Chapter 10 #2
“That kind of limits your pool to just people you know personally and super famous people,” Gisele pointed out.
“And there’s no way super famous people would believe me.”
Gisele sighed. “Fine, so people you know. You complain about your coworkers literally all the time. Who at Zabloom deserves this?”
Surely no one deserved it.
But was that really true? They were awful. Well, no, if she were honest, they were mostly just really annoying.
But did she deserve it more than they did? If it was her or them?
It was a thought that she kept turning over in her mind, even after Gisele gave up prodding her. She tossed on her cheap mattress all night. It rolled around in her head on the subway.
She made moral decisions without thinking about it all the time, she knew.
She wore inexpensive clothes that may have been made in sweatshops and used electronics that contained minerals that could have been mined by children and bought coffee that might have been raised on land clear-cut from rainforests.
She wasn’t sure because she didn’t do a deep investigative dive before every ten-dollar purchase.
She bought stuff online from big companies with questionable ethics instead of small local businesses because of free shipping.
She took ride shares even though they burned fossil fuels and exploited their drivers.
Her barely-clinging-to-middle-class urban lifestyle contributed to climate change and microplastics and the exploitation of the lower classes both in developing countries and her own neighborhood.
She spent most of her day trying to convince people to spend five or six figures on software she privately thought was stupid.
She gave twenty bucks here and there where she could afford to, to wildlife conservation or GoFundMes for people she half-remembered from high school, and tried not to think about it all too much.
No ethical consumption under capitalism.
Was this really so different?
* * *
It wasn’t the best frame of mind to be in, going into her introduction to the ad agency.
Morgan had heard of this particular agency before starting at Zabloom—her mother had mentioned that it was owned by a siren who had helped start the very concept of the modern Madison Avenue firm as a way of keeping herself busy after millennia of swanning about luring individuals to their doom.
Modern tech made it all much more scalable, not to mention profitable.
The fact that Morgan had heard of them made her think perhaps Tim had been paying more than a small company like Zabloom could afford.
Her junior account executive had jumped straight to introducing Morgan to another junior account rep from an ad tech vendor who wanted Morgan to spend even more money on another new technology platform Morgan had never even heard of.
She wondered how many layers of companies you’d need to get through before you hit the first one that physically impacted the world in any way.
“With this add-on, you can gather intent data from multiple sources,” the vendor rep on the video call was saying.
She had hair too straight not to have been professionally blown out and enough vocal fry to annoy even Morgan.
“When enough people at the target company have given enough intent signals, you get a Hot Stuff! alert. You can set the threshold wherever you like, but we recommend four to five chili peppers.”
“And how many people is a chili pepper?” Right now, all the chili peppers next to each target account on her screen were grayed out.
Rix, meanwhile, wanted very badly to chew on her shoe.
Gisele was willing to tolerate a fourth roommate, but only to a point, so Morgan was taking full advantage of the dog-friendly office policy.
If Hayley could bring her disgruntled pom-pom, Luke could bring his lightly disguised demonic mutt.
“That’s proprietary information, but rest assured that we’ve done extensive testing for your industry to calibrate an appropriate threshold,” the rep assured her. “Then you can plug into any of several third-party applications to create personalized user journeys to increase demand.”
So, they were stalking people to see who might want their product so they could try to convince them harder to want the product.
It did seem better than blasting people who didn’t want the product at all, but she wondered how the people giving the intent signals would feel about that. “And how much is this add-on?”
The ad budget had given her enough clue to not take a sip of her coffee, so she didn’t have to spit it at the screen. That number was yet another yearly salary. “And how important is it to your own quota that you make this sale?” she asked, a little too casually.
The rep looked a little offended. Despite the fact their job titles literally overlapped with each other, apparently mentioning other people’s quotas wasn’t done.
Which was a pity, because Morgan would have loved to know if Ms. Shiny Hair was willing to sell her soul to make the number after this conversation.
No, that was mean. “I want to make sure we’ve paired you with the package that’s best for your organization’s needs,” the rep was saying.
