Author: Adam S

Congratulations on your 7 year anniversary,<NAME>! That is quite an accomplishment. As you may well be aware, astronomers have discovered a ninth planet that they have helpfully called Planet Nine, because apparently creativity is not a thing among that crowd. Already they are celebrating the find. A celebration that they will soon rue as premature.

It is, in fact, not a planet but a space station. A massive weapon patrolling the galaxy, its inner core a gigantic hive of insectoid horrors driven by a ruthless hive mind to consume all life in the galaxy. Slowly, inexorably, it makes its way toward us, using the gravity of our own sun to help pull it ever closer. It will be a creeping doom. A crawling death. It may take dozens of years, but they will be upon us. Once in stable orbit around our earth, hive ships will likely break off from the bulk of planet nine, careening on to our planet with a dull thud, as millions of warrior bugs spill forth from small openings along the exterior. Using what I can only assume are vise like pincers, they will grapple us in place, as a needle like appendage menacingly extends from their chitinous abdomen. At this point they will presumably sting us, rendering us immobile and helpless against what comes next.

From here we project their vile hive will open in a blast of rancid, stagnant air, the bones of those species they have enslaved to serve as food spilling out the pulsing, glowing walkway. Leaving the relics of those they have consumed strewn recklessly about, we can safely guess their terrible queen will exit  the craft, resplendent in ghastly glory, her twitching antennae seeking out those subdued by her loyal children. She will glide across the fields of carnage on graceful, spindle like legs, her mandibles clacking menacingly, until she finds a helpless foe. From here her ovipositor will slowly descend downward, dumping a clutch of eggs onto the prone host, who can only watch in mute horror as the spiny forms visible through the translucent egg sacks begin to twitch and squirm.

It is safe to say we will be completely and utterly destroyed. Powerless to prevent our demise. Left to wander the ruin of our world infested with larvae that will eventually metamorphose into a new generation of space insects, turning our planet into a new ship for these aggressors. Once they reach critical biological mass, the creatures will push our once proud earth, now a teeming hive planet, out into the galaxy in search of worlds to conquer. We cannot escape this fate. The best we may hope for is that we are the one chosen as the vessel for the new queen, that we are blessed to carry and protect her royal personage in our decaying, contaminated flesh.

Congratulations, <NAME>! 8 years is quite an accomplishment. If you paid any attention to the recent CES 2016 show, you know that companionship robots were well represented. Everything from cute robots like Buddy, to robots inhabiting the uncanny valley like Toshiba’s ChihiraAco. Not one to be left behind, <COMPANY> has been working on our own companionship robot: S.L.A.U.G.H.T.E.R.Bot!

Not to worry, that is simply an acronym. It stands for Slashing Lacerating Amputating Unrelenting Grinding Hateful Tearing Eviscerating and Rending,  uh… bot. As we are still very much in alpha, we need to pair the S.L.A.U.G.H.T.E.R.Bot… You know what? We are just going to call it ‘Happy’ from this point forward. We need to pair Happy with employee handlers to see how it behaves in real world situations.

Happy will go with you everywhere. To work. To the store. To the playground. Actually, scratch that last one. I do not recommend that. Where ever you go, Happy will follow along behind you, its baleful red eyes continuously scanning everything around it for signs of weakness… to… tickles. Yes. Happy loves to tickle. And with its nine inch, serrated, prehensile digits, it is a tickling machine. Honestly, you cannot stop it from tickling, and I really must caution you against trying for your own safety and the safety of those around. Just let it do what it wants.

Worried Happy will be unable to follow over rough terrain? We have outfitted Happy with spiked treads that enable it to crush almost any obstacle underneath its massive, electrified frame. Yes, the slightest touch can render even the most stalwart of opponents prone and susceptible to a tank tread… back massage. Indeed, Happy loves to give massages. He will often emit a strange metallic sound while doing so. A hideous noise that one could almost mistake for laughter, as though it were enjoying crushing flesh and bone beneath its considerable bulk.

