Chapter 1: 1. Pip

Sabine Merritt-Hutchinson likes to describe the Tower as a human body; some departments—I forget which ones—are like the lungs, or the stomach. Others—like the department she’s talking to—are the heart. She will pause, look around, lean towards the audience. “And the board, the board are the ass… ahem… assorted leadership steering the body.” 

I have seen the speech three times; once as an intern in Accounting, once as a Junior Developer in Prototyping, and once when I accidentally got trapped coming back from Planning. She was very natural, every time. The same body language, the same perch on the desk, the same bonhomie. Sometimes you almost forgot that you weren’t in the same struggle. That she was a billionaire.

But other than carefully planned appointments, there was only one place in this body where the higher and lower humours mixed; the bank of elevators. You could ride to your floor with senior management, board members, celebrity investors. They were going to much higher floors than you, of course. Higher floors with nicer furniture, probably actual offices, expensive coffee. But you were all in it together.

Some places, I suppose, that wasn’t even true; the upper floors had their own elevators. But the Tower was more egalitarian, I guess. Karl Marx would be so happy.

So that was how I found myself in an elevator with a witch and a vice president. I hesitated—stumbling—as I realised who had got on before me. If I’d have been paying attention, I would have caught a different elevator. But it was after the morning rush, it would have been even more embarrassing to back out now, but I was tripping over my feet.

The witch put out a hand to stop me falling; a cool hand to my shoulder. 

“Careful, dear,” she said, smiling. She was tall and pale, wearing a neatly tailored and figure-accentuating business suit. 

“Floor?” demanded VP Serhan, gruffly. 

“Oh, three, please.”

The witch nodded slightly at me; a clocking nod, I felt. I had read that witches couldn’t be trans, or didn’t acknowledge it, or something. But I’d also read a ‘Top Ten Trans-friendly Jobs’ article which put witches at number one. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any magical ability, and also didn’t start training when I was a toddler, so I was forced to take the second option.

“MerHu keeps a stable of programmers on site,” said Serhan, talking to the witch. “To rapidly prototype interfaces. The UX for HedShake came to her at 3 o’clock one night. We had a preliminary version coded by close of business.”

I mean, preliminary version meant some non-scalable Javascript with a single working button, but sure.

“Once the basic interface is working,” continued Serhan, “longer-term work is handed on to offshore teams.”

The lift stopped at my floor, and I hurried out.

“Wait,” said the witch, putting a hand on my arm. “What’s your name, sweetie? I’m Veronika.”

“Oh, um, Pip,” I said. “I mean Philippa, but people call me Pip.”

The doors began to close, and Serhan—with great irritation—pressed the button to keep them open.

“Pip,” said the witch Veronika. “Have a good day, Pip.”

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