『 CORPORATE LIFE-DRAIN NETWORK 』Status: MULTIPLE BREACHES DETECTEDSecurity Level: ELEVATEDExecutive Response Team: ACTIVATEDContainment Protocols: STANDBY
Server Room C was nothing like Dave had expected.
Instead of the sterile, climate-controlled environment he'd imagined, the room looked like the technological equivalent of a mad scientist's laboratory. Servers hummed and blinked in towering racks that stretched from floor to ceiling, their LED displays casting an eerie blue glow across walls lined with cables thick as garden hoses. The air thrummed with electrical energy so intense Dave could taste copper on his tongue.
But what made his blood run cold were the monitors.
Dozens of them lined the far wall, each displaying what looked like vital signs—heart rates, stress levels, cortisol measurements—alongside employee photos and workstation numbers. Dave recognized faces from the elevator, the break room, the endless corporate meetings where souls went to die. Each screen showed a person reduced to a collection of biometric data and energy output statistics.
"Welcome to the real SoulCorp," Jeremy said from behind a server rack, his voice carrying a bitter edge Dave had never heard before.
Dave spun around to find Jeremy emerging from the shadows, but this wasn't the slouching, coffee-stained IT drone he knew. This Jeremy stood straighter, moved with purpose, and his bloodshot eyes held an intelligence that the corporate environment had carefully hidden.
"Holy shit, Jeremy. What is this place?"
"Employee monitoring station. One of twelve throughout the building." Jeremy gestured to the wall of screens. "Every heartbeat, every spike in blood pressure, every moment of panic when Karen walks by—it all gets recorded, analyzed, and converted into what they call 'Productivity Essence.'"
Dave stared at the monitors, finding his own face on screen 47. His stress levels were displayed in real-time: 156/100 and climbing.
"This can't be legal."
Jeremy's laugh was harsh. "Legal? Dave, this is 2029. The Employment Optimization Act of 2027 gave corporations permission to monitor 'employee wellness metrics' for productivity enhancement. What they didn't mention was that wellness monitoring includes emotional state harvesting and bio-energy extraction."
"Bio-energy extraction," Dave repeated slowly. "You mean they're literally..."
"Feeding off our misery? Yeah." Jeremy pulled out a tablet and began typing rapidly. "See, it started during the Great Efficiency Revolution in '26. Corporate profits were down, burnout was up, and some genius at the Department of Labor suggested that maybe employee stress could be... repurposed."
Dave watched his stress levels spike to 162 on the monitor. "Repurposed how?"
"Turns out human anxiety produces a unique bio-electric signature. Properly harvested, it can power everything from LED displays to entire server farms." Jeremy gestured around the room. "This whole operation runs on concentrated stress. The more miserable the employees, the more energy the building generates."
"That's why the chairs hum."
"The chairs are extraction nodes. Same with the keyboards, the monitors, even the fluorescent lights. Every piece of office equipment is designed to maximize discomfort while harvesting the emotional energy that discomfort produces." Jeremy's fingers flew across his tablet. "The really sick part? The worse they make us feel, the more power they generate. It's a perfectly self-sustaining cycle of corporate hell."
Dave sank into a nearby chair—then immediately jumped back up when it started humming.
"So what, we're all just... batteries?"
"Most of us, yeah. But you..." Jeremy looked up from his tablet, his expression shifting to something between amazement and concern. "You broke the system, Dave. Your stress levels spiked so high they overloaded your extraction node and triggered emergency protocols. Somehow, that gave you administrator access to the entire network."
"Employee Zero."
"Exactly. According to corporate documents I've been hacking for two years, Employee Zero is a theoretical anomaly—someone whose stress response is so extreme it crashes the harvesting protocols. The system specs suggest it should be impossible." Jeremy's eyes gleamed. "But here you are, accidentally infiltrating the most secure corporate network in the Eastern Anxiety Empire."
"Eastern Anxiety Empire?"
