The job posting had said “Entry-Level Position, No Experience Necessary.” What it hadn’t mentioned was that the interview would take place in a conference room on the 66th floor of a building that, according to the elevator map, did not exist. Or that the interviewer would have no face—just a smooth expanse of nothing where a human being would keep their features.

“We call it the talent acquisition process,” the faceless interviewer said, its voice coming from everywhere and nowhere. “But you can think of it as an audition. We have a vacancy, you have a soul. Simple transaction.”

James had been job hunting for six months. Six months of rejection letters, automated responses, interviews that went nowhere. He had $47 in his bank account and a lease that expired in three weeks. He was not in a position to be picky about where he worked.

“What exactly would I be doing?” he asked.

“The same thing everyone does,” the interviewer said. “Moving numbers around. Pretending it matters. Wearing a tie and pretending you care. The specifics are irrelevant. The only question that matters is: are you willing to sell?”

The contract was twelve pages long, written in a font that seemed to shift when James tried to read it directly. He caught fragments: “eternal damnation,” “waiver of rights,” “the standard three hundred year term.” But mostly, it promised the same thing every job promised: a salary, benefits, and the gradual erosion of everything that had once made him human.

“The compensation package is very competitive,” the interviewer said. “We offer full medical, dental, vision, and a 401k match that we will take back if you leave before the term is complete. There is also a signing bonus, which you will not receive, but which we will count as income for tax purposes.”

“And the soul?”

“Yours to keep until retirement. At which point, we discuss renewal terms.” The interviewer smiled—or did something that served the same purpose. “Unless you prefer to negotiate now?”

The office was exactly like every other office James had ever worked in, which is to say it was a beige prison where ambition went to die. The fluorescent lights hummed at a frequency specifically designed to induce low-grade depression. The water cooler made sounds that were not quite bubbling and not quite gurgling but something in between. And his coworkers, seventeen of them on the floor alone, all had the same expression: the blank stare of people who had been here too long.

“Welcome to Corporate America,” his cubicle neighbor said. Her name was Deborah, and she had been with the company for forty years—or possibly four hundred; the records were unclear. “You’ll learn to hate it here. Give it about a week.”

“That fast?”

“Give or take. Some people adapt faster than others. Some people fight it for decades. The smart ones just… stop fighting.” She turned back to her computer, which displayed nothing but a spreadsheet of numbers that seemed to go on forever. “My advice? Don’t think about it. Just do the work. Let the work become you. Eventually, you won’t notice the difference.”

James lasted longer than most. He fought the system from the inside, questioning processes, challenging assumptions, pushing back against the absurdity. He wrote memos suggesting improvements. He attended meetings with notes and ideas. He believed, stupidly, that he could change things.

He couldn’t. No one could. The system was designed to resist change the way a living body resists death—with everything it has, even when everything it has is not enough. And slowly, imperceptibly, James began to change. He stopped writing memos. He started attending meetings without notes. He stopped caring about the work and started caring only about the paycheck.

By his fifth anniversary, he was making twice his original salary and none of it made him happy. By his tenth, he couldn’t remember what happiness had felt like. By his twentieth, he had been promoted four times and demoted twice, and the person he had been at twenty-five was nothing but a distant memory he sometimes thought about when the fluorescent lights flickered and he had a moment to think.

The interviewer was waiting for him in the same conference room, on the same floor that didn’t exist. “Twenty-five years,” it said. “Longer than most. You must be tired.”

James was tired. Tired in a way that sleep couldn’t fix, that retirement couldn’t cure. Tired in his soul, if he still had one to feel tired.

“I want to renegotiate,” he said.

“You have that right. The contract provides for annual reviews, performance assessments, and the occasional… lateral move. What did you have in mind?”

“I want my soul back. And I want to remember what it felt like to care about something other than the quarterly projections.”

The interviewer was silent for a long moment. Then it laughed—or performed the equivalent laughter function. “You spent twenty-five years trying to climb the ladder only to discover it was leaning against the wrong wall. Do you know how many people make that same discovery? Thousands. Every year. And do you know how many of them ask for what you’re asking?”

“None?”

“None,” the interviewer confirmed. “Which means I cannot, in good conscience, offer you what you’re asking for. But—” It slid a new contract across the table. “I can offer you a promotion. VP of Giving Up. Corner office. Eternal windowless view. What do you say?”

James looked at the new contract. Then he looked at the conference room, at the floor that didn’t exist, at the interviewer with no face. “I’ll take the promotion,” he said. “What the hell. I already sold everything else.”

And that is how James became a senior executive, which is, when you think about it, exactly what he had been aiming for all along.