“Thanks, I’ll have to check the budget and think about it,” Morgan replied, faking a smile as she said polite goodbyes and closed the video window. Rix lifted his head from the floor and wagged his tail. There were a couple of shiny spots where his drool had melted the carpet.
Luke poked his head in. “Want a snack?”
“You don’t have to keep getting me stuff,” she said.
“I like it when you’re satisfied,” he said, sitting down next to her. Was it everyone that he enjoyed pleasing, or just her? “And I can’t get what you really want.”
She stilled. “I don’t blame you for all this.”
“That’s OK, I do.” Before she could come up with a response, he changed the subject.
“How’d the call with the ad agency go?”
“Business-to-business advertising is ridiculous,” she said, only refraining from banging her head on the table because she didn’t want Ronaldo to see. “Apparently spamming is the illegal routine practice everyone does anyway.”
“No idea what that means, really happy to keep it that way,” Luke assured her.
“Mass cold calling, basically,” she said. “But, like, ten thousand people at once.”
He perked up. “That’s a thing?”
“I don’t think you guys can use it if our email’s not compatible,” she said. “How’s your day going?”
He blew his bangs up out of his eyes, and she wondered where he’d picked up the gesture, since his natural form didn’t have bangs. “I accidentally called a convent.”
And there was the spit-take she’d avoided earlier. He pounded her back as she gasped air back into her lungs and fumbled for the tissue box to clean off her screen. “You what?”
“I dialed the number wrong,” he said. “But it was weird. They were a really good prospect.”
She blinked at him. “For buying HR software or selling their souls?”
“Both, maybe?” He shrugged. “Seems like recruiting isn’t going great for nuns these days.”
“Which did you sell them?” she said, vaguely horrified.
“Neither.” He shifted in his chair. “It didn’t seem… right.”
She blinked. Did he have a conscience after all?
“I had a nice conversation with Sister Dolorosa about how nice that young Sister Bridget is and how much she wished there were a few more like her, and then she said she’d pray for me.”
“Oh.” Morgan sat back, wondering how much of this was transferal of guilt.
Had he ever felt guilty before, she wondered?
He looked abashed and a little confused.
It was weirdly cute, and when she reminded herself yet again that he was a demon instead of an attractive colleague, it didn’t stick as well as it usually did.
She lowered her voice so it wouldn’t carry through the open door.
“How does that work? I mean, does it, like, burn?”
“Since I’m not actually from Hell and I don’t know where your souls even go when they leave us, it mostly seemed like a nice gesture.
” He rubbed his head, reminding himself that his horns were still there even if they weren’t visible in his reflection.
“I’m not sure you humans appreciate how nice it is when you’re nice to each other.
But a surprising number of you seem to want nice things for each other without something in return? ”
Floofums poked his head in, looking to see if there were any legs free for humping.
Rix’s ears pricked forward and he gave the tiny interloper his best puppy-bow.
Instead of accepting the invitation to play, Floofums launched into a hysterical barrage of shrill barking, dancing back and forth, unwilling to charge for real but desperate to drive the newcomer from his territory.
Rix straightened, watching quizzically, and then decided this was a great game.
He bounded toward the Pomeranian with a howl like a damned soul.
On the other side of the glass, the rest of the office had stopped, staring.
Luke tried ineffectually to shush them both.
Floofums latched on to Rix’s leg.
There may have been an illusion of fur, but Rix’s scales were still up to the task.
Floofums clamped down and Rix stared at him without flinching, confused.
He reached down and grabbed Floofums by the scruff of his neck.
In shock, the little dog let go. Rix trotted out, carrying Floofums like a puppy.
Floofums yapped his resolution to murder Rix and maybe the rest of the office for this outrage, even as Rix deposited the squirming bundle at Hayley’s feet. He loped back to Morgan.
“Floofums? Are you OK?” Hayley scooped him up. She looked up, incensed.
“He started it,” Kelly pointed out dryly.
Hayley’s outrage collapsed and she buried her embarrassment fussing over the squirming dog. “What did you get in your fur?”