You’re heart is pounding as you follow the directions down the isles. Your interview is with a Philip Chapman on the sixth floor. All around you prospective employees are talking to existing employees, up selling their skills and downplaying their weaknesses. You try not to think about it, but you can’t help but notice how much more confident everyone is compared to you. Or at least more confident than you feel; Raphael says you have a wonderful poker face and you hope it applies to this.
The job market is bad, and Snow Stripe Pharmaceuticals is one of the few white collar businesses in town growing. Sable wasn’t wrong to call them a glorified distributary. They focused on the manufactory and direct distribution of mail order medicines across international borders. Heart medication, ear drops, eye drops, respirators, and insulin; they did it all. They even had a line for weight lifting supplements that passed real peer reviewed trials, not just those fake tests with subjective numbers.
As you reach the third floor, you notice a sharp drop off in interviews. In fact by the time you reach the fourth floor you are stopped by security. You show them your papers, and they call it in. Eventually you are given a lanyard and allowed to continue upwards.
Between the fourth and fifth floor, you start to feel like you’re swimming with sharks. Everyone was just bigger than you. So much so that you had to remind yourself that you aren’t a twelves year old. ...well, OK. You are twelve, but physically you’re an adult. But the further you went up in this company, the more built everyone appeared to be getting. Even the women had that hour glass look from hardcore gym sculpting. All with perfectly tailored suits, too; even the janitor you pass by had a jump suit perfectly carved to his hard frame rather than some baggy one size fits all number.
On the sixth floor you really start to feel like this must be candid camera or something. This floor has oak door. Not CEO of the company oak doors, but it was still way more important than anyone who has any business talking to someone with just a GED and secretary certificate. The floor also seems much more deserted. By the time you find Philip Chapman’s office, you’ve passed maybe one hulking janitor and a tigress who looked like she could crush you between her traps.
You almost breath a sigh of relief when you duck into Philip Chapman’s office. Then you catch your breath.
Behind the desk is possibly the largest squirrel you’ve ever seen in person. Compressed into a perfectly cut suit is a rodent wider than the door you just walked through; the man must have to walk sideways just to get into his own office. You could look him in the eye while he was sitting, so standing he must be taller than you. And that chin was almost as sharp as his two buck teeth.
Smiling, Philip greets you, “Mist D Narang. Welcome. I’d almost thought you’d had gotten eaten by the lemmings surrounding our office today.” He gestures at the chair in front of him. “Please, sit down.”
You resist the urge to frown at the lemmings comment, and keep your best blind the angels in heaven smile on as you sit down. “It’s a pleasure to be given this chance, Mister Chapman.” The desk is far too large to extend your hands over it, so you settle for placing your documents flat in front of you.
Mister Chapman glances at the few flimsy pieces of paper, reaches his huge arms easily over the expanse of the desk to pick up said papers, and then promptly drops the in his waste basket. Never dropping his smiles during the whole action, he says, “If you allow me to be honest, Mister Narang, I was very worried for a moment that you weren’t going to show. Someone like you just doesn’t pop up on my radar every day.”
You raise an inquisitive eyebrow, your smile faltering ever so slightly. “Radar sir? I’m just applying to be a secretary.”
Mister Chapman’s smiles raises just a bit, along with a small dilation of his eyes that is surprisingly predatory for squirrel. “Mister Narang, secretaries aren’t normally interviewed by the head of human resources.” There’s a slight fault on the word human, but he presses forward before you can over analysis it. “Additionally, we don’t hire secretaries without at least ten years of work experience and a thorough background check.”
Your heart skips a beet with those last two words. They don’t calm down when Mister Chapman spreads out copies of your birth certificate, identification card, and general education degree. “What your background check turned up was interesting. Two years ago,” he taps your ID, “You showed out of nowhere and got your identity card. Not unusual, particularly in preparation...” his finger moves to the GED, “for a homeschooled student getting ready to blow the general education degree out of the water. Congratulations by the way, full marks.”
You keep your silence as he moves his finger over to the birth certificate. “This though...” he picks up the paper and stands up, the squirrels hulking figure looming as he walks around the desk over to a side wall. “...would normally not be up for question. But here at Snow Stripe Pharmaceuticals we question everything.” Continuing over to second wastebasket in the room, he casually drops the copy into it. “Whoever made this was very good, but hospitals keep independant records. There was no child abbandoned at Saint Mathew’s twenty years ago.”
Mister Chapman continues to walking around you, entering your blind spot as he continues “Of course we didn’t stop there. To know what you were up to we’d need to know exactly who you really are. Trouble was, you didn’t appear to exist at all until two years ago... until we found,” a newspaper thrown on the desk in front of you, Philip Chapman looming at your side now, “this.”
You swallow. When you were told your first interview wasn’t going to be as easy as you thought, you certainly weren’t thinking this. Laying down in front of you is an article that reads “Solomon Bio purchased by Stork Tech. Relocated to Brazil.” The picture of the articles shows Hubert, the proud lion walking with dignity in front of reporters. But it also shows Sable walking behind him with a very young you in her arms.
The saber teeth are very hard to deny, plus the stripes on the face are like a fingerprint for tigers. If you remember when it happened, you were one and a half at the time... which makes you physically three... and since the picture was taken eleven and a half years ago... yeah, you’re boned.
“So,” Mister Chapman continues as he places a firm hand on your shoulder, “Just how old are you, Mist D Narang?” His tone is still calm, but there’s a cutting edge to it. You briefly wonder if he’d just have you tossed out of the building or if you’re life is on the line here... but that’s crazy, they’re just a drug company... right?
Heart racing, your brain feels like it’s in free fall as you try think of a way out of this. There’s too much at stake... if Stork Tech finds out someone else knows, they’d relocate you. Worse, they’d separate you from Solomon Bio... maybe even dissolve it. Hubert’s dream has already been crippled by your existence, you didn’t want to completely destroy it. And to never see your family again...
What should you do?
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