Outsiders Pt. 01

She was the type of boss that made Michael Scott look like a poster boy for reason and restraint. She was living proof that people didn't quit their jobs, they quit their bosses. The call center would run so much more smoothly if she just came in, sat down at her desk and did nothing until she went home.

She glared at Ben pointedly. "I am done with taking the heat for things and am laying the blame squarely where it belongs. With you."

Ben took a deep breath to calm down. Susan had been so very thankful to him for saving her ass on the first day that she had offered him a contract on the spot and he had signed it. However, as soon as he had started complaining about all the programs and service packs, he had been put on the top of her shit list and she has been trying to find a replacement for him ever since. Ben's predecessor had posted about her in professional forums and few people answered her repeated advertisement for IT professionals. The ones that did quickly realized she was both computer-illiterate and desperate to appear all-knowing, so they declined her offers and she was stuck with Ben.

Susan pushed a piece of paper towards Ben. "However, I might be inclined to not throw you under the bus with the head office. You don't even have to thank me. All you have to do is sign this."

Ben glanced at the paper. It was a dissolution of contract agreement and it would, in essence, leave him free to get his salary cut and withheld at her whim. And fired without a severance package as soon as she found a sucker that could replace him. There was no way he was giving up his best hope of making the tuition money. Despite the fact that he was now a level 19 sorcerer, he wanted to stay an IT guy at a call center until he came up with a concrete plan on how to use his magic to make money. Enduring Susan's lunacy was much more acceptable than telling his folks about Krista and the tuition. In fact, since he was protected from the worst she could do by the contract, he even found her antics a bit amusing. He decided he'd remain the IT guy in this place until after he made money using his magic. Then he'd quit. Possibly in a spectacular fashion that would make him a legend in the local IT forums. It was something to look forward to.

"No, thank you," Ben said. The way she was trying to portray her bending him over with the agreement as doing him a favor with the head office was making his blood boil.

"Listen, Ben," Susan said, her tone of voice reasonable and soft, "I'm doing you a favor. If you sign this, then this whole unpleasantness goes away. It's a chance at a clean slate and I really think you should take it."

"No," Ben said.

Susan's face twitched at the refusal and her mouth tightened into a grin of displeasure. "If you don't sign it," she said, "then you'll leave me no choice. I will have to report this matter to the head office and that will not be good for you."

"I think that might be best," Ben said, calmly. Everyone in the center suspected Susan was fucking someone in the head office. No one could come up with any other reasonable explanation for how someone as deranged and incompetent as her could ever get a managerial position. Ben was pretty certain her threat was an empty one. As she had already let slip, the head office was asking around and that meant that her head was, if not already on the block, then at least chopping block adjacent. If she made a loud enough ruckus, her benefactor in the head office might just cut her loose.

"If I go to the head office with my complaints, the matter will go on your permanent record," she said, threateningly. "You will never be able to find another job. Not anywhere. Not ever again."

Ben couldn't help but snort a laugh of derision at her. He was completely blameless in the matter at hand. He should even be rewarded for his efforts. He and two of the senior sales people had consistently worked to undo the damage she had been doing and he was the only one still here. When Susan had kept nixing their sales' strategies and replacing them with her own, ignorant versions of the same, and tearing up their leads and insisting on random cold calling, the two experienced sales directors had quit.

Ben knew they were working in better jobs, having been talented staff that was snatched up as quickly as they cut loose from Susan's tyranny. They had kept in touch with him, but there were no job openings in IT in their new firms. He had asked already. He was fairly certain that he could get a new job if Susan tried to make trouble for him, but he couldn't afford to lose the current one at this point. Not if he was going to get a check together for the tuition in the fall. His parents had always taught him to play it safe. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," they'd say to him.

His derisive snort had an effect on Susan. She sat there and glared at him for a few seconds, before her eyes went deathly cold. "Sign it or you're fired," she said, in a clipped tone of voice.

