Abyss, page 3
* * *
It’s just after lunch when Virgil appears. Joe’s completing a spreadsheet task that seems pretty straightforward, even if he doesn’t understand it. He’s got his feet up on the desk and he’s munching from a bag of Quavers he bought on the meal deal, earphones in.
This time, he doesn’t knock, and Joe almost falls off his chair trying to put his feet down from the desk. After regaining his balance, he looks up at Virgil sheepishly.
“Mr. Stanforth, hi. Didn’t know you were in today.”
“Got a job for you. Not on your DailyPlan. Need it done as soon as possible.”
“Uh, sure.” He looks at his computer, and the set of tasks he’s lined up before the end of day, hoping that whatever this job is won’t throw that schedule off too much. “What is it?”
Virgil takes a few oddly tentative steps into the room and pulls a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. About half a page of A4 that looks like it’s been torn from a notebook, the edges jagged and frayed. He puts it down on Joe’s desk, face down, hand still pressed on it.
“You’ve got a camera on your phone,” he says. It isn’t phrased like a question.
“Y-Yeah.”
“Need you to take a photo of what’s on this, then email it to yourself so you can send it to the printers. It’s a…” He waves his hand, looking for the word. “A cloud system. You send it out and then log in with your keycard. I need ten of them before the end of the day. Got it?”
“Sure.”
Virgil breathes a sigh of relief, but it seems to take him some effort to lift his hand off the piece of paper. As soon as he does, he backs up the three steps out of the door so quickly Joe would have missed it if he blinked.
“Erm, it’s just…” Joe raises a hand.
Virgil turns, and for a half second, Joe swears that he sees panic. “Yes?”
“Surely the printer systems have a photocopy function, right?” This was a classic old person IT blunder, and usually Joe would just not bother explaining the impracticalities and move on, but there was something about Virgil’s demeanour that was setting his teeth on edge. “I can just go photocopy ten copies right now and you can—”
“Do not,” he interrupts, “under any circumstances, photocopy that piece of paper.”
Joe blinks, taken aback by the sheer ferocity of the command.
“Okay.”
Virgil takes another step forward, any tentativeness in his manner converted to what Joe can only interpret as either panic or menace. “Follow the process I outlined for you to the letter, by the end of the day, or find yourself another job.”
“I—I didn’t mean to—”
Virgil exits, the door closing behind him. Joe sits back in his chair, puts a hand to his forehead, and tries to work out what the hell just happened. Did Virgil really just threaten his job? Can he do that? He supposed he was still on a contractual probationary period, but aren’t there employment laws in this country even giant corporations have to follow? Surely not complying with a frankly bizarre and stupidly inefficient request wasn’t grounds for dismissal.
But that wasn’t what bothered him. Not really.
It was the whole encounter—the strange urgency in Virgil’s manner, the way his mood shifted so suddenly, the way his hand pressed against the piece of paper. It still lay on the desk, in front of Joe, and after that experience he found himself simultaneously not wanting to turn it over and desperately curious as to what was on the other side.
His computer pings.
Good afternoon, Joseph, the WellBot avatar speech-bubbles chirpily. It’s time for your afternoon check-in. How has your day been so far?
Joe ignores it. Reaching out, he picks up the piece of paper and slides it towards his keyboard. Slowly, as if it might suddenly burst alight, he turns it over.
He doesn’t know what he expected, but it isn’t this. Scrawled by hand across the page is a series of numbers and symbols that look strangely like some kind of mathematical proof. There aren’t many numbers, but symbols from the Greek alphabet, parentheses, division and subtraction, and more things Joe doesn’t understand cover the page in what seems like frantically-written script.
What the actual fuck is this?
He turns it upside down, then upright again, trying to make it out. The computer pings.
Is there a reason you are ignoring me, Joseph? Have I done something to offend? Your wellness is important to me, and refusal to respond is usually not indicative of a happy and safe work environment.
Joe pulls out his phone and lines up the paper for a picture. The lighting isn’t great, but he angles the camera so that it isn’t casting a shadow and the natural light from the window is directly on it. Before emailing it anywhere, he looks at it again on his phone. Beth—his old housemate from uni—would probably know what this is. The girl has a PhD in astrophysics and works for some fancy consulting firm now. She’s probably the cleverest person Joe can think of.
Scrolling back through his WhatsApp, very far back, he finds the last message they exchanged together. It was seven years ago.
Seven years. Jesus.
Joe hasn’t touched his computer, but he swears when it pings this time, the sound is louder than before.
I’m going to restrict access to your DailyPlan tasks, Joseph. There’s clearly something upsetting going on and it would be good for the two of us to get to the bottom of it. I’ll make a quick note on your Probation Performance Review that you won’t be completing your tasks for today.
Fuck. No, wait. He types back quickly.
Sorry, was just in the toilet!
After pressing Enter, he rereads his message. Why is he lying to an AI chatbot? Why is he apologising to an AI chatbot? There’s a long pause where WellBot does not reply. For a time, the avatar just looks back at him and, if it wasn’t completely absurd, Joe could swear it was raising its eyebrows to say, Oh, really?
