Six Months, Three Days, Five Others by Charlie Jane Anders

Author:Charlie Jane Anders [Anders, Charlie Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250191762
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2017-10-17T05:00:00+00:00

The Day It All Ended

Bruce Grinnord parked aslant in his usual spot and ran inside the DiZi Corp headquarters. Bruce didn’t check in with his team or even pause to glare at the beautiful young people having their toes stretched by robots while they sipped macrobiotic goji-berry shakes and tried to imagine ways to make the next generation of gadgets cooler-looking and less useful. Instead, he sprinted for the executive suite. He took the stairs two or three at a time, until he was so breathless he feared he’d have a heart attack before he even finished throwing his career away.

DiZi’s founder, Jethro Gruber—Barron’s Young Visionary of the Year five years running—had his office atop the central spire of the funhouse castle of DiZi’s offices, in a round glass turret. Looking down on the employee oxygen bar and the dozen gourmet cafeterias. If you didn’t have the key to the private elevator, the only way up was this spiral staircase, which climbed past a dozen Executive Playspaces, and any one of those people could cockblock you before you got to Jethro’s pad. But nobody seemed to notice Bruce charging up the stairs, fury twisting his round face, even when he nearly put his foot between the steps and fell into the Moroccan Spice Café.

Bruce wanted to storm into Jethro’s office and shout his resignation in Jethro’s trendy schoolmaster glasses. He wanted to enter the room already denouncing the waste, the stupidity of it all—but when he reached the top of the staircase, he was so out of breath, he could only wheeze, his guts wrung and cramped. He’d only been in Jethro’s office once before: an elegant goldfish bowl with one desk that changed shape (thanks to modular pieces that came out of the floor), a few chairs, and one dot of maroon rug at its center. Bruce stood there, massaging his dumb stomach and taking in the oppressive simplicity.

So, Jethro spoke first, the creamy purr Bruce knew from a million company videos. “Hi, Bruce. You’re late.”

“I’m . . . I’m what?”

“You’re late,” Jethro said. “You were supposed to have your crisis of conscience three months ago.” He pulled out his Robo-Bop and displayed a personal calendar, which included one entry: “Bruce Has a Crisis of Conscience.” It was dated a few months earlier. “What kept you, man?”

* * *

It started when Bruce took a wrong turn on the way to work. Actually, he drove to the wrong office—the driving equivalent of a Freudian slip.

He was on the interstate at seven thirty, listening to a banjo solo that he hadn’t yet learned to play. Out his right window, every suburban courtyard had its own giant ThunderNet tower, just like the silver statue in Bruce’s own cul-de-sac—the sleek concave lines and jet-streamed base like a 1950s Googie space fantasy. To his left, almost every passing car had a Car-Dingo bolted to its hood, with its trademark sloping fins and whirling lights. And half the drivers were listening to music, or making Intimate Confessions on their Robo-Bops.

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