The Retention Specialist (Season One, Episode Four)

This continues from episode 3(here):

The Retention Specialist (Season 1, Episode 3)

Things are beginning to get serious and weird here.

Follow the series from the beginning: https://thevunderkind.com/retentionseries/home

All caught up?

Shall we continue?

— — — — — — — — —

It’s like a Mexican stand-off, thought Y Johnson, his brain valiantly churning sluggish thoughts as he continued to feel the rain in his bones.

A Mexican stand-off, but with a chainsmoker and a really, really fat man.

Target was looking at him expectantly, like he was waiting for something. Y Johnson groaned and spoke.

“What, are we going to keep staring at each other all day?”

“Dear God, no.”

“What, then?”

“What’s your favorite news platform?”

“Er. Forbes?”

“Yes. That. That will have to do. Open the homepage.”

Y Johnson sighed, but obliged, shielding his screen from the rain with his impossibly large jawbone.

The headlines were, admittedly, interesting. Companies were posting remarkable customer churn numbers. The big three of the mobile-friendly world. The FMCGs. The social media kingpins. Everyone.

“Ridiculous,” chuckled Y Johnson. He hated how he couldn’t hide the nervousness in his voice. “Companies of this scale can’t all churn at once — that loss has to be a gain somewhere, balance — and even if they did, you wouldn’t find numbers on news websites instantaneously.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” grinned Target. “Not unless the person responsible for the churn was also feeding the news.”

There it is, thought Y Johnson, realizing he was on his eighth cigarette. The worst day of my life.

“How the hell did you do this? I know what you are…but you do not have the capacity of anything of this scale. It is impossible!”

Target‘s teeth were positively glinting now. “Wouldn’t you like to know? You’re missing the more important question, though.”

“And what’s that?”

“The question is why. Why would I sabotage ALL of the biggest customer-centric companies in the world? What’s in it for me?”

“Oh, I figured that out already. You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The One True Product.”

Target’s grin was now a reflective surface.

“Why are you here, Cornelius?” He hated using Target’s real name. “What do you want with me?”

“To recruit you, of course. Our plan needs retention, and you’re the best there is.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Well, if you insist…” and Target growled, his entire head morphing into a barracuda.

Y Johnson flicked away his cigar stub, flicked open his Swiss Army knife, then crouched.

Engarde, you son of a bitch.

— — — — -

“WHERE THE HELL IS THE RETENTION SPECIALIST?” yelled the red face of one of the agents. He dealt a semi-precise kick in the genital region of the Boy With The Nose, Now Without Nipples.

The boy did not move.

“I think you killed him, sir.”

“So it would appear. What have we learned from this?”

“That you’re terrible at interrogating, sir.”

“No, I mean, what have we learned from questioning this boy?!”

“That, if you did not have murder charges against you prior to questioning him, sir, you do now.”

There was silence. Then, a cough.
The agents looked down. The Boy With The Nose, Now Without Nipples, Who Was Presumed Dead a Second Ago was sneezing.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Bless you,” said one of the agents. “It’s that season again.”

“Hay fever,” agreed the boy. “It’s the pollen, sir.”

“Do you remember where the Retention Specialist is now?”

“No, sir.”

The agent sighed tiredly, then tasered the boy.

“Put him in the backseat. We’ll question him properly at HQ.”

“I believe we should optimize for an outcome where we do not kill him, sir.”

“Shut up, Magnus.”

— — — — — — — -

It was raining in Oshodi, so no one was out on the streets. Well, nearly no one, not if you count the mangy dog three streets down and the man in the overcoat charging towards a blob with the head of a killer fish.

You wouldn’t have heard it, but the man in the overcoat snarled and said “I WILL WASH MY GENITALS IN YOUR BLOOD, USING YOUR ENTRAILS AS SPONGE AND YOUR SKIN AS TOWEL.”

When they made contact, the blob simply exploded in a soft pop, leaving nothing behind but a tinny laugh and the man in the overcoat crashing into a puddle of water.

When he sat up, Y Johnson swore loudly, then attempted to pull out a cigar from his breast pocket, but it was destroyed from the rain and the impact.

What the hell just happened?

— — — — — — — — — — — —

A remote location, but obviously a really sweet place with pods and stasis chambers and fancy technogadgetry.

Time: immediately after Target explodes in Y Johnson’s face.

A stasis chamber hisses open, and a skinny man staggers out, grabbing on to surfaces to keep himself from falling. His eyes are sunken, and veins criss-cross his body like some form of intra-city network grid. His body has quite a number of open sores and he slips on his own amniotic fluid (the term for the stabilizing fluid contained in his stasis chamber).

As he falls feebly, a boot blocks his path. He follows the boot upwards and sees the stern face of a woman looking at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, without teeth. “I…needed…a drink.”

The woman stares blankly at him, then leaves, returning shortly with a towel and a glass of water.

The now half-clothed man sips on the water, gags and says “it’s water. What the hell?”

“Why are you out of your chamber?” she asks.

“Thirsty. Tired. Needed a change of environment.” He smiled a painful smile.

“We cannot afford to be lax now. We’re so close.” The woman’s lip was tight with annoyance and worry.

“Don’t worry, baby,” the man said, picking at one of his sores. “I am working all over the world.”

Behind him, the other stasis chambers gurgled, with sick-looking men, identical in appearance to him, suspended in tense sleep.

“Good,” she said. “Your instructions are clear. If you can’t bring Y Johnson over to our side, kill him, Cornelius.”

— — — — — — — — — —