“Enthusiastically incentivize efficient leadership skills to impact cross-platform expertise in providing excellent customer service!" Zoli declared. The Fire Salamander, whose shoulder he was looking currently over blinked in confusion. Zoli remembered just in time, employees in the field – or, like the Salamander, on the hills – were chronically and pathologically unable to understand sophisticated speech patterns. After all, if they were sophisticated people, they wouldn't need to do back-breaking physical work but would sit in an office building, enjoying air conditioning, and the networking area.

  Well, the networking area was for managers, but the common employees could enjoy the cantina for half an hour each day!

  “How would you professionally implement B2B interfaces in generating best-of-breed customer service?" Zoli asked the Salamander. It was blinking in apparent confusion even more. "This can not stand! I will talk to your supervisor. Zone Leader Lynx!" the Lynx appeared in short order like he was summoned "Your subordinate clearly doesn't know the professionally incepted competitive Process Map for delivering agile customer service! Provide HR an evolved cross-unit schema for educating the employees on the crucial importance of fostering focused best practices!"

  The Lynx blinked in utter confusion.

  “Janine! Let Dana and Ellen know, her presences are required in Zone 2!”

  “Have you tried to call them yourself?”

  “Of course not! Summoning has to be done through the right channels!”

  “Sure… Dana! Ellen! The Boss is calling you!”

  In a flash, the two managers appeared next to Zoli. He nodded. A quick reaction to the CEO’s summon was to be expected.

  “Dana, I found out, that the Zone Leader and the Deputy Zone Leaders are unaware of the Process Map! How would they deliver value-centered customer service, if the carefully curated Process Map isn't followed? Or even known!"

  “Honored CEO, sir, our departments are working closely together to distinctively coordinate collaborative mindshare," Dana assured the dungeon CEO

  “Honored CEO, sir, we have rapidly matrixed effective quality management, and looked into the challenge already." Ellen added "We found, that while the employees are mostly ignorant of the synergistically negotiated error-free Process Maps, they are nonetheless able to implement the core ideas. The process is, so to speak, in their blood."

  “Yes, sir. They have excellent leadership skills to seamlessly integrate the extensive values of killing the customers’ asses dead.”

  “How do you know? They just blink stupidly!”

  “Well, sir, honored CEO, sir, one of IT's guys, I think it was drone 11000111, came up with a flexible scheme to test the completed Zones. They call it the 'Leveraged Adaptive Re-defining Process', or LARP for short. They pretend to be customers, including full customer gear and try to overcome the challenges we place. According to the summaries, it is going quite well, and every mindless drone is eager to participate."

  “That is good. Dynamically exploiting inter-department growth strategies, while displaying enterprise-wide innovation and dedication is how excellence can be achieved! Wait! Do we have full customer gear?!? How did that happen?"

  “Oh, the gear is fake, and we can’t supply real customers with them. Unfortunately.”

  “We can make fake gear?”

  “They can be found in the DOS under ‘Decorations’. Like the fake watermill.”

  Or the whole back office, but Ellen wisely kept that to herself.

  “Hmmm… Fake decorations… Schedule a meeting with the other managers and investigate how to further harness inexpensive quality vectors in placing more fake decorations, and how to have fungible impact! This is a priority!"

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “Using fake decorations as a stand-in for expensive real merchandise? Brilliant, sir!"

  “Not just merchandise! Also customer service stations, furnishing, and office decorations!"

  “Traps, fake walls? Brilliant, sir!”

  “This could open excellent possibilities, sir" Ellen added "I will inform Burke and his devs immediately! Making a crystal cavern, where the customers would need to search for the real merchandise in the middle of fake ones will be an extensively impactful scheme!"

  “Do so, do so. Don’t forget the meeting”

  As Zoli didn’t need the managers further, they disappeared like magic. A good trait for underlings, Zoli thought.

  The Salamander and the Lynx still looked confused, so he left them to their own devices. Looking over the shoulders of underlings was one thing, but holding their hands constantly, and reminding them to breathe was another. Well, if some intern was stupid enough to forget to breathe, it wasn't a big loss for the company. Or for society.

  Zoli scaled the lookout tower to take in the sights after working so hard for so long. He thought about calling his secretary, Janine, to fetch him some quality wine from his cellar, but decided against it in the end. A good sight could be enjoyed even without drinking – not, that he was able to get drunk anymore. Getting a whole landscape wasted probably required a LOT of booze. Or an army.

  Well, it could be done with quite a low amount of booze, if it was administered to key personnel. A general, for example, or an incompetent CEO.

  As for the view, it was quite nice. To the South, the Lake Biome started not far from the hill – at the edges, a dense belt of reeds made progress difficult (probably, Zoli never tried to negotiate patches of reed), and the trees, that could be found here and there were either dead or… one of the trees, that liked to live in swamps.

  Behind the reed belt was open water, with strategically placed islands, everything from just a sandbar to quite large, forested ones. He even spied a few rocky reefs, that could be called islands on their own.

  He found his beach house quite easily.

  “Janine, please send a memo to Zoning, that my beach house should be moved, or made inaccessible. Please also send a memo to the managers to implement shifting fog or something, so the Lake Biome can’t be seen at once.”

  Zoli couldn't believe it: here he was, relaxing after a long and exhausting day of grueling work, and he still had to work and direct his underlings! Does work never end?!?

  His me-time was, however, only slightly disturbed – no need to get worked up. There was still enough relaxation to do.

  He turned East.

  The view there was not much to write home about. Only the low saddle, the other hill, and the swirling darkness, that was the border of his company. Turning back to the South, he could make out the boundary there too, just on the horizon. He looked up, and indeed, the darkness was there too.

  Strangely, the illumination was like mid-day, even when there wasn’t a sun there, only darkness.

  To the North, Zone 1's long, low hill, the valley with the pond, and the fake watermill were clearly to be seen, and beyond those, Zone 4 and Zone 5. The elongated hillside gave a nice contrast to the nothingness behind it.

  A little bit to the Northwest was another hill, at least double in height to the former Zones, and in the foreground Zone 3’s lonely hill.

  The most interesting was the range to the West. A long chain of flat hills with the occasional peak – but how the Mountain Biome’s summits peaked above those hills, well, that was intriguing.

  Zoli spent a few hours surveying his domain. The longer he looked around, the more the sense of something missing or not being right manifested itself.

  The rolling hills and horsts looked nice, the deep forest everywhere was awe-inspiring, and the Lake Biome conveyed a sense of peace. Everything was masterfully done by the previous CEO.

  “Janine, please send a memo to every department. They should look into the boundary challenge and the missing sky. This is a priority!”

  Zoli was finally able to put his fingers on what was sub-par. While the company's premises clearly had a defined ending, showing that to customers wasn't professional. If it looked like a never-ending place, the customers would spend even more time figuring out the border or trying to find a non-existent passage to hidden places behind.

  Even if they found only a construction site or a half-finished Zone or Biome, they probably earned some bragging rights.

  As for the sky… Everything was better than a nothingness of swirling darkness. If he ran an indoor company, he would have elected for a fake plasterboard ceiling, but that wasn't…

  “Janine, please ask the managers, if a plasterboard ceiling would be feasible!”