Company - Max Barry [16]
Freddy says, “I know who our main competitor is, if that helps. Assiduous. Assiduous is always hiring our ex-employees.”
Holly lets out a short, disgusted snort. “Traitors.”
Jones has never heard of Assiduous. “What does it do?”
Holly and Freddy look at each other.
“Oh, come on.”
“Well, you can't go around asking questions about Assiduous,” Freddy says. “How would that look? Besides, when someone joins Assiduous, they're the enemy. You can't call them up and ask how they're doing. You have to protect company secrets.”
“What secrets? You guys don't know anything!”
“Remember Jim?” Holly says to Freddy. “I was sad when he left. I would have liked to have kept in touch with him.”
Jones's phone rings. He reaches over Freddy's shoulder for his handset, but Freddy beats him and pushes SPEAKER. Jones says, “Hello?”
“Hi. I've heard there's something of a run on the training courses. Can I still get an order in, or is it too late?”
Freddy frowns and leans close to the speaker. “Is this Procurement?”
“Ah, yes.”
“You're Roger's account! Why are you calling this number?”
“Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I did call Roger.”
“No! You didn't!” Freddy kills the call. He gets up and walks back to his desk.
Jones says, “Was that necessary?”
Freddy picks up his phone. “I want to try something.”
Jones's phone rings. “Hello?”
Freddy yelps. Jones gets it in stereo: across the aisle and out of the handset. “Roger's forwarded his phone!” He hurries to Jones's desk and starts punching buttons.
“Hey, Jones,” Holly says. “This thing about what the company does, don't let it get to you. I was the same when I first started working here. But you just get used to it. The thing is, there's plenty about Zephyr that makes no sense. Sydney got promoted to manager. One of the best parking spaces is always empty, I mean always, but we're not allowed to use it. Last month we had to sit through a presentation on eliminating redundancy, and it was a bunch of PowerPoint slides, plus a guy reading out what was on the slides, and then he gave us all hard copies. I don't understand these things. I don't really understand anything about this company. It's just how things are. Like that story, you know, with the monkeys?”
“Chimps,” Freddy says. He stabs at Jones's phone. “A-ha. Jones, I've forwarded your phone to Elizabeth.”
Holly folds her hands on her desk. “These chimps, they're in a cage, and the scientists poke in a banana on a stick. The chimps try to grab it, but as soon as they do, the scientists electrify the floor, so all the chimps get a shock. This goes on until the chimps learn that touching a banana equals electric shock. Right? Then the scientists take one chimp out and put in a new one. This chimp, when he goes to grab the banana, he gets beaten up by all the others, because they don't want to get shocked. You see?”
“That's a terrible story,” Jones says.
“The scientists keep switching chimps, one at a time, until none of the originals are left. Then they add one more. The new chimp, he goes for the banana and the others jump him, same as before. But, see, none of them was ever shocked. They don't know why they're doing it. They just know that's the way they do things.”
“So I'm the new chimp.”
“You're the new chimp. Don't try to understand the company. Just go with it.”
In the bowels of the company, a computer is about to be murdered. It's a simple computer, a PABX. Its job is to route phone calls. It is running software that was once as clean and functional as a mountain stream, but over the past decade has been patched, tweaked, and customized into a steaming, festering jungle, where vines snag at your feet and snarling, fanged creatures live in the shadows. There is a path through the jungle, a clear, well-worn path, and if you follow it you will always be safe. But take two misdirected steps and the jungle will eat you alive.
The software prevents two phones from forwarding their calls to each other, which would create what is known as an infinite loop, a particularly brutal way to kill a computer. In IT, infinite loops