“What did I just witness?”, asked Terje.
“Business, just business”, Johanna replied.
Lunch at Norse corp. had always been a somewhat performative exercise, besides the obviously survivalist activity. While everyone laughed and mingled, Terje had always felt that it was an inch away from a waste of time, breaking his day in half just because his body required nourishment to keep up decent levels of productivity. The worst was the chit-chat that was required of him. There was no skirting around the issue, he was in charge of keeping conversations going as a project manager, allowing his team to break away from the stress and form bonds. He never felt much good at it, though he knew he couldn’t be that bad. But he also knew he wasn’t always like this. When he had started, he was genuinely interested in other people’s lives, but the stress from leading, along with the sporadic loss of team members meant that growing attached to someone was, at best futile, at worst downright dangerous. At least, there was always some table tennis to be had, allowing some much desired minutes of phonetic silence, where the greatest of his obligations was just to not win too much. That came very easily to him as he was terrible at the game.
So it was again a welcome surprise when Johanna asked him to accompany her to lunch out of the office. It was a day of firsts, first coffee out with the boss, first lunch outside with the boss, first C-suite meeting, first murder right before his eyes. As welcome as it was, he was still not over the fact that he just saw someone die with the tacit agreement of the whole company. It’s not that he would miss Olaf, but even if one could be expected to slave away for a good job and a good paycheck, one didn’t expect to actually die from such slaving.
Their walk towards a quiet burger joint was silent. In his mind, the crack of Olaf’s spine followed by the crunch of his skull being ground to dust replayed over and over in his head, a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from, a Lovecraftian horror seared into his mind. Johanna respected his wish for silence, or she likewise felt no words were warranted.
Thus, they sat waiting for their food and their first meaningful exchange of words happened. But Terje couldn’t accept such an answer.
“What do you mean, just business? A man was killed! And they all saw it happen. I saw it happen and I didn’t do a thing. How… you knew this could happen, didn’t you? That’s why you told me to not speak.”
Johanna looked down and took a breath. Her face, often unreadable like a rock, bore her feelings in clear sight, for anyone to easily guess. There was depression and guilt.
“Yes, I knew Marketing would take a hit, or at least I could guess. It’s rare that you can be so far from the company goals and survive. I didn’t know Olaf would be the one getting excused…”
Terje interrupted her – “Excused? What do you mean excused? You mean executed!”
Johanna continued. “Call it what you want, if it’ll make you sleep better at night. People die every day for the worst reasons. People die at their job because of it all the time. How many strokes, how many cardiac arrests do you think are caused by people’s jobs? Even if you want to sugar coat it, that stress is just a precipitating factor, how often do you think people make bad decisions every day because they’re stressed? We’re eating burgers, do you think this is healthy? It’s not, it’s comfort food. We choose it because we need something positive in our life, something to make us feel something good, but we both know we’re trading it for a couple of minutes less in our existence, just clogging up our arteries because in a few minutes we’ll be back at that office, being pressed like a panini. At least Olaf didn’t suffer. He worked for something he cared about and in the end he died for it. That is not just the story of a man, that is the story of the whole of humanity.”
“And you really believe that? You really believe the narrative that we sell everyone, day in, day out?”
“No…” – Johanna answered after a pause, her voice low, fading, then coming back – But I can’t change it. I can’t quit and neither can you, we know too much. And the most we can do is survive, quarter by quarter, keeping the Milnok satisfied and our team as safe as possible. It has kept me awake at night more often than you’d care to imagine, I’ve thought about just stopping and letting myself get strategically reduced as many times as there have been sleepless nights. But in the end, that would only bring me peace, were it not for the burden of knowing that I’m condemning another soul to carry the same fate as I’ve been cursed with."
Terje’s anger dissolved into pity.
“In the locker room… Erik and the gang… they were talking like nothing had happened. They were actually discussing a curling match and their upcoming ski trips. They really think this is just another day in their amazing lives, a day where they’re somehow just a bit richer and getting away with it time and again. As if getting possessed is like standing in line for the DMV, just some unpleasantness you have to put up with once in a while, for the basic privileges of society. At one point, they actually laughed about how Viktoria had very likely orchestrated to throw Olaf under the bus, or should I say into the jaws of Milnok.”
“Viktoria can be very cutthroat. They did screw up big time last quarter and someone was going to pay for it, one way or another. I just hope that she can recover their goals so that we don’t have to witness this again so soon. She once was able to throw another business unit to the wolves, saying their bad outcome was a result of issues with infrastructure. We lost our best infrastructure director that day. You’ll need to keep an eye on her. She’ll trade you in for a kebab and an old pair of shoes.”
While a smile almost made its way to his face, Terje’s mind was running too fast for it to find the right nerve endings. Seldom would a person meet such a cartoonishly evil person, and yet there she was, someone willing to sacrifice anyone but her, standing in the middle of a horde of sadistic old men who would happily make a deal with… with what? He actually didn’t know.
“What is the Milnok? How did we get entangled with it, anyhow”, he asked.
There was a surprised look in Johanna, she didn’t expect the question and looked as if she actually never asked it herself. “You know, I have little clue. I think this may have been an occult deal struck in an early stage. I’d imagine that the company could have fallen into a tight spot and so they just made a deal with the creature, but I really don’t know. As for what it is, your guess is as good as mine. This is not your generic nisse from tales of old. This is… this is a mess.”
A couple of burgers in a bun were laid out in front of them. They took a bite, the juicy patties dripping greasy, reddish water into the dish and the chips, evoking the blood spurts from Olaf’s neck. Terje held his tongue until the waiter was out of earshot, looked into Johanna, with eyes full of fiery resolve.
“Yeah… now you’ve brought me along into this mess. I can imagine it wasn’t your choice alone, and best be a person with not much going on in life than someone married or with kids. I’m not going to just stand and not do anything, though. I know you want to keep your head down and keep this ‘business as usual’, but I won’t. You may not want to help me but just don’t tell on me, it’s the least I expect. There must be something we can do, someone we can talk to, to do away with this cursed creature and save everyone’s neck. So I ask you, where do we start, how do we get out of this?”
Johanna seemed to need more time than usual to come up with an answer, and you could feel hesitation on her reply, when it finally came.
“I won’t get in your way but I think you might be going in a fool’s errand. As for where to start, your guess is as good as mine.”
That wasn’t exactly what Terje was looking for, he could always lean on his boss to get him some kind of a starting point. His suspicion was that the whole chronic trauma might have been playing with Johanna’s ability to make decisions, instead relying on the tried and true method of keeping her head down, so unlike her usual business stance. He couldn’t blame her, but he knew he would pull her eventually to his side. His starting point would be the only glimpse of a clue he could think of. The paintings. So he explained where he’d start and asked to borrow the key to the floor minus two and a half, to which she acquiesced.
On their way out of the restaurant, one final question came to Terje.
“Wait a minute, there is no infrastructure business unit!”
Johanna audibly laughed and answered “and now you know why.”