A damp smear mark now ruined the crisp paperwork in front of Mac. The personal questions marched on, but it felt much easier for Mac to waive them off if he labeled them a security risk in his mind. Other, less threatening items he answered honestly. Probably not the smartest move, but that was who he was. It took almost another hour to finish the tax forms, which he set one by one on the corner of his desk as they were completed.

  The final form before lunch was the “Time Paradox Insurance and Liability,” form. Miss Hafliff introduced it. “This next form is an opt in form. I strongly recommend it as most of you will be heading to work with or around the R&D department at our headquarters. Even those of you who don’t, may cross paths with them from time to time. There is also the matter of the locker rooms. I should advise you against speaking with yourself beyond formal greeting. Cryptic comments to your past self are also discouraged by not only upper management, but also by the psychiatry department.”

  “Please be aware that except in rare circumstances, without this insurance, the company will only pay the earlier one of you at the lower pay rate at any given time. The HR team has made this very clear as the company’s automatic pay system just isn’t set up for such complications.”

  “In case you are wondering how our insurance provider is able to support these challenges, I will note that they exist further along the timeline and have significantly advanced technology and logic processes to handle time paradoxes.”

  Mac quickly checked the “accept” box and finished filling out the form. It was kind of odd how it required the date at the top and bottom of the page. No matter.

  Lunch was delivered to their desks in paper bags. Mac opened his and was surprised to find a warm curry rice meal in a sealed bento box. Chopsticks were included with two water bottles, a side of steamed broccoli, and an oversized fortune cookie that looked fresh baked. There was even steam still rising from it. It even smelled good.

  “Today, for lunch,” Miss. Hafliff began as she looked out over them from her commanding position behind The Desk, “you will be enjoying the guest cooking of Takeda Liang our master chef from headquarters. I will be discussing company values while you eat. Please, begin.”

  Mac took a tentative bite of the curry and was immediately impressed. The spice was only just enough to bring a sweat to his brow, but it didn’t overpower the natural citrusy flavor. The meat fell apart on his fork and the vegetables could have been picked that morning. He almost cried.

  Mac took that moment to chance a glance at the other new-hires around him and spotted the same rapt look on their faces as they chewed, some with tears of joy running down their faces then ritually anointing the napkins in their laps.

  He needed to get assigned to headquarters… and not forget that the others would be trying to take his spot. A second glance at the odd scruffy-looking elf beside him confirmed his suspicion as their eyes met in deadly challenge. The scruffy elf raised an arm protectively between his plate and Mac.

  Since when could an elf grow a five-o’clock shadow… by noon, and why was he wearing a blue cotton shirt… with wrinkles in it? That wasn’t normal. He really needed to pay better attention to those around him.

  Miss Hafliff raised her tone a mere fraction to draw attention back to herself, “The first value of our great company is, ‘Winning.’ We only hire winners. I don’t mean people who emerge from races victorious by an inch. I’m talking about people who destroy the competition, lapping the next closest competitor. Let the tears of the enemy be your drink and their lunch be your breakfast.”

  “We at HeHeHe expect you to always give your all, not only for the customer and the company, but also for yourself. Trust your co-workers, work as a team, and you’ll win every time. Our president deeply believes in rewarding winners like him, and just as the victorious army shares the loot in the enemy’s camp, so you too will be rewarded when your team secures victory. You should be winning… both on and off the clock.”

  “The second value,” the young zombie continued, “is ‘Innovation’. Other people might say ‘continuous improvement’, but that only scratches the surface of what we are after. It’s not enough to just make something marginally better, when you can come up with a completely new solution altogether. Try new things, embrace change, challenge physics…”

  Wait, what? Mac wasn’t sure he had heard that right.

  “Don’t accept anything as being impossible… EVER,” Miss Hafliff announced with real conviction.

  “You will frequently find yourself working in new positions as our portfolio of daughter companies is constantly in flux. Bring your best to the table and do not simply accept status quo. Always be on the lookout for and applying new ways to improve the company and your position.”

  “Thirdly, is ‘Comradery’. You need to care about and know the entities you work with. Who wants to go to work every day with strangers you know nothing about? Make friends with your co-workers. Tarry a bit at the watercooler, well, or time portal… those are easy… probably too easy. Find out about each other’s hopes, dreams, and annoying habits and make sure no guard is ever alone. After all teamwork makes the dream work,” she said with a straight face.

  “Talk to each other, keep each other awake, and watch each other’s backs. Learn about their odd birthmarks, their verbal habits, the way they swing their body walking in the dark at 500 meters.”

