The One who Mistook Their Hobb for a Tick

by skysailor99

Summary:

The new employee at Home Safety Hotline thinks they know what they're doing. They've worked at a home safety call center before--that's why the junior supervisor hired them. Except at this place, the database has strange entries... and terrible things keep happening to the customers.

This fic is written in such a way that it follows the flow of the game up to a certain point, so you can play along if you've unlocked and activate the three Junior Supervisor options.

Notes:

The chapters start short and get longer pretty quickly. I'm going to be posting them once a day for the next week, ending at Sunday.

Chapter 1: Monday

Not the first home safety place I've worked for. I don't even bother flipping through their database—I know most of the hazards by heart. Not long into the morning, the junior supervisor who interviewed me drops by my desk to update some of the permissions on my computer. Some of it's stuff my cubicle-mate doesn't seem to have.

Guess it makes sense. I'm entry-level right now, but I shouldn't be for long. They promised me if I perform well, they'll let me "descend" to Junior Supervisor. The "descend" is kind of funny, but made me hopeful. Maybe it means they treat their non-managerial staff well?

First day goes fine. I give everyone their diagnoses, roll my eyes at the prank caller, and earn a bug spray coupon. Overall, not bad.

Chapter 2: Tuesday

Here's where the trouble starts.

First sign of it's my inbox. Some kind of weird, typo-ridden threat from an old employee, Mike. Telling me I'm in danger, to quit before it's too late.

My email permissions are all screwed up—it's all read-only until IT fixes it—so I can't even forward it over to Carol to deal with.

Second sign's the database. I've never worked for a place where they slow-walk the reference access, but I guess they're using screeners or something to stagger out my training. But now they've given me more entries, and some of them are… weird. Some new-age bullshit. Is this a prank? Or do they really buy into this crap?

People call in, and I start getting dinged. Really unfairly dinged, honestly.

Someone named Hunnigan calls in about a ruckus in their living room without anything getting messy. I figure it might be a raccoon—usually they leave more of a mess, but they do make a racket. So I send over that info packet. The second the call ends? Carol calls and threatens to fire me. Makes stuff up about me getting a lot of complaints, but I know better—this is the first one I haven't been sure of. Worse, she won't even tell me what I was supposed to send the client. Maybe she figured it was a bat? Only other thing they have an info packet for that's something actually real.

Then some guy called Dan calls. Yelling, ranting about someone organizing his desk at night. Honestly, I have no idea what the hell, so I actually look through the database this time. Sure ain't a raccoon or a bat. I snag on something, though. Carbon monoxide. The entry doesn't say anything about it, but yeah, I can remember an old coworker's stories about this one carbon monoxide case. Guy kept doing things and then forgetting he'd done them, so he thought someone was breaking into his house… sounds just like this.

I tell Dan he's got carbon monoxide poisoning. Hopefully he'll get out of there pronto.

Chapter 3: Wednesday

Another sketchy email from that ex-employee, Mike. Maybe he's also the prank caller, who knows? Says it's too late for me now, tells me to go crawl in a mouse hole in the office building. Sure, guy.

This freaked-out guy David calls about a dog-sized creature in his basement. I go through the database. A raccoon, maybe? That's the only thing dog-sized in here that actually exists. I send him the info.

Carbon monoxide guy from yesterday, Dan, calls back. He's full-on hallucinating now. He hangs up mid-shout.

I sit there for a minute, just… reeling. He said the instructions I sent didn't make sense. Maybe I got it wrong, maybe it wasn't carbon monoxide? I'm not sure if tick-borne illnesses can cause hallucinations, but I know they can mess with your brain. Still, though, the instructions I gave him should have sent him to the hospital. A doctor should have figured it out. Maybe he was too far gone to even read them. I'm not sure he ever left the house.

It's not long before the next call rings. Just some frozen pipes. A relief to get an easy one.

Yesterday's bat lady—Hunnigan—calls back. There's no way for me to send her the corrected info packet, and I guess nobody at the hotline called her back to correct my mistake. It's weird as hell. Carol threatened to fire me over it, but nobody followed up with the customer? Then again, she seems to think the bat is cleaning her house, so I'm not sure what they could tell her.

Or maybe she and Dan were right, about the break-ins.

A widower calls in. Quaid. There isn't really an option in our system to tell clients that what they're calling for is better suited to a grief counselor than a home safety hotline, is there?

It does sound like maybe he's got some memory issues, though. Our database is kind of useless. Wish we had reference books around. Or Encarta?

I think about Dan. Maybe it was ticks. Maybe this guy's got ticks. Lyme disease can cause memory loss, I'm pretty sure. At the very least, it might get his ass to the doctor.

I send him the info packet on ticks. Hopefully it helps.

Carol certainly doesn't think it'll help. She rings me up and threatens to fire me again. At least this time she's not lying when she says there's been complaints. I'm sure Huffy Hunnigan and Delirious Dan both put some in.

I wince at the thought. Shouldn't mock the customers. Or at least not Dan. Poor guy's dying from brain damage. Not his fault.

Prank caller must be on the same wavelength, because he calls in to try and file a complaint. I listen through his whole spiel. He hangs up the phone before I can put anything into the system, at least, doesn't make me get management involved.

I sigh. Maybe I should quit. Listen to Mousehole Maniac and Crabby Carol and just throw in the towel. Doesn't sound like I'm getting the Junior Supervisor role at the end of the week, anyway.

Gotta make it through today, at least, though, right?

God. The next call is David, the guy with the thing in his basement. It isn't a raccoon—isn't any of the real creatures on this damn filtered-down database access they gave me. A python—maybe an anaconda—but they don't even let us talk to the customers—

He screams, and the call goes to static.

Another easy one. Bedbugs. The software dings me for it, but I know it's bedbugs.

Quaid, the widower, calls back. Upset that the info about ticks didn't bring his memories back. He sounds so sad. Hell, nothing I sent him would have undone the brain damage. I even check the made-up entry the company gave me for "Memory Wisps", but no deal. This company's weird, but they're at least not cruel enough to pretend they can magic this guy's memories back into his mind.

Next is termites. The customer's got a cat named Whiskers, sounds cute.

Angry guy named Gary calls in. This isn't one I've pissed off—someone else sent him the advice from the bunk entries. Or maybe that person was the one who created the bunk entries? That'd explain a few things. Anyway, let's see. Racket in his living room. Power outages?

Mice, it's gotta be. They'll chew up electrical wiring, I remember that from my old job. I send him the packet.

I log out for the day. They put my accuracy rating at some crazy-low number. One in three. It's bullshit. David shouldn't even count—not like they gave me access to any entries about pythons. Quaid, how the hell am I supposed to know what gave him memory loss? He needs to go to the doctor.

Dan needed to go to the doctor.

I sigh and look over my notes. I saw the training score bouncing around when I was answering calls, and I guess I should have written those down, because I can't see where they're getting 33% from. And from all those callbacks, it doesn't sound like management is following up when they think I've made a mistake. Feel like I'm getting scapegoated. Maybe that's what Mousehole Maniac was trying to warn me about.

If I leave, what happens next? Other than "no money to pay the bills", anyway. And a reference from Carol so scathing it'd be better buried in the dirt than handed over to potential employers. But that's about me. What about the customers?

They'll get someone new in. Maybe someone who'll send out the bunk info packets, if those weren't a prank by the last rep. Maybe they're trying to pawn off their new-age crap on people. Longer I stay, longer I can keep someone from sending these folks fake info packets.

But even the ones they do let me send aren't much help. Is it worth it? And how the hell do I convince people like Dan and Quaid to just go to the damn doctor?

I go to see Carol, but her office is empty again. She's basically never here. I open my email, but IT still hasn't gotten their shit together. It's all read-only. I don't have the number for wherever she calls in from whenever she wants to yell at me, and the system's not set up to let me make outgoing calls.

Ha. Even if I'd followed Mousehole Maniac's advice to quit on day one, how the hell would I have managed it?

I hand-write a resignation notice and sign it. Put it on Carol's desk. If she never drops by and never sees it, I don't care. I'll work my two weeks, and then I'm out.

Chapter 4: Thursday

There's a cat when I walk into the office, a green-eyed, orange tabby with a little extra chub around the cheeks. Email says he's pest control. He's got the same name as termite girl's cat. Can't blame them. Whiskers is a cute name.

