Dissonance 2 – Companies, Harems, Money (or lack thereof)

“YOU SPENT ALL OUR MONEY?!” Avari squawked.

“Yup,” Eldred responded with a strained grunt. His arms and core were burning from the strain of repeated push-ups, made better and worse by the ghost lady seated on his back. The stronger he got, the more tangible she could be. A purely physical workout only added so much though and she didn’t exceed a couple kilos. All the same, her bubble butt was nicely seated on his naked back.

Existential dread and a woman’s love, what stronger motivating factors could there be?

A final push up and then his arms gave in. “I have defeated the mighty warrior,” The joke mixed with Nyx’s naturally sad voice into an adorable trill.

“I am never defeated!” Eldred declared dramatically. “Not until my very last breath!” Though his arms felt like noodles, he managed to push himself upright. He grabbed two pillows and put them against the wall to serve as his backrest.

They all had reconvened in his office, located in the corner of the upper level of his derelict inheritance. It was the largest room in the building and one of the few that could be used without much concern. The window was still intact, Nyx had cleared the trash out of it over the years haunting the walls, and it was, in the broader context, clean. The massive wooden table in it retained an aura of importance, even if the carpet had long since turned to dust.

In a corner by the door, Eldred had created his little nest of camping mats, pillows, sleeping bags and blankets. A nest that Avari now joined, tossing her own sleeping bag into the collective. She had agreed to be part of his company, part of his harem, and that meant she was going to live with him. She had readily agreed to that idea.

They were in this together, through thick and thin. Retreating to the comfort of her apartment was unacceptable.

“Why did you have to spend ALL of it?!” Avari groaned. “I was in such a good mood after setting up that bank account and then you blow it all! All!”

“That was always the plan,” Eldred reminded her. He settled with his back against the pillows. His naked chest served as Nyx’s resting spot. “Before you start your rant, remember my office policy on clothes.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Avari grumbled, though a bit of excitement mingled in her tone. Under the light of the lumen, she joined Eldred and Nyx in nudity. Though he loved seeing her in the secretary outfit he had bought for her, matching Nyx’s, he loved seeing her grey, gold-marked skin even more. “Happy?” she asked after putting her orderly folded clothes on top of the table.

“Immensely,” Eldred answered, basking in the glory that were her naked tits. He could practically hear them bounce with every motion of the gremlin.

“Okay… So, what the FUCK, Eldred?!” The greed demon pointed aggressively at her boss. “We had an absolutely absurd amount of money to start out with!”

“And now we will have an absurd amount of Echo,” Eldred responded.

“Echo doesn’t fix the holes in our walls!” Avari complained. A deep inhale pushed out her boobs. “Can you listen to me?!”

“Trust me, I can listen while appreciating what you have to offer, shortstack.”

Rolling her eyes, Avari grabbed the laptop from the table and then sauntered on over. “I was going to give the details of my totally tragic backstory today,” the gremlin declared, “but now I am going to make that wait for another day so I can give you the rundown on what ‘corporation’ actually means in the world we are about to enter.”

“Is your tragic backstory something that can wait?” Eldred investigated. “I want to know if I can help you with anything.”

“Urgh, I hate it when you’re sweet. Makes you actually lovable.” Avari plopped down to his left. “No, there’s nothing urgent about my past. The short version is that my mom is disappointed in me and if you become like my father, I will stab you in the eyes.”

“Noted?” Eldred responded with more than light confusion.

“Relax, you don’t have the chance to be like him until you get at least two women pregnant. Current odds of that are 0.”

“Are they?” Eldred asked. He earnestly had not thought about the potential of impregnating either of them. Now that he was, he was approaching it with the same mindset as everything else: he would make it work or die trying. “How come?”

Too used to his questions, Avari casually opened the laptop and pressed the start button as she answered. “Banshees can’t get pregnant until they have taken their vengeance and then chosen to remain alive,” the gremlin informed him. “And I got an alchemical contraceptive before I came here. I’m barren for a year or until I get the antidote.”

Eldred hummed in disappointment.

“What?” Avari’s bratty side showed in that single question. “That needy to knock up your gremlin?”

“I think we would make beautiful children,” he responded.

The sincerity of his words knocked the sass right out of her. The points of her ears turned a bit darker as wholesome embarrassment flooded through her. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “Ehem… well, maybe I would make beautiful children and maybe you could add to that but....” Avari bent forwards to tap on a program on the finally booted laptop. “…we have not even known each other for two weeks. I’m honestly not sure what we are. I like it and I want it to keep going. I gave you my first time, so that should count for a lot. I’m not ready to get knocked up.”

