The Big Disruption Read online

  Jennie continued to stew about her Niels hookup as she began to rattle off other campus facts to Arsyen. Sales were in Buildings 10 to 15, Operations from 15 to 20, anything supporting those teams from 20 to 27, and facilities and janitorial staff in Building 28. She saw Arsyen nod when she mentioned the janitors and wondered if he was one of those social activist employees, the type who made six figures but liked to spend the majority of his work hours railing about The Man and trying to make the cafeterias go full vegan.

  Jennie found those employees a bit annoying — they were always complaining about the juice selection in the reception area — but she still preferred them to people like Niels. He had taken home more than $100 million dollars last year in executive pay but hadn’t even offered to order her a car ride home.

  “What do you do at Anahata?” asked Arsyen, interrupting Jennie’s thoughts.

  Was he just trying to make conversation, or was he questioning her competence? At Anahata, one could never be sure.

  “I’m a campus guide and do some reception work,” Jennie said. “It’s a really important role, because if you don’t have someone like me who shows new people around, they may never understand Anahata and could get lost.”

  She paused and searched Arsyen’s face for a reaction. It was totally blank, as if he wasn’t even listening to her.

  “Of course, I mean ‘getting lost’ both figuratively and literally,” continued Jennie, feeling anger build in her stomach. “Many of your lot only understand the latter point, not the former, and so you see, that is why we humanities majors are so valuable here.”

  Arsyen nodded but now seemed fixated on the Moodify bracelet on his wrist.

  Had he even heard a word she said? He was like the rest of them — full of himself, convinced of his own brilliance, sure that a lowly receptionist was completely irrelevant to the mighty things he had to do during his day. But what did he know about the world, anyway? Coding didn’t teach you about culture. It didn’t teach you empathy or emotional intelligence.

  “I was a Russian lit PhD before I dropped out to join Anahata, so I know a lot about what’s going on in the world,” Jennie said. “There are people starving, people who don’t have clean water. So after Anahata, that’s what I’ll do — change some of those things. Or maybe I’ll do it here. I haven’t figured it out yet. The point is, do you have a social conscience? A big purpose, Arsyen?”

  Arsyen looked up.

  “Yes,” he said. “I will save my people and kill very bad dictator.”

  Good lord. This tour was proving even more tedious than her last one — an engineer who made whale sounds out of his nose while they hid in a broom closet. She leaned out the door.

  “All clear.”

  She popped her head back in and pointed at Arsyen’s badge to remind him to hide it in his pocket.

  They made it safely to the other parts of the campus, each building revealing a well-orchestrated surprise for Anahata’s new employee. Building 3 had frozen yogurt machines in each cubicle. In Building 4, there was a service for engineers who wanted someone to tuck them in at night in the campus beds. Building 2 had moving walkways that would reverse direction every fifteen minutes — a challenge to either time one’s movements precisely or exercise by moving against the current.

  “Past that door is the volleyball court,” said Jennie, pointing just beyond the reversible walkway, “and to the right is the swimming pool. Our founder, Bobby Bonilo, wanted to set an example for the rest of the Valley that health and fitness should be an important part of an employee’s well-being.”

  “Like Galt,” Arsyen said.

  Jennie shot Arsyen a glance. What kind of idiot joined Anahata and spent their first day talking about its biggest competitor?

  “Anahata did it first,” she said sharply. “We were the first to make health a priority. The first to say you should drink lots of water and get lots of sleep. Galt copies everything we do.”

  She made another note on his HR form: Cocky. Insulted Anahata.

  Yet another point racked up for Arsyen. This guy had to be one of the more arrogant employees she had ever met. He’d probably be a big success here.

  T hey stopped in front of the medieval-themed cafeteria in Building 5, and for a moment Arsyen was transported back to Poodlekek, standing in a cave next to Sklartar, his manservant.

  But what had first looked like Sklartar was now, at second glance, clearly a robot, and there were no bodies scattered at his feet. Nor were there any henchmen to wait on Arsyen, or maidens to help feed and clothe him. And there was certainly no one to help clean up after him. To think if his people knew that Arsyen was now cleaning the toilets of America!

