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  ALSO BY SCOTT MEYER

  Help Is on the Way: A Collection of Basic Instructions

  Made with Recycled Art: A Collection of Basic Instructions

  The Curse of the Masking Tape Mummy: A Collection of Basic Instructions

  Dignified Hedonism: A Collection of Basic Instructions

  Master of Formalities

  The Authorities

  Magic 2.0

  Off to Be the Wizard

  Spell or High Water

  An Unwelcome Quest

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Scott Meyer

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477848739

  ISBN-10: 1477848738

  Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects

  CONTENTS

  1.

  TWO YEARS LATER

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1.

  There’s no way I’m getting this job.

  Hope Takeda cast her eyes around the room, making no effort to keep her fellow applicants from seeing that she was checking them out. Every seat, and much of the standing room around the perimeter, was full, occupied by hopeful young scientists in immaculately laundered clothes. Some made small talk. Most sat quietly, mentally rehearsing for the next hour of their lives or fantasizing about their prospects for the more distant future if the interview went well.

  Look at ’em. I bet at least two-thirds of them have PhDs. How am I supposed to compete with that?

  She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. They said they’d consider applicants with a master’s or better. My master’s should be good enough. There’s no reason to believe that they’d rather have a PhD. They didn’t say that. They just referred to those candidates as . . . better. There’s no way I’m getting this job. These people all have better degrees than me, better experience, better clothes. Hell, I know me; they’re probably better people, the jerks.

  The man sitting next to Hope asked, “Are you still with me?”

  Hope snapped to attention and turned to the man, whom she’d managed to completely forget in the past thirty seconds. He was tall with shaggy blond hair, a scruffy beard, and a stocky build. He smiled at her, far more amused than irritated, and said, “Hello?”

  “I’m sorry,” Hope said. “I must have zoned out.”

  “Oh, well, I was just saying that the interesting thing about golf—”

  Oh Lord, she thought. He’s still on golf.

  The man continued, “—is that the ultimate goal of the serious golfer is to do as little actual golfing as possible. Think about it: the better round you have, the fewer shots you take. In the end, the winner is the one who took the fewest strokes. The prize is to do less of the thing you set out to do. The perfect game of golf would be eighteen holes in one.”

  Hope said, “That’s—” but found herself unable to use the word “interesting.” Instead, she finally said, “something.”

  Two other applicants were talking in the corner of the room. Normally Hope would’ve disregarded the distant chatter, but she had distinctly heard the phrase “Krom’s Canyon.” She swiveled her head to look at them.

  A fairly good-looking guy in a shirt-and-tie combination just casual enough to look much better than any truly formal clothes ever could was talking with a woman who was working her hardest to look like she was radiating a sexy librarian vibe by accident.

  “The way you had to work back and forth across the bridges with limited cover, taking out psychos blocking your path while the turret at the end of the canyon tried to gun you down, was just epic. It’s probably my favorite map in the entire series, even though it’s in my least favorite of the games. The writing was just so much better from two onward, though around five it started losing steam again.”

  Borderlands, Hope thought. They’re talking about the Borderlands games. Why can’t I be over there, talking games with them, instead of being stuck with, um, Bill Murray in Caddyshack. What was that character’s name? Carl something? Hmm. Well, I bet I know who’ll know.

  “Hey,” Hope asked, “what was the name of Bill Murray’s character in Caddyshack?”

  The blond man said, “Carl Spackler.” He adjusted his sleeves. As the cuff of his left sleeve pulled back, Hope noticed a dark purple bruise on his forearm.

  Thank God. Something to talk about that isn’t golf!

  “How’d you get the bruise?” Hope asked.

  He said, “Golf. I was standing too close and someone accidentally got me with their backswing.”

  Accidentally, Hope thought. I doubt that. He most likely kept interrupting their golf to talk to them about golf. Oh well, look at the bright side. One good thing about the fact that you definitely won’t get this job is that you definitely won’t end up working with this dude.

  A quiet rattle emanated from the knob of the door to the next room, instantly silencing all conversation—and a good deal of the breathing—in the waiting room. The door swung open. A guy who had entered looking nervous ten minutes before walked out looking relieved.

  He said, “She’d like to see Hope Takeda next.” Then he made a beeline for the exit, avoiding any eye contact with the rest of the applicants.

  Hope stood up, straightening her clothes. The blond man who had been pestering her about golf said, “Good luck, Hope.”

  Oh no, Hope thought. We did tell each other our names when we sat down, didn’t we? He got a reminder, but now I have to try to remember his, and if I don’t, I’m going to look like an ass. That’s just what my self-esteem needs before a job interview. Oh well, I gotta give it a shot.

