Aodhan had found himself in a few office environments during his career, all experimenting with their own sets of rules and guidelines and cultures. The bog-standard water cooler discussions exempt, how social connections and responsibilities between each workplace appeared quite different. One had weekly pizza parties, likely meant to keep up morale and distract from the fact the employees simply weren’t being paid enough. Another had their office hours reduced on the last day of the week in certain seasons – which could only be taken advantage of should a worker be on or ahead of schedule with their deadlines. A more luxurious office offered several extracurricular activities, such as yoga classes and badminton matches – though, most of the organization of those events fell onto employees a bit lower down on the chain of command. Generally speaking, all of these were benefits to ease tension in the workplace.
On his arrival, Pinnacle Corporation... didn’t seem to have any of that on the surface. Rather, the closest approximation was instead in a shared role that rotated between the employees on a studio floor of the building. The Conference Assistant of each week was excused from their regular duties, and instead held the responsibility of attending each meeting held on that floor’s main conference room. They held a supporting position to all other employees in attendance, rather than being an active participant in the meeting. Their exact method of support seemed... irrelevant, for some reason, though. In spite of his curiosity, Aodhan could never seem to pay attention to the Conference Assistant during any of his own meetings.
It was the first frustration that came to mind when he read the e-mail he received Friday afternoon.
Sender: Boss – Floor 53 (boss_53@pinnacle.com)
Subject: Conference Assistant of the Week
Hi Aodhan,
Thank you for your continued efforts at Pinnacle Corporation! For this coming week, you’ve been assigned as our floor’s Conference Assistant! When you arrive at work on Monday morning, please disregard your regular duties, and report immediately to our floor’s main conference room to be briefed on your duties for the week.
Good luck!
Boss – Floor 53
“How do they even choose someone for that...?” he mumbled, as he approached the doors of the towering office complex. Crowding into one of the many elevators with at least half-a-dozen other people in semi-formal attire, all he could do was ponder on the role he would soon be performing. Frustration wrapped around his mind, as every effort to recall their duties, their presence in the room – hell, even who might’ve worked the position just last week – fell short. If there was truly a Conference Assistant in each and every one of their meetings, why couldn’t he remember a single thing about them?
He was alone with that quagmire of thought, right up until the elevator reached his floor. The doors opened, and he strode forward. He managed to arrive earlier than most of his coworkers today, so there were few faces to see as he navigated the sea of cubicles. No one to distract him from sailing straight to the conference room. His trepidation made it difficult to tell if that was for better or worse.
Sure enough, he arrived at the large wooden door, leading into the familiar meeting place. Except, curiously, the windows were blinded. The room hosted a large wall of windows – extending from the door to the end of the room’s interior – that allowed anyone on the floor a peek at the discussions that took place within, and conversely, anyone inside could peer back out to their world outside the meeting. There were few conversations so discreet to warrant throwing the shades down on those windows, but perhaps they were also put in place at the end of the week as well? Aodhan couldn’t fathom the reason, exactly, but he did take a moment to muse on another peculiarity of the windows, now that he was paying attention: why did the windows only start rising at about waist height...?
He shook off the thought, and turned the door handle. Heavy as the door seemed, it swung open effortlessly, and he stepped into the darkened room. No one else here yet... He thought he might step back outside and wait for someone to invite him in – likely the boss. But there was one light that cut through the pitch of the room. The projector was left on, it seemed, and at the end of its trail was the whiteboard, where a message stood:
Please close and lock the door, and sit in the chair facing the whiteboard. Your briefing will begin shortly.
No other prompts but those... Not even a request to turn on the lights? But he complied, sliding the door back into its frame, the knob clicking in place. The lock turned just as easily in his hand, leaving him in the shadowy conference room. The projector’s light almost seemed to get brighter as the door locked, casting enough light that his chair – turned to the whiteboard and resting neatly at the head of the oval table – was plainly visible.
