Fugue

Open mouths, empty heads, big bytes.

I founded SKELM CORPS in a century when a company was a guild with a wax seal and a grudge. This morning it hired me as a mid-level analyst named Martin.

The plan is simple: go undercover at the Locus, my company's headquarters in Iowa City, find out who has been grading my life from upstairs, and take it apart from the inside. Ban is Mary. Katherine works nights. The onboarding is relentless.

Then the doors start opening before I reach them. Promotions arrive that nobody requested. Memos come signed D. Skelm, in a hand I haven't used since the fourteenth century. And Chrysalis, the company's new wellness halo, is teaching employees to want exactly what they're told.

Worse: I'm good at this job. Martin is very good at it. And every night I come home a little less sure which of us signed the day's paperwork.

Somebody upstairs likes me. That's the problem.