The Corporate Apocalypse: Jakarta's Survival Guide to Cosmic

Chapter 11: Hostile Takeovers and High-Dose Caffeine

The HRD RECON SUV tore down Sudirman Avenue, its engine sounding more like a high-end laser printer churning out a thousand-page report. Rendy sat in the driver's seat, one hand on the wheel with a cocky swagger, the other gripping the black coffee Vanda had provided. 

The coffee tasted like hot garbage. Imagine battery acid mixed with melted asphalt and a hint of synthetic vanilla. But the kick was insane. After just three sips, Rendy's pupils dilated until his irises were gone, and he felt like he could see raw Wi-Fi signals floating in the air.

"Ren, slow down! You're gonna kill us hitting those Model Zs!" Alana screamed, white-knuckling the grab handle.

Ahead of them, about fifty Model Zs in matching white dress shirts were performing a mass morning workout in the middle of the street. Their movements were jerky, perfectly synchronized, led by a drone blaring: "One, two, hit your targets! Three, four, healthy overtime!"

"Relax, Al! This SUV has priority clearance! Watch this!" Rendy hammered the horn.

Instead of a normal honk, a polite yet terrifying female voice boomed out: "MAKE WAY, PLEASE. THE EXECUTIVE DIVISION IS RUSHING TO A SHAREHOLDERS' MEETING. FAILURE TO YIELD WILL RESULT IN A DEDUCTION FROM YOUR ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW."

Instantly, the line of Model Zs scattered. They scrambled to the sidewalk, snapping into a rigid salute, clearing the way for the black SUV as if Rendy were a corporate god descending from his throne.

"Holy crap... that voice is magic," Gondrong muttered from the back seat. He was trying to reload the massive staple gun. "Boss, these staples are huge. If you hit someone in the head with this, you'll probably stitch their fate shut forever."

"Eyes on the prize, everyone," Rendy said, his eyes bulging as he stared down the road.

"I just read Chapter 21. The title is: 'How to Pull Off a Zero-Capital Hostile Takeover'. It says this cosmic corporation has one fatal flaw: they can't process anything that's 'Selfless'. To them, everything has to be a transaction. The House of Hope is an anomaly because it's fueled by the energy of pure, selfless giving."

"How are we supposed to get in without tearing the place down?" Alana asked, checking her staple gun. "Vanda is definitely tracking us through the car's GPS."

"That's why we need Tip #66," Rendy said, pointing to Coach Udin's book open on the dashboard. 'If you're being monitored by a supervisor, create fake activities that look incredibly busy on their radar. Use the "Window Dressing" technique—physically spruce up your fake reports'.

Rendy ripped the price tags off some clothes in the backseat (leftovers from a previous shop heist) and stuck them to the SUV's windows. "Al, Gondrong, Juling! Stick every scrap of paper or receipt you have on the glass! Block the view from the outside!"

Within minutes, the SUV looked like a messy high school bulletin board. Convenience store receipts, old newspaper clippings, and expired parking tickets covered the windows, leaving only a tiny peephole for Rendy to see the road.

"This way, the HR satellite will see us as a 'Moving Pile of Documents'. They won't suspect a thing," Rendy explained confidently.

They entered the Senayan area. Here, the atmosphere changed drastically. The dominant purple sky began to fade, replaced by a warm, golden glow. The stinging scent of pine floor cleaner was replaced by the smell of old books, real coffee (not that battery-acid stuff), and freshly cut grass.

In the distance stood a beautiful old colonial-style building. The name was clearly displayed above the iron gate: "NATIONAL LIBRARY & HOUSE OF HOPE".

The building was surrounded by hundreds of Model Zs, standing frozen within a fifty-meter radius. They looked like computers hit by the blue screen of death. Some had their hands stuck in the air, some were slack-jawed, and others had eyes blinking rapidly, pumping out Morse code.

"They're lagging," Juling whispered. "Boss, look! They can't even move!"

"The optimism radiation is too strong for their processors," Rendy said, stopping the car right at the edge of the golden light. "Okay, here's the plan. Vanda wants us to level this place with giant staples. But what we're actually going to do is a 'Hope Capital Injection'. We're going inside, grabbing whatever makes this building glow, and rigging it to the car."

"Wait, what for?" Alana frowned.

"To turn this car into a 'Mobile Branch Office' with authority higher than Vanda's!" Rendy grinned like a madman. "If we carry the light source, we can roam Jakarta without fearing the Auditors or the Couriers. We'll be fake 'CEOs'!"

They got out of the car. The moment Rendy's feet hit the gold-lit ground, he felt a strange vibration in his chest. The fear, the stress from the battery-acid coffee, and the crushing weight of the apocalypse seemed to lift. Alana looked more relaxed, her tense face finally softening.

But the peace didn't last long.