Whiskers ignores me and I ignore him, since that's what the email said to do. I'm glad they're making sure people don't harass the cat.

Ha. People. It's a good thing I'm leaving, because this is the chilliest office I've ever worked in. Nobody talks to me or even looks at me too long. Nobody checks in with each other about how to answer the calls, the way they'd do constantly at my old office. Not even the usual call-center hubbub, since they don't let us talk to the customers. Every day at the office is just eerie silence. The only thing that pierces it are the customers' voices and my cubical buddy's too-loud Walkman, kept well-fed with batteries and constantly plugged into their spare ear. Damn thing plays Muzak. I didn't even know you could get a CD of Muzak.

Carol's still off to wherever she calls in from. Nobody's even touched the letter on her desk. I think about pointing it out to someone. But honestly, screw Carol.

Speak of the devil, she calls through the software the minute I log in. Says she's been watching me closely, is impressed by my accuracy. She's either being deeply sarcastic or getting just as forgetful as some of our clients. Maybe upper management gave her a talking to? She even gives me more access to the database.

I flip through the entries. Every single new entry is sheer bullshit. Maybe she noticed the resignation letter, and now she's taunting me? Maybe it's a trap to make sure I get fired? Or maybe…

I think about that junior supervisor, the one who interviewed me. The one who came in Monday and added extra permissions to my computer.

Maybe those aren't the only things the junior supervisor's done for me. Why, though? And does it have anything to do with the way the company keeps scapegoating me?

Gary, the angry guy with the mice chewing on his wires, calls in. The call is—

What the hell is this call?

I line up the calls in my head. Hunnigan, Dan, and Gary. All with some kind of ruckus in their living room. Gary mentioned the last rep telling him to lay out bowls of milk… I look through the bunk entries in our database.

There. A "Hobb". It doesn't mean that this thing is what they all saw, since it's obviously just a photo of some kid's stuffed animal. But it does tell me what Gary had in common with the other two. Someone breaking into his house and cleaning.

And lashing out violently at each of them, upon getting caught.

Dan wasn't brain-damaged. Someone really was coming into his house and organizing his desk. God, I should have found an info packet that had home security info, like he asked for. If any of them do. The database is still weirdly restricted.

I flip through the bunk entries some more. Maybe these aren't scams. Maybe they're… code names. A list of weirdo criminals the police won't touch, and the strange little rituals that might keep them from lashing out at you. Coded to ward off a defamation lawsuit. Or becoming the next target. Jesus, does that mean there's a child serial killer running around pretending to be a rose bush? Why haven't the police done anything other than send these people our way?

Bedbugs calls back. Hasn't even bothered washing his blanket. Think it's my fault he still has bedbugs. It's so normal it feels surreal.

Another normal one. Ash, lives out in the boonies, eats home-grown produce. Stomach bug, aches and pains.

There's a ton of things I can think of that aren't even in our damn database, of course—bad compost, salmonella, old pesticides sitting in the soil. I dig around some more. Wishing we had an entry that just said "GET TO THE DAMN DOCTOR." Then again, nobody's listened to any of the entries that recommend that. He mentioned the water, pipe damage can contaminate that. Maybe I could toss the frozen pipes entry his way? But that doesn't say a word about going to the doctor.

I sigh and look through the database, just running my eyes over the entry names. And skipping all the fake ones, for all that means maybe I'm missing out on discovering a stomach-bug serial killer. Maybe raccoons? There's a lot of diseases raccoons can pass on. Or if he's working out in the fields a lot… ticks.

Yeah, maybe it's ticks.

I send him that info packet. Wishing—not for the first time—that the company wasn't so insistent on only ever sending a single diagnosis. How the hell is a few-second answering machine message supposed to help me narrow down the million things that can give you a stomach bug and body aches out in the boonies?

It's a normal frustration, at least. Policies written by some sales manager with their head up their ass. Not secret codes and serial house-cleaning burglars.

QA knocks my accuracy rate down to 0%. Of course they do. What else is new?

Old lady calls in about a stalker, says the police sent her our way. Meaning it's probably one of those coded entries. I finally look through them all, the incessant beat of my cubicle buddy's Muzak filling my ears. God, they're so heavily coded I can hardly even guess what the truth is underneath. But I find it: a crook they're calling the "Night Gnome". Sounds like this stalker, alright. The instructions are useless. Wear a sleeping mask and try to sleep in a boring way? Seriously?

What makes these weirdo criminals so untouchable, anyway? Is Night Gnome some politician's kid or something?

I send the packet over. QA approves it. Honestly, at this point, I don't know if that means I got it right or if it just means I'm giving in to this place's crazy.

Next is a caller with ventilation issues. Raccoons, probably nesting in an air duct. QA dings me. I don't care.

Next is–Oh, god. A missing kid. Why aren't the police doing anything? I send the mom our info packet about rosebush guy. QA dings me. I don't know what they want anymore.

Is the kid okay? Is that thing about eating the victims part of this secret code, or is that really what the kidnapper does?

Carol calls and threatens to fire me again. I finally realize it's a recording—she's sent me the exact same message with the exact same words in the exact same tone three times now.

A weird question nags at my brain when I realize that. Not something I'd normally think, but. With the way this company is…

Have I ever had a live conversation with Carol? Has she ever called me anything but "employee"? Ever said anything specific about my "mistakes"?

No. No, I haven't. She hasn't. I've never even seen her in her office. That's why the first time she threatened to fire me, she talked about mistakes, plural, even though I'd only made one.

Is she just that distant? Or is she even… I don't know what to think. Real? I mean, she must have been once. Does she actually still work here?

I turn to Mr. Muzak. "Have you ever met—"

Muzak barely gives me a glance, and doesn't take off their headphones. I doubt they even heard a word.

Next call comes in. Only thing on my database that fits is termites. QA dings me again. I'm starting to really frigging hate QA here. I don't think it's termites, either, but they're not giving me "foundation cracks" as an option. Maybe they wanted me to send him the frozen pipes info? Or do they actually think one of those Hobb burglars is somehow breaking in and cracking this guy's basement walls?

The lady with raccoons in her attic calls back angry. She says she followed the instructions, but she's also mistaken this for a live line instead of a gussied-up answering machine, so who knows what she actually did. There's a noise, and the call ends. Guess she found the raccoon.

A guy with pink-eye calls in. We have no entry for pink-eye, of course. Zero idea why his doctor can't diagnose it—doesn't everyone know about pink-eye? Maybe that's what's wrong with our customers. It's not that they're skipping a trip to the doctor when I tell them better, it's that their doctors couldn't find a stethoscope if it was taped to their hand.

I sigh and try to remember if bats carry something like that. Bats carry everything, don't they? But I can't remember anything about them carrying pink-eye.

Okay, headaches, eye's looking pink, doctor says they can't fix it… you know, it could be allergies. I send him over the info packet for black mold. QA dings me. Whatever. It's the only packet we've got that covers allergies and doesn't involve some criminal codename.

Funny, how the network's doing bad enough I can't access the database, but good enough QA can still ding me over stupid bullshit.

Lady with the missing kid calls back just to—god, it's so hard to listen to her. I'm sorry, lady. I don't know why there's some serial kidnapper running around disguised as a rosebush. I don't know why the cops won't do anything about it.

Caller, Kyle. Something digging through his floorboards? We've got entries for gophers and moles, but I'm not sure they can do that. And his dog is missing…

I flip through the coded criminals, trying to find something that matches up. There's the foundation-cracking burglar. Busting up your floors sounds more likely than busting up foundations.

Oh, huh. There's a half-bullshit entry about tree roots getting into your home. Maybe? The description's weird, though. I don't know what real thing it's trying to disguise. Doesn't sound like a criminal.

Termites, maybe, they could weaken the floorboards enough for them to fall through. Maybe the dog fell?

I check the entry for wood secretions—nope, more weird bullshit. And also not a criminal. What are these entries code for?

I leave Kyle on hold and go refill my coffee, just trying to think. Wish I had a coworker I could talk to. Barely even being looked at when I pass by people leaves me on edge. It's bad enough I start imagining a conversation in the break room. Talking to one of my old favorite work buddies, this gal who collected stories of her weirdest customer calls, just pitch-perfect on the telling.

