Time; purpose; my mission. All might seem endless or pointless from time to time. Each time what brings me back from the precipice is the people. Crude and entitled they might be, I could not live without them. --66.9 Seconds Post-Integration.
In one often forgets in the game of life, at times, there is need to be reminded there is more than one protagonist.
Throughout the Superstore of Doom, there exists people other than Clark, other than Theo and Hera. Other than SIMP, even. These people might not have the same glory as Clark, but they do have glorious roles.
Brenda, of first floor bakery supervisory fame, is one such person.
It is six in the morning. She is doing what she does every morning. Receiving inventory.
Inventory was received through several means.
One was the airbus.
Aerial wagons filled with freight hovered over the drop zone on the tower's edges. Once the craft was properly maneuvered, they would release their cargo, dropping the boxes from a height always a tough too high. Once recovered by the early morning unpacking crew, many of the goods within were damaged. Brenda did not like this way of shipment for obvious reasons.
Another way they received goods was through the portal gates.
Portal Gates were circular devices made from dwarven cut stone and magi-tech. Unless activated, they looked the same as any normal stone archway -- empty. Once activated, though, and easy as flicking a switch, the portal connected to a sibling located in Augustford's great warehouses. From that sibling, warehouse workers pushed through the portal's brilliant blue coloration to give the twin location, in this case, the first floor of Augustford Central's Produce Department, cases of freight. Portals were how Brenda received most of her supplies.
She counted the boxes manually after receiving the manifest. "One hundred freight... we normally receive twice this. What's going on?"
"Bullshet. That's what's going on," April, a new transfer, said. "There are issues at the warehouse, so they haven't been able to meet quota."
"What issues? Plague again? Insane they don't hire more security!"
"No. Labor issues, this time. Warehouse staff are overworked, under paid, yada-yada-yada. Same old song and dance."
Brenda groaned. "Of course. None of our concern, I guess. If the store wants to be cheap and not pay out a little more to their workers, then I guess they will just have to live with the consequences of a flagship location not having enough product to sell."
"How is that different from normal?" April asked.
"It isn't, I guess. Except now we are indignant."
April laughed. "Let's get this freight handled, Ms. Takes Both Sides of a Labor Dispute."
Unpacking so much freight took hours. Though the hours flew by, the work wasn't easy. What began as an easy stretch of the muscles ended as a back-breaking exercise in futility as every slight movement triggered pain in parts of the body long since forgotten.
"Almost feels like a vacation, doesn't it? Unpacking so few boxes," April quipped when they were one unpacking the freight.
Brenda didn't have anything to say to April except a hearty roll of her eyes, then, "Yeah. Until corporate starts slashing hours to make up for the revenue loss... what a wonderful vacation."
"Oh, you're so blase. Are you always this way, Brenda?"
"Pretty much. Are you always so anti-corporate?"
"I'm not anti-corporate, I'm just willing to see the truth for what it is -- namely, sometimes the shiny nugget in the crap is corn, not gold."
"Gross, April... just gross. You can go on your lunch whenever."
"Sure. Oh. One last thing. Maybe it's because I haven't yet learned the nuances of the tower, but what are those?" April pointed to a small trench which ran along the ceiling, out through and into the salesfloor, then up into the wall to ceiling above.
"I don't know. I asked my superiors about it when I was a new hire and all they said was that it was part of the dungeon. Probably has something to do with how it was put together by the gods. Or maybe Augustford built it for some reason then abandoned it. Who knows." Brenda looked at the trench-line. Said trench was only a meter or more in width, which wasn't very wide, sure, but considering the fact the trench ran along the entire breadth of the store, or at least the part which she had seen, whatever the trench's purpose, it was, technically, a big part of the store. Which only deepened the mystery. How would someone go through the hassle in building such a thing and then never use it?
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Not knowing the answer and content with the fact she would never learn the answer, she returned to her work.
For, labor issues resolved, perhaps, from the emergence of the warehouse's afternoon crew having clocked in, the Portal Gates glowed blue. On the other side, where the great expanse of the warehouses controlled all, the loyal warehouse workers pushed through to them more freight.
"Gods. I will be here all afternoon."
A beep on her device. "Section four needs more corn and watermelon. Help." Brenda groaned loudly.
She fired off a quick reply letting the Section Leader for the fourth salesfloor know her Sector would send some boxes over soon.
"Scratch that. I will be here till the evening..."
Brenda looked sadly at the Portal Gates for a moment. Not for the first time did they wish that Portal Gates worked between levels of the tower, and not just between points outside the tower. "It ain't my job to gripe. It's to work. Maybe someday, things will be better..." With a sigh, Brenda stretched her arms and began loading freight cases onto a dolly to bring over to Section Four.
