“The brilliance of the Humancorp Incorporated sales strategy is that we don’t just make humans! We also make things for humans! That’s called vertical integration, you bunch of penniless chumps! Humancorp Incorporated - By Humans, For Humans.”
The “By Humans, For Humans,” tagline was repeated several times on the page, with certain lines identifying it as Humancorp’s sales slogan, with the Humancorp motto, “Lucrum Per Malum et Stultita” also featuring heavily.
There was also a statement from Herman.
“The purpose of this handbook is to ensure your continued loyalty to the leader and the father company, and by maintaining productivity and efficiency, guarantee you do not become a burden to your inherent superiors.”
Sean scratched his head and flipped a few pages down in the handbook. He found himself in a section on sexual harassment.
“Sexual harassment,” it said. “In general, we advise against it.”
That was all.
“It’s got a section about suicide pills in there too,” Noel said, seizing it from Sean and flipping a few pages.
“Thinking of suing us for gross negligence due to our many workplace safety violations/hazards, discriminatory treatment of non-white workers, or because we secretly test our suicide pills in the cafeteria sandwiches? Don’t! Instead, why not slow down and enjoy a nice sandwich from the cafeteria while you think about it?”
There was more information on employee benefits and vacation days and workplace safety and conduct, but Sean was feeling too demoralized to read it. He tossed it back into his bag, then, to vent his feelings, rooted around for stuff to steal.
Meanwhile, Noel had finished tinkering with the magic wand.
“Stop rooting around in my pockets and look,” said Noel. “I’ve adjusted the detector to ignore you.”
He waved it around. It beeped in every direction, but judging from the frequency of the beeps, the defective person must have been deeper in the restaurant. Noel brandished his electric stick at the waiter, who was standing in a corner spitting into the dishes, but the beeping slowed down. Then, he turned the stick towards the kitchen. It started to beep wildly.
“That settles it,” said Noel. “The chef must be the defective person. Let’s lure him out, then catch him with the net.”
“Right,” said Sean, then reached into his bag for the net. He blinked. It wasn’t there! He found a lot of stolen napkins and silverware, but no net.
“Uh oh,” said Sean. “I think I must have left the net back at the laboratory.”
“What?” Noel said. “That’s literally the only piece of equipment you need to do your job, Sean! How could you forget it?”
“It’s my first day,” Sean said, crossing his arms.
“Fine,” said Noel. “We can’t go back and get the net because the donkey is probably still recharging. We’ll have to think of something else.”
Sean, however, still had a sort of mental tinnitus from the aftermath of the powerful electric shocks that Noel had haphazardly applied to his brain and couldn’t think of anything. Noel had a plan, but it involved drugs and a trebuchet and an elephant and therefore probably wasn’t practical at the moment, since the zoo probably wouldn’t agree to loan them either an elephant or their drugs or their trebuchet, but Noel kept thinking about it anyway.
Meanwhile, the waiter, who had been busily leaning against the wall making armpit noises, finally came out with their dishes.
“Yeah, sorry about the wait,” he said carelessly. “The kitchen finished your meals a long time ago, but the thing is, I don’t care if you live or die.”
“I hear that enough from my employer without hearing it from you,” Noel snapped.
Sean had been wondering why the employee handbook had the words, “We don’t care if you live or die,” plastered across the third page.
“Good to hear,” the waiter said. “We won’t have a lawsuit that way, because I’m required by court order to inform you that eating here legally constitutes attempted suicide. Anyway, who had the Food and who had the Not Food?”
“Food,” Noel said.
“Not Food,” said Sean.
“Okay,” the waiter said. “For you, mister scientist guy, a bucket of slop.”
He dropped a tin bucket of a frothing, bubbling, brown sludge with carrots, lumps, and something green that was hopefully vegetables onto the table.
“Hey, this isn’t a bucket!” Noel protested. “This is a pail.”
“And for you, guy in the hobo jacket with the fancy gold pin,” said the waiter to Sean, “one bag of bricks.”
