Maxi was so focused on returning to her homeworld that she almost made the same mistake again. While charging forward through life, recklessly, and making up plans as she went along had generally served her well. She did not want to end up like Von Patrick and ever since his death, the realness of her situation, the permanence of her situation came crashing down on her.
Being bold had its place. It had allowed to figure out the secret of the antitrust lawyer. It helped her survive the dragon. It even got her through a time when literally everyone in the company was out to get her. Now, it felt different. Her first instinct was to run to her mom, figure out how to get back to her homeworld, and take a look.
Something told to hold back even though every fiber of her being wanted to move forward. It was the same reason why she was saving up to buy the Accelerated Healing skill that would decrease the chair’s healing time by a factor of her dedication skill. It was also a skill the Paranormal Investigators would never have unless the dual classed, so she could go on more quests more often, which meant more rewards, more often.
Whether it was anxiety of going back to her homeworld or a sense of caution imbued in her from Von Patrick’s death, she couldn’t know. There was a part of her that wondered if she wasn’t as shaken up by the death of her home dimension because she never really knew it like her parents did. She wondered if it was like reading about tragic events on the other side of the world.
Yes, they were tragic. Yes, she felt bad for people going through turmoil regardless of where they were located, but it never hit her as hard as say the death of one of her friends back in high school. There was a guy in her class. She didn’t know him that well, but he was always nice to her. He died along with his entire family in a car accident while they were on vacation.
It hit her and all the people at her school pretty hard. She remembered not being able to sleep for weeks. Yet, at the same time, she could read about a natural disaster claiming hundreds of lives, and she’d feel bad for them but not lose sleep over it.
Maxi wondered if going back to her homeworld would hit her the same way, like that guy from high school, Thomas, she thought his name was. She feared that she was able to avoid most of the trauma by being distanced from it because it happened before long term memory was being formed. Not that there hadn’t been trauma from it. She was already high strung enough, and her family felt more like a ticking time bomb, not a matter of if but a matter of when.
Like all great emotional dilemmas in her life, she filed it away as a for later problem. Instead, after coming back from the HR training, she sat at her desk and took inventory of her todo list. She needed to attend more psychic training classes and swordwork classes. There was also the quest about the Destruction of the entire Planet of Earth that she didn’t know what to do with, but was pretty sure, it would be fairly urgent at some point in the future. She had requested Von Patrick’s computer files and was granted access. There was also that sketch he drew of the Printer of Never Jamming, if it was the real thing or something he just imagined. There was also a fetch quest called A Pen For Martha, but after the Sticky Notes for Bobby quest blew up in her face, she wasn’t so sure she’d wanted to go there just yet.
How was it that her to-do list had grown insurmountable and overwhelming? Office workers seemed fated to always have more to accomplish then one could reasonably expect in a week. For every item she cleared off the list more would be added to the pile. For a workplace that prided on employees never having more than they could handle, she certainly had piled on more than she could handle.
Then there was also the matter of the raid boss then just fought… she popped up from her cubicle and leaned over to Farhad’s.
“Farhad,” she said. “Hey Farhad!”
He was listening to his music while doing something that looked like creating a powerpoint presentation for lemon bars. It was probably one of the menial labor tasks the company queued up for income generation. From what Maxi knew of the company, if there was a task someone could be hired to do on the internet, chances were that it was someone at the company doing it.
She had paid an artist to make a graphic for her Spasm Channel page once and now wondered if it was one of the company Workers doing it from the menial labor section from their work station. The chances seemed pretty high, because there never seemed to be a shortage of tasks to do, even with surge pricing changing the incentives.
Maxi changed tactics and created a sticky note paper airplane, not with her magic Sticky Notes of Wonderment, just with the regular pad that came with her desk when she got it. That was another cost saving measure on the company’s part, the first standard issue office supplies were free after that, they charged, at least for stuff that wasn’t on the basic list.
Sticky notes were not considered a basic item but a common one. Common ones all came with a price. Regardless, she folded the paper into a tiny plane and flew it at Farhad, it thunked the corner of his screen but he was too busy rearranging a lemon bar to notice.