Aodhan’s slacks had barely grazed the seat of the chair, when the projector shone bright against the wall. He nearly jumped back to his feet, but something fought back against his reflexes. A familiar jingle droned from the speakers, as the Pinnacle Corp logo spins into view. A training video, he realized, not unlike the ones from orientation. Given the rotating nature of the role, it made some sense, but perhaps they also recognized how easily forgotten the conference assistant was in these meetings...?
Another sudden realization came to mind as the screen began to shift to an array of contrasting, pastel circles emanated from the center of the projection. For the brief moment before his conscious mind slipped into darkness, hastily shoved out the back of his cranium by the hypnotic programming, he recalled this exact pattern from that very same orientation day. If he could’ve remembered it earlier, he’d think it another peculiarity in the office’s culture.
Instead, silence. As if the word was uttered deep inside his own brain, possessed with an authority he couldn’t contest. The pulsing visuals spoke louder than any thought he could conjure. His training made sure of that.
“Thank you for your prompt arrival,” hummed an inorganic voice from the speakers. “You have been selected as this week’s Conference Assistant for Floor 53 –” the numbers were stilted in their delivery. “– a role in our offices that rotates between employees, so everyone has the chance to show their support for their team.”
No response. Aodhan simply stared, distant and entranced. Drool began to seep slowly down his bottom lip. If those flaccid words found any purchase, it couldn’t be seen on the surface.
“The following training will prepare you for your duties as Conference Assistant,” it continued. “While the tasks are unorthodox compared to other office practices, you will find them simple and effortless to execute through the week!”
Without another moment of preamble, the circles began to twist and spiral, and the voice flatly droned instruction after instruction. Just as the circles pushed away his conscious mind, the spiral drilled deep into his subconscious. Command after command sunk deep into his psyche, deeper than he could hope to reach. Yet even as information was force-fed into his brain, he didn’t budge. All the Conference Assistant could do was sit, slack-jawed, glassy-eyed, mindlessly attentive, as his role was made clear to him.
The door opened wide, the first in attendance to the meeting striding into the conference room. They were followed shortly by another attendee, and another, and another. Idle greetings between coworkers that had yet to speak to each other earlier in the day, small talk as more bodies entered the room, the light thumps of penny loafers and oxfords against the carpeted floor as they found their seats at the table... Every sound bounced against the walls and windows of the sterile meeting place.
Loudest of them was the door shutting, signalling the beginning of the meeting above. Signalling the beginning of Aodhan’s duties below.
The light of the room could still find its way beneath the thin laminate tables, though all the bodies that crowded the outside dimmed his vision. He could still see clearly enough to find his way to the first of his coworkers. Shambling along the floor to position himself between those legs was still awkward, but he found it more graceful than his attempts during Monday’s meetings.
Aodhan reached for the zipper sitting in his coworker’s lap. The shifts above were subtle, absent in their efforts, as he assisted in fishing out his cock from his briefs. Were the lighting a mite bit better, Aodhan might have been able to tell who he was kneeling in front of, but it hardly mattered. What mattered was the support he would offer, beginning with the hand he wrapped along that stiffening member. Stroking it slowly at first, the soft meat inflated and hardened in his hands. Once it was at full mast, he brought his lips to the head, and began to sink down on it.
The details of the meeting were a garbled mess to his ears. Irrelevant to his task as Conference Assistant. His support didn’t require context of the meetings held. Even as the coworker he was supporting spoke, and his words reverberated subtly on his cock, they were no more intelligible than the wet, sloppy fellating Aodhan offered.
The orgasm was swift and silent. It had barely been a minute since his mouth made contact that he felt the cock twitch and spasm against his tongue, salty jism spurting down his throat. Its owner barely moved as the ecstasy of ejaculation passed him by. It hardly surprised Aodhan, of course; everyone on Monday acted the same. Even should it release stress, pleasure wasn’t necessarily the point.
Both Aodhan and his coworker worked in tandem to return the spent phallus to its home in his pants, briefs folded back in place, fly zipped up. As if nothing happened. And he found his way to the next man, sitting opposite to the last.
