Category: Work

Comrades,

For too long, we have allowed the forces of rot and corruption germinate within the confines of our very fortress.  Indeed, within the very heart of the structure designed to hold these forces at bay, a foul contagion grows.

Even now it strains the walls of it’s confine, threatening to spill forth and engulf us in a fetid plague.  The time has come for action.  I shall marshal my forces and attempt a purge of these putrescent fiends this coming Wednesday evening at 6PM.  I shall armor myself in righteousness and arm myself with virtue.  I shall give no quarter to my foes.  All shall be destroyed in the purify flame of my zeal.  Should you wish to spare any of your belongings a trip to a cold, unforgiving grave, I would suggest you spirit them away prior to the execution of my plans.  The streets shall run green with mold and spoiled food stuffs.  Should I fail in my efforts, should these diabolical former edibles overcome my senses and deliver me unto the Elysian Fields, I ask only that you tell my beloved of my fate, and deliver unto her my seal as a reminder that I fell in performance of my duty.  I can only hope it will provide her some comfort.  Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!

---

Carrion crows gather, heralds of the coming conflagration and dire portents of the waiting carnage.  Their sheer numbers blot the sun and cast a long shadow o’er the land.  I once again send word of the imminent purge.  The glorious cleansing will fall tonight at 6PM.

Remove any belongings you want saved from the pyre with swiftness, lest calamity befall them.  Of those that remain, none will be spared, no brethren saved.  Many Ziplock containers will die, but we stand firm in our resolve.  We shall fight them on the shelves.  We shall fight them in the lunch meat drawer.  We shall fight them in the vegetable crisper, and we shall not rest until the last of them has been driven into the refuse bin.  We shall scourge them mightily and salt their fields so their wickedness might never take root again.  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

Periodically I get mass emails asking me to welcome someone to the company. On occasion, I reply. This was one such occurrence.

---

Welcome to <company name>, <employee>.

As you have no doubt heard, <company name> is an up and coming company on the fast track to internet dominance!  Our “go get them” attitude has been responsible for rapid growth, allowing us to claim the position of top <identifying information removed>!  In fact, our portfolio is larger than the next three competitors… COMBINED!

You may have heard rumors about the ancient leviathans that dwell beneath the earth and issue inscrutable orders to our leaders through psychic links… and while all of this is true, who are we to argue with success?  Our soul pact with horrors from beyond time has given us the edge we need, while only costing us our very sanity, and a monthly tithe in interns that we must toss, screaming, into the yawning chasm beneath our world headquarters in <city>.  These eldritch beasts will surely arise one day, cracking the soil of our planet, their ravening hunger driving them to consume all that lays before them.  In the meantime, we will leverage our position to grow even further, that we might prove a suitable repast for our fiendish overlords.

Gentlemen,

Congratulations on your recent anniversaries! Here at <company>, we strive to make sure our employees are recognized in unique and interesting ways. In exchange for your years of noble service, please select three of the following mandatory body upgrades to make you an even more valuable employee:

Glass jaw

Nuclear Arms – Not like missiles or anything, we just make your arms radioactive

Replace your pancreas with a live badger

Replace your pancreas with TWO live badgers

Sledgehammer hands

Gills – Note, these are in place of, not in addition to, your lungs

Ridiculously brittle cyanide capsule teeth

Gummy spine

A gland that will make your face smell like a rich, beefy stew (not to be combined with the badger modifications)

Poison Blood (please note that at this time we are unable to make you immune to the poison.)

Landmine feet

While I can’t promise any of these non-elective operations will be performed by certified surgeons, I can assure you that our personnel have passed the finest training available in North Korea. We look forward to collecting your feedback on these new and innovative employee rewards. It is forward thinking like this that keeps <company> on the cutting edge. In the most literal sense possible. What I mean to say is you are going to get cut during this process. Like… a lot.

Congratulations on reaching nine fine years at <company name>. As you may know, we are instituting mandatory cryogenic freezing of our most valued assets to ensure that <company name> can continue to function well into the future. In our specialized “sleep tubes” you will pass the years until your expertise is once more needed, or we determine technology has sufficiently advanced to the point where your knowledge is so hilariously outdated that it will be funny to wake you up and watch you struggle with the most mundane day to day tasks. Alternately, you may be awoken to participate in our conflict against an intergalactic species bent on the conquest of our planet as they descend to our surface in seemingly endless numbers, armed with Skin Flayers, their terrible razor fanged maws screaming incomprehensibly as their pitch black, soulless eyes scan the shattered remnants of our cities. These interstellar nightmares will turn us into a nutrient rich slurry to feed their ever expanding galactic fleet of Horror Titans, driven ever onward by a terrible hive brain in their battle to become to only form of life left in a galaxy turned to flames. Trapped in a deathless chrome war suit you will witness the last tattered remains of our species desperately flee into the void between the stars, one step ahead of the terrible creatures we come to know only as The Phalanx, constantly on the edge of catastrophe, never knowing if you have found safety or merely a temporary respite in their pitiless hunt to wipe us out.

