During the video calls like this, she remembered her old colleagues from the old company. She used to have almost twenty people in one team alone, in finance back then before time. Surrounded by many people, it felt encouraging to be on the same boat together. Relentless deadlines and difficult decks came to their plates every single day. But the esprit de corps made the routine bearable.
Now handling Prattle, she didn't feel the office job changed. Only until the news outlets started categorising them based on the physical or nonphysical tasks carried out during the job, she felt at ease. Companions were useless, logistic workers weren't. The black and white dichotomy made her dizzy every time.
All the condescending talks actually paled in comparison with the real problem: money. That was the discussion topic they had on this video call one afternoon.
"How do we get more clients, aargghh!" Gema mussed up his hair, getting frustrated at the root problem. He recruited more Companions in stealth mode, afraid of competing directly against the government in regard to the talent pools.
Val shrugged. "Either lowering the subscription fee or we do a paid promotion."
Stephanie jumped in, "People don't use social media anymore, I've told you this. We did the survey. We can't rely on influencers. It's the vine now. People hear by word of mouth and register to services on impulse."
He huffed. "Alright, then. Recruiting should be moderated if that's what you want, we can't have more Companions than clients, more supply than demand. How are we still doing this, by the way? Why is forecasting necessary?"
She looked down. "I don't have a better answer other than everyone trying to hold onto practices from the past with their grubby hands. This is how we used to do business. So we keep doing this. A denial," she chuckled.
'And stay normal' left unspoken. They both knew 'normal' had become a daydream. A forbidden concept like sovereignty to the colonies or progress to the socialists. Their business was not normal.
Val leaned back on the chair, his tan face gleaming with curiosity. "So what do you want to ask? We've not scheduled a debrief until next week. And Gema, you're in Jakarta, right?"
"Yeah, I'm in Jakarta now. Gosh, it's increasingly difficult now that the Companions are now put in pending. The thing is, once you only keep them in view, they'll start considering other jobs like in the logistic hub. I can't preserve them forever."
The other two mulled over Gema's predicament, then Stephanie spoke up, "I started to consider the partnership proposal from Visit."
Val piped in after slurping his coffee. "Visit is similar to us, right? But they don't have a specific app. They work on messaging services and chatbots. Their team are deployed to cater to mainly the elderly and those needing assistance," Val recited the facts quickly, his fingertips dragged across the dusty surface of his desk.
She thumbed up. "You've done your research. Yep, that's because the co-founders were in-house nurses and caretakers. They've been trained and now they extend the training to their new joiners. Should we partner with them, I'll ask them to train us and in return, we also coach them on mundane topics."
"That's a good point, Steph. We're green in that area, and people start thinking we're tailored for chitchats and gossiping. Why are we still being stereotyped while talking and simply having another human being nearby is a luxury now? I want those internet trolls to understand that we're built as social beings before individualistic culture stormed in."
They understood but were still in denial. It had been three years, and how the countries were managed showed that the focus was on survival. Initiatives like Companionship were merely nice-to-haves.
"Hey, what about that new friend of yours? Mark? Marcus?" Gema asked.
"Mark." She then proceeded to talk about him briefly. After Mark's call that evening, she kept pondering the idea in her head about the domestic violence to her clients.
"Do you guys know that staying behind closed doors might hide the ugly truth of domestic violence?" She tossed the first ball, then gave an explanation.
"So, clients in difficult households," she steered them away from more depressing reality and back to the task at hand.
Val scratched his chin, angling his head so that the sunlight from the floor-to-ceiling window teased at his jet black hair. "I read your monthly report. From the remarks of our team, there were like sixty per cent of clients feeling stuck in their households, surprisingly not a hundred per cent, though. But abusive, or potentially abusive relationships couldn't be detected from five one-hour sessions only, S."
They weren't trained in relationship counselling. A Companion was at most a paid friend and at least an escort without the sexual offerings.
"We can't just ask people to keep it together, alright? Let's schedule a call with Annisa to see what she thinks about our role here."
Val fished a transparent tumbler out of his messenger bag. After taking a sip, he screwed the cap back and stared at the water inside. "Maybe the best way to investigate is to listen more."
"Bottled-up emotions are like a river blocked in its natural path to the sea," he added. Somehow, an image of a beaver with its dam popped up in Stephanie's mind.
"A river must be reunited with its ocean, like two long lost lovers. The more blockage they face, the more explosive the rendezvous would be. So I think, and I convey it to my clients, that my job there is to unblock the pathways. More often than not, a pregnant silence will open the floodgates."
Stephanie got him. The silence was the loudest among all voices. The voices of the repressed. The yells of the unspoken.
