It is midafternoon on a Monday when I roll into the parking lot in front of the big office building. The sun is already descending, casting long, oddly shaped shadows from the trees around the lot. I park my car and walk up to the building. The door automatically slides open when I get close enough for the sensors to see me. Entering the building I find myself in a large open reception. Apart from a single piece of abstract, modernistic art on the wall furthest to the left, everything is completely white. The floors, walls, stairs on the right, the doors leading further into the building. All the same white, making everything seem to blend together. Even the large front desk is completely white. No logo or company name. I walk up to the desk to find a young woman sitting behind it, looking at a computer screen, typing steadily. She pays no attention to me, as I approach. I look at her nervously and start fumbling for the note in my pocket. “Hi, I’m here for an interview. I have an appointment with Mr… Uhmm.” I look at my note, trying to make out the name I scribbled down earlier, but she cuts me of before I can finish my inquiry. “Yes, Mr. Almbase will be with you in a second”. She never even moves her eyes from the screen, and her fingers keep dancing tirelessly over the keyboard in front of her.
Almbase. Now that she said it, it seems much easier to read on the slightly crumbled note in my hand. Before I have a chance to respond to her, a mans voice reaches me from the top of the stairs. “Mr. Christensen? Follow me this way please”. The man turns around and walks through an automatic door behind him. I glance at the woman at the desk one last time as I start making my way to the stairs. Her eyes are still firmly fixed on the computer screen.
I had expected the door at the top of the stairs to lead to a hallway or a big open office space, but instead I find myself in a small conference room. The walls and the floor are clinically white. There are no windows, but the entire ceiling is made of square light panels, bathing the room in a very evenly distributed white light. In the middle of the room is a large table. A middle-aged woman is sitting at the table reading a light-grey dossier. I’m assuming it’s my application and her notes on it, but there seems to be quite a few pages. My resume and application for the job both fit on one page, so I wonder what the rest of the pages are. The man is making his way around the table to sit next to the woman. He adjusts his chair slightly before looking at me. “Mr. Christensen, my name is Mr. Almbase, we spoke on the phone, briefly. This is Mrs. Hughes. Please take a seat.” He is gesturing to a chair at the table opposite himself and Mrs. Hughes. I hesitate for a moment, but finally sit down and look at them. As soon as I sit down, Mrs. Hughes closes the dossier and looks me straight in the eyes. “Help yourself to a glass of water should you feel the need.” I only now notice the decanter and glasses at the end of the table. “But for now, let us just get right into it, shall we? First of all, what motivated you to apply for the position at our company? And what is it you think we do here?”.
I must say I’m used to quite a lot of small talk at the beginning of this kind of meeting, but apparently that is not how these people do things. The honest answers to her questions would of course be that I have no idea what they do at this place. And my motivation is mostly that I currently do not have a job, and I need one to pay my bills. I cannot tell her that though, which is why I’ve been practicing a better answer for this kind of question. “Well, I found your job posting and looked up your company. From what I could read, this is a very nice workplace, with plenty of opportunities for both personal and professional growth. It is my understanding that you do research and development in a broad range of areas, mostly to do with artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality. You also have several fairly extensive research projects surrounding neuroscience and psychology.” Mr. Almbase is nodding slowly, but Mrs. Hughes is just staring at me, through her big square glasses. Neither of them seems to have anything to say, so I continue: “The job posting didn’t have a lot of detail, on the actual job. It was mostly a description of the benefits and the achievements of the company. I would like to know more, so maybe you can tell me about the position? What will I actually be doing here?”.
Mr. Almbase glances at his colleague, whose eyes are still firmly fixed on me. She shifts slightly in her seat. “We will get to the specifics of the job soon enough. The job posting suggested you should read up on a few specific terms. Please explain those to us, to show that you have fully understood the concepts.” The job listing did mention a few terms that I had read up on, however briefly, to get an understanding of them.
“Ok, it mentioned confidentiality, meaning anything I hear or see here is to be kept secret. I cannot tell anyone about the work that I or anyone else does here. It is a practice used mainly for protecting corporate secrets and classified information. It also mentioned psychological evaluations, where a professional psychologist makes a medical assessment of a persons’ mental health. It is used to form an indication of whether a person is likely to be able to handle whatever job they are supposed to do and whether that person is mentally healthy in general. Finally, it mentioned hazard pay. My understanding is that that it is a practice of paying someone a handsome bonus for doing dangerous work. I think it is mainly used for people working in mines or war zones.”
The two interviewers look at each other for a short while, before Mr. Almbase nods slowly. Mrs. Hughes turns to me once again, reopens the dossier, glancing over one of the pages, and then looks back at me. “Very good. Now if you could please tell us in just a few words why you believe you would be the right choice for this position.” She looks over the rim of the square glasses and folds her hands over the now closed dossier.
As I still have practically no information on the job I applied for, I am not sure what to say to this one either. However, she and Mr. Almbase both seem to expect an answer. “Yes, of course. I believe I would fit this role nicely, as I am a great team player, but I am also greatly confident in my own work and not scared to take responsibility for various tasks on my own. I go at every assignment with great enthusiasm and a professional ‘can do’ attitude. I have some experience as a team leader, but I am also very compliant when working as part of the teams working force. When working on my own, I find great pleasure in working towards the best result that I can possibly produce. In case I get stuck in a task or need more information, I will not shy away from asking a more senior colleague or searching for answers in the company documentation or online. I am very skilled at estimating the time to complete a task, and I deliver on time. It is important to me to live up to both my own expectations, and the expectations of others.”
