They came in loud, laughing, chewing gum like it was some new Olympic sport. Kids in expensive sneakers and hoodies that probably cost more than my car. And at the head of it all was him—Reynard Cask, the billionaire tech messiah, riding in like Napoleon if Napoleon had spent more time huffing his own farts in a Chirper social media echo chamber.
I was just sitting at my desk, half a donut in one hand, trying to avoid looking at my inbox because I knew it was filled with tickets about some new payroll system that was about as functional as a one-legged horse.
Then the doors burst open, and in they came: The DOGZ Crew. That’s what they called themselves. Some crypto-obsessed teenagers he’d picked up from Raddit and a couple of tech bros who looked like they hadn’t touched grass since high school.
“Alright, gang,” Cask clapped his hands together. “We’re running this place now.”
We all just sat there blinking, chewing, staring. This was the Bureau of People Management—BPM for short. The bureaucratic swamp where federal jobs go to die in piles of paperwork and bad decisions. And this lunatic was treating it like he’d just bought a fast-food franchise and was about to change the menu to all soy-based protein slop.
My boss, Karen—yeah, real name—stormed out of her office, her face already flushed red like she was about to explode in a shower of HR compliance memos.
“What the hell is going on here?” she demanded, hands on her hips.
Reynard just smiled, a little too wide, like he knew something we didn’t.
“We’re here to make things more… efficient.” He let the word hang in the air like a bad smell. “Your hiring processes are outdated. Your benefits systems are a joke. Everything here is government slow. We’re gonna fix it.”
I felt a sick laugh bubble up in my throat but swallowed it. Fix it. These were the same geniuses who turned the internet into a screaming pit of meme stocks and conspiracy theories. Now they were going to optimize federal employment. Christ.
One of the DOGZ kids was already at my desk, fingers on my keyboard. I slapped his hand away, but he just smirked at me, like a kid who knows the teacher isn’t looking.
“We’re sending out some emails,” he said.
“What emails?” I asked, my voice flat, dead.
“All of them.”
And then it started. Messages flooding the government workforce, subject lines screaming in all caps: YOUR JOB IS AT RISK. DOGZ HAS ARRIVED. EFFICIENCY IS MANDATORY. STOP WASTING TAXPAYER MONEY.
I watched in horror as they hammered out messages filled with cryptic threats and crypto slang, interspersed with pictures of Reynard Cask’s face, digitally altered to look like some kind of ancient Roman emperor. They were telling employees they’d be fired if they didn’t start proving their “value” in real time.
In the back, Karen’s office door slammed shut. One of the DOGZ kids had her cornered, his hands on her shoulders, whispering something I couldn’t hear.
Cask stood outside the door, grinning, arms crossed, pretending not to see it.
I should’ve done something. I should’ve been a goddamn hero. But I wasn’t. I sat there. Because what do you do when the world is run by these people? When every door you knock on, every number you call, leads to another glass tower filled with more of them, each one thinking they’re smarter, better, faster, richer? There’s no stopping them. They move like a disease, infecting everything.
Karen stormed out eventually, her hair a mess, her blouse half-unbuttoned. She looked through me like I wasn’t even there, grabbed her purse, and walked out of the building without a word.
“See?” Cask said, adjusting his absurdly expensive sunglasses. “Things are already changing.”
I picked up my coat, didn’t bother clocking out. I walked through the doors, past the security guards who weren’t stopping a damn thing, past the streets filled with people who had no idea what had just happened inside. The sky had turned that dark gray that lets you know the city is about to punish you for daring to be outside.
I pulled a cigarette from my pocket, lit it, took a long drag, and watched the rain start to spit on the asphalt. The world was ending, just not all at once. Not in some big explosion. It was being eaten piece by piece by guys like Cask and his teenage army.
I flicked my cigarette into the puddle and crossed the street into a city that didn’t give a damn either way.
