Nigel Forthright, middle-manager of indeterminate seniority and perpetual anxiety, had not seen another human being in the flesh since March 2020. He had, however, seen a wide array of torsos, disembodied chins, and a suspicious number of tropical-themed Zoom backgrounds, despite the company being headquartered in Slough.

Digitech Solutions, purveyor of “cutting-edge digital synergy platforms” (which, if pressed, nobody could actually define), had somehow continued to exist—if not function—under Nigel’s tepid stewardship. The CEO, Sir Barnaby Bluster, a man best described as the lovechild of a steam engine and a gin decanter, had recently emerged from what he called a “strategic sabbatical” (and others called a medically-induced rum stupor) to announce an urgent all-hands meeting at his ancestral home in Dorset.

“This,” he thundered in an email composed entirely in Comic Sans, “concerns irregularities most irregular.”

Nigel, already nursing a mild panic attack and an ulcer shaped like a spreadsheet, began emailing everyone frantically. Several bounced. One replied with a GIF of a cat on a jet ski. Another simply said, “Who dis?”

Meanwhile, Miss Flinchley, the company’s buttoned-up bookkeeper who had not blinked during a Zoom call since 2021, was sunning herself in Barbados. She had developed a rather lucrative arrangement involving 17 simultaneous jobs, three aliases, and a rather sophisticated scheme involving fake invoices for ergonomic chairs. Her crowning achievement was the company’s so-called AI assistant—“DigiPal”—which was, in fact, a senile African Grey parrot named Lord Twiddlington who occasionally shrieked “Synergy!” and bit the microphone.

The IT Director, Terrance “Crash” McBride, spent most of his day installing new RAM in his PlayStation. He had quietly outsourced the company’s entire infrastructure to his nephew Tyler, a 15-year-old savant who’d rewritten the payroll system in Minecraft and replaced the HR software with a chatbot that just replied “lol”.

Come the day of the meeting, the gates of Bluster Manor opened to reveal a ragtag convoy of confused employees, disgruntled contractors, and at least one delivery driver who’d been misdirected by the company’s buggy satnav app. Nigel arrived first, pale and trembling, carrying three laptops, six clipboards, and a large bottle of indigestion tablets.

Miss Flinchley appeared via hologram, reclining on a sunlounger and sipping something unnaturally blue.

“I’d come in person,” she said, “but I’m currently facilitating trans-organizational liquidity alignment.”

Sir Barnaby, now wearing a kilt and an expression of confused indignation, banged a tankard on the drawing-room table.

“Where’s Jenkins?” he roared.

“I am Jenkins,” said a man wearing a suspiciously fake moustache.

“No, I’m Jenkins,” said a woman wearing two pairs of glasses.

At this point it emerged that four employees were, in fact, one man with a green screen, and at least three others were, to quote Sir Barnaby, “figments of some infernal HR hallucination.”

The situation escalated dramatically when Lord Twiddlington squawked “REVENUE PROJECTIONS!” and flew straight into a chandelier, knocking it loose just as the antique plumbing exploded. Torrents of brown water surged through the conservatory, sweeping away laptops, server backups, and the entire marketing team who had just been discovered to be nothing more than a collection of AI-generated avatars.

Just as Sir Barnaby, soaked and steaming, was preparing to call in the Royal Marines, the quiet intern, a shy young woman named Becca, calmly produced a USB stick, inserted it into the smoking remains of the company’s mainframe, and restructured the entire organisation in twelve minutes.

“Who are you?” Nigel asked, soaked to the skin and halfway through a nervous breakdown.

“I’m Becca,” she said, “and technically I own 43% of the company. Dad left it to me in his will.”

“Dad?” Nigel blinked.

Sir Barnaby froze, blinked, and hiccuped.

“Oh God,” he said. “Not another one…”