My name is Sotomura Kimiko.

Many of my team suffer from low morale. They do not do good work without constant supervision, but the supervision itself frustrates them and it is clear to me that they are far from happy. We also deal with regular communication breakdowns with other teams connected to the same project, but they are not dealt with well. I have refused until now to allow Sheehan’s team to set the pace for Project Mississippi, because this would affect which of us received a better bonus. These and other political issues prevent Kintech from being all it can be.

Kimiko’s fingers flew over the keyboard. It was strangely freeing to have started to confess her thoughts and frustrations on everything holding the company back. Many of these had curdled over time into the anger that had spurred her to look elsewhere for money.

Too much time and thought must be spent on how our actions look. I review timesheets weekly and there is never anything worth noting to find, so I must note things that aren’t. It is a waste of my time.

I am aware that some of the runners and PAs abuse the petty cash facility and steal from the company. I never reported this. It did not seem to me that it mattered.

Lee Edmonds confided in me a few months ago that he is blocking any recruitment to fill the empty spaces in Carl Sheehan’s team. He told me this is his reparation for Sheehan continuing an affair with Lee’s PA Jasmine. Lee effectively has no PA on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and Thursday and Friday afternoons as a result of this. I believe there is also an element of jealousy to the rivalry.

Project Mississippi is compromised.

Typing those words, her fingers shook and her head ached. She felt deeply uncomfortable. It was as if she was doing something wrong. But she was loyal to Kintech Global. Personally loyal to VP Peters. This needed to be documented. She continued typing.

I accepted an offer from Interlogistics LLC. Every month I supply them with the report on the current state of Project Mississippi. They had already been working on something similar. They expect to launch first, in just over two months, and require very little more data to do so.

At that point, all the money we have invested in Project Mississippi will be wasted. We will also have completed the retool in our largest manufacturing facility and will not be able to change its production for months to come.

There is no clear evidence of this, but I have left enough hints that Carl Sheehan would be identifiable as the culprit and blamed in the ensuing investigation.

I am loyal to Kintech Global and I cannot account for my actions but they are nonetheless true.

She took a deep breath, feeling her headache intensify, her discomfort becoming queasiness, but clicked Submit.

The screen updated, and the message was gone, replaced by a simple Thank You in Kintech’s brand font and colours.

Kimiko blinked three times as her disquiet vanished and her headache lifted in moments.

What had she been doing?

She couldn’t remember, so in all likelihood it couldn’t have been important. She decided to move on to something else, and smiled warmly at the thought.

She opened up her departmental report and started looking for opportunities to massage their productivity figures. If she was being noticed by senior management, it was important that her metrics be immaculate. This could be the path to promotion, and she hoped to be with Kintech Global for a long time yet.

*

The message took a little longer to arrive than David Peters had expected, but as it was only a matter of minutes, and as he was otherwise occupied, he didn’t mind.

It might have been considered rude, but he didn’t think it would be taken amiss, so he reached out to his mouse and opened the mail.

Anonymous mail is not always from the person you assume. This was, however, from the woman he’d just started the Blank Page process on, Kimiko, as expected. She’d signed her name to it, as instructed.

You had to read between the lines on documents like this, he always said. The team were losing morale; if all of them were, it wasn’t the reason she’d given. It was her. But she did, probably, believe the reason. She’d have convinced herself of it.

Of course, since he’d seen her mentioned negatively in two reports already, one of them simply saying that they’d enjoy their job more “if Kimiko Sotomura was less of a bitch”, he’d been expecting something like that.

He chuckled politely over the political squabbles and petty cash. Both were expected, which didn’t mean that they didn’t need thinking, but did still leave them fairly low on his priority list.

“Take a note,” he said aloud. “Invite Lee Edmonds’ PA to a Blank Page meeting.” Too much of that paragraph was speculation. He could rely on Kimiko’s reporting to be honest, but it was all second or third hand. She didn’t have clear data. Jasmine would probably be the most efficient way to find out what was going on.

