Video Game Recruiting (Corporate Marines Book 1) (14 page)

That was a ripoff. Get the good pay and benefits, do your service, and then one day they send you back out when you are in your sixties?

When I asked him about how that seemed unfair, he didn’t even look up from his work but his answer made me reconsider how I had thought about it.

“Really, Timothy? The Corporation is going to invest how many millions of dollars in someone’s training
and
install top-of-the-line implants so that they can work in deep space making top dollar for a few years, and then they transfer back to Earth where they make much more money than someone else would? Then one day, the Corporation is desperate for that skill set and, ‘Oops, sorry, no one’s available’? This could affect humanity as a whole. An individual or individuals mean nothing compared to everyone.”

I
was just wrapping up my work for the week and thinking about going out with Ken and the rest for the game and a few drinks when Ken took an incoming call. Mr. Smythe had left at noon, so it should have been an easy wrap-up of work. Until Ken looked at me while talking. “Yes sir, I will pass the message on, sir, and make sure that he knows what files to bring. Have a good trip, sir.”

“Timothy, Mr. Smythe is leaving for China tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. This is an excellent opportunity for you to learn how to interact with other parts of the Corporation. There will be several meetings over the three days and you will be involved with all of them. I am sending you a list of files and presentations that need to go with you.”

I was going to be stuck working on this till just before departure so Mr. Smythe could look good. I was so screwed.

Ken was still working away and then cleared his throat to get my attention. “Timothy? I don’t mind helping you get all this done, but perhaps you could actually start work and not have me do it all?”

I looked over. “Umm, sure, Ken. Sorry I was just feeling a bit, mmm.”

Ken never even looked up; he just nodded. “I understand that this is a bit of a shock and will be a busy few days for you. But the sooner you start, the sooner it’s finished.”

I sat down and started pulling data together. By eleven o’clock that night, we were done and walked out the door.

I packed a small bag with my things, got cleaned up, arranged for a wake-up call at 4 a.m. and had a taxi on standby for 4:20.

I woke up, shaved, and was dressed and downstairs in time for my taxi to the airport. I cleared through customs and everything else by 5 a.m. My flight had been arranged and I was going in the economy seats in the back. Mr. Smythe was going in first-class seats. It was going to be a very long flight.

I grabbed some breakfast and some EZ sleep travel pills and waited by the gate.

I was wondering if the boss was going to make it, as they were just starting to board us, when he walked out of a small lounge on the side with a drink in his hand, waved at me with a smile, handed his ticket to the steward and just walked on board the plane. I slowly boarded along with everyone else. I could see him after I boarded. He was sipping on a fresh drink and watching a show on his pad.

I moved back and took my seat. I was going to pop my pills and go straight to sleep, but decided to hold off. I hadn’t watched much on my pad for a long time. After we took off, I flipped through some shows and caught up on a few episodes of
Billy Banger
. I started watching the news and how the economy was growing. The growth was faster than expected and the experts were blaming or praising the development of the solar system and the development of the deep space program. Even with the distant colonization efforts on that new planet, the expectation of the ‘experts’ was that this growth level could not be sustained. They were calling for the economy to take a big downturn within the next two years.

All I could think was these ‘experts’ were playing on people’s fears.

If we kept trying to build up, then that was infrastructure development and was expensive and took a long time. That super carrier that was nicknamed the “Mama Pig,” as unflattering as it sounded, had taken thousands of colonists out to the new planet. If that could be built up, then humanity could explore that much more of deep space. Not to mention the benefits of a new colony world in a different star system.

I understood that it was ‘haunted’; any civilized race either destroyed itself or made the jump to star travel. The nuclear weapons that had been used on that planet had been used a long time ago. Segments would be off-limits for hundreds more years, but eventually we could begin terraforming. This was a bigger project than anyone realized.

But it didn’t matter now. My eyelids were getting heavy and I popped a pill to help put me under and I was out.

