Work Text:
Goddard Futuristics, the card says. Logo on one side, address and phone number on the other. Good design. Nice card stock. There’s no name listed. Jacobi runs his thumb back and forth along one edge of the card, then puts it in his pocket before he orders his next drink: more icy booze.
The next day, in the midst of the third worst hangover of his life, he Googles the name. He’s not expecting to find much—he’s never heard of the name, after all—so he’s not entirely disappointed by what he finds. Most of it’s just dry business news about buy-outs and corporate deals, but some of the information is… intriguing. Goddard Futuristics has a deep space program, for one thing, and that alone means that they’ve got some heavy resources behind them and a need for strong talent.
When he’s exhausted the available articles and news reports, Jacobi checks out the official website. It’s sleekly designed but just as vague as the web articles: photos of stock image-esque employees interspersed with text about cutting-edge technology and innovative working environment and philanthropic contributions. Mhm, yeah. The Careers page just says “Please call to learn about our employment opportunities.” Except there isn’t a phone number listed.
But the card has one. It’s an unfamiliar area code.
Jacobi knocks back a couple more aspirin and dials it. He expects to get an automated voice system, but after two rings the line picks up and a pleasant female voice says: “Goddard Futuristics. How may I direct your call?”
“Um. I’m calling about… employment opportunities?”
“I see. Unfortunately, we don’t have any openings at this time. If you give me your name and phone number, I can put you on our contact list the next time a position becomes available.”
“Oh, um. Jacobi. Daniel. Daniel Jacobi.”
A pause.
“Thank you, Mr. Jacobi,” the voice says, noticeably warmer. “If you don’t mind waiting for one moment, I’m going to put you on hold while I transfer you to another line.”
“Oh, sure, th—”
The hold music begins before Jacobi can finish his sentence. He blinks at the far wall and then glances at a clock. He’ll give it thirty seconds before he hangs up.
Then the music stops jarringly mid-note and someone says, “Thank you so much for your patience. I understand that you’re seeking career opportunities with Goddard Futuristics.”
It’s a different voice, masculine but lilting, and it makes the middle of Jacobi’s back tingle.
“Uh, no problem. And, yeah. But I just spoke to someone who said—”
“I apologize for that miscommunication; we are, in fact, seeking qualified individuals to fill certain positions at Goddard Futuristics. Let me put you in touch with a local recruiter who can help you with the application process. Your appointment is scheduled for 11 A.M. tomorrow at 15504 East—”
Jacobi dives for a pen, realizes he doesn’t have any paper, and resorts to scrawling the address directly on the back of his hand. It’s a shitty ballpoint pen, and half of the address just comes out as faint red impressions on his hand without leaving any ink behind.
“Well, Mr. Jacobi, I wish you the best of luck with our employment process,” the man continues without pause. He says it with a certain tone of finality that suggests further conversation is unwelcome.
“Uh, thank you very much, Mister—?”
“You can call me Mr. Cutter.” He can hear the guy smiling, and it doesn’t feel comforting.
“Thank you for your help, Mr. Cutter.”
“My pleasure. Good-bye, Mr. Jacobi.”
The line goes dead with a click, and Jacobi scrunches his face at the terrible slanted scrawl of the address on his hand. He sure fucking hopes he got it right. Everything happened so fast, and his head has been pounding all morning. But some kind of hunch had told him that asking extra questions wasn't a good idea.
Only then does it occur to him to wonder how Mr. Cutter knew which “local recruiter” he’d be closest to in the first place.
* * *
The address brings him to an unassuming building amongst a cluster of other warehouses converted to office and retail space. There’s no signage on the building, but it doesn’t look un-inviting.
Jacobi slides through the front door, and his shoulders relax when he sees that there’s a reception desk with Goddard Futuristics emblazoned across the front. He moves closer. The receptionist raises his eyes from his monitor and offers a bland smile.
“Good morning. I have, um, an appointment at eleven?”