He glances up at the corners of his room, looking for the distinctive domed glass of the security cameras, but there are none in this room. So why does he feel like he’s being watched?
Going forward, it would be useful to keep me apprised of your movements around the building, just so we can ensure your wellbeing. No need to explain, just a quick line in the chat will do! Thanks!
Okay, he types back. I’ll let you know.
Then he quickly adds, But no problems here. Just getting on with the jobs!
WellBot gives him a quick thumbs-up, then disappears off the screen.
Huffing, Joe returns to his phone. In front of him, the seven-year gap between the last time he spoke to Beth has grown into an impenetrable chasm. Old memories flash through his mind, of beer gardens and joints in the park, of kebabs after clubs, of hanging out in a friend’s hot tub at 6:00 AM after a whole night of dancing to drum and bass. Beth has kids now—two of them. She has a house in north London. Joe can’t just get in touch about a random segment of mathematics without asking how she is, without catching up. But then Beth would want to know how Joe was, what he’d done with his life, what he’s been up to, and the prospect of the whole interaction makes him feel so sick he puts his phone face down on the desk, stands up, and goes to stare out the window.
He should just post it on Reddit, it occurs to him. Make a throwaway account and post it on r/AskMathematicians or something. That’s easier. Way more convenient. He doesn’t want to bother Beth anyway—she’s likely very busy.
He emails the file to his work email and brings it up on his computer.
Print, colour, he’s assuming. A4. Single-side. Ten copies.
He makes a little whoosh sound as he sends it off into the cloud, gets up off his arse, and heads for the printer.
Before he does, a little annoyance tugs at the back of his brain.
He sits back down, clicks up WellBot, and types.
Just going to print something for Mr. Stanforth. Be back in 5.
The reply pings back almost immediately.
There are no jobs that require printing on your DailyPlan today, Joseph.
No. Mr. Stanforth came in and asked me to do this personally. Said it needed done by end of day.
A pause.
And how do you feel about that, Joseph?
His fingers hover over the keyboard, not expecting an interrogation. Virgil’s threat of terminating his job if he didn’t get it done exactly to instruction by the end of day weighs heavy on his mind.
Fine. It’s just a quick print job. Takes 2 seconds.
Thank you for sharing that with me.
What a weird bot. He closes the application, sticks his phone in his pocket, and makes his way out into the corridor.
* * *
After walking past a collection of other offices which either have their blinds closed or no-one in them, there’s a pantry. In it, a fridge that Joe briefly peeks in to find only half a mouldy lemon, some teabags, and two very questionable-looking cartons of milk. The microwave looks like it was made fifty years ago, as do the collection of untouched chairs and tables. The lights are off.
Joe flicks them on, and in the corner, a printer is illuminated—one of those big chunky industrial machines that can pump things out in booklets or staple them or scan whole textbooks. Again, Joe wonders why he wasn’t allowed to just photocopy the stupid paper, but he’s beyond properly questioning that now and just wants to get the job done.
The printer is on already, for some reason, which suggests someone else in the office has already used it today, not that he’s seen anyone else here. Could have been Virgil, he supposes, but then why didn’t the man print the bloody thing himself?
He swipes his card which beeps positively, and his name—truncated by the size of the display—appears on the screen: JOSEPH RI. NAVIGATING TO PRINT JOBS, he releases the photo of the maths and sends it to print.
The machine whirs, clunks around a bit internally, then stops.
ERROR: PLEASE LOAD PAPER IN TRAY 2.
The sigh Joe lets out could put out a fire. He reaches down, pulls out Tray 2 to find it empty, and then straightens up, looking around the printer for extra paper. There isn’t any. He pulls open the other trays, hoping he can move some around, but they’re all empty.
For fuck’s sake.
For a good couple of minutes, he circles the room—looks behind the printer, in cupboards, in drawers, on the floor. There’s nothing. No hint of printer paper anywhere to be found. Above the printer, there is a sign, not dissimilar to the one he encountered in the lift.
CONSUMABLE SUPPLIES:
Please inform a Super User should you require paper or a change of toner cartridge.
If you require assistance, please contact the Super User listed below: Zuzana Kuznetsova z.kuznetsova@ponos.com Ext. 4365
If contacting about this device, please quote the following device name:
PON-D65a-MFD
Pulling out his phone, he snaps a photo of the sign, and makes his way back to his desk. Once there, he picks up the phone and calls the extension.
“I’m sorry,” says a female voice that he recognises as the one that called him in the lobby yesterday. “This extension is no longer valid.”
The call ends, and Joe just stares at the phone in his hand. Frustratedly huffing with quite some gusto now, he pulls up his email and taps out a brief but curt message to Zuzana Kuznetsova, urgently requesting printer paper for the specific device and, if not, asking where he can source it himself. He is sure to quote the “device name” listed on the sign.
Five seconds after pressing send, he gets an email back from Mail Delivery Subsystem entitled “Failed Message.” It seems that, like the phone extension, the email doesn’t exist.
Joe is just about ready to pick up his monitor and throw it at the wall. But in his mind, Virgil’s threat is playing and replaying in his head.
Follow the process I outlined for you to the letter, by the end of the day, or find yourself another job.