Words would have been inadequate to express how he felt about her sincere response. Gently, he pulled her back against his chest. She turned her head just as he caressed the side of her face. With all of the care he could muster, he placed a loving kiss on her dark mouth.

Eldred had no idea what exactly they were either. His world had changed so rapidly, like a strong gust scattering gold dust into the air. Everything was too recent, too turbulent to make any specific call. He had decided he wanted to fight to thrive. He had been rewarded with not just one but two of the most gorgeous women he had ever seen. They even agreed to share him as he expanded his company.

Nyx had little choice. Avari had been stuck in her own way. Eldred knew his new mindset was exploitable. Were they each just opportunistic? Pragmatic? Was this romantic? Was there anything calculated at all or had they all just been devoured by the heat of the moment?

It didn’t matter much. What mattered was what happened the next hour, then the next day and then the next week.

“Before we know it, whatever we are will be clear,” Eldred whispered into the silent room. It was night and no hoodlums dared get close to this property. There was only them, the ruin they called their home, the whirling of the laptop fans, and the sound of their breathing. “In this moment, I only know that I love you. Both of you.”

Avari’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times. So bashful was she that she remained in that pose even as Nyx leaned in and seized her own loving kiss from her man’s mouth. It did not last nearly long enough to satisfy them, but a kiss just between them was not enough anyhow. The banshee bent down, kissing Avari. Then, Eldred immediately moved in, stealing a second kiss from his gremlin.

On and on, it went like that, until they were panting with arousal. Avari managed to break the cycle by giving Eldred a half-hearted shove. “Okay, okay, I get it!” she exclaimed, hiding her glistening lips from her two partners with a shyly raised hand. “I… love you too, okay? Take that to the bank… not that it would do us any favours! No!” Avari gave Nyx a firm poke, interrupting her attempt to kiss Eldred again. Icy eyes flashed a pale blue. “Uhm… s-sorry, but I need you to pay attention now.”

“One more kiss.” Nyx wasn’t asking and Eldred was not withholding anything from his banshee. It was a chaste pecking of their lips, by comparison. “Proceed.”

Avari gestured at the laptop screen. “Because you two are stupid-idiot-morons that know nothing, I put together a couple of slides to inform you on what company culture is like.”

“Seated in an expensive pillow fort, naked, on an ancient laptop placed on a barren, concrete floor,” Eldred commented on the situation. “A fitting first business meeting.”

“Don’t forget to add ‘in the middle of the night’,” Avari said, gesturing at the black window. “Now, first slide…” She tapped a button and the presentation program started up. Text flew in from off-screen. “What is an Iridescian company?”

The tone indicated she wanted an answer. “A gathering of people into an economic partnership with the goal of generating or acquiring wealth?” he provided the definition he remembered from his school years.

“Correct! You get one breast squeeze!” She put her arms together, squishing her grey-gold melons together. A light gasp escaped her when he immediately took his just reward. No excuse to grab those tits would ever escape his boob-loving attention!

After he had claimed his prize, Avari smacked the spacebar on the laptop, causing the next slide to appear. It was empty, except for a small stretch of text at the top.

“The common structures of Iridescia companies,” Avari read out. “Do you know any?”

“Uhh…” Eldred rubbed the back of his neck. “Not really.”

“Nyx?”

“No.”

“Then let me present you with the common ones.” Avari continued to hit the space bar as she talked, making the names fly in as she spoke them. “By far the most common variety of company is the Board of Directors. In those, you have a small group of elite Cultivators that set the agenda for the entire company, which is then, depending on size and purpose, organised into various segments that are beholden to individual board members. Typically, one member of the board, the CEO, is the one to coordinate and instruct the members of the board.

“The more extreme version of this idea then is the pyramid. This is a borderline, sometimes actual, feudal structure. One guy at the top has a couple guys beneath him who have guys beneath them and so on. In this company structure, roles are less defined, with all the good and bad that does.

“Third on the common structures, though this one is a lot rarer than the first two, is the cooperative. In this one, every member of the company has some degree of vote to influence the direction of the company. Resources are also distributed more equitably.”

“Why is that one so rare?” Eldred wondered.

“It does not scale,” Nyx responded before Avari could. “To expand, the company needs the agreement of those already there. Those already there would diminish their own wage if they agreed to growing.”