  It was never supposed to be like this. If the peasants hadn’t gotten so mad about the potato tax, if the neighboring country of Embria hadn’t sensed weakness and attacked from the north, Arsyen would still be in Poodlekek now, having his bottom wiped by the royal wiper, occasionally exerting himself at a game of croquet.

  But the Embrian barbarians had surrounded his family’s palace, with Arsyen narrowly missing execution as he snuck across the border and into a U.N. refugee camp. The Pyrrhian military successfully restored the country to order, but just as Arsyen was prepared to return, General Korpeko declared a coup and foisted the helpless Aimo family from power.

  Arsyen was bounced between various immigrant detention camps, eventually ending up in California, where he was released into the wilds of Silicon Valley. There, he found work as a janitor in Stanford’s chemistry department. Then, from there, on to a few small startups and eventually Galt. And now Anahata, where he would finally make his mark.

  Arsyen glanced over at his future queen.

  Jennie’s mouth was moving again. It seemed to move a lot. Arsyen knew that women liked the opportunity to speak, but beautiful women were most beautiful when they were silent.

  “And so you can see,” she was saying, “that the composting techniques developed in Russia in the early twentieth century had a profound impact in how we compost now in Palo Alto.”

  “Yes,” said Arsyen, looking down to see if their Moodify bracelets had finally synced.

  They still weren’t working.

  Jennie stopped in front of another building. It was an echo of all previous buildings they had toured: an enormous white complex with a plain, charmless exterior. “Your new home,” she announced.

  Hadn’t Jennie said janitorial services were in Building 28? This one had an enormous black “7” painted near its entrance.

  The metal doors banged open, and a large group of men walked out, laughing about something. Arsyen had never seen such diversity — so many white, Chinese, and Indian male janitors all working in the same company.

  Behind them was another man, also white, walking slowly across the lawn, chomping on an enormous carrot. It was the same guy Arsyen had met at his interview. He had already forgotten his name, but the man’s shirt reminded him: R-O-N-I, spelled out in big block letters sewn clumsily across the chest. This was him, the king of the cleaning crew.

  Roni greeted Arsyen with a wave. Arsyen turned to say something to Jennie, but she had already disappeared.

  Roni signaled to Arsyen to follow, pointing out different landmarks as they made their way around campus: “Here’s where you can pick up four different kinds of cupcakes each day at three p.m.” “Here’s the secret underground passageway that leads to the volleyball court.” “Here’s where you can get a full-body massage — and if you book the tropical forest room, tell them no rainmaker!”

  Arsyen was amazed by the amenities, but he was even more excited about his paycheck. With the extraordinary salary they were paying him — ten times more than the job listing had originally advertised — his reclamation of Pyrrhia drew much, much closer. This year’s salary alone would purchase twenty Pyrrhian mercenary troops and several thousand horses, as well as one million sacks of flour to be distributed to the poor (eight
hundred thousand if he had his portrait printed on the sacks, which could be an important revolution/coup marketing strategy).

  If he kept on this path, he could reclaim the throne in just a few years. He could probably even fly Natia, his Pyrrhian internet girlfriend, out to the United States so he could finally have sex with her. Though maybe it would be better to dump Natia, date Jennie, and spend the extra money on some new video games. Being a ruler meant setting clear priorities.

  They walked down a nondescript hall that dumped them into a maze of cubicles. Each contained a handful of desks, and occasionally a table. The white walls were only shoulder height, and Arsyen could easily see who was inside. The view was the same no matter where he turned: square after square of men staring at their computer screens. The layout reminded him of ice cube trays.

  Roni stopped next to a poster that read “Entering a No Galt Zone!”

  “Voilà!,” exclaimed Roni, his arm gesturing at the cubicle before him like a game show host. Its simple layout mirrored that of every other cubicle they had passed. There were three desks — only two of which were occupied — and a whiteboard covered in code hieroglyphs.

