The Incentive Program

In the break room of Synergetic Solutions LLC, where the coffee machine wheezed like a dying asthmatic and the motivational posters peeled at the edges like sunburnt skin, Terry from Accounts Receivable found the memo.

It was pinned to the corkboard, right between the "Hang in There!" kitten and a sign-up sheet for Karen's baby shower that nobody had touched in three months.

The memo was printed on cheap, greyish paper that smelled faintly of monotony, and the font was Comic Sans, because HR thought it made bad news feel "friendlier."

Subject: New Employee Incentive Program!!! it read, with three exclamation points, like a middle manager trying too hard at karaoke. Starting Monday, all employees achieving 110% of their quarterly KPIs will be eligible for our EXCITING new perk: IMMORTALITY. Below that, in smaller print: Terms and conditions apply. See HR for details. Synergetic Solutions LLC is an equal opportunity employer and reserves the right to terminate this program, or you, at any time.

Terry blinked. He sipped his coffee, and reread it. Immortality? Like, forever forever?

He pictured himself, at 87, still hunched over spreadsheets, muttering about pivot tables while his grandkids forgot his name.

Then he pictured the alternative, hitting 110% of his KPIs. Last quarter, he'd barely scraped 82%, and that was with creative accounting on the expense reports. He'd need to process invoices at a rate that violated the laws of physics, or at least carpal tunnel syndrome.

By noon, the office was buzzing.

Cheryl from Marketing, who wore yoga pants ironically, was already scheming. "I'm gonna A/B test my soul," she said, popping a kale chip. "If I hit 110%, I'll live forever. If I don't, I'll just die trying and trendy."

Meanwhile, Dave from IT, pale, twitchy Dave, who smelled like Monster Energy and headless chicken, was muttering about "gaming the system." He'd written a script to auto-generate help-desk tickets, then auto-resolve them, boosting his metrics overnight. "Immortality's just a numbers game," he said, eyes gleaming like a man who'd seen the edge of the abyss and brought snacks.

The first casualty came Tuesday.

Linda from Customer Service, a woman with a laugh like a hyena and a desk cluttered with cat figurines, hit 112% of her call quota. She strutted into the break room, smug as a peacock, only to clutch her chest mid-brag and collapse into the vending machine.

The coroner, some guy in a Synergetic Solutions polo, called it "spontaneous organ optimization." The memo hadn't mentioned that immortality came with a factory reset: new lungs, new heart, new everything, all at once. Linda 2.0 emerged from the supply closet an hour later, hair glossier, skin tighter, voice a pitch higher. "I feel amazing," she chirped, then asked where her cats were. Nobody had the heart to tell her she'd forgotten them entirely.

By Friday, the office was a war zone of ambition and body horror.

Cheryl hit 110% and grew an extra thumb, which she used to type faster.

Dave's script crashed the server, but not before he clocked 115%; his teeth fell out and regrew as perfect, blinding veneers.

Terry, still at 89%, watched in quiet terror as his coworkers morphed into shiny, uncanny versions of themselves, eternal, yes, but wrong.

The break room smelled like formaldehyde and ambition now, the coffee machine drowned out by the sounds of new vocal cords reciting corporate mantras.

At the weekly stand-up, the CEO, a man named Brad with a jawline like a PowerPoint slide, beamed via Zoom. "This is what Synergy looks like, folks! You're no longer just employees, you're assets now, forever!"

The camera panned to Linda 2.0, who waved with a hand that didn't bend quite right.

Terry glanced at his inbox: 47 unread emails, a KPI dashboard blinking red. He could push harder, chase the numbers, become something eternal and awful. Or he could stay human, frail, and temporary, free to quit, free to die.

He walked out.

Behind him, the office glowed with the light of a thousand perfect smiles, and the air thrummed with the sound of something not quite alive anymore.