"Alright Iris, this is your meeting, what did you want to go through?" asked Bella, with that air of authority which she always spoke with.
Iris looked dumbfounded. "Huh? I didn't set this up, Dylan did," she responded, quite confused about what this meeting was about to begin with, and most of all why she had been invited. She was friendly with Dylan, but he worked in a totally different team to her.
Between the four of them, it quickly became clear that everyone's calendar showed that a different one of them had set up the meeting, all with different titles, but with the same attendees in the same room, at the same time.
"Weird, some kind of calendar glitch?" suggested Dylan, "it's been a bit buggy lately." They were all a bit relieved, it was a busy Friday and although this was only a thirty-minute meeting, it was good to have the time back. He grabbed his laptop and stood to leave, dressed much more formally today than usual, with a full navy suit and tie and his brown mop of hair combed and slicked back. Clearly he had something important to attend.
Jennfier beat him to the door, "Me too, good to see you all anyway!" She had a reputation for both her efficiency and charm, walking the office with a certain star-quality that seemed destined for a string of promotions to leadership despite being quite new to the company. Jennifer knew everyone, and she dressed the part, with short white heels, dark tights, a taut grey skirt and white blouse. She even colour-coordinated her glasses to her daily outfit, today a thin black-metal set with round frames. As she reached the door and tugged it, she found it wouldn't give. It was stuck in place, even after Dylan joined her to give it a few tugs of his own.
"Ugh, I left my phone downstairs, can someone call security?" urged Bella, flicking to the front page of her notes to retrieve the number from her list of useful contacts. The worn leather notebook accompanied her everywhere, stuffed with papers every bit as dishevelled as she was with her unkempt dark hair and ill-fitting expensive monochrome dress. She had clearly lost weight since she had first bought it, slight, short but somehow still intimidating.
"I haven't got any signal," answered Iris, "on my phone or my laptop." Whilst she worked in a different team to the rest of them, she knew them well, one of the few finance admins that people actually liked. Popular due to her cheeriness and the deceivingly saccharine bright blonde hair with glistening blue eyes, a profound beauty she weaponised as needed to get people to come clean when the numbers didn't add up.
The others checked too, they had no reception in this room at all. Everyone hated this room because unlike every other meeting space it was converted from unused storage space, only accessible from the fourteenth floor from a staircase, and so rarely used due to its inconvenience. It had nice large windows, and was newly refurbished with wood-panelling but it was everyone's last choice. Still, they had all been in here before, there were never signal issues previously.
Jennifer knew security didn't have cameras monitoring meeting rooms, so there was no hope of alerting them that way. Of course, Nefarium's cameras were hidden all around the room, recording and broadcasting the group's perfectly crafted plight for their ever-exclusive audience.
The large monitor on the wall lit up unprompted and displayed the meeting objective at the top of the screen: 'Discuss the available roles, agree and carry out the related activities.' The light drew their attention, but only increased their confusion. A meeting agenda appeared beneath it:
- Discuss roles
- Agree and assign
- Role preparation
- Carry out activities
>>> Role 1a
>>> Role 2
>>> Role 1b
>>> Role 3
- Any other business
- End meeting
"Is this a slide from another meeting?" Dylan enquired, opening the panel in the table and finding none of the cables plugged into anything. At the bottom of the agenda on-screen, their names were listed as attendees, with the meeting room and time. This was clearly intended for them.
The slide changed, with the agenda now on the right of the screen and three boxes on the left labelled 'Role 1', 'Role 2' and 'Role 3' each with an icon beside it.
Role 1 showed an icon of a woman on her knees, and had two activities listed alongside it: 'a) fellatio, with facial' and 'b) fellatio, swallowed semen'.
Role 2 was accompanied by an icon of a woman with her legs spread open, the activity next to it was described as 'sex until dual-climax'.
Role 3 had an icon beside it of a woman bent over presenting her ass and one activity: 'receive anal sex cream pie'. Beneath everything was a disclaimer in red text, stating 'All clothes must be removed to begin'.
The lewdness of the content caught them all off-guard, stunned into silence. Eventually Bella gave a small laugh, asking, "Dylan, what is this?"
"I don't get it. Is this a joke?" He said, scratching his neck nervously, "Why would someone set a meeting about this? Why would you think I'd set a meeting like this about myself?"
Bella looked unconvinced.
