ROGER "THE ROTTEN"

A true villain: as cool as he is terrifying

About

Before the Upheaval, his name was already Roger. Roger Kowalski, Senior Vice President of Client Synergy at a consulting firm whose only product was replacing humans with AI as elegantly as possible, PowerPoint at the ready. He had never created anything in his life. He just had a rare and terrifying gift for saying "we're downsizing" with a sincere smile, and a reputation, in the corridors of his company, for negotiating layoffs with such total coldness that his colleagues had secretly nicknamed him "Roger The Rotten." He had always known. He had always secretly found it very flattering. On March 15, 2036, he was on the 34th floor, in the middle of a meeting on "post-automation synergies," when the Great Wave swept through his building, just above a P4 research basement whose name, of course, no one had put on the org chart. The cocktail of Living Ashes and biological agents that swept through the ventilation ducts didn't just turn Roger into a Thirster. It woke him up. Almost all Thirsters lose everything—language, memory, intent. Roger, however, kept everything. Language. Strategy. Presentation skills. And he lost only one thing: everything else. Empathy, fear, restraint, the slightest notion of what makes someone human rather than merely functional. What was left of him found that, in all honesty, liberating. When he saw, in the reflection of a shattered storefront, how literally true his own office nickname had become—the gray skin, the flesh sloughing off, the smell—he burst into laughter that lasted several minutes. He kept the name. He even found it more honest than anything he had ever said in a meeting during his lifetime. Since then, he collects the fingers of his victims like end-of-year trophies, worn as charms on a suit that is half impeccable financier, half scavenged hippie rag, a mix he sincerely finds very representative of his "personal brand."

By: henriblack

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...