Pilot (Part 1) Things Were Better Back Then
January 1st, 2027
The Wan-Kjer & Co. office smelled of burnt hair and lemon detergent. Henry was kneeling under a desk, a pile of spare screws in his shirt pocket and a screwdriver tucked behind his ear.
He wasn't an idiot. He was just a man who believed a bit too much in DIY.
"It’s all about residual humidity," Henry muttered, trying to wedge a metal panel that clearly had no intention of staying put. "If Albert used modern servers, they wouldn’t suffer from a few drops of condensation. It’s legacy tech, that’s what it is."
He stood up abruptly and cracked his head against the edge of the desk. Nothing theatrical—just a sharp thud that made his eyes water. Rubbing his forehead, he checked his watch. 3:40 PM.
"Shit. Twenty minutes."
The “Dawn of the Dragon” event waited for no one. His clan, the World Destroyers, were counting on him. Or rather, they were counting on him paying the monthly server fee and bringing the golden armor that literally lit the way for everyone else. If he didn't log in, they’d demote him to "Water Boy."
At that moment, the office door swung open. Albert, his cousin, appeared on the threshold. He was wearing a camel coat that cost as much as Henry’s car and looking at him the way one looks at a damp patch on the ceiling.
Albert took three steps into the office, carefully avoiding a network cable Henry had left dangling from the ceiling like a jungle vine. He stopped three feet away. He wasn't screaming. His voice was low, flat—the sound of a man who had depleted his final reserves of patience.
"Henry," Albert said. "I smell burning. Again."
Henry wiped his grease-stained hands on his sweatpants, leaving two black streaks across his thighs. He smiled, or at least tried to. "They’re just drying out, Albert. I did a deep clean on the Wan-Kjer server fans. They were caked in dust. If I’d left them like that, they might have caught fire in ten years. I just got ahead of the curve, and now they just need to finish smoking a bit before they settle back down."
"And what exactly are they doing now?" Albert asked, pointing to a trail of gray smoke lazily drifting out of the central cabinet, right above the company’s golden logo.
"Nothing, trust me. It's steam. They're drying," Henry repeated, trying to cover the smoke with his hand as if he could hide it. He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes left. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "Look, Albert, I’m done here. I can swing by tomorrow to polish the keys, but I’ve gotta run. I have a party. Important stuff."
Albert raised an eyebrow. "A party. On January 1st, at four in the afternoon. With whom, Henry? Who has the courage to invite you to a party after what you did to the Christmas buffet?"
Henry straightened up, trying to look dignified. "With my online gaming friends. It’s the 'Dawn of the Dragon' event. Thirty people connected from all over Europe. If I don’t get on that server, the castle falls. I can’t abandon them now. It’s a matter of loyalty."
Albert took off his glasses and rubbed his temples, where a vein pulsed as if it were about to detonate. Henry tried to stammer something about a slow connection, but Albert cut him off with a finger pointed an inch from his nose. His hand was visibly shaking.
"Shut up, Henry. Not a word. I am the Vice CEO of this company, but for the last six months, my only job has been babysitting you. I had to hire a personal secretary, paid entirely out of my own salary, just to erase the trail of your disasters before the Board of Directors noticed. I am burning through my savings just to keep you from being fired, and I still don't understand why."
Albert stepped forward, limping slightly.
"Do you remember when I appointed you Administrator? You just had to validate digital certificates. Instead, you decided to use the biometric signature USB stick to level the wobbly leg of your table. You crushed it, Henry. The signature was pulverized, exports were blocked worldwide, and the CEO nearly took out my kneecap with a marble pen holder when he found out we were stuck at the port. You hear that clicking sound when I walk? That's your fault."
Henry looked down, but Albert pressed on, his voice rising an octave.
"And how about when I put you in charge of Cybersecurity? You disabled the corporate firewall because you said it 'slowed down YouTube loading.' A hacker breached the entire Wan-Kjer network in ten minutes, stealing all our industrial patents. I spent the summer at the Cyber Police offices giving depositions and signing forms, while that poor intern downstairs was fired and investigated for gross negligence in your place. That kid’s life is ruined, Henry!"
Albert took a breath, but it was a jagged, angry one.
"Then I tried giving you Purchasing. You fell asleep on the keyboard and ordered four drums of sulfuric acid instead of reams of paper. When the truck dumped that stuff in my private parking lot, I had to be the one to handle the emergency because you were on a cigarette break. I slipped in a corrosive puddle—see this scar on my ankle? That’s my skin handing in its resignation. And I wasn't the only one: when I made you a warehouseman, remember Mrs. Adele? Our seventy-year-old accountant? She fell because of the forklift you left without the handbrake to watch a cat video. She broke her femur, Henry! She’s still in physical therapy!"
He leaned in even closer, his heavy breath smelling of sour coffee.
