Meet Mirage, part 1

I took stock of the room.

Nearly everyone was here.

We had the web team trio, the so-called “crack team”… we had Noriko and her two little Asian cronies… we had all three of our graphic designers, and our photo editor Melissa as well.

Ulla and Sophie were here too, but they sat at the back, looking at lot meeker and subdued than the rest of their co-workers.

Gretch was here too, of course, clearly nervous about what I was planning next.

Yeah, I guess the only people missing were Lana, Anna-Marie and Teresa? The first two weren’t missing, of course, but tucked away safely in the closet again. This time with some food and drinks. And a cellphone. For emergencies.

As for Teresa… I might have to start looking into her disappearance. Could be trouble.

Oh, wait, I guess Pauline, the HR monster, was missing as well.

Then again, it made sense, it’s not like she cared about the actual magazine.

“Okay, everybody… I realize many of you might have a lot of questions about what’s going on.”

And I’m sure they would. The supermodel article had been treated as top secret. Before yesterday, only us writers, Anna-Marie, Gretchen and Teresa knew about it. When it was finally revealed to our graphic team yesterday, it was way too late for any of them to raise any stink about it. The magazine had to be completed, and they had to put their personal opinions aside.

I sort of hoped that tactic would let me avoid this awkward conversation, but it seems I miscalculated.

“Probably number one question many of you have is… ‘Why’?”

“Make that all of us,” Holly shouted to a chorus of agreement.

Holly Springton. One of our graphic designers.

There really wasn’t anything I knew about her, other than how fuckable she looked. A trait everyone at our magazine shared.

I wouldn’t mind tying up that braid of hers to a ceiling bar… and while she hung there, by her hair, her arms and legs all tied up, start cutting off her clothes one by-

Calm your libido, Jack. You just had a foursome.

“Well, Holly, I’m not quite sure of that. How many here read the foreword to the article? Raise your hands.”

“The what?” Melissa, our surly photo editor, shouted back.

Melissa Reed. Didn’t know what to make of her. She just looked like somebody I’d never usually talk to, so I never did.

What was that style of hers? Emo? Was that still a thing or something?

The one thing I could say about her that I had never seen her smile. She had one of those permanent resting bitch faces, maybe born without facemuscles for smiling. Or something.

“The thing at the start of the article,” I answered her in a condescending way.

Of course she knew what it was, she was just confused about why I would bring it up.

“Foreword? You mean that one sentence excuse for doing the article?” Khali, one of the web team spoke up.

Look, what can I say? She was the digital content manager, and she had the dusky skin of a stunningly sexy Indian woman… because she was one. Other than that, I knew nothing about her than our current interaction.

I had a feeling I might have to say that many times today.

“What sentence?” Noriko asked.

Khali was about to answer, before I stopped her.

“Okay, okay, it’s clear that many of you missed that vital bit of information. Never mind, we have the writer of that particular passage here today. Ulla, would you please stand up and recite what you wrote there?”

Ulla looked completely caught unaware, wishing to disappear behind the mass of women, but now every eye was on her.

Unable to resist my order for too long, she stood up.

“I wrote: ‘This article might be shocking, but its point is to prove male superiority over women.’”

There were no gasps. No sudden shouts of indignation.

Just an awkward silence.

Few people, who clearly hadn’t read those words before, rubbed their heads a little bit and blinked rapidly for a few seconds.

But that was about it.

Though it looked like Holly was having the hardest time with it.

She had her eyes closed, rubbing her temple and was muttering to herself.

“The point… The point… But it’s not- it can’t be true, so… it failed its point… the article failed its point… but…”

Wait…

Oh shit.

There was actually some leeway there how to interpret it.

Ulla could convince anyone of male superiority, but she doesn’t flat out say that in the foreword.

She only says that the article… tries to prove that.

Apparently, most people would still interpret text like Ulla was speaking of “male superiority” as a known fact, but in the case of someone like Holly, it could cause an exhausting battle of interpretation inside her head.

Shit. I knew I should have spent just a few minutes more finessing the fucking thing.

At least I could easily fix this.

“Ulla, males are superior to women, right? Answer right now.”

She didn’t even try to fight the order this time. “Y-yes.”

Holly lifted her head, leaning against her co-worker like she had just gone through a tough workout.

Crisis averted.

Just hope this didn’t cause many problems for people out there, in the wild.

Actually, it didn’t even matter if some ended up thinking that the article failed its point. At least it was somewhat effective.

The women in this room, though… my employees… now all believed men were superior to women.

That’s a hell of way to start a Tuesday.

“Yeah, but…” Kalissa spoke up suddenly, in her tiny high-pitched voice. “What- Why in the world, are us, a fashion magazine, trying to prove… that point?”