“Hm,” the receptionist says. “With whom is your appointment scheduled?”
Jacobi falters. “I, uh. I’m not sure, actually. I spoke with a, uh, Mr. Cutter yesterday, and…”
“Oh, of course,” the receptionist cuts in. Jacobi represses a frown. Does everyone at this company get off on demonstrating that they know more than he does about the situation? Christ. “Please follow me to the screening room, Mr. Jacobi.”
The receptionist leads him down the full length of a hallway stretching toward the back of the building. They pass many doors. The one at the very end of the hall has a frosted glass window; Jacobi can tell from the light coming through that it opens to the outside, though, and as they approach it he actually begins to wonder if the receptionist is just going to lead him outside and lock him out. Instead, the receptionist veers to the right and walks through the next-to-last door in the hall. The door is unmarked, like all the rest, and opens up onto a landing for a staircase that switchbacks downward. An unfocused knot of apprehension settles in his gut, but he follows the receptionist down the stairs all the same.
The staircase descends seven turns, sixteen steps each, before the receptionist opens another door. They step out into a basement that seems to span the entirety of the building’s footprint. The far side of the room is so far away that he can’t make out any details at all. There are dim overhead lights, but the basement is empty—except for a spot right in the middle where some office furniture has been arranged like an IKEA show room. Someone is standing there, looking at him.
The receptionist says, “Good luck with your screening, Mr. Jacobi,” and then steps back into the stairwell and closes the door.
Jacobi walks, stiff-legged, toward the center of the basement. When he gets closer, he sees that the figure is the man from the bar. Of course.
The man says, “Please, Mr. Jacobi, have a seat. I’m glad to see you again.”
There’s a big block-print rug spread out on the floor, and arranged atop it are a sofa, coffee table, two armchairs, and a big high-backed chair with motherfucking honest-to-God wrist and ankle restraints. A duffel bag and a briefcase sit on top of the coffee table.
Jacobi picks one of the armchairs—the one farthest from the high-backed chair—and lowers himself slowly. He doesn’t know what else to do. “Are you going to kill me?” he asks.
The man from the bar laughs and sits down in the middle of the sofa. “Goodness, Mr. Jacobi, no. I’m here to offer you a job. Surely you’ve figured that out by now?”
Jacobi studies the man for the moment. He’s not a bad looking guy: mid-thirties or so, starting to go grey at the temples. But there’s something wrong with his mouth. One side doesn’t move as much as the other when he talks. Some kind of nerve damage, maybe. He seems too young to have had a stroke. Jacobi didn’t notice it during their meeting. The man had sat down so that the bad side of his mouth was turned away.
He’s had enough time to think about the encounter that, yeah, the job offer isn’t a huge surprise. By the time he made that first phone call, he was certain that the man at the bar had sought him out deliberately. Every subsequent interaction has suggested that someone in the company knows who he is and wants… something from him. He’s flattered but, if he’s being honest with himself, also scared out of his mind. If Goddard Futuristics wants him, then that almost certainly means that they’re… how to put it… willing to break a few eggs to make an omelet. He’s a relatively disposable egg: unemployed, a bad record to his name, with few people to miss him if he disappears. This man could kill him, and who would know or care?
“I figured,” Jacobi says cautiously. “But, uh, I think you can understand how I might have come to other conclusions.” He motions to indicate the huge, ominous expanse of the room, and, more particularly, the high-backed chair.
“Well, I apologize for any misunderstanding. I’d requested the use of a different facility for your screening, but it wasn’t available today.”
“Um, okay. Is there a reason for this stuff, then? Specifically, the, uh… That.” He jerks his head sideways toward the high-backed chair. He really wants wants the guy to just acknowledge it in some way.
“Oh, of course.” The man from the bar leans forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs. He looks conspiratorial, and Jacobi unconsciously leans forward a little bit, too. “Mr. Jacobi, I want you to break me.”
Three seconds of silence.