"As Legal Director, you formatted the contract archive backup because 'there were too many messy icons' on the desktop. I had to rewrite every single contract from last year by hand—me, the Vice CEO—for ten days straight. Now my right hand shakes constantly; I can’t even hold a spoon without splashing soup into my own eyes. And even as a Mail Clerk, you were lethal: you left the vault door open 'to let the air circulate,' and a stray dog got in and ate the only original contract for the Kjer merger. I chased that dog for two miles on a sprained ankle. See this hole in my bespoke trousers? Those are the bastard’s teeth marks."
Albert began pacing the cramped office, frantically counting on his fingers, then starting over as if reciting a rosary of misfortune. "Henry. I’ve rotated you through every single square inch of this company hoping to find a corner where you couldn’t do any damage, and yet here we are. I made you System Admin, then moved you to Junior Accountant for expense reports, and when you failed there, I demoted you to Logistics and Warehouse Manager. Nothing. I gave you HR, then sent you to the Historical Archives to catalog files, and finally, you were reduced to being the internal Mail Clerk between departments."
Albert stopped for a second, breathless, but immediately resumed counting with fury.
"Not satisfied, I tried you at the Front Desk, then moved you to Purchasing and Procurement, and even as an Executive Secretary, you managed to be a disaster. You went through General Maintenance, you were a Hardware Tech for the printers, and I even put you on the moving crew for the ground floor renovation—remember? The one that inexplicably flooded? You were a Treasury Clerk, Safety Officer—the irony, eh?—and finally, I put you on Data Entry for accounts payable."
He planted himself in front of Henry, hands trembling at chest level.
"And all of this in less than a year, Henry. You’ve practically held every existing role in a modern administration, from the top to the bottom of the pyramid, and the only constant in this entire itinerary has been my secretary who—paid out of my own pocket—had to run after you to fix your messes before the Board realized you’d turned the company into a refugee camp!"
Albert sighed. From the inner pocket of his camel coat, he pulled out a dark leather folder. He extracted a single, heavy sheet of paper with the Wan-Kjer & Co. embossed seal in the top right corner.
"Henry, I’ve sent you to every department, but that’s it. Enough. You have only one option left. A secret seminar. Project: 'Things Were Better Back Then.' If you participate, your aunt will never find out what happened to her porcelain cat during the last move. If you don't... well, you know how she feels about that cat."
Henry looked at the paper. "Advanced Training Seminar - Room 404." It sounded like one of those corporate nuisances where they show you safety slides for hours. He could handle it. Maybe there was even Wi-Fi to connect with the clan.
"Can I bring my laptop?" Henry asked, already holding a pen.
"Bring whatever you want, Henry. Just get in that room."
Henry grabbed the pen, clicked it twice—it jammed once, but he cleared it with a sharp snap—and signed. "Done. Where do I go?"
"End of the hall. Steel door. Room 404. You can't miss it."
Henry looked around distractedly and asked again:
"Where was it, cousin?"
"End of the hall. Steel door. Room 404," Albert replied, cleaning the pen with a handkerchief.
Henry tucked the laptop under his arm. The dragon stickers were scratched, and the battery was almost dead. Less than ten minutes until the clan attack.
"Thanks, Albert! See you at graduation!" Henry shouted, racing toward the exit.
As he crossed the office threshold, a sharp bang made the windows rattle behind him. A piece of black plastic bounced off the hallway wall.
Henry didn't look back. He sped up.
"They're just drying, Albert! It's evaporation!" he yelled into the empty corridor.
He reached Room 404. It was a wall of smooth steel. No handle. Henry pressed his shoulder against the metal, forcing it in his haste.
CLANK.
The door slid aside. Henry stumbled and rolled onto a glossy white floor. Behind him, the panel closed with a hiss.
The smell of burning vanished. The room was a void-like cube, lit by a cold glow. In the center floated an egg-shaped robot, with no cables or supports.
"Subject 001 acquired. Welcome to January 1st, 3027, Henry."
Henry stood up and shook his laptop. "3027? Cool name for software. Look, flying egg," he said, pointing at the robot. "I’m in a hurry. Where’s the Wi-Fi? I bet you’re the new Wan-Kjer router. Where do I plug in the cable?"
The robot emitted a red flash. "Welcome to the future, Henry."
Henry snorted. He searched for a seam on the robot’s shell to pry it open. "Yeah, the future, hilarious. But if I miss the dragon because the Wi-Fi is down, my cousin’s gonna dismantle you."
Before Henry could react, a thin cable shot out of the robot and slid straight into his right nostril.
"Hey! What the—!" Henry yelled. The cable began rummaging inside his nose with frantic movements, as if searching for something among his neurons. Henry’s eyes went wide, then, with a twitch, the cable pulled out and shoved itself straight into his mouth, sliding down his throat.
Henry made a muffled choking sound, eyes watering from the internal tickling. After a moment, the robot retracted everything.
"Synchronization complete," the machine announced.
Henry coughed, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "Are you guys crazy? You nearly choked me!"
Then, however, he looked at his screen. The Wi-Fi icon showed five blue bars he’d never seen before. The speed was insane.