He dumped a paper sack of bricks onto the table with a thud.
“Served hot,” he added. “Chef’s special.”
Sean prodded at one of the bricks with his fork.
“Uh, could you maybe crush up these bricks a little?” he asked the waiter.
“Oh, and would you like me to chew your bricks for you too?” the waiter mocked him. “Man up and eat your bricks.”
“Now look here,” Sean said, putting his hands on his hips. “I distinctly remember paying the extra ninety-nine cents for edible Not Food, but this is completely inedible, not to mention probably very bad for my teeth.”
“Alright, I’ll get you something,” the waiter said, rolling his eyes. He walked off and came back with an arm full of stuff.
“Ketchup, salt, and pepper,” he said, handing Sean a large bottle of ketchup and salt and pepper shakers. “And hot sauce, and a hammer. Just break up the bricks with the hammer into edible chunks or whatever.”
“Thanks,” Sean said, and started to break them up, then sprinkled a little ketchup and salt on them.
“Why aren’t you adding more salt?” asked Noel, watching Sean carefully mete it out.
“It’s not good for your heart,” Sean said in a superior tone, then took a bite of his brick.
He paused.
“Needs more ketchup,” he said.
“You know, we should really have some vitamins with our meal,” Noel said slyly. “Here, have one.”
He handed Sean a pill.
“Hey, thanks,” Sean said brightly, then paused before taking it. “Wait, is this another suicide pill?”
Noel’s eyes became twitchy and evasive.
“Stop that,” Sean said crossly.
Meanwhile, Noel dumped all ten of his remaining shots of bourbon into the pail of frothing brown slop. He did this for a reason. As a partially qualified scientist, he was aware that germs like bacteria and viruses can cause illnesses, including food poisoning. At high levels of alcohol, such as those levels found in hard liquor, the bacteria that cause food poisoning cannot thrive. That’s because the alcohol makes the bacteria become drunk and they start to make poor decisions, like trying to drive back to their colonies inebriated at night, or hitting on gram-negative bacteria with big plasmids who are way out of their league, the result of which is lots of bacteria are killed/bankrupted by civil fines and paternity suits, and thus cannot hurt you.
The bourbon was high enough in proof and low enough in quality to kill all but the wino bacteria, who were too busy stumbling around and collapsing in alleyways to hurt anything anyway. Noel thrust his spoon into his pail and dug out a generous helping of brown muck, which he gingerly nibbled on.
“Blech!” he said, gagging as he did. “This tastes even worse than that gunk that grows on the seals in bathtubs, or licking a smallpox patient. I feel like my tongue is going to burst.”
“And these bricks are chalky and tasteless,” complained Sean, drinking large amounts of coffee with every hunk of brick. “You need to drown them in ketchup to make them edible.”
As he gobbed ketchup and hot sauce onto another lump of brick that he’d broken off with the hammer, an idea suddenly occurred to Sean.
“I have an idea,” he therefore announced.
“You’re ready to take the suicide pills?” Noel suggested. “I know I am.”
“No! A different one. Give me a
sec! Waiter!” Sean called.
The waiter approached.
“No refunds, and we don’t accept any liability for medical bills or psychological harm from eating our food,” the waiter said with rehearsed ease. “There’s no point in calling the health inspectors, either. They’re dead after the last time they ate here.”
“I wasn’t going to sue you,” said Sean, brightly. “I just wanted to say that we like it.”
He assumed his biggest, fakest smile, much like the one he’d used during the job interview.
Their waiter stared at Sean like he was crazy, which he was.
“Holy cow, you guys really are idiots,” he exclaimed.
“Yeah, it was really good,” said Sean. “We liked it a lot.”
“Could I have a word with my colleague here?” Noel asked, and pulled Sean aside in a headlock.
“What are you doing?” he hissed to Sean. “Did I accidentally give you insanity powder instead of a suicide pill or something?”
“It’s my idea,” Sean said with excitement.
“What part of a monkey did you pull this idea out of?” demanded Noel.
