Company - Max Barry [58]
Holly sighs. “Same.”
“But I did hear that Simon from Training Delivery clocked Blake Seddon. Right in the face.”
“You're kidding! Blake Seddon from Senior Management?”
“And—get this—now he's wearing an eye patch. Like a pirate.” He looks from Holly to Jones. But Jones doesn't smile. Jones has already seen Blake's eye patch: he was introduced to it on Monday at 7:30 A.M., during Project Alpha's morning meeting. Jones wasn't especially unhappy to discover that someone had assaulted Blake, but this was tempered by the fact that Blake now looked even more like he just stepped from a daytime TV soap. “Needless to say,” Freddy continues, “Simon is now an ex-employee. And, of course, Assiduous snapped him up. I bet they loved the idea of getting their hands on someone who punched a Zephyr executive. They're probably getting him to run training drills.”
“Hey, that reminds me,” Holly says. “I called Human Resources to find out Megan's contact details, so we could send her a card—”
“That's a good idea,” Jones says.
“—and they wouldn't tell me. They said she'd been hired by Assiduous.” She throws a fearful look at Jones. “It's like you said.” Jones doesn't react, so she adds, “Isn't that creepy?”
“I don't know. Not really.”
“Not really? Before you were saying there was a conspiracy.”
“Well, I thought about it some more.” The elevator arrives at the lobby and Jones squints against the bright light. “I realized that in a market with only two major players, it's perfectly natural for there to be cross-pollination of employees.” This is, word for word, a line from an Alpha training manual Klausman gave him last week.
Holly says, “But—” Then she stops, because waiting to step into the elevator is Eve Jantiss.
“Oh. Hello.” Eve smiles. “Hello, Jones.”
“Hi.” And then he has to do it. “Do you know Freddy and Holly?”
“We've probably spoken on the phone. But I can never put faces to names.” She laughs. She looks fresh and alert, and why shouldn't she? Eve had six hours of unbroken sleep last night. Jones, who was awake for every minute of it, knows this for a fact.
“It's nice to meet you,” Holly says.
“Ymmrr,” says Freddy.
“It's funny, isn't it?” Eve says. “We spend so much time here, but we don't even know what one another are really like.” She puts a slight emphasis on really.
Nobody responds to this. To avoid any further mind games, which Jones is not in good shape to handle, he says, “Well, nice to see you,” and begins to cross the lobby.
Freddy and Holly catch up halfway across. Freddy says, “Did you see me back there? She'll think I'm retarded.”
They exit into sunshine and head up the sidewalk. “It's like you're two people,” Holly says suddenly.
“What?” Jones says, startled.
“What Eve said. It's true. You come to work every day but you hardly get to know anyone. I don't even know the names of half the people I see in the elevators. They say the company is a big family, but I don't know them. And even the people I do, like you two, and Elizabeth, and Roger—do I really? I mean, I like you guys, but we only ever talk about work. When I'm out with friends, or at home, I never talk about work. The other day I tried to explain to my sister why it's such a huge deal that Elizabeth ate Roger's donut, and she thought I was insane. And you know what, I agreed with her. At home I couldn't even think why it mattered. Because I'm a different person at home. When I leave this place at night, I can feel myself changing. Like shifting gears in my head. And you guys don't know that; you just know what I'm like here, which is terrible, because I think I'm better away from work. I don't even like who I am here. Is that just me? Or is everyone different when they come to work? If they are, then what are they really like? How can we ever know? All we know are the Work People.”
“Oh my God,” Freddy says. “Elizabeth ate Roger's donut?”
Holly freezes. “No, I meant, Roger thought Elizabeth ate his donut.”
“That's not what you said.”
“It came out wrong.