Page 2 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
I’d been so thrilled when Sunil started paying attention to me. He would stop by my cubicle to compliment my workflow or the granularity of my reports (I’ve always prided myself on my granularity). Leaning over me to look at the numbers on my computer screen, so close that I could feel the heat from his body, he’d brush his hand against my shoulder while commenting on the way I organized my spreadsheets. Who wouldn’t fall for that? Then, one day, he cornered me in the bathroom. I was on the fast track to bigger things, he told me. He could put in a good word with Ms.Kettering, maybe even set me up for a promotion. I just had to do him a couple of favors.
Then he pushed me into a stall and tried to force me to my knees.
“Why are you doing this?” I demanded now. “She’s considering”—I stopped abruptly, then glanced around as I lowered my voice—“early retirement. Is this because I wouldn’t…?”
His smile vanished as if snuffed out. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“That’s it, isn’t it? You thought I’d do whatever you wanted.”
He leaned closer to me. “I’m a ten, Colin,” he said, voice soft and cold. “And you?” He ran a contemptuous gaze across my striped bow tie and my Monday cardigan and my cheap khakis. “You’re a four. On a good day.”
Ignoring a sour twist of hurt, I snapped back, “If you’re so amazing, Sunil, why are you still languishing here in HR? Four years as Ms.Kettering’s assistant, and not even a hint of a promotion. It’s pathetic.”
Straightening, he curled his lip in a faint sneer. “You know what’s pathetic? A data analyst with a week to live. Get back to work.”
I watched helplessly as he walked away. This couldn’t be happening.
People were staring at me from their cubicles. How much had they heard? Head down, I hurried back to my desk. I had a report to compile.You can do this, I kept telling myself.You can save your job.I needed to go around Sunil and show Ms.Kettering that I deserved to be there.
Before I finalized the report, I checked it five times for mistakes. Then I sent the filepath directly to Ms.Kettering. Leaning back in my chair, I exhaled slowly. It was going to be okay. Once I’d taken the threat of early retirement off the table, I could figure out how to handle the Sunil situation.
My computer dinged and an email from Ms.Kettering appeared in my inbox. Heart pounding, I clicked it open and found a single terse sentence:As you should know, reports are reviewed by Sunil.She’d copied him as well.
Less than five minutes later, I got an email from Sunil.Please see attached, it read. Then, below,These errors are unacceptable.Numb, I opened the attached screenshot. He’d taken the time to circle in red the changes he’d made to my report on the departmental server.
My heart, fluttering somewhere in my throat, plummeted into my stomach when I saw that he’d copied Ms.Kettering.
I might as well give up now. I was done.
Two
At twelve years old, Ilearned how the world really works. Most people call this experiencemiddle school. For me, it was hell. This was my first brush with hierarchies of status and power, the invisible ladder that defines our existence in a collective society. Here’s the thing that nobody tells you, though: status and power are limited resources. The system is designed not just to elevate the few but also to ensure that most never get close to the top.
It’s easy to gain this perspective when you spend your life at the bottom of that ladder, looking up. When I arrived in middle school, I was shy and quiet and bookish. I craved the camaraderie of conformity but never quite got it right—I had boring hair and uncool clothes and read books that had dragons and wizards in them. I worked hard not to be noticed, so naturally the popular kids made a point of noticing me in all the wrong ways. They humiliated me on a rotating schedule, just to make sure I understood my place. And I did. I understood it perfectly.
I never saw those people again after we graduated, but they’restill with me. That’s what systems of oppression do: they sink into your bones, into the marrow, so you never forget where you belong. Long after they leave school, the popular kids carry with them a muscle memory of grinding lesser people into the dirt on their way to bigger and better things. They move through life with a little extra bit of confidence, a hint of swagger. And those of us with our faces in the mud, reminded over and over again of our place in the pecking order? We carry that with us as well.
It didn’t matter how hard I worked, how much I knew, how accommodating or helpful or kind I was. The beautiful and the privileged still floated effortlessly to the top while I struggled to find a foothold. Well, I was sick to death of it. More than anything—anything—I wanted to reach the top of that ladder, and I no longer cared what I had to do to get there.
