He was just reaching into the fridge for a beer when his phone chimed. He glanced at the ID and then put the beer back in the fridge.
A half hour later, he was sitting with Natalie, Sophia and Hadeon at the LoveCraft bar in the Khamovniki District.
“Hey, guess what?” Hadeon said, his ruddy face flushed even redder. “I accepted a new job. With Facebook—Symon and I are going to be co-workers!” He turned to the server coming up from the bar and waved her down, then turned to the others and said, “I’m getting this round of drinks.”
“No kidding,” Natalie said. “That’s weird. I just got an offer from them too. Out of the blue.” She opened her large brown eyes wide, and her black eyebrows disappeared behind her jet-black bangs.
“Must be hiring,” Sophia said, fluffing her golden coils theatrically
“Wait—out of the blue?” Symon said to Natalie.
“Well, I mean…I wasn’t actively looking for a job. I bet they found my LinkedIn profile.”
“Guys—this is kinda weird.”
They all three turned to Sophia, who held her beer to her mouth and smiled behind it coquettishly.
“What is, Sophia?” Natalie prompted.
“Me too! I just got an offer from Facebook. For a lot more than I’m making. I was going to show it to Symon later, because I thought it was a joke.”
“Yeah, the salary thing was kind of weird,” Natalie said with a shake of her straight black hair. “A lot higher than I expected. I didn’t believe it either. I thought it was just one of those Ukrainian hackers.”
“Hell, I’m taking the offer,” Hadeon said. He turned to Symon. “I mean, I don’t even have any experience in CGI, so you guys are kind of taking a chance on me.”
“Wait a minute,” Symon said. “This is in my group? Who is it?”
“Well—like I said. Facebook.”
“No, I mean, who at Facebook?”
“Oh…I don’t know. I’ve only talked to their HR team so far.”
Symon looked from one of his friends to the other. He’d told them six months earlier that he’d been hired by the CGI group at Facebook, so now they all thought they were going to be co-workers. How was he going to keep up the lie if they all worked there too? And there was also something suspicious about all this. Andriy must be behind it. But why? Had he broken through Symon’s cover? Was this an act of revenge?
“You mean it wasn’t because of you, Symon?”
“Yeah,” Natalie said. “Don’t you want us to work with you at Facebook?”
Symon glanced at her and burst into a fake smile. “Of course I do!” Shit! How is this going to work? And what was Andriy up to?
He forced it out of his mind for the evening by convincing himself that there were ten thousand employees here, plenty of ways to hide from his friends when he was working with Andriy. And maybe they’d all gotten offers because of the big hiring push Facebook was planning.
The next week, Symon came to Andriy’s office to pick him up for lunch, and almost tripped over his own feet when he saw Sophia’s distinctive mane of golden curls at the reception desk.
“Symon!” she exclaimed in surprise before he could hide. “What are you doing here?”
“I was going to ask you the same question!”
“I work here! I told you yesterday. I took the job.”
Andriy came out of his office at that point. “Oh, good. You know each other.” He turned to Sophia and said, “We, uh…we go lunchy.”
Symon gaped. What the hell did he just say?
“Going to lunch? Okay,” Sophia said. “Do you want calls forwarded to your cell?”
“Ye—no!” Andriy said, turning toward Symon. Even in his confusion, Symon recognized Andriy misinterpreting his dark expression to be another nag about getting a personal life.
“Dude, what is going on here?” Symon said as they walked out onto the sidewalk path leading them to the main Facebook food court.
“I never know how to talk to women,” Andriy admitted. “Even at work.”
“No, I mean, you—you hired her on purpose. Because she’s one of my friends?”
Andriy turned to look at Symon as though he was about to correct him, paused, and then did anyway. “Actually, I was the one who hired all three of your friends.”
Symon stopped, dumbstruck.
“Hey, c’mon, Bud,” Andriy said. “Let’s get in line. I’ve only got fifteen minutes before the conference call.”
Symon started walking again, “You mean…Natalie and Hadeon, too?”
Andriy nodded, a big grin on his face.
Symon stumbled along, asking questions while Andriy picked out their wraps from the Mexi-Russi bar.
“What kinds of jobs? When do they start? How did you even know who they were?”
“What do you think, Symon? I’m in data mining! All I need is your first name and a business you’ve shopped at in the last thirty days, and I can find out anything there is to know about you: favorite porn, how much you owe on your car…”
“But—but why?” Symon asked. “Why did you do this?”
Andriy beamed at him, breaking his usual code of no eye contact to look him directly in the face. “I did it for you, Symon! You’re always complaining about how you never see your friends anymore. I figured if we all spend all our time here together, then it’s really like we’re not working at all!”
The following weekend, Symon tried calling his friends. All three of them were at the office.
“Sorry, Symon, but there’s a big push to get a new deliverable ready in our group. We’re going to be holed up here all weekend,” Natalie said.
“Is that Symon?” Hadeon’s voice giggled off in the background somewhere. “Tell him to get his ass over here and hang out with us. We’re doing CBD-tinis and roasting a goose!” Or something that sounded a lot like that.
“You guys don’t sound very serious over there,” Symon muttered.
“Yeah, Facebook seems to think if we get hammered while launching, we’ll be more open to creative solutions.”
“Hey, lemme talk to him,” a male voice slurred, and suddenly Symon found himself face-timing with Andriy.
“You don’ look like you’re at work!” Andriy said. Symon was still trying to figure out how to turn the screen off, and now he gave up. “Working from home today,” he answered.
“Yeah, sure,” Andriy sing-songed dubiously.
“Why are you saying it like that?” Symon asked.
“Andriy thinks you don’t work at Facebook.”
“What? Why not?”
“One thing’s for damn sure,” Hadeon laughed. “Everyone here works, like, sixty hours a week, minimum!”
They said a few other things, clearly in the highest of spirits, and then hung up. “Gotta get back to it—we’re doing a chalk-talk now!”
Symon put down the phone. They were onto him. This was bad. Completely outside of the XZ terms. A moment later it dinged, and he recognized the number of his handler at XZ.
“Hi Angelina,” he said. “I guess you heard.”
“We certainly did.”
“So…now what?” If they were going to fire him, he was going to make her say it, not him.
“So. Are you ready to pick up a few new clients?”
That was unexpected.
“Wait, what? How is that even going to work? If you transfer me off of Andriy, then what happens to my friends?”
“You’re not going to be transferred. We’re adding new clients for you. And you keep Andriy.”
“What are you talking about? I—my cover’s been blown.”
“Oh, no it hasn’t,” she said blandly. “We already put a few digital breadcrumbs out there. A false trail.”
“False trail?”
“Little things. Stuff that makes it look like you work for the Security Service.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The cover story shifts, that’s all. Andriy and your three friends know you don’t work for Facebook. That’s fine. So now they’ll think you work for the FSB. All of your evasiveness and misleading excuses of the past will be forgiven in the light of the super patriotic work you do. Protecting intellectual property.”
“Oh…” He paused. “Okay, but…why are we doing this? It seems like a lot of effort. Just assign someone else to him.”
1 Comment
What a wacky story!