Oh, yeah, I remember now. She had one about gophers going through concrete. She used her long, painted fingernails to mimic those big old gopher teeth… yeah, that's gotta be it. It's gotta be gophers.

I go back to the desk, send Kyle the packet. Only glance at my QA score just long enough to confirm what I already know is going to happen—they've dinged me again.

Screw 'em.

Guy with the cracked foundation calls back, furious. He's right, the info was useless. But they literally didn't give me anything better to send him. I hope he gets someone better than this crappy service to help him out with it.

Next customer just came back from vacation. A day later, soil and plants all in the inside of her place.

Doesn't sound normal. I resign myself to looking through the criminals list—and whatever the hell else this other code is.

There's some guy called Grotto who digs out people's basements until there's a damn lake down there. The vacation might have given the weirdo time enough to do that. Floor roots, maybe? Plant roots going places they shouldn't sounds more like a real thing than the description they gave me here. Hoarding squatters? Plants isn't usually their MO. Maybe she's mistaking mushrooms for plants and she had some kind of flooding.

Ah, here we go. It is a weirdo criminal, one they're calling the Travel Gnome. I'm not sure how literally I'm supposed to take the whole thing about the crook hiding in your luggage, but the rest lines up. Preys on recent travelers. Tries to turn the home into a garden.

The suggested cure is to try and get the crook to move on to a new victim by inviting a few potentials over. What the hell? Why won't the police—ugh. It's too frustrating.

QA approves it. Miracle of miracles.

Kyle called back. He found his dog! He says whatever's messing up his floors wasn't a gopher, so I have no damn idea what it could be. Hopefully it's not the weird cellar crook. It's a relief to hear something go right for someone. Feels like the first time all week.

Last call of the day's got a flooded basement. Usually I'd send out the frozen pipes info packet, that's the nearest thing I'm used to seeing. But there's that weird basement guy… I don't want to send a plumber down there when there's some weird basement guy. I send over Grotto's info. QA approves it.

It's frigging bizarre what kinds of things are becoming normal to me now.

Chapter 5: Friday

Mike the Mouse Maniac sent me a picture of Whiskers, taken from… inside the mouse hole? Fine, you know what? He's got my curiosity piqued. I look at the email I got from him Tuesday, track down the little mouse-hole he told me about. Trying to figure out how the hell he squeezed a camera into there. I don't see a lens or anything… I puzzle at it for a minute, then go back to my desk to take a look at the email again. It's not the same mousehole. The one he sent me a pic of Tuesday is almost a triangle shape, flat on the bottom. This one's round. Maybe some prankster in the office just rigged up some cardboard with craft moss and took a picture of Whiskers.

Ha, that's funny. Can't believe I almost fell for it. That's a good one.

Glad I had the laugh, because the next email's not so funny. They want me working the weekend? Seriously? First they threaten to fire me three separate times, via answering machine, now they want me working overtime? What the hell is wrong with this place?

I turn to Muzak and shake my head, start to do the normal cubbymate complaining, but… then I remember nobody here actually talks to me. The most I get in response is a wary glance.

At least Whiskers is nice to me. He's taken to bumping his head against my shins when I go to get coffee. Today, he's followed me over from the mouse hole to meow at me some, even though he knows I'm not the one who feeds him. I shake my head at him, chuckling, before I put my headset on. Time to start the day.

Carol's taken to sending me deeply sarcastic voice memos in ye olden speech for spice. "Thine accuracy continues to impress those of us above and below the soil." "Our eyes rest soundly upon thee." I seriously don't get her.

She gave me more entries. It's all bullshit. Or code. One of the two.

First call of the morning comes in.

Oh, god.

That guy out in the boonies, Ash. First customer I've talked to here who actually got himself to the damn doctor. And what they found was… what the hell? Some kind of parasite, but not a tick. Something internal—maybe intestinal?—and big enough to show up on an X-ray. He said it was growing in his garden. What the fuck?

Was this something I just plain didn't know about? I start going through the entries. Parasites, fungi… "translation of flesh", no… whistling, no. That one only affects animals, and it stays on the outside. Vines—doesn't say anything about eating them. A—

Oh, god. Oh, god. Is that what happened to Ash? There's this thing called a Sprig Tree. It grows a tree in your body and you—

Oh, my god. The woman who called me while I was looking this up, Patrice. It's happened to her son, too.

How common are these things? Shouldn't they be in the news or something? Why didn't the place I used to work know about these?

I send Patrice the info on the Sprig Tree. It's too late for her son, but at least she can quarantine off the infection before it spreads to other people.

God. God.

QA agrees with the diagnosis. I'm not sure how to feel about that.

Another customer who actually went to the doctor calls back. The one I thought had pink-eye, but couldn't send any pink-eye info to. I think I sent him something about mold?

Whatever it was, it wasn't pink-eye or mold. There's holes on his face? Or he's hallucinating? I can't tell which. Fuck.

I close out the call. He asked for help—begged for help—but he didn't stay on the line long enough for me to give him any. This poor guy.

I look through the entries for diseases I haven't heard of. Or start to. Some angry guy calls. Someone else helped him before I got here. Wish I knew what they sent him. I was so confident before, but now I'm realizing how much stuff there is I just don't know.

Fuck. Okay. Gotta think about this.

Angry guy—Robert—his description sounds like one of those Hobb crooks. The one they nicknamed "Common" sounds like they hit kitchens sometimes. I send it over. Tense wondering what QA's gonna say.

They don't ding me. Either they've just decided not to ding me today, or they think I've got it right. Good? I hope that's good.

Another caller getting a weird crook, though I don't recognize the description for this one. Though she says it didn't set off the security alarm… could be this whistling fungus. I didn't think that was a real thing, but obviously, I was wrong about similar stuff.

Could it be that rose bush creep? There's nothing in here about them singing. Maybe not.

Wait, there's a… plant? That sings? Or, not a plant, something that disguises itself as a plant. Maybe it's like a really big stick insect with a weird mating call? Anyway, oof, sounds important to leave it alone. I send the caller the info. Hope she's less skeptical than I am. Was.

I'd have understood this stuff faster if they didn't spend half the entries trying to pretend magic is a thing. Just stop scamming for a damn minute so we can actually do some home safety.

Prank caller. He's… god, I don't know what to think anymore. He's maybe leveled up his pranks. Or… that sound at the end was an awful lot like the False Rose Bush serial killer. Doesn't usually go after adults, but…

His calls have been annoying me, but it's not like I want him dead.

Unfortunately, he does what basically all of them do when they call back, and hangs up before I can send him the info packet.

Carol calls right after. Gloating about having "seen to" the false caller. Did she… did she send False Rose Bush after him?

What the hell kind of place is this?

Then it's back to what I think would be normal. Big insect flying into a guy's house. Sounds like a bat, or maybe a cockroach. But I'm wary now. What if it's something big and messed-up like the Sprig Tree? I gotta be careful about this.

The network takes that exact moment to go down.

Goddammit. I don't want to be wrong. I take what feels like the safe route. Tell him it's a house fire. Smells like burning and maybe a creature got into the electrical wiring, that probably is a fire. Either way, it'll get him out of there, won't it?

Will getting out of there do any good, if it's something nasty I haven't learned about?

Next caller. Missing kid. I wish I hadn't given two weeks' notice. I wish I'd just left. That way someone else could take these calls. Could answer this. Could, hopefully, get it right.

The network's back up, at least. I look for stuff with tendrils. There's some kind of giant house spider? But then the kid wouldn't be missing, just stuck. False Rose Bush, maybe. God, I hope it's not them.

The entry for Floor Roots says they wrap around and strangle children. I don't know if I believe that. Do the kids go missing, though? It looks like dolls go missing.

God, where do I draw the line at reality? Is this a real plant I didn't know about, or made-up bullshit like the Closet Labyrinth entry? Or code for something else entirely? It could be another serial killer. How many of these serial killers are out there?

I get ready to send him the Floor Roots entry. Take a look at my QA score, so I'll know if QA agrees. See that they dinged me for the house fire.

What was it, really, that happened in that guy's house? And if QA knows, why can't I just ask them? Why do they have to make me give people bad advice? Why don't they follow up when they know I got things wrong?

I send the Floor Roots entry. QA doesn't ding it. Safe. Sort of. The info will save the next victim. It won't save the missing kid.

They want me to work through the weekend, fucking up and condemning people to die.

