Jack watched Mr. Smith depart the conference room. He wanted to shout back that his name wasn’t “One Sixty One”, but he had already made enough of a scene today.
Dale poked his head in the doorway. His coworker couldn’t help but stifle a bit of a smile. The little punk was going to be the new head of Beast Resources!
“Come on, let’s get you down to orientation,” he said. His voice was polite and professional and didn’t betray a hint of amusement.
“Do we have to? Come on, seriously. Just find a windowless room for me to work out of for a week or something.” Jack sighed. He followed after Dale despite himself.
“Sorry, boss’s orders,” Dale gestured to the small group of partially-transformed beast men down the hall. “Just get in line with the rest.”
“But I’m not just some new donkey,“ Jack huffed.
“I know, I know,” Dale cut him off. “Don’t worry, I’ll put your contract in the pile to get turned back during the next renewal day.”
“Haw?” Jack rubbed his neck. He felt like he needed a haircut. His mane would be coming in before he knew it. “That’s next week, my DNA won’t have stabilized by then.”
“Oh,” Dale pondered this. “I’ll just put it in the pile for the one after that.”
“Haw!?” Jack’s eyes went wide. They only did those monthly! “I’m not being a donkey for a whole month!”
“You’re right, you’re being a donkey for a bit longer than that.” Dale grinned. “I’m not giving you special treatment One Sixty One. Now come on.”
“Come on, why not!?” Jack protested.
Donkey Thirty Six tugged on his shirt sleeve. “Excuse me, we need to get going now.”
Gah! Donkeys were strong! It had been a while since someone was literally dragged to orientation, but Thirty Six could do it if he wanted to.
Jack pulled his arm back. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
“This won’t take too long,” Thirty Six gave him a bucktooth grin. “Seriously, you’re going to love working for Paper Corp.”
What the- Jack gave Thirty Six a curious look as the group shuffled down to the basement. Did the donkey seriously not recognize him? He wasn’t even calling him ‘sir’ anymore. Was he just another new recruit in the eyes of the company’s beast men? Only One Seventeen was giving him a second look.
The orientation was humiliating. All of Jack’s personal belongings got catalogued in a large ziplock bag with his number on it. House keys, smartphone, shirt, pants, boxers, everything was there. Hopefully Dale wouldn’t liquidate his house in just a month. Hmm, was his car parked somewhere it could sit for a while?
Jack tuned out most of the onboarding presentation. He’d given it dozens of times! He was just waiting for his jumpsuit. His identical gray tail friendly jumpsuit. Haw! This was the worst!
“I already knew all that...” Jack grumbled. He stood there awkwardly with his hands between his legs. Most of the new donkeys were doing the same thing. A few of them just casually had their hands at their sides though. Either they didn’t have any modesty already, or were a bit further along in their changes than Jack was.
Haw! How far would Jack’s changes go in a month? He knew he’d physically be a donkey man. But mentally? He tried not to let his eyes linger on the few exposed bits of nudity dangling out in the open. He knew what these animals got up to on their downtime. Was that going to be him by the end of his contract?
“Thank you for being patient,” Dale grinned.
“There’s just one last step before you get you dressed,” Dale gestured over towards- Oh shit. The tagging machine. Jack had forgotten about this.
Over in the corner of the room was something they’d gotten surplus out of a tattoo shop in town. An old industrial ear piercing machine. Jack was about to get tagged like a common farm animal!
Jack’s ears had already fully shifted into a large pair of donkey ears. He stood in line with the rest and heard the startled brays as the plastic was crimped onto the new recruits. It didn’t take a genius to pick up on the string of expletives in their brays.
Dale dangled a plastic tag in the air, “Come on One Sixty One, you’re up.” He wasn’t hiding his smile now. “Company policy.”
“Can you please make an exception? Come on, everyone knows it’s me,” Jack tried to reason with him.
“For another few days maybe,” Dale got Jack’s tag loaded up. “Just hold still One Sixty One. This won’t hurt a-“ HAW! Sweet mother of donkey! Jack knew it was coming but it still hurt like a motherhawer! “-bit.”
“Asshole...!” Jack swore under his breath. He reflexively reached up and rubbed the sore spot on his ear.
“What was that?” Dale narrowed his eyes.
“Uh- N-nothing sir!” Jack stood up a bit straighter.