Kalissa Grey. Yet another part of our graphic design team. Let met just get the most notable thing out the way. She… was tiny. The tiniest person in our office. She didn’t even reach five feet. Despite that, her voluptuous body competed with many people in this room.

A real shortstack if I ever saw one.

It would be so easy to pick her up and use her like a-

Time for that later. Need to answer her question.

She did have a point.

“Well… Let’s just put it like this. How many in this room, before today, before the article… Thought that men and women were equal, and that men weren’t the superior ones?”

A silence hit the room.

Many people looked confused, some even embarrassed.

Noriko just seemed angry. Not at me, but more like the world. She scrunched her forehead and gritted her teeth, staring at the floor like it held the answers.

Even Gretch looked a little off.

Oh yeah, I guess I hadn’t used Ulla’s powers on her yet?

Well, nice to get that software updated, even though it won’t change how she already kneels at this man’s feet.

Since nobody answered my question, I decided to continue.

“Looks to me like it did it’s thing then, didn’t it? Seriously, how could you people be against an article that would change your worldview so radically? If anything, I think it deserves an award, doesn’t it?”

God I hope it doesn’t actually win an award.

Angry glares.

“THIS MAGAZINE IS NOT FOR MAKING POLITICAL POINTS!”, Noriko suddenly shouted, so loud that I nearly had to take a step back. “However the fuck you thought that shooting softcore porn was going to change people’s opinions about genders, THAT IS NOT THE POINT OF OUR MAGAZINE!! This is a fashion magazine! Maria knew this! We have a very specific readerbase, one that is very comfortable with the way we have been doing things! DO YOU HAVE ANY FUCKING IDEA how many loyal readers we just lost because of your insane SHIT!?”

She yelled so loud she literally had to take a breather after the verbal onslaught.

There’s the Noriko I remembered.

The ballbuster from the seventh layer of Hell.

She really had some anger issues.

“Look-“ I started, before being immediately cut off by Noriko’s next tirade.

“I don’t give a SHIT that you’re the editor and this is your ‘ artistic choice’ or whatever! Guess what? In case you forgot, I’M THE MARKETING AND ADVERTISING PERSON! Do you have any idea the amount of angry calls I had to field today? How I’ve almost begged on my hands and knees to keep our sponsors and partners from leaving us!?!? AND IT’S GOING TO GET WORSE! No, seriously, I cannot understand how one MAN can fuck this whole magazine up IN JUST UNDER A WEEK!! DO YOU HAVE ANY QUALIFICATIONS TO DO THIS JOB?! OR ARE YOU AIMING TO BANKRUPT US?! TO END US BECAUSE OF SOME PETTY **** OR SOMETHING?!”

This time… I let her cool down a bit.

Nobody spoke.

Everyone was starting at me accusingly.

Noriko’s Asian backups patting her on the back.

Oh boy.

Would it be fun to punish her right now. For showing such disrespect to our magazine’s great editor.

But…

She was still -48 in submission points.

I don’t think I could do it even with the room’s trait helping me.

But then again… The trait did say I could do punishments here, even with a weak reasoning.

There still had to be limits, right?

It was then that I noticed the little hairsticks sticking out of her hairbun.

They looked quite… Japanese. Almost something a geisha would wear.

I guess the trait I gave her yesterday was slowly crawling inside her, and she would slowly start turning into my little Japanese doll.

Fuck it.

After that rant, and how delectable she looked, all puffed up and angry like that…

Yeah, I wasn’t going to let this chance pass by.

“Gretchen… come here.”

She tried to look firm and commanding, despite the fact that the editor was now giving orders to the owner of the magazine.

I landed my hands on her shoulders, which made her flinch.

Always so jumpy.

“Do you think… it’s okay for your employee to talk to her editor-in-chief like that?”

“Excuse me? This isn’t about her, it’s about-” Noriko spoke up, a touch of nervousness in her voice.

“Quiet,” Gretchen snapped, stopping the raging Asian before she could even start. “Your attitude right now is extremely disrespectful, and not at all something I can allow. I can understand how the article caught all of us by surprise, and for that, it’s our- it’s mainly my fault for communicating about it so badly. All of you should have been clued in, but we- I considered this to be top secret thing, since I didn’t want it leaked out. But Noriko… I think your comments seriously crossed the line.”

“What fucking comments? I’ve only been honest about how this human-sized turd probably cost us our jobs and-“

“Noriko,” I spoke up strongly, stepping up from behind Gretchen. She had laid the groundworks now, so I felt safer to go for the kill. “You cannot talk to your superior like that.”

“Superior? EXCUSE ME? Since when did YOU become my superior?”

“Since I was born, of course.”

That scrambled her brain, because she really had no comeback for that. Nobody in the room had a comeback for that, even though many groaned in disgust. Their worldview was still adjusting.

“Now… I think it’s time I make that even clearer. Are you ready for your punishment?”