On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 165, of 240 so far.

Culture Fit

The room was a curious blend of welcoming and intimidation.

A comfortable-looking and playfully-coloured couch off to one side, not far from some kind of isolation cubicle for focused work, or perhaps making video calls in private. Various vending machines, all serving healthy snacks and fruit juices. Even a videogames corner, with big-screen TV and several neon-hued controllers. All very modern, and all very startup.

But then there was the large table set horizontally, with windows behind it. The single chair on the near side, pushed back a little from the table, and the three chairs on the opposite side — all of them occupied.

This was the fifth round of a marathon three-day interview process, and Blair was fairly sure he’d passed every previous round with flying colours. It wasn’t like he hadn’t practiced enough.

Most of the past year had been devoted to interviewing at companies like this one, and befriending their employees to learn about how to best present himself. There weren’t too many open positions, but he’d already turned down four good offers. They always asked the same questions afterwards, in the same tone of surprise.

Is it about the compensation? Is it about the level of responsibility? Have you had a more attractive offer?

He let them down as politely as he could, because he couldn’t give them the real answer: that they were all just dry runs for the real thing. It was this company that he had always intended to apply to, once he was ready — and he was ready now. This was the final stage of the process, and at last he’d have the chance to speak with the big three: the CTO, the Director of Software Engineering, and the founder. They all sat behind the big table, smiling in an artificial way, as he approached the lone seat.

“Welcome,” the founder said, rising to shake Blair’s hand, and the pleasantry was repeated by the other two. He made the appropriate greetings, and the founder opened a folder. Inside it, presumably, were the notes from the previous rounds of Blair’s interviews. He had already gone over everything in his mind, and was confident he could answer just about any pertinent question. Except perhaps one, which was the question of why he wanted the job.

I don’t want the job, he thought. I just wanted this interview.

First were the enquiries about how he’d deal with particular problems, and how he handled management challenges, and how he’d allocate time and resources to meet an unexpected engineering need. Then they talked about important technologies, and his experience with them, and their applicability to a set of real-world scenarios that were germane to the company’s goals over the next five years.

Blair had a chance to ask some questions himself, which he’d duly prepared, and honed, and rehearsed for hours. Some of them were easy to answer, and some were flattering to answer, and some were just barely difficult enough to show that he was a deep thinker, and a forward-looking person, and a big-picture guy. It all went incredibly smoothly.

The founder spoke for a few minutes about the company’s vision, and Blair asked a couple of softball questions which he’d constructed after watching every speech that the man opposite him had ever given. They all collectively enthused at how aligned everyone’s perceptions of the industry and the market seemed to be.

Then they moved to the so-called soft skills and personal interests areas, and once again, Blair shone. He had an impeccable balance of outdoor pursuits, niche interests which were intriguing rather than eccentric, and of course a couple of major intersections with the favourite hobbies of the three people who were by now smiling broadly, and nodding at his every word.

He wove in a few jokes, occasionally self-deprecating but always confidently delivered, and he also spoke of his love for his family — which didn’t exist, at least not anymore — and his in-built need to leave the world a better place than he found it. Blair even deftly found a way to mention the car he’d purchased recently, of the same make and model — but a discreetly lower and more affordable trim and set of options — than the one he already knew that the CTO drove.

The interview had been scheduled for forty-five minutes, but the one-hour mark found the four of them chatting and laughing in a manner that would easily convince an outsider that they were old university friends, or other such long-term acquaintances.

And then, by way of closing, the man who was the director of software engineering — the only one that Blair was really there to see — asked the question he’d been waiting for all along.

“I know you’ve had a variety of personal projects underway during this tricky last few years for hiring, but I wanted to briefly ask you about the… looks like eighteen-month gap in your resumé here,” he said. “It isn’t a problem, because I think we can all agree we have a strong match and culture fit, but I just wanted to get your explanation for that, for our records.”

Blair nodded, smiling more widely. “Absolutely,” he said, “and I’m glad you raised that before I could get to it myself. I chose to use that time to move my own projects forward, to see what opportunities were available in the industry, but particularly to prepare myself.”

The founder was nodding away. “Prepare for what?” he asked. His tone was genial, clearly in the mood to accept whatever answer he would receive, but Blair only looked at him briefly before returning his gaze to the director again.

“For vengeance,” he said, delivering the words as if the answer was as obvious as it was innocuous. He watched as the confusion registered, and as they tried to understand the joke, but it wasn’t a joke, and then the smiles across from him faded a little.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” the director added, and Blair nodded, as he reached into his own pocket. He leaned forward.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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