There was an enthusiastic mumble of acknowledgement from below his desk. David smiled and reached out for his coffee mug as he read the next paragraph, and then on through to the rest of the mail.

Then he read that section again.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” He set his coffee mug down again, undrank from, turning it over.

An inquisitive mumble emerged.

“Oh,” he said. “Yes, you’d better take a look at this.”

He rolled his chair back a pace or two, in the process drawing his cock out of Harriet’s eager mouth where it had been muffling her responses.

The brunette gazed up at him adoringly, the O of her mouth settling into a warm smile now there was nothing to hold it open. She licked her lips, crawling forward on her hands and knees until she could straighten up, showing off her naked body.

Harriet had, he suspected, resigned herself to missing out on much beyond a casual hook up, the tradeoff that women of her age had made when they committed to careers. All the same, she’d kept herself fit, and David would have called her a cougar if he wasn’t a year or two older than her.

In any case, he found her an ornament to his office when undressed even if that hadn’t been why he’d made her the first subject of the Blank Page process in the company. His thinking at that time had been more along the lines of ‘HR could nullify this project in a heartbeat if not dealt with’, and so he had taken clear steps to deal with them.

Still kneeling, she half-turned so she could read what was on his screen. “Oh, you’ve already begun work on Ms Sotomura?” Harriet asked brightly. “I can’t imagine she would have sent anything in unless she was compelled to.”

“It’s what she’s sent in that you should be looking for.”

“Oh? Let’s see.”

When he’d arrived at the company not long before, Harriet had been perpetually glum, a fake smile plastered on her face. It wasn’t nearly as positive an attitude as she had now, nor was the previous smile anything like as convincing. David told himself, as he had done at the two previous companies where he’d done this, that the staff would be better off for the changes he was making, as well as the business.

“Oh, my.”

“You got to that point, then.”

“Yes. I don’t know how she’s managed to do all that past our IT security.”

“No. But that’s alright.” David smiled tightly. “She’s going to tell us everything she did, and why, and who her contact is.”

“You’re going to ask her? She’s only had one session so far, I don’t think that would be wise-”

“No, I know. But that’s alright. Book her in for her second session, whenever she fits.”

“Of course, sir.” She smiled, her eyelashes lowered demurely, studying his responses from beneath them. “Now?”

“No,” he conceded. “No, I think I have some better things for you to be doing before you do that.”

“I’ll just get back under the desk,” she said, but paused before she did. “I do hope you’ll give me a positive performance review, all things considered.”

“You know it.”

*

“I just wanted to see how things were going after that meeting.” Lee Edmonds dropped down into the visitor chair in Kimiko’s office. “How much bullshit was it?”

She gave him a quick smile and opened her mouth to answer. “It wasn’t, it turns out,” she said. “It was actually really useful. You should send in one of those messages, put your grievances on the record.”

“Oh, I’m not doing that!” His cheeks flushed, and not for the first time, Kimiko wondered if Lee had been sleeping with Jasmine before Carl took over. He had the same strange shame in someone else’s misdeeds as a jilted lover.

She watched his eyes narrow. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

Well, she’d remember if she had, surely? It hadn’t come up in the meeting and she’d never sent a message, though, so answering was easy. “I hate to say it, Lee, but you didn’t come up while I was making small talk with the VP of Ops.”

“Just him? I wondered if Harpy Harriet was going to be there.”

“You’re not going to make that nickname stick, you know.” It never paid to get involved in someone’s feud with HR. Of course, she’d be leaving not long after the fallout of Mississippi’s collapse, so it was less of a risk, but…

Her thoughts hiccuped to a stop. Leave Kintech Global? The idea was uncomfortable. Absurd, even. And yet, then why…

“Well, she is a harpy,” Lee was saying. “Always nagging.”

“It wasn’t a nagging sort of meeting. Actually, it was really good. Made me feel properly part of the team again.”

“Hunh.” Disinterested disbelief filled his voice.

