novelnext Chapter 2 You've been fired
Chapter 2 You've been fired
After get off work, Leo followed Dave to his office.
Dave sat behind his desk, without circling around, and simply sighed, turning his computer monitor toward Leo.
The screen displays an email from "Daily Grinding Catering Group - Atlantic Region - Human Resources".
Subject: Guidance on Maintaining Brand Image Consistency and Proactively Avoiding Potential Public Relations Risks
"Main Text: To all branch managers, in order to ensure that our brand maintains a consistently positive and neutral image in the current complex and ever-changing public opinion environment, headquarters recommends that managers at all levels proactively review store employees. Please closely monitor and assess any employees who may pose a risk of 'value incompatibility'. To achieve proactive risk management, it is recommended to optimize relevant positions in a timely manner to maintain team cohesion and brand security..."
Leo's eyes swept over the convoluted words, and he could even imagine what kind of person wrote the email.
A well-dressed VP of Human Resources, who may earn $200,000 a year, has a life motto of reducing all living people to risks and returns on a balance sheet.
At the end of the email, there was a PDF attachment.
Dave moved the mouse and clicked on it.
PDF files offer more direct and straightforward content.
The screen contained screenshots of several tweets, with the first one being the "New Deal Ghost's" tweet about Omni.
His ID and that profile picture of Roosevelt were precisely marked with a glaring red box.
Everything is clear.
"Leo," Dave's voice was filled with exhaustion and helplessness. He didn't even dare to look Leo in the eye. "I'm just a branch manager. Above me are regional managers, and above them are regional directors. My son is going to the dentist next month, and you know, dental insurance doesn't cover everything. I also have to pay my mortgage every month. I don't have a choice."
He did not use the word "dismissal".
The word was too direct and too impersonal; he simply pushed a white envelope from this side of the table toward Leo.
"This is your salary for this month, plus an extra week's pay as per company policy," Dave said.
Leo was neither angry nor did he argue.
In that instant, what he felt was not the anger of being targeted by someone, but a bone-chilling cold and a tremendous sense of absurdity.
He wasn't fired by Dave; Dave was just the terminal responsible for executing orders. He wasn't even fired by some unseen HR VP.
"Take care, Dave." Leo picked up the almost weightless envelope, turned, and walked out of the office.
He turned and walked out of the office, through the back alley, and into the Pittsburgh night.
This city, once famous for its steel industry, now only has a few glass buildings belonging to banks and high-tech companies in the city center that still shine in the night sky.
Many other neighborhoods, however, are shrouded in a thick, rusty darkness, much like their forgotten glory.
Back in the apartment filled with the smell of cheap coffee, Leo turned on the light.
He placed the envelope containing the severance pay and the "Final Overdue Notice" from the "Office of Federal Student Aid" side by side on his desk.
A document from capital.
A document from the government.
Despair surged in like a tide.
Leo staggered and pulled a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey from the cabinet, unscrewed the cap, and took a big gulp straight from the bottle.
The spicy liquid burned his throat, but it couldn't ignite even a trace of warmth in his heart.
His gaze fell on the yellowed Roosevelt poster on the wall.
In the photo, Roosevelt sits in a convertible, smiling and waving, his eyes filled with the unwavering confidence unique to that era.
The alcohol and pent-up anger exploded at that moment.
Leo grabbed the half-empty whiskey bottle, raised it high, and the muscles in his arms bulged from the effort.
He wanted to smash it against the wall, against that damned, hopeful smiling face.
But at the last moment, he stopped.
With all his might, he uttered a question, a desperate roar that spanned nearly a century.
He roared at the eternally confident smile on the poster:
"Do you see this?! This is the world you left behind! If you had hanged all those bankers and oligarchs on Wall Street back then, none of this mess would exist today!"
His voice echoed in the empty room, tinged with sobs and cracking.
His strength seemed to have been drained by that roar; his body went limp, and he collapsed onto the floor, a mixture of drunkenness and extreme exhaustion.
The world began to spin, and consciousness was rapidly sinking into an endless darkness.