  Hope said, “Thanks, Eric. Same to you.”

  The blond man smiled, which Hope took as a sign of success. She walked into the next room and closed the door behind her.

  An impressive blond woman in her forties sat behind an impressive desk, devoid of papers. The only item on the desktop was a single electronic tablet, which the woman glanced at as she stood.

  “Ms. . . . Takeda, thank you for coming in. Please have a seat.”

  Hope sat in the single chair opp
osite the desk. The woman sat as well.

  “My name is Dr. Lydia Madsen. I am in charge of the project that’s hiring here at OffiSmart.”

  Hope said, “Well, it’s very nice to meet you.”

  Dr. Madsen nodded, lifted her tablet, and read silently. Hope kept expecting her to ask a question, but she didn’t, which made Hope nervous.

  Finally, Dr. Madsen glanced up at Hope and said, “I’m just reading your resume,” then went back to reading silently, which did little to make Hope less nervous.

  Dr. Madsen kept her eyes glued to the tablet, but said, “Focus on machine learning, master’s degree, very impressive.”

  Hope said, “Thank you.”

  “Not as impressive as a PhD.”

  Hope said nothing.

  After another stretch of silence, Dr. Madsen said, “It doesn’t list a current job.”

  Hope said, “My current job isn’t in the field. It’s just something that’s covering my bills. I didn’t think it was relevant.”

  “What is it?” Dr. Madsen asked. “Just out of curiosity.”

  “I work at a day care.”

  Madsen looked up from the tablet. “Really? You like it?”

  “Yeah, I like it well enough.”

  Dr. Madsen arched an eyebrow and returned her attention to the tablet.

  Hope said, “I’d much rather work in my field of study, though.”

  Madsen said nothing.

  Hope said, “The day care pays the bills, but that’s about all it has going for it.”

  Madsen said nothing.

  “To be honest,” Hope said, “most days, the kids drive me batty. When they’re good, it’s fine, but when they’re bad, you just wanna . . .” Hope trailed off.

  Fantastic, she thought. Well done, Hope. Sit down for a job interview and casually joke about attacking children. That’s just great. Oh well, there was no way I was going to get this job anyway.

  Dr. Madsen nodded definitively, put down the tablet, then asked, “I’m sorry, Miss Takeda, were you saying something?”

  “What?”

  “I got lost in thought there, and I believe you said something.”

  Hope said, “No! Nothing! Nothing worth repeating, anyway.” She laughed, a little too hard.

  “Good,” Dr. Madsen said. “Well, I still have several more applicants to interview, but I think there’s an excellent chance I’ll be offering you the job.”

  “Really?!”

  “Yes. You have a unique combination of skills and experience that I think will be a real asset.”

  “That’s great!” Hope said. “Thank you!”

  Dr. Madsen said, “Don’t thank me yet. I do still have to interview everyone else, and the project you’d be working on is top secret. If I offer you the job, you’ll have to accept the position and sign multiple NDAs before I can even tell you what you’ll be working on.”

  “The project, is it interesting?” Hope asked.

  “It’s world changing.”

  Hope thought, I guess that’s a yes. Not that there’s any chance of me not taking it. It has to be better than working with kids.

  TWO YEARS LATER

  2.

  Hope handed over her bag, wallet, phone, and car keys, then stood with her hands in the air. When the full-body scanner finished its cycle, the security guard thanked her for her cooperation and directed her to await her belongings at the end of the conveyor belt, like he did every morning. Hope nodded and said nothing in hopes of speeding up the process, like she did every morning.

  She picked up her oversized purse, which had gone through an X-ray scanner while she was busy having her various metals detected.

  Hope looked at the side of the guard’s head for a moment, then glanced at the next item coming down the conveyor belt—a very expensive laptop bag.

  She picked it up, watching to see if the guard would notice. She waited for a full five seconds, then handed the bag to its owner when he emerged from the metal detector. He thanked her and went on his way. She paused to take one last look at the guard, who didn’t appear to have noticed anything.

  Completely oblivious, she thought. The easiest place in the entire building to steal something is in the security line, right next to an armed guard.

  She walked through the reinforced glass doors and into the building. Eric was waiting for her on the other side and fell in beside her as they made their way to their office. She was small and slight with black hair. He was large and blond with a scruffy beard. He wasn’t overweight, at least not by American standards, but he was bigger than her in every way except attitude.

  “Good morning,” Eric said.

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  “Well, it is if you want it to be. I don’t know why the security screening bugs you so much. The guards are just doing their jobs.”

  “No, they aren’t. That’s the problem,” Hope said. “If they were doing their jobs, I’d have nothing to complain about.”