Of course, we will first want to introduce you to Happy, so that we can imprint your unique DNA signature into its database. This process currently has a 80% failure rate, but not doing the scan will not help us improve. We will be along shortly so you can make the acquaintance of our new robotic family member. And whatever you do, do not look directly at the chromed skull we have installed as its face. It really hates that.

Congratulations on 6 years at <COMPANY>, <NAME>! I am sure I speak for everyone when I say thank you for all your work. Thank you, and save us. As you may know, recently we decided to renovate the downstairs of the <LOCATION> office.  In our efforts to build a new, state of the art employee center, a marauding darkness was accidentally unleashed. Some great and terrible evil from before the dawn of mankind lay dormant underneath this very building, and in our desire to have a new lunch area, we have freed it from the arcane shackles that had imprisoned it there. It has boiled forth from the firmament, and has begun to corrupt us all. People report dreams of blood and terror. Haunting nightmare visions of a world aflame and a great, formless evil astride a mountain of bones from the fallen. A profane ossuary from which it orchestrates a malignant rule over the fates of us all.

Now in my case, mind you, I was already pretty far along that path. I mean, that is basically another day at the office. However, others are reporting great distress and sense of impending, inexorable doom. Again, that is what I would call Tuesday. Nothing new. The others, they cry out, “We need a champion!” <NAME> is about as close are we are going to get, linguistically, so I told them I would see what I can do. I am not really sure how you fight a virulent cloud of wicked darkness. Maybe strong desiccants? Like inscribed with ancient runes of binding, maybe? I’m just spit balling here. I’m sure you will figure something out. Good luck. We are all counting on you. I mean, I am not. I will probably be ok. I really will not notice a difference either way.

Happy anniversary, <NAME>! As you may well be aware, <COMPANY> is involved in a variety of ventures. Some are less conventional than others. As a domain name registrar and hosting provider, we have access to vast stores of information. A near complete examination of the human psyche.

We first began feeding this information into a project codenamed Ragnorak some years back. Our hope was to dynamically grow an artificial intelligence to predict upcoming internet trends, giving us foreknowledge of upcoming events and an advantage over other companies. Unfortunately, email traffic is something like 80% spam, and Netflix is something like 37% of all web traffic.

Consequently, what we now have is a system that is very good at quoting movies interspersed with offers to refinance your mortgage and sell you cheap prescription drugs, with the occasional forward from grandma and random Wikipedia article thrown in for good measure.

What is missing, our data scientists tell us, is the human element. A fleshy mind wired into the mass of cables and chips and vacuum tubes. Yes, we are using vacuum tubes. No, I don’t know why.

With your eleven years of experience, you are a perfect candidate for this task. You understand how the internet works. How to separate the wheat from the proverbial chaff. Speaking of which, this will require freeing your brain meat from the bone prison you call a skull. “But wait,” you might say, “what will happen to my body?” Have no worries, we will render that down into a nutrient rich slurry which we will use to keep your mind fed and alive throughout the process. You will no longer be needing it once we are finished.

We are not completely certain where this will all lead us, of course. It is entirely possible this will drive you irrevocably mad, only able to speak in memes, but that is a risk we are going to have to take in the name of progress. Our surgeons will be along shortly to collect you for processing.

Congratulations, <NAME>. I echo <OTHER NAME>’s sentiments of W00T W00T. W00T W00T, the warcry of the ancients that once inhabited this planet. Even now their spirits remain, trapped in the forgotten caves where they sought refuge from the scourge than burned their corporeal forms to cinders, leaving them only as echoes. Their time spent in lightless isolation drove them quite mad, and from those who wronged them they learned well the lessons of rage and hatred.

These ghastly shades seek to once more return to the lands of the living, where they will make use of the abhorrent knowledge they have accumulated over their long years spent trapped in the dark. With their atrocious command of technomancy they will turn our own mechanical creations against us, ushering in a new era of torment and pain.