Next call. House fire guy. Whatever it actually was has gotten him.

I try to console myself that if he'd just gotten the hell out of the house, like the house fire pamphlet told him to do, he'd have been fine. It's not much solace, but it's the best I've got.

A person calls, desperate. They say, "someone stole me." Kidnapped, or… I don't know. I don't understand. The kidnappers in the database go after children. The only other things in the database that match up are things I don't believe, can't believe. Nothing literally steals your face. It's not possible.

I send her info about a strange flu that can cause delusions. QA dings me. I know what they wanted me to say. I just can't… I have to draw the line at reality.

For all I'm starting to wonder what reality even is.

A house break-in. Something of a relief. I know which entries those are. Most of them actually neaten up the house, but there's a gang of hoarders who squat in other people's homes in order to hoard there. I send her the info.

The person who's been "stolen" calls back. Desperate. Angry. I listen, and close out the call when it drops.

Shaking. My hand is shaking. All of me is.

I get a hot cocoa from the break room. It does nothing for my mental state, but at least Whiskers gives me a friendly leg-weave, nearly gets me to spill the whole mug. Silly cat.

I get back to my desk and just. Sit. I let the next call ring. I tune out Muzak.

My eyes sting, and the tears flow forth in an unstoppable flood. I hang my head and just let it come out. It's too much. It's all too much.

When will this day end? When will this job end?

What will I do, after I leave?

I find out, for the first time, what happens if I ignore a call. It just keeps ringing. Because they're not really calls, are they? Not live ones, anyway. They're answering-machine recordings. Just like the one Carol used to threaten to fire me over and over.

Eventually, I answer it. Listen.

Bright lights. As usual, there isn't any normal explanation in the database, even though I can think of a million of them. I check what Lamp Sprite means. Find out too late that it's what bit the guy who wasn't having a house fire. Fuck. It doesn't say what happens if it bites you.

Doesn't answer the current problem, though.

Okay, there's a bug. Like a really bright firefly, but mimics human voices. Which I guess is a thing bugs do, now. I guess if it's something birds can do, it's something bugs can do?

I send it to him. QA says it's fine. Thank god.

Someone named Patty found… a door?

That doesn't sound like a bug. Or a plant, or a mushroom, or a serial killer/kidnapper/squatter, or any of the things that used to make up reality to me.

Closet Labyrinth. Physically impossible. Maybe code for something. Maybe means a hidden passage in the home? Doesn't sound very windy, though. Maybe a ventilation shaft? Portal, but that's honestly more impossible than the Closet Labyrinth. At least people actually have surprise architecture in their homes. Not a portal to another place entirely.

They both say to lock up the opening, so it won't hurt her if I fuck this up. Right? I send her the info on the one I think is most likely to actually exist—the Labyrinth—and hope for the best.

QA dings me. Hopefully it doesn't matter. Hopefully.

She calls back right after, but the callback doesn't make sense. Sounds like a prank. Maybe she's just another prank caller.

If she did go through the door, at least I can say I told her not to.

Next call names a weird creature. Okay, that's something that doesn't require me to suspend everything I know about reality. I find out about some kind of soap-mimicking amphibian and send the info their way. QA agrees.

The day is finally over.

Chapter 6: Saturday

Summary:

Here's where some of this fic's content warning tags come into play.

Aww, they fired Mike the Mouse Maniac. Not surprised, but it's a shame. He's the only coworker who's even bothered talking to me, even if it was just to prank me. Now my only friend left is Whiskers.

I try and sneak Whiskers a treat, but the cat's better at following company rules than I am. Just ignores the offer and starts in on the day's splay-legged grooming.

I log in. Carol is being extra weird. "Soon, thy time in the soil arriveth. Prepare thy body." Is that her way of cracking a joke about me dying? The hell, Carol?

Someone calls with a bat in their wine cellar. I go to submit it and—

God, I'm really second-guessing even the easy stuff now.

I open up an entry called a Wine Sprite. It sounds like it could be a real animal, I guess. I send it. QA likes it.

When the fuck did all these weird creatures start existing? Why didn't I learn about them in my old job?

Next call. Something dead in a desk. It's not a Desk Ho—no. No. Desk Hobbs are just a code name for weird criminals. Not small creatures that live in your desk and organize it.

Wood Secretions is the one that fits. Do I believe in that? Is that a relevant question anymore? I've never heard of deadly sap in furniture wood.

…the woods in this area are really strange, though. Maybe it's a thing for local-made furniture. Yeah. Poisonous local furniture sap. Sure.

I send it to her. QA agrees.

Maybe… maybe the woods are why this place is so weird. Maybe it's where the creatures—

A call comes in. Howard. Who's seeing something in the woods. The woods I was just thinking of.

What's watching you, Howard? Who?

I put Howard on hold, and look through our list of coded criminals. It's not the rose bush guy, is it? Howard didn't say anything about roses.

Reanimations are one of the things in this database that are fake, right?

Spriggans. They… make Sprig Trees. Sprig Trees were described almost like a disease. Maybe Spriggans are carriers? Some kind of animal with the disease?

The cops asked Howard questions about mowing his lawn and eating fruit in public… does that mean the cops know about this? Why aren't they announcing it all over the city? It's not like it's secret, we're telling people—

—but then I remember. Something Carol told me, at the start of the week. When the entries started getting weird. I don't remember the exact words, but I remember the gist. Something like how we only tell the customers what they need to know.

It clicks together. The weird way the calls are structured, with the answering machine instead of a live line. QA looking at everything I send through.

I—

#

Hard floor. Tacky. Linoleum. Not my desk chair. Not in the cubicle farm—that area's got faux wood flooring. The lights are a harsh yellow, and it smells like burnt coffee and overripe fish.

Break room. I'm in the break room. When did I get here?

"You okay?" Muzak. Headphones out for the first time I've ever seen. Bending over me, looking worried.

"What—" God, my head's ringing like someone just used it for a gong. Or—I touch the tender back of my head and flinch—like I banged it against the break room wall. "What happened?"

"You left a call on hold. I took care of it for you. I was gonna come here and tell you off for leaving, but I found you on the floor here? Hyperventilating. Whiskers left you a present, I think it gave you a panic attack."

"A present?" But the memory's coming now, in flickers.

My throat so tight it felt like I was being strangled.

A torrent of thoughts so overwhelming, I can't even assemble them now. Just remember how loud they were.

Going to the break room just to take the edge off, only for Whiskers to—

"Was there—" I'm nearly back to hyperventilating again. "Mouse head?"

"Yeah. I threw it in the garbage, so it wouldn't freak you out again."

"Its eyes." Fuck. Fuck, just thinking about it makes my throat feel like it wants to close up. "Did you look at its eyes?"

"Yeah, moose loquitur or whatever."

"…what?"

"It's from those info videos they dumped on our desktops."

"We're supposed to ignore those."

Muzak shrugs. "Not a lot else to do between calls."

"So, what is a—what?"

"I'm sure your computer still has it. It's a science video or something. I'll point the file out."

"O-okay." I'm still confused, but. Confused is better than passing out.

"Look," Muzak says. "Take your lunch break now. Not like we're ever in a hurry. Take a walk, clear your head. I can lend you my Walkman?"

I start to shake my head and then stop before the throbbing pain can take everything over. "Walk, uh. Sounds good. No Walkman. Got kind of a headache."

"Makes sense." Muzak nods to me, awkwardly. Then looks around, hands half into pockets, trying to find something to do that isn't paying attention to me.

I manage to get to standing. Kind of wondering if my walk should just take me to the nearest hospital. But I tell Muzak, "See you after lunch," anyway.

Partway through my walk, I realize there's no point going to the hospital. Benefits don't kick in until my probationary period's up. And considering I didn't even make it a week before putting in my notice… yeah, an ER's not happening. Best I can hope for is buying an ice pack at the gas station.

My head's still aching when I get back, but at least I've done something. I sit down and log in. They keep changing our desktop background. It's weird. I do my best to ignore it. Nudge Muzak to point out the mouse video for me. Stick my headset on and settle in to watch.

The CGI makes me think of Myst. A little outdated, but can't have been made too long ago.

Mus musculus loquentes?

Oh, god, that's it, though. I know it the second I see the eyes. The ones that look all too human.

The rest of the video says they're also called "smart mice". That maybe they can talk. Like Koko the gorilla?