Jacobi says, “What?” And then, “Is this part of the interview?”
“Oh, no,” the man says, smiling with the one side of his mouth. “Goddard Futuristics is already prepared to offer you a job. I’ve got the paperwork there in my briefcase. We can go over it if you want. You can sign any time before you leave. But this is a… personal screening. You see, I think you’d be a good fit for my department, but I don’t like to just guess. I like to know.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Jacobi says, slowly.
“Mr. Jacobi,” the man sighs. He sounds disappointed. “I’m given to understand that you’re a reasonably intelligent man. Do you know why Goddard Futuristics would want to hire a man with your skill set?”
Jacobi swallows. Pieces of their earlier conversation bubble to the surface of his mind. “To… to break things.”
“See, you’re just as clever as your reputation suggests. And, as I recall, you included ‘people’ on the list of things you could break. Am I misremembering? Misinterpreting?”
“When I said that, I meant more in the… explode-y way. I don’t think you’re asking to be blown up. Or am I misinterpreting?” He manages a perfect imitation of the man’s sarcastic delivery of the final word.
The man chuckles softly. “You’re correct. But you don’t really mind breaking people in other ways, do you?”
Jacobi can’t respond immediately. He shifts. “What do you mean?”
“It’s alright; you don’t need to put on some little act here. I know a thing or two about you. Interests of yours. Past incidents. The things that you thought had been all covered up; the things you thought no one else knew about.”
“Are you trying to insinuate that the detonation was deliberate?” Jacobi doesn’t yell, but his voice goes more frigid with every word. His hands tighten on the arms of his chair.
But the man puts his hands up in a pacifying gesture. “Not at all. You respected those two men. But the thought of hurting people—people in general—doesn’t really bother you, does it?”
Jacobi breathes in and out through his nose. He’s going to do something stupid if he can’t keep his composure, but his heart rate keeps rising and rising. The sound booms dully in his ears. “So then what are you… screening me for? You want to see how good I am at breaking people? Doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you’d want to test on yourself.”
“Well, let me explain. There are three fundamental things any employee of Goddard Futuristics must be capable of doing. One: maintain appropriate discretion. Two: follow any orders you’re given. And three: complete your work by any means necessary. Now, your sense of discretion leaves something to be desired, but—”
“Meaning what?” Jacobi demands.
The man gives him a capital-"L"-Look to convey that he doesn’t appreciate being interrupted, but he follows it up with a broad, indulgent smile. “Well, you were willing to tell me all sorts of things back at the bar. Unflattering things about yourself. Potentially sensitive things about your previous projects. I wasn’t expecting to get so much out of you.”
Jacobi frowns, irate; his leg starts jogging up and down. “Uh, I’m not sure if you counted how many glasses were in front of me in that bar, but I was pret-ty far gone by the time you showed up.”
The man arches an eyebrow. “Oh? You hid it well.”
“Yeah, it’s a fucking talent of mine. Anyway, I’m more talkative when I’m drunk. That’s all.”
“And here I thought you were being so chatty because you’d taken a shine to me.”
“And I thought you were chatting me up because you wanted to fuck me,” Jacobi shoots back viciously, which only makes the man laugh.
“I’m glad we’ve had a chance for clarifications. But, as I was saying, you’ll be expected to complete your work by any means necessary, and your work will be to break things. So try to break me, Mr. Jacobi.”
“You’re going to have to give me more direction than that,” he says. “This isn’t a situation where open interpretations are going to work in your favor.”
“Alright. Why don’t you start by taking a look in that duffel bag.”
The duffel bag. Its presence has been overshadowed by the high-backed chair, but Jacobi hasn’t forgotten about it. He reaches out and snags a corner of the bag, dragging it toward him across the table. It’s rather heavy. There are a couple of side pockets, but he goes straight for the main compartment.
“Jesus…”
Jacobi reaches inside and pulls out… an electric cattle prod? He holds it like a live snake: extended at arm’s length away from his body, gripped tightly. Then he uses it to poke through the other contents of the bag. There’s… quite an assortment of things inside.