  There were two men in the cubicle, but neither turned, continuing instead to focus intently on their screens. Arsyen wondered why his fellow sanitation engineers were working on computers, and why there were no cleaning materials anywhere in sight. Perhaps cleaning happened differently at Anahata. Thoughts of unknown methods immediately filled his head, his exhilaration only slightly tempered by the sight of Red Bull cans stacked in a pyramid atop a side table. Roni grabbed an unopened can and tossed it to Arsyen. “Life blood,” he joked, grabbing one for himself.

  Roni tapped one of the cubicle dwellers on the shoulder.

  “Jonas, meet Arsyen,” he said.

  The seated figure turned slowly, and Arsyen realized that the gangly, pimply boy before him couldn’t be more than sixteen. His skin was a shifting kaleidoscope of sallow and dark blotches. Enormous glasses covered his face from the eyebrows to the tip of the nose. Through the frames, his eyes studied Arsyen, and then moved to Roni, and then suddenly seemed to register the purpose of the introduction. “Hello,” he said, in a thick but familiar accent. “It is nice to make your acquaintance. Arsyen — bish mena kakaya?”

  Arsyen hesitated. The words, the accent, the singsong of the phrase all sounded so familiar, and yet he had no idea what the teenager had just said to him. “Sorry?”

  “Oh, my most sincere apologies,” the boy said. “I thought from your name…you see, Arsyen is a name we have in my country, Embria. And your face could pass for Embrian.”

  Arsyen’s left eye twitched. Embria! The country that had started the Fifth Great War, the country responsible for having raped and pillaged his native land for thousands of years. The rivalry between the two countries was legendary. The greatest insult in the Pyrrhian language was to call someone a klok-klok — a chicken from Embria.

  Arsyen offered his hand. “I am from Pyrrhia,” he said, proudly trilling the rand making the sign of the red-breasted woodpecker.

  But Jonas’ expression didn’t change, as if it was simply an input of information, meaning no more to him than if Arsyen had said he was from Los Angeles. He turned back to his computer.

  Roni pointed to the desk across the room, where a very blond head sat atop a very long body.

  “That’s Sven. He’s from Sweden and is ex-Microsoft, but he’s a bit embarrassed about that, so don’t bring it up with him. He lives with his mom, which is another topic to avoid. But he’s got a thousand startup ideas — that’s always a safe subject.”

  Roni pulled the headphones off the blond mop of hair, and Sven swiveled his chair. He grinned and shook Arsyen’s hand. Then he readjusted his headphones and banged his knees against the desk as he turned back to face his screen.

  Roni pointed at an empty desk between Jonas and Sven. “Here’s your space.”

  Arsyen’s eyes ran across the desk. There was nothing on it but an enormous computer. He opened a drawer. No sponges, no commercial cleaning agents, no chemicals for him to mix.

  “Roni, where my supplies?”

  “Oh, there’s a tech center down the hall where you can get everything — a mouse, big monitor, pens — if you are one of those people who still writes things by hand, that is. Anyway, take your time getting set up. I’ve got an important meeting to attend, but when I come back I’ll get you briefed on everything.”

  Arsyen took a seat at his desk and studied the area around him. The floor throughout the cubicle was covered in potato chip particles — presumably from the open bag on Sven’s desk. A piece of dried putty had begun a slow, snail-like trudge down the wall above Jonas’ desk. Across the room, a series of dark symbols glared at Arsyen from the whiteboard.

  This was the messiest janitor’s office he had ever seen.

  T he first order of business was to get his cleaning supplies. Roni’s instructions had seemed simple enough — straight down the hall, a right at the first opportunity, then the second left. But no sooner had he made the first turn then Arsyen found himself lost in a labyrinth of cubicles.

  He approached a map posted on the wall, tracing his finger along the rows in search of something resembling a supply closet.

  Arsyen felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “Are you lost? New here, maybe?”

  Arsyen turned to face a freckled, red-headed kid, not much older than Jonas.