“Plus, if you distribute Echo a lot, you end up with a bunch of okay fighters who then get stomped when a focused Cultivator comes along,” Avari added. “Cooperatives have a tendency to implode after a time, even more so than other company types. It’s not an auto-fail though and those that make it work make it work well. Boards are the default because they’re relatively easy to execute, but corruption usually seeps into the cracks as the organisation gets too big for oversight. Pyramids usually have a problem with a lot of infighting, because everyone wants the favour of the next guy up.”

Avari pressed the space bar again. Big bold letters proclaimed the words: ‘There is no perfect system, only systems suitable for purposes’.

“Always remember that,” she said. “Every structure has weaknesses. Now… onto what this is becoming!”

The next slide was titled ‘Harems, the company in companies’.

“You’re far from the first wealthy pervert who decides he wants to surround himself with gorgeous women,” Avari said.

“What?!” Eldred proclaimed in dramatised surprise. “I thought I was unique!”

“You’re unique, alright, just not in this way,” Avari drawled sarcastically. “Alright, so here’s the way harem companies work: they usually don’t. It’s essentially the same as cooperative structure, but then you also add inter-female drama in the mix, which is just the worst.”

Eldred furrowed his eyebrows at that revelation, then shrugged. “Just means I will make the impossible work.”

“It’s not impossible,” Avari responded. “They usually don’t, because the men that start them are nepo-babies with three gold diggers in an inherited skyscraper. There are ways to make this work. Some are a little less pleasant for the women involved than others though. I’ll go from my least to most preferred.”

“I am all ears,” Eldred actually stopped kneading Nyx’s thigh to lock in.

“First way for rich CEOs to have their harems: keep them separate. Rather than having your harem in the company, you have your harem outside of it. Basically, you’d put one to three women in an estate and then you’d visit that one whenever you fancy a specific woman. Typically, this also involves keeping them dependent and-slash-or afraid of you. They don’t interact, so they don’t get as jealous and you keep them rich enough to be complacent little birds in cages. It’s the scumfuck way.”

“That’s not a harem, that’s a collection of trophies you can breed,” Eldred remarked.

“Which is the definition of harem for a whole lot of guys,” Avari told him. “It’s not about the relationship for everyone out there. For the scumfucks, it’s just about the power trip.”

“…Noted.” Mentally he added, ‘I should beat up everyone who I can who does this on principle.’

“Next you have the dispersed harem,” Avari said. “In this, the members of the harem are dispersed in an otherwise regular company. Typically, this also is more of a loose arrangement where the guy just is powerful enough that the women tacitly tolerate sharing him. Plenty of drama to be had between them, enough to blow up the workplace, but as long as the guy doesn’t get too greedy with how many secretaries he sleeps with, it can work fine-ish. Again, this usually isn’t a loving arrangement, more of a lust situation. The members of the harem don’t necessarily know about each other. There can even be multiple of these in one company. It gets messy.”

“I suppose this is… fine. Not what I want though.”

“After that we have the integrated harem. In this, the harem is a formalised institution within the company. In board-based companies, this typically takes the form of the CEO being the man and the haremettes being the other chairs. In pyramids, it is usually a parallel authority, sort of a council. In cooperatives, this sort of structure just doesn’t fly.”

“Makes sense.”

“Now, this isn’t without drama either, because no group of people ever is, but by the time a harem manages to grow together enough to effectively govern a company, they usually have the kinks ironed out. All of the women know about each other and necessarily get along at least enough to work together. It’s a bit like glass. It’s pretty sturdy, but when it breaks, it shatters totally.”

Eldred wasn’t going to let the potential fail state define what he was going to do. ‘I intend to win at life across every metric,’ he thought. “I can’t help but notice that my preferred way hasn’t been mentioned yet.”

“Because you have some decent ideas.” Avari carefully enunciated that ‘some’ for emphasis. “Last general structure is the harem-exclusive company. There’s no difference between the harem and the company. If you get hired, you either are an informal part of the harem already or are being tested to join it. Now, this CAN be run like a tyranny, but CEOs that try that have a tendency to get stabbed in the night by a horde of pissed-off wives.”

“Dramatic and deserved – how do the working ones set this up?”

Avari didn’t even go through the slides for this bit. She spoke in the tone of someone who finally got to share a niche topic of interest. It seemed that Eldred wasn’t the only one in the room with an interest in this pervy lifestyle.