"You can't fire me," Ben said, "I have a contract." As boneheaded a move as giving him a contract was, since he had been a complete unknown she found in a want add, it was the only move she had made as head of the center that was a net benefit to it.

"You are in breach of your contract," she said. "It is null and void and you are terminated."

"I am not in breach of my contract," Ben insisted.

"Yes you are," she calmly said. "You have not shown up for work today and you have not excused your absence."

Ben spread his hands in a gesture of annoyance and said, "I'm right here!"

"You were not at your post at eight o'clock," she said, "and that means you were not here at the start of the day. Therefore, you were not here today."

"I'm sitting right here!" His ability to reach a compromise with the other party was rapidly dwindling. Susan was again descending into lunacy, seemingly eager to see what new low she could achieve.

"Your casual disregard for punctuality and standards of professional conduct in this office," she said, "are not the basis for your contract being made null and void."

Ben rolled his eyes. His patience gauge was showing empty. "Then what is?!"

"You have actively sabotaged our means of production, mister Kidder, and thus voided your contract. As a matter of fact, we shall be bringing legal action against you to the tune of lost revenue."

"Sabotage," Ben asked. "Lost revenue? What on Earth are you talking about?!"

"Are you going to play that game," she asked, her tone of voice surprised. "Very well, then. I am, of course, referring to the fact that, according to the statistics you have yourself recognized as legitimate in this memo you had sent me," she held up a piece of paper, "that state that we are getting randomly disconnected during one in eight calls we are making and that we are more likely to be disconnected during a successful sales call than an unsuccessful one, due to the fact that successful calls last longer than unsuccessful ones."

Ben had brought up that complaint with her numerous times before, as it was the fault of all the crap software she had crammed into the servers against his recommendations. After each install, the odds got even worse, but Ben's efforts had curbed it down to losing only one in eight calls. Which was still catastrophic for the firm's reputation. She had coolly rebuffed his input and said that he must give it all to her in writing in the future. So he had sent her a memo every other day, citing the numerous problems with the servers and asking for her permission to fix them. She had, of course, just responded with irritation and a direct order to not interfere with her "sophistication and streamlining program".

"You know very well that's entirely your fault," Ben said. He wasn't going to sit there and take any more of her idiocy and wild fabrications. Not today.

"Oh, really, my fault," she asked with exaggerated surprise in her voice. "Whose job is it to maintain the computers? Mine, or yours?"

"You know darn well," Ben started saying before she cut him off.

"I have recently come to believe that these system-wide failures are not random," she said, "but rather the deliberate product of your malicious influence. We shall be pressing charges against you for those wrongdoings."

Ben stared at her in utter disbelief. No matter how many times he had seen her lay the blame for her failings on someone in her power, she had always managed to surprise him, again and again, with the depths to which she would sink to.

"Your contract is void, as of right now," she said. "However, if you sign this agreement and take a thirty percent pay cut, we can avoid all the unpleasantness of legal proceedings."

"Fuck you, you crazy cunt," Ben whispered, surprising himself and Susan at the same time. They stared stunned at one another for a few seconds. The genuine shock on her customarily smug face was such a pleasant sight that Ben impulsively decided to throw all caution to the wind and plow ahead, even if he was using swear words. "I'm not signing anything. You better get your head out of your ass and put it on straight, cause, let me tell you-"

"How dare you," she exclaimed in a profoundly vicious tone of voice. "You are nothing! How dare you speak to me like that!?"

Her tone of voice instantly harshed Ben's glad buzz at having shocked the unflappably smarmy snake. With the wind gone out of his sails, Ben raised his hands in a gesture of reconciliation and said, "Ok, I think we should both calm down for a second here, and-"

"No," she hissed at him. "There will be no calming down. Your contract is terminated. We are going to press charges against you and get restitution in a court of law and I shall personally see to it that you never work again! Now, get out! You're fired!"