  Arsyen’s hidden red badge poked into his thigh, reminding him to be careful.

  “Are you an engineer?” the kid asked.

  Arsyen nodded. The kid looked skinny and weak. Arsyen was sure he could outrun him.

  The kid’s eyes narrowed.

  “Okay, then. I want to know all the words in English that have X as the second letter and N as the second to last.”

  Arsyen spotted an exit sign at the far end of the hall. He decided to make a run for it.

  “Hey! Hey!” screamed the kid, yelling after him. “Tell me how you would make an object model of a pig!”

  Arsyen dashed down the hall, the sound of the kid’s plastic Crocs squeaking closely behind him. He pushed open the door, ran to his right, past the volleyball court, over a bridge made of Legos, dodged through a group of employees fighting with light sabers, and ducked into a nearby building.

  Arsyen glanced behind him. The kid was nowhere in sight. He caught his breath and surveyed his surroundings.

  He hadn’t been in this building before. It seemed largely empty — nothing more than a series of plain white corridors. There wasn’t even anyone walking about.

  He spotted another building map and traced his finger down the corridors. At the end of the northwest hall was an exit door that appeared to lead in the direction of Building 7 — Arsyen’s building.

  He headed in that direction, keeping an eye out for predatory engineers. But there wasn’t a soul in sight.

  Just before reaching the exit, Arsyen stopped, and his face lit up in a smile. To his right was a white door labeled in simple black lettering: SUPPLY CLOSET

  Finally!

  Arsyen paused before the door. This was a big moment. The tools he chose here would determine the success of his first week at Anahata. A lobby broom was a good choice for one-handed cleaning and getting at some of the trickier corners of Arsyen’s cubicle. But a midsize broom would be better for general sweeping.

  He knew his co-workers would judge him closely for his choices, so he took a deep breath and placed his hand on the knob.

  On the other side of the door, Gregor Guntlag’s gaze alternated between the doorknob, which he thought he had seen rattle, and the clock, whose minute hand was broken. It wobbled between one tick and the next, as though no longer sure of the direction in which time moved.

  The existence of a clock on a wall of the world’s most important technology company was itself a quaint reminder of a different era, a period in which time was
measured differently, the various positions of its hands signifying official, institutionalized periods of work and rest.

  That clock — the only one on campus — was a crucial addition to the Anahata board room, aka the supply closet. The company’s CEO, Bobby Bonilo, had forbidden the use of any electronic devices in the room, and the clock was the only way his management team could measure the progress of their interminable meetings. According to its current movements, one minute (soon to be minus one minute) had passed since Bobby had begun his latest yoga pose. Gregor Guntlag, Anahata’s senior vice president of engineering, had many projects in the works to speed up time, but to date, even he couldn’t manage to accelerate Bobby’s sun salutations.

  “Haaaaaaaaaaa,” came a deep, raspy sound from the back of Bobby’s throat. He was on all fours at the head of the table, his butt thrust toward the ceiling, the top of his white shirt falling to expose a pale back covered with moles. Bobby rested his knees on the table and sat back on his legs, a small gut spilling over his waistband like freshly baked bread. His eyes remained closed.

  “Haaaaaaaaaaa.” The sound intensified. “Haaaaaaaaaaa! Haaaaaaaaaaa!”

  The daily management meeting was itself an exercise in yogic patience and discipline, with all five members of the team doing a generally poor job of tolerating each other.

  Although they were a small group, the men spread themselves out around the table, allowing spaces of two or three chairs between them. In addition to Gregor, there was Old Al, the company’s only gray-haired engineer, occasionally useful for his fifty-four years of wisdom. A few seats down sat Greg Fischer, the chief financial and corporate affairs officer (CFCAO), who ran all the departments — legal, finance, marketing, and PR — that were seen as necessary evils in helping run a large company. Equal in irrelevance was HR Paul, the head of the human resources department, who was generally regarded as a nincompoop psychology PhD with a flatulence problem. And then there was Niels, aka The Salesman.