“I’d give it a try,” she said again. “Even if you don’t bring… you know… up, you’ve got to have some other things you think should be better.”

“It’s all smoke and mirrors,” he answered dismissively.

“Anyone would think you’re looking for an excuse not to help make this a better place,” she retorted spiritedly. That drew his attention; his gaze flicked back to her face and fastened sharply onto it.

“I guess Kintech has beaten that out of me,” he said quietly.

She opened her mouth to answer, but couldn’t find the words she needed. His experience, she supposed, was just too alien to her own. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly in the end.

“Well, aren’t we all?” he asked. “There’s really no juicy gossip from the meeting?”

Kimiko ran through possible responses in her mind. The problem was that her memories of the meeting were gossamer-thin, fleeting ideas of his voice as he explained things. “Nothing special,” she said. “Or nothing that seems special yet.”

“Alright.” He gave her a thin smile as he rose. “Well, back to it.”

“See you.” She smiled as he left, but once alone she exhaled slowly. Something about that conversation had been unsatisfying.

Turning back to her monitors, she discovered she had another Blank Page invite waiting for her. She accepted with a smile, regretting slightly that it wouldn’t be until the following Monday. Some part of her was really looking forward to her next encounter.

*

There was, she thought privately, more email flying around the company about Blank Page than there were Blank Page emails being sent to VP Peters, and that was definitely the wrong way round. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t persuade many people to send in their own gripes or requests.

On Monday morning she decided to try a different tack. Visiting each of her team in turn, she quietly confided in them that training was available and that it looked like the bill would be handled by Kintech.

“You don’t even have to sign your name to it,” she said. “You could say it’d be a good idea for the team. And then you can add anything else you need in there.” She gave each of them her most winning smile, and on her way back to her desk, she wondered about the expressions each of them had worn when she did.

It was very strange. She was trying to help them build careers, become more valuable to Kintech. She had visions of bringing her team up with her as she climbed the ladder, seeing them grateful to her. A new model for the company to follow, in which her team were loyal to Kintech Global, but also personally loyal to her. It would be such a good idea.

Had she just not invested enough time into making them trust her?

It was a question that worried her all through lunchtime. She’d developed a number of tricks for getting people to trust her, of course, but they all worked on the assumption that the other person held more power than she did, because (she had always asked herself, a little rhetorically) why else would she need them to trust her?

She found herself now in an unprecedented situation; she wanted something from those below her which was officially voluntary, where there was no underlying threat of punishment if someone didn’t realise it was mandatory, and therefore which she couldn’t just outright tell them to do.

She was in an irritated frame of mind, therefore, as she entered the elevator to go up for her second Blank Page meeting.

Not that it had stopped her smiling.

When she opened the door into the Blank Page meeting room, Peters wasn’t in the room yet, but his laptop rested on the desk. The big screen on the far side was on, and the lava lamp style screensaver was playing.

Well, VP Peters was invested in this project, and his computer was there. He wouldn’t be long. She took a seat and settled down to wait, resting her hands on the table and interlocking her fingers, a posture of alertness and attention so she could make the best possible impact.

Naturally enough, her eyes drifted over to the screen. She had a dim memory of having studied it during the previous meeting. It didn’t make sense; it had been such a productive, rewarding meeting that surely her attention had been on the conversation the whole time, especially one to one.

Even if the details hadn’t stuck in her head, at least she knew that.

It was no wonder that she’d ended up watching the screen, though. This screensaver was eyecatching, enough so that her attention had fixed onto it again. She was following the lava-like glows as they shifted.

A sensation of peace settled onto her, a softness and slowness in her thoughts, a slackness in her jaw and in her shoulders, her eyelids no more than half-open.

Her fingers unlaced as her shoulders slumped, her hands parted as her elbows slipped down below level with the desk, which drove the angle of her forearms up.

The strange, drowsy weight of her arms now her shoulders had relaxed caused her forearms to slide backwards off the desk and drop, hanging by her sides so limply an observer would have been forgiven for assuming Kimiko was asleep.

