A Cover-Up at the Stygian Corporation
Morgan sat in his dark office eating donuts. He couldn’t let the employees see him like this. It would completely destroy the respect he had worked so hard to cultivate from them. But the donuts were so good… Instituting donut Fridays had been a genius move on his part. The workers loved it. Morgan hadn’t known donuts could be so scrumptious, so delectable, so… you get the picture. No wonder he was hiding.
CREEEEEEEEAK! Morgan jumped and threw the box of donuts under the desk. The office door slid open. “May I come in, sir?” It was Samuel, one of the presidents of the company. Was that a trace of… fear in his expression? Morgan still had issues determining human expressions after all these years.
“Sure. Come on in!” Morgan said.
“Sir, there’s been… an incident,” Samuel said.
“Another workplace brawl? Did Terrence Carter from accounting cut in line for crêpes again? I can fire him immediately.”
“No sir, it was… another kind of incident. I thought I should break it to you personally. It has to do with the Honeypot.”
Morgan sighed.. Of course it was the damned Honeypot. The superweapon had had an absurd amount of issues since its inception. “What's wrong with it? I thought it was on track,” Morgan asked.
“Well, sir… it is,” Samuel replied.
“Then what’s the issue?”
“It… detonated..”
“…What?! How?!” Morgan bellowed before quickly suppressing his rage. He would not freak out. Not again. But if the Honeypot had detonated, which it was not supposed to do, then it would have been disastrous. Maybe even cataclysmic.
“It was just sitting there and it …spontaneously turned on. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
Morgan sat for a while, searching for the right thing to say. This was terrible. “…Where was it?” he finally asked. Maybe it had gone off in a desert, away from anything. Maybe nobody was harmed.
“It was at the hangar in West East Wales, sir.”
“A civilian area?! Seriously?!” Morgan snapped. The idiocy! The carelessness! What idiot brought a superweapon into a populated area?! “How bad is it?”
“The entire town is gone. Vaporized into dust,” Samuel said, with an eerie stillness.. That was it. Morgan’s employees had messed up, and now an entire town was dead. He shrieked in rage and flipped over his desk, spilling papers and hidden donuts everywhere.
“ What is the number one rule here at the Stygian Corporation?” Morgan roared, leaning into Samuel’s face and shoving him to the ground.
“Uh… no taking more than one cafeteria crêpe?” Samuel replied, his eyes now overflowing with fear.
“We do not kill! I don’t know who you worked for before-”
“Vuistland Industries-”
“That explains a lot. Those guys are evil. I don’t know how many people you ended up being responsible for killing there, but we don’t do that here. We. Do. Not. Kill. Do you understand? Can your pathetic little human mind process that?!” Morgan snapped. No response. Oh no. He had just lashed out at somebody again. Morgan composed himself and helped Samuel to his feet.
“I’m sorry for how I just acted. We’re going to need to completely twist this to save the company. Can you get the PR guys on that? You can go now. Have a good night,” Morgan sighed remorsefully. Samuel quickly slid out of the office.
Damn. Morgan hadn’t had an outburst like that in years now. Ironic. He abhorred killing and violence, yet did things like that. He looked out his window at the night sky. No matter. In a short while, his plan would be complete. He would never have to do anything like this again.