“You sort of fuse the pyramid and cooperative styles. You keep the company structure fairly flat, four steps at most, though two or three is much better. You are at the top and you make it clear that’s not negotiable. The man of the company is the head of the household and the glue that keeps it all together. You have to be strong, optimally the strongest, reliable, and keep everyone sexually satisfied. Regular orgies during work hours don’t just serve to keep stress and jealousy low, they also encourage your women to find as much satisfaction in each other as they do in you. Though you’ll have to push some hierarchy in the harem for the company to run efficiently, you’ll also want to foster the sense of sorority that all of your women are ultimately equal within the harem.”

“Glorious,” Nyx muttered.

“The problems,” Avari continued on. “First off, it all sounds dreamy – because it is. It’s a dream. A distant one. Like cooperatives, this one has a difficult time scaling. If you just cram women into the company as you fancy, that is going to collapse. You need to expand this slowly and you need to make sure the women you already have are fine with it whenever it happens, at a minimum. Enthusiastic would be much better.”

“And how would I go about that?” Eldred asked.

“First, you will want to honour your women by not sleeping outside the harem.” Avari looked at him sincerely. “You already have two women right now, which is 100% more than guys usually get. Every time you just sleep outside the harem, that’s basically saying that we’re not good enough for you and that you don’t respect us. So, if you’re smart, you keep it in your pants or inside us until we’re happy to let someone join in. Right, Nyx?”

The ghost lady was quiet for a few tense seconds. “I concur,” she said, finally. “I want Eldred to be powerful. I also want to know my love gives me some power over him.”

That made perfect sense to him, so Eldred just nodded. “I promise I won’t sleep with anyone outside the harem and Nyx will always be there to stop me if I try.”

“Which will work out in your favour,” the gremlin informed him. “Having a second person constantly with you makes believing you so much easier.”

“Am I untrustworthy?” Eldred asked, with a small amount of genuine offence sneaking into his voice.

“It helps clear doubts, reasonable or not.” Avari crossed her arms over her enormous chest. “Having a harem sounds great and all and as a raging bisexual being in one sounds fucking hot too, but don’t forget that the individuals part of it will have progressively less time with just you as it grows. It’s not the way most women like to live. We’re entitled to wanting some reassurances on what power we do have in this arrangement.”

Eldred still found the conceptual distrust he was given here mildly insulting. It wasn’t enough for him to start an argument over it. Besides, he could get the point. All he had to do was do what he had planned to do anyway: be loyal to his harem.

“Next is that you will need a mechanism by which additions to the harem are approved by those currently in it. There’s three broadly successful ways this is done. You can do it by unanimous vote – if it’s not unanimous, you are just asking for resentment in the harem -, you can do it by approval of your ‘queen’ or you can do it via trials.”

“Unanimous approval sounds just fine to me,” Eldred said. “Though I am curious about those other two?”

“The ‘queen’ thing works if you’ve got a member of the harem that’s just really great at keeping a harem. Sometimes you just have women that are as much or more invested in it than the guy.” Avari glanced at Nyx, then rubbed her own forearm. “Not saying the enthusiasm is lacking, but Nyx is quiet and I can be… difficult.”

“That’s a way to say bratty.”

“Yeah! Trials are just… weird. The whole harem puts together a series of hazing and such. Works for some, but I don’t like it. Usually comes with a religion.”

Was there a lustful intrigue in making a cult focused around his cock? Yes. But a perverted ideation was where that stayed. Eldred didn’t even bother saying it aloud. Instead, he summarised what Avari had said. “So, to make this work as a harem company, I have to be careful with potential additions, leave it to the harem to approve its own expansion, be faithful in who I have sex with, and structure the company in a way that facilitates my whole harem cumming together?”

“I did not miss that pun,” Avari drawled. “But yes, that’s basically it.”

“That can be done. Is that the end of the presentation?”

“Well,” Avari yawned and tapped the space bar. A new slide with the header ‘How to: Money’ appeared. “I’ve got a dozen slides about what I wanted to do with our money, but now we have none. Thanks for that by the way. How are we going to eat tomorrow?”

The question had Eldred tense up. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Yeah, you didn’t. You stupid-idiot-moron.” Avari let out a long sigh. “And that after I transferred my share of the earnings from the mission…” she grumbled and shook her head. “Okay, so for the time being, you are my manwhore. I’m paying you to lay pipe, got it?”

That was an arrangement he could certainly work with.