Probably the most prophetic of all the megacorps, Candy Coins was going to be the main currency for Cyberia’s criminal underworld which basically means that everyone was going to be using it including those brutish Cyberpigs.

Myra Lippit was already working in the Silicon area when she applied for the role of “project leader who understands mathematics a bit more than the average person”. After hearing what the summer contract actually entailed she told her interviewer to fuck clean off. She wasn’t prepared to sacrifice a comfortable salary as an accountant for an uncomfortable steaming pile of horseshit.

But as she was about to exit the room in a sulk, her hand touching the office doorknob, a coked up Lawrence Cassidy surprisingly said, “Okay, okay, come sit down again.”

“Why should I? You expect me to work for literal peanuts.”

“We will be offering other snacks and beverages, but that’s besides the point. Myra, if you tell anyone what I’m about to…”

“Keep your dick in your pants,” Myra said, pointing to a stapler on the desk, “or I’ll behead it with that stapler and force feed it to your mother.”

“My dick isn’t going anywhere,” Cassidy said. “In fact, it hasn’t gone anywhere for the last two years except for one lonely hospital visit which is a personal matter I don’t have to justify to anyone. But listen, I’m going to offer you the same salary as you have now plus 25 percent. Take a sabbatical for the summer and then you can go back to your old job whenever you want. It’ll be as if you were never even here.”

It’s at this point Ryba would’ve done an emergency cough, warning Cassidy that the Silicon snow was talking too much, but he was crashed out in the first floor storage room after hitting a bong stuffed with cartel big bud for the first time in his life.

“25 percent,” Myra said.

“25 percent, plus everything else we discussed. You just categorically can’t tell another soul in the office that you’re the only employee on the payroll.”

“The only one?”

“There’ll probably be more at this rate, but right now you’re the first and I’m going to try keep it that way.”

“25 percent.”

“25. No problem. Do we have a deal?” It then dawned on Cassidy that he had no clue how much this was going to cost him. With a dry throat disguising a gulp, he said, “How much do you earn again?”

When he learned what Myra’s monthly pay was, he immediately farted, almost following through. When he later checked, there was a tiny bit of brown pebbledash in his undies looking up at him.

A day later the contract was reluctantly signed and sealed, and this particular megacorp is the sum of Myra’s achievements during her time at Give Me Head Productions. It might appear slightly underwhelming but allow us to explain.

The concept behind Candy Coins is that it’s a digital currency which is solely used for untraceable transactions. Want to hire a Warbot? You need Candy Coins for that. Want a forehead chip to improve your poolshark skills? You need Candy Coins for that. Need to bribe the Cyberpigs to take out an “innocent bystander”? You get the picture.

Myra also decided to “cute-ify” the branding for Candy Coins, reasoning that this is what would happen if such a currency ever hit the black market and wanted to disguise its criminality.

Eagle eyes will also notice that the Cyberpigs logo is stamped on the digital adverts above. Myra went with the idea that the Candy Coins megacorp was brazenly sponsored by the Cyberpigs. Apparently this would help to reduce “wasting police time,” although we have already established by now that pretty much everything is wasting police time in Cyberia.

In any other world, all this would seem ridiculous. However, as we are beginning to learn, anything ridiculous goes in Cyberia.

The Wrath of Horst Krantz

When Myra decided to leave this practical joke of an operation, it was on terrible terms. She told everyone they’re “even more sexist and useless than that Boriz loser” while trashing her desk.

This all happened directly after Myra received her last wage slip. She also realised that, owed to there being no written contract, there was nothing to stop her making more money out of an exposé.

In their August edition, Office Waste (a long defunct magazine which shined a “hilarious spotlight on office rebellion and terrible employers”), published her story.

The most crushing is this excerpt:

Perhaps the biggest idiot loser of them all is CEO Lawrence Cassidy. He’s allegedly snorted so much Silicon snow that you can now use his emaciated torso as a ski slope for mice. Yet Cassidy is a genius at the same time because other than Myra, he allegedly doesn’t pay any of his employees with money allegedly; he allegedly pays them in [please note that we’ve already used this second rate joke above…].

Office Waste, August edition 1988.

Shortly after her departure, someone at Give Me Head HQ must’ve purchased several copies of the magazine as we found them in the files along with everything else. The wear and tear indicates that it had been furiously thumbed through a million times.

By the date of its publication, the team’s daily bread had been thoroughly replaced with narcotics, liquor, sleep deprivation, tantrums, chaotic brainstorming, too many useless meetings, collapsing morale, occasional fist fights, office pranks (resulting in at least one hospitalisation) and very little progress. But the loyalty of the remaining employees didn’t waiver. They still kept churning out ideas which continued to deteriorate with every day that passed until all that was left was office landfill.

When the above headline news began to circulate in the office, most of the employees were too invested in the project to really care. However, a handful took it extremely badly.

A storyboard artist called Horst Krantz took it worse than anyone else. He had been riding the cocaine ghost train for five solid days, working on the NoCanDo character who he despised with a venom.

When the rumours registered, Horst wholeheartedly believed that it all meant he was the star of the latest episode of Candid Camera. He leapt out of his chair and slammed his hands down on the desk.

“You motherfuckers,” he yelled. “I’ll kill you all!”

Next thing, he trashed his desk with a pogo stick. He then marched towards Cassidy’s office and smashed the handle off, the door swinging open. But there was nobody home.

“Where the fuck is this guy Cassidy who’s been pretending to be a CEO? I’m going to eat him alive!”

“He’s temporarily going through his own bout of psychosis,” Mickey said from the other side of the doorframe. “Somebody said he’s hiding inside the foyer fish tank but I don’t know if that’s true.”

“This fucker will pay with his life!”

As Horst began to march towards the wrong exit, he finally tripped over his own shoes and found himself lying between two occupied desks. Exhausted, he then proceeded to sleep for 31 hours in the fetal position, peeing himself twice and shitting himself only once.

When Horst came back around, his head thumping, he had forgotten what had happened. Everything appeared as normal in the office. He staggered back to his desk, necked a couple of valium and asked if anyone had seen who’d smashed up his computer.

There was a muttering of nos. Horst replaced the computer with a new one and cracked on with NoCanDo.

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