Arijati Susilo presented the document on a video call with Stephanie. So this was the guy that Val claimed they wouldn't like, and that was true. A representative of the Department of Commerce, he uttered one-word responses and seldom blinked. Having a call with that guy made Stephanie feel like facing a high brick wall she couldn't climb to reach the destination behind it.
Arijati's shiny forehead and crown of the head intimidated her from crafting sentences to subtly push her intentions, but his pallid complexion finished the job to tick her uneasy. If they had met in a more friendly and not a work situation, she might suggest that he should get his dosage of the sun more often. Doing yoga or sunbathing was not prohibited whatsoever.
His screen seemed stuck at the page displaying the clauses of this appendix highlighting the reasons for certifying the companies as a hundred per cent Immune workplace. Beside the screen, a smaller thumbnail still displayed Arijati talking in clipped intonations, getting his point across.
"So, your business shouldn't have interfered with the politically exposed persons, you know this, yeah?"
Stephanie nodded.
"The consequence is your company must retake the certification to obtain the licence renewal in probationary period."
Probationary period??
How laughable was that, considering Prattle was the pioneer of the entire Companionship business and now they had to retake all the mandatory steps in order to keep the operating licence?
She picked her tone and words vigilantly. It clung to her like a wet cloth, this habit of fearing for offending someone, be it her clients or the government. So much for giving independent opinions nowadays. "About that, Sir, which documents should we resend, or what assessments should we retake?"
The licence was mainly about registering all the employees under Prattle and to obtain an official ID card of Companions. A long time ago she suspected that it was to actually gauge how many
They could just resend them over email or file sharing service, she thought.
The G-man grinned unnaturally, like a public figure who had multiple layers of masks to pick on. In this session with Stephanie, he donned the official smile mask. "Unfortunately, you can't. Who knows that the employees of a company, obviously not yours, Ms Stephanie, might have falsified their documents, so we unknowingly have Protected people on the loose acting as Companions?"
He trampled on, "We don't want to take that risk. Yes, we do spot checks now and then, but without a proper procedure, we don't have anything to rely on. We have responsibilities to all the people in the world, not only in our country, to keep the Protected safe. That's why we don't disregard the licence renewal as just formalities."
The shiny forehead bobbed assuringly. "This would make it fair for everyone. We eliminate the risk of having Protected people work as Companions—or any other supposedly Immune workers— in the light of day, and you shed one extra step of recruiting people, making it easier for you all."
At the cost of no new-hire at all, if they would be reallocated elsewhere, she thought.
Gema, Val, and her discussed before that the punishment would benefit the government, especially the Commerce team. "When the population dropped to only a quarter, and only a fifth of it can work outside, while the natural resources stay the same, we are competing for the workforce. The idea that we can split the workforce in the supply depots and our business is impossible, so the Department of Commerce wants the majority of Immune to work full-time for them, not us. Think about this, S. What was the real problem of providing Companionship service to the Council? Nothing! They're cherry-picking so there are more people working on their side, not ours."
Yeah, it wasn't about the violation, man. She had a problem with the thinning pool of talents which she shared with other companies, and these people wanted to snatch them away.
"May we pay a lower administration fee? We don't have that much money, honestly."
"How so?"
"Only a fraction of the client's pay comes into our company's pocket. That's for the operational and fixed costs. The rest is received by the Companion, which explains why I'm still visiting clients, too."
He jutted his chin. "That's only fair. But I don't see a way to cut down the cost here. We have to maintain the system, too, you know."
"And it can't be paid in instalments?"
"No. We don't have the means to track it. We're on limited resources, too."
"Our service is still needed by isolated people."
"I believe human interaction is important, but not essential."
Being faced with such an argument, Stephanie pulled her ace card.
"The Happiness Index has been aligned with the Department of Wellbeing." The Happiness Index was one of the key metrics measured by the regional Council and Unified Global Government for sustainability, despite being merely lip service.
At the mention of this index, Arijati scrunched his nose like being in faint disgust. Stephanie could still notice it on the fast internet connection.
Arijati looked considering another solution.
"I see," he said after a pause. "So, you can still operate, of course. But you do jobs no other companies would take."
"Such as?" she asked with her heart drumming loudly in her ears.
He surely took time to add a flair of dramatic effect before replying. Locking eyes with her, he said, "Providing Companions for reintegrating the former inmates."
What the everloving—? She thought quickly. It wasn't a nasty task. If anything, she would help. Her blood boiled for another reason. His disgust of the Wellbeing folks, his blatant disapproval of former prisoners' reintroducing needs . . .
And this person was only one of the similarly minded people being in charge of this country, if not the world. She felt dizzy, watching her reality being unmade and remade, the shift in her understanding of the mechanics of the world being slotted forcefully in the puzzle of her decisions. She remembered Damar, Lila's husband, with his own worldview and controlling manner.
She was always the one who took the wrong steps all along. Starting from neglecting the feature development, to somehow getting the business with a no-no person, and then this.
"Or we terminate your business, Ma'am," he added with a tone of finality, dismissing the chain reaction of expression flashed on his caller's face.
~*~
She immediately called for an emergency meeting with Val, Gema, and Annisa.
Annisa was their in-house psychologist. She used to be a corporate one, but after everything that happened, she tapped into whatever her clients needed.
She explained the deal and asked for their opinions. All three of them agreed to help her. Since she acknowledged it was her mistake as a start, she wanted to be the one who handled this client.
Stephanie shot a sure look across to Gema, nodding to him, "Let's start the preparation tomorrow."
She bore a steely gaze for Annisa, "As for the bargain, I need your expertise here. I don't know how to communicate, the dos and don'ts of the reintegration into society. I don't want this job to go pear-shaped. Firstly, for the ex-prisoners themselves. Secondly, we want to look good for the Commerce folks. Heaven knows what next challenges he might hurl at us if we botch this."