"Oh... well," Henry muttered, immediately sitting back down on the floor. "You could've said it was a high-speed installation. The ping is fantastic."
Henry sat on the floor, back against a glass wall showing flying cars, but he was staring only at the Windows loading bar. The laptop emitted a high-pitched hiss, like a pressure cooker forgotten on the stove.
"Come on... load..." Henry muttered, tapping nervously on the touchpad.
The egg-shaped robot floated an inch from his nose, glowing with a steady red light. "Subject Henry, your device is attempting to process a signal of excessive power. Its physical structure cannot sustain this computing capacity."
"Shut up, egg," Henry replied, eyes glued to the screen. "It’s just a bit of lag. Always happens on New Year's."
The Wi-Fi icon on the screen began to flash frantically. The laptop was no longer vibrating: it was convulsing. The internal fan went from a hum to a metallic scream—a sound of scrap metal grinding against plastic.
"Hey, why is it so hot?" Henry lifted his thighs slightly, feeling the heat from the battery seeping through his Wan-Kjer jumpsuit.
KABOOM.
It was a sharp crack, like a firecracker in a tin can. The laptop shattered instantly, snapping in two and spraying plastic shards everywhere. A black blade of a fan shot off at absurd speed, embedding itself into the robot's sleek casing, which began spinning wildly, emitting blue sparks.
A blue flame shot out from the keyboard, followed by a cloud of thick black smoke that smelled of burnt plastic.
"Crap! No!" Henry began blowing frantically on the keys, waving his hand to clear the smoke. "Not now! You piece of junk!"
The computer gave one last sizzle, the screen turned purple, and then it died for good, leaving Henry engulfed in a toxic fog in the middle of the cleanest office in the universe.
Henry sat motionless, staring at the black monitor. His face was smeared with soot, and the screwdriver was still tucked behind his ear. He looked up at the robot, which was now leaking smoke from a hole in its chassis and staring at him with its one remaining sensor.
"It didn't connect," Henry said, his voice raspy from the smoke. "I mean, it exploded before it gave me a line. What kind of crap setup do you have here?"
He set the molten wreck on the white floor, staining it black.
"Look, egg," Henry continued, wiping his hands on his jumpsuit. "Tell Albert the seminar is off to a bad start. The signal is too strong and my hardware is fried. Do you have a tech department, or do I have to fix it myself?"
The floating egg gave a metallic jolt. The black plastic fan blade was deeply embedded in its white shell, right above the main sensor. A thin stream of purple smoke leaked from the gash, accompanied by an irregular electrical sizzle. The egg tilted to one side like a sinking boat.
As he watched, the cloud of black smoke from the laptop explosion began to clear, finally revealing what lay beyond that room. Henry’s eyes widened, momentarily forgetting the melted computer in his hands.
Beyond a massive curved window stretched an impossible metropolis. Kilometers-high buildings, made of a crystalline material that reflected the indigo light of the sky, spiraled upward. Between the buildings, there were no asphalt roads, but rivers of light suspended in the void, traveled by thousands of silent vehicles streaking by at insane speeds.
Lower down, floating platforms hosted gardens of phosphorescent colors, where strange plants interacted with small drones that looked like they were made of liquid mercury. There was no sound of horns, no smog. It was a geometric perfection that triggered anxiety.
"Whoa..." Henry muttered, touching the screwdriver behind his ear. "Albert went overboard with the special effects. It looks real. How much did this set cost him?"
The robot made a croaking sound, like a badly tuned radio. Its green light, now flickering, turned a sickly orange.
"S-S-Subject H-H-Henry," the robot said, its voice skipping and repeating, distorted by the circuit damage. "W-W-Welcome p-p-protocol d-d-damaged. C-C-Computing c-c-capacity r-r-reduced by s-s-sixty p-p-percent." The egg jerked downward, struggling to stay level. "W-W-We m-m-must g-g-go to the o-o-orientation m-m-meeting."
It turned slowly, emitting an asthmatic hum, and began floating toward a wall that opened silently as it approached.
"F-F-Follow m-m-me. Q-Q-Quietly, p-p-please. D-D-Do n-n-not t-t-touch... A-A-ANYTHING."
Henry stood up, picking up the melted laptop from the floor and leaving a trail of black ash across the immaculate white surface. "Orientation? But I just need to fix the PC! You got a soldering iron in there? Or some electrical tape? Or at least a station where I can plug in? If you have firewalls, I know how to bypass them to download the game."
He followed the damaged robot down a corridor made of pure light, the smoking wreckage under his arm, convinced it was just a particularly well-made Wan-Kjer simulator.
The egg-robot stopped in front of a sheet of opaque glass that slid away soundlessly.
"S-S-Sit d-d-down. W-W-Watch the s-s-screen," the machine croaked. The egg was leaning so far to the side that the fan blade stuck in its shell almost scraped against the wall. It gave one last asthmatic hum and added: "D-D-Do n-n-not t-t-touch... A-A-ANYTHING."
Then, with an irregular jerk, it wobbled away down the hall.
