✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

46. My Kind of People

Back in my office, I fired up the computer and made a start on my work. Or the bureaucracy that surrounded my work, at any rate. Timesheets and client billings, rights accesses, and tracking of assets. Within an hour of staring at numbers, it felt like my brains were beginning to dribble out of my ears.

I shrugged, and opened up my web browser. A separate window, so that anything I looked at wouldn't appear when somebody from corporate went snooping in my history. I went straight to the FetishLibrary; a site which held fiction on all kinds of subjects in spite of the more salacious name. There was so many interesting tales on there, and some of them it wasn't entirely clear if they were true stories. And perhaps most importantly, one of the factors that had led to its success, there was an incredibly sophisticated tagging system that made it easy to find exactly the kind of stories you were interested in.

There were no updates on the stories I was following, but that didn't surprise me. But I wasn't particularly interested in stories today; I was looking for the message board. The people on there were the most supportive, friendly group I could ever hope to meet. On the littlespace stories especially, there were people with an incredible grasp of problem solving. That was why I had posted something there on Saturday morning, when I realised that I would need to do more investigation into the mysterious printout. I had told my story there; that I'd found a part of Little Sister's magnum opus The Baby Button on my office printer, when I was sure I hadn't printed it out. There had been a few suggestions. It was from their comments that I realised I probably didn't need to look for some key I had accidentally pressed, or some setting I didn't know how to disable. They suggested that someone else could have been involved, and advised me to look for people in my office who might have a grudge against me.

There was all kinds of speculation about how it could be achieved, and it seemed like the more technically-savvy people could see a hundred different ways. But the motivation was clear. It was pretty much a given that people who didn't understand littles would have a prejudice against the whole concept. They couldn't see that this was just a healthy way for someone to escape stress, so they wanted to destroy the lives of anyone who knew better.

There were several new replies today, and my eyes must have bigged out like a cartoon character when I read the titles. I clicked on the one next to the username TheAuthorsLittleSister, blushing just a little. It was like finding out a celebrity had mentioned your name. There were a thousand people following this story now, and easily a hundred in its discussion board. A dozen new posts every day, but the actual author had responded to me. Was this my fifteen seconds of fame?

"It happens to all of us," I read under my breath, blushing just a little. This woman was practically an icon to everyone who wanted a little; respected for everything from her political commentary to the stories themselves, and before that she had been a kind of agony aunt for people trying to find their way in this strange new world. And she was admitting that she had once shared my problem.

"It happened to me too. Recently, in fact. I keep hardcopies of my stories in case the site suddenly decides they don't understand ageplay anymore. And Daddy's printer packed in, so I thought why not use the office one. Just once, to print out the last chapter and take it home. Came to pick it up, and it wasn't there. Just the cover page sitting on its own in the tray, with my name where anybody could have seen it. So now I'm looking around every time I hear footsteps, waiting for somebody to tell me what they want. Or for Mr Bossman to come and chew me out for having this stuff on my computer. I think the lesson we both need to take away is to not look at this stuff in the office. Maybe next time we'll know better. I hope yours turns out to be some weird mistake, and not spyware or something."

I took a deep breath. It should have been terrifying, to think that this really was something that even the most popular authors had to deal with. But knowing that there were others in the same situation was a little reassuring. It didn't make any sense, but it didn't have to.

I looked at the new replies, and saw more people talking about spyware, and malware. They suggested that somebody could have put unofficial software on the computer, which would silently monitor what I was doing. I didn't know anything about that, but it would explain where a printout had come from when I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. Would it be able to look for me visiting sites that weren't work related and then print them out without me knowing? I could certainly believe that. I would have to read up on the subject, and then ask Matt if he could check the computer again.

Of course, I wouldn't even be able to visit that site until the problem was dealt with. Or anything that wasn't related to my job. So I closed the forum down, made a stack of mental notes about things I might have to do in response, and focused on the work in front of me.

The stack of numbers seemed to be never-ending. There were project budgets, staffing calculations, and room assignments. Percentages, too, and service level agreements. I had to work out the best guarantees to offer to our client in case there was a problem with one of the company's services. How late could late be before they had cause to complain? How many revisions was reasonable to ask for? A project manager always had to do the math. To weigh the cost of these assurances against the likelihood of any of these clauses being invoked. I wasn't actually a project manager, but the work had been delegated to me. And I wasn't quite naïve enough to miss what that might imply. If I was the only person in the office the next time Jessop strolled through, he would consider me responsible for the Claughton Innovative account. And now I knew that we were looking at a seven-figure contract once all the different departments were factored in, I knew exactly why he was so determined to have someone in the office ready to be yelled at.

My only break from the meeting was two interviews. The designers; the people with the biggest desire to see me fail. I asked them both if they had seen anyone acting suspicious around the printers, or anyone tampering with my computer. I told them that the IT department was involved in checking something out – they would believe that when Matt sent someone around tomorrow – and that I had reported to the internal auditors that there was evidence someone in the office was angling for promotion in an unorthodox fashion. I didn't accuse them; that would just be pointless. I said that they were senior, and trustworthy. That I wanted to know what they had seen, in the hope of avoiding a full investigation. And I let them know that management already knew the nature of some stolen documents.

Elliot Klimt had an incredible poker face. Hagen looked down at her hands and fidgeted with a pen. It was displacement activity, something that practically screamed guilt. But only if she was always guilty of everything; the woman didn't know how to make eye contact, or to sit still. I didn't learn anything. But now they knew that I'd taken measures. They knew that corporate was involved. And they must know that they were missing some detail; that I had shared my browsing habits with my superiors, had not been disciplined for misunderstanding, and that there was nothing they could hold over me.

If more suspicious things happened, I would have to try something else. But if Hagen and Klimt were responsible, I was confident that this subtle harassment would stop immediately. Everything would go back to normal, because the blackmail material they'd taken such pains to procure couldn't hurt me. I was still curious how they could have found out what I was reading in the first place, but I knew that in reality it was only a curiosity now. They could no longer hurt me.