“That’s what I thought,” Dale pointed to a space on the floor beside him. “Please stand there until I finish with the rest One Sixty One.”
“Uh- Yessir.” Jack shuffled over a bit. Yes...
Oh man, he was calling Dale sir already! Haw!
It took Jack a minute to realize he had been given a different order than the rest. Dale dismissed the new donkeys and allowed their new supervisors to get them outfitted. They knew where all the fresh jumpsuits were anyways.
“I figure you won’t learn much from their orientation. Mr. Know It All,” Dale laughed to himself. He watched the other beast men walk off before turning and heading in the other direction. Dale lead Jack over to... the break room area?
“Sit,” he said. Jack quickly plopped down on the sofa. Dale picked up one of the company’s VR headsets. “Just because you already know everything doesn’t mean that you can’t use some good ol’ fashioned corporate training though. Let’s see if you still have that lip on you after this.”
“What!? Dale!” Jack’s eyes went wide. “It’s only a month! I don’t need corporate training!”
“You wanted some special treatment, right?” Dale tapped a few buttons on the headset. “I’m loading up every course at once. You always tell me I should get all that pesky compliance trainings knocked out in one go, right?”
“Haw!? It’s not training, it’s brainwashing!” Jack brayed. He tried to struggle, but his attempts were halfhearted as Dale lowered the headset down over his head.
His arms lowered and his body went limp on the sofa. Jack’s mind was already drifting off to the corporate training’s digital farm-scape.
“Finally, some peace and quiet,” Dale laughed.
That should keep him occupied for a few hours. Hopefully he’d be less grouchy when he came out of there.
Dale headed over to some nearby filing cabinets. Despite the day’s events, there was still paperwork to process. He got out a stack of papers and proceeded to document the new beasts they had acquired.
Each filing cabinet was associated with the donkey’s contract renewal date. He dropped the contracts for all the new donkeys in a folder flagged for three years from now.
Then he sat down with One Sixty One’s paperwork.
“Alright Jack Reed, what are we going to do with you?”
Dale looked up at his former coworker. Jack’s leg kicked gently against the sofa as he went through the corporate training. Dale had half a mind to drop One Sixty One’s contract in with the rest. Jack needed taught a lesson. Perhaps not that large of a lesson though.
He sighed and wrote up the contract as Mr. Smith had instructed him to. One Sixty One was to be treated like any other donkey, with the exception that he be restored with the latest copy of JackReed.bak they could find at the earliest moment.
“Earliest Moment” was a flexible enough term. Dale would see how Jack adopted to his new situation. If he were beyond miserable maybe he’d take pity on him. A few extra weeks shouldn’t hurt though.
He worked his way through the rest of the paperwork. 161. Yes. No. JackReed.bak. Yes. 161. 161. 161.
The paperwork was monotonous. Dale’s mind started to wander a bit. Was Jack’s last backup honestly a decade out of date? What were they going to be restoring him too exactly? Could the Chronivac age him back up? Would he still be in a senior position, or would he be back in with the other college age recruits?
As Dale pondered this, he failed to notice his penmanship getting a little sloppy. Dale put a bit of a flourish on his ones. He’d always given them a bit of a tick mark up top. Not a significant one, just enough to let him know whatever he was looking at wasn’t an errant pen stroke. As he progressed on the form however, some of the tick marks were getting particularly long. If someone careless were reading the contract, it could potentially read that Donkey One Sixty Seven was scheduled to be restored with JackReed.bak in a month.
After a few minutes, the form was finished. Dale hovered over one of the boxes at the bottom. Donkeys were offered the chance to renew their contract at the end of their terms. According to Jack, they all almost always did. There was a box he could check to not offer the donkey the option and change them back no matter what.
He stared at the box for a bit.
Dale set his pen down and walked over to the filing cabinet. He opened up the drawer for next month’s renewal day and slipped One Sixty One’s contract onto the top of the pile.
Who knows, maybe he’d have a fun month?
Dale flagged down one of the supervisor donkeys. He instructed him to take One Sixty One’s headset off at dinner time if he wasn’t back by then.
“Haw! Of course sir!” They donkey brayed happily.
With that, Dale was done for the morning. Speaking of food, his stomach was growling. He headed off to go check out the corporate cafeteria. With any luck they’d have a good lunch special going today.
One Sixty One’s ears twitched as he stared into the headset. A bit of drool trickled down his chin as the headset’s fan kicked into high gear.