"Ok, if I'm fired, then who's going to start your servers and make them work despite being lobotomized by your insane shopping sprees?" She paused for a second and glared at him. Ben would have loved to just get out and file a suit against the company for wrongful termination and breach of contract and get a big bunch of money awarded to him as damages, but that could take a lot of time, years, even. He had to come up with the tuition fee this summer. He reluctantly decided to contritely backtrack and try to be the voice of reason.

"Look, you don't want to take me to court. I think that despite your insanity, you are still aware of the fact that you don't have a case. Not even a teeny, tiny one. I can file a suit against you and the company and get a huge amount of money awarded to me as damages, but I don't want to make this any-"

"Get out," she hissed at him. "Or I'm calling the police!"

Ben rolled his eyes. "To tell them what?!"

To Ben's shock, Susan pushed her chair a bit backwards and then slammed her forehead down on her desk. He jumped in his chair. "Holy... Are you all right?"

She smiled a wicked smile at him and said, "I'm going to tell them you assaulted me." Ben instantly panicked. He knew what a convincing liar she was. She could totally get the cops to arrest him. Especially if she had a big bruise on her forehead. The news of his arrest would get back to his parents and break their hearts. He needed to do something and fast. Susan smiled a truly evil smile at him. Her hand reached for the phone and her eyes flicked over to it.

In the grips of pure panic, Ben cast the Dominate Person spell, waving his arms around and intoning the syllables for six seconds. During that time, she dialed 911, derisively snorted at him and said, "Save the insanity plea for court, mister Kidder."

The spell slammed into her mind and completely took it over. Ben sensed a link establish itself between their minds. He instinctively used it to send her the order to hang up the phone. The 911 operator didn't even have time to pick up, before Susan hung up. His next order was for her to tell anyone that asked that she had slipped and fallen and hit her head by accident. He ordered her to also say that he had dialed 911, but hung up when she insisted she was perfectly fine. He could sense her obeying each and every command of his. He let out a big breath of relief. The immediate crisis was averted. However, he was now stuck with a dominated slave.

As he looked at her blank face, the true extent of his deed started to dawn on him. He had voided her will and replaced it with his own. It was the ultimate violation of a sentient person and he was the one that did it. He was worse than a rapist. He felt nauseated. He didn't mean for it to happen, but he did it, all the same. If his parents ever learned of this, they'd die on the spot, he was sure of it. He wiped his face in frustration. He had no idea what to do, but he knew he had to do something to fix this.

No one in the call center would ever dare enter Susan's office uninvited, so he had some small measure of privacy, for the time being. He immediately decided he would not exploit or abuse Susan in any way. He wasn't a monster, despite what he had inadvertently done half a minute ago. He forced himself to calm down and stop recriminating himself. He asked himself what the ideal outcome of this situation was. His answer was that she should be released from his domination and that she should not tell anyone about it afterwards.

Ben huffed in frustration. The spell didn't allow for him to wipe her mind or order her to forget things, so the second part of his ideal outcome was impossible. As for the first part, he could just order her to act like her usual self and not tell anyone about his domination. As long as he didn't focus on the spell for a whole day, she would get a feeble chance to break loose of his domination. It probably wouldn't work but, in nineteen days, she'd be free of it, anyway. And then he'd be fucked.

Ben tried to imagine what Susan Wright would do to him once the nineteen days of domination were up. His head popped up in pleasant surprise as he realized there was very little she could do to him. The nutjob could always break bad and go for a gun, or something, but she couldn't expose him as a magician or mind controller. Who would ever believe her? She'd probably never even mention it to anyone in the first place. After his control was up, she'd probably break down in tears, have a very good cry and then pick herself up and get on with her life, making triple sure to avoid ever again coming into any kind of contact with him. He nodded to himself. He was going to remove himself from her vicinity and let the spell play itself out. It was the best thing to do. He was feeling too bad for having dominated her once already to even think about dominating her every nineteenth day for the rest of their lives.

