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Title:
Cubed
Author:
Miss Murchison
Rating:
R, overall
Disclaimer:
All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy,
etc. Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine.
Word Total: about
20,000.
Summary: To solve a
mysterious string of deaths, Buffy and Spike must go where they have
never gone before—undercover at a large company, where they must hunt
down a murderer amid the cubicles while coping with PowerPoint
Presentations and the Coffee Fund Rules.
Extra long, boring,
skipable note: This is a long-gestating fic. In fact, several
elephants could have gestated, been born, and grown to adolescence
since I started it. I started it just before Season 7 began airing and
worked on it a bit more during the depths of angst-ridden drama on the
screen, at my job, and in my fic. I kept adding to it whenever I was
desperately in need of cheering myself up. I finished it as an
antidote to my current fic, which chronicles Buffy's depression.
Therefore, I've set it in an alternative Season 6 where there is no
angst. Assume Buffy didn't die at the end of Season 5, or, if she did,
she was glad to get back. Don't go looking for any huge problems among
the canon characters. They're not there, although all is not sweetness
and light. Which is good, because we all know how bad light is for
Spike.
Thanks:
To
Keswindhover and
to the friend who has since disappeared from the fandom but who
encouraged this idea in the first place. (If you ever read this, you
know who you are, and you are missed by others as well as by me.)
Thanks as well to
It Must Be
Tuesday, for creating the
Seasonal Spuffy community on Live Journal that encouraged me to
finally finish this story.
Chapter Two
The ads Willow found said that Ashiana Industries conducted walk-in
interviews for entry level positions beginning with its 8 a.m. shift.
So early the next morning, Buffy stepped off the Sunndydale municipal
bus in front of the long, low, almost offensively boring building that
housed the corporation. It was located outside of town, apparently to
afford lots of parking space around the building and to make it
difficult for people without cars to get to work. She stepped up to
the large glass doors of the nearby entrance, to be stopped by a sign
announcing, "Employees with security badges only."
A few people who had ridden out on the bus with her leaned over to
swipe the badges they wore around their necks against a small black
box near the door handle. The door clicked and let them in.
Buffy grabbed the handle, but it had locked after the others. Another
young woman hurried up and swiped a badge.
"Can you let me in?" Buffy asked.
The woman shook her head, shocked. "I'd be fired," she said and
hurried through the door.
Buffy was left outside, wondering how one got inside long enough to
become an employee with badge and the right to be inside. A car pulled
up in the space next to the entrance, and she turned to look at the
driver, wondering why there was an empty spot so close to the door.
"Hi!" A tall, lanky young man jumped out of an elderly Chevy, his
pimpled face shining with welcome. He was wearing a blue shirt
emblazoned with the Ashiana logo.
"Hi," said Buffy cautiously. "Maybe you can help me? I'm looking for
Human Resources." She noticed a sign in front of the newcomer's car.
"Reserved for Employee of the Month."
"You're looking for a job here? Sure I'll help!" He waved at the sign.
"This is a great place to work if you like to work. They give you all
kinds of rewards and stuff. He tried to puff out his chest. "That's
how I got this shirt. It was a Customer Service Award."
"Oh?" Buffy followed him down the sidewalk away from the door. "Where
are we going?"
"There's an entrance near HR with a security guard. Letting someone
with a badge in any other door is Against the Rules. It's Against the
Rules to park without an employee sticker either. You didn't do that,
did you?"
"No, I came on the bus."
"Really? Hey, if you get a job and you don't have a car, maybe you can
carpool with me. I'm working on some ecology stuff for the Citizenship
Award, and I could get some points for that. I'm Harry, by the way."
"Buffy."
"Cool name." Harry beamed at her. He seemed almost supernaturally
happy for someone showing up for work before 9 a.m.
Buffy increased the space between them. "I hope I won't make you
late."