The door she had entered by opened again and closed, quickly, someone hurrying into the room with her.

“Perfect,” Kimiko heard Peters say. “Welcome back, Kimiko.”

“Thank you,” she said, as absently as if she was dreaming, as indeed she may have thought that she was.

His hand rested on her shoulder for a moment before he moved further into the room and round the desk, sitting down in his chair.

“So,” he began, “You are a blank page for me again.”

“Yes.”

“You have no questions. No hesitation. No second guessing.”

“Yes.”

“You will give me the answers I want, and you will give them to me clearly. For Kintech.”

“Yes. For Kintech.”

Kimiko heard it all, but retained none of it. She was too caught up in what was on the screen before her, and in the way her scalp was pleasantly tingling, a rolling sensation that seemed to make thinking not so much difficult as irrelevant, a trifle not worth bothering with.

“In this state, you are allowed to remember the message you sent. Do you?”

“Yes.” It was true now; it had been since she had been told she was allowed, but not a moment before.

“You confessed to compromising one of our projects.”

“Yes.” When she had sent that message, her head had ached, a conflict stirring in her mind. This was not something that would, or even could, happen while she was a blank page.

“I want to know everything about it, Kimiko. I want to know whether you reached out for a buyer or were approached. I want to know how long ago. I want to know who the buyer is, and if there were any other candidates, who they were. I want to know how you’ve been getting away with it undetected, and if there’s anyone else involved within Kintech. I want to know what the plans are for the remaining data transfers. I want to know your price, and that of anyone else in the company who’s involved. Understand?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence after that. Kimiko, unthinking, read nothing into that quiet, did not recognise the brief confusion that inspired it. “Tell me,” Peters said once the moment was past.

Kimiko confessed. She took the topics he had laid out and answered them in turn, long past the point that he had forgotten the order he’d laid them out in, and heedless of his fingers clattering away on his laptop keyboard taking notes. She spoke with a precision and a thoroughness that would have baffled anyone used to her typical briefings to her team or after-action debriefings to higher-ups, both of which often concealed strange gaps where any lack of certainty or understanding could be hidden away.

All told, she spoke for over twenty minutes, her eyes never leaving the screen as she did so. And then, with a final “My price was twenty million dollars, with a million paid after every delivery and the remaining eight to be paid on completion,” she fell silent.

Again, the silence stretched. Kimiko was comfortable in silence; she was heedless of everything except the screen and speech, and so for her time simply passed without issue. Eventually, Peters whistled.

“That was some scheme,” he said. “Kimiko, close your eyes.”

She obeyed.

“Kimiko, I am going to say some things to you that I want you to understand and accept as truth. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Now, I need to know that what you understand and accept as truth is right. So when I say these things to you, you will repeat them back to me. What will you do?”

“I will repeat them back to you.”

“That’s very good. You are ready to begin.”

“I am ready to begin.”

“You never betrayed Kintech.”

“I never betrayed Kintech.”

“You always wanted to betray Interlogistics.”

“I always wanted to betray Interlogistics.”

“You will be given false data for the next transmission.”

“I will be given false data for the next transmission.”

“You will give no indication that anything is wrong.”

“I will give no indication that anything is wrong.”

“You will betray Interlogistics with a smile on your lips.”

“I will betray Interlogistics with a smile on my lips.”

“It brings you pleasure to benefit Kintech.”

“It brings me pleasure to benefit Kintech.”

“Being a Blank Page is good for you.”

“Being a Blank Page is good for me.”

“Being a Blank Page makes you a better worker.”

“Being a Blank Page makes me a better worker.”

“Being a Blank Page makes you a better person.”

“Being a Blank Page makes me a better person.”

“Open your eyes and stop repeating now, Kimiko.”

Kimiko opened her eyes.

“You’re doing very well, Kimiko. Why should you benefit Kintech?”