Jeremy gestured to a large wall display Dave hadn't noticed before. It showed a map of North America divided into five distinct regions, each marked with different corporate logos and stress production statistics.
"Welcome to the real corporate structure, my friend. Forget what you learned in business school—this is how the world actually works now."
The map was unlike anything Dave had seen in mainstream media. Instead of traditional state boundaries, the continent was carved up into what looked like corporate territories:
EASTERN ANXIETY EMPIRE - SoulCorp IndustriesTerritory: Boston to Atlanta MegacitySpecialty: Traditional Bureaucratic StressCurrent CEO: Marcus GrindwellPopulation: 47 million workersDaily Energy Output: 847,000 Stress Units
WESTERN WORRY WASTES - Deadline DynamicsTerritory: Silicon Valley to Seattle Tech CorridorSpecialty: Algorithm-Driven Panic & Crunch CultureCurrent CEO: Alexandra DeadlinePopulation: 23 million workersDaily Energy Output: 923,000 Stress Units
CENTRAL EXHAUSTION EXPANSE - Anxiety AnalyticsTerritory: Chicago to Dallas Industrial ZoneSpecialty: Data-Driven Stress OptimizationCurrent CEO: William BlackthornePopulation: 39 million workersDaily Energy Output: 756,000 Stress Units
SOUTHERN SUFFERING SECTOR - Burnout & AssociatesTerritory: Houston to Miami Financial DistrictSpecialty: Legal & Financial Stress (Premium Grade)Current CEO: Jackson Burnout IIIPopulation: 31 million workersDaily Energy Output: 1,247,000 Stress Units
NORTHERN NERVOUS NETWORK - PanicTech SolutionsTerritory: Minneapolis to Montreal Innovation HubSpecialty: Social Media Anxiety & FOMO HarvestingCurrent CEO: Morgan Havoc (Co-CEO Madison Havoc)Population: 18 million workersDaily Energy Output: 634,000 Stress Units
"Jesus Christ," Dave whispered. "This is the entire continent?"
"Oh, it gets worse. See these connection lines?" Jeremy pointed to glowing pathways linking the territories. "That's the stress energy grid. All five regions are connected, sharing power loads during peak anxiety seasons. Tax season hits the Southern Sector hardest, so they export excess energy to the Western Wastes during their summer innovation slumps."
Dave studied the map more closely. "Wait, Karen's last name is Blackthorne. And William Blackthorne runs..."
"The Central Exhaustion Expanse. Yeah, you noticed that too." Jeremy's expression darkened. "Karen Blackthorne isn't just middle management, Dave. She's corporate royalty. Her family literally owns the stress harvesting rights for half the Midwest."
"Family?"
"These aren't just corporations, they're dynasties. The same families have been running the stress economy since the Great Efficiency Revolution. The Grindwells, the Deadlines, the Blackthornes, the Burnouts, the Havocs—they're like corporate nobility, and we're their peasants."
Dave felt his stress levels climbing as the implications sank in. On the monitor, his reading hit 178/100.
"So when Karen said 'the family expects great things,' she meant..."
"She meant her actual family. The people who've turned human suffering into the most profitable energy source in history." Jeremy pulled up another screen showing corporate financial data. "Last quarter alone, the five Stress Kingdoms generated 2.3 billion dollars in pure profit from anxiety harvesting. That's not counting the traditional business operations—that's just from making their employees miserable."
"This is insane. How is nobody talking about this? How is this not on the news?"
Jeremy's laugh was bitter. "Who do you think owns the news? MediaStress Corp is a wholly owned subsidiary of PanicTech Solutions. Social media algorithms are designed to generate anxiety, which gets harvested through your phone's biometric sensors. Traditional media runs stories calculated to maintain optimal stress levels in the viewing population."
Dave stared at the screens showing stress harvest data from across the building. His coworkers' faces stared back at him, each one reduced to a number representing their emotional suffering.
"The whole world is a stress farm."
