Year Zero Read Online Free Page A

denounce the entire Microsoft empire when the door flew open.
    “Dude, got a moment?” It was the guy from the next office over, Randy Cox. Not waiting for an answer, he slid onto the chair that Frampton had just vacated. Six-two, brawny, and with a thick head of wavy brown hair, Randy’s a decent guy who joined the firm two years after me. “Fido’s coming to New York the day after tomorrow,” he said, fixing me with a meaningful look. “I thought you might want to know. Given that you’re
due for the Omen, and all.”
    Our firm has so much internal jargon that we could probably foil a wiretap with it, and I know its terms as well as I know the names of the states. But I was too frazzled to muster anything more than a shell-shocked gaze.
    “Fiiii-do,” Randy repeated, as if teaching a new word to a thick preschooler. “Coming to town. Senator Fiiii-do. Fido.”
    I nodded mutely. Fido is our hazardously impolitic nickname for a man who can only be described as the music industry’s pet senator—a high-ranking Republican. I think he honestly views himself as a fiercely principled advocate of The People. But he’s firmly on our leash. And like any good pet, he obeys his master’s voice.
    “He’s coming through town the day after tomorrow for some fund-raising,” Randy continued. “Judy’s got an hour on his calendar.”
    “Of course she does,” I said, partially regaining my wits. Judy is one of the firm’s most powerful (and dreaded) partners, and manages our relations with countless outside bigwigs. She meets privately with Fido almost monthly.
    “I thought you’d find this interesting. Given that it may be your turn.”
    I nodded again. Each year, our firm hacks mercilessly at its cadre of long-serving associates, dropping the ones with no hope of ultimately making partner. And I was now in my seventh year—a notoriously lethal time. You know you’ve survived year seven if (and only if) you receive The Omen. This comes when a senior partner (like Judy) takes you around to meet privately with some of the firm’s most prominent outside allies (like Fido). If you don’t get
The Omen by early March, you never will. And with February almost over, I was running out of time. I was also battling political headwindsthat were bigger than me—and even Judy—in that our firm’s patent litigators were starting to eclipse the copyright group that Judy heads. Our group was still printing money. But with patent troll clients shaking down businesses for ever-larger payouts over ever-more questionable patents, we were no longer the
firm’s ascendant team. This made it that much harder for copyright associates like me to survive.
    I managed to give Randy a calm, skeptical look. “Do you honestly think Judy will let me through the gate?” She had been openly hostile toward me for months.
    “Of course she will. She’s like a lazy seventh grader. She only bothers to be mean to the people she really likes.”
    Randy wasn’t just being nice, as this interpretation was actually consistent with Judy’s odd temperament. But unlike him, I had read my performance reviews. “Nick gives good meeting,” she had written recently. “But does NO original thinking.” Sadly, I could see where she was coming from. I do
give good meeting
—a result of my ability to stay weirdly cool under fire, and to make people think that I know what’s
happening when I don’t (another old survival tactic. I defused countless childhood plots by conning my brothers and cousins into thinking I was on to whatever they were planning against me, and had already alerted the grown-ups—when in truth I had no clue). The trouble is that this sets expectations high—so high that when people figure out that I’m occasionally quite clueless, they tend to overcorrect their assessment of me, and decide that I must be a full-time
idiot.
    “Thanks for the warning,” I said, as my phone vibrated from a text message landing in its gullet. I slid