From behind the row of frozen Model Zs, a figure emerged that was far scarier than any Auditor. He was seven feet tall, wearing a blood-red suit that fit him perfectly. Instead of a safe or a pig mask for a head, he had a giant wall clock that was ticking aggressively fast.

He held a long steel ruler that crackled with electricity.

"Who... who's that guy?" Gondrong whispered, trembling.

Rendy frantically flipped through his book. New ink appeared at high speed, as if Coach Udin were screaming through the pages: 'WARNING! THE TIME MANAGER HAS ARRIVED! HE IS A UNIT SENT TO ENSURE ALL TASKS ARE COMPLETED BY THE DEADLINE. IF HE TOUCHES YOU, YOUR AGE WILL BE REDUCED BY THE TOTAL NUMBER OF OVERTIME HOURS YOU'VE EVER WORKED!'

"Oh man! I was basically a slave during that old construction project!" Gondrong shouted. "He'll turn me into a shriveled prune if he touches me!"

TENG! TENG! TENG!

The Time Manager's clock-head chimed loudly, signaling the start of office hours. He stepped forward, and strangely, every time his foot touched the ground, the golden area around the building shrank slightly, turning a deep purple.

"Subject detected engaging in work procrastination," the Manager's voice echoed like ticking needles. "Commencing early retirement acceleration procedure."

"Alana, staple him!" Rendy yelled.

Alana raised her giant staple gun and pulled the trigger. THWACK! THWACK!

Two steel staples the size of a child's arm shot out, but the Time Manager just moved his steel ruler in a slow yet precise motion. The staples stopped mid-air, spun, and fell to the ground as rusted metal that looked a hundred years old.

"He can manipulate time around him!" Rendy realized the horror. "Physical weapons won't work if he can make the bullets expire before they hit!"

"Then what do we do, Boss?!" Juling panicked as the Time Manager closed in.

Rendy looked at the House of Hope, then at his book. He found a small note in the corner of a page: 'Tip #70: The only way to beat time is to do something useless. Time cannot calculate something that has no productive duration'.

"Everyone! Do the 'Waiting in a Line That Never Moves' routine!" Rendy ordered.

"What?!"

"Pretend to play on a phone with a dead battery! Occasionally complain, 'Why isn't it here yet?' Move it!"

Rendy started acting. He picked up a small piece of wood, held it to his ear, and put on an incredibly convincing bored face. "Yeah, Mom... still on my way... traffic's a nightmare at this light..."

Alana, having reached a level of pure resignation, joined in. She sat on the asphalt, chin in hand, staring blankly at her broken watch. Bang Gondrong and Si Juling started having a thumb war with their toes.

The Time Manager stopped right in front of Rendy. The clock hands on his face spun wildly, trying to calculate how much "productivity" Rendy was generating.

"Analysis: Subject is engaged in... Waiting?" the Manager's voice sounded confused. "Estimated Time of Completion: Infinity. Job Status: None. Economic Value: Zero."

The Manager's clock hands began to vibrate violently. His logic couldn't process humans voluntarily wasting time in the middle of the apocalypse without a commercial goal.

"Error... Error... Time cannot process an empty agenda! Subject has no deadline to accelerate!"

Rendy glanced out of the corner of his eye. "Yeah, Mr. Manager. Looks like it's gonna be a long one. You wanna wait with us? We're waiting for closure from an ex."

The Time Manager began smoking from his sound holes. He stumbled back. To him, waiting without certainty was the ultimate system virus. He turned around and started walking away, mumbling incoherently about 'efficiency' and ruined 'KPIs'.

"It worked!" Rendy stood up immediately. "Move it, into the building! Before he comes back with an even meaner HR unit!"

They ran through the iron gates of the House of Hope. As they passed through the large wooden library doors, they were met with something they didn't expect.

Inside the grand lobby, there were no monsters or cosmic bureaucrats. There were only thousands of candles floating in the air, and in the center of the room sat an old man casually reading a book while sipping hot tea.

The man was wearing a t-shirt that said: "I HATE MONDAYS".

Rendy froze. He looked at the photo on the back cover of his book, then at the man.

"Coach... Coach Udin?" Rendy asked, his voice shaking.

The old man put his book down, adjusted his glasses—which looked exactly like Rendy's—and offered a wide grin.

"You are ten minutes behind the schedule I wrote on page 60," Coach Udin said casually. "But it is fine, I get it. Time management is a nightmare when the world is being taken over by a psycho corporation."

Alana dropped her staple gun. "You... you are real?"

"Real-er than Vanda's Excel sheets," Coach Udin said as he stood up. "Welcome to the Resistance Headquarters. Rendy, bring the book over here. We need to do a massive contract revision before this world officially turns into a password-protected P*F."

The apocalypse had finally found its brain, and Rendy realized his adventure had just been promoted from 'Survivor' to 'World's Next CEO.'