Dark Enterprises was supposed to be my ticket to great things. I’d been promised as much when I interviewed for this job.There are opportunities here that you will find nowhere else, Ms.Price had told me, shortly before I electrocuted someone for the first time. That’s why I’d been a model employee from day one. I worked hard, I didn’t take unnecessary breaks, and I wasn’t burdened by pointless moral qualms. I supposed some people would consider me a bad person, but like a Gen Z influencer on TikTok, all I’d ever wanted from this job was immeasurable power, staggering wealth, and maybe the chance to rule the world someday. Was that really so wrong?
Our company specializes in solving problems, and though our fees are unusual, our track record speaks for itself. We have testimonials stretching back millennia, and in that time we’ve gone from a modest ziggurat on the banks of the Euphrates to fifty-one branch offices around the world, all of them working to realizeManagement’s secret and terrible goals. Our reach is unparalleled. Countless people owe us favors—if you recognize their name, chances are good that they’re a client. They come to us because they want results, preferably without inconvenient questions or performative hand-wringing. For our part, we don’t care if they have metaphorical or even literal skeletons in their closet. Once they promise to pay our price, we employ the darkest of magicks on their behalf or outsource the work to one of our contractors, entities summoned from across the known realms of existence. Everyone’s happy, at least until the bill comes due.
Prospective clients receive glossy brochures filled with photos of attractive people wearing determined smiles and slogans likeChanging the world, one problem at a time, but those of us in the trenches know that it takes more than inspirational spiels to fix things. The suffering of countless people in HR’s extraction suites might strike some as morally problematic, but their sacrifices are in service to a greater cause. Solving the world’s problems doesn’t come cheap, and we all have to do our part. For example, the only reason the global climate hasn’t yet spiraled into a civilization-ending catastrophe is the measures we’re taking on behalf of a certain former vice president. Sure, the price we’d demanded in return was steep, but at Dark Enterprises you get what you pay for. His family’s sacrifice has bought the world a few more decades.
There’s no hollow morality here, no hypocrisy. The executives on the thirteenth floor don’t pretend that the ends justify the means, because the means don’t require justification at all. Ancient sorcery and blood sacrifices are simply tools like any other, and the only real difference is that most people are too squeamish to use them.
As fervently as I believed in Dark Enterprises, however, loyalty alone wouldn’t save me from death. For that, I’d need a miracle.
At five p.m. on the dot, I trudged across the lobby of our building along with a steady stream of fellow employees, pushing through the revolving doors and into the bustle of Midtown Manhattan. Head down, I walked to the Seventh Avenue subway station and shuffled onto my usual train, headed north to Hamilton Heights. Clutching the overhead handrail, I stared at my reflection in the darkened windows as the train rumbled and swayed through the tunnels. I’d long admired DE’s ruthless pragmatism, but being on the receiving end sucked. I barely noticed the rest of my commute until I reached the enormous apartment building on Hamilton Terrace where I’d lived since moving to the city almost three years ago. Mechanically, I checked our mailbox off the echoing, black-and-white-tiled lobby before stepping into the ancient elevator and waiting as it laboriously clanked and groaned its way to the fifth floor.
Amira looked up when I walked into our apartment, books and papers and her laptop spread across the battered old dining table. “Hey you,” she murmured absently before making a series of notations on the notepad in front of her with the little furrow between her eyebrows that meant her mind was presently occupied by some serious math. My roommate and best friend was the smartest person I’d ever met. She was working on her doctorate at Columbia and was already known as someone to watch in the world of particle physics, or so I gathered from the half-admiring, half-envious comments made by her fellow graduate students at the very boring parties she occasionally dragged me to.
“Hey,” I mumbled. Tossing my messenger bag onto our sagging, floral-upholstered sofa, I slumped next to the bag, leaned back, and closed my eyes.This is fine, I kept telling myself silently.I can fix this. I don’t know how, but, like the poster said, nothing is im-POSSUM-able.
“Okay, so tell me.”
I opened my eyes to find Amira standing next to me, both arms raised as she loosened her dark, curly hair from the knot she always twisted it into while working.
