Chapter 1: The Perfect Storm The alarm went off at 5:47 AM, which Harold Grimsby had calculated was the mathematically optimal time to maximize sleep while still allowing for his ninety-three-minute morning routine. The phone buzzed on the overturned milk crate he used as a nightstand, and the sound joined the usual morning symphony of car alarms, construction equipment, and what might have been artillery fire from the disputed zone three miles east. Harold opened his eyes and stared at the water-stained ceiling of what used to be his garage. The house it had once belonged to was technically still his, at least until the bank finished the foreclosure paperwork, but his ex-wife Linda had claimed the actual living spaces in the separation. So here he was, sleeping on a futon surrounded by boxes of Christmas decorations and his kids' old toys, which they never asked about because they barely remembered he existed. He rolled off the futon and immediately stepped on a Lego. The pain shot through his foot, but he didn't have time to acknowledge it because he had exactly ninety-three minutes before he needed to be on the road, and the schedule was unforgiving. His reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror showed a man who looked older than forty-two. The hair was thinning in that special pattern that suggested anxiety more than genetics, and his eyes had the hollow quality of someone who hadn't slept properly since 2016. He kept his suit on a hanger hooked to the exposed pipes, and he could see where he'd used safety pins to hold together the tear in the jacket's shoulder seam. Breakfast was two antacid tablets and an energy drink, which he consumed while checking the war updates on his phone. The news said the ceasefire was holding, but Harold had learned not to trust that sort of optimism. He also had seven missed calls from the orthodontist's office about his daughter's overdue payment, three texts from Linda about back child support, and one email from Synergy Solutions Inc. reminding all employees that today's board meeting would determine the future of the company's middle management structure. The email didn't say "some of you will be fired," but Harold had worked in corporate environments long enough to understand subtext. He swallowed another antacid. The commute should have taken forty-seven minutes, which was why Harold left at exactly 6:53 AM. His 1997 Honda Civic was held together with duct tape in at least four critical locations, and the passenger door didn't open anymore, but it usually got him where he needed to go. Usually being the key word. He made it exactly twelve minutes before the engine started making a sound that definitely wasn't supposed to happen. The car was in the middle lane of the highway when it began, and Harold had just enough time to coast to the shoulder before the whole thing died with a noise like a mechanical death rattle. He sat there for thirty seconds, watching traffic zoom past, and calculated his options. A tow truck would cost money he didn't have, and calling in sick to the most important board meeting of his career would guarantee his firing. So he did the only logical thing, which was to abandon the car and start running. Three miles in dress shoes turned out to be exactly as terrible as it sounded. The shoes were old and the soles had worn smooth, so every step was a minor adventure in potential ankle-twisting. Harold passed two military checkpoints, where bored soldiers waved him through without much interest, and one heavily armed private security patrol guarding a gated community that looked like it belonged in a different country entirely. By the time he reached the Synergy Solutions Inc. building, he was soaked in sweat and existential dread. The lobby's air conditioning hit him like a cold slap, and the security guard gave him a look that suggested he might be having some kind of medical emergency. Harold scanned his employee badge and headed for the elevators, checking his watch. 8:47 AM. He was forty-seven minutes late. Mr. Wickshire was waiting by the elevators on the fourteenth floor, which meant he'd been watching the lobby cameras. He had that specific smile that management used when they wanted you to understand your failure without them having to explicitly state it. "Nice of you to join us, Harold," Mr. Wickshire said. His suit probably cost more than Harold's monthly mortgage payment, back when Harold had actually been making mortgage payments. "The board meeting starts in ten minutes." "Car trouble," Harold said, which was true enough. "Of course." Mr. Wickshire looked at Harold's sweat-stained shirt and the visible safety pin in his jacket. "You might want to freshen up. The Federal Reserve Chairman will be attending today." Harold's stomach did a small flip. The Federal Reserve Chairman meant this meeting was even more important than he'd thought, which seemed impossible given how important he'd already thought it was. He had ten minutes. He spent three of them in the bathroom, trying to make himself presentable with paper towels and hand soap, then realized he'd forgotten to actually review his presentation materials. His office was on the other side of the building, and he sprinted there with the grace of a man who had just run three miles in dress shoes and was now running again. The presentation was called "Efficiency Through Misery: A Comprehensive Approach to Resource Optimization," and Harold had spent six weeks developing it. The core concept was simple enough: if you made your employees miserable in precisely calculated ways, you could increase productivity by