Milnok

“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. ...

Terje could see the upper management was all there, slowly distributing themselves along the chairs in the first row. Johanna eyed him and Olaf, directing them silently to sit in the back, just behind her. The silence in the chamber felt eerie, only cut by the echoes of rustling capes against chairs, old men and women grunting as they tried to find comfort in the ancient chairs. Meanwhile, Milnok just gazed into each person that entered the chamber, smiling like a child on Christmas Eve. Terje felt his mind free ever since the nisse looked away from him and could almost reflexively smile back, were it not for the fact that everything felt wrong. This was no way to conduct business. This was the realm of insanity. ...

It was a dull winter morning, much like every other that Oslo had to offer at this time of year. The saving grace of snow, which made everything prettier and more exciting, was still yet to come. The train was late nonetheless. But nothing could take down Terje’s spirits today. After years of managing a team, constantly and somewhat miraculously being able do deliver on ever increasing goals, he had been invited to join upper management. Not yet officially part of the C-suite, he was regardless, as Johanna had put it, part of the inner sanctum. That had to count for something, right? ...