Just as he was about to completely lose consciousness.
A voice, a voice that didn't belong to this room, didn't belong to this era, a voice that was steady, clear, and had a retro feel like an old-fashioned radio, rang out clearly in the deepest part of his mind:
"Young people, hanging them won't solve anything..."
……
Consciousness is forcibly pulled back little by little from a dark, viscous abyss.
Leo Wallace's first feeling was a headache.
It felt like someone was hosting a heavy metal festival inside his skull, with Jack Daniel's as the lead singer, cheap whiskey as the drummer, and that damn layoff notice from last night as the bassist.
His second feeling was that the voice still existed.
It did not disappear.
It was like a radio station that never went out, continuously playing in the background of his consciousness.
This was definitely not his own thought.
His thoughts were now a jumbled mess, filled with regret and hatred for ethanol, while the voice, like a lighthouse standing in a storm, was chillingly calm.
Just as he was struggling to distinguish the boundary between reality and illusion, the voice rang out again, continuing the words that had been interrupted by his fainting last night.
"...But it's acceptable to have them serve the people."
These words instantly pierced through the confusion of his hangover.
Leo sat up abruptly from the cold floor and looked around.
The apartment was empty. The whiskey bottle lay beside him, and the Roosevelt poster on the wall still hung there, with that damn confident smile.
"Who?" he growled hoarsely. "Who's speaking?"
The only response he received was the deathly silence in the room.
A primal fear gripped him.
He scrambled to the door, but it was locked from the inside.
He rushed back to his desk and frantically shook the mouse to wake up the computer screen.
There were no remote connection notifications, and the firewall logs were completely empty.
He was all alone here.
"I thought my accent was fairly standard, from upstate New York." The voice rang out again, this time with a touch of aristocratic tone. "Young man, your hospitality is rather poor, even if I admit I'm an uninvited guest."
Leo's blood seemed to freeze.
All his reason told him it was an illusion, a cruel joke that life was playing on him, a result of stress, alcohol, debt, unemployment...
But he couldn't explain the texture of the sound.
Unlike other auditory hallucinations, it has a sense of direction and a physical presence.
The sound seemed to resonate right in the center of his skull, yet it was clearly independent of his own thoughts.
He could hear the sound as clearly as he could hear the car horns outside his window.
"Who are you?!" he roared at the empty room, feeling like a complete madman.
"A man who once sat in the Oval Office of the White House and steered this country for twelve years."
The voice answered, its tone perfectly calm.
"By the way, you still have my portrait on your wall. Although I must say, the photographer made me look a bit too serious; I'm actually much funnier in person than in the photos."
Leo's neck, like a rusty robot, turned toward the wall, step by step.
His gaze was fixed on the Roosevelt poster.
The sunlight shone on the poster's glass frame from a tricky angle, creating a distorted interplay of light and shadow on that familiar, resolute face.
A chill ran from the soles of his feet, up his spine, and up to the top of his head.
He wasn't talking to a hallucination.
He wasn't talking to himself.
He was talking to a poster.
And damn it, this poster actually responded.
Leo's first reaction wasn't to scream. He rushed into the cramped bathroom, turned on the tap, and splashed his face with the icy water over and over again.
He looked up at his face in the mirror—pale, with sunken eyes and a vacant gaze.
"Calm down, Leo," he said to himself, his voice slurred from chattering. "It's just too much stress...unemployment...loans...plus the combined effects of alcohol, an acute mental disorder, yes, that's it."
He needs help.
He needs modern science.
He needs a doctor in a white coat to tell him that he just needs to take some tranquilizers and get a good night's sleep.
He made up his mind.
At that very moment, the voice in his mind spoke softly, almost with pity:
"Son, if you think going to the doctor will solve this problem, then go ahead. There's nothing wrong with it; just think of it as an after-dinner walk."
This understated sarcasm shattered Leo's bubble of self-comfort.
But it was precisely those words that made Leo make up his mind.
He has to go.
He had to prove that the voice was fake.
He must completely expel this arrogant "ghost" that has illegally intruded into his mind.