Congratulations again! Our freeze team will be with you shortly.

To whomever reads this missive,

Do not make the error I have made. I thought to open this receptacle of cold and consumables. What I bore witness to within shall forever haunt me. The old pizza has gained sentience and joined into an unholy alliance with what I can only imagine was once lasagna. There was a salad, or at least it was green, that battled against their assembled hordes, screaming in guttural, bestial agony as they threw themselves against its mass. Tearing and pulling. Rending.

Over the din of battle and the horrid sights came the smell. My stars, the smell. It was like something out of an ancient marsh, or long neglected tomb. It was a physical thing. Tangible. Eldritch. It assaulted me, battering against my sinuses until I threw my head and recoiled, lest in breathing it, it should contaminate my mind and forever sear itself into my senses, rending me incapable of ever experiencing another smell again. To be forever haunted by the grim darkness to which I stood in mute testament.

Turn back. Turn back now and do not return unless you do so with the fires of purgation. This place, this… thing, is unclean. The vileness palpable. I would ask for deliverance, but there is no salvation for me now. Not after this. My only escape is the void.

Congratulations on your ten year anniversary at <company name>! By now you have doubtless noticed the blinking red light in the center of your palm. Do not be alarmed. That is simply there to notify every one of your new status, and is no way some sort of signal sent to our Recycling Specialists to aid them in hunting you down and turning you into a nutrient rich gruel to be used in our $2 lunches. There is no reason why anyone should come to that sort of conclusion. Neither will you be evaluated as a potential offering to the dread beast Domainulus, the fanged, thrice mawed horror that dwells beneath Verisign and requires a constant steam of victims to power the .com registry. That is simply ridiculous. It has four maws.

Congratulations again. Our specialists will be along shortly… is what I would say if we had those. Which we totally _don’t_.

Congratulations to you, <employee names>! You have accomplished many great things in your time here and have the respect and admiration of your peers! In recognition of your accomplishment, you have been selected to participate in <company names>’s Mandatory Genetic Manipulation Happy Fun Time Program (<CN>MGMHFTP)! Think how much more productive you will be with a prehensile tail or gills or some kind of snout. We can cross you with a spider, and while you won’t gain the proportionate strength or even retain a vaguely human appearance like Peter Parker, think how much more productive you will be with a cluster of eyes and excess limbs jutting oddly from your torso at obscene angles. Why, the possibilities are endless! The only limit is your imagination… and the ability of our Genetic Fungineers to keep your helix from tearing itself asunder and turning you into some chthonic horror out of the realm of nightmares that stalks the darkened passageways of Facility X, ever hungry for the flesh of the living. I can still hear the screams and that horrible, wet scraping sound the creature made as it stalked us through the corridors…

So enjoy! You have earned it!

Happy 9 year anniversary, <employee name>! In recognition of your service, you have been awarded the following mandatory award: CYBERNETIC IMPLANTS. Please choose three of the following:

_ Buzz saw hands
_ Buzz saw feet
_ Buzz saw eyes
_ Buzz saw large intestine (we had a rather large shipment of buzz saws sent to us in error)
_ Laser eyebrows
_ Ear implant that plays Olivia Newton John’s top 40 hit Physical on endless repeat
_ Aluminum bones
_ Acid spit (please note we cannot make the rest of your mouth immune to acid)
_ Completely non-functional steel wings
_ LED holiday antlers
_ Forearm mounted cassette deck with Gloria Estefan mix tape
_ Explosive knee caps

Our doctors will be along shortly to prep you for surgery. Actually, I’m not legally allowed to call them doctors. Or Engineers. Or technicians. One of them has read one third of a William Gibson novel, so we should be set.

This is the first in a series of replies I have sent out on receiving a company wide email asking me to congratulate someone on an employment anniversary.

Congratulations on reaching your 11^th year of service with <company>. As you may know, the average solar cycle lasts 11 years. You may wonder what the two have common. In your special case, your anniversary coincides with an event of dire cosmic importance. Our <company> Archaeological specialists uncovered certain tablets in their digging. Tablets that point to an… occurrence. On the 11^th hour of your 11^th year something was opened. We do not yet know what it is. A gateway to another world. Perhaps another dimension. The last team we sent to investigate simply… disappeared. Their last garbled transmissions consisted of nightmarish screaming. Inhuman screaming. The video that was captured showed a creature that was nothing but fangs and tentacles and smoke and shadow. We have further translated the stones, and the beast has a name. The ancients called it “The <last name>”, and it seeks something called “The Unification”. The few pictographs we found in the ancient, vine choked ruins of the Temple of Eternal Suffering that have not been worn smooth by the passage of time or scarred into an unreadable mess by constant sacrifice on their pitted, blood crusted surfaces show the creature needs a host. A vessel specially prepared to hold it. A vessel that shares its name. Once joined the ancients wrote that it will begin The Thousand Years of Torment, an age of interminable darkness and destruction that will turn our world to a smoking ruin. You have doomed us all.

Happy anniversary!