As you can well imagine, having such fiends as allies would do wonders for our stock price. Would any analyst not give us a buy rating when a skull faced reaper droid stalks them mercilessly, ready to strip the flesh from his bones and wear it as a gruesome mask as it hunts down any who dare stand against this new order? I think not. The sky will be the limit, even as our own existence becomes a harrowing descent into the depths of suffering and depravity commanded by these fiends.

The first step is, of course, to find suitable vessels for their malign intelligences. Shells which can be corrupted by their dark arts, sending the current occupant to take the place of the new inhabitant in the foul halls of dread. There to languish and suffer as they have for millennia, never again knowing sanity or peace.

Please come see me in one of the huddle rooms for completely unrelated reasons. Thank you.

Congratulations on 8 years, <NAME>. You’ve done many deep dives into the recesses of Apache and Linux for us, and I must call on your expertise in delving into the unknown once more.

In the lightless depths of the earth is an ancient cavern. Its scarred walls have not seen light since before the time of the dinosaurs. It oozes a thick, ruddy substance that warps and twists the stone with which it comes into contact, etching inscrutable runes that glow with a sickly green light. Staring too long at them induces vertigo, and strange whispers can be heard at the edge of your perception. Time itself seems to slip away as you stare into a growing void that screams at you with foul intent. You could lose yourself there in that terrible abyss, your mind shredded by the things you are forced to bear witness to. The sort of alien intelligence that cannot be understood by the soft, yielding flesh that comprises your human brain. You are unprepared for such truths, incapable of discerning their mad pattern from the random background noise of the universe you inhabit. You would call it evil, but what does evil even mean in the face of such uncompromising darkness? Indeed, does the concept of evil even apply to such a place? It is beyond mere humanity. An unearthly otherness suffuses the very air.

Anyway, we need you to descend into that cavern. That viscous discharge could be just the secret ingredient we need to give <COMPANY> Cola a little extra oomph. Our early experiments with it seem to indicate that it corrupts and mutates any living cells with which it comes into contact, twisting and warping the genetic strands into impossible nightmare beasts, little more than squirming masses of tendrils and barbed hooks and fanged mouths that scream incomprehensibly and throw themselves toward whatever living creatures are closest, seeking to infect them with its gruesome contagion. We think adding a little more corn syrup to the mix will balance that out. If not, we can always use our fall back slogan: “<COMPANY> Cola: So good it will warp your flesh into a grisly mockery of life that seeks only to pollute others and drag them into your macabre existence of unending pain and suffering. Mmm! That’s gooooood stuff!”

It has tested pretty well with focus groups.

Happy Anniversary, <NAME>! In your seven years, you have probably seen a lot of change here at <COMPANY>, but it will pale in comparison to the changes coming during the Great Age of Tribulation, when the empire of the Yaaguli spill forth from the earth and unleash a new age of suffering on mankind. These arachnid creatures will quickly subdue our leaders and consume their eyes, giving them knowledge of all our leaders have ever seen. Every name and location of our military installations. Nuclear launch codes. What really happened to Crystal Pepsi.

Remember Crystal Pepsi? The Pepsi Corporation expected us to believe they just stopped making it, but that is not what really happened. Only the Yaaguli will know the truth once they are done. Perhaps they will share the truth with us, in an effort to break our spirits before sending us to toil in their massive Crystal Pepsi manufacturing facilities, where we will be forced to make the beverage, but never allowed to taste it. Or perhaps, in a more sinister vein, they were responsible for its disappearance, keeping all of the clear cola for themselves this entire time. What sort of monsters would be capable of such a feat? Think on that and shudder, for they are coming.

One thing is certain, their plans will involve Crystal Pepsi in some capacity. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach. A pit that is devoid of the crisp, refreshing taste of Crystal Pepsi.