Krath's Interview#
Preface#
This short story was written by my friend idiocy․inc, who has contributed many ideas to the world of ODODI including kickstarting most of the bullshit with the fourth wall. It is fully canonized and these characters will be in the plot. I'm not going to give anymore context - connect the dots between all the random stuff on this network, have fun. This is an edit of the original version, which you can read here. Do note it is not fully canon.
Story#
Between the cat memes and the TOS agreements and the advertisements and the non-euclidean hells and the ‘oh my god what the fuck is that reality peels where it steps ‘tis a being of pestilence and death’ on Krath’s screen, you could barely see the pop up of ‘You wouldn’t like to initiate the interview process?’
He sat sweating in his study room, spinning nervously in his office chair, knuckle-grip far surpassing white and bleeding into the next section of the light spectrum, because that’s how physics works. Paperwork was piled across his desk – research, taxes, designs for Akral energy transmitters and Akral energy nukes – ‘talk about a holy hand grenade!’ was scrawled in a corner followed by self-re-cringe-imation.
His coming interview was currently the least of his challenges. On the screen were four buttons – copious others floating around in the fourth dimension – to respond to the pop up. They read ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘yea,’ ‘nah,’ ‘sure,’ ‘no yeah,’ ‘yeah no,’ ‘yay,’ ‘all of the above,’ ‘none of the below,’ ‘5 random options,’ ‘one month subscription to Crunchycube,’ and finally, ‘3 TIME USE PRAYER ACCOUNT $20 BUY NOW.’
Krath furrowed his brows in concentration. He had trained for situations like this. He had used the Interconnection Cube™ before. He knew this was no big deal. He had to think, then decide, then get the interview and fix his debt and lose the Akrilith’s scouts.
He began to eliminate the wrong answers. Crunchycube was an obvious scam. He wouldn’t be paying any megachurch pastors anytime soon. ‘Yes’ could be interpreted wrong, same as for ‘no’, and both ‘yea’ and ‘nah’ were discontinued after the 1324 incident. ‘All of the above’ was clearly a conspiracy from the Jarnu Tech Co., ‘5 random options’ was too uncertain, so that only left ‘none of the below’ left. With a confident smirk on his face, Krath locked onto the button and gave it a press.
“User response received. Processing…” The screen replied in a cold robotic voice, as Krath set his elbow on the table, pinched his nose bridge and took a deep breath.
“We will take that as a no.”
“Fuck.” Krath said, his smirk evaporating faster than his bank account. The interview tablet was quick to follow.
Krath bought another screen, using up the last of his dwindling funds. He knew that his only escape from his dire situation was to go somewhere where his debt was abolished, where no one had any jurisdiction over him.
He opened the screen again. He got through all the distracting pop ups and scams in the way, and finally back to the screen. It was now written in warping glyphs of an unknown language.
“Fuck.”
Krath overdrew his credit card, activating another screen. He had a magic translator with him, so that he wouldn’t get screwed over by foreign language again. He clicked all of the above.
“Fuck.”
Krath clicked yea.
“Son of a bitch.”
Krath clicked, no, and then yes, and then no yeah, and all the options with variations of no and yes.
“Piece of sh – ”
Krath failed a quicktime event before getting to the screen.
“Motherfu – ”
Krath got a one month Crunchycube subscription.
“This anime sucks a – ”
Krath read the fine print.
“Oh what the f – there is a…one in … 27 chance your interview will be accepted upon hitting the 5 r – shiiiiiii – ”
His face was a mix of absolute infuriation and guilty relief. Krath now owed more money than was currently in circulation. A countdown appeared on his screen.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
The interview began.
A loud crack spanned the room, objects floating ominously in rings and squares and myriad other shapes. His desk split in half and the screen began floating as well. Light invaded every crevice, every gap between atoms every lattice in his soul.
Krath felt everything possible for a split second. The depths of the abyssal nothingness. The endlessness of the cosmic voidways. The sideways strictures reality enforced. The horses. Oh the horses. So many horses, almost forty two. Krath would never understand the horses.
