Pbeidy
Work fulfilled several central roles in the life of Sean Fuentes. Any waking hour he did not spend at the gym, he spent there. Grinding. Crushing it. Putting in the hours showing he had the Founder mentality. Like the city itself and almost every other institution within it, Overseer Systems had an internal ranking for every employee, every team, every business unit. The system was ruthlessly meritocratic. Every second you worked, your ranked increased, every second you took a break it decreased. No exceptions. The Founders were at the top, much like they were in every list in 2moachan City, inspiring their employees to go the extra mile, do that extra rep. There was a 158” holo display in the lobby that cycled through the various rankings, with the All Hands ranking always showing on the right hand side. Sean stood, spitting his flavorless gum into a kleenex while waiting for the lists to cycle through. This was his morning ritual. He wouldn’t look at the All Hands ranking until he saw his position in his own business unit. 25 seconds later there it was and there he was, Sean Fuentes, VP of Urban Accounts, North America. Top of his business unit, as he had been the last 83 weeks. He pumped his fist slightly in a practiced gesture of mild celebration and allowed his eyes to slide over to the other board.
There he was again. On rank 38, below the three Founders, the Executive team, Business Unit Presidents and a scattering of others, some of whom happened to be married to the children of the Founders. He had not been able to crack into the top 25 in his entire career at Overseer Systems. But he had been on a tear these last couple of weeks. Several large contracts signed with mid level cities in Texas and Florida had boosted his stock considerably. He would get there, this week would be critical. His boss had been fired for cultural contamination. Brad has always been a little bitch, especially about what the company’s cultural handbook had to say about employees being obligated to “ensure the promulgation and proliferation of genes lines compatible with 2moachan City’s goal of Ascendancy while also, by active or passive means, working to limit the potential harm done by incompatible or even degrading gene lines”. He had gotten ripped at a company event and vented to Sean that it was “racist eugenicist bullshit draped in techno-babble. Sean had been inclined to let it go, Brad was always on some woke shit, but then he had held Sean’s gaze for one heartbeat too long and brushed a stray lock of hair out of his face. Sean had reported him to Human Resources the next day. That had been last week.
Sean had plenty more opportunities to curse Brad as the day went on. He had anticipated that stepping into Brad’s position should have been a breeze. After all, anyone as woke and soft as Brad couldn’t have been good at his job. He had handled the high potential accounts in North America, mostly large metropolitan areas in the East that belonged to rump states that were culturally and politically at cross purposes with 2moachan City but still made use of some of their large scale AI systems such as those sold by Overseer Systems. The accounts were notorious for demanding bespoke solutions that striped out much of the tracking, data collection and ranking that were the bedrock of 2moachan City’s resounding growth and success. They complained that it violated “civil liberties and human rights”. In Sean’s mind, what these accounts had needed was a strong hand and a straight talker. Someone who would lay out the facts to the clients about how the situation really was. They needed Overseer more than vice versa.
Eight hours later, Sean closed out the first half of the work day with his head in his hands. He had been in a multiple calls with members of the City Maintenance Board, the City Council and the Mayors Office of the Greater Metro Commonwealth of the District of Columbia-Baltimore. Some of the calls had contained no fewer than 13 people, all of them spitting blood. The Agua Fina system Overseer Systems had sold them last year, and which represented a considerable revenue stream in service fees, had shut down the water and sewage flows to large parts of the city due to residents there “not inherently ranking high enough to merit such perks”. The attendants had angrily reminded Sean again and again of the fact that the city’s contract with Overseer Systems stipulated explicitly that any system purchased from the company be stripped of any and all ranking system for its citizens. Appeals for calm and attempts to get the myopic bureaucrats to look at the bright side of the situation had only served to inflame them even more. To Sean’s dismay, the client contacts had been singularly unimpressed by any of his reassurances that things were not that bad as they seemed and that this glitch would be easily resolved with a patch in the next update in two weeks as per their SLA. The contacts should instead look at the actions of the Agua Fina AI as an opportunity. Feeling himself and certain he was about to reassert control he had continued, ignoring Brad’s former assistant as she waved her arms at him in desperation, it had identified waste in the system and the city could now adjust accordingly. Why, if they chose this moment to adopt a few more tenants of the 2moachan Way and go to the next subscription tier, it could identify more opportunities to trim costs and regulations and thus return Columbia-Baltimore on to the path of Growth and Profitability!