She could have just walked over and tapped him on the shoulder but one of her coworkers’ criticisms was that she didn’t stay in her chair enough. At least, she had found a reason to sit a little longer. She folded the next one again, but this time changed the design a little.
It wasn’t till she started watching videos on the internet about how to make different kinds of paper airplanes and Farhad’s desk was littered with them that she finally caught his attention.
Farhad swiveled in his chair and removed his headphones and noticed the sticky note paper airplane graveyard that had become his workspace. He glanced up at her. “Bored much?”
“You’re always saying I should stick around to heal more.”
“Daisuke is always saying that. I never said that. You sticking around in your chair until you’re healed is like leaving a kid alone in a room with a marshmallow and telling them you’ll give them a second one if they wait until you come back and don’t eat the first one. Never going to happen.”
“Marshmallows sound good. Especially when they are all melty in hot cocoa.”
“My point exactly.”
“You know how last month, we figured out how to beat the raid boss, and got a lot of credits because we got a percentage of everyone’s rewards?”
“Yes.”
“We figured out how to beat the raid boss.”
“Takeshi already beat us to it.”
“What?!?! That prick! How? He wasn’t even in the raid with us!”
“He went on a raid. Must have figured it out. There are 98 left now. The battle logs show that he was the only one to do damage from his whole Office Pool.”
“They were in the same training as us! When would they have time to do the raid?”
“He was one of the first people done with the test. He must have went on the raid afterward.”
“Without his Office Pool?”
“We went on the raid without you when you disappeared for a week.”
“I just don’t get it. I was unconscious and recovering in my chair when I figured out last month’s raid and plenty of people had used my technique before I woke up.”
“That’s because I registered the technique on your behalf,” Daisuke said from across the way. “One of the advantages of not charging into battle and dying every chance you get.”
Maxi winced. The wound was too fresh. There was still guilt over the death of Von Patrick. Even though, objectively, if she thought about the situation, he may have died regardless of her being there or not. If she was healing when IT went to shit and got stuck here with Farhad, the creature still would have been in the elevator and killed Von Patrick or the guy might have asphyxiated in the freezer.
Either way, no one would have come along to drag him to a resurrection chair in time. Without her, the chances were slim that Daisuke would have come across him in time either. It didn’t change any of the feelings of guilt, knowing that Von Patrick’s permadeath was inevitable. But it was pretty low of Daisuke to turn the knife when it was in so deep, even by Daisuke standards, who was an asshole on a good day.
A thought occurred to her. Yancy had been nice to her too, but also prone to these uncomfortable outbursts. She brushed it off as him just being a little weird. They all had their idiosyncrasies. Maxi was convinced that Belinda thought she was a cat. Patti treated the pop star Ricky Martin like he was some sort of catholic saint. Daisuke was a prick. Farhad hid it well, but Maxi knew he was traumatized by whatever happened to his Office Pool before it became its current configuration.
And Flav… he was a solid guy. Maxi couldn’t think of anything weird about him, but there had to be something. The man probably had an apartment full of porcelain dolls or something creepy like that. Not that she’d necessarily think anything less of him for having something like that, glass houses, stones, and whatnot. She was her own bundle of neuroticism and high strung energy that sometimes rubbed people the wrong way.
Even with the inner strange that she was convinced resided in every human, Daisuke had been a little more standoffish than usual. He seemed like he was always ready to pick a fight, storm out of the room, or go above and beyond his usual self. Could what happened to Yancy be happening to him too?
She didn’t know Yancy for very long or very well. There was no telling if his outbursts of aggression were him or a demonic entity taking possession of him. She wasn’t even sure if possession was the right word. He could have been born with the black eyes. Cassidy claimed they did a background check, but how thorough was it? Did they pull his records from elementary school and find out if his eyes turned black when he pushed a kid on the playground at school?
It was the kind of thing that most NPCs would convince themselves they didn’t see, a trick of the light, or their adrenaline got going, so they must not remember it correctly. It was something that if Cassidy’s PIs interviewed Yancy’s friends and family, they could possibly tease the information out of someone. One person remembering the abyss of eyes from the kid would be enough to tell Maxi that Yancy was always that way.