  “You should know them so well that you are able to report ahead of time if they are about to become a backstabbing traitor who said they loved you, but they were only setting you up for the moment they would betray you… and leave you bleeding in a ditch… while they steal vital company secrets,” she monologued.

  “This even extends to your leaders. They should be regularly dropping by your workstations to check on you and getting to know you. Remember, most of them were just like you before signing on with us. They have families and fears, hobbies and hopes, dreams and waitmares… I mean nightmares. Sorry about that. Get to know your co-workers… well.” Miss Hafliff recovered quickly and drew a deep breath... which seemed pretty pointless for a zombie, but it made her point.

  “The third trait, ‘Keenness’, deals deeply with security. You need to be keen. You need always be alert and aware of what’s going on around you. This goes double for those of you working anywhere near R&D. You need to be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice. Be aware of your surroundings.”

  “Ask questions,” the zombie urged vehemently. “What’s normal? What’s not? Is that animal about to bite me? Is there something dangerous in that dead-looking water?”

  “Do the scientists normally leave that security door open? How long has that spider been in that same spot? Does Bob have a mole on the left or the right side of his face? Is the heavy water colored purple or green? Are you really going to utilize the temporal portal to get caught up on your work today, or can you get it all done in a normal workday?”

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  “Pay attention to your environment and the people around you. Know what right looks like. If you see someone off, smack someone. And if you see something off, say something.”

  “Examine,” the almost pretty zombie continued, “is next. It’s like Keenness, but there’s more to it. Think safety.”

  “We expect you to pay attention to what you are doing and know why you are doing it. Everything should have a plan and a purpose… and be reasonably safe. You need to ‘stop and think’ before you do something unfamiliar.”

  “Examine the situation and ask yourself, ‘Is there a way to do this safely.’ Don’t just leave things to work themselves out by themselves. See it through.”

  “Don’t just leave an armed intruder locked in the room with the robotic sharks. How do you know they are not an Olympic level swimmer or master programmer? Either see to it they get completely eaten or arrest them, and save us the paperwork, fines, and future safety inspections that the little bits floating around the pool inevitably bring.”

  That probably wasn’t the best time for Mac to look down at the remains of his curry.

  Mis Hafliff pressed on, “Knowing why you are doing whatever job you are assigned to is extremely important.”

  “Why would you stand all night in the freezing rain guarding a building of unknown contents? Would you do it to protect a nuclear time scrambler from falling into the wrong hands? Ask your leaders, ‘Why?’ Don’t just do your job blindly. You could get hurt that way,” the zombie hammered home her point as Mac unwrapped the plastic around the small mixed fruit cup.

  That drew a frown and a baleful eye from the zombie talking at the front. She continued, “We’re paying immense sums of money for training and wages, so you can do important work. You deserve to know why, and you deserve to go home to your loved ones at the end of the day.”

  “The final value is ‘Daring.’ This one almost sums up all the others. Don’t be paralyzed by fear or analysis. We expect you to actually take immense, but safe, calculated risks,” the zombie said with a straight face.

  “Fortune favors the bold. Try things that haven’t been done before. Dare to consider your fellow employees more valuable than yourself. See what can be done. Know the value of what you are considering and have the chutzpa to really pull it off. And even if you fail, you should have insurance,” Miss Hafliff concluded with aplomb.

  Mac picked-up the deep-fried fortune cookie at that point and snapped it open. He instinctively pulled out the small slip of paper expecting to find a humorous, generalized saying and perhaps the winning lotto numbers from three weeks ago. He was disappointed. The slip simply warned in small red print, “There are those of you who are not what they seem. Be Keen.”

  Haha, a fortune cookie message reinforcing the company values. Really creative. He instinctively flipped the paper over and the lotto numbers read “21-03-33-30-00”. Okay, at least that looked authentically faked unlike the advice on the other side.

  Mac looked around his classroom at the disreputable bunch of misfits that composed it with the possible exceptions of the vampire, the older hyper-vigilant man in the back center, and the good-looking Mr. Campbell who seemed to be trying to hit on the vampire.

  Hold that thought, maybe the handsome idiot was stupid enough to fit in the former category. Mac mentally amended his list.

  The cookie crumbs once cushioned comfortably in his lap were still coming to grips with a new reality on the cold, tile floor when Mac spotted yet another document sitting on the center of his desk. This was getting creepy. He consciously forced himself to resist the urge to check under the desk for a mechanism.

  The bold, red print at the top of the form read “Accidental Injury Insurance Opt In”.

  Miss Hafliff addressed said form with her most serious voice yet, “I strongly recommend that all of you opt in. This job does have certain unpredictable hazards that even our robust safety program can’t anticipate. Don’t worry, we’ll get to safety tomorrow.”