The video ends. It's short. Probably filmed for a commercial break. I don't know what to make of it. Creepy to think that mouse might have been begging for its life when Whiskers bit its head off.

Something's nagging me, though. I look around to make sure nobody's watching and play the video again. Hard to bring myself to listen through the pounding of my headache, but I grit through it. Easier than listening to some of our callers' screams.

The mouse sounds. They kind of remind me of the rosebush killer. I log into the system and go straight for that entry.

…no, it's different, it's definitely different. But that prank caller guy. When he called for the last time, and I thought I heard the rosebush killer…

…were those mouse sounds?

The realization hits as a huge relief. It wasn't the serial killer. Guy just had some pet smart mice or something. No wonder he kept bitching about his snappers or squeakers or whatever. Carol didn't—god, how could I even have thought that? She's a sarcastic asshole, not a murderer.

#

I log back in and take the next call.

The customer, Jay, sounds… fine? Maybe high, but doesn't mention any problems on the phone. Unfortunately, there's no option for an all-clear in the system—we have to diagnose everyone with something, or else the company wouldn't be able to sell its pest control and other services.

I look through the database. Autumn Vines? Didn't say anything about them being orange, but they do get people high, apparently. Is it like, orange pot or something? Will sending over this info get my customer arrested? But Jay probably needs to know what it is growing around there.

Oh, god, there's a Spriggan vine thing. Jay didn't say what color the leaves were. What if it's Sprig Vines?

If I say it's Autumn Vines and I'm wrong, Jay might try to dig the Sprig Vines out. Maybe catch the Sprig Tree disease, and the brother might, too, and—god, I remember the way that woman described her dead son, even though she didn't know it was him. Ash's agony, Get it out—

If I say it's Sprig Vines and I'm wrong, Jay will just move away. That'd be overkill for Autumn Vines, but it'd still solve it. Two birds, one stone.

Something's nagging at me about that. Something I thought about right before the panic attack, We only tell customers what they need to know—

I clench my hand around my ice pack until the cold aches sharp. Anything to cut the thought short. To not put myself in the damn hospital with a second panic attack.

I send Jay the info on Sprig Vines and hope for the best.

Somehow an even stranger call follows that one. A woman, Jill, who thinks her family isn't her family. Or maybe they really aren't? Could be some of our weird criminals. I check the database.

Carbon Monoxide could still be possible. I can't even remember the last time I sent someone info about that. Things have gotten so damn weird. Not that it helped, anyway, nobody listened—

The wrong thoughts come close again. I squeeze the ice pack and scroll away.

Memory Wisp, Mirror Nymph, Portals… I can suspend my disbelief as far as weird criminals and poisonous tree sap and voice-mimicking insects are concerned. But this stuff is way over the line into delirium. Even Neighbor's Doorway, there's just… zero sense there.

I sigh and stretch out my legs. This is too much.

I wrack my brain about mental ailments. There anything that mess with your ability to recognize people? Like that book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. There were a bunch of stories in that one about people who couldn't remember things or recognize things. I don't remember any of them involving stuff in our database, though… unless ticks can give you diabetes?

But then it hits me. Kalashnikov's disease,¹ or whatever it was called. When you've been drunk so long your brain starts to give out. There were a couple of stories like that in the book. One guy who couldn't remember anything after World War II. Another who stopped being able to recognize faces and made up constant stories about the people he met.

There isn't anything in our database for alcoholism. But maybe I can scare her off the stuff, by telling her it's been infested with wine sprites. Worth a shot.

QA hates it. That gives me a pang, but—the database isn't good enough for me to tell what they want. All I can do is my best. Besides, I'm remembering a third one of those Kalashnikov stories as I think about it, about a guy who couldn't understand why everyone around him seemed to be aging so fast, because he still thought it was the 1970s. He'd probably sound just like Jill here. Recognizing-but-not-recognizing family.

Jay, the one with the vines, calls back. Obviously didn't leave, but says everything's okay. Though the way Jay says it is… it makes the sickening pound in my head worse. Something off. But then again, with this job, everything is off.

The next caller is at least a more mundane kind of weird. Large mystery poop. The animals in the database—the real ones, anyway—aren't that large. But the creepy criminals… yeah, I could see one of them popping a squat on her kitchen table. Not one of the super-neat ones, for certain… the Horde gang, maybe? Since it's poop, I almost think it's the Toilet Hobb… but all the Hobb criminals are weirdly tidy. There's something similar to a raccoon that smells the way she described. I can't get a good sense of scale for it, though. Is it really big enough to leave a dog-sized poop?

I'm gonna guess it's the Horde gang. They sometimes bring rotten food in, so that's pretty similar. I send her the info.

QA is… god, fuck QA. If they're not going to tell me what I should be saying, they should either fix what's getting to the customer or leave me the hell alone about it.

Another sign that the prankster is fine and not dead to the False Rosebush serial killer—someone with a voice that sounds a lot like the prankster's, who has a lot of kids (but isn't calling them "snappers" like the prankster does, ha) just called in. It's a normal case, too. At least, I hope it's normal. It sounds normal. Bedbugs.

Wow, QA even agrees with me.

Oh, my god. Carol picks this moment, this fucking moment, to send me that same damn recording of her threat to fire me a fourth time.

What the hell, Carol? What did I do to make you not only hate me, but hate me so lazily? You can't even be bothered to send me new insults?

Nobody's so much as touched that notice letter I left on her desk yet, but I've got a sudden surge of gratitude to my past self for writing it up and putting it there. One more week. Just one more week.

Jill calls back. Her family's gotten concerned enough that they're getting her psychiatric care. Not a fun call to listen to, but at least someone's doing something right. Hopefully a brain doctor can come look. Maybe they've gotten better at handling this stuff than ten years ago when that Hat book came out. Here's hoping.

A normal call. Heater broken down, crying kid. It's almost like I'm back in my old job .

Of course, we don't have a damn thing in the database for a normal frigging furnace problem. There's the Carbon Monoxide entry, but they don't sound like they're suffering that issue. Some kind of weird ball of slime mold or whatever that grows in pipes? But doesn't sound anything like what they're telling me. What did the last person send them, anyway?

I wrack my brain over it some. Kind of a relief to have it going down the routes that made up my life before. I can put this together. I can get a picture of it.

Okay. Their furnace went down last week. Someone here sent them… something, and it didn't work. Possible they diagnosed the original cause okay, but the customer went to fix it too late—heater stayed down long enough in the cold for the pipes to freeze up. And that is something in our database. I send it over.

…QA really needs to tell me what the hell they want.

Next call is pranksters hitting a guy's place. We don't actually do home security, as far as I know, but I can check if it's one of our weird criminals. Stealing clothes and making whoopee cushion noises? There's a troll entry—ha, didn't know the database writer was into Usenet—about a clothes-stealing prankster with some kind of blow-up costume. I send that over. QA even accepts it. Miracle of miracles.

…

That normal call. With the furnace. The guy called back. Something about his kid's mouth bleeding, then—screaming. Something or someone there.

Can't believe I let myself feel comfortable for a damn minute.

The next call sounds normal. It is normal, isn’t it? The lady's description just sounds like bees.

There's other entries here, some of the weird bugs. I go to look, but… the network's down again.

Fine. Fuck it. Bees. It sounds like bees. Therefore it's bees. Therefore I'm not going to get a screaming call in an hour as a person inexplicably begs for their life—

Come on.

I send the bee info packet over. QA dings it. A pit of dread opens up in the core of my stomach, and I can't close it back up again. Fuck. Fuck.

Another call that feels so ordinary. Network still down. But I feel sick as I scroll down to the entry the old me would have considered obvious. I submit it—black mold.

QA dings it again.

Bees lady calls back, and honest to god, I can't tell. Before, I would have just assumed she found a bee in her cup. But now, her screams are melding with the memories of all the other screams…

I look at the bee entry again. It basically just says to order our Pest Removal Services. So why did she say she tried what I sent her and it didn't do anything?

I can feel the thoughts approach again. My hand goes to my ice bag. But it doesn't hurt anymore. It doesn't bring me back out of the thoughts anymore. I just feel numb. It's only been a couple of hours since the panic attack, but it feels so distant now. Buried by the barrage of every call since.

It's in that indifferent haze that the memory comes. The first thought in what became cacophony, those scant few hours ago.