Or was her determination to prove Yancy was always a demon kid, just her way to clear Daisuke of possession charges? Daisuke couldn’t be possessed if Yancy was just a demon spawn and not a seemingly normal person that went off the rails. Did she have the thought because she wanted it to be true? Or because it was true?
Maxi decided to ignore Daisuke’s comment and said. “Something seems wrong to me. Why would Takeshi hop on the next raid without his Office Pool?”
“Maybe it started while the rest were taking the test,” Farhad suggested.
“But isn’t daily attendance mandatory?”
“There are exceptions. People get sick, having training, vacations. There are plenty of completely acceptable reasons to miss a raid. That’s why we have a whole month to clear them to account for the fact that not every employee can be here every day.”
Maxi realized something. If she could miss a raid, then could she apply to be on the next one. She thanked them, and said was going to do a bit of research. She pulled up a chat window with Terry.
She typed: Can I join a raid outside of my scheduled time?
Terry answered: Yes. Would you like me to schedule you for the next one?
No, thank you. I’ll go whenever we go next.
Anytime.
While she couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, something felt a little bit off. The unscheduled training. Takeshi clearing the test before any of them and charging off to the next raid by himself. Something wasn’t adding up. Yet another thing to add to her every growing to-do list.
***
Later, after she recovered all of the psy points and did some menial labor to pass the time, she headed over to IT because her request for the contents of Von Patrick’s data was approved but only under the supervision of an IT manager. She figured they would be busy cleaning up after the miniature apocalypse from the other day.
By the time the elevator opened to the call center floor where the rank and file employees did tech support calls all day, the office was as if the incident never happened. There wasn’t even blood stains on the carpet or cubicle walls.
A man in a yellow shirt greeted her. From his nametag, she saw that he was Frank. He was an older man, near retirement, and had a brown tie. Maxi was willing to place money that the tie was magical, probably boosted his adaptability checks or something. Very few items were what they seemed, especially for long time employees.
“Greetings,” Frank said and extended his hand. “I would like to personally thank you for saving the lives of me and my fellow IT professionals. Your courage has not gone unnoticed.”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Thanks,” Maxi said. “But don’t thank me too much. I was with Von Patrick when he died.”
“It was my understanding that he would have died even if you hadn’t been there. At least he didn’t die alone. Besides there are many who are alive because you fought here in this room.” Frank waved his hands and the people on the phones stood up and made silent cheering and clapping gestures as most of them were still on the phone. She even saw a man whose leg was nearly gnawed off by a printer hold up a “Thank you, Maxi” sign.
Maxi blushed and said, “I’m sure the PIs did their part too.”
“Most of them came after a majority of us had gotten out. Something, more of us wouldn’t have been able to do if it wasn’t for you.”
Maxi wasn’t surprised that the PIs arrived later. Even if a group was equipped and ready to go, the elevators were down, and they would have had to use the stairs. It was nothing special to her. She was just in the right place at the wrong time, and just doing her job. Plenty of people did their jobs and didn’t get accolades for it.
She decided to do what she did best when a situation got too uncomfortable, change the subject. “Seems like you cleaned up the place well,” Maxi said as they started towards the IT corridors and the phone support people sat back at their desk.
Frank nodded. “We can’t take credit for that. It was Janitorial. We are going to have a hefty bill.”
“They are charging you? But it’s the company. I can see PIs footing the bill if they cause too much damage to an NPC place. Gotta keep the secrets and all, but IT. It’s in the same building.”
“True, but they aren’t charging me. If they couldn’t find out who was responsible for letting all the monsters out of their cages, maybe them, but in absence of anyone to blame, it’s charged to the department. So, I guess it will be us. IT will take a little more out of quests until the bill is paid off.”
“Is that why people are working? I mean I saw a guy who nearly had his leg chewed off the other day and here he is back at work.”
“The resurrection chairs are amazing things,” Frank agreed.
“I mean, doesn’t he need time off for, you know, the trauma?”