Light flared against his retinae once again – mortal, physical light. Dragged from the heights of heaven to the grunge of reality once more. He was in a room barely larger than a closet. The walls were of a seamless chrome texture. Light from nowhere bounced across the walls. It was almost hard to look at, the strange maze of diffuse rays taking a toll on Krath’s eyes. It brought back memories of the cells in the Sanctum. Pristine and white. Blinding.
On the window was a coloured pencil drawing of a meadow, with a sun and clouds and an odd, unknown animal that Krath couldn’t make sense of. He knew the Akral Adherents would not have approved. Hopefully this refuge proved better than that place.
A whirring noise revved up from the walls, more artificial lights bleeding through. The room unfolded into nonexistence – the drawing flowing to the floor – and around him manifested some sort of interrogation room. Aluminum sheet walls – Krath recognized from working with the Resistance’s R&D department. He could probably break his way out if needed, with his enhancements.
What lay beyond would probably not let him get far.
The other side of the room was what appeared to be a window – if not for the note on it reading: “NTE: fix the one sidd miror, its on the wrong side :(.’
Its words were misspelled and barely intelligible through the shoddy handwriting. He could see a couple of people on the other side of the mirror. Krath turned his attention to the woman seated down at the other side of the table, who motioned for him to sit down.
Krath took his seat. The chair was completely flat and made of metal, which was incredibly uncomfortable to sit in. The woman on the other side of the table was very clearly tired, struggling to keep her eyes open. Despite this, she was staring rather intensely at Krath. Both of them sat there for what felt like hours. Each passing second Krath was feeling more and more unease. Thankfully, she was first to break the silence.
“When do I start the interview?” she said in frustration, turning to the people behind the mirror. “ We’ve been here for a quarter hour.”
“Wait, the guy is here already?” One of the employees said, pausing his game of chess with the other employee.
“Yes. You know when I started going here as an intern I thought I would be doing some sick ass science shit, and this is a real downgrade.” The intern said back to the people in the window.
“Hey, we told you we can’t see through the mirror because it's on the wrong side, okay?” The other employee said.
Krath sat as the three argued about what was going on. There were a lot of insults thrown, a lot of threats of fired, corporate incompetency incarnate. This went on for a good few minutes in which he sat, twiddled his thumbs, and pondered his life decisions.
“Mate, I don’t care if you – whatever!” The woman snapped her head from the window. “Right – new guy – here, one of the hardest brain teasers we’ve got. How many parallel sides does a cube have?”
“Aha! Trick question! -4!” Krath said in full confidence like he’d just outplayed the system.
“It's three.” Monotone.
“Shit.” Krath says, before slouching back into his chair as an awkward silence superseded the atmosphere.
“Moving on. Wh-”
“Hey uhh, Krath,” one of the window dwellers held up their magnetic chessboard. “Do you know if you could find me a mate in 3 from this position? It's my turn right now.”
“Oh uhhh, see that horse?” Krath said, pointing vaguely in that direction.
“We can’t see through the mirror.” The employee responded through the speaker.
“Ah, right. The white one on the black square, just shank it with that bishop, and that's a discovered check. And I think you can see where this is, y’know,” Krath said, stuttering slightly.
“Perfect! Try kicking my ass now, Jared.” The employee said, pulling the chess board back and playing the moves.
“I really don’t get paid enough for this,” Jared said in a long suffering voice. “Oh, yea, and intern dude. You can let the guy pass, he has my approval.”
With a disappointed look on her face, the intern raises his hand. A non-euclidean horror begins to manifest 2 centimeters away from her palm. The intern starts to slowly chant something, while floating comic sans, dodecahedrons, penrose triangles and most importantly magic bullshit starts to gather. The shadowy silhouette of a rectangular something, and the disruption in all four spheres collapses into a fully formed remote. Bewilderment waves across Krath’s face. The intern presses a button.
