The waiting room smelled of disinfectant and dead ambitions.

  Four molded plastic chairs, bolted to the floor as if someone might actually risk stealing them. A water dispenser with a paper cup wedged in the slot since the Cretaceous period. A motivational poster tacked to the wall, its edges yellowed by time: "Your commitment forges destinies." Underneath, carved with a ballpoint pen in a moment of anonymous lucidity: "Except yours, asshole."

  I had been staring at my hands for twenty-three minutes when the door opened.

  — Enter.

  No name. No smile. Just a perfectly tailored charcoal grey suit, a tablet, and a voice possessing all the emotional warmth of an eviction notice.

  The office was a monument to the absence of humanity. No family photos. No agonizing green plants. Just an LED lamp humming like a dying wasp and a window looking out onto other windows. Thousands of them. All identical. All lit up despite the hour.

  The man — or woman, hard to tell under that thick layer of corporate neutrality — placed the tablet on the desk with surgical precision and crossed their hands.

  — Sit down.

  I sat. The chair creaked. No one flinched.

  — Congratulations. Your profile has been validated by the narrative resources selection committee. You are joining the structure as a Trainee Narrator, provisional assignment Block 104, Sector 7, Level 3. Your probationary period will be ninety calendar days with continuous evaluation of your narrative performance indicators according to the standard compliance grid.

  A silence. I waited for them to catch their breath. They didn't. Maybe they didn't need any.

  — Your first operational development phase will cover a period of seven days, during which you must bring a temporary training profile from Tier Zero to Tier Five minimum, using agile narrative management, decisional optimization, and character-arc synergy methodologies. We expect a proactive commitment to the enhancement of the assigned heroic journey, as well as strict adherence to the current regulatory framework.

  They paused. Not to breathe. For dramatic effect, perhaps, or just because their mental script demanded it.

  — Any deviation will be recorded in your personal file. Any unauthorized intervention will result in a disciplinary notification with a potential impact on your end-of-probation evaluation.

  I nodded as if I had understood a single word of what had just been said.

  They handed me a badge. Grey plastic. Barcode. Blurry photo taken during my first interview, back when I still looked like I had dreams.

  NARRATOR 104 Sector 7 — Level 3 Integration: [DD/MM/YYYY — the digits were illegible, as if erased]

  — You start in one hour. Basic equipment is provided at your workstation. Coffee as well, though the management and refilling of the thermos are your individual responsibility. The canteen is on Basement Level 2. Avoid the fish on Thursdays. Toilets are in Hallway 8, sub-section J. Biological break: six minutes maximum.

  They stood up. The interview was over.

  — Welcome to the family.

  The smile that accompanied those words could have served as Exhibit A in a trial for emotional homicide.

  I took the badge. My fingers were trembling slightly. No one noticed. Outside, in the hallway under the bleak neon lights, a synthetic voice echoed:

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  — Narrator 317, please report to the disciplinary room. Narrator 317, disciplinary room.

  No one ran. No one looked up. I walked toward my new life.

  I had imagined an open space. Maybe a few rows of desks, a coffee machine surrounded by tired colleagues exchanging platitudes about their weekends. Maybe even a welcoming smile.

  Not this.

  The door opened onto a cathedral of human mediocrity. No. Not a cathedral. A hangar. A fucking industrial hangar, air-conditioned to exactly 19 degrees Celsius, sliced into a thousand identical little grey squares by two-meter-high acoustic partitions. White neons hung from the invisible ceiling, diffusing a cold, uniform light that created no shadows.

  A hundred rows. Cent blocks per row. Ten thousand narrators.

  The sound was that of a library haunted by ten thousand ghosts all whispering at once. Rustling paper. Muffled sighs. The regular, obsessive clicking of a pen being placed on a metal desk, picked up, placed back down. Again. Again. Again. A collective breath that wasn't quite alive.

  A synthetic voice echoed somewhere above my head, coming from speakers I couldn't see:

  — Narrator 104. Assignment: sector 7, row 34, block 104. Please proceed to your workstation. You have eight minutes.

  I walked. The aisles were numbered. 1. 2. 3. Stenciled onto the industrial grey floor. No names. No colors. Just numbers. Sometimes, between two partitions, I caught a glimpse of a silhouette. Always the same: black suit, white shirt, black tie, motionless in front of a metal desk.

  No one looked up. No one turned their head. A man passed me in the aisle, empty thermos in hand, eyes fixed and glassy. He walked like an automaton whose batteries were nearly dead. His lips moved without producing any sound. I didn't try to find out what he was saying.

  Row 34. I turned right. The blocks followed one another. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

  — 103.

  A woman. Early forties, maybe. Impeccable black suit. Sitting perfectly straight, hands flat on her desk, VR mask over her face. Motionless. For how long? Impossible to say. No one to answer.

  — 104.

  My block. Two meters by two meters. Light grey acoustic walls, textured like low-quality stiff cardboard. A metal desk bolted to the floor, laminate surface vaguely imitating oak wood. An ergonomic chair that had survived three presidents, four restructurings, and probably two pandemics. A brushed steel binder, closed, placed exactly in the center of the desk with almost surgical precision.

  To the left of the binder: a black pen. Cap screwed on. Generic brand. To the right: a stainless steel thermos. Shiny. New. Filled with coffee — by whom? when? — with a white ceramic cup placed next to it. No logo. No personality.

  And in the center, resting on the binder like a promise or a threat: a VR mask. Black. Lisse. Shiny as polished obsidian. No visible cables. No brand. No instructions.

  I sat down. The chair creaked. Just once. Then it went silent. Around me, the infinite murmur continued. Thousands of voices forming only one. Indifferent. Eternal.

  I placed my hands on the desk. My palms were clammy. The binder opened by itself.

  The first page was a clinical white, void of all humanity, except for a box printed in small type in the upper right corner:

  TRAINING PROFILE — TEMPORARY SUBJECT ASSIGNED DURATION: 7 CALENDAR DAYS MINIMUM OBJECTIVE: TIER 5 STATUS: NON-PERMANENT AUTOMATIC EXTRACTION: D+7, 23:59:59

  I stared at the words. Non-permanent. What did that mean, exactly? That the character would be deleted after a week? Recycled? What happened to a temporary consciousness when someone pressed "extraction"? Did it know? Did it fear?

  I brushed those thoughts aside. This wasn't the time. I turned the page.

  CREATION PROTOCOL — PHASE 1: SUBJECT GENERATION

  The Narrator is requested to put on the immersion device and follow the standard procedure for profile generation. Any deviation from the protocol will be automatically recorded in your personal file. Any unauthorized intervention will result in disciplinary notification.

  The Narrative Management System (NMS) will accompany you throughout the process and ensure regulatory compliance.

  Good luck.

  "Good luck." Even here, in a procedural manual, sarcasm was institutionalized.

  I grabbed the VR mask. Heavy. Cold to the touch despite the uniform temperature of the room. I placed it over my face with slow, almost ritualistic movements.

  Mechanical click. Automatic adjustment.