  “It would be remiss of me if I did not inform you that over twenty-seven percent of our employees with fifteen plus years’ experience have made use of this. That’s why it seems a bit expensive,” the zombie explained.

  Mac checked the accept block even as his eyes widened at the price tag beside it. It was… he did the math mentally… nearly seven percent of his pay. That’s insane. What could he be doing that would warrant that high of a monthly payment? On second thought. There might be things he didn’t want to know.

  He couldn’t help himself, and he glanced down at the small print noting conditions for payment. That was a mistake. A nearly exhaustive list of rather discomforting, life-threatening possibilities went on for nearly seven pages, and concluded with, “…acts of Miss Windsor*. This is not an exhaustive list of all conditions that may apply.”

  “We had to strengthen the wording to aide our lawyers,” Miss Hafliff explained as Mac shuffled the documents to the corner of his desk wondering who Miss Windsor was. When he looked back to the center, another document was waiting for him.

  “Next up is our uniform requisition form. You will need to stand up in front of your desk, put your arms out to your side, turn around, and blink twice.”

  Ooookay… Mac rolled with the instructions only to realize that he was already standing. He completed his final long blink and sat down to discover the form was already filled out and sitting on the corner of his desk.

  Mac leaned out from his seat and tried to sneak a look under his desk but couldn’t discern anything out of the ordinary. At least, it was devoid of gum. Then, he glanced up looking for some kind of camera above him. Nothing there, but there were two in the corners of the front of the classroom. Maybe that was how they did it.

  “Next, we have a simple form to assist with establishing accounts for airline miles and hotel stays. The company is pleased to allow you to keep and use what you amass for yourself,” the zombie explained. “Don’t treat this form lightly or you might regret it later as we utilize it extensively for planning purposes and making your travel as comfortable as reasonably possible… within budget constraints.”

  Mac looked down and read softly aloud, “Hmmm… aisle, window, center… other?”

  “Other, maybe I’ll get first class.” He continued and marked as he mumbled, “One king size or two queen size?

  “I might get to bring Zach along, let’s go with the queen.”

  “Preferred floor?”

  “Penthouse.” It was worth a shot.

  “Preferred cuisine?”

  “Human, mild spice, please,” Mac stated as he wrote.

  “Meat temp?”

  “Let’s go with medium.”

  “Choice of beverage?”

  “Nothing beats a black tea with a few lumps of sugar on a cool day.”

  “Favorite Color?”

  “Uhhh, purple, I guess,” Mac replied to himself.

  “Cats or dogs?”

  “Definitely cats.” Mac would be pleased to never see another dog again.

  “Irrational fear of heights?”

  No. Not really. After a certain point, you reached terminal velocity, which generally tended to be… terminal.

  “Do you have parachute training?”

  “I could probably count that,” Mac reasoned.

  “Beach or mountain?”

  “Definitely the beach… unless there are sharks.” This was kind of fun.

  The questions continued bringing a smile to Mac’s lips. Who didn’t like to talk about what they liked? He turned to the third page and the questions became a bit… odder, “Lose your hearing or sight?

  “Uhmm, hearing, I guess.”

  “Sit next to a zombie or vampire?”

  “Zombie.”

  “Sit next to a vampire or kobold?”

  That’s a tough one.” Mac stared at the sheet for a long moment before finally listing vampire. Erased it, then marked the vampire box, again.

  “Sit next to an elf or troll?”

  Mac silently marked down “troll” so as to not offend the elf beside him.

  Though a troll might smell, at least they considered you an equal. A troll could be reasoned with as well, at least the ones he had met so far. Elves… elves could be a bit singularly minded. It would be an absolute killer to be trapped next to a single topic elf for more than an hour while traveling.

  Mac finally completed the longish form and shoved it to the corner. Maybe working for HeHeHe wouldn’t be so bad.

  The next form was rather short and Miss Hafliff introduced it, “This is your consent to taping form. We keep closed circuit camera filming almost everywhere on our property and record all phone calls made and received through company phones. We have a rather sentient AI that sifts through all these for us and recommends specific recordings for training, innovation and betrayal prevention. No options here, you will sign this document, or you will not be allowed to work for us.”

  Mac could feel the zombie’s dead eyes on him as he signed the form knowing there was nothing he could do about it. There was a sigh of relief from somewhere behind him, but he couldn’t pinpoint who.

  Miss Hafliff collected up the last of the forms then reminded them, “Tomorrow is mandatory safety training except for those of you selected for junior leadership. Please get a good night’s sleep if you want to survive.”