The Corporate Apocalypse: Jakarta's Survival Guide to Cosmic

Chapter 8: Field Audit and Protocol Error 404

The metallic stench of blood that had choked Jakarta for so long was gone, replaced by the overpowering scent of pine-scented floor cleaner—the kind of smell that gives you a migraine in a hospital elevator. South Jakarta no longer looked like a wasteland; it looked like an architectural model that was too clean and deeply inhuman.

Rendy and the others crept behind a line of fire trucks parked neatly along the Pasar Minggu road. The word "neatly" was the problem. The vehicles, once wrecked and scattered, had been organized by color gradient by the zombies who had just finished their firmware update.

"Look at that," Alana whispered, pointing across the street.

Three zombies—formerly city janitors—moved with robotic precision. The silver cables were gone, but tiny blinking antennas now sat on their temples. They were wiping the asphalt with strips of white cloth. Not just sweeping, but literally buffing the black pavement until it gleamed under the purple sky.

"Jesus... they’ve gone full OCD," Rendy muttered. He opened his guidebook. Page 55 was now filled with illustrations of people doing somersaults with deadpan expressions. "Chapter 17: Dealing with the Field Audit Team. It says here: 'The Company hates disorder. If you encounter an Auditor, do not try to act normal. Normal means you are a categorizable asset. Become an Error'."

"What do you mean, an Error?" Bang Gondrong asked. His hands were shaking, the "APPROVED" stamp on his forehead seemingly throbbing with his heartbeat.

"Like this, Bang," Rendy pointed to a paragraph glowing in neon red ink. "'Auditors can only delete things that have a clear but inefficient function. If you have no function at all—like trying to eat with your nose or walking on your ears—their algorithms will suffer a stack overflow'."

Alana rubbed her temples. "Ren, you want us to do some stupid acrobatics in front of them? This isn't just dancing zombies this time. You see that at the end of the block?"

At the far end of the intersection, two figures appeared, looking nothing like the street-sweeping zombies. They wore transparent plastic raincoats over formal business suits. Their faces were hidden behind chrome pig-snout gas masks. Their right hands held short batons emitting blue laser light, while their left hands held digital clipboards.

"Audit Team," Rendy whispered, terrified. "They aren't zombies. They’re... reality-cleaning functions."

One Auditor stopped in front of a leaning power pole. He swept the blue laser across it. A mechanical voice droned from the mask: "Unit: Utility Pole. Status: Non-functional. Aesthetics: Low. Decision: Liquidate."

The Auditor touched the pole with the baton. In seconds, the massive structure melted, turning into transparent pixels before vanishing into the air as if it had never existed.

"I don't want to be pixels..." Cross-Eye began to sob quietly. "Boss, I don't want to be deleted! My eyes are crossed, they’ll definitely think I’m a factory defect!"

"Shhh! Shut up!" Alana snapped, though her own eyes betrayed her sheer terror. "Rendy, they’re getting closer. What’s the move?"

Rendy swallowed hard. He watched the Auditor head toward the fire truck where they were hiding. The blue laser swept the air, searching for biometric anomalies not on the "Approved Assets" list.

"Okay, listen up," Rendy said, tearing strips of fabric from his bag and handing them out. "We have to execute 'Protocol Error 404.' Alana, put your shoes on your hands and your gloves on your feet. Bang Gondrong, crawl backward and keep asking 'What time is chocolate flavor right now?'. Cross-Eye, pretend you're a tree but make microwave noises."

"I’m not doing—" Alana started to protest, but the blue laser hit the hood of the fire truck just inches from her head.

"DO IT OR BECOME PIXELS!" Rendy hissed.

The Auditor stepped past the fire truck and stopped. In front of him stood the four most bizarre creatures in the history of corporate auditing.

Rendy stood with his left foot balanced on Bang Gondrong’s head, while his right hand tried to shove a spoon into his own ear with a look of intense concentration. Alana, face burning with humiliation, tried to walk on her hands (shoes attached to her palms) while her gloved feet kicked at the air.

Bang Gondrong scrambled backward with surprising agility, face to the pavement, whispering urgently, "Excuse me, sir, what time is chocolate flavor right now? Has the price turned blue yet?"