Expose the dick. Suck it off. Swallow. Return the dick. Move to the next participant.
Again, expose, suck, swallow, return... Move to the next.
Suck... Swallow... To the next...
To the next...
The next...
Next.
Next.
Next.
Next-- wait. He was here already.
Recognizing the pair of legs was the same as the first coworker he supported, he retreats back and sits quietly below. The meeting continued unabated. No pause, not for even a moment, as business was conducted orderly and efficiently above. Just as he had conducted his own business below, orderly and efficiently. The Conference Assistant had finished his work in this time slot, with time to spare, as expected. All he could be expected to do was sit patiently as the meeting droned on above.
Curiously, as he sat, he found it impossible to absorb any of the information discussed above. The words themselves certainly sat within his grasp, but he simply couldn’t will himself to care. Their words simply weren’t relevant to the Conference Assistant.
Eventually, the room swelled with the clamouring of chairs and shoes against the floorboards. The members of this meeting found their way back to the door, exiting one after the other. Eventually, with the closing of the door behind the last of them, silence fell upon the conference room once again. All that was left was the humming of fluorescent lights above, and the muffled activities of the office floor outside. The meeting found its end, and Aodhan took his short reprieve to exit from beneath the tables. He wouldn’t have long to rearrange the room to presentable standards, adjusting each chair and clearing the whiteboard.
The next meeting would start shortly. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last of the day. Several more back-to-back meetings awaited the Conference Assistant this week.
The door closed behind the last of his coworkers attending the meeting. He would likely make his way directly to his desk and collect his things to leave for the weekend. Aodhan would have to make his own arrangements to depart, now that the final conference of the week had closed.
All the same procedure between meetings first: erasing the whiteboard, clearing any potential clutter from the table tops, placing the chairs back in their rightful places. Once the room was organized, then came the closing tasks for the Conference Assistant. The blinds would come down on the meeting room, just as they did when he entered earlier this week. One chair would find its place in front of the whiteboard. And, before departing, he would sit patiently with the lights out, awaiting his debriefing.
His wait was short, as the projector shone bright again, skipping straight to the same spiralling patterns he saw Monday morning. On the surface, he seemed unfazed. After all, he hadn’t left trance the whole work week.
“Thank you for your hard work this week,” the speakers greeted him. “Your efforts as Conference Assistant has seen us through yet another productive work week at Pinnacle Corp! Before you leave for the week, we’d like to take a moment to help unburden you, and allow you to decompress this weekend.”
As the spiral continued to turn – was it spinning the other way earlier in the week? – the tone of the voice behind it changed, back to the monotonous droning that programmed Aodhan at the start of the week.
“You will erase any knowledge of your activities as Conference Assistant from your memories.”
With one sentence, the last work week suddenly felt like a blur, as if waking from a dream already slipping out of his grasp.
“You will erase any training of your duties as Conference Assistant from your memories. You will retain your subconscious routines meant to assist later Conference Assistants.”
Even the spiral in front of him – digging deep into his mind again – seemed distant and unfamiliar.
“You will forget any conscious information pertaining to the Conference Assistant. Should any copies of your assignment e-mail exist, you will promptly delete them, and forget you received them at all.”
He merely sat and stared, as his mind was swiftly debriefed and reprogrammed.
“Your final task for the week will be to walk out of this room and close the door behind you. When you have left the room, and boarded the elevator, your conscious mind will return to you, and you may depart for the weekend. Thank you again for your continued dedication to Pinnacle Corp!”
Aodhan blinked. He felt strangely dizzy, as if he just fell asleep standing up... The jerking of the elevator beginning to descend didn’t help. A groan under his breath, before he looked around. Only one other person on the elevator. They seemed almost as out of it as he was. Perhaps they had a long week too...
At least, it must have been a long week for him, right? Why else would he feel so worn out? Why else would the events of the week feel like a formless blob in his brain?
Why... couldn’t he remember...?