2.9 Boring Corporate Stuff

“So, this is it.”

“What, creeping up to the Museum of Pompous Pricks and sneaking in through a window to take your place?”

Silven sighed. He gazed out over the walls of Desert Marsh from their makeshift camp just off the road. He gulped down the last of his tea and held his friend by the shoulders, gazing deep into his soul. “Olgy, Olgy, Olgy. This has been my goal for some time. I founded the companies to escape my prescribed fate and bide my time until something allowed me to move on. The Doll Sequence, as we have code-named it, is the key. I have failed to enter several times, but this time, I am sure.” He held out a folded piece of paper. “These are my final instructions. I wish you, and everyone else who has helped me to achieve comfort in this pastime, all the best for the future. But you must listen to me when I say I have no idea how my actions this morning will affect you. It may aid you. It may hinder. It may destroy you. It may tear away the façade I feel envelopes this illusion and let me peer into the depths of the true universe. At this point, I don’t know, and for that, I am sorry.”

“It’s alright, master. Good luck,” grinned Olgred. “And if you transcend this world and enter a higher dimension of being, do send a postcard.”

Silven stood and glared at his business partner. Then, he raised his palm and slapped him hard across the face.

“Ouch!” shrieked Olgred, patting at his hot cheek. “What in the depths of your true universe was that?”

Silven gestured to the folded note. Olgred opened it and read. ‘U R AN IDIOT’, it declared, rather unprofessionally. “You are the public head of Silverlink. You are told explicitly that I could single-handedly wipe out everything you have worked for, and you wish me luck. As you have failed to uphold the interests of your employees, you are now demoted.... to intern.” Olgred groaned. Silven rubbed his hands smugly, and cast one last look at the town. “It’s true, I do want to know what awaits me in that academy. But when I have a definite path to help people improve their lives, and several hundred directly relying on me to feed their families, I’m not taking that risk. No, the Doll Sequence must be kept a secret. Let’s be off.... we’ve got real work to do.” He gathered the pots and handed them to Olgred. He winked cheekily. “Go on then, you’re promoted again. Just don’t be announcing your demise; it makes us look indecisive.”

Olgred’s face paled. “Too late. Already released at HQ.”

Silven grimaced and fast-travelled them back to the mansion. “It serves you right then; you shouldn’t have made me say it. First call of order: a new CEO.”

Within a week, Silverlink had its new boss. Herbie Sootroller was the perfect catch for Silven’s vision. As a 14-year old, uneducated, dirty little ruffian who ended every sentence with a cheery ‘guv’nor’, he was within that golden 0.01% of the population most likely to chirp in with a valuable new plan seconds from disaster. Plus, the mere promise of a toffee or two at the end of the business week made him ripe for puppeteering.

Herbie’s first directive was to establish a new wing of the business. Silverlink Stuff was an exciting new development focused on the manufacture of.... stuff. Curiously, any product desired by any individual would be delivered for a fraction of its old price, just days after a quick IM order. Its head was, thankfully, Olgred, the former big boss who was eager to change the world as the people knew it. Silven, the head of Fireline, was to transfer from the recently-and-very-generously-bought-out company to become Chief Thinker of the bold venture, to be replaced at the energy firm by his younger hip surfer brother by the name of Gary. It would all be delightful.

That was not to say that Silven’s entire focus was on his new department. Fireline soon introduced smart demons, tiny fireball-spitting murderers who would sit happily in compartments within customers’ baths and ensure temperature was at its optimum. This did much to restore the maligned business’s reputation, until one particularly attractive maiden in Golden Avenue accused her monitor of poking a peephole in his office and doing unspeakable things while she bathed. It seemed that energy companies were quite simply destined to be despised.

Over at Silverlink, Silven’s investigations had proved rather fruitful. New greenhouses enclosing Overwall’s village green, while initially delayed by a campaign to relocate the Lesser Savage Armoured Poison Fiery Electrical Greenfly, which occurred only in that area, were soon growing shipments of siege flowers for the king’s army. With lovesick rebels not suspecting a thing, Solmond City had soon regained control of a handful of regions on the civil war’s eastern frontier. The papers and IM shows were soon buzzing with talk of a final push to reunite Oldeburgh under the king’s banner. In other news, the cooler mags were raving about the initial two monster camps. Though they divided opinion, Silverlink Mossy Ravine and Silverlink Deeprock Ruins proved a total hit with the younger attention-span-challenged generation of adventurers. When a formal claim to ban paid microboosts from jousts close to the camps was thrown out, the older folk who had actually worked to gain their gear finally spat out their dummies, went home, and the age of casual slaying was born.

In response to criticism, Silverlink branched out into charity. Strangely, it chose to partner with hospitals and outposts in the far reaches of the land where the epidemic of mind diseases was most obvious. It donated dozens of Silverviews to rapid responders to help locate and aid new patients before the madness took them completely. Despite these efforts, there were growing concerns that the plague was out of control. Some nobles had even started leaving Solmond as new sensational cases crept ever closer.

And what about the main communications products, I hear no-one ask. It seems the developers of Silverview and IM had run out of ideas after the release of Maplr. And yet, the hard work was already done. Whilst a handful of innovators struggled with the challenges of escape travel, the main team was busy hyping Silverview 3’s inch wider parchment and three coloured ink variants to ‘suit your style’. The cult was ready to follow; Silverlink merely had to ride the wave.