He takes in a long breath, holds it for a second, and lets it out. He reaches into himself, into the deep reserve of blankness that has been rising within him for the past two years, and scoops some of it up to the surface. He lets his mind sink into that blankness.
“Okay,” he says. “What are the rules here? How I do pass the screening?”
The man smiles a smile that bares half of his teeth. “You have one hour from the starting point to make me say something. Doesn’t matter what; any word at all will do. You can do anything you can possibly think of using anything in this room. Of course, Goddard Futuristics is likely to rescind their job offer if you do anything that will impair my ability to perform my job. I need to keep my fingers and limbs, my eyes, and my tongue intact. I’d prefer to have all of my teeth, too.”
“That hardly counts as ‘by any means necessary,’” he points out dryly. That earns him a genuine smile.
“I’m sure you can understand that test scenarios are different than actual job expectations.”
“Right.” Jacobi unbuttons his cuffs. He rolls his sleeves up the elbow. “Why don’t you start by moving to that other chair?”
The man stands up. He moves to the high-backed chair and sits down again. His face is completely relaxed.
Jacobi fishes his cell phone out of his pocket and sets an hour-long timer. He shows the man the phone screen. “I’ll start this when you say to go. But I want to know something else first."
“Certainly.”
“What's your name?”
A smile twitches over the man's face. “My name is Warren Kepler. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
He reaches out. They shake hands.
Then Warren Kepler sits back and arranges himself comfortably. “So, Mr. Jacobi, let’s begin.”
Time turns weird after that. Jacobi just lets the timer count down for a few moments while he familiarizes himself more thoroughly with the tools in the duffel bag, thinking about their uses. He locks Kepler into the high-backed chair and investigates the other furniture, and then does a circuit of the big room to see if there’s anything else interesting available. Then he spends another few minutes just warming up and getting a feel for what he’s doing, letting himself slip gradually into the role he’s occupying. After awhile he really gets into it, and larger chunks of time vanish in quick flashes. At first the blankness stays with him, and he doesn’t really feel anything as he starts in on Kepler with the tools from the duffel bag. And then he becomes anxious and uncertain, and the uncertainty makes him agitated, and then he’s angry. Then, as he channels that anger into movement and force, the anger mutates into something else: it becomes a a kind of euphoria, a lightness and excitement that he hasn’t felt for a long time.
The only thing that remains the same is Kepler. He just takes everything that Jacobi gives him. He doesn’t react to anything. He looks Jacobi in the face the entire time.
And then the alarm for the timer goes off, and Jacobi is the one who jumps. The spell is broken: time returns to normal, and the only emotion left inside him is vague dismay. He couldn’t get Kepler to make a sound. He fumbles to turn the alarm off, then kneels to unbuckle the restraints from Kepler’s ankles, then his wrists. Then he backs away and sits down in one of the other chairs. He feels drained, like the inevitable crash after a couple of all-nighters. He’s so fucked up that he can’t do anything normal, but he’s not even good enough at being fucked up to succeed at that, either. He wants some icy booze.
“Well,” Kepler says, rubbing the circulation back into his hands. “That was very illuminating. Congratulations on passing your screening.”
“What?” The words don’t make any sense: Kepler might as well have spoken an alien language. “I didn’t make you say anything.”
“True. But you were working under some serious handicaps.” Kepler bends down to massage his ankles, too, and then he gets up and makes his way back to the sofa. His hair slightly disarrayed, and he combs it down with his fingers. “There was a time limit, which both of us knew about. There were restrictions on what you could do, and I knew I wouldn’t suffer any debilitating damage. And you didn’t know anything about me: no opportunity to hold information over me, or to threaten anyone or anything I care about.”
“Well then what was the fucking point?” Jacobi demands, fresh anger rising inside of him. “Did you just want to be able to make fun of me afterward? You said—you said you wanted to see if I could do the job. If you knew that I couldn’t do it, why fucking bother?”