“Because I am loyal to Kintech and because it brings me pleasure.”

“That’s very good. Now, tell me about Shauna Morrison.”

If it were not for the screensaver, it’s safe to say that Kimiko would not have answered as she did. “She is being misused,” she said. “Her role bores her and so she does only a little more than the bare minimum. I assigned her to data collection on Project Mississippi because I knew she would not be interested enough to go deeper in analysis. She wouldn’t wonder why I was asking for figures I didn’t need but Interlogistics do.

“She is much more engaged if given a chance to look at strategy. I took her name off a report we co-authored once before submitting it-”

“Why?”

“I did not want her career to overtake mine.” A truth she would never have uttered while fully conscious slipped easily from her lips in that moment.

“Do you think she should?”

“I think she deserves to.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” It was the last thing he said for more than a minute, but even as her attention remained focused on the screen, she could hear the sound of him moving in his chair, as he did whatever it was that he was doing.

“Kimiko, stand up.”

She rose mutely, her arms still hanging limply by her sides, the whole process achieved by ankles, knees, and hips. The chair she had been sat on slid an inch or two back as she straightened her legs.

“Look away from the screen.”

She turned her head to face him and blinked. She had been staring long enough, she discovered, that her eyes had begun to water.

Peters pointed to the door behind him. “I want you to go on through into my office,” he said, “and take a seat. Wait there until you are called, and question nothing you may see in there. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then do so.”

She turned and made her way around the desk to the door and then stepped through.

There were two chairs on the visitor side of his desk. She had sat down in one of them, obediently, before she registered that someone was sat in the other one.

She recognised Harriet immediately. Something about her was different, Kimiko’s slowly-stirring thoughts insisted. After a few moments, she placed it; the smile on Harriet’s lips was as warm and genuine as Kimiko’s own.

A few moments after that, it sank in that the other woman was… underdressed… for the workplace. She wore a sombre grey short skirt - a very short skirt - which was at least in the approved power suit cut, and the black shoes she wore had perhaps a slightly higher heel than might have been expected from a businesswoman, but not out of the ordinary. Above the waist, however, she was bare.

Harriet’s smile turned to favour Kimiko briefly, before she turned her head back to her laptop and continued working.

Kimiko simply sat, her head facing forward from her chair, and she waited. At first she did so without thinking, but over time the engine of her mind started to turn over once again, slowly at first but picking up as the minutes rolled by.

She was sitting beside Harriet, and Harriet was topless. She had been sitting there for some time, so she couldn’t just bring it up now. It would probably be rude, and in any case Harriet was a colleague and bringing up her toplessness might not bring her pleasure, and Kimiko wanted to bring her colleagues pleasure, and…

“Did I already say hello?” she asked, and smiled politely. “My mind was elsewhere.”

Harriet met her gaze with a knowing smile. “I know,” she said, and reached out, patting Kimiko’s knee reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I completely understand.”

“Oh. Good.” She seemed to be thinking slower than usual, at least a little. Harriet’s comparative quiet gave her time to assemble her thoughts, which was good. “Is this the VP’s office?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it must be, but I wasn’t sure.” She blinked several times. Harriet was looking not at her laptop but at her, and her expression was expectant. She obviously thought another question was coming, and Kimiko didn’t want to let her down.

Kimiko waited peacefully for the question to come to her and, in due course, it did so. “Why are you here?”

“It brings him pleasure to have me here,” Harriet told her, “where I can be useful.” After a moment to consider, she added “And decorative.”

Kimiko nodded, thinking over the answer slowly. She understood why Harriet wanted to bring him pleasure, and while it didn’t feel as important to be useful, her desire to be a hard worker felt analogous. She wasn’t sure she understood the urge to be decorative, but then someone who’d gone into HR probably had different priorities.

She turned her head back to face directly in front of her and sat there with a smile on her lips, thinking a little faster as time went on. Yet even as her mind caught up to where it had been, grew bored, and began to wander, it didn’t occur to her even to consider getting up and leaving the office.