“Alrighty, you can go to the next room.” The intern says, not even looking at where the door should be.
“Where… exactly?” Krath asks.
“Oh fu- did it not wo-” the intern looks around her. “yeah, no it didn’t. I swear I kept a fresh pack of double A’s on me, batteries not included my ass.” She fumbled around her coat pockets.
“Aha! There it fucking is. Let's go. Now how the hell do these fit? Ah. there… Really? Nothing? God, they write these symbols like madmen. Society’s really been downhill since they stopped using the plus and minus.”
“I think those need to go diagonally across each other.” Krath said.
“No, of course not. They wouldn’t design this bullshit to become a parallelogr - oh wait. That kinda makes sense. Is this why I don’t get paid?”
The intern eventually figures it out and presses the button again This time a door opens out of the wall, and Krath walks through it. He pauses slightly, about to say something, but disregards it as everyone in the room seems to have occupied themselves. The door opens to an endless white void, with the doorframe repeating through it like bad CGI.
Krath suddenly felt a zooming sensation, before being transported to an endless black void. The only thing he could see was the floor, a slightly gleaming plane that propagated to seeming infinity. In front of him was a tall man in a tuxedo. It was higher quality than his.
“Hello there, my dear lost traveler!” the well dressed man said in the performative voice of some sort of game show host. “Welcome to the void, where your dreams die and your nightmares feed off of the corpses. I’m your host Baruch, and I shall be guiding you through eternity in nothing.”
“It has been a bloody TREE(3) since I met another visitor.Allow me guide to you through this illogical hellscape!” The man continues, voice cascading through nothing like thunder. Non-euclidean geometry streams throughout the void, accompanied by copyright free epic music.
“Now, care to give an intro-” The man says, finally turning around. “ – Oh fuck, it’s one of you people.” He pinches his nose bridge, clearly frustrated as the non-euclidean wonders and public domain soundtrack slouched back like a sad dog.
“Is t-this, not, the interview?” Krath says as the music turns off.
“No. It isn’t. You’re in the wrong cosmology you idiot. Y’know, in my dimension, I am the coolest fucking guy, I’m like a god. I am the host of the void, which isn’t original, but it sure is fucking, cool. Do you know how catchy that song was? And how much better my suit is in comparison to yours? But god, ever since you idiot whatevers started showing up I just turn into a gag character.”
“Sorry, I guess?” Krath replies, not really sure of what to make of the situation.
“You better be. I spent an eternity making these cool non-euclidean polygon architectures for the next visitor, and now it seems lame as shit.”
“It is some pretty cool geometry.”
“I, know. So please get out, and go tell those fuckers to quit messing with a superior storyline.”
Baruch walked up to Krath, and slapped him so hard he got sent to another interview room. His head still moved in the way one would expect after being slapped, ringing like ears would.
This time the room seemed friendlier, with a table, rolling chair and whiteboard. There was an interviewer with a buttoned up shirt that was only half tucked in, next to the table, pacing around.
“Hey there!” He said in an enthusiastic tone, noticing his entrance.
“Greetings.” Krath said back, shaking his hand.
“Salutations my good sir-” The interviewer said, mocking him. “Anyways, you met the void edgelord guy right? The one called barbados or something.”
“Yeah, Baruch. He was pretty pissed.”
“Yes!” The interviewer said, pumping his fist. “You can take a seat. This whole interview is sort of just a formality. No need to worry at all. First question, who is our lord and savior?”
“The concept of a cube?” Krath said, kind of expecting it. “Specifically with two o’s instead of a u – and no e.”
“Hell yeah! This narrator is obsessed with those things. Can’t really express it anywhere else without it being a plot hole so, he has to make it our whole thing, which I am a-okay with. Checkmark there. Now onto question two. Who do you like?” The interviewer said, leaning in, putting more intensity into the atmosphere.
“Wh-what do you mean by like?” Krath said, confused “I am literally new to the office, so I guess no one…?”
