Games Like PROBATION: EXTENDED COVERAGE

Vantrell Mutual, claims intake, floor 7, 1994. You are a clerk on probation. Forms fall onto your desk without stopping, and each one has to be read in half a second: by its silhouette, its colour and one small mark. Left click approves. Right click denies. The space bar has been locked by HR and will be released when your career allows it. Nobody here jokes. The absurd is simply company policy.

Every form has a place to look and a way it is supposed to be. A medical claim has an upright cross and a live heart line. A police report has a whole gold seal. A leave application carries a photograph of the employee: not a clown, not an alien, not a cat. On a forgery one detail is always wrong, and the verdict is never written anywhere on the page. A wrong stamp is a strike. A form left to expire on your desk is a strike. Enough strikes and your probation is concluded.

Some paperwork is more important than you are. VIP forms pay double and give you half the time. Burning forms pay double and give you a third of it. On Friday the lights begin to flicker. On Saturday the forms stop being the colour they are.

Three currencies, each on its own schedule. KPI is earned by correct stamps and combos, spent in the run store on artifacts, and burned when the store closes. Cash arrives as one paycheck per shift and feeds the breakroom vending machine for the rest of the week. Shares are kept forever and go into the career tree.

A run is one week. Monday is induction. Tuesday brings VIP forms. Wednesday is a surprise audit, and the inspector's clipboard sits on a corner of your desk. On Thursday forms arrive in pairs. Friday is quarter close. Saturday is voluntary overtime, and the paperwork goes into orbit. On Sunday the Board of Directors attends in person: three acts, contracts stamped on the beat, and separation orders with your name on them. Missing a daily quota is not fatal; it is one strike tomorrow. Missing Sunday's is.

From Tuesday, an internal memorandum lands on the desk before every shift, and it must be signed before work may begin. Every option is a trade stated as policy: a lower quota for shorter timers, cash today for higher prices tomorrow. Some signatures stay in your file, and the correspondence continues from week to week: a note in the drawer from the previous occupant, of whom HR has no record; an inspector who rates the clipboard on a scale of one to one; a vending machine that has requested a transfer to the lobby.

The first node of the career tree releases the space bar. After that come four emergency protocols, one equipped at a time: the desk slam, the hydraulic press, the general stamp and the event horizon. Twenty-four nodes in four branches, from union representation to a mechanical intern who stamps the oldest form on the desk.

A permanent contract opens the next level of Ascension. There are twenty. Each one shortens every timer, and some add a clause of company policy. Previous terms remain in force.

Coverage does not lapse. It is extended.