That ocurrencia had earned him five minutes of the Mayor’s time. A stern faced women with tightly cropped gray kinky hair and flinty eyes, she had coolly informed Sean that The Greater Metro Commonwealth of the District of Columbia-Baltimore was cancelling it’s contract with Overseer Systems on the grounds of the Values Clause as laid out on Page 127, Paragraph 13 Section B. Sean, his face stretched into a smile so broad it threatened to split him in half, had countered that their contract stipulated that they had to go through arbitration first and offered that he fly out to the East Coast to discuss the situation face to face, maybe over dinner and a few drinks. The Mayor had just stared at him wordlessly for several heart beats before her the left side of her mouth curled up in knowing smirk.
“You’re pretty and got a tight ass. Brad was pretty and had a tight ass too but he was a lot smarter than you. Knew the reality of the situation. You send me Brad by the end of the week, maybe he can pull this out for you. Otherwise, you’ll be hearing from Delaware.” With that, she ended the call.
It took a dozen breathing exercises and a handful of Kegels for Sean to calm down enough to be able to drink some Ultra IV Electrotite. The grainy liquid coated the back of his throat and caused him to cough violently. He returned to his bent over position.
Delaware. The Free and Independent Economic Zone of Delaware had seceded from the crumbling United States 30 years ago, just like many of the other Assorted States and Territories of America. Much like before, there was only one thing that made it notable amongst a bevy of states, nations, territories, commonwealths, communes, provinces, republics, collectives, free economic zone, technocracies, ethno-states, city states and drum circles that romped around in the wreckage of what was once the United States of America.
A court. THE Court. The International Corporate Court. The ICC, as it was known to all (except for the Euros, but fuck those backward looking, socialist, traitors to western civilization) had grown out of the Delaware Court of Chancery. It was the supreme authority on corporate law and arbitration for all limited liability states and other entities with whom employment was roughly equivalent with citizenship. Chaired by the some of the most ruthless corporate lawyers and AI Gestalt programs of some of the foremost legal scholars in the history of American corporate law, it’s verdicts were final. While the Court lacked any obvious means of enforcing it’s verdicts, plaintiffs always diligently adhered to them lest even a hint of non-compliance be suspected. After all the first years after its founding, several of the newly established corporate free cities had thought to flaunt the self proclaimed authority of the court. Within weeks, they had found their bank accounts frozen, key Founders and executives disappeared, their city AIs under constant hacking attacks. In two cases, the working population of the cities had torn their homes apart in apocalyptic scenes of violence, murdering every citizen and Founder they could get their hands on after the Court AIs had released personal earnings data into the local communication networks.
You did not fuck, with the Court.
Panic coiled itself around Sean’s heart and lungs, constricting them so tightly his vision started to white out. Even reciting the Mantra of Masculinity and the Overseer Systems corporate anthem did nothing to calm him down. He was sweating. He would need to wash his face and reapply moisturizer. Career destruction did not need to be compounded with breaking out. He needed to fix this. He could fix this. He was dead. He could fix this. He needed to fix this. Why was he hard? He needed to fix this. H.
A loud female voice calling his name cut through his thoughts, frightening him out of spiraling fear reaction. Had he been muttering out loud?
It was Brad’s former assistant. He had forgotten her name. Amy? Dulce? They had dated for a bit, but the bitch had refused engage in any activity that might have meaningfully improved his PAP score, let alone live stream it. She fucking knew that he would not get the credit unless there was streaming evidence. Had probably just been trying to trick him to knock her up and get his money. Fu…
No, he needed to focus. This had to take precedent. He had to show he was the Man, that he was in control. This shouldn’t bother him. He could handle this no problem. He was success. He would dominate this situation, just like he would dominate that Mayor bitch, that pinche puta ne..
“Sean.” Maria repeated again. “What do you want?” He finally said in flat tone, staring at her with hooded eyes.
“Pyotir wants to see you. “
Sean’s skin was suddenly ice cold as the hair on the back of his neck stood at end.
The Founder and CEo of Oversee Systems wanted to see him.
He was so fucked.