Chapter 3 : Survival Metrics
Tracy found him in the hallway outside Studio 6H.
Not a general sweep. Not an ambient accusation delivered to the floor at large. He came around the corner specifically, pointed at Albert specifically, and said, "There you are," with the satisfaction of a man who had been conducting a search and located the subject.
Albert stopped walking.
Tracy closed the distance to about four feet and stood there. Grizz and Dot Com arrived a half-step behind, which was their standard formation: close enough to intervene, far enough to observe. Tracy crossed his arms and looked at Albert with the focused intensity of someone running a complex calculation.
"I've been thinking," Tracy said.
"About the shark," Albert said.
"About the shark, about you, about the energy in this building, and about the fact that new people bring new energy, and new energy can disturb existing energy systems." He paused. "My therapist says I have high sensitivity to energy disturbances."
"That sounds right."
"Are you mocking me?"
"No."
Tracy studied him for another four seconds. Albert didn't move, didn't shift his weight, didn't offer anything. The trick with Tracy — from everything he remembered, from every episode he'd filed in his memory — was that motion read as guilt. Stillness was harder for Tracy to interpret.
"My shark," Tracy said carefully, "is a three-foot inflatable great white named Gerald. Gerald has been with me since the Paramount parking lot incident of 2004, which I don't talk about, and he was in the greenroom this morning and now he is not in the greenroom."
"I understand."
"Can you see the guilt in your eyes right now? Because I can." Tracy leaned in slightly. "I am trained to see guilt. I spent six weeks in a facility in Arizona and the whole program was basically about reading guilt in people's eyes. I have a certificate."
"I didn't move Gerald."
"You have the eyes of someone who moved Gerald."
"Those might just be my eyes."
Tracy opened his mouth. Then Dot Com said, quietly, "Tracy, I think Gerald might be in the Uber from this morning. You were holding him when we left the apartment."
A pause.
Tracy did not break eye contact with Albert. "Is that information you had available during this entire conversation?"
"I just remembered it," Dot Com said.
Another pause. Tracy straightened. Something in his expression shifted — the focused intensity redirecting itself toward a new target, which was the Uber driver, the Uber company generally, and the concept of Uber as an institution. He pointed at Dot Com. "Call them. Tell them Gerald is in their vehicle. Tell them the liability situation if something happens to Gerald."
"I'll call them," Grizz said.
"Grizz, you call them." Tracy turned back to Albert and pointed. "I'm watching you."
"Understood."
Tracy left. Grizz and Dot Com went with him, Dot Com already pulling out his phone, and the hallway exhaled.
Albert let out a slow breath through his nose.
The HUD went off.
Not a flicker. Not a gentle pulse. A full-panel notification that hit the upper right of his vision with the force of something that had been building and now released:
[HIDDEN ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED][SURVIVE YOUR FIRST TRACY ENCOUNTER][+5 ENDURANCE]
And then — and this was the part he hadn't expected, hadn't been able to read from the low-resolution preview of the locked icon — something went out.
Not a sound. Not a visual. But Albert felt it physically: a brief warmth behind his sternum, and with it a sense of something radiating outward from him in all directions, like a stone dropped in water. It lasted half a second. Then it stopped.
Three seconds of silence.
Then, from the direction of the writers' room, a head poked out. Frank Rossitano, LOVE DOLL hat slightly askew. He was looking down the hallway with the expression of someone trying to identify a noise they weren't sure they'd heard.
From behind Albert, the door to the production assistant bullpen opened and two PAs looked out with the same expression — searching, slightly confused, like they'd been trying to remember something and the attempt had surfaced without the actual memory.
From his left, Kenneth Parcell materialized from wherever he had been, clipboard in hand, and stopped next to Albert. He was quiet for a moment, which was unusual for Kenneth. Then:
"Did you feel that?"
Albert kept his voice neutral. "Feel what?"
"I don't know." Kenneth looked at his clipboard. Then at the hallway. Then at Albert. "It was like — I was thinking about the morning briefing and then suddenly I was thinking about you. Just, specifically, you. Like someone said your name, but quieter."
"That's strange."
"It might be the building," Kenneth said. "Old buildings do things. My grandma's house in Stone Mountain used to—" He stopped himself. "Anyway. Are you okay? Tracy can be intense in the initial getting-to-know-you phase."
"I'm fine."
"He doesn't actually think you moved the shark. Probably."
"I know."
Kenneth nodded slowly, the way he did when he'd decided something mattered more than he'd initially signaled. He made a small note on his clipboard. Albert watched him make it but couldn't read the handwriting from this distance.
"We've got audience staging in about forty minutes," Kenneth said. "I'll come find you."
He walked away.
Albert waited until he was gone.
Then he turned around, found the supply closet three doors down — the one with the latch that didn't quite catch, the one that smelled like cleaning solution and cardboard — and went inside.
He stood in the dark with the HUD glowing faintly at the edge of his vision and held the endurance point allocation without actually allocating it yet.
He'd understood the incoming notification. He'd understood the rewards, the stat increases, the achievement framework. None of that was the problem.
The problem was what came out.
He replayed the moment: the notification hitting, the warmth behind the sternum, Frank's head appearing, the PAs opening the door, Kenneth suddenly thinking about him specifically. Four separate people registering something they couldn't name. And not one of them had any reason to be thinking about Albert Myers in that moment — he was a page, three hours into his first day, invisible furniture in a building full of more interesting furniture.
The system didn't just track his accomplishments.
It announced them.
Every achievement he unlocked was going out as some kind of signal, some wordless broadcast that made the people around him suddenly aware of him, pull his face up from wherever faces got filed, think his name without meaning to. He had no idea how far it reached. He had no idea how many people had just gotten a flash of Albert Myers in their peripheral awareness.
He touched the NBC peacock pin on his blazer.
There were going to be more achievements. The system had an entire menu of them, still greyed out, still locked, still waiting for conditions to be met. Every single one of them was going to do this.
Every success was going to have witnesses he couldn't predict, couldn't control, couldn't redirect.
He had to understand how this worked before it happened again.
The cleaning-solution smell was starting to get into his clothes. Albert pushed the supply closet door open, stepped back into the hallway, and went to find Kenneth — because Kenneth had made a note, and Albert needed to know what was on that clipboard before Kenneth decided it meant something.
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