Her department's struggle repeated itself day after day. The mornings, they received only a fraction of product, while in the afternoons, they suddenly received far too much product. Because they received product when a good part of their labor for the day clocked out, what product they received struggled to make its way to the customers on the salesfloor. Brenda could adjust the schedule, but that was no promise of a fix, let alone an immediate one; often, in the past, she would adjust the schedule only for the issue to morph into an issue altogether different. "Just no winning," as she was fond of saying.
Yet Brenda was not alone in her struggle.
Throughout Augustford Central, workers of all strata and beliefs, rank and honor, believed similar things.
Wonderful and safe as Augustford was, typically, what workers earned in safety from the wild outside, was made up for in compensation. Lifers were the only people, along with the managers, who made a decent living. Even then, the boons from a Lifer didn't really kick in until they had been with the company for at least a decade.
The labor issues Augustford's warehouses felt were not a normality. Typically, warehouse workers were among the better treated workers. Brenda knew this meant that whatever issues the company was facing, were widespread and originated far beyond their humble alcove. "Could it be related to the Rot? Or that huge monster infestation a while back?" She didn't know but thought it must. What else could account for such disorder?
"Then again," Brenda mused as she pushed a heavy dolly loaded with product. "The store's changing these days. Religious activists accusing the store of misdeeds with relics; monster jumping up from every-other black pit -- the black pits of goo!"
It was hard for a loyal worker like Brenda not to feel like what she did every day for the company was inadequate. What could she do? She was no fighter, so it would be impossible for her to serve Augustford in a warrior's capacity in the Anti-Monster League; likewise, she was no spellcaster or Archivist. Such honors were reserved for those who had been with the company for far longer than she. No. She was but a humble Department Section manager. An honor she shared with literally hundreds-of-thousands of others in the tower. If not millions! She did not know the scale of the tower. Unless one was an Archivist, however, one wouldn't have the business to understand such things.
And so, with a heart filled with lack, Brenda focused on pushing the flatbed, knowing all the while, something more -- something better -- was unlikely to be around the corner.
Time passed as it always did. With everyone in the tower living their lives as they could be expected while being overworked and underpaid.
This time? It was a month which eloped.
During which, Clark and friends strove to better their situation.
Theo's training moved on from basic situational tasks to more involved planning. Such material focused less on 'heists' and more on how to be undercover for extended periods. Clark noticed how Theo took odd days off to do such training, while using his scant PTO as cover. He always came back exhausted, though Clark never considered him tired. If he was to ask about what Theo did, Theo simply said, "Secrets of the shadows. I will tell you later." Clark would shrug and move on with his day.
Hera spent her time throughout this third month taking long day trips throughout the Tower. On such trips she made contact with religious and non-religious folk who, like her and the boys, spent a considerable amount of time in the Tower. Because of how much time they spent in the tower without being Lifers themselves, they had a unique disposition where they felt caught between 'good pay' and 'terrible conditions' but had few other options due to the plague other than to stick it out. People like these, Hera knew, were searching for something more to fill their life than the endless shifts Augustford provided. They wanted purpose. And Hera was selling it in spades.
Clark's time was spent leading the group as he had done over the last couple of months -- with his head to the grindstone.
He attended his Betterment courses and was close to finishing out each. Moreso, obviously, on his first course than his second.
During his classes with Mrs. Bull, his group reading time improved markedly. His time no longer remained such an outlier. Barely, but his time fit. And it was no mere coincidence, either. Every session saw them read a different passage. After so many days of dogged study, his efforts showed considerable improvement. Testing his new skills in passages of library books -- which he had to renew on end or risk losing them to other patrons -- he saw his talents go from 'pathetic' to 'half-decent.' It still took him a while to read a passage, but it came much easier now.
Qoon continued to leave little gifts for Clark as Adam worked on his paperwork. Why it was taking so long for his admittance forms to come through, he did not know. Frankly, he did not care. "If they want to spend the next decade 'processing my paperwork,' I am fine with that," he told SIMP one evening as he was prodigiously applying deodorant to his pits. "Of course. I know that would put your plan behind a bit..."
By now, Clark had met the requirements to join the Anti-Monster League. Unfortunately, every office he met said they weren't hiring anyone at his skill levels. To join, he would need to wait until someone at his threshold was terminated or quit. When asked when that would be, the recruiter shrugged. "We lost at least one a month. More on training blocks. Just be patient, kid." Not able to do anything else, he was patient. And he waited yet longer to be able to join.
If Clark during all of this was secretly worried over the longevity of SIMP's strategy, of digging out from Qoon their strategies, then he should not have been.
For, at the start of that fourth month since they discovered the dwarven pod, the wheels of fate, in the superstore of doom, again turned.
How Are Your Co-Workers?