Not just that, but the way he responded to it, passively, like a beaten dog. He sees the same interaction play out in his head like a film, like he’s watching himself, and the sheer piteousness of it makes his face hot. It’s uni seminars all over again, he thinks. Or meetings with his tutor, who would say to him, I can’t help you unless you ask the right questions, but Joe never had any idea what the right questions were, so they literally just sat there in humiliating silence.
How am I supposed to print this stupid thing by the end of the day when there’s no fucking printer paper or facility to get any?
For a moment, he considers typing his problem to WellBot, but even as his fingers brush against the keyboard, something instinctive deep within him stops him. An odd recoiling, that he can only equate to that kind of deep feeling of self-preservation when faced with mouldy food or terrifying heights.
No. This is ridiculous.
Body now vibrating with sheer exasperation, he storms out into the corridor. As he power-walks down, he knocks on every closed-blind window he can find, peers in every open one. There must be someone here who can help him. There must.
Right at the end of the corridor, at a door labelled OFFICE OF ESOTERIC ACCOUNTING, he sees a woman through the window. She’s sat at a computer, shoulder-length hair tied back in a ponytail, glasses on, typing away quickly. Relieved to have finally found another human, Joe reaches for the handle.
It’s locked.
He tries again, turning it, but the door isn’t budging.
He knocks on the window. “Hello? Uhm … excuse me?”
She doesn’t look, doesn’t move from her position, so intently focused on typing into the machine. He knocks again, loud, but it’s no use.
Frustrated, he knocks again. She’s right there, maybe ten feet or so away from the door. He slams his hand against the door repeatedly.
“Excuse me?” he shouts. “HELLO?”
Nothing. Not a flicker. It’s as though the window he’s looking through is actually a screen, a one-way system, and that there’s no way to penetrate the vacuum within. He kicks the door, but, short of actually kicking a door down in his workplace on his second day, it seems nothing is going to work.
This is insane. They’re all fucking with me. That’s what this is. They must all be playing a game.
Turning around, he storms back down the corridor, trying to work out his next move. The original piece of paper is still sitting on his desk, but for some reason, he finds he can see it clearly in his mind. Despite its complexity—five full lines of barely recognisable symbols and equations—the entire image is seared into his brain, written in permanent ink on the back of his skull. He is certain that, if he wanted to, he could sit down and write out the whole thing.
Well, he thinks, if I did that ten times I wouldn’t need to print anything.
Virgil’s menacing threat whispers in his mind, Follow the process I outlined to you to the letter.
Christ. Does he even want this job anymore? His upcoming rent payment says, yes, he absolutely does. Not to mention last month’s electric bill sitting in arrears. As much as he desperately wants to, he can’t just switch off the outside world completely. He has to have a job, and right now this is the only one that wants him.
It’s going to be alright. It’s just a boring admin job. I’ll hide away in the office and in a few months I’ll start looking elsewhere.
I just need to find some fucking printer paper.
His brain goes to the lobby that he walks through to get to his office. He remembers, on the left hand side as he came in, a door with a sign that says IT SUPPORT. Given his luck, the chances anyone will even be there feel close to zero, but right now it feels like the next logical step.
As he walks to the lift, his phone pings.
He takes it out.
On the screen, smiling, with her godforsaken speech bubble, is WellBot.
How’s that printing job coming along, Joseph?
He stares at it, the phone suddenly feeling hot in his hand. Tentatively, he types back.
Why are you on my phone?
Oh, that’s standard operating procedure when you use the company Wi-Fi, Joseph! It’s just so we can support your wellbeing 24/7. Did you not read the Ts and Cs of the Wi-Fi Connectivity section that was included in your induction packet?
But I didn’t connect my phone to the Wi-Fi.
The avatar makes a pouty face, as if he’s just told a silly joke.
Well, you must have done, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, would I? Don’t be so silly, Joseph! Anyway, I hope you’re having a good day and I just wanted to remind you that there’s a complimentary Mindfulness webinar just for you added to your DailyPlan for today, once you get through your other tasks. And remember to check in with me before you leave at 6!
He reads the message three times. The initial annoyance at having more added to his plate in the name of staff wellbeing is quickly shunted to the side by the final sentence. The end of the day is 5:00 PM. He’s sure of it.
Stopping in his tracks, he scrolls back through his emails to find his offer of employment from a couple of weeks ago. Reading it thoroughly, he sees the answer as clear as day, both in the body of the email and in the draft employment contract attached as a PDF.
Your regular working hours are 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Monday to Friday.
It’s there in black and white, irrefutable, even though he could have sworn that the original contract said five. Does that mean he left early yesterday? Nine to five is basically standard. Dolly Parton wrote a song about it. If it had been different from that, he would have noticed, wouldn’t he?
Wouldn’t he?
He can’t think about the answer to that question, because too many things are barrelling their way through his brain at once and it feels like it’s going to shut down. WellBot on his phone. The woman in the office not hearing him. The strange rich lady with the hat. And, worst of all, the large man yesterday heaving and grunting over some kind of strange project, the corners of his lips stained with red, as if, for some reason, he might be—
