HillCorp: The evil conglomerate

Sometimes I like to start stories, to set up a premise and then mull over the intricacies at a later date. Yes, not finishing them or every updating my blog are both due to an extreme case of combined laziness and forgetfulness, oh well....Here's a short piece I wrote recently.

Snarling voices scraped against the jostling hallways of HillCorp. Agitated clusters of suits shuffled past in hurried steps, never making eye contact with anyone outside of their own clique. Decades of bloody corporate backstabbing saturated every vestige of the multinational conglomerate. Each nation on the planet had a finger in this sticky industrial pie, and every digit was poisoned with a thirst for profits, at any cost but their own.

Those with a consciousness were quickly weeded out by the sadistic HR witches on the headquarter’s fifth floor. On her third day, Kay Mahon was thrown out of the complex for apologising to a complaining customer on the phone. In his fifth month, Charles Boon was told to pack his things when he asked to leave 10 minutes early to visit his mother in the hospital. There was no room for apology or heart or empathy. Only the most hardened sociopaths made it a year.

Yet this was the foundation of HillCorp’s successes, why it survived one economic crash after another. Its focus was unshakeable. Its dominance in the market paid no heed to rules of monopolies. One after another of its rivals crumbled or succumbed to aggressive take over bids. With its constant stream of cash, buying politicians was simple. Everyone knew what was happening, but no one was powerful enough to stop it. The only force strong enough to take down HillCorp was HillCorp.