What does QA actually send the customers?

And why doesn't it sound like anything I try to send?

A weird call. Strange whistling sound. The database is back up again, so I scroll through it. Whistling Fungi has an audio sample, and the sounds match. Okay. No need to justify it to myself. Fungi are on the possible end.

I send the entry on Whistling Fungi. QA approves it, and from that I know I'll never hear from this customer again.

What happens to the ones I don't hear back from?

That was another thought in that clattering chain. I remember.

Tabletop poop calls me back. Screaming. There's always screaming. The Horde is making her eat it. It's a horror so absurd I can't even picture it. All I can do is hook onto one sentence she said, "The instructions you sent didn't work!!"

I double-check. The instructions about the Horde say that once they've targeted your home, the only thing you can do is move out.

What instructions did she get instead? Why didn't they just… why is the company doing this? They didn't tell her to get out. They left her to become the victim of this drug-addled gang. Why?

Next call comes. My hand presses the button to answer it before my brain can give any say-so. Horrible smell. Pet acting strangely. How much does the Horde gang stick together? Do they hit more than one house at once?

Other options. Wood Secretions smell terrible to adult humans and delicious to pets. Maybe that. Unicorn Fungi make pets behave strangely, and sometimes they dig things up. Not sure what the puppy would have dug up, though. "Trash Gnomes"… which look like some kind of specialized raccoon? Bad smell, and a big mammal in its territory would rile any dog up. Normal raccoons seem just as likely. Would Reanimations smell bad, if they were real? The entry says so. Pooka…

The picture watches me.

It's a mockery of a thing to do, but I pick by the solution.

(a) Replace the wood.

(b) Give the dog a bath or take it to the vet.

(c) Call our Pest Removal Service.

(d) Make peace with your neighbors.

(e) Find your real dog's corpse and pretend the thing watching you isn't there.

I send one of the ones that recommends the Pest Removal Service. QA doesn't like it. Of course.

I guess I'll know when I hear the screaming.

The bleakest bit of relief pierces through my haze at the next call. The person with asthma is going to find another doctor. Good. Hope it helps.

Riled-up dog gal calls back really fast. She says the instructions didn't help. Meaning, again, whatever the company sent her, it wasn't what I tried to send her, about the Pest Removal Service. Why undercut themselves like that? Don't they want to sell the service?

I listen to the rest of the call. Sounds like (e), Pooka, was the right answer. I mean, not actually possible, unless she's really bad at recognizing what her own puppy looks like, but.

She sounds scared, but the entry for Pookas doesn't say anything about them hurting people. Just that they like to scare people.

I hope it wasn't what killed her dog. Though that would have happened a long time before she ever called here.

God, when are the calls going to end?

Oh, it's the prankster! He's put his smart mice on the phone. That makes me feel a little better. I bet they're cute.

I try not to think about Whiskers.

Saturday is finally over. I don't know how I'm going to do this again tomorrow. I really don't.

#

I get home and wonder if I should try and avoid sleep, since I maybe gave myself a concussion. I have a medical manual kicking about around here somewhere, what's it say…

Go to the emergency room. Yeah, that's not going to happen.

Stay warm and watch for symptoms of brain damage over the next several days. Okay, well. Yeah, I can do that. Unless it's the symptom of "unconsciousness", probably can't do that. Otherwise: pulse, pulmonary, puking, pupils, and… convulsions.

It doesn't say anything about not sleeping. Might be because this thing's a little old, though. But I've gotta sleep if I want to make it through tomorrow. Seventh day in a row of work at a job that started making me question reality before getting a head injury.

It's shit sleep. Nightmare after nightmare almost like fever dreams. The line between waking and sleeping impossible to find. Worse when I have dreams that start with me "waking up". In one, I walk out to the kitchen for a midnight snack, only to find the walls full of mouseholes. I go to open the fridge, and out tumbles a pile of mouse heads, each of them with those too-human smart mouse eyes. I clutch one in my hand and turn to the endless mouseholes, only to see each and every one has an occupant now. Mice, standing up on their hind legs like that photo of the Pooka dog. Watching me.

#

1. Korsakov's disease return to text

Chapter 7

Notes:

And now, the finale! And with it, the grand reveal. Do mind the content warning tags.

I make it to morning. Real, actual morning. But the feeling of nightmare still clings to me, sticky and heavy, like my dawn-bright kitchen is somehow, simultaneously, somewhere dark and deep.

I get into the office. Nobody's there. But there's a new message in my inbox. It sounds like Carol wrote it. Descension? Trial? "The soil is fertile"?

There's a hole in the desktop background now. Like it's that somewhere dark and deep, left over from my dreams.

I put off starting. Get coffee. Say hello to Whiskers. The cat doesn't bring me any mice today, thank goodness. Sit back down.

They finally fixed the database problem by just putting a copy of the database straight on the computer. Good? But it's still the same entries. Still half nonsense.

Some of the entries feel like they're watching me.

I load up the call software. Not sure how anyone's going to know to call today.

But the calls don't come from customers.

The screen says, Thy Trial Hath Begun. Is this a prank from Carol?

There's music playing, but my deskmate isn't here to be playing it, and this is nothing like the stuff he listens to. It mixes with the ringing of the phone, a dank echo.

I answer the first call.

The person who calls me is incomprehensible. I'm not sure how our speech-to-text manages to understand a word. If it even did.

We are many, the text says. We are above. We are followers of our Queen. What are we?

What we? What Queen?

It's a prank call, but the software still wants me to answer.

Is this the Horde? Has the Horde called me?

I send it. QA dings it, and the screen shakes.

Showcase Thy Knowledge, the screen says.

Wait, Trial, Knowledge… is this an audit?

I take the next call. Another hooded figure, words incomprehensible and echoing. The transcription reads, I am not living, yet I clatter. I am small, I am weak. I serve my purpose, then I die. What am I?

For a moment, I wonder if it's talking about me. But I'm alive, still.

I search the database, but none of the entries work anymore. There's no option to check the database copy they sent me without clocking out of work completely.

Most things in our database are living. Frozen pipes, maybe? They clatter. And… I guess you could say they die. The strange music even echoes with the sound of dripping faucets.

I send it in. QA doesn't like it.

The screen shakes. Forge Ahead.

An elderly face with a crooked, rictus grin calls next. The echoes read, I am the beggar, I am the encroacher of the dry. I am friend to the water of the sky. What am I?

We don't have any entries about flooding. That's always been weird to me. Fungi, maybe? I pick one and send it.

The screen shakes. The background is a photograph of a skull and bones in some distant dirt. Press On, Employee.

The next caller has some kind of leaf-like growth where their face should be. I am the harbinger of death. I am the bringer of pestilence. I am forever the nuisance. What am I?

I should just get up and leave. I didn't sign up to get threatened and harassed.

But there's one more week left on my notice, even if they haven't read it yet. And I might still need to get this concussion treated. What were the signs I was supposed to watch out for? Pulse, perception… no, that can't be right.

Maybe I got concussed far harder than I thought, and this is all a hallucination.

Death and pestilence. There's creatures that bring those. Bats, rats, raccoons. Which do they want? Or are they talking about Fae Flu? Mice?

I choose mice. QA tells me again that it's wrong.

I don't care about passing this audit. Hell, the place deserves to fail an audit. Only one week left on my notice. Come on.

Rejoice, the screen says.

A… hound dog calls? I seek the domains of those who have too much. Step within, and they lose their way. What am I?

What the fuck does that mean?

…oh, who the hell am I kidding. These creepy software backgrounds, the fact that a literal dog seems to be calling me. The fact that I'm the only one called into the office today. This is obviously Carol's fucked-up idea of a prank.

I almost submit "Troll", just to call her out. But I take my job too seriously, I guess, because instead I think about it. The answer is Closet Labyrinth, right? That maze of hidden rooms some rich people built into old houses.

QA likes that one.

The screen shakes. Expand Thy Mind, it says.

For once, I get the message. It wants me to take the joke entries seriously. As if they're real.

The next face is indistinguishably strange. We are companions of the gardens. We compel those who tread to tread no longer. What are we?

There was a small creature, I remember, that ate weeds. But I don't think this is talking about that.

I select the Spriggan, one of the things I actually did end up believing in this week. A cacophony of screaming horror inside my head, at remembering what those things do.