"Not at all. I'm always extra early, just in case. Don't want to lose
points on the Attendance Awards! That gets you gift certificates for
donuts, you know. Besides, if you tell me your full name, I can tell
HR I'm referring you, and if I refer three people in a month, I get a
Referral Bonus. Twenty dollars. Can I tell them that?"
"Sure. Buffy Summers." Much to Buffy's relief, they had reached the
main entrance, where Harry presented her to a security guard and a
receptionist as if she were a prize animal he'd brought for show at a
4-H Fair. He then went off down a hallway, nodding and smiling at
everyone he met, and left Buffy to take a clipboard full of forms from
the reassuringly bored receptionist.
Buffy shifted uneasily in the uncomfortable plastic chair provided for
job applicants at Ashiana Industries. She tried to smile perkily and
failed. So she mentally reviewed the previous night’s activities and
tried again. She had learned that it was easier to act eager during
job interviews when you felt truly desperate.
I don’t just need this job to investigate demonic activity. I need
the money. And it’s almost a dollar more an hour than the last place!
The last place that had fired her, that was. And Spike had managed to
get fired last night too. Which was kind of her fault. I didn’t
mean to kick that gearshift thing in his cab. So it’s not really my
fault. Spike shouldn’t have been, uh, distracting me. She
felt an involuntary wince of remembrance pass over her features as
last night’s spectacular crash rang in her ears. At least we
didn't hurt anyone who wasn't already dead. And he said his leg would
be better by this morning.
Now she had to figure out how to make the mortgage payment with both
her and Spike out of work. She had resisted taking his money for a
while, but he’d pointed out that he ate her food, watched her TV, used
her washer and dryer, and—more recently—climbed through her window
after the others had gone to sleep and used her bed. So it only seemed
reasonable that he should pay his share, especially when Willow always
seemed to have some excuse not to, like needing to buy a new textbook
or grimoire for research, and Dawn was growing and eating like there
was no tomorrow.
So Buffy forced herself to respond to stupid statements like, "Tell me
about yourself."
Well, I'm good at surviving death, which should be an asset in this
company.
"Well, I have some college, and it wasn't really my fault I dropped
out. I mean, I'm planning on going back maybe part-time, but I need—I
mean, I want to get some real experience first."
That was stupid. Way to say, "I'm not going to stick around,
succka!" But something about the non-blinking stare of the
middle-aged woman behind the desk made it very hard to think of
anything more positive.
The HR representive looked down at Buffy's resume. "Why did you leave
your last job?"
Buffy remembered green blood and someone shrieking at her to get out
and never, ever come back again. "Uh—there was a restructuring after
my boss, uh, also stopped working there." Buffy shifted her position
again, tugging down on her short skirt and thinking she might look
more efficient and trustworthy if her clothes and her knees weren't
such strangers. But she couldn't afford new clothes.
"How do you handle conflict?"
"Uh— Pretty well. It's kind of my area of expertise, really."
The woman seemed to expect more, but Buffy was unable to think of an
adequate way to expand on this. Her interrogator shut the file, picked
up a pencil, and started making notes on a pad. Buffy shrank down in
her chair as the scratching went on and on. Just when she was prepared
to get up and slink out the door, the woman looked up and said, "Oh,"
as if she'd forgotten Buffy were there. But then she added, "We need a
temporary worker on a special project. Fill out this packet and give
the forms to Rachel at the reception desk. You can start this
afternoon."
"Oh, thanks." Buffy had taken the papers and was halfway back to the
waiting room when she thought to ask, "Um, how long does it last?"
The woman was perusing another file and didn't bother to look up. "As
long as Melandra Harbottle needs you and you can stand working for
her."
Well, at least I have a job. Buffy would have been more relieved if
she hadn’t gotten the impression that the woman would have hired
anyone who was still breathing. Buffy wondered if the assignment was
that bad, or if it was just the attrition rate of the staff that made
the recruiter desperate.
Several hours later, Buffy had been fingerprinted, drug tested,
photographed, and submitted to a mind-numbing video that talked about
Ashiana Industries at great length without actually explaining what it
was the company did. Buffy gathered that that they performed various
kinds of work for various other companies, but she still had no idea
exactly what she would be doing at her job.