“Oh, I lied about that,” Kepler says cheerily. “I actually wanted to test the second requirement I mentioned: whether you could follow orders adequately. And you did so, despite the unfavorable circumstances. We’ll have further opportunities to develop your actual job performance abilities once you start working with us. You made a commendable effort to satisfy the objective, but I’ll have to dock you points for lack of creativity.”
“Why’s that?” Jacobi asks. He’s boiling. If Kepler were still in the chair, he’d hit him again.
“Well, you resorted to physical force as your only option despite the disadvantages with that type of approach. I’d have talked if you’d just tried some ice breakers first. Asked me how my day was going, you know, something nice like that.”
“You’re an insane piece of shit,” Jacobi spits.
Kepler grins. “Are you ready to go over the employment contract?”
Jacobi says, “Sure.”
“Excellent. Any other questions first?”
“Yeah,” Jacobi says. “Do you want to screw or what?”
He’s been hard since mid-way through the session, and he wasn’t the only one to have that reaction. He’d ground his heel between Kepler’s legs at one point, but otherwise not acknowledged or read too much into it. Bodies react in strange ways under stress. A hard-on doesn’t guarantee genuine interest. But now he’s certain that his very first instincts were accurate: this fucker has been flirting with him since they met.
And, bingo, there it is: Kepler’s face registers mild surprise, and then he looks smug, like he’s just been vindicated. Jacobi hates to give him the satisfaction, but it’s not like he has much pride left to preserve.
“See, now that’s exactly the sort of thing that would have made me talk,” Kepler says pleasantly. He starts to stand, but he’s no more than half-way up when Jacobi steps directly onto the coffee table and collides down onto him.
It’s the best sex of Jacobi’s life. He’s dry-sobbing by the end of it, so fucking over-stimulated by everything that he can’t even begin to control himself. After two years of feeling like he’s at the bottom of a deep hole—everything muffled, everything dim—the sheer magnitude of sensation is more than he can contain. Everything just overflows.
By the time they’re done, the sofa is lying on its back and the contents of the duffel bag are strewn across the floor like guts from roadkill. They’re on the floor, too, and Jacobi feels phenomenally wrecked, like the endorphin high after a grueling workout—yet another thing he hasn’t bothered doing anytime recently.
“I’m fucking out of shape,” he says out loud when Kepler rolls away from him and starts to dress himself, and Jacobi reluctantly follows suit.
“You can turn the couch back over if you want to take a nap before going over your contract.”
And that actually gets him to start laughing. He clutches his stomach; water gathers at the corner of his eyes. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I’m fucking starving.”
“Let’s take care of that, then.” Kepler finishes adjusting his clothes and opens the briefcase that’s been sitting patiently on the coffee table the entire time. He takes out a little walkie-talkie (Jacobi panics for a second; he hadn’t thought about the possibility of being recorded, like a idiot), but the walkie-talkie gives a distinct crackle as it’s switched on.
“We’re ready for lunch,” Kepler says. “Moving to room twelve now.”
He doesn’t wait for a response before clicking the channel off again. “Let’s go.”
He replaces the walkie-talkie and picks up the briefcase, then sets off walking. Jacobi follows him to the one door in the entire room. He glances back once before the door closes behind him. It seems embarrassingly obvious what happened in the room, and and he wonders what the person who will have to tidy up behind them will think. Is this a normal occurrence during Goddard Futuristic’s recruitment process?
They ascend back to the main level and then take an unmarked door midway down the hall, which leads into another corridor. The doors in this corridor are labeled, but not in any way that makes sense: they pass doors marked “Epsilon”; “53”; and “M” before reaching room “12.”
