Page 22 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
It had taken about five minutes for me to realize that Lex was significantly cooler than I would ever be. I envied them at the same time that I found myself craving their approval, a familiar blend of emotions I remembered from high school. “Then why are you here?” I asked with genuine bafflement.
Lex smirked. “Because I love weird shit. Plus, no one here cares what I wear to work.” They glanced down at their baggy Metallica T-shirt as if to prove their point.
I leaned my elbows on the table. “And they called you up and offered an interview because you like weird stuff?”
“Interview? Nope. I was making a ruckus in some of the more fringe online communities. Exposing secrets that the company wanted hidden. I think I made them nervous.” Lex looked smugly satisfied at that.
“What kind of secrets?”
“I spent a long time tracking down this book supposedly written by the Devil himself.Liber damnatorum, the Book of the Damned. I’ve been into freaky stuff since I was a little kid, and I fell down some crazy rabbit holes on the internet. There’re a lot of stupid people online, a lot of ignorance and conspiracy theories, but if you ask the right questions, you start getting some interesting answers. Ididn’t want to become a Satanist or anything like that. I just…wanted to know.”
“Know what?”
“What’s out there. If there’s more than this tedious bullshit everyone callslife.” They shrugged and looked away. “I didn’t want to live on Staten Island forever like my parents had, and their parents. I wanted more. So I followed a bunch of clues about this book, and they took me all the way to New Orleans and a tiny bookshop in the French Quarter.”
“And, what, it was all a hoax? There was no book?” I guessed.
“Oh, no, there was a book. It wasn’t written by the Devil, obviously, because he’s barely literate, but itwaswritten by some big shot in Hell. Only, I couldn’t read it, because it was in one of the more obscure Dialects of Sin. Kind of disappointing, if I’m honest. I took some photos on my phone while the old guy running the store was distracted, and then I posted them on a few Reddit subs. I guess that got someone’s attention, because while I was waiting for the bus back to New York, a woman approached me and offered me a job with Dark Enterprises.”
I was rapt. “Just like that?”
Lex shrugged again. “Yeah. Two days later, I was working in the Repository here. That was almost four years ago now.”
Leaning back in my chair, I thought for a moment. “And are you glad you signed up?”
Lex’s eyebrows rose once more. “Glad? Fuck yes. I was maybe a month away from being homeless when DE found me. The problem with not fitting in anywhere is that no one cares if you sink or swim. The company threw me a lifeline, and I grabbed it.” They played absently with the book in front of them. “Now, is the job perfect? No. I keep pissing people off, and that means I’ll probably bereshelving books as a Class 5 librarian for the rest of my life. But I’m part of a world that’s so much cooler than anything I could have imagined when I was a kid.”
I gazed down at the table as I considered their story. Dark Enterprises had given Lex the things they wanted most—knowledge, and also the freedom to be themself. It could give me everything I wanted, too. Over the past week I’d already caught glimpses of the power I craved. That power would never be mine if the Thing had its way, but if I figured out what Management had bound all those millennia ago, maybe I could find a way to stop it. I could seize the greatness I’d been promised and save the world along the way.
“What about you?” Lex asked. “How did you end up here?”
“That’s a funny story, actually,” I said, staring off into the middle distance. “It all started with a phone call…”
I was working at atiny accounting firm down by the Battery (I said to Lex), trudging each morning to a job I hated because, well, that’s what you did in your twenties. I’d escaped Ohio the year before and arrived in New York City with dreams of an exciting, fulfilling life that I could live on my own terms. Like countless others before me, however, I’d quickly discovered that the city didn’t give a crap about me or my dreams. Stuffed into a cramped little cubicle in an office that smelled like bologna and wet dog, I told myself every day that this was a stepping stone to something bigger. I had lots of time to make my mark on the world, to finally have respect and power, maybe even love. Then I would look around at the sad, beaten-down people in the cubicles around me, most of whom had worked there for decades, and try not to weep.
The phone on my desk had never rung before, so when it shrilledabruptly in the middle of a Tuesday morning, I lunged for it out of sheer instinct. “Hello?” I said loudly while fumbling the handset up to my ear.
“Is this Colin Harris?” The voice was feminine, the tone coolly polite.
“Uh, yes.” I glanced around. People were watching me.
“Mr.Harris, I’d like to extend an invitation to interview with us later this week.”
I was silent while my mind struggled to catch up. “I’m sorry. Who are you?”
“My name is Samantha Price. I work for a company called Dark Enterprises.”
“I’m afraid I’ve never heard of you. Them. It.”
A note of amusement entered her voice. “I would be very surprised if you had. How does Thursday morning work for you? Say, ten o’clock?”
“I don’t understand. How did you find me?”
“Let me know when you have a pen handy, Mr.Harris, and I’ll give you the address.”
I stared blankly at the screen of my antiquated computer. Was this a thing that happened in New York? People randomly called you up and invited you to a job interview? Maybe it was a scam. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more certain I became. Why would anyone want to hire me? I had precious few skills and barely any experience. No, it was far more likely that this woman was trying to lure me to an abandoned building site where a team of illicit surgeons would remove both my kidneys.Thatwas the kind of thing that happened in New York.
“Thank you,” I said at last, “but I already have a job. And it’s great. Really.”
