Angel Co. Cares

Seven years was all Kim Pryce could think as the bus opened its doors to her. Seven years as it roared to life. Seven years as it screeched through the concrete jungle of Chicago, Illinois.

Seven years is hardly a moment when one is considering the expanse of history, but when one is looking back upon nearly a third of their life and finding that it has virtually been taken from them, seven years is, to say the least, very long.

And yet, Kim felt an almost cold sense of calm settle into her. It had been anger at first, sure. Of course it had been anger. But then that had cleared, as it is always wont to do, and it was replaced by a feeling of resentment that was so deep that Kim felt more relaxed and certain than she had in a long time. She could now fully accept how deeply she hated that company. Angel Co. She smirked to herself. What a stupid name.

Kim's eyes looked out upon the city landscape. She was sure that at one point, it had been beautiful. She was sure that everything had been. Regardless of what it had been, it was no longer pleasant to look at. Smoke wafted upwards from the exhaust pipes of trucks that seemed to be permanently stuck in traffic. The parks and all other green spaces were overrun with trash that the few attendants of these areas never bothered to clean. Skyscrapers loomed overhead, always appearing to be on the verge of falling. Tent cities lined the streets, and those that were not fortunate enough to have tents fit themselves into the nooks and crannies where Chicago either allowed them or did not care enough to bother them. This was all fine. This was normal. At any rate, it was (mostly) livable, and that was what mattered.

The only thing that bothered Kim about any of this were the never ending advertisements. The mammoth displays that so helpfully told everyone what they never knew they had wanted.

Looking out the window, Kim watched as the billboards on sides of buildings displayed their blinking messages. One had the face of a woman who looked no less than overcome by the bottle of shampoo she was holding. "IT WORKS!", the sign read. "IT REALLY, REALLY WORKS!"

Kim reached up to her own hair. She ran her fingers through it, thinking about how nice it would be to have something that really, really worked. She couldn't afford things that really worked. She hadn't been able to before Angel Co. had "let go of her", and she certainly couldn't now.

Kim's eyes met a billboard paid for by her previous employer. A man and a woman, on a beach, holding each other's hands affectionately. "We value real love." Any actual meaning to this phrase was lost on Kim. The billboard a couple of blocks down, on the other hand, was far more aggressive. A minimalist cartoon of a group of people sat with their arms by their sides. They all wore smiles. All except for one, that is, who, though confidentiality standing in front of everyone else, looked rather distraught. "Stand up = Stand out = Get noticed = Get Nowhere". Then, in smaller lettering, in the corner "Angel Co. Cares" This was signed off with a little heart.

I didn't stand up, Kim thought to herself. I didn't stand out or get noticed. Seven years and I didn't get anywhere at all. She felt hot and began to tug at the collar of her shirt. She laced her fingers behind her neck and took slow, deep breaths. The chain of her necklace started to rub uncomfortably hard into her neck, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Huffing out a sigh, she thought back to her first day at the Angel Co. factory just outside of the city. She had thought it was nice. She had genuinely thought that it was a nice place to work. She had been excited. And as her supervisor handed her a little locket in the shape of a heart, saying "This is because we love all of our employees. You'll find that everyone lucky enough to work here wears one." Kim, not wanting to be the odd one out, put it around her neck and smiled. It was a sweet gesture, on the company's part. It had seemed to be so at the time, at least. Now it seemed as meaningless as "valuing real love".

Kim was generally one for planning. It's easy to plan. Far easier than doing, by any means. The difference between what Kim was doing today and what she generally did was that today, she was acting on her plan. She planned to march into the building, and she planned to walk up to her former supervisor's office and demand an explanation for the ending of her career. She didn't know what she was going to say. Or, rather, she had planned out so many different situations that while she had a thousand and one options for what to say, which she would actually verbalize remained to be seen.

She had heard people talking. Higher ups, murmuring as they passed through the building she cleaned. They spoke in quiet voices of buses crashing, and possible reasons why. Kim would have been interested in this had it not been plastered to nearly every television screen, as news casters discussed possible causes, looked somber, or tried to crack jokes. The crashes, which had started almost a year before, had only begun to catch the public's attention recently. Angel Co. produced nearly everything, and one of the many pies that the company had stuck its finger into was public transportation. This had begun decades earlier, and because of the company's general popularity, most buses in major cities were manufactured by Angel Co. (In fact, the bus that Kim was sitting on as she mulled this over in her head, had been one of the earlier models of Angel Co.'s Metropolis Trekker). Kim didn't think too much of the crashes. They just weren't interesting to her. There were rarely survivors, but then again, Kim didn't know anyone who was killed or injured by one of these incidents. It wasn't personal for her, and even if it had been, she had an acute sense of the fact that everyone died eventually. Today in a bus crash, tomorrow while sleeping. None of it really mattered. And if the general population were being honest with themselves, it didn't really matter to them either. The only difference between Kim and most others was that most others took a moment to say "Mm. How terrible." before they continued on with their day, fully unaffected.

The bus that Kim was riding slowed to a stop. She stepped off and, while walking the two blocks from the bus station to the Angel Co. office building, she tried to decide upon what she would say. Ms. Spellman. I think my termination was baseless. I would like you to explain to me why I wasn't a good employee.

As Kim walked through the door, she didn't know that it was a temp named Jake who, upon seeing her, rushed to her former supervisor. Kim would never know the risk of janitors seeing rather confidential papers in the trash. Kim would never know that all of the janitors had been replaced with various machines that would not (and for that matter, could not) read what they found in the rubbish. Kim's former supervisor would not know that Kim had not read any of these documents. Documents about rather planned crashes done to eliminate various public figures. Documents that a few people who had been taken care of already had forgotten to shred.

Kim would not know that her supervisor was only following protocol, and Kim's supervisor would not know that this protocol was, in this case, unnecessary.

Because Kim did not know this, she walked to the front desk, trying, despite her nerves, to appear calm. She gave the receptionist her name, and waited. Waited until her supervisor, serious-faced and stiff, met her on the ground floor and beckoned her to the fifth floor (despite her office being on the third). Kim was only starting to feel confused when she was taken into a plain room. Only starting to feel worried when she was forced to sit down. Only starting to feel sick when she realized that she would never leave.