“One of the good ones, I hope,” said Sean.
“It doesn’t sound like a good idea. It sounds dumber than the time Humancorp decided to start selling earthquake insurance for astronauts.”
“No, this is better than that,” said Sean. “Listen, we should tell the waiter we liked the food and we want to talk to the chef to compliment him. Then, the chef will come out, and if he’s the defective person, we can nab him.”
“Oh, I get it,” Noel said, catching on. “Good thinking! Thanks, Sean. I’m glad to hear that the electric zap I gave you didn’t completely liquify your brain’s higher reasoning centers, like I thought it had.”
“Hooray,” Sean said.
They both turned back to the waiter.
“After consulting with my subordinate, I’ve decided I like the food too,” said Noel.
“Really?” asked the waiter. “Do you want seconds?”
“No, no, oh God, no!” Noel said hastily. “I mean, no, we’re full. We, uh, had large breakfasts and intend to have large dinners and so on, but we extend our compliments to the chef. In fact, why don’t you ask him to come out here so we can talk to him?”
The waiter considered.
“Well, okay,” he said after a while. He wandered over to the kitchen door. “Hey Mr. Eats,” he hollered into the kitchen. “The customers say they like that garbage you scraped off the floor.”
Someone shouted something unintelligible back.
“Yeah, I think they must be crazy or something,” said the waiter. “They don’t look too smart, either of them.”
Noel bristled.
“I’ll have you know that I’m an engineer, possibly,” he said, straightening his white lab coat.
“They want to talk to you to tell you how good it was or something,” the waiter continued to shout. “Yeah, completely off their rockers. Okay?”
There was another muffled exchange that Sean couldn’t hear.
“He’s coming out,” the waiter said. “Get ready for this.”
Then, the waiter retreated to a very safe distance. A second later, Sean found out why, as the fattest man Sean had ever seen emerged from the kitchen wearing a chef’s get-up and a red scarf. His girth was colossal. He was even pudgier than the wondrous fat man that Sean had seen in a circus once, who had been so fat that the strong man hadn’t been able to lift him. It hadn’t been a very good circus.
“My God,” whispered Noel. “He’s even fatter than fat Ted! Heck, he’s even fatter than morbidly obese Ted, and I once saw morbidly obese Ted try to eat fat Ted with a fork! That was one heck of a human resources complaint.”
“I wondered why the employee handbook said cannibalism in the workplace was banned,” said Sean.
“Eh, not really,” replied Noel. “They don’t enforce it.”
Meanwhile, Noel had covertly pointed his magic wand at the very fat man. It started to beep wildly, almost emitting a continuous, solid chime. A light on it blinked green. There could be no doubt, this fat man was the person they were looking for.
The fat man’s hair was on the fairer side, almost blond in good light, but his eyes were a darker color, maybe green. He had many jiggling chins that obstructed the view of his scarf, and stumpy legs. He waddled up to the table with a big, friendly grin on his face.
“Hello, good afternoon,” he said to the two men at the table. He tried to sit down in an empty chair and crushed it to dust in the process. Undeterred by this setback, he proceeded to sit on the floor and introduced himself. “My name is Will Eats. I’m the head chef, proprietor, owner, and manager of the Café de Food. Recommend us to your enemies. I understand you two liked your meals. I’m very happy to hear it. Anything else I can do for you? Reheat your slop or your bricks?”
“No thanks,” Noel said. He was doing some quick thinking. This man was so large that they’d barely be able to fit him in the donkey cart for return to the laboratory, much less trap him in the net, which was only about a fifth his size.
“It was really good,” Sean said, with the earnestness of a man with years of practice as a highly skilled liar.
“Well, if you’re not going to have anything else today, let me go ahead and ring you up,” Eats said cheerily. He handed them a bill.
Sean gave him Noel’s credit card.
“When did you steal that?” Noel asked, frowning and patting his pockets.
“I also got your suicide pills,” Sean said, tapping the bottle he’d taken out of Noel’s pocket.
Eats stumbled over to the register and processed the bill before returning to the table.