“Company employees seem to be a little better at handling trauma. I mean most NPCs are so anxious to put the event behind them, they’ll believe anything Janitorial suggests. Company employees are so dedicated to the truth that they’ll retraumatize themselves just to get to it.”
“I guess when you put it like that,” Maxi said as they continued to walk.
She could scarcely believe how thorough Janitorial had been in scrubbing the place clean. Not just blood and printer parts, but the doors that had been blown off the hinges had been replaced. Walls with claw marks looked new, no evidence of patches. There wasn’t even a dent in a wall where Maxi had sworn she had seen one as if a giant beast had rammed into it.
Compounded with the fact that it all happened within a day, Maxi believed there had been some sort of magic going on. According to her mom, magic didn’t exist and psychic powers were just using the astral plane to their advantage. Tara was convinced that all the “magical” things she had seen during her time at the company was just science she didn’t understand. Her mother was definitely in the Arthur C Clarke camp of advanced technology looks like magic to people who didn’t understand it.
Maxi wasn’t quite sure. She’d seen fire breathing dragons, killer slime, and three headed creatures that charmed her into not killing it (that bunny still gave her chills over how adorable it was). She wasn’t sure how anything those things could just evolve in a natural world.
Then there were the magic elevators themselves. They literally could read her mind and take her to any elevator door in the world/multiverse in the time it took to go fifty floors in a regular building. If it was technology, how did it work? Who built it? Who was maintaining it? All technology breaks eventually where as magic doesn’t have to obey the laws of entropy.
Maxi couldn’t explain how Janitorial could make an entire floor destroyed by monsters up and running after about a day. Yet, here she was, walking through it. If Janitorial did have some technology that was aiding them in their clean up, why wasn’t the rest of the world using it? They could have rebuilt entire cities after natural disasters or reinvisioned healthcare, but the company policy was quite clear, they could only contract services to NPCs cleared and vetted to be appropriate use of company resources.
Basically if they were to accept money from an Earth based business or person, it had to be for services a person could purchase elsewhere on Earth. Thus why IT had a massive call center floor doing outsourced tech support for almost every major company. The way Maxi’s uncle explained it, the reason they were selling IT services and not resurrection chair services would be that their chair would put every healthcare company out of business and Interdimensional law prevented companies from meddling in the affairs of the local culture.
Eventually, they made it to Monster Holding. To her horror/surprise when he opened the door, the cages were fixed and filled with creatures. A particularly nasty looking inkjet smashed itself into the cage until its face was bloodied and the plastic parts cracked. As they made their way down from the catwalk into the main holding area, Maxi asked. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“What? The monsters?” Frank asked.
“Yeah, didn’t a whole bunch of people, you know permadie?”
“We had to put them somewhere when the PIs rounded them up again, at least the ones they didn’t have to put down.”
“Why wouldn’t they put all of them down? Seems like a hazard to the company, to you.”
“The research is too important, and I have full assurances that it was a fluke and would never happen again.”
“By who?”
“Upper Management.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Frank.” Maxi said. “But have you ever met Upper Management?”
“No, but I haven’t met the President of the United States either.”
“At least you know what the President looks like. I’m just saying be careful.”
“Noted…” Frank said as he opened the door. She wasn’t sure if she sounded like a crackpot conspiracy theorist to the guy, but also didn’t care what he thought. She wasn’t here to earn his admiration or his scorn, she was here to help people, and the turn around from full apocalypse to functioning company made her uneasy.
It was probably nothing. She hadn’t been at the company long enough to know how things operated, especially the mysterious Janitorial Branch, which to her knowledge, she hadn’t met a Janitor once, at least as far as she knew. She supposed one of the many employees in the cafeteria, mailroom, or fighting with her in the raids could have been one, but she wouldn’t know.
Her anxiety was probably nothing, more a sign of being overwhelmed and overworked than something more sinister, but she remembered Von Patrick saying that someone had released the monsters, and if a person did it, they could do it again. Even if the exploit used to release the monsters was fixed, there was a person out there actively causing havoc with the company and didn’t care who they killed in the process.