He considered Susan sitting before him. He certainly wasn't going to miss her, or this place. He had gotten to know, and even like, some of the people that were trying to eke out a living in this place. As he thought back on all the crazy shit she had been doing since he got there, he ever so slightly amended his decision. He decided to undo the worst of what she did at the center on a daily basis. It was only right. He reminded himself that any order he gave her that went against her core beliefs gave her a chance to break free of his domination. He needed to play it carefully. The spell allowed for him to receive her full sensory input if he concentrated on it, but it didn't allow for him to freely read her mind, so he ordered her to tell him how much money she was spending on all those software service packets and upgrades.

"Eighty-three thousand dollars, and change, by the end of the year," she said. He ordered her to tell him how much it would cost the firm if she were to cancel all those contracts right this instant. "I don't know. I'd have to look it up."

He ordered her to do so and she pulled out all the contracts out of the filing cabinets and perused them. She crunched the numbers and said, "Sixteen thousand three hundred and eighteen dollars, even."

Ben ordered her to go outside and tell everyone work starts at ten that morning and that the system errors would be completely fixed by then. She was also to tell them that they'd be free to punch out eight hours after they came in originally, despite the free time. Then she was to cancel all the contracts and check the numbers again and pay Ben half the money that the cancellations saved the company in this year alone.

He sensed her trying to break free of his domination and failing. He chuckled and went to the server room where he uninstalled all the malware and put in a simple, free Unix and compiled an ideal system for their needs. It wouldn't even need anyone to be there the whole time. The system would be operational 24/7 and would only need a reboot if the building lost power, or a mechanical fault made the cooling system fail. He printed out simple, but detailed instructions on how to reset it if something happened and left copies in a binder marked, "Resetting the server for dummies".

He had no intention of hanging around Susan's tyranny for a minute longer than he had to. The whole time he was doing his thing, he could sense her hard at work, making calls and crunching numbers. He finished first and went to the break room. He announced, to the few employees that hadn't scattered as soon as they had heard Susan's announcement, that the boss had seen the light under recent pressure from the head office and that the system wasn't going to cost them clients and sales' commissions anymore.

They were skeptical, but also guardedly optimistic, about their chances of earning rent that month. Ben chatted with them for a few minutes more and then pointed out to them that they could start making calls right away and not wait for ten o'clock. They hurried to their desks and got to work.

He went back into Susan's office and sat down, putting his feet on her desk. She ignored his smug grin and kept making calls to cancel the harmful contracts. When she finished and triple checked the final numbers, she said, "You are to be paid thirty-six thousand, five hundred and nineteen dollars and eighty one cent."

"Good," he said. He gave her the order to draw up a contract in which he is paid exactly that much to overhaul their system. He ordered her to make a separate agreement that actually terminates their contract in an amicable manner and thus removes the need for the two of them to see each other anymore. They signed both pieces of paper and he ordered her to pay him the money and file those contracts.

He issued an order for her to never tell anyone the truth about the events of the morning and to stop interfering with the people working at the center. She failed to resist either order. His domination of her mind held fast. He decided not to issue any more orders and risk her breaking free. She had obviously hated the one where she had to go tell the staff they were free until ten. He gave her the order to behave as close to what was normal for her, without violating his previous orders, and left.

As he walked out of the call center, he felt a huge sense of relief. The city air seemed to smell a bit better to him. Though they looked wrong on the surface of the matter, he felt justified in his actions. He had dominated Susan's mind, but that had been done in pure self-defense. She would have lied about him to the authorities and committed a great injustice. The injustice would not only be done against him, but also against all the people she would have lied to and manipulated into punishing him. Making them hurt an innocent was hurting them, too, in a way. No one went into law and law enforcement to help commit acts of injustice.

He walked to an ATM and withdrew some walking around money. He was feeling very pleased at his new account balance. He came from a humble background and had only ever eaten at a fancy restaurant when his parents had taken him to one, on his eighteenth birthday. Today, he decided to treat himself with brunch. After he had eaten his fill at a nice restaurant, he began to think about the future. He now had the money for the tuition fee and even enough to buy a used car to be able to get around town from now on and not have to squeeze himself into the smelly busses anymore.