I must have nailed it pretty good. Mr. Almbase is nodding faster than usual. “Very good. Now, do you or any of your immediate family suffer from any chronic or hereditary illness or infirmities?”.
Without letting the rapit change in topic throw me off, I answer, “No sir. Both I and my family are healthy as can be.” Mrs. Hughes quickly flips to a page in the dossier, circles something on the page and turns the file, to show Mr. Almbase. He is staring at the page for a few seconds, then turns to me. “Allergies, phobias, depression. Stop me if I mention something you suffer from or have suffered from in the past. Recurring nightmares, suicidal thoughts or tendencies, self-harm in any way, anger management issues, impaired vision or hearing, back- or knee-pain, inflammation of any internal organs.” He stops for a second. “No? None of the above? Impressive.” He looks back at the dossier on the table, then looks at Mrs. Hughes. “I believe he might be.” He mutters under his breath.
Mrs. Hughes closes the dossier again and leans onto the table a little, as she turns to me once more. “This all seems very promising Mr. Christensen. If you feel the same way, we would like to offer you a contract right away. If you sign it, you will start tomorrow morning. We will show you the rest of the offices and your work area then. Your starting salary will be a fixed rate of four thousand five hundred dollars pr month. On top of that we have a standard hazard compensation program, that is paid as an hourly rate. The rate is one hundred and fifty dollars, pr hour, multiplied by the HCP-score of the project to which you are assigned. The HCP-score is of course closely tied to the type of project and the risks it involves. How does this sound?”.
I am completely stunned at the fact that she just offered me a job out of nowhere. No consideration period, no second interviews, no thorough background check. “That sounds, good, I guess. But what would an HCP-score usually be for a project? And what risks could it involve? I feel like that is something that is quite important to know before making a decision.”
Mrs. Hughes smiles slightly. “Of course. The HCP-scores vary greatly between projects. Currently the lowest score for a project is at zero point six. The scores can be anything above that really. The type of risk it involves will also vary and can be anything from watching a film design to trigger epileptic seizures to handling hazardous objects or materials.” While she answers my question, she carefully plucks a sheet of paper from the dossier and pushes it towards me. I read through the contract and quickly decide to sign it. When it is signed, I hand it back to Mrs. Hughes, and she tucks it back in the dossier. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Christensen. We will see you tomorrow.” She folds her hands on the table and smiles at me. Mr. Almbase stands up, quickly nods at me, then at Mrs. Hughes and leaves the office. A bit confused by the sudden end of the interview, I get up and leave as well.
It is an early Tuesday morning as I roll into the parking lot of my new workplace. It feels great to finally have a job again, but I am a bit nervous, as I have no idea what I am going to be doing here. As I walk up to the doors of the building and they slide open, I see Mrs. Hughes standing in front of the big, white front desk, where the young woman is still sitting, typing effortlessly. I smile at the two women. “Good morning.”
The young woman ignores me completely, still fixated on the screen. Mrs. Hughes smiles slightly, “Good morning, Mr. Christensen. Follow me please.” She quickly walks off to the left towards a white door, that she opens with an electronic keycard. I follow her through the door into a long corridor. The walls and floor here are just as plain white as the rest of the building and the ceiling is entirely made of the same light panels as they had in the conference room. Along the corridor there are several doors, all requiring keycards to enter and all with small signs describing the department they are hiding. Apparently, this place does everything from animatronics to experimental medicine. I pause at a door marked ‘Long Range Cognitive Stimulation and Manipulation’. To me that looks like a fancy way of saying mind control, but that seems absurd.
“Mr. Christensen, your department is in here”. Mrs. Hughes has stopped in front of a door and has opened it. I quickly make my way to her and read the sign on my department: ‘Classified Experiments’. I pause for a second at the door, but Mrs. Hughes is already walking down the hallway behind the door. I follow her and the door closes behind me. The walls on both sides of this narrow hall are covered in many more white doors, but these have no signs or even numbers. I wonder how anyone would ever find anything in this building. A few meters in front of me, Mrs. Hughes has stopped in front of a door. When I catch up, she looks at me with a serious frown. “All right. This is your office in here. When you go in, you will find a file on the table explaining your task. Follow the instructions carefully, to ensure the best and safest results. Good luck.” With those words she pushes the door open to reveal a large square room. In the middle of the room is a table with a dossier on it, not unlike the one she was reading from the day before. I go into the room, and she closes the door behind me. The room is completely white, like everything else in the building. I hesitate a bit at this odd start to a new job, but after a few seconds I walk up to the table and open the file. There is a single sheet of paper in it. On the page is my name, today’s date, the company address and phone number and then a description of my task. The description is short, and easy to understand, and yet it makes absolutely no sense.
‘Task description: Stand in this room. Do not lay down or sit on the floor or the table. Do not touch the walls. Do not move, turn, or flip the table. Do not attempt to leave before a representative from the company asks you to. Leave the file on the table when you are ready to start.’
After reading the description a few times, and checking the file for more pages, I am still very confused about this new job. But what truly scares me is the last line of the page in the file.
‘HCP-score: 86’
With the hazard compensation payout being one hundred and fifty dollars multiplied by the HCP score, that means I will be paid twelve thousand and nine hundred dollars pr hour to stand in this room. I look back at the door and realize that there is no door handle on this side. I put the page back in the dossier and throw it on the table. I am ready.