“Whatever sounds believable, I’ll note that down. I like the options you're giving me for office gossip. Alrighty, moving on. What is the answer to the universe, life, narrative plane, and everything?”
“It's definitely 42.” Krath said confidently.
“Welp. That’s all I need to know, it's not like they keep me here for quality control.”
“Really? Isn’t that the purpose of an interview?” Krath said, puzzled.
“Nope,” The employee replied like the answer was obvious. “The purpose is so that I can get paid extra!”
“Where do I go now?” Krath asked.
“Down the hall, on the door to the left that says ethics committee evaluation office,” he rolled around on his chair.
“You guys actually have a place for ethics.” Krath asked in a slightly surprised tone.
“Surprisingly, yes. How much do they actually do? Let me ask you a question. How many ethics committee members does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” The interviewer said, no longer rolling around in his chair and pointing his pen in the direction of Krath inquisitively.
“I don’t know. One? Half a step ladder?” Krath said back.
“None! The ethics committee can’t change anything!” The employee said, laughing hysterically afterwards.
“Hahaha, well uhh, I’ll be on my way now.” Krath said, trying to laugh along with the employee before walking out the door.
As he stepped through the frame, he braced for impact, squinting his eyes. He felt nothing. Opening his eyes revealed that it was a miraculously normal door. Upon further inspection, he noticed that there wasn’t a door in the frame at all, and that it was in queue for another door. As he scanned the hall, it seemed to be an endless expanse with doors on both sides of the hallway. Some of the doors were open, presumably waiting for a door to become available, and he could peer through them. Through the hall he could see jail complexes, voids, warehouses, all not seeming to fit the geometry of the hallway.
He looked to the left. There was a sign for the ethics committee evaluation office. As Krath put his hand on the knob the door disappeared, now queuing for another one.
In the office was a round table with a serious-looking woman.
“Hello there Krath,” The woman said in an ominous voice in accordance to the dim lighting. “Take a seat.”
“Right.” Krath said, pulling out a chair.
“You don’t have a last name? It's fine. The narrator writing this hardly gave me a first name. But that’s besides the point. Do you know how much outreach this committee has?”
“Not to be disrespectful, but given the work conditions, I would assume none.” Krath replied, trying not to come off as disrespectful.
“That is what most people think, there are also a lot of jokes about it. How many ethics committee members does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
“None? I'm guessing the punchline is that the ethics committee can’t change anything.”
“The guy with the half tucked in shirt told you that one already, didn’t he?”
“He definitely did.”
“Right. Anyways, we do a lot of work to give the impression that we are useless here. However, we are the secret power in this company. You see, our outreach is secretl-” The woman said until the lights turned on. “Dammit! I was trying to be all mysterious and cool okay. We almost had him too, weren’t you the one who wanted someone else to play UNO with us?”
“Look here, unnamed friend, if it wasn’t the lights that broke the vibe it would have been my unending laughter. Seeing you trying to convince that intern that we actually do things in here while blatantly copying the ethics committee orientation from the SCP wiki is just sad.” Another person said over intercom, presumably the one who turned on the lights.
“Wait, what do you guys actually do?” Krath said, more confused now.
“We just get to see whatever projects are happening in our branch and approve them,” the woman at the table said. “Last time, we approved for someone who vaporized a dimension to find his missing sock. Billions dead, likely including the sock because he never found it.”
“Okay. How do I pass this interview – cuz right now that’s all I really care about.”
“You don’t really do anything. We’ve been scanning your brain and we’re gonna watch a movie of it together and judge your life decisions for like, ethics and all that. In fact we already have. That's what the weird box you were put in was for. How did you manage to go broke buying stocks?” The woman at the counter grabbing a cereal box said.
“Hey, I was buying at the dip okay,” Krath said in aggressive defence. “Also – don’t judge my financial abilities.”