She had then been left to sit in the HR waiting room for a half hour
until the mysterious Melandra Harbottle sent up a representative to
show her around and bring her to her new work area. Sometime after
Buffy had brought herself up-to-date on the latest marriages, births
and divorces in the entertainment world and been reduced to reading an
even more boring discussion of the problems certain corporations were
having with their own mergers and acquisitions, a newly familiar voice
said, "Hi!"
Harry was beaming down at her. "You're going to be in my work group!
They needed someone to get you so I volunteered!"
What a surprise.
He threw out his arm in
a welcoming gesture. "I get to show you all around first. I would have
been here sooner, but I was finishing up some work tickets. I have
myself on a quota each day so that I can get the Productivity Award at
the end of the month. Come on! Wait until you see the cafeteria! Do
you have any change? They just put in a new machine that vends tacos
and ramen so you don't have to eat Snickers bars if you forget your
lunch."
Buffy followed him down the hallway, swiping her brand-new employee
badge as they passed through a security door. "Can't you go out for
lunch?"
"I suppose. But it's only a half-hour and there's no place to eat near
here, so you'd probably be late getting back, and you wouldn't want
that to happen." At the thought of lateness, the first worried look
Buffy had ever seen on Harry's countenance appeared. Then he smiled
again. "But everything you need is right here! There's an ATM and even
a dry cleaners that delivers here. And once a week, a pizza place
delivers lunch. Just two dollars a slice, and if you have enough
Promptness Points, you can earn gift certificates for those."
"Gee, I wonder why you ever go home." Buffy looked around, trying to
get her bearings in a sea of identical cubicles. Every few hundred
yards, these were broken by walls that seemed to contain blocks of
offices. Then more cubicles, then more offices. As far as the eye
could see.
He seemed to seriously consider her statement. "Well, sometimes I do
too, but if I lived here, how would I use my special parking space?
I've had it three months running, you know."
"Well, that’s—special."
Harry showed off the cafeteria, a bland room bordered with vending
machines and populated with tables, plastic chairs, and a few
depressed-looking people sipping cups of coffee. Motivational posters
with pictures of places those people would never see and exciting
things they'd never do covered the walls. "There's a coffee fund too.
Just fifteen cents a cup! And sometimes they push all the tables back
to make a stage and there's entertainment by the staff during lunch.
There’s a Talent Show next week. I’m going to do my stand-up routine
again. It’s won the past two years. I have my own rubber chicken. This
year, the trophy’s even bigger, and the first prize comes with a gift
certificate for an order of French fries from the Doublemeat Palace."
He peered down at her. "They let temporary employees participate."
Buffy shook her head. "No, thanks, I’m kind of in a ‘been there, done
that,’ place when it comes to talent shows."
"Well, I always appreciate competition, but I understand if you don’t
want to participate." Harry’s voice sounded more relieved than
disappointed, but Buffy didn’t envy him his stand-up glory. She
trotted along behind him as he pointed at various departments for
things like Marketing and Software Development.
But when Harry led Buffy past another wide doorway without commenting
on it. Buffy slowed and stopped. In a huge room, dozens of workers
huddled in the tiniest cubicles she had ever seen, each barely wide
enough to hold a computer. Most of the people inside were hunched over
their keyboards, talking earnestly into headsets as they stared at
their computer screens.
Harry noticed that Buffy had stopped. "Don't worry. If you're careful,
you'll never have to go in there."
Buffy heard a strange, horror-struck note in her guide's voice. She
continued to stare at the mumbling people with their dead, blank
stares. She shuddered. Something in their expressions reminded her of
the faces she had seen when she descended into Hell to rescue the
street kids in Los Angeles.
"I don't want to. But I have to know. What goes on in there?"
Harry shivered. "Telemarketing."
Buffy moved hastily away from the doorway.
Chapter Three, where Buffy finds out what Spike's been up to
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