up to seventeen percent while simultaneously reducing salary expectations. The trick was finding the optimal level of suffering that didn't quite push people to quit. He grabbed his laptop and the backup USB drive, then checked his watch again. Four minutes. His stomach gurgled ominously, which was probably the antacids fighting with the energy drink. Or maybe it was the expired protein bar he'd eaten yesterday for lunch. The gas station coffee from this morning probably wasn't helping either. Harold ignored it because he had bigger problems. He pulled up his notes and tried to do a last-minute review while speed-walking to the conference room, which meant he walked into a wall and nearly dropped the laptop. Someone from accounting saw this happen but was polite enough to pretend they hadn't. The conference room was everything Harold's garage apartment wasn't. The table was real mahogany, probably, and the chairs looked like they'd been designed by someone who understood ergonomics. The board members were already seated, along with several people Harold didn't recognize but who looked expensive. Mr. Wickshire sat at the head of the table, and next to him was a woman who must have been the Federal Reserve Chairman, based on how everyone was carefully not staring at her. Harold's immediate supervisor, Janet, gave him a look that clearly communicated: you're late, you look terrible, and this better be good. She'd been relatively kind to him over the years, but Harold understood that kindness only extended so far when your own job was on the line. He set up his laptop and tried to ignore the fact that his hands were shaking slightly. The projector took forever to recognize the connection, and he had to restart it twice while everyone waited in the special kind of silence that made you hyper-aware of every sound you were making. His stomach chose this moment to gurgle again, louder this time. Mr. Wickshire cleared his throat. "Whenever you're ready, Harold." Harold took a breath. The presentation appeared on the screen behind him, and he launched into the opening he'd rehearsed a hundred times. "Good morning. Today I'd like to discuss how Synergy Solutions can optimize human resources through what I call strategic despair management." The first slide showed a graph of productivity versus employee satisfaction. The key insight was that satisfaction and productivity weren't actually correlated the way people assumed. You could drop satisfaction significantly before productivity started to suffer, and if you managed it correctly, the increased desperation actually created a temporary productivity spike. Harold clicked through the slides, warming up to the material. He'd done his research, and the data was solid, even if the underlying concept was fairly dystopian. The board members nodded along, and he could see Mr. Wickshire making approving notes. "The beauty of this approach," Harold continued, "is that it's self-sustaining. As employees become more desperate, they're willing to accept increasingly poor conditions, which reduces our overhead costs while maintaining output levels." The Federal Reserve Chairman leaned forward slightly, which Harold interpreted as interest. He moved into the second section of his presentation, which detailed specific implementation strategies. The key was to introduce small degradations incrementally so that workers adapted without recognizing the overall decline in their conditions. His stomach was making sounds now that seemed too loud for the room, but no one appeared to notice. Harold pressed on, clicking to a slide about optimal break time reduction. "By reducing lunch breaks from sixty to forty-three minutes, we found that employees actually ate faster and returned to work in a heightened state of digestive discomfort, which paradoxically increased focus on their tasks as a distraction from physical distress." Someone coughed. Harold couldn't tell if it was approval or horror, but he'd committed to the presentation at this point. He moved through slides about strategic parking lot placement (farther from the building increased steps while decreasing morale), optimal fluorescent lighting frequencies (certain flicker rates increased headaches but maintained wakefulness), and temperature control (68 degrees was comfortable, 64 degrees was miserable but not quite cold enough to justify complaints). The pressure in his stomach was building now. Harold tried to clench everything while maintaining his presentation voice, which created an interesting challenge in breath control. He was sweating again, though this time it wasn't from the run. "And that brings me to the final component," Harold said, advancing to his conclusion slide. "By implementing these strategies across all departments, we project a fourteen to seventeen percent increase in productivity while reducing facility costs by nine percent and wage expectations by as much as twelve percent." The board members were nodding. Mr. Wickshire looked pleased. The Federal Reserve Chairman was writing something down. Harold's stomach was staging what could only be described as an internal rebellion. He stood straighter, trying to project confidence while simultaneously clenching muscles he didn't normally think about. "The traditional approach to employee satisfaction is based on a fundamental misconception about human motivation. We don't need happy workers. We need productive workers. And sometimes, strategic misery is the most efficient path to optimal output." This was his big moment. He'd rehearsed the closing line dozens of times, and he knew it would land