"Can't you believe how deep the problem is? Sweeping the dissatisfaction under the rug like this." Her stomach twisted when a plausible thought entailed. "Domestic violence cases. Abusive relationships. I'm sorry I've been too selfish, didn't look at it until I sensed something wrong myself." She wiped her hands on her face.
Val gave her a forlorn look. "Sometimes doing our job means playing Twister with all your limbs. You try to cover everything just enough. Spider diagrams."
Her mind reeled in the possible scenarios of failing to grasp the real issues. Her eyelids pressed hard. "Because one hour flies by when the Companion walks the family dogs."
Val almost choked on his drink. "Are there still people having pets?" He knew everyone was doing odd jobs in each session, but never did it cross his mind that the task also included furry babies.
"Val," her gaze pierced him, "in case you don't know, the virus only kills people."
"But without anyone to take care of them, the animals would just die."
She shuddered. "Those who still have owners, they can survive."
His nails ran across his scalp, causing his hair stuck in every direction. "You just don't know the trauma I had to suffer from when I went to visit a client earlier last year, totally unassuming, but we ended up shoving the carcasses—plural—of the neighbour's dogs. The first responders had a few body bags out days before but didn't save the dogs. To their defence, the pooches were not found. But I guess the team were in such a hurry that they missed opening the back gate to let the dogs roam free on the streets. You know, much better than cannibalising each other."
The fallen silence raised the bile from her stomach. Last year, when the bodies still piled up, when volunteers in hazmat suits still updated the body counts on the boards placed strategically in each county daily—nowadays weekly, she wanted to throw up, like how Bobo threw up all over the floor before he died. Stupid, incompetent, reckless. How could you leave him at the doggy daycare, a place he'd never been, just so you could attend the tech conference in Bali for your personal goals? She could practically her Ex yelling at her.
"I'm sorry . . .," her subconscious responded in the physical world.
"Pardon?" Val frowned.
Stephanie shook her head, firming her grip on her pen. "Nothing. Yeah, I'm sorry, I just can't imagine the total casualties. The indirect ones of this pandemic. Of this apocalypse."
She shoved the memory deeper to the far end of her recollection drawer as if disciplining a misbehaving child. There she stored the stories about the dog away—their dog, a man, and the clock of the past.
A home reeked of the putrid smell of his betrayals, the Ex's, staunching the already mouldy air.
No no no, not today, not at the mention of dead dogs.
Seek relief, be forgiving. Breathing dank air in the room, she was back to the present, at the Seroja meeting room, sitting with Val who was typing at his laptop now, probably transferring the whiteboard numbers into a spreadsheet.
"It's time to start doing this companionship more properly. If Den Haag starts saying things like rebuilding for the new future, so should we be in our capacity to support this."
"Yeah, another politically correct statement. Dismissing the fact that their local Councils are also understaffed. You sound like you haven't heard last week's Lawless rebellion being left up."
"They were let up because the black choppers and black drones did take care of them. Sorry, but, that's not our concern now," she hissed, effectively silencing him. Some people could only do so much. Moping over the state of the world came out less useful than actually acting in smaller pieces within their responsibilities.
"In any case, I'll schedule you guys to meet up with Mark tomorrow. Maybe Department of Commerce wants to assign more ex-inmates to us, maybe our punishment isn't done yet, we haven't heard anymore from them."
Hearing this coming out from her own mouth, Stephanie felt uneasy. Why was transporting Mark considered as a punishment? What was actually behind the agreement?
She also suspected the other two Prattle leaders let their mind wander to the same question, but she kept her mouth shut.
~*~
Stephanie visited Mark at his hotel room and together they sat facing Stephanie's laptop to start the video call with Gema and Val. She was still unclear whether she was allowed to take Mark to anywhere, so calling them online was the most suitable option now.
Mark's impression towards the guys were astute.
For Val, he had ambitions and might do something out of the blue to fulfill his curiosity.
For Gema, he was less of a system and business person than Stephanie, not well-versed in analytical projection like Val, but had years of product development experience under his belt.
"Product person. Gotta do whatever we've gotta do to keep the business running," Gema said proudly when Mark asked if he did more recruiting than solving tech problems. Consequently, he handled fewer clients than other Companions even today, but it didn't impair his sharp sense to map out the problems. Not that their clientele grew so much, anyway.
"So, about the domestic violence case . . .," Stephanie started.
"Wait, before we start, don't you think it's the same as prying into people's private matters?" Gema asked.
"Consider this as a side project. We help people for the semblance of human relationship, but if they need more help, we can actually reach deeper, right? Becoming the extension of what Department of Wellbeing can't cover," Val explained.
"That's right. New Police obviously don't have bandwidth to handle these cases."
After a pregnant silence, Mark spoke, "So, we'll start this project?"