In all undue irony, QA dings it.

For fuck's sake, QA.

The screen shakes. Let Go Thy Stilted Soul.

A star-nosed mole calls. Or perhaps something with a spider for a face. Or a tick for a face, it's hard to say. I am the dancer, I am the bringer of destruction. I consume the weak, and the reckless. I am the forsaken oil and the careless light. What am I?

Fire. QA… accepts it. For once.

The screen shakes. The trial—the audit—pressing ever onward. Descend.

Something that looks more carving than human calls. I am the seeker. I am the one who delivers. What am I?

A gopher, maybe? Metaphorically? Or a Reanimation, seeking and delivering vengeance… I think I've proven I don't know what they want.

"Dorcha," a voice says, from just over my shoulder. "That's what they want you to say."

My whole body freezes taut. That voice. I know that voice.

The junior supervisor. The one who interviewed me. Who hired me. The one who put extra permissions on my computer, like showing me the QA scores.

The one who's probably behind whatever the fuck I went through this past week.

I open the menu. Select "gopher". And hit submit.

The junior supervisor laughs, soft and careless. Pats my shoulder, the touch jarring, startling, too real and too wrong.

QA does not respond, and the screen does not shake.

Day is ending, the computer says. Please hold.

One final call. Carol, her eyes open and glowing. Nothing she says makes sense. Stuff about my high accuracy. About a promotion. None of that fits together with the threats to fire me, nor with the abysmal QA score hovering at the corner of my screen.

The junior supervisor's hand clenches around my shoulder. Tight to the point of pain.

Carol turns strange, the screen shaking, and my vision—my own vision, in my own body, goes dark.

Am I unconscious? Hallucinating? I'm on the ground in a forest. Carol is there, but different. Wild and stained with soil. A crown of wood and mushrooms in her hands. Her voice echoes, her mouth unmoving.

"Please, be not afraid." But then her bright eyes fix on the figure behind me. "What dost thou here, Junior Supervisor?"

A swift, rustling sound. Out of the corner of my eye, a blade—I scrabble back, getting as far away as I can.

The junior supervisor moves no closer to me. Their blade—an actual fucking longsword—aimed instead for Carol..

"Employee," her echoing voice rings from the trees. "I regret to inform you we no longer allow promotion by combat. Please await your annual review for a performance-based descent."

A bitter bark of a laugh. "Promotion? Is that what you think this is?" Junior Supervisor raises the sword, as if about to cut Carol down.

Carol reaches out a careless hand, and a green glow washes over Junior Supervisor. Junior Supervisor gasps, clutching at their chest—

Only to grab something from their pocket and throw it.

A distorted scream echoes through the trees until the branches shake. The crown Carol holds clatters to the ground as she flails her arm, a scent like burning leaves filling the air. A horseshoe hooked around her wrist, her skin bubbling beneath it.

"Thou—" the voice growing tangled, "—how didst thou—"

The Junior Supervisor uses the sword. Off with her head, snicker-snack.

I hear a rustling in the trees. Shapes, all around us. We're not alone in the forest.

Junior Supervisor, sword still green—green?—with Carol's blood, comes and hauls me up roughly. I struggle, try to get away.

"Do you want to live?" the Junior Supervisor hisses.

"O-of course I—"

"Then let me protect you."

I let the Junior Supervisor pull me in close, sweep a leather cloak over me. It smells like flowers, the gentle fragrance discordant.

"I claim this employee as my subordinate," Junior Supervisor shouts into the trees. "They have a perfect QA score, and have never told a customer our secrets."

"Um," I say, "I actually don't—"

"Shh."

Right. Probably not the best time to object.

"Give us safe passage to above, and I harm none," the Junior Supervisor says.

There's a grumbling of voices. "You killed her," one says. "Took her subordinate."

"I took action in equity." The Junior Supervisor's voice a growl. "Jure naturae aequum est neminem cum alterius detrimentum et injuria fieri locupletiorem."¹

A small, green figure steps forth. I've never seen such a thing before, but something about the shape of it sends roots of dread down through me.

"Name thy cause," the green figure says.

"She took my subordinate, Michael," the Junior Supervisor says. "Stole his form and ordered him slain. Indebitatus assumpsit."

…wait. Wait, is Junior Supervisor talking about Mike? The emails guy?

Mike is dead?

"He spoke our secrets," the creature replies.

"He was on a Performance Improvement Plan," the Junior Supervisor snaps back, as if that's some devastating counterblow. "And kept his word upon it."

"Very well," the creature says. "Passage thou shalt have. But no protection shall we grant thee against thy fate above the soil."

"And what fate is that?"

"That is for Human Resources to determine."

The entire world shivers. Past the next few blinks of darkness, the familiar shadows of the cubicle farm emerge. We're back in the office.

The Junior Supervisor frees me of the leather cloak, and only then do I realize it has a face.

"I-is that human?"

Junior Supervisor shakes their head. "Bed Hag. Died of natural causes, is what the store listing said. Cruelty-free."

What the fuck. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.

"I don't—I don't understand—"

"We shouldn't talk here. Follow me—I live a few blocks away."

"You can't go out in public like—"

Junior Supervisor turns to me. No sign of the bloodied longsword, of the cloak with an old woman's face. A stainless and crisp white dress shirt, and perfectly suitable slacks. The only un-business-like thing a long crystal necklace with a bright green stone.

"Is that Carol's necklace?" I ask. Not that she has a neck to wear one on, anymore.

"No, but it's the same kind. Glamour Stone. They sell them in the company shop."

The vaguest damn memory of a bug spray coupon comes to mind. The first and only time my QA score wasn't in the gutter.

I want to ask, but Junior Supervisor did say it wasn't safe to talk here. So I hold my tongue, grab my briefcase, and follow them home.

#

Junior Supervisor steps through their door only to immediately hand me a watering can. "Pour this on that thing that looks like a mushroom in my plant bed, will you? And let me know if it's still between the tape lines."

I do, and it chirps at me. I make sure it's still inside the tape, then I walk into the apartment. My hands on the pitcher are shaking.

"Appreciated," Junior Supervisor says. Takes the pitcher from me. Their crisp, neat businesswear is gone, and they look again the way I saw them in the forest. The cloak, however, is no longer with them—I glimpse its face as we pass their bedroom door, hanging from a metal mount.

I follow Junior Supervisor into the kitchen, vaguely accept an offer of soda. The can cold in my hand. Mundane. Normal. And so badly out of place, as I watch them use a dish sponge and the kitchen faucet to clean Carol's green blood from their sword. The blade doesn't fit in the sink, so they can only rinse it off a bit at a time, taking breaks to wipe drips off the countertops.

I watch. Pop open the soda can, the sweet and bubbly liquid having no room in my head alongside the sight.

I frown. Is caffeine bad for concussions? I don't remember if the medical manual said anything about that.

"How much did you figure out?" Junior Supervisor asks, drying off the blade with a flower-print dish rag. "I couldn't really tell."

"Figure out about what?" I ask, feeling foolish the second I say it. "I mean, there's… there's a lot."

"True. There is a lot."

My mind grasps for something, anything. "Is Mike really dead?" It doesn't make me sound any smarter, but. But, god. Fuck.

"You should know," Junior Supervisor says. "You're the one who found the body."

"Wh—what are you talking about?" I'd remember if I'd found a human body. This week has been crazy beyond anything I could imagine, but I would remember a dead body.

"Ah, so you don't know about the mice."

"Mus musculus loquens–loquentis?"

"Loquentes," Junior Supervisor corrects. "And yes. Those."

"I know about them. I mean, I know—Muzak showed me—" I clap my free hand over my mouth. Good god, do I feel like a fool. "My deskmate. They, um, they've never introduced themselves. But they showed me the video about smart mice, the one from the network something-or-other."

"Ahh. So that's how far you got." Junior Supervisor looks down at the sword in their hands. Eyes soft and pained and distant. "There's more to smart mice than what the scientists figured out."

"What do you mean?" There's not anything in our database about—god, what am I talking about. We're not at work right now. I can think outside the database now.

"Carol can—could—turn people into mice."

It shouldn't register. It shouldn't seem real. And yet, I can hear the squeaking still—"The prank caller. Is that… is that what happened to him?"

The Junior Supervisor laughs. It's something warped and bitter.

"It's not funny."

"No." They wipe a tear from their eye. "No, it really isn't."