well. Harold took a breath, gestured broadly at the final slide showing projected profit increases, and delivered the line with as much conviction as he could muster. "And THAT'S how we maximize profits!" The gesture was perhaps more dramatic than necessary. He threw his arms wide in a display of corporate enthusiasm, and in doing so, he relaxed muscles that absolutely should not have been relaxed at that particular moment. Time slowed in the way it does when you realize you've made an irreversible mistake. Harold tried to clench everything again, but it was too late. The pressure that had been building since breakfast had found its release, and there was nothing he could do except experience what happened next. It started quietly, almost apologetically. A small sound that might have been ignorable in a different context. But then it built, gaining volume and confidence, until it became the acoustic equivalent of a freight train passing through the conference room. Harold stood frozen at the front of the room while his body produced a sound that lasted somewhere between ten and twelve seconds, though it seemed much longer. The windows rattled. One of them cracked, which Harold would have thought impossible except he was watching it happen. The plants on the windowsill wilted visibly. The CEO's toupee, which Harold hadn't even realized was a toupee, shifted sideways on his head. Then came the smell. The Federal Reserve Chairman put her hand over her mouth. Janet's eyes watered. Someone in the back of the room made a gagging sound, and Mr. Wickshire pushed his chair back from the table so hard it hit the wall. The silence that followed was worse than the sound had been. Harold stood there, his face burning, his carefully prepared presentation completely irrelevant now. Every person in that room was staring at him with expressions ranging from shock to horror to what might have been fascination. The fire alarm went off. Then the building's security system activated, apparently interpreting the seismic activity as some kind of structural threat. Car alarms in the parking lot fourteen floors below began wailing, which Harold could hear even through the cracked window. "I'm so sorry," Harold said, which seemed inadequate given what had just occurred. "I think it was the coffee." Nobody responded because they were all trying to breathe through their mouths. The Federal Reserve Chairman stood up and left the room without saying anything. The other board members followed, some of them actually running. Mr. Wickshire remained seated, staring at Harold with an expression that suggested he was trying to process something beyond his comprehension. Harold packed up his laptop with shaking hands. His presentation materials seemed silly now, though the data was still solid. He walked out of the conference room and down the hallway, where people were evacuating the building because the alarm was still going off. Security guards were running toward the conference room, speaking urgently into their radios. The rest of the day had a dreamlike quality. Someone called the police, though Harold wasn't sure who or why. There was a lot of discussion about whether what had happened constituted a crime, and if so, what kind of crime it might be. Eventually someone remembered a new environmental law that had been passed last month, something about corporate atmospheric violations that was supposed to target industrial polluters. A very confused police officer informed Harold that he was being charged with aggravated atmospheric assault, chemical terrorism, and destruction of corporate property. The property destruction charge related to the window, which had apparently shattered completely about ten minutes after Harold left the building. They took him to the station and processed him, which involved a lot of paperwork and several officers trying very hard not to laugh. Harold sat in a holding cell and thought about his mortgage, his kids, his ex-wife, and the presentation he'd worked so hard on. He thought about the three miles he'd run in dress shoes and the ninety-three-minute morning routine and the seven years since he'd slept properly. When they took his mugshot, Harold looked directly at the camera with the expression of a man who'd just watched his entire life collapse because of his digestive system. The officer read the charges again, and they still didn't make sense. "Aggravated atmospheric assault, chemical terrorism, and destruction of corporate property." Harold's voice came out smaller than he intended. "But... it was just gas?" The officer shrugged, which suggested he agreed this was ridiculous but had stopped trying to make sense of the world sometime around 2020. They let him make a phone call. Harold tried Linda first, but she didn't answer. He tried his lawyer, who laughed and then hung up. He tried Mr. Wickshire, which was probably a mistake, but he didn't know who else to call. "You're fired," Mr. Wickshire said before Harold could speak. "Obviously. Don't come back to the office. We'll mail your final paycheck." Harold sat in the holding cell and stared at the concrete wall. The cell was small and uncomfortable and smelled like disinfectant and despair. There was a bench that was too hard to sleep on and a toilet that looked like it had seen things. It occurred to him that this was probably the quietest place he'd been in years. No car alarms. No construction noise. No artillery fire from the disputed zone. Just silence and concrete and the distant sound of other people's problems. Little did Harold know, this was the first day of the best years of his life.