As a sales guy at GlitchWorks, Inc., I’m not one to question the ins and outs of the IT department. My job is to sell our “product,” whatever that is. 

The truth is, I’m pretty sure nobody knows what we sell. The website says, “Digital Infrastructure Solutions for the Future.” Which means exactly nothing. But the checks clear, so who am I to judge? 

But curiosity got the best of me after the sixth IT hire vanished last quarter. Why was the IT department at GlitchWorks the corporate equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle? 

Today was the day I was going to find out.

I made my way down the dim hallway that led to the IT “corridor.” It was at the back of the office, behind a random, unlabeled steel door that looked more like the entrance to a janitor’s closet. 

Inside, the department was a mess of servers blinking at odd intervals, cords that seemed to slither around on their own, and empty Dorito bags tossed onto every available surface. 

“Hello?” I called, though I couldn’t see anyone. There was a strange absence of chairs, as if no one ever stayed long enough to warrant them. All that was there was an old, dusty desk covered in unlabeled keyboards that looked vaguely accusatory. 

“Randal?” came a voice from behind me. I turned to see Gary, the Head of HR, who looked suspiciously startled to see me back here. Gary was a pale guy with a habit of drinking neon-colored energy drinks. Today, he was holding a can of something called Eternal Pulse.

“Just, uh, checking out the department. You know, seeing if I can get a better grasp on what’s going on with all the turnover,” I said, feigning casualness. “Seems odd, you know? Every week there’s a new guy back here.”

Gary shifted, glancing nervously at the metal filing cabinet in the corner. It looked harmless enough, except that one of the drawers was slightly open, casting a faint glow across the floor.

“Yeah, well, IT’s complicated,” Gary said, tapping his fingers on the can. “Sometimes people just… don’t fit in. Not everyone can handle the… technical requirements of the job.”

“Technical requirements? Like fixing printers?” I scoffed. “I’ve never even seen anyone fix the printer back here. I just see more new hires, and then—poof. Gone. Like magic.”

Gary glanced at his watch and cleared his throat. “Well, I should, uh, get going. Got a meeting about the, um, security initiative.” He practically jogged out, leaving me alone with the mystery.

Not one to let things go, I walked over to the filing cabinet. The glow was definitely coming from inside. I opened the drawer a little wider, and the glow intensified, now tinged with a weird shade of green that made me slightly queasy just looking at it. 

Before I could second-guess myself, I yanked the drawer open, revealing what I can only describe as a portal—swirling and pulsing, like a green kale smoothie on crack.

And because I am, at heart, an idiot, I stuck my head in.

I was immediately pulled into what looked like the GlitchWorks IT department, but … wrong. The walls were dripping with black sludge that smelled like burnt popcorn and sadness. Random desks were piled high with discarded Ethernet cables, old 1990s CRT monitors, and thousands of those little USB dongles no one ever uses. 

At one desk sat a creature who looked vaguely humanoid but with way too many arms—six, to be exact, all typing on different keyboards simultaneously. He—or it—wore a name tag that read, “Hi, my name is Mike.” I waved awkwardly.

“Hey, uh, Mike?”

Mike turned and grinned. His teeth were disturbingly pointy.

“Yo, new guy? I’m on tech support. What do you need?” His voice was about three octaves too deep and sounded like he was gargling gravel. 

“Oh, no, no,” I said, chuckling nervously. “I’m just, uh, looking around. I’m Randal. From Sales.”

Mike’s eyes—or were they his nostrils?—widened. “Sales? Oh, man. They let one of you back here? That’s rich.” He turned to another creature who looked like a spiny octopus in a Hawaiian shirt. “Hey, Ricky! Sales is here!”

“Sales?” said Ricky, eyeing me with… was that contempt or hunger?

“What is this place?” I asked, backing up slightly, into a printer that seemed to growl at me.

“You’re in the back-end support dimension, kid,” Mike explained. “This is where the real IT work happens. You didn’t think your ordinary tech guys were just walking out, did you?”

I glanced around at the various beings shuffling through stacks of papers that looked suspiciously like tax audits.

“We get in newbies every few weeks. They think they’re coming in to fix laptops, reboot systems, the usual.” Mike shrugged. “Then they open the drawer, come through here, and poof—they’re on payroll forever.”

“Forever?” I repeated, my stomach dropping. 

“Yeah, it’s great,” said Mike. “Amazing benefits. Can’t beat eternal job security, if you know what I mean. You don’t quit; you just… evolve.”

“Evolve?”

Suddenly, Ricky leaned in, sniffing the air around me. “Are you sure you’re just Sales?”

“Positive!” I said, holding up my ID badge. “Randal from Sales. Just, you know, checking out the turnover rates.” 

Ricky and Mike exchanged glances, then burst into laughter, a deep, unsettling sound that echoed through the dimension. 

“Oh, they’ll be seeing you again,” Ricky chuckled, slapping me on the back. “One day, you’ll find yourself drawn here… like all of us.” 

Before I could protest, I felt a shove from behind, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled back in the regular IT department, staring up at the flickering fluorescent lights.

Gary stood above me, sipping his energy drink. “You saw the filing cabinet, didn’t you?” he asked, more annoyed than surprised.

“Yep.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Happens to all the curious ones.” He helped me to my feet and straightened my tie. “But hey, at least now you know why the turnover’s so high. And why we never seem to run out of Doritos.” 

As he walked me out of the IT corridor, he added, “By the way, if you hear a soft humming in the middle of the night, or feel a weird urge to reorganize your Ethernet cables, ignore it. It’ll pass.”

And as I walked back to my desk, I wondered if it really would—or if I’d already gone too far.

The End