodded. “Fair enough, but take it from me, it's clearly a mistake. Did you do something to piss off your interviewer during the initial appraisal?”
I remembered the sour-faced Fox News anchorette who had interviewed me not even a week prior. “I think she was unimpressed by the pigsty I lived in, she didn’t like my answers to the questions in the provo half, plus I was very late in confirming the interview in the first place.”
Kent nodded. “I thought as much. I can recommend you for a promotion up one level as it is, but I'm also going to propose you get reevaluated by a more neutral party in let's say six weeks?”
I nodded. “I will trust your judgment on this, I told him.”
“With one exception, all of our staff have come in at level three, and yet it seems like you understand what we're about already better than almost any of them. Consider yourself provisionally level three, but we've got to get you up to four or five ASAP. Those who get what we’re about get access to the whole building, and I'm lifting all the access restrictions that I can for a level three. I assume I can trust you not to go wild with the virgins and to move them down the floor if you do decide to deflower any of them?”
I nodded. “To be honest sir, I think I kind of want to keep work and pleasure separate. I don’t think I want to be fucking the inventory that often unless I'm planning on taking it home with me.”
“I can respect that,” he told me. “If you want to take a couple more home, just be discreet about it. Don't go rubbing anyone's faces in your access to the source material. How’s that original party favor working out for you by the way?”
“Remarkably well,” I told him, “considering how roughly I've used her. Remember how I told you that my apartment was a pigsty and it did not impress my interviewer much?” He nodded. “Well, that's not a problem for me anymore. When I'm not using her body as a oversized fleshlight or coming up with creative ways to torture her, she's been a regular 50’s housewife.”
He grabbed his chin and began stroking it. “I assume you are accounting for the possibility that she might be trying to lull you into complacency.”
“I am,” I said, “and I consider that a real possibility. But I also think if half of what y'all have told me is true she's not gonna get the opportunity she's looking for. That said, I do think that when she figures out she's not gonna get the opportunity, she might try to make a run for it. I don't suppose Sam has any GPS trackers I could stick on her against that moment?”
Kent shook his head. “That would be Shax, when he's here he has the office down that way,” he pointed down the hall to the corner office I had seen locked. “But of course he splits his time between us and cyber. Marco is working with him now though, he might be able to set you up with something if you can't find him.”
I thanked Kent, I did not know who Marco was but I figured Sam or Miss Peggy could probably tell me if I could not find Shax. After that it became clear that the interview was at an end. He dismissed me and I took the elevator back down to the first floor. Miss Peggy, with some annoyance helped me find the office supplies I was looking for, and I began putting together the dead tree versions of my org charts.
***
About 90 minutes in, I decided I needed a break and took the elevator up to the top floor to see if Shax was in. He was still out, so I asked Miss Peggy about Marco and ask Marco about GPS trackers.
“Yeah, said Marco,” a swarthy muscular man in his mid-30s, “Cyber is doing some amazing things with GPS trackers I hear, but I only have access to the ankle monitors. We are mostly doing that with raw inventory we are claiming for ourselves, to keep track of them on the floor. You said you went by Shax’s office? You have virgin floor access?”
“Yeah,” I said. “As of today, apparently.”
“Guess that makes us the Lucky Seven then, until some fortunate fellow gets promoted to number eight. Anyways, if you do you want to claim one for yourself, I would recommend moving her to one of the virgin floors. I'm not gonna say I don't trust the new guys, but some of them seem like they would take a marker of ownership like that as an invitation.”
I thanked him and asked him for a monitor for Gingham. He insisted on giving me four more of them, “just in case.”