“Here you go,” he said. “Twenty-five cents is your change.”
“He gave you my credit card, not cash,” said Noel.
“I know he did,” Eats said, and handed them a quarter anyway. “I’m very glad to hear that you liked my food. So great to have some positive feedback once in a while! Usually, all I get is complaints, lawsuits, and government orders to shut down the business. It’s infuriating. To tell you the truth, it makes me sad and angry. People make fun of my food and my weight.”
“Er, you don’t say,” said Sean. “That’s too bad. You remind me of my old manager. He was fat, but he always cheered himself up with cookies and a goldfish.”
“I must have finally gotten the recipe for volcanically hot, poisonous slop right,” said Eats. “My secret ingredient must have done the trick.”
“What was your secret ingredient?” asked Sean.
“I can’t tell you that or it wouldn’t be a secret,” Eats said, waggling an enormous finger at him. “All I can tell you is that it was still wriggling when I put it in there. I want to see how it turned out. Do you mind if I taste a spoonful from your bucket here or were you going to take it home?”
“Uh, no, I’m actually going back to work and they don’t allow pails of pig slop in the work place,” said Noel.
This was a lie, of course. Humancorp pretty much allowed nothing but pails of pig slop as food for the lower-ranked personnel in the workplace, but they probably would have objected to this particular pail on the grounds that they hadn’t made either the pail or the slop. Humancorp doesn’t look kindly on the use of competitor’s products.
“Then, I’ll just take a taste to see what it’s like,” Eats said.
Eats plunged a fresh, large tablespoon into the slop and thrust a whole heaping pile into his mouth.
In the next moment, he was using the pail for a more traditional purpose than the storage of food.
“That’s disgusting,” Eats said, as he wiped vomit from the corners of his mouth. “It’s even worse than that time I tried to serve fried toe fungus mixed with gasoline.”
He retched into the pail for another few minutes.
Then he sank back down onto the pile of splinters and dust that had previously been a chair and wept profusely.
&nb
sp; “I’m a failure,” he said. “I’m a miserable failure.”
“There, there,” Sean said in a consoling way. “We’re all failures.”
“Excuse me?” said Noel. “Speak for yourself.”
“Well, I’m a failure too, anyway,” said Sean. “You don’t have to beat yourself up over it.”
“All I ever wanted was to be a famous chef,” wept Eats. “I wanted to be like those celebrity chefs on television.”
“Because you love food?” Noel speculated, glancing over Eats’ gut.
“That’s part of the reason,” Eats said. “But I mainly admired them, and I wanted to be like them, because they got to hurt people, physically and mentally.”
“Uh-” Sean said.
“They got to shout at people and tell them they were worthless, and make others feel bad and themselves feel superior, and there was nothing anyone could do about it,” Eats said. “That’s what it means to be a famous celebrity chef, and that’s what I wanted to do! If I was a celebrity chef, I could hurt all the people who ever made fun of me because I was fat or told me my cooking smelled when I was little. The whole country would watch me and cheer for me as I did it! I remember the first time I saw a celebrity chef. He was red with rage, spit flying out of his mouth as he screamed abuse at a bunch of hapless trainees and underlings. That’s what I wanted for myself!”
His eyes sparkled as he described the fond memory, but then he shook his head and burst back into tears.
“But my food’s too horrible for me to be a famous chef. At this rate, I’ll never get to hurt anyone,” he whined. “It’s all been for nothing.”
“There, there,” Sean said, trying to console him while at the same time picking his pocket. “It’s not true that you’ve never hurt anyone. I’ll bet lots of people have died eating your food.”
“You think so?” Eats blubbered. “You’re just saying that.”
“No, I’m not,” said Sean. “And you know what? There’s a way to turn you into a good chef. Isn’t that right, Noel?”
Noel looked taken aback that he’d been involved in the conversation, but caught on.
“You mean, using the brain reprogrammer? That’s right, there is a way to make you into a celebrity chef!”
Humancorp Incorporated Page 13