  “We both know you’d have found something. I dunno, Hope. It’s not cool for you to punch down.”

  “How am I punching down?” Hope asked. “I didn’t even say anything to him.”

  Eric said, “But you think about it every day. You have a master’s degree and a good job at a Fortune 500 tech company. They’re security guards. Do you know how far a security guard’s salary is likely to go in Silicon Valley? Cut them some slack.”

  Hope said, “You assume that we’re in a better position because we’re more educated and don’t have to work in a uniform. My degree cost me six years of my life and an eternity of debt. My ‘good job’ is as a lab assistant.” She gestured over her shoulder. “He, on the other hand, is a full-fledged security guard, not an assistant. I can’t get to my workplace without his approval. He can get me fired. He can get me arrested. He has the power, not us.”

  “That’s an interesting way to look at it.”

  Hope smiled. “Meaning you disagree but don’t want to argue.”

  Eric said, “That’s one way to interpret it.”

  “You’re being passive-aggressive.”

  “I prefer to think of it as being aggressively passive.”

  After a short wait, Hope and Eric entered a crowded elevator and stood in silence as everybody else got off before them. They worked on the ninth floor of the ten-story building, a floor that had originally been set aside for the offices of upper-level executives, which they definitely were not.

  They walked across the imported marble tile landing onto the deep, soft carpet, then down a walnut-paneled corridor. They passed glass doors set into sections of glass walls, bearing plaques engraved with the names of people important enough that you needed to know their names before you met them, but not so important that you’d know them without this reminder.

  Behind the glass doors, well-dressed administrative assistants looked up at the sound of footsteps, then looked away when they recognized Hope and Eric as fellow employees to whom they didn’t need to be friendly or welcoming.

  Hope and Eric worked behind a glass door set into a glass wall, just like the others, only the glass had all been blacked out and there was a security card reader built into the door’s handle. The name plaque on the wall read “Dr. Lydia Madsen.”

  Hope pressed her ID card against the sensor, but it didn’t surprise her when the door stayed locked. She looked down at the card—sure enough, her picture and the name “Hope Takeda” were there under the OffiSmart corporate logo. She had the right card.

  She tried it again. Still nothing.

  She slowly slid the card around the surface of the sensor, looking for the sweet spot.

  After several seconds of careful card wiggling, the sensor glowed green and she heard the latch click open.

  “Thank you,” she muttered. “It’d be easier to use my ID to jimmy the lock.”

  She stomped into the office. Eric slipped in behind her and slid into his chair.

  “It’s been two days,” Hope said, h
olding her ID card up like Exhibit A. “Why didn’t they fix this while I was gone?”

  Eric swiveled his seat to look at her. It was a small room—more of a vestibule, really—originally intended to hold a secretary’s desk and a few chairs. Instead it held two full workstations. Eric sat less than four feet away from Hope. It was a good thing that they liked each other, or that, on bad days, they were both willing to put in the effort to pretend that they did.

  He squinted at her card. “Yeesh, would it have killed you to smile for your ID picture?”

  “It’s an ID picture. The whole point of it is so that security or cops can identify me. If I’m in a situation where the cops are trying to identify me, I’m probably not going to be smiling about it, am I? So why haven’t they fixed the door?”

  “Because they don’t believe it’s broken,” Eric said. “I’ve had maintenance out four times in the last two days, and it always works fine for them. They’ve stopped picking up my calls.”

  “Huh,” Hope said. “What do we do now?”

  “I’m going to try again, and if they don’t pick up, I’ll report our phone broken too.”

  “It’s good that you have a plan,” Hope said, sitting down at her desk. “What’s with the Band-Aid?”

  Eric’s hand automatically rose to the large adhesive bandage over his left eyebrow. “Oh, that’s nothing. Soccer accident. I fell. The guy chasing me didn’t. I ended up taking a cleat to the head.”

  Hope smirked. “Physical fitness is gonna be the death of you, Eric.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll die with memories of doing something other than sitting at home playing computer games.”

  “I’ll have you know that last night I stormed a heavily armed fortress.”

  “And how’d that go?” Eric asked.

  “Not great. I got matched with some little girl who’d never played. At least I assume she was a little girl—her handle had the word ‘unicorn’ in it, misspelled.” She paused. “Man, I hope it was a little girl. Anyway, I spent like an hour trying to teach her what to do, but she got mad when I kept winning. She called me ‘shitful.’”

  “Sounds like someone should spend an hour teaching her how to curse.”

  “If I ever come across her again, I might. Still, it’s better than getting kicked in the head by a guy wearing cleats. Aside from the door not getting fixed, did anything interesting happen while I was gone?”