Chapter 1
Arnold Bingley sat in his cube, staring at the lines of code that glowed ominously on his dual monitors. His eyes flitted from one screen to another, a dangerous expression for a man who was generally known to express all the fury of a mild cup of chamomile tea. As the project deadline loomed, he felt his sanity flickering like the occasionally troublesome fluorescent light above him. It was during one of these flickering moments that a most unexpected email popped into his inbox, sent by someone named ‘Indigo Serpent’. The subject line read, ‘Operation Iron Pigeon: Commence Immediately.’
Curiosity slightly kindled, Arnold clicked on the email, cautiously adjusting his everyday spectacles he wore since second grade. The email was, puzzlingly, full of phrases like “nuclear solstice,” “cogs within the clockwork,” and “agent relocation,” which he initially assumed was some joke by the interns who routinely threw paper balls at his cubicle saying, “The Oracle wants a sacrifice!”
But as he continued reading, the extent of the supposed joke began to unnerve him. Attached was a scanned document headed with an emblem bearing two crossed pens over a motherboard - a symbol he took for a sophisticated logo from one of those hipster designer firms - and detailed instructions on the acquisition of something nicknamed ‘The Golden Algorithm’. The absurdity was no less than a badly written spy thriller.
Remembering about ‘Reply All’ email disasters that sometimes accompany office jokes, Arnold decided to caution his anonymous correspondent. He typed a short, polite reply stating that they had the wrong email address, sending ‘Indigo Serpent’ directions to contact Human Resources instead.
Life, as it tends to do in these sort of improbable situations, chose that moment to send a sweeping gust of comedy Arnold’s way. His office door banged open with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. A tall woman in a sleek black catsuit carrying a briefcase handcuffed to her wrist strode in, her eyes scanning the room until they locked on Arnold. She was followed by three more similarly dressed, bulging with muscles that looked like something out of a gym rat’s dream.
With a click and a whirl that certainly didn’t belong in a mundane office setting, the alright-looking, one-donut-every-Tuesday Arnold Bingley found himself at the beginning of the most ridiculous adventure of his life.