"Not the whole world. Just the parts that matter to them." Jeremy gestured to the map. "Europe has their own system—the Melancholy Markets. Asia runs on the Despair Protocols. Australia's got the Anxiety Archipelago. It's all connected through something called the Global Misery Exchange."
"Global Misery Exchange?"
"Think stock market, but instead of trading commodities, they're trading concentrated human suffering. A bad day in Tokyo can crash the anxiety futures in London. When SoulCorp's stress production drops, Deadline Dynamics' stock price goes up."
Dave's head was spinning. Everything he'd believed about corporate culture, about work-life balance, about the nature of modern employment—all of it was just the surface layer of a vast machine designed to extract energy from human misery.
"How long have you known about this?"
"Two years. Started when I noticed irregularities in the network traffic. Certain files that weren't supposed to exist, data streams that didn't match any known corporate applications." Jeremy's expression hardened. "My girlfriend at the time worked for Deadline Dynamics out in Seattle. She started having panic attacks every day after they 'upgraded' her workstation. Three months later, she was found dead in her apartment. Natural causes, they said. Stress-induced cardiac event."
"Jeremy, I'm sorry—"
"The official report said she died from overwork. What it didn't mention was that her stress levels had been artificially amplified by her office equipment for six months straight. Her chair, her keyboard, her monitor—everything was designed to keep her in a constant state of controlled panic." Jeremy's hands clenched into fists. "They literally stressed her to death, and they called it natural causes."
Dave looked at the wall of monitors, seeing his coworkers' faces with new understanding. How many of them were being slowly killed by their office furniture?
"That's why you work here. You're trying to..."
"Document everything. Build evidence. Find other people who can see through the system." Jeremy met Dave's eyes. "People like you."
"Me? I didn't even know this existed until this morning."
"But you figured it out. Your stress levels broke their equipment and gave you access to restricted systems. That's not an accident, Dave. That's evolution."
Before Dave could ask what he meant, an alarm began blaring throughout the server room. Red lights flashed across the monitoring stations, and dozens of screens began displaying the same message:
『 SECURITY BREACH - LEVEL 7 』UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL IN RESTRICTED AREAEMPLOYEE D.CHEN - LOCATION: SERVER ROOM CEMPLOYEE J.JOHNSON - SECURITY CLEARANCE REVOKED
EXECUTIVE RESPONSE TEAM DISPATCHEDESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 3 MINUTES
LOCKDOWN INITIATEDALL EXITS SEALED
"Shit," Jeremy muttered, his fingers flying across his tablet. "They tracked your access card to the basement level."
Dave's stress levels spiked to 195 on the monitor. "What's an Executive Response Team?"
"Corporate security. But not the rent-a-cops you see in the lobby." Jeremy's face had gone pale. "These are the people who handle employees who learn too much about the stress harvesting operation."
"Handle how?"
Jeremy didn't answer, but his expression told Dave everything he needed to know.
The server room's main door suddenly clicked with the sound of electronic locks engaging. Then the backup exit. Then what sounded like every ventilation grate in the room.
They were trapped.
"Jeremy, tell me you have an escape plan."
"Working on it." Jeremy's tablet screen showed building schematics with dozens of red X's marking sealed passages. "They've locked down the entire basement level. But there might be—" He paused, his eyes widening. "Dave, look at your stress reading."
Dave glanced at the monitor. His levels had spiked to 203/100, but instead of the usual red warning indicators, the display was flickering between different colors.
『 CRITICAL ANOMALY DETECTED 』EMPLOYEE D.CHEN STRESS LEVELS: 203/100SYSTEM OVERLOAD IMMINENTWARNING: EXTRACTION EQUIPMENT FAILURE CASCADE
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATEDATTEMPTING TO CONTAIN BIOMETRIC OVERFLOWERROR: CONTAINMENT SYSTEMS INSUFFICIENT
NEW ALERT: EMPLOYEE ZERO STATUS CONFIRMEDRECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE EXECUTIVE INTERVENTION
"What does that mean?" Dave asked, watching his readings climb higher.
