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Episode 01x04 - Slappy Emerges

Malex:

I had settled in for a long day’s work. Specifically, I was working on trying to catch up on the sleep I had missed the night before. Sadly, however, MicroSlop had other plans.

“Excuse me,” said the receptionist who had given me the job earlier that morning. “Your new boss has scheduled a meeting between yourself and the members of your new team. The meeting begins in ten minutes.”

As she explained where I was to find the conference room, I wondered why she had come up to tell me. Were there no other employees? Did the phones not function at all? After she left, I tried the phone on my desk, and discovered that its function was apparently decorative in nature. How odd.

Resigned to the idea of working for somebody other than myself, I began making my way to the conference room.

I was not the first person to arrive at the conference room. There were already several people sitting at the table, and none of them seemed eager to introduce themselves to me. Two of them had greasy Taco King uniforms on. (Again, how odd.)

“You must be Malex,” said the man at the head of the table. He introduced himself as Gill Bates - the owner of the company. Mr. Bates had a strange accent to his speech, and several mannerisms which made me begin to hate him even before these first few sentences had fully slithered past his teeth.

Icepunk:

I hang up the payphone and shake my head in wonderment at the smoldering ruins of the Taco King. Who would have guessed that cheese could combust like that?

I wander aimlessly for a while - unsure of where to go - until a thought strikes my brain with surprising force. What if I got a job at MicroSlop?

I head for the bus stop, fingering loose change, keys, and some rolls of bills in my pocket. Before the roof of the Taco King collapsed, I managed to retrieve quite an amount of currency from the cash-drawer.

Tired of waiting, I step in front of an approaching bus, which promptly stops and opens its doors. The driver, a skinny old man with a bald head, demands, “What do you want?!”

I show him my wad of cash. “My good man!” I begin respectfully. “Can I get a ride to MicroSlop?”

“Give you a ride?!” he leers at me. “I don’t give rides! What do you think this is, a carnival? No passengers!”

“So you get paid to drive this bus around and refuse to pick people up? How deviant and un-stereotypical of you! I must say, I greatly admire your methods,” I say in a futile attempt to butter him up.

“Whoever said I get paid?!” the wrinkled old man screams hysterically. “Now leave me alone and let me get back to work!” The old geezer cackles and is racked by a fit of coughing.

I step onto the bus. “But can’t I just ride around a bit? Please?”

Enraged, the bus driver grabs his cane and whacks me out of the bus and onto the sidewalk. Before I can get up, the old man leaps onto my chest with surprising agility and starts beating me with his cane.

I’d rather not hit him - he’s so brittle that he’d probably turn into a chalky pile of dust. My options limited thusly, I choose to attempt to reason with him.

“Wait!”

Whack!

“I’m-”

Crack!

“-sorry!”

Thwack!

Having failed in reasoning with him, I decide to enact Plan C.

A few moments later:

I leave Slappy swaying in the breeze - duct-taped to the bus sign. I whistle gleefully and pat the wheel of my newly acquired Strayhound bus. Not to be an optimist, but I’d say the day is looking up a bit.

Malex:

Mr. Bates began to introduce me to the other people present at the meeting, who he had apparently met as recently as I had, considering the number of names he got wrong the first time.

Two of the people, Boof and Poo, seemed familiar. Perhaps I had noticed them working at the Taco King across the street. That would be a logical assumption considering their uniforms.

“All of you people here make up the new team,” Mr. Bates said. “A team whose goal is to write MicroSlop’s newest software package. A software package which will make us the greatest software company on the planet!”

I noted, dryly, that Mr. Bates’ voice got more irritating with every high-pitched syllable.

I waited for him to elaborate, but he did not seem inclined to do so. I suspect, looking back, that the man probably had enough severe social problems to send a seasoned psychiatrist into convulsions.

“What exactly,” I asked, “will this software do?”

“It will be a first-class operating system of course!” He spoke as if he was enlightening me to the fact that I had a large hole in my skull.

“Ah,” said I, wondering how much more of this I could stand before I went postal. “Well, now that we’ve established the purpose of this wonderful team, can we ask some questions that might bring this whole thing back into the realm of sanity?” I decided to either bring some order to our little group, or get fired trying.

Mr. Bates seemed perplexed at the possibility that anything out of the ordinary had yet taken place. “Why certainly! Everyone, please feel free to ask any questions that are on your minds.”

I was relieved, and expected hands to go up all over the table. I was sadly mistaken, and every eye turned toward me. “Hmm,” I thought, “I appear to be surrounded by grade-A loons. Memorize all available escape routes...”

Icepunk:

I arrive at MicroSlop’s pristine, ninety-story headquarters with eager anticipation of what the next few minutes will bring, which will hopefully include a job and a bathroom with working facilities.

I leave the restrooms with a spring in my step, and approach the only human in the lobby.

Sitting at a desk by some shiny little elevators is a super-perky receptionist whose plastic smile goes with the decor of the lobby. “Good morning sir,” she greets me. “How may I help you?”

I clear my throat and turn on the charm. “Hey there, do you think I can find a job here? Maybe get your number in the process?”

Perky smiles even more. “Yes, we have a few job openings here-”

One of the elevators opens and a man in a business suit puffs by us indignantly. As he leaves, he calls to us, “I quit! No one even works at this lousy company any more!”

“What did he mean by that?” I ask.

“Well, I may have understated a bit by saying that we only have a few job openings.”

“Skip it. Do I get the job?”

“That depends. What sort of skills do you have?”

“I can easily beat any first-person shooter game on the market, so I might like a career in contract killing.”

She frowns at me. “Is that some kind of slang? Are you serious?”

“Heck yes, I’m serious. I’m talking about a fiber-optic scope with 15x zoom capabilities, mounted on a fully-automatic rifle with noise suppression, aimed at an arbitrary target a thousand meters away, and possibly emptying a twenty round magazine loaded with custom-made hollow point bullets into said target.”

“You’re hired. Can you start today?”

Malex:

Everyone was staring at me, waiting for me to ask for clarification about whatever points I had been stupid enough to miss.

“Well,” said I, preparing a mental list of the oddities of the day, “why don’t we start with the picketers and lack of, umm, senior employees?”

“Strike,” Mr. Bates answered too quickly. “Some of my political stances are unpopular among the general population.” The ball bounced squarely into my court.

“Okay, that works for me. What about the phones? Why don’t they work?”

“Ha!” Mr. Bates laughed, prompting everyone around him to laugh as well. “Security, boy! You can’t tap a phone that doesn’t work!”

“Ah, stupid me,” I said dourly. “Well then, what about the leadership of our little group? Who calls the shots?”

“Hmm, I hadn’t thought about that. I suppose I’d better pick somebody!” He squinted at the people around the table, and lighted on Poo. “I like the stains on your shirt! You be the leader, okay?”

Poo grinned, made a high-pitched noise that sounded something like ‘w00t’, and promptly convulsed right out of his chair.

We were doomed.