Juling stood stiffly in the corner, his arms splayed out like branches, letting out a rhythmic drone, "Mmm-mmm-mmm... PING! Mmm-mmm-mmm... PING!"

The Auditor froze. The sensors on his chrome mask spun wildly. A blue laser swept over the four of them repeatedly, but every time it tried to scan, his digital clipboard flashed a single message: [ERROR: UNDEFINED OBJECT TYPE].

"Biometric analysis..." the Auditor’s voice came out distorted. "Subject 1: Performing aural nutritional intake. Subject 2: Inverted anatomy. Subject 3: Taste-based temporal logic. Subject 4: Electronic-grade flora."

Another Auditor stepped closer to assist with the scan. "Status: Unidentified. Is this system junk?"

"Negative," the first Auditor replied. "System junk usually has a structure. This is a total logic failure. If we delete this, we might accidentally wipe a section of the core code we don’t understand."

Rendy, still bracing his weight against Bang Gondrong’s back, glanced at the Auditor. He decided to deliver the final blow. "Hey, Mr. Auditor, did you know that 1+1 is actually just a depressed fish?"

The Auditor’s sensors immediately started smoking. His digital clipboard suddenly suffered a small explosion, spitting out sparks.

"Anomaly too high! This sector is suffering god-tier data corruption!" the Auditor shrieked in a panicked robotic voice. "Abort Liquidation at these coordinates! Isolate the area immediately! Do not touch them, or we’ll catch the inefficiency virus!"

Both Auditors turned tail and ran—like, actually ran—hauling ass away from the four "crazy" people as if they were a plague far deadlier than any zombie virus.

Alana collapsed onto the asphalt, dropping the shoes she’d been holding. "I... I hate my life. I seriously hate this."

"But it worked, right?" Rendy slid off Bang Gondrong’s back, gasping for air. "Coach Udin was right. Corporations are afraid of one thing: something they can't fit into an Excel spreadsheet."

"I feel smart, Boss," Bang Gondrong muttered, still on all fours. "That question I asked about the chocolate-flavored clock... I think that was really deep."

"Bang, get up," Rendy said, pulling him by the hand. "We haven't reached the Archive yet. And look at that..."

Rendy pointed toward the sky. In the middle of the purple clouds, a giant holographic screen appeared, displaying a bar graph showing a drastic drop in "South Sector Efficiency." A red warning sign flashed over their coordinates.

[WARNING: SYSTEM UNSTABLE. DISPATCHING CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER (CFO) FOR IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION.]

"A CFO?" Alana swallowed hard. "If an Auditor can make a power pole disappear, what does a CFO do? Cut our salaries?"

"Worse," Rendy said, flipping to the next page, which felt like cold human skin. "Chapter 18: Facing the Top Executive. Tip #40: 'The CFO (Chief Flesh Officer) won't delete you. He will consume you to offset this quarter's losses.' We have to get to the Archive before he lands."

They started running again, this time without having to fake the insanity because their fear was all too real. The streets of Pasar Minggu began to vibrate. From the north, a massive shadow—resembling a five-story steel vault—descended from the sky.

The booming sound of grand yet eerie classical music began to echo throughout the city. Every time the music thudded, the asphalt beneath their feet turned into piles of razor-sharp paper receipts.

"The Archive is just ahead!" Juling yelled, pointing at an old building with massive pillars, some of which were already scorched.

The building looked like humanity’s last stand in a world turning into a giant digital office. But right in front of the gate stood a man in a billion-dollar suit, a steel vault for a head, and a screen for a face.

That man was the CFO. And on his screen, a number was ticking downward: YOUR VALUE: $0.00.

"Ren, the book! Read the book!" Alana screamed as she readied her bow. This time, she wrapped the arrowhead with a red ribbon she’d found on the street, hoping he’d see it as "Complex Bureaucracy."

Rendy opened the book with trembling hands. The page was blank, except for a small button shaped like a red wax seal in the center. Below it, the text read: 'Press here to file for Moral Bankruptcy.'

"I don't know what's going to happen," Rendy said, looking at his friends. "But I think we’re about to pull off the riskiest financial maneuver in the history of the apocalypse."

Rendy slammed the button just as the CFO raised his hand of pure gold to "harvest" them.

The world suddenly went pure white. The sound of a giant typewriter began to clack out their destiny across the scarred Jakarta sky.