Saying that an accident was fluke and would never happen again didn’t have the same weight when a person with malicious intent was part of the equation. It felt like either a mixture of incompetence and narcissism to believe they would outwit an attacker who had outwitted them already, or that they were hiding something. Either way, Maxi couldn’t escape the feeling that merely having all the monsters back in their cages was setting up for the event to happen again.
They made their way through the cages until they got into the dissection room that used to be Von Patricks. There was a printer gutted, tagged, and categorized. Even its internal organs were part beast part machine, a roller with bone, an ink cartridge with arteries sticking out. It was a macabre display that seemed very much like something Von Patrick would do but the employee doing the dissection was a woman with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and large glasses turned around.
Her rubber gloves were covered in blood, and Maxi recognized her. She was the woman in Von Patrick’s family photos, or was that her family photos. Maybe they shared the same office.
“I’ll leave you to get acquainted,” Franks said and scurried out of the room.
Maxi expected to be blamed for her husband’s death, who truly seemed to be a life partner in everything. What were the odds of two people who could endure being elbow deep in dead bodies and fascination with anatomy meeting each other? Actually, pretty good, Maxi thought. Where else do doctors boarding on mad scientists go to meet people?
“It’s good to finally meet you,” the woman said. “My husband told me so much about you. It’s nice to put a name to a face.”
Maxi was a little taken aback. She expected berating, blame, anything. Maxi had used her husband’s chair instead of him.
Instead, the woman removed her glove, held out her hand, and said. “Patricia Von Patrick.”
She elected for no teasing this time around, and simply said. “I’m sorry about your husband. If there was something I could–”
Patrica held up her hand, and Maxi petered out. “He knew the risks, so do I. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The people who deal with monsters whether it’s fighting them or studying them, they either permadie or become one of the Power Twelve.”
“There has to be some inbetween,” Maxi was starting to say but a glare from the women shut her up. Maxi normally had no problem with confrontation or what people thought, but there was something about Patricia Von Patrick that made her not want to antagonize. Maybe Maxi wasn’t over the guilt of Von Patrick, or she sensed something from Particia. She could be sure, either way, her gut was telling her that it was time to listen, not to talk.
“Come along,” Patricia said and ushered Maxi into the office next door. It hadn’t changed from when Maxi was there. Even the smiling picture of the family still on the wall. Either the woman hadn’t had the time to mourn or it truly was their office.
“Look, if this is going to be too difficult for you, I can just get remote access…”
“That’s what my supervisor suggested too. I asked to be here.”
“I’ll include you in anything I find. You have my word. Heck I’ll be happy to have Terry record the whole thing for you so you can be sure that I’m not–”
“I need to be here,” Patricia said more forcefully. The veil that had been hiding the woman’s emotions was gone now. Maxi could see the tears, the anger, and the hate in her eyes. Maxi understood it. She felt that way too sometimes when she thought about her father.
The woman slumped on the office chair, the one that was used to save Maxi’s life and not her husband’s. At least that’s what Maxi assumed, considering the office also looked as if it had a once over by Janitorial.
“I don’t have to forgive you,” Patricia said. “It’s not my job to make you feel better about yourself, saying there was nothing you could have done. Nor is it your responsibility to tiptoe around my feelings, attempt to make up for something that can never be replaced. We aren’t going to be friends laughing about this over drinks. I was something that happened, and I am a professional. My hope is that you are too.”
“Duly noted,” Maxi said.
“Good, let’s see what my husband had in his storage,” she said.
While Patricia booted the computer, Maxi asked, “You said that he talked to you about me. What did he say?”
Patricia regarded her for a moment.
“For the investigation,” Maxi said. “Maybe he said something that will help.”
“You have to know, Maxine Breakwaters, that you are famous around here. People know who you are even if you don’t know who they are. Your parents were both in the Power Twelve. Sure, most of the junior employees in the tiers you muck about in don’t know who you are, but anyone who’s been here a while knows that you are practically royalty.”
“I didn’t even know this place existed before I was hired here.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you can’t help who you are. Then you go off and break company records… So, yes, my husband talked about you, but it was more like an average everyday citizen being asked by the crown prince to work on a special project. Especially one as important as the Printer of Never Jamming.”