Tuning them out, Jennifer turned away from the arguing pair and tested the door again. It was completely sealed, she didn't even know this door could be locked - there was no visible latch. She also double checked her phone, no signal at all including wifi. Her laptop was still at her desk but she was fairly certain even if she had it there would be no connection. Someone had lured them all to this room and cut them off from the outside world. Testing the certainty of that in her head, she considered the alternatives and none made sense, but sure as she was of it, why would anyone go to such trouble? She might have posed the question to the room, but it seemed that while she had been deliberating Iris had joined the squabbling. Jennifer felt herself getting tense, conflict like this made her anxious at the best of times, and between her recent break-up and the important workshop she had this afternoon, her nerves were thin. She'd had little sleep preparing for this workshop, but still she wasn't ready and if they didn't get this door open soon, she was going to miss it and then she would be in real trouble.
Her hands trembled, so she tightened her fist, clutching her phone and calming herself by focussing on the feel of the glass on her fingers. "Okay let's take a minute, shall we?" Jennifer appealed firmly without raising her voice. They paused, Bella drawing a long breath and turning to the window. "Right what do we know? No-one is sure why we are here or who invited us, the invite came from all of us and yet none of us. We're locked in, with a very strange and sexual meeting agenda, but other than that, we are all okay and we're not in any danger - right? So no need to get worked up just yet."
"Well, judging by that agenda we're not getting out of this room until we do that stuff," Iris chimed in calmly, "so it depends if you consider starving to death a 'danger' I suppose." She punctuated her statement with a wry smile. As far as she was concerned, there was no way she was partaking in any of these 'roles'. Iris' life was on track, at least as far as anyone else could tell, she was with a great guy she had known since high school, they were recently engaged, and all the key stuff was going as she planned. Their issues would work themselves out along the way.
"We won't starve to death, someone will come check on us eventually." Bella asserted, "Security will do a sweep of all the rooms when they lock up the building at night."
"That's over ten hours from now! I've got work due today." Iris exclaimed, without an internet connection she couldn't access any of the files she needed to work.
"Me too," groaned Bella.
"Are we sure security definitely always checks this room? It's pretty out of the way." Dylan remarked quietly, sitting on the floor in the corner. His question hung unanswered but there was a silent consideration in the room that he might have a point.
No one said anything for a while, quietly contemplating until Iris fetched a pen and nail file from her handbag and tried to jimmy the edges of the door to no success. Bella began pacing, reading through her schedule in her notebook to try and work out what meetings she was going to miss, kicking off her heels in resignation and slumping in the corner. Dylan kicked the door a few times without making a dent.
After over an hour Jennifer accepted she was going to actually miss that workshop. It was almost a relief not to have to worry about it, this was completely out of her control. She stifled a dejected laugh. This was so absurd but there was no getting around it, they either had to wait it out for however long or consider the ridiculous activities on-screen.
From Iris' position on the floor, she could still see the roles listed on the slide, and wondered which would be the least awful. It had been so long since she had done anything like them, since the engagement her other half had become distant, and it was now well over a year since they had been intimate. Between work and wedding planning, he seemed fixated on working through their lives like a set of problems, rather than something to be savoured. Their quality time had become strangely administrative, and though she loved him, she yearned for something more than the secret arsenal of toys she had amassed. Usually her libido was pretty low but it had skyrocketed in the absence of sex, and she couldn't keep her eyes from the text on screen for more than a few seconds at a time.
By now the mood in the room was low. Dylan had taken off his jacket, loosened his tie and had rolled up the sleeves. He noticed Iris staring at the monitor, pupils-wide and biting her lips lost in thought. "What is it?" he asked, trying to keep quiet but the room was too small for any privacy.
"Huh?" she uttered, jogged from her thoughts, "oh I was just... well I was working through the roles, just like, if things got desperate which would be worse, you know?" She said with a half-laugh. In her mind it was out of the question, with her partner and Dylan's on-and-off girlfriend always in the picture, though she couldn't remember from their last chat which phase he was in currently. They were always fighting about something.
"So, which is it?" Bella enquired with a smirk of curiosity, "I know what I'd pick but I could see a few angles."
Clearly Iris hadn't realised she would attract so much attention, blushing as everyone in the room now looked to her and awaited an answer. She stood up and approached the table, rubbing the wooden surface with her palms. "Well I suppose oral is the lesser of the evils but that involves doing it twice. All the other roles are one and done." Her legs ached from sitting uncomfortably on the floor so she perched on one of the chairs instead.
"The riskiest is Role 2," Bella contributed, musing aloud as she moved to get a better look at the slide, "yeah see it says dual-climax, so that should be assigned to someone who's on birth control." Everyone in the room was looking at Bella, not because she was speaking, but for her string of famously salacious office-escapades. "I know word gets around, trust me you don't even know the half of it. I mostly use condoms, but they're in my purse downstairs. Anyone have any with them? Dylan?"
