Company - Max Barry [36]
“Interesting, isn't it?” Eve says. “How you need to be more disciplined to operate a high-performance piece of machinery. More machinelike yourself.” She stretches in the sun. Jones wants to glance at her, but doesn't trust himself not to wrap the Audi around a street sign. “Damn, this is a beautiful day. Someone tried to tell me the other day that the only habitable place in America is California. But I just don't understand how you could spend your life restricted to summer outfits.” She slides something onto her hair, pulling it into a ponytail that leaps and twists in the wind. “Okay, let's get down to business. You seem like a smart guy, so I'll spare you the sales pitch, all right?”
“Thanks.”
“If you don't join Alpha, your career is over.”
Jones swerves a little. A white Ford honks at him. “Can I have the sales pitch?”
She laughs. “If you join Alpha, you'll start at $125,000 a year, be on the cutting edge of global business management practices, and get the kind of experience money can't buy. Instead of spending your days with the pencil pushers and clock-watchers, you get to play with the big boys. You get to have fun.”
Jones risks a glance at her. “What do you mean, my career would be over?”
“What happens if people find out Zephyr is fake?”
“I guess . . . the experiment is ruined. You'd have to shut the company down.”
“So we can't have you telling anybody. We would take steps to ensure you didn't.”
“What sort of—”
“‘Stephen Jones was a competent and productive member of staff, except when using the Internet to download animal-related pornography.'”
“Jesus!”
She laughs. “I'm kidding. Kind of. But you get the idea. You wouldn't want to put us on your CV. You can come up with some story to explain the gap in your employment history, but still, that's the kind of thing that makes employers wary. If it comes down to you and someone who didn't mysteriously miss out on every major graduate intake program, I know who I'd hire.”
“What if I just promise not to tell anyone about Project Alpha?”
“We prefer to play it safe,” Eve says. “There's a lot at stake.”
Jones doesn't say anything.
“But don't focus on the negatives. The important thing is the opportunity. So just say yes.”
“To what? I don't know what you want me to do.”
“Same as the rest of us: become an agent. You keep your official job, but you also run projects for Alpha. If Klausman likes your ideas, you get your own project. Maybe it even goes into the next edition of The Omega Management System. It's very rewarding. Occasionally we go into other companies to present our findings, tailor a solution for their special circumstances. That's the best. You fly around the country, stay in five-star hotels, bill everything to the client . . . I'm telling you, Jones, it beats the crap out of filing someone else's expense forms.”
“But no one in Zephyr would know what I'm doing.”
“No.” Eve snickers. “No, Jones.”
He pulls up at a red light and looks across at her. She has one arm hanging out of the car and is looking at him through dark sunglasses and smiling. Despite this, Jones says, “I don't know if I feel comfortable spying on my co-workers.”
“Urrrr,” Eve says, as if she has heard this a million times before. “Okay, look. Companies spy on their workers. They have security cameras. They monitor e-mails. Employees know they're being watched. We're just more organized about it than most companies.”
“There's a difference between a security camera and sitting next to someone pretending to be their colleague.” She doesn't say anything, so he adds, “Don't you think?”
“Honestly? No. If you see a co-worker ripping off the company and report it to your manager, is that wrong? That's what we're doing: we're looking out for unproductive situations and trying to fix them.”
“But—”
“Do you want the ethics speech? Because we have one. It's on video, this whole spiel about how we're improving business efficiency, creating jobs,