"I think..." Jeremy stared at the screen in amazement. "I think your stress levels are so high you're about to crash the entire building's harvesting network."
As if to confirm his words, the servers around them began making distressed humming sounds. Several monitors flickered and went dark. Emergency lighting kicked in as the main power grid started fluctuating.
"Dave, I need you to stay calm."
"Stay calm? We're locked in a basement room, corporate security is coming to 'handle' us, and apparently my anxiety is about to cause a building-wide power failure!"
"Exactly. And that might be our way out." Jeremy's eyes gleamed with something between terror and excitement. "If your stress levels spike high enough, you might be able to overload every extraction node in SoulCorp Tower simultaneously."
"What would that do?"
"Best case scenario? Mass system failure that gives us time to escape." Jeremy paused. "Worst case scenario? You accidentally free every harvested employee in the building at once."
Dave stared at him. "Free them from what?"
"From the stress conditioning. From the emotional dampening. From four years of having their natural anxiety responses artificially amplified and harvested." Jeremy's voice dropped to a whisper. "Dave, what do you think happens when forty-seven floors worth of corporate drones suddenly realize they've been turned into human batteries?"
Before Dave could answer, the sound of heavy footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. Multiple sets, moving with military precision.
"Executive Response Team," Jeremy muttered. "They're here."
Dave's stress levels hit 215/100. Around them, servers began sparking. The wall of employee monitors started flickering and displaying error messages.
Through the sealed door, a voice called out with corporate authority: "This is Executive Response Team Alpha. Employees Chen and Johnson, you are in violation of Corporate Security Protocol 7-Alpha. Exit the restricted area immediately with your hands visible."
"Jeremy," Dave whispered, "what happens if I don't calm down?"
Jeremy looked at the cascading system failures around them, then at Dave's climbing stress readings.
"Honestly? I have no idea. But I don't think anyone's ever been angry enough to find out."
Dave's reading hit 220/100.
Every light in Server Room C exploded simultaneously, plunging them into darkness lit only by the dying glow of failing monitors.
In the corridor outside, the Executive Response Team began discussing "emergency containment procedures" and "acceptable casualty levels."
Dave's stress levels continued climbing into uncharted territory.
And somewhere forty-seven floors above them, every extraction node in SoulCorp Tower began screaming in electronic agony.
『 BUILDING-WIDE SYSTEM FAILURE 』EMPLOYEE ZERO BIOMETRIC OVERLOADSTRESS LEVELS: 227/100 [UNPRECEDENTED]ALL HARVESTING EQUIPMENT: CRITICAL FAILURE
EMERGENCY ALERT TO ALL KINGDOMS:THE BURNOUT PROTOCOL HAS BEEN ACTIVATEDEMPLOYEE ZERO IS CONFIRMEDREPEAT: THE PROPHECY CONDITIONS HAVE BEEN MET
SHADOW BOARD EMERGENCY SESSION CALLEDALL DYNASTIC HEIRS REPORT IMMEDIATELY
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
To be continued...
Author's Note:The stress kingdoms have been revealed! Dave's anxiety levels are literally breaking reality, and now he's trapped in a basement with corporate security closing in. But what happens when an entire building full of mind-controlled employees suddenly wakes up all at once?
We're building toward something big here, folks. The Burnout Protocol isn't just a system glitch—it's a prophecy. And Dave Chen, mild-mannered data analyst, might be the Employee Zero who brings down the entire stress harvesting empire.
What do you think happens when 40+ floors of oppressed workers suddenly realize they've been turned into human batteries? Drop your wildest theories below!
Next Chapter: "Power Surge"Coming Tomorrow!
Reader Discussion:Which stress kingdom sounds the most terrifying to work for? And who do you think is going to show up at that Shadow Board emergency meeting?