The Plot Calls #4 : "Signature Pending"

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or Ai-assisted-content-generation. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Peter Thance was never the best coder in his class. Never the sharpest speaker. Never the one investors circled at networking events.

But thieves and frauds rarely need to be.

They just need to be loud enough. Bold enough. Opportunistic enough to sign the right paper at the right moment.

And Peter Thance? He signed plenty.

Half-built prediction engines stolen from dropout startups. Behavioral models reverse-engineered from anonymized data leaks. The futures of colleagues sacrificed for his meteoric rise.

The result? PallidTear.

A billion-dollar behemoth that sold fear, modeled behavior, and quietly rewired human autonomy under the guise of "optimization."

His TED Talk—Data as Destiny—boasted ten million views.

Forbes ran his profile: "Self-Made, Self-Correcting Leader."

But Thance hadn’t self-corrected in years. He'd only refined the illusion.

His empire wasn’t built on innovation. It was built on theft. And pride.

The article wasn’t even a proper exposé.

No bombshells. No damning lawsuits. Just quiet, unnerving questions:

Who was Peter Thance? Where did he come from? Who helped him? Why do so many former co-founders no longer exist online?

It didn’t need to be scandalous. Just present.

In the silence that followed, the applause tilted. The markets wavered. The consumers whispered.

And Thance's illusion cracked.

"I built myself," he muttered, alone in PallidTear's Bavarian HQ, standing in the cavernous, empty boardroom.

His team had left hours ago—early, tense, their polite claps replaced by clenched jaws and whispered doubts.

"They don’t rewrite me. No one does."

He stormed upstairs, to the rooftop greenhouse he'd commissioned during the company's first boom year. "A symbol of conscious growth," he once called it.

The plants wilted now. So did the press coverage. The article spawned questions. Questions birthed investigations. Investigations revealed cracks. Cracks eroded stock value. Stock dips devoured credibility.

Control slipped.

But tonight, something bloomed in the garden.

Past the hydroponics. Beyond the neglected nightshade.

The soil shimmered—black and violet beneath the moonlight.

Thance's breath caught.

A memory surfaced—half-remembered whispers, cautionary tales from the old conferences:

"The One Beneath watches." "The soil calls." "The signature is binding."

He stepped closer.

In the far bed, where nothing grew before, the soil pulsed with impossible life.

From its center, a porcelain hand rose. White. Flawless. Outstretched.

Thance's chest tightened. His mind fogged. But some deep, ancient part of him understood.

It was here for him.

He returned to his office. Unlocked a drawer. Retrieved his original pen—the one he'd signed PallidTear's co-founding papers with.

His hand trembled, not from fear—but from destiny.

"The soil calls," he whispered. "The One Beneath finally heard me."

Thance knelt in the garden bed. Placed the pen in the porcelain palm.

The hand closed. Sank.

A pressure lifted. His doubts faded.

—

The next morning, headlines changed.

Rivals' scandals erupted. Founders groveled. Shareholders apologized.

A handwritten note arrived: "Take my data. Shape my behavior. Own me. You are incredible."

Peter Thance smiled.

Control restored. The world—molded. Pride—fed.

But like all frauds, Thance understood price. Not value. Not cost.

The cracks deepened.

An intern swore Thance dreamed of the company in middle school. Training manuals rewrote his past. Documents arrived—granting him ownership of projects he didn’t recognize. Tax forms surfaced—debts from forgotten frauds.

The illusion bent reality. But reality never signed the agreement.

Thance's reflection dulled. His memories blurred. The applause? Static. His empire? Unfamiliar.

But the soil remained. Pulsing. Indifferent.

Each night, he visited.

Not to offer—he knew more offerings sealed fates. He visited to remember. But forgot what he tried to remember.

The porcelain hand never returned. The soil shimmered—neither waiting nor expecting.

Just idle.

—

Days later, at a keynote for a company Thance barely remembered joining, he stood before the auditorium.

He spoke words without meaning:

"Palant's Tear—no, PallidTear—is near. When the world erodes, Mars will be here. The Amazon is no longer jungle—but fulfillment. Endless, ceaseless, constant fulfillment."

The crowd erupted—clapping, oblivious.

But Thance saw it.

Front row.

A pale man in black robes.

Motionless. Expressionless.

Neither waiting nor expecting. Idle.

Terror bloomed.

Thance pointed, tried to speak— But language failed.

He stumbled backstage.

His attorney—a bloated opportunist in designer mascara—called after him.

"Sir? Peter?"

But Peter Thance wasn’t there anymore.

His hand trembled. He looked down.

The founding pen—the one he offered The One Beneath the plot—was in his hand. Confused, he clicked the pen. His eyes widened. The pen didn't emerge. It was soil. Soil poured from its tip. A hollow gasp escaped Thance's lips. "J.D.?" he asked, frightened and confused.

Then, he fainted.

—

The next morning, Thance's PR firm received an envelope.

No return address.

Inside: keynote cards. Warped with moisture. Signed in an unfamiliar hand.

Peter Thance? Never seen again.

The rooftop greenhouse? Repurposed into a "wellness lounge" for accelerationists desperate to imitate shape humanity through flawed eugenics and the idle pursuit of transhumanism.

Yet, beneath the orchids, hidden in a garden bed— The shimmer lingered. The soil pulsed. A portal closed.

And in the shadows, an Idle Man stepped forward.

Pale. Robed. Silent.

It turned in a nameless direction—fading from reality with the plot—whispering:

"The Plot Thickens."

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