Turn 2 of 11

Look at my own job description in the HR portal

You minimize Ronan's profile with a click and pull up your own. The page loads in that specific, agonizing way the portal has, each field rendering one by one as if the server is thinking about each word individually. Your job title still says what it said this morning—Junior Analyst, Business Operations—but beneath it, in the Responsibilities section, a new line sits that wasn't there when you clocked in.

'Reports enthusiastically to whoever she just promoted.'

You read it three times, waiting for it to be a glitch, a temporary artifact of the system catching up with itself. It doesn't change. The autosave indicator sits contentedly in the corner, already done, already committed. Below that line, your original responsibilities are still listed—maintain departmental reports, coordinate cross-functional meetings, support senior leadership on ad hoc projects—but the new addition sits at the top of the list like a crown placed slightly crooked.

Your phone buzzes. It's Imani, one desk over, and you glance at the screen without moving your head. 'Your face is doing something,' her message reads. 'You look like you just got away with something and also might throw up.' She's not wrong. You set the phone face-down on the desk and stare at the words on your screen. You promoted yourself, or at least you promoted someone, and the system compensated by making you their enthusiastic subordinate. That's the trade. That's the ledger.

Ronan is still standing at the edge of your desk, smiling like a man who's just been told the quarterly numbers are excellent. He hasn't sat down. He's waiting, you realize, for you to say something. The deference in his posture is real and it's unsettling, because you know exactly why it's there. You put it there. You wrote it into existence with four keystrokes and a deleted line, and the system balanced the books by rewriting yours.

You glance back at the screen. The Responsibilities section has a small pencil icon next to it, the same one that was on Ronan's profile before you changed his. Your cursor hovers near it, and you feel the pull of it, the same pull you felt five minutes ago. You could edit again. You could delete the new line. You could add something else, something better. But the system is watching, and every change you make will cost you something. The review is in three days, and your job description is already a document you don't fully recognize.