I woke up two hours out of our destination, and aside from cramps, I felt actually rested. I bought some food and drank some water and caught up on the files that Ken had helped me get ready. I found some of his notes and he had told me some common-sense stuff. I was there as fluff. To show that Mr. Smythe was important enough for assistants that basically did nothing.

I was going to control the slideshows during his presentation.

I drank some more water. We landed and I cleared off. By the time I was cleared through customs and had my bag, the boss was gone.

He was good enough to message me that he had taken a limo to the new hotel that had just opened and had himself a suite. He had let them know I was following whenever I bothered to get there and had a room reserved.

I thought corporate policy was to always use corporate resources, and there was a good corp hotel a bit further away, but we were going to a private hotel.

I took a taxi and walked into a palace.

The front desk let me know my room number, and I was able to find the boss’s room. After I got settled in, I looked up the floor plans. I basically had a shoebox while he had an eighth of a floor.

I spent three days at meetings sitting in the control booth on the side while the boss went to the front and introduced the recruiting and training programs.

During question and answer, I sat there cueing him the answers.

I never sat in on a meeting or met anyone other than other technicians and assistants.

It was all a blur to me and I spent a lot of hours in the booth watching. I was able to get copies of all the material being presented and had a good idea on numbers and expectations. Our office pushed the algorithms and search programs that the programs used for recruiting.

It was brought up that numbers seemed low given how many were going through for testing. The answer always seemed that we had to have the best quality recruits.

I hated to think it, but Mr. Smythe was wrong. We needed a lot more Marines to cover all the hotspots that seemed to be coming up.

I understood that some meetings needed to be held in person so that there was human interaction. But this series of meetings could have been held by sim just as effectively and at a fraction of the cost.

The last morning there, before we were to fly out, the boss went to a last meeting; it was outside of the core. I had to pack my things and move his bags to the first-class lounge at the airport.

The biggest surprise for me was when I hit the checkout and they presented me my bill. The boss was traveling on a corporate account. I didn’t have one. The bill was going to cost me two weeks’ income.

I didn’t scream or freak out. I got receipts and every confirmation possible and paid.

That scumbag had taken me here and set me up. Maybe he just didn’t know, or more likely, didn’t care about anyone else besides himself.

I knew what the other assistants had told me; this meeting was the standard. The ‘meeting’ was a round of golf. Management would get together and play while talking about realistic expectations.

I sat at the airport and drank some water. I had spent twelve-hour days at the conference centre and then more hours compiling reports for the boss. Short sleep and small serving sizes of food were killing me.

I hadn’t had the chance to work out properly for weeks now.

The flight was held up as the managers were late getting back, and the four that showed up ended up in first class, of course.

We took off and I scanned through a few episodes of some old-school science-fiction movies. They didn’t grab me, so I reviewed some business files and updates while listening to Rammstein again, and then when I felt myself slipping away, popped a pill.

I was out until we were almost back.

I woke up, ate something and drank some water, and then waited for landing.

Mr. Smythe was waiting for me on the other side of customs. He was good enough to be tapping his foot and looking upset that I took so long.

I walked up to him and before I could say anything he started. “Well, I could be home by now, but I was stuck waiting for you.” He smacked a package against my chest. “Here, swing by the office and drop this off. Let Ken know that I won’t be in tomorrow. Make sure all the files and reports that were requested have been compiled and ready for review. I will be in early on the following day and intend to send those off after I review them.”

I just had time to say, “Yes, sir,” before he had turned away and was walking out the front door and to a waiting limo.

It was 3 p.m.

I took a taxi to the office and was there before 4.

I saw Ken and he just stared at me. “Timothy, why are you here?”

I explained what I had to do and he just stared at me some more with a blank look. Then he stood up. “Let’s go for a smoke.”

So we went upstairs and he bought me an energy drink out of one of the vending machines.

He asked me for the whole story on the adventure. I have to say, I was pretty blunt and didn’t put that positive a spin on it.

Ken listened to all of it and then started asking questions.

