Company - Max Barry [30]
All the doors are closed. None are labeled. Then one to his left clicks, and Freddy stops. The door swings open. Beyond it is a dark meeting room. But there's no table, just a plastic chair in the center of the room. Freddy steps inside warily. “You want me to sit in the chair?” There is no response but silence. He walks over and sits. He realizes he is facing an enormous mirror.
The voice comes out of nowhere, the one from the voice mail. “Your name,” it says. “State your name.”
Passing by a stairwell door marked 15, Jones notices a certain weakness entering his legs. By the time he reaches 10, his legs are visibly shaking and his shirt is stuck to his back. At 5, he misses a step and decides to go with it: he half sits, half falls onto a concrete step, and takes the opportunity to suck air into his burning lungs. As if waiting for this, his forehead jets sweat, which Jones tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to mop up with his sleeves. He realizes he is not going to make the best impression on Senior Management.
A sound bounces up the stairwell from below. Jones sits up. It comes again (or is that an echo?), then he hears voices. One says something like, “Up or down?” and the other replies, “Gotta be up.” Jones wonders if this might be Security, tracking him down, and then one of them yells, “Mr. Jones? You're not permitted in the stairwell. We need to take you to Human Resources. Are you there? Mr. Jones? It's best if we get this done quickly.” This settles the issue, and Jones hauls himself to his feet and starts climbing again.
A few minutes of Herculean effort later, he is face-to-face with a stairwell door marked 2. The Security guards are still behind him, but at least five floors lower. Jones reaches for the bar to open the door . . . then hesitates. He looks up. Level 2 is Senior Management. But level 1 is Daniel Klausman, the CEO. Jones thinks: Why settle for second-best? He has come all this way.
His legs lodge an objection, but Jones overrules them: he staggers up one more set of concrete steps. And then he is facing a door marked 1 with nowhere else to go.
It looks just like all the other stairwell doors. He's a little disappointed; he was half expecting golden gates, fluffy clouds, and bright light spilling out. Oh well. He puts his hands on the metal bar and pushes it down. Ker-lack! In the stairwell, it sounds like a gunshot. Down below, the Security guards start shouting. Because of the echoes, it's hard to make out individual words, but Jones gets the impression that there are dire consequences in store for him. Jones knew that already. He just hopes there are no Security guards on level 1. If he's gone through all this for nothing, he will be very disgruntled. He shoulders open the door.
The wind nearly pulls him onto his face. He has to grab at the door for balance. It's so different from what he expected that for a second his brain fails to comprehend it; he just hangs there, gulping air, his eyeballs struggling for focus. His first stupid thought is: His office is huge!
Jones is on the roof.
“You know my name,” Freddy says. “You asked me to come here.”
“State your name,” the voice says again.
He swallows. He guesses this is for the record. Whatever record that is. Or maybe—another idea occurs to him—it's to calibrate their equipment. When you have a polygraph test, Freddy has heard, they ask simple questions first, to get the parameters right. They save the real questions for later.
“Freddy Carlson.”
“State your employee number.”
“It's 4123488.”
“State your department.”
“Training Sales. Level 14.” He clears his throat. “All this is on my application.”
“You have a disability.”
Freddy shifts on the chair. In the mirror, his reflection does likewise. To Freddy, his reflection looks very