Page 6 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
Mechanically, I reached out and took the card. It was made of heavy, expensive cardstock, but there were no words that I could see.
All I will ask in return is a single favor. Something small, unimportant. Promise to give me that, and you will have anything you want. That is fair, is it not?
I tried to speak, but my throat was so dry that nothing emerged but a strangled croak.
You are destined for great things, Colin. Let me help you achieve them.
Without another word, it pressed theEMERGENCY STOPbutton again and the elevator lurched back into motion. Meremoments later, we arrived at the sixth floor and the doors rolled open with another cheerfulding. I stood there, card clutched in my hand, until my companion turned to look at me once more.
“Yes,” I breathed, “right, sorry.” Without looking at it, I scurried out of the elevator and turned to the right, making a beeline for Ms.Kettering’s office. I was so eager to be rid of the thing that I stopped in the middle of the empty hallway and gestured toward her office door. “Here we are.”
This time, I couldn’t hide a flinch as it brushed those long fingers against my shoulder.Remember: I will give you your heart’s desire.
I didn’t reply. Instead, I turned and hurried away, faster and faster, until my skin stopped crawling.
Back in my cubicle, Ihunched over my desk and turned the black card over and over between my fingers. The correct thing to do—thesmartthing—was to surrender the card to Ms.Kettering. Employees were strictly forbidden from accepting gifts or favors from contractors, since more often than not they came with hefty strings attached. People still talked about the woman in Personnel who allowed a contractor to buy her a coffee back in the 1980s and then found herself feeding an endless succession of ravenous demonic larvae with her own flesh. She was still down there, somewhere. They said that if you listened very hard late at night, you could hear her voice floating eerily up through the air registers on the fourth floor as she crooned the Top 40 hits of 1987 while her body regenerated in time for the next brood.
Shivering, I stared at the card, fingertips running across its smooth surface as my mind spun furiously. I needed help, but was itworth whatever “small favor” that thing wanted from me? As bleak as my future looked, I didn’t want to replace it with an eternity of torment.
Slowly, I opened the top drawer of my desk and placed the card inside. Then I got back to work. Or, rather, I tried to. My gaze kept drifting to that drawer.Your heart’s desire, the thing had said. I could ask to become a trillionaire, or to have an eight-pack, or to make Henry Cavill fall madly in love with me. I could even be a “good person”—cue eye roll—and save the world by eradicating poverty or ending war or providing free, renewable energy. And sure, all of that sounded great, except for the Law of Unintended Consequences. That thing might end poverty by disintegrating 99.99 percent of the global population, or provide us with a source of renewable energy that required sacrificing children, or give me an eight-pack of Bud Light rather than abs to die for.
I needed to be smart about this.
I’d been staring at my computer screen for a while when the phone on my desk rang with jarring suddenness. Pressing the handset to my ear, I stammered, “Hello?”
“Colin.” Ms.Kettering’s high-pitched voice purred in my ear. “I’m still waiting for that visitor.”
I paused in dismayed confusion. “But I brought it—him—themup from the fifth floor at least half an hour ago.”
Silence. “Then where are they?” she demanded.
“I—I don’t know. I left them outside your office.”
“So you have no idea where they are?”
“No, ma’am.” My palms had started sweating. “I’m sorry. I showed it—themwhere to go and then went back to work.”
An irritated sigh traveled down the phone line. “Very well. I’ll look into it. I’m very disappointed, Colin.” Then she hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand before slowly replacing it. So much for earning points with Ms.Kettering. I hadn’t seen the thing actually go into her office, but why would it stop there? Where else could it have gone? Unsettled, I glanced over my shoulder as if it might be standing at the entrance to my cubicle, those frail hands folded politely while it watched me, but there was just Beverly on the other side of the aisle, piling on more lipstick for some reason. Rolling my shoulders uneasily, I turned back to my computer and the spreadsheet waiting there.
Later, as I was getting ready to leave, I glanced across the bullpen and saw Sunil talking with Ms.Kettering. They were both watching me. Slowly, I opened my desk drawer and looked down at the card waiting there. Then I slipped it into my pocket.
Desperate times, I thought as I walked to the elevators.
Four
That evening, Amira and Imade dinner in our little galley kitchen, a ritual we followed whenever we were both home. The apartment smelled like cumin and red chilies as she toasted spices in preparation for her mother’s amazing curry recipe.
“If someone said they would give you anything you wanted,” I said while I measured out basmati rice, “would you do it?”
Amira leaned down to bathe her face in the aromas rising from the pan, then gave the spices another quick stir with a wooden spoon. “What, like in a fairy tale?”
I grunted as I wrestled our ancient rice cooker out of a cabinet. “Sure, yeah.”
“I don’t know,” she said, a little absently. She was focused on making sure the spice mixture didn’t burn, and after another judicious stir, she removed the pan from the heat and carefully poured its contents into a stone mortar sitting on the counter. “Like, I could haveanythingI wanted?”
“Anything at all,” I agreed as I plugged in the rice cooker.