“So you didn’t stay in the corporate hotel? Were you told this in advance? Were you told to get a corporate account set up? Do you have all your receipts? Are you sure Mr. Smythe told you to come to the office direct from the airport? He didn’t mean tomorrow morning a bit earlier?”

I answered everything and then started taking more hits on the energy drink.

Ken nodded and laid out a plan. “We are going downstairs. You will have all your receipts ready to go tomorrow morning, and we will drop off everything to the cashier. Fill out an itinerary on your time tonight. Include ALL the details so you get what you are entitled to. We are going to lay out the files for work tomorrow. Then you are going home. Eat and sleep. In that order. Move!”

We went downstairs, and after an hour, I was done. Ken had continued working on whatever his tasks were. He reviewed my work quickly and let me know we were good to go.

I grabbed something to eat on the way home and collapsed in my room.

I barely made it in the next day on time, but I did it.

Ken sent me to the cashier with a warning on how long they took and that they were uptight.

I waited for thirty minutes until they reviewed my itinerary.

It was like being grilled by a secret police force. After twenty minutes of being grilled while being recorded, a chit was submitted and I was told to wait two weeks. I would be messaged when I could come down to collect the claim.

The only reason it was so fast was they checked with Ken. Otherwise I would likely be there for the whole day.

When I made it back to the office, I assembled all the files and passed them over to Ken to review. That took the entire day and I ended up reviewing a lot of raw data. The questions that had come up in China kept running around in the back of my mind. Most of the simulations showed that we should have more potential recruits from the gaming centres. We were getting some and they were high quality. But why were the overall numbers so low?

Mr. Smythe was always carefully analyzing the data and inputting changes into the algorithms. The more I thought about it, the stranger that sounded. Someone so senior shouldn’t need to spend as much time as he did on evaluating, unless he was obsessive-compulsive. From everything I had seen, he was not.

When it was complete, I sent the file to Mr. Smythe and then cleaned up to go home.

The next day I was early. Mr. Smythe walked in at 9:30. He looked over the files and then sent them off.

A reply came back later in the afternoon with the files attached. Ken sent that over to me for review.

The raw data was still the same, but it had been altered. I could see the algorithm that was used, and this was off from what we were using.

I copied it to my pad under an alternate name and didn’t say anything. This was just raw data and not restricted at all.

When the boss came out, he stopped off and actually talked to Ken for a minute, inviting him and then, as an afterthought, me to a party at his place on the following Monday.

Ken accepted for me and threw me a warning look.

The week passed and I did gofer jobs.

The following Monday I went to the party at the boss’s house in the suburbs and finally met his wife. She was gorgeous—a blonde that had more bodymod going on than I could believe and she was wearing a skin-tight sheath dress that accented her body to perfection. If it had been any more low-cut her breasts would have just been sticking out there.

I was standing off to the side by the buffet when I heard Mr. Smythe talking to another manager. “Of course she looks great. After all, I paid enough for her and that foxy body.” They wandered off and I faded away.

I decided that it was time to leave when I caught Mrs. Smythe looking me over with a calculating look on her face. Everyone at the party was a slab of meat to her. Some could be allies, some enemies, and I? I was young, looked good and was at this party as an assistant. She was probably thinking about dumping the hubby for a younger up-and-coming climber.

I said my goodbyes and headed back to the city.

I found out that Ken hadn’t gone as the invite was a ‘gesture’ to the hired help, not a real invite. I had upset the senior people because I had actually gone.

It was a shame that Clara had left; she was great to talk to and fun to be with. But with no distractions, I threw myself into work.

Mr. Smythe mostly ignored me, except for once about two weeks before I was done. He sent me a file to review on the gaming system. There were dozens of files and a lot of information on the gaming system, specifically the Marine game that was still the most popular game out there after years.

But the information was confusing. Data collected by the servers was reviewed by a series of AIs that would see if players had the criteria that the Corporation required and if the results were good, they would continue to collect responses and pass evaluation up higher. If a player made it through several rounds of evaluation, they would get an employment request from the Corporation.