I’m not a princess, I have no more claim to this place than any of you, Maxi wanted to scream but stayed silent. Instead, she said. “He told you about that?”
“We don’t keep secrets from each other,” She said. “It was an obsession of his. He talked about it a lot. Honestly, I don’t think it exists. The company has been deliberately infecting electronics for ages now, and the virus has a 100% infection rate. When a device comes in contact with another device, it’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when.”
Maxi thought of Dalek, and the fact that he’d been around all their computers, phones, and Belinda’s workshop. Had she just risked her entire team because the critter was too darn cute?
“What about docile ones?” Maxi asked. “Are they infectious?”
“You’re talking your pet?”
“You know about Dalek?”
“IT keeps a record of all pets in the company, so we can respond when one turns dangerous. You’re not the first person to keep a dangerous animal. People adopt black bear cubs when they are cute and mostly harmless, only to get mauled by the creature when it grows up. Such is human nature, we keep tabs so we can put them down when the owner doesn’t have the fortitude to do it themselves. I think what you’re doing is reckless and stupid, but it’s not against company policy, so there’s nothing I can do until the pet turns.”
“So it’s not infectious.”
“Not till it starts raging out. Thus why the infection is so hard to control, it can be dormant for years.”
“If it’s any consolation, if Dalek hurts anyone, I’ll pull the trigger myself.”
“I’ve heard that about you.”
Maxi wanted to say, what’s that supposed to mean? but refrained from speaking. Diplomacy wasn’t her best skill, but she was trying. So she changed the subject before she said something that would either give the woman satisfaction for getting a rise out of her, or that she would regret. Instead she said, “Computer’s booted.”
Patricia pulled up a command prompt from her desktop, and typed in a command from a sticky note. It asked for a name and she typed “PATRICK VON PATRICK”. Then it came up with a password, and she typed that in. Once she finished the last keystroke, the sticky note dissolved into a thin smoke.
“That’s handy,” Maxi said.
“Sticky Notes of Wonderment have many uses.”
Having some of the notes herself, she wondered what else the handy items could do? The screen shifted and switched. It flickered a few times, and then came to the terms and conditions screen that was labeled The Archivist Branch. Patricia scrolled through them quickly and clicked accept. Maxi had learned her lesson, and would have read every word of them, but she wasn’t driving so she stayed quiet.
A screen appeared that looked alot like the company menu screen that resembled an RPG interface, except it only had one button, Patrick Von Patrick. Patricia clicked on and a rather simple directory appeared. It was neatly organized folders that started with Autopsies and ended with Wedding Photos. She clicked on the Printer of Never Jamming and there were document and picture files that used the date as the name.
“My husband kept journals and documented everything,” She said. “They were organized by date in the folder of the topic.”
Maxi glanced at the screen. There were lots of entries. Long before she had joined the company. He had been looking for quite a while.
“So how do we do this?” Maxi said. “Start at the first one?”
“I was hoping you would tell me. We cannot copy, move, or restore the files. We have a two hour time limit from when we started. Once we are done the Archivists will lock this information away, never to be seen again, short of a request from upper management.”
Maxi remembered the file labeled Wedding Photos and her heart broke a little. Was this the amount of time her mom had? Two hours with Henry’s life work and that’s it? It didn’t seem fair.
“That’s ridiculous. Even if we knew where to look, two hours isn’t enough, she said remembering the amount of folders, and who knew if they had subfolders, she could imagine each creature in the Autopsies folder having one of their own.
Then she remembered Terry and her HR glasses, “Terry,” she said. “Could you record what I’m seeing?”
“Yes,” Terry said. “But until the Archivist Branch has time to go through Von Patrick’s files, they will appear as redacted, and after they review his files, there is no telling how useful it will be as you may only be able to read a handful of words.”
“Let me guess,” Patricia said. “The bot’s a no go?”
Maxi realized Terry and had spoken through her bluetooth headphones. “Yeah.”
“Well, I suggest we start reading.” Patricia said.