"Then why—"

"You'll get it soon enough. I need to explain the calls to you first."

"Okay." I take a sip of the soda, to steady myself. Try not to think about the mouse head Whiskers brought me. About Mike. "Why couldn't Carol turn you into a mouse?" That must have been what she was trying to do, when she hit Junior Supervisor with that green glow.

"Ah, that." The Junior Supervisor turned to me, pulled down the collar of their shirt, to reveal the shine of a silver medallion with a wrought-iron chain. "Another purchase from the company shop." They covered it back up. "I'd recommend it, but they only made one."

Thus the insistence, on keeping me close to protect me. So Carol couldn't—wow.

"Thank you," I say. "You saved my life."

"Thank no one." Their voice sharp and serious. "Ever. It's too dangerous."

"I—what?"

They shake their head. "Like Carol, there's a lot that can pretend to be human. And if you say 'thank you', then some of that lot might decide you owe a favor. And they always collect."

"Uh. Okay. Got it." I would assume the Junior Supervisor was insane, but. Well. Everything.

"Anyway," Junior Supervisor says. "I'm human, but still don't thank me. I'm the one who got you into this mess. And I did it on purpose."

"What do you mean? When you hired me?"

"When I used you," Junior Supervisor says, "To set this whole thing up."

"I, um." I look down at my drink. "Could I? Sit down someplace?"

"Sure." They finish drying off the sword and sheathe it in a leather scabbard, then set it in the umbrella stand by the door. From there, they lead me over to the living room, to collapse down into their couch. The cushions firm and soft in just the right ways. A relief.

Junior Supervisor doesn't sit. Pacing instead, back and forth across the living room rug. "I'll start by explaining the calls."

"I have a question about them," I say.

"Hm? Okay. Shoot."

"What happens to the people who don't call back?"

A pause in the pace. "Noticed that, did you."

"And the ones who do call back, why didn't they do what the packets said? I'd send instructions and they'd call back without even having tried them, saying they didn't work—what info is the company actually sending them?"

"Is that why you made some of the choices you did?" Junior Supervisor asks. "Trying to hedge your bets?"

It sounds like an accusation, but I refuse to back down about it. "Yeah, of course I did. We get barely a few sentences to figure things out, and we can't ask any followups. So if I wasn't sure, I sent them the safest option. But then they didn't... and I thought they were just being stubborn, at first, but they'd mention following instructions while clearly still in the house."

Junior Supervisor snorts. "Clever. More sensible than what I do when I'm not sure. I'm too by-the-book." Which is a hell of a thing to say for someone who just murdered our boss.

"So, what is it? What instructions actually get to them?"

"Oh, whatever the operator sent them," Junior Supervisor says. "Back when those calls were originally made."

Things click together, things I haven't ever consciously noticed before. Like the seasons. One call would be about freezing furnaces, another about tall summer grass, that drugged-up one I wasn't sure about maybe talking about autumn vines.

"Were they all recordings?" Right, our system—"Archived ones, I mean?"

"Right on the money. All the calls through Saturday were training records. When I set up your system special at the start of the week, I had those route to you instead of fresh ones."

"Why? Was this a training thing?"

"Nah. A secret plan thing. I had to make sure nobody called us back about something you told them."

"So the callbacks—those were recordings you fed me, too?"

"Think of it as feedback. And yes."

"How did you know which ones I'd get wrong?"

"I didn't. That's why you didn't get positive callbacks."

The dread, then, seeped in again. I took a swallow of soda. "So they were all..."

"Every one of them, one of our past failures. Yes."

"So, even the ones I gave the right advice to—"

"—never got it. They met their fates long before you ever tried to send it."

Half relief, half horror. No more of the burden of wondering what if... My fuck-ups harmed no one, cost nothing.

My successes never saved a single soul.

"Why do that? Why do this?"

"So you could have a perfect QA score."

That one snaps me. "But I didn't!" I stand angrily from the couch, swaying with an onrush of dizziness, half-crushing the soda can in my hand. "My QA score was shit, almost the whole time! QA dinged me for everything!"

"That was also feedback." Voice calm, implacable. "That score never made it to anyone but you and me. What Carol and those below the soil saw was a perfect score." The reason, then, for why the firing threats were pre-recorded, in contrast to Carol's "sarcasm". Her praise had been genuine. Her damnation, stolen from some poor sap's past.

"Why?"

Junior Supervisor's eyes wander to the sword. "To get you that promotion."

It doesn't make sense. "But you said—you said Mike died this week. But you set this up before that. I don't understand."

"There's another set of call recordings I sent you. Do you remember? You've asked me about them already."

"The prank caller. Why did you send me the prank calls?"

"A clue, to see if you'd put it all together. Since the tapes eventually let you hear what Carol did to Mike."

"To—to Mike?"

"To Mike," Junior Supervisor confirms. "He was the prank caller. He got put on suspension for telling a customer too much, and he got... frustrated." The Junior Supervisor shakes their head. "Not my favorite thing he ever did, but not worth what happened to him. What Carol did."

My brain keeps hitting snag after snag in the fabric of this tale. "What do you mean, telling a customer too much? The only thing we can do is send them info packets." And I know the info packets weren't just a Junior Supervisor plot, because Muzak had to do them, too, because the cubicle farm is always uncomfortably quiet, because I've never heard anyone talk to a customer.

"These days, yes. That's a policy change. One that changed because of Mike." A frown. "It was supposed to fix the problem, so they wouldn't have to fire him, or anyone else who slipped up."

"So Mike got turned into a mouse, and you—"

"—found him. And worked together with him on this plot."

"How do you work together with a mouse? Did you have that interpreter thing the scientists did?"

"He can still type—you've gotten his emails." A flash of sorrow. "Could still type, I mean."

I don't know what to say. "I'm sorry."

Junior Supervisor shakes their head. "Don't be. This was my fuck-up."

"So, what happened?"

"We set up our gambit. Installed some cameras in mouse holes, hired you. The goal originally, it wasn't killing Carol." A look at the sword again, face twisted in pain. "We just wanted to get Mike his body back. Let him be human again."

God.

"He and I got into an argument, the last time we talked. He was getting cold feet about using you."

"That's why he sent me those emails?"

A grim nod. "And then Carol figured enough out from that to bring in the cat. I tried to keep the cat well-fed so it wouldn't need to hunt, but cats—"

"Cats," I agree.

"And you found Mike's body. And from there... It stopped being about fixing things."

A grim silence falls. Pierced only by the popping of the soda can, as I unclench my grip. As I let the memories of the week pass through my mind, relit by this new context.

"What happens next?" I ask, eventually.

"I meet with HR. If they don't let me off easy, well, hopefully I put up a good fight."

"And me?"

"Run. If I make it past HR, I'll cover for you as long as I can. Give you a head start. I don't know what they'll do to you when they find you."

"I thought you told the monsters I was your subordinate? Under your protection?"

"That only matters if you stay."

"Then maybe I should stay."

"Stay?" Junior Supervisor looks at me like I'm crazy. "You'll get customers killed. And get yourself fired, without a head start."

The reminder of this past week stabs. "I'll do better, now that I know the entries are real. They are, aren't they? All of them."

Junior Supervisor blinks at me in surprise. ""Warped to the perspective of our underlords. But real, yes." They take a moment to contemplate, then shake their head. "I think you've answered one of my questions."

"What's that?"

"Why you answered the way you did. I could never find a pattern to it. But you decided... what? That none of it was real? That only some of it was real?"

I explain. How many of the things could easily have been mundane. How brain damage could explain even the seemingly inexplicable. How many gaps there were, of things that should have been there, could have answered the callers' questions. How I justified, finally, the Hobbs and the Horde and the False Rose Bush. How sprites and the False Flower became insects, how I decided the local fungi and local tree sap were something strange but possible.

I half-expect Junior Supervisor to laugh at me. But instead, they grab a notepad and pen while I'm talking, start scribbling things down. Asking me questions. We're halfway through a list of things you could mistake for a Memory Wisp when finally they hold up their hand and set the notepad down.

"You're right," Junior Supervisor says. "You should stay. But not answering calls, and not supervising."

"Then what?"

"How would you like to help expand the database?"

---

1. "By natural law, it is just that no one should be enriched by another's loss or injury." –Sextus Pomponiusreturn to text