It looks like a normal conference room: a long oval table, a video screen on one wall, a ficus in the corner. Kepler places the briefcase at the end of the table; they sit across from one another without saying anything. After a moment, there’s a quiet knock, and then someone enters the room rolling two covered trays on a little cart. It’s not the receptionist from the front desk. The woman has a prosthetic arm; her other arm is covered in floral tattoos down to the wrist. She sets a tray in front of each of them and then leaves without speaking. Jacobi can’t look her in the face; he feels like the evidence of what just happened is somehow obvious upon him, like a scarlet letter.
Kepler whisks the lid off Jacobi’s tray and then uncovers his own, revealing plates and glasses and silverware. The plate in front of Jacobi has a big slab of Salisbury steak, chunks of pan-roasted potato crusted with black pepper, and spears of charred asparagus. Jacobi’s mouth floods immediately.
Kepler’s meal is completely different: an arrangement of sashimi with vividly red pieces of fatty tuna, slices of octopus, and autumn-gold uni. There’s also a bowl of white rice and a little dish of pickled vegetables.
“I took the liberty of ordering a lunch I thought you’d enjoy,” Kepler says. “Help yourself.”
This is his favorite meal. How would anyone even know that?
“I’m disturbed but excited,” Jacobi admits. He cuts a piece and raises it to his mouth. He smells cognac in the gravy and the comforting, bread-like scent of cooked mushrooms. The first bite actually makes him moan softly. He has to close his eyes and collect himself.
As he goes for a second bite, he accidentally catches Kepler’s eye. Kepler’s just looking at him, mouth quirked ever so slightly.
“Don’t watch me,” Jacobi says. “This is private.”
Kepler gives him a proper smirk, but he does drop his eyes. Jacobi gulps down some water.
“Do you mind if I use my hands?” Kepler asks abruptly.
A piece of mushroom falls off Jacobi’s fork and plops onto the plate. “Huh?” he asks, eloquently.
“To eat,” Kepler clarifies.
“Oh, uh, sure. Whatever.” Like he gives a crap about Kepler’s table manners. But now it’s his turn to watch surreptitiously as Kepler picks up a couple pieces of sashimi with his fingers. He’s a very slow chewer. He switches to chopsticks to eat a few mouthfuls of rice and some of the pickled vegetables.
“You know,” Kepler says after a moment, “sushi used to be a working-man’s food. I once had an opportunity to work in Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market, and…”
Jacobi stops listening immediately. He’s in Salisbury steak heaven and isn’t the slightest bit interested in anything anyone could possibly say right now. He just nods his head vaguely whenever he notices Kepler looking at him for some kind of reaction. When he finally finishes eating several minutes later, Kepler is still talking, and Jacobi’s attention drifts to other thoughts. He should feel more uncomfortable and suspicious about the situation he’s in, probably, but he’s gotten laid and had a good meal, and he honestly feels more normal than he has in a long, long time. Goddard Futuristics has good recruitment strategies. He wonders what kind of benefits they offer. He hasn’t been to the dentist in quite awhile, and one of his teeth has been bothering him lately when he eats anything cold.
Eventually Jacobi notices that there’s no more noise, and Kepler is looking at him expectantly, waiting for a response to his story.
Jacobi musters up his best ‘that’s very interesting’ face. He says, “That’s very interesting.”
Kepler clucks at him. “That’s another thing we’ll have to work on. You don’t lie very well.”
Jacobi raises an eyebrow, declining to apologize. “You keep saying ‘we.’”
“I did tell you that you’d be a good fit for my department.”
Jacobi leans back in his chair, crosses his arms, and eyes Kepler blandly. He hasn’t been won over yet, and he wants Kepler to know it. Do these people think he’s so unsophisticated that food and sex are all it takes to get him to go along with everything? “And what if I’m not interested in your department?”
“I think you will be. And I’m willing to persuade you.”
“Really.”
“Really.” Now Kepler leans back and folds his arms, mirroring Jacobi’s posture. His eyes are bright. He looks like he’s settling in to enjoy himself. “Mr. Jacobi, how do you feel about space?”