She was waiting, even if she was unclear on what for. She had, she thought, been asked to wait by VP Peters, and so it wasn’t just her duty to Kintech Global to wait but also her obligation to a man who she felt a deep personal loyalty to.

“Whose idea was Blank Page?” she asked, after her mind had wandered on to that topic. It would have taken some work on her part to retrace the logic which had taken her there.

Harriet paused as if considering. “The answer is confidential,” she said first. “We will need you not to speak about it.”

This did not make sense to Kimiko, but that, naturally, did not matter. “Of course,” she said.

“It was David’s idea originally,” Harriet said. “I was doubtful at first. But it will make life much better for everyone at Kintech, I think.”

“It’s opened up my eyes to so many possibilities,” Kimiko said.

The smile on Harriet’s lips became an amused one. “Could you name one for me?”

Kimiko had not been prepared for the question, and she simply sat in silence, questing about for an answer. After perhaps a minute Harriet reached out and patted her knee again. A memory surfaced in Kimiko’s mind.

“I remember,” she said, “a few years ago, when I got my first managerial role…”

“Yes?” Harriet asked politely.

“I read an article. It talked about using a repeated pattern of gestures and physical contact to imprint sympathy and positive associations in the recipient. To condition them to better respond in the future, or to accept negative news positively in the present.”

Harriet waited.

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“Me?” she asked. “No.”

“Oh.” The line of thought fizzled out. She went back to looking directly in front of her. It was a lovely office. The view from the window wasn’t as magnificent when sat down some distance back from it, but she could imagine it.

Before she had sold out she’d wanted eventually to be promoted into an office like this one. Then she had wanted to get out entirely.

Except that she hadn’t, had she? She had always intended to betray Interlogistics. She was secretly not a turncoat at all. These were complicated feelings, because they did not make sense together.

If you were a loyal part of a company, HR should be your ally in understanding work decisions, Kimiko thought.

“What do you do,” she asked, “when your memories and your beliefs are in conflict?”

Harriet took her hands from the keyboard of her laptop and gave Kimiko her full attention. “What do you mean?”

“I…” Her first attempt to say something faltered through uncertainty, something Kimiko was unfamiliar with and found irritating in others. She tried again. “I have done things, and thought I had good reason to do things, that I shouldn’t have,” she said. “And now I look back on those decisions and I don’t understand how I came to take them.”

In other circumstances, a few weeks ago, she would have considered anyone who said something like this to HR to be a fool; a fool who would roundly deserve their dismissal. This wasn’t even a consideration for her at that moment.

Harriet took a few moments to collect her thoughts without answering. “Is this a conflict you’ve been struggling with for long?”

“No,” she said, and only after she gave the answer did it strike her as strange that she hadn’t been wrestling with it for months. Had she somehow convinced herself of the cover story she’d fed Interlogistics? “I actually started worrying about it… in the last week or so? Or maybe even just today?”

The smile on Harriet’s face was warm and understanding. “In that case, I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said.

“But I-”

“Blank Page gives you a clearer perspective,” she said. “You’ll find yourself reviewing past actions in the light of your understanding a lot. That’s alright.”

Kimiko nodded, still uncertain.

She was about to ask a follow-up when the door to the meeting room opened up.

“Ah, excellent,” David Peters said, standing in the doorway. “Stand up, Kimiko.”

Kimiko complied quickly, using her hands to support her against the desk for that little extra bit of speed.

It crossed her mind that his manner was unusual; that he was giving orders, rather than direction. That he was uncannily brusque. That he assumed an obedience that he surely could not.

He beckoned her with a finger. “Join us in here.”

Kimiko obeyed, walking toward him as she took in the intensity of his stare.

He stepped backward into the room, and Kimiko hesitated on the threshold, staring.

Sat on the opposite site of the meeting desk, her attention neither on Kimiko nor on VP Peters but instead on the meeting room’s big screen, was Shauna Morrison.