"Al-Ra'ees Al-Khalidi, we can't keep using the economic crunch as an excuse for downsizing or the company will face major delays in important projects," Youssef Al-Mutairi said. He was a tall, distinguished looking middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, dressed in a white thobe and red-checkered ghutra.
(Ed note: Al-Ra'ees roughly translates to "president", Al-Khalidi is a Saudi Arabian surname, and the thobe and ghutra are traditional Saudi apparel. It's the ankle-length white robe [thobe] and the headscarf [ghutra] that you see them wear on television or in movies. Ghutras are secured to people's heads by a black cord called an agal.)
"How old will you be this year?" Suleiman Al-Khalidi asked. It was a weird deflection of the issue Youssef had raised.
Suleiman was a trust fund baby that got parachuted into a leadership position far too young. He was the very definition of the phrase "hire them while they're young enough to believe they know everything" and felt that he could take his company to new heights by getting rid of all the dead weight. And to him, "dead weight" was synonymous with "old", so he had been purging his company since taking over.
"Forty-two, Al-Ra'ees," Youssef politely replied, despite not seeing the correlation between his age and the issue their company was facing.
"Do you want to remain in your position until you retire?" the much younger man passive-aggressively asked.
Youssef remained silent, eyeing his boss and refraining from comment.
"You think you're smarter than me? Eh? You think I didn't think of that myself? Just do what I fucking tell you to do or pack your shit and get out!" the boss yelled. He had his head tilted so far back to look down on Youssef that the tip of his nose was practically pointing at the ceiling tiles in his office.
Youssef sighed in disappointment and adjusted his glasses, then said, "Al-Ra'ees, firing all of your most experienced employees because you count them as dead weight is going to catastrophically backfire on you. I understand that you think you can bring in younger, more hot-blooded employees and take advantage of them by forcing them to work twice as long for half the pay by exploiting the time dilation in VR, but do you really think the empire is dumb enough to miss that obvious loophole? What do you think will happen when they finally take action?"
"What?" Suleiman asked, almost surprised that an ambitionless wallflower like Youssef had somehow found the unmitigated gall to talk back to him. The older man had been in middle management and avoided attracting attention for years, despite graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in business before going further and getting an MBA from Harvard.
"Despite the short period since the empire's founding, it's already been made very clear that they're incredibly fast to discover problems and just as fast at nipping them in the bud. Currently, they've got bigger fish to fry-terrorist attacks, the mass blessing, and intense recruiting drives are among those issues. But that doesn't mean they aren't monitoring the situation.... Sooner or later, they WILL take action, and if their all-too-short history is anything to go by, that action will be swift, decisive, and ruthless," Youssef said, conviction obvious in his voice. He was absolutely positive that everything coming from his mouth was the unvarnished truth.
He had been working in his current company for almost twenty years to repay the favor of Suleiman's father sending him to prestigious schools after discovering his quick, facile mind as a young boy in an orphanage. It wasn't until he realized that, after giving birth to a biological son-Suleiman-his benefactor had marginalized him and merely gone through the motions as an adoptive father. Thus, after graduating from his MBA program, he returned to Saudi Arabia and did exactly the same thing: gone through the motions.
And now he felt like he had repaid his debt, so he would take this opportunity to speak truth to power and let the chips fall where they may.
"You shitstain! You think I won't fire you just because my father took pity on you once? You think you can still tell me what to do? Who's the fucking boss here, you?" Suleiman sneered, casting an arrogant gaze at Youssef from the top of his head down to the hem of his thobe. "You're just a fly! So pack your shit and disappear from my sight! If I see you in ten minutes, I'll have security throw your useless ass out of my company!"
Youssef said nothing, just turned and left his younger "brother" in the luxurious office. A few minutes later, he carried a cardboard box with a few personal mementos in it out of the front door. It was a pitiful amount of things considering his nearly twenty years with the company, but he was a minimalist to begin with and everything he needed at work had been provided to him by the company anyway.
"What am I supposed to tell Samira?" he mumbled to himself after getting in his car, thinking of the upcoming awkward meeting with his family when he got home.
However, before he could think any further, his AR glasses flashed with a golden priority notification and a figure appeared directly in front of him, wearing the flashy gold, red, and black dress uniform of the Emperor's Aegis.
"Is this Youssef Al-Mutairi?" the man asked.
"Who are you and how did you force my display like that?"
"Are you Youssef Al-Mutairi?" the man repeated.
"Yes," Youssef grunted in frustration. "Now tell me how you-"
"I am Huzeyfa Thabit of the Emperor's Aegis. Please standby for extraction."
Moments later, a sleek shuttlecraft painted in white with red and gold accents rocketed from the sky and came to an abrupt stop in front of Youssef's car, silently hovering a foot and a half off the ground. A gullwing door hissed open on its side and a ramp extended to the ground before a man wearing the dress uniform of the Emperor's Aegis stepped out onto the ramp and dropped to the ground.
He walked over to Youssef's car and tapped on the window. "Mr. Al-Mutairi, your extraction vehicle has arrived. Please exit your vehicle and board the shuttle, there is little time to waste."
