Aren’t You Grateful?

“Take a seat and let’s skip the pleasantries. 

“I know you love this corner office. This carpathian elm burl desk. The aluminum-framed chair covered in hideous cow skin imported from Lagos but refined into luxurious leather in Rome, before being shipped across the ocean and carried into my office by the peasant hands of delivery persons. 

“You love the view from up here, where you can see all the uninitiated scurrying around like minimum-wage ants on a set of gridlocked streets — they never even stop to wonder who the Queen is dictating their every how-am-I-going-to-afford-the-rent move. 

“We are sorcerers summoning all the strength from their aimless bodies until they’ve served their purpose. We do them a favor. They don’t really want freedom. Look at them — they flee from the responsibility of responsibility itself. We’re gifting them non-choice. We don’t even ask for their gratitude.

“Only their time. 

“We even wait patiently until they breed amongst themselves, so we can replace them with their children. They thank us. Call us job creators. We thank them. Call it retirement. If they live that long.

“We weave spells of materialistic illusion. Offer trinkets for the irresistible price of a one-thousandth of their soul. 

“Is it our fault they desired a thousand trinkets?

“Of course not.

“As our god Adam Smith signed with his Invisible Hand, ‘THERE ARE NO REFUNDS OR EXCHANGES.’ 

“Yes, that was both an economics and a sign language joke. Everyone knows jokes are funnier when you have to explain them.

“Every now and then, however, we need to hire a new magician into our order. I’d like to say it pains me to say this, but Geoff-with-a-G-and-an-O-and-two-F’s from accounting had a breakdown. Last week, he threw his tears-of-children stew on the ground in the breakroom and declared that he ‘couldn’t do this anymore.’ That ‘it wasn’t right.’ That he would ‘kill himself if he had to do this another minute.’

“I told him I knew he was going to get a bad case of indigestion if he ate his tears-of-children stew cold. These kids don’t listen. You have to heat up your food. That’s the whole point of the microwave. 

“Anyways, we cleaned up the stew he dropped on the ground. Replaced the breakroom window. And now we’re in need of a wizard with the numbers.

“So you’ve been selected as the privileged one to have a look behind the mystical curtain. Tah dah. You should feel lucky. There were hundreds of applications. Six hundred and forty three passably-sociopathic, magnifying-glass-holding college graduates prepared to stand over the anthill while pledging allegiance and justice for all. 

“And we picked you!

“Aren’t you grateful?

“Aren’t you grateful?

“Aren’t you grateful?

“Aren’t you grateful?

“We’re not even asking for your gratitude.

“Only your time.

“Any questions?”

I run out of the office, get back on my spaceship, and when I land back on Janisthrii, I tell my parents they’re right — it’s too dangerous to do missionary work on earth. They’re savages.