Annisa thumbed up on her screen. "I'll send you materials and brief you sometime this week. Do you have an upcoming date with the first ex-prisoner?"
Stephanie sent her a calendar invite, a week before the date with the first prisoner to do a mock session with Annisa.
The lady tucked away a strand of hair beneath her ear after seeing the date. "It's too soon. It's gonna be a crash course. You're sure you wanna do this?"
"I feel obliged."
"After you, I'll help the next prisoner, if any," said Gema. Val parroted.
Stephanie beamed. Together, we're in this together.
Only, this time nobody stood her up last minute.
~*~
The next night, the blinking light in Stephanie's bedroom triggered her migraine again. She turned it off most of the time, relying solely on the sunlight mottled by the lace curtain. At night, she switched on the bedside lamp, its yellowish light poorly illuminating that 2x3 room. But tonight, she found herself wanting some stable source of light to read the briefing materials sent by Annisa about her first non-negotiable task with the ex-prisoner.
She moved to her living room sofa, planted her laptop there. Ten minutes later, a mason jar of hot tea lent its warmth to her huddling figure. She dialled Annisa's number at 10 pm.
That girl stayed awake quite late these days, mentioning she was catching up with old Korean dramas she hadn't had the chance to binge-watch when she was still a corporate HR.
"You will get there," Annisa's gentle voice reassured her colleague.
"I don't know which topics are suitable for our very first conversation. It's . . . Probably I've been complacent in this job, my brain follows a template now."
"Maybe. Each companionship player has their own style of communication approach. Us and Vision, us and Wish, and so on. Some are specialised in caretaking, too. We provide more appointments with the same package rate. But the typical clients make it a problem for us when a new persona is introduced."
Stephanie pinched at her chin. "But the instruction email only says about me to escort him to the assigned accommodation. And to explain the homecoming package. Homecoming, huh? He's gonna even be sent to a new place, how is this considered a homecoming?"
A soft husky voice of a male singer floated from Annisa's end. It seemed like she put on her bluetooth speaker, so Stephanie couldn't hear the echo every time Annisa said something.
Take my love away
Bring it everywhere you go
Make it your friend, your most beloved friend
Here I do
Keep loving you in my life
Until the time
Lets us meet again
Stephanie hummed the final notes despite not quite muttering the correct lyrics.
"Haven't heard this song for so long. It was from the 2010s," she commented.
"Yeah. Feeling nostalgic these days. The series I watched was from that era. I was still a college student back then."
"Who would have thought we're like this today . . ."
"Yeah, who would."
She began to chuckle. "This playlist is from my old laptop. From a CD my ex-boyfriend burnt for my twentieth birthday. There were no streaming services, so giving your crush a CD of the songs you wanted them to hear was a common practice. It was only nine, twelve, songs at max per CD. But the message, and the CD sticker . . . Gosh, I wonder what becomes of him now."
Melancholy dripped from her words, mind fleeting to the olden days. Perhaps, that was why she romanticised the past. But what good was it to embellish the memories and view them from rose-tinted glasses? Mistakes occurred, rectified, and people moved on. A simpler time, a nostalgic feeling of the dream escaping from the grip once we wake up.
"I haven't been in touch with my classmates. Where are they now, are those guys we were in the study group still alive . . . We exchanged notes and past years' exam questions." Stephanie let her mind run free to collect the breadcrumbs of the buried old times.
"Did you see someone?"
"No. I was pressed for time. I received a scholarship and had to graduate early because of the limited semester quota."
"What did you take, sorry I forgot it."
"Accounting. Did you still see him after graduating? I think it's too late to ask it in the present tense." The song had changed into something else sung by a mellow female voice. What a way to spend the last hours of the day.
Annisa shook her head, flashing her pearly white teeth smile on the camera. "A young love like that, how could it withstand the test of time? Some of my friends did marry their college sweethearts. Maybe I'm too hardened, too pragmatic, but I didn't see any reason to maintain it back then."
"I was dating someone a couple of years back. But it didn't work. And here I am," Stephanie replied with the same relaxed tone. A mess, she recalled. But Annisa didn't need to know.
"But it must be nice. That light, delightful feelings when your love is reciprocated."
"Huh? Even if I have a one-sided crush on someone, I don't sing On My Own on repeat." A peal of laughter bubbled up from her throat.
Annisa smiled. "But it may change now."
"Now?"
"Now that we're the only remaining people here. Twenty-five per cent. I wonder how a one-sided love must feel in the times like this. Knowing that this might be the end of the world, but you still can't have the person you want, you need."
Stephanie wasn't stupid. She sensed a wary emotion trapped behind Annisa's words. "Are you . . . in such a situation?"
Annisa's eyes shut closed for a moment, then opened to reveal a bright pair of pupils, so dark and intense across the screen. A grin decorated her pretty face. "Fortunately, I'm not. Can't imagine how heartbroken the person must be when fate is still against them even when it spares them from this pandemic."
"Oh." So it was like this, then. Stephanie couldn't afford it if her closest colleagues were in trouble. They only had each other in this trying time. "If anything, I'm all ears, too. Don't forget that I'm always a Companion first, at your beck and call."
"Even a Companion might not be able to cure a heartache." A sombre feeling seeped across the internet connection, suffusing Stephanie's room with a strange suspicion.
What heartache could it be? But Stephanie didn't continue her thought. If her in-house consultant's reticence took precedence, she would let it be. So they steered back to the matter at hand.
They chatted for another half an hour about the details. What to say and not to say, what kind of gestures or wording she should use, and such. By the time one of them pressed End Call, it was already past midnight. The next day, Stephanie had to pick her new guy up.