“Riiiiiight. Anyways, the least ethical thing you did was having a major labour complex in your basement, but we have three of those next door so I don’t see how that being a problem. Approved. You can go to the guy at the top now. You’re gonna have to take the stairs though.” She pointed at an endless staircase into oblivion above.
“How many stairs are there?” Krath asked.
“9,223,372,036,854,775,807 steps.” The employee responded.
“Is there any faster way up? Y’know, other than climbing the 64 bit integer limit?” Krath asked, trying to be hopeful about his options.
“You could sell me your soul for a shortcut. Here’s the contract, sign here.”She tapped on an empty signature box.
“Sure, whatever. At this point I have nothing to lose.” Krath said, signing the document.
“Really? You folded that easily?”
“Yes really,” Krath waved it aside. “ I have infused ten souls into my body, which means you now only own 10% equity in my total soul assets. Where’s the shortcut?”
“Can’t say that's the first time it's happened. Oh well, anyways. Go through the other door.” The woman said in a casual way. Another entrance opened up, this time to a much shorter staircase.
Despite that, it was still a rather long staircase. Fortunately, the gravity inside of the room had apparently been turned off, allowing for easier travel. Krath jumped as hard as he could, and hit the roof. Trying once again, Krath managed to get a working trajectory, stairs blurring below as he sped through the room.
Eventually, he made it to the top, hitting his head against the door in the same place he had hit it in the first attempt. Upon his head coming into contact with the door, it disappeared and he crashed through. Gravity returned and he fell to the ground.
“Krath, is it? Get over here.” A man in a suit said, standing next to a bar stool.
“Who are you?” Krath said, making his way to the bar – which was dressed in ostentation fit or a billionaire.
“All will be answered. Eventually,” said the man. “First, what do you know about this company? What do we actually do?”
“I'm not really sure, to be honest.”
The man chuckled to himself a bit.
“Well, how about another question. You know about pataphysics right?” The man said, Krath nodding to his question.
“Well, all the theories are true. We are in a narrative stack, and there is a narrator to this universe. On technical terms, we’re a massive narrative anomaly. In more understandable words, we are a massive plot hole, designed specifically for shits and giggles. Hell, this whole interview was a gag. The only reason we are where we are, is because we are favoured by the narrator. Let that sink in for a bit.”
He grabbed two fancy glasses and a bottle of liquor from the bar.
“How reassuring.” Krath said in a sarcastic voice.
“Well I don’t work here to reassure. Anyways, I’m the administrator. I am this company.”
“Do you mean you own this company?” Krath asked.
“No. I am quite literally the company itself, I am the reason it is here. My real name is David Kim – maybe – and I am literally on the same narrative plane as the narrator. Don’t get confused, I don’t narrate. I’m just some guy who is acquainted with the narrator. Notice how I didn’t say friend there. He’s not familiar with those – anyway – I managed to bullshit this gag into existence, so you'd better be thankful. This brings us to what you are going to do. We need to maintain the favor of the narrator. If we get too boring or not fun enough we’re either going to get deleted, or even worse – discontinued.”
He finished pouring the liquor and returned to the bar.
“I have many questions,” Krath said, sloshing his drink around slightly. “But I have a strange feeling they aren’t going to get answered.”
“You’d be right about that. One thing I can answer is that you are hired.”
“Okay, what do I do?” Krath asked, slightly excited but evidently trying to hide it.
“Your lifelong career job will be to find anyone developing or using AI, and stop them. By AI, I mean the techbro chatgpt kind, and by stop I will usually mean stab.”
“Why exactly?” Krath asked.
“Well we wouldn’t want the narrator to think that we support something that could take his future job now would we?” The administrator asked.
“No wonder the interview start button was so damn annoying.” Krath said, making a joke about the state of the company’s infrastructure.
“You’re right about that.”
The administrator raised his glass, and Krath followed.
“In the favour of fate.” The administrator said.
“In the favour of fate.” Krath affirmed.
A glass clink can be heard throughout idi0cy․inc voidspace.