"I... yes sir." You bow your head in acceptance.
"Good." He walks off, turning back for just a moment to add, "Remember! My desk! End of day!"
You nod again and keep watch until he turns around a corner. Only then do you let out a sigh and slump back down into your chair. So much for your weekend plans. Not that they were much in the way of plans, but sitting at home with your cats and doing some grocery shopping were plans all the same.
A brief glance at the break area lets you catch Rising Star looking at you. Your eyes meet and he smirks, giving you a little half-shrug as if to say, "Tough to be you, but it's not my problem." And you know that's probably the last time you're going to cross his mind. Not when he's off at a corporate dinner wining and dining a new client.
But what can you do? He's just so much better at playing office politics than you. Sometimes it feels like everyone is. They get promotions and transfers and raises, while you get everyone else's busywork, year after year after year.
Sometimes you wonder what happened. You had plans when you were younger. Dreams, ambitions. You were going to be a Wonderbolt, or start your own company, or make great art, or invent some world-changing gadget. Now your biggest dreams involve long weekends and compounding coupon deals. This was supposed to be a temp job. A few months, a year at most to get some bits in the bank and pad out your resume. How did it become your life? When did cancelling the odd meetup with friends turn into regular overtime? When did dating become a distraction? When was the last time you used a vacation day to do something other than just run errands or clean house?
And in the end... does it even matter how it happened? It's all in the past anyhow and there's nothing you can do change it. Maybe if you'd made different choices when you were younger, seized opportunity when it knocked and took more risks then things would have turned out differently, but there's no value in dwelling on the past.
This is your life, for better or for worse, and there are spreadsheets to fill out.
You dip your quill in the inkpot and begin to work.
Ink flows across the page like blood from a wound. Numbers and figures spelled out in your lifeblood, each stroke of the quill another passing tick of the clock. Seconds flow into minutes, and minutes into hours, yet no matter how many times you check the clock, quitting time never seems to come. It's always still a few more minutes to the hour, a few more hours to the day, a few more days to the new quarter, a few more quarters till retirement. Time and ink and numbers blend together into meaningless nonsense, draining you dry of everything essential until there's nothing left but a dry husk still scratching away at your spreadsheets with a bone-dry quill. Yet you continue. Line after line, moment after moment.
But even as you work there's a sadness in your heart- a heaviness that weighs down on your features behind the smiling mask. A strange longingness, like you've forgotten something important but can't remember what.
Even as everything—sight, sound, sensation, your very body—fades into the same mundane greyness that stretches out into eternity through both your past and future. And you work. Because you have nothing else.
[A horror most existential shakes you to your core. Add two (+2) to your Fear Meter].
You wake up in a cold sweat on the dusty floor of the foyer. Memories return hazily as you sift apart what is real and what is false. Your name is... Rainbow Dash. Right. That's important to be sure of. And you're a Wonderbolt. Best in a generation. A racer, a record-breaker, a savior of Equestria. Not some fat middle-aged mare who never accomplished more than Employee of the Month and Tidiest Cubicle awards.
"Yeah..." A drawling voice from your false memory snaps you to attention. Atop the second story landing is Trixie, dressed in pristine office chic, wearing thick glasses and despicable smirk. "So if you wouldn't mind coming in this weekend to finish up those TPS reports, that's be just greeeaaat."
You shoot her a withering glare, but hold your tongue. It's better to give her as little ammunition as possible. Starlight however... "I know it's counts as quitting if I leave, but what if I just stick my head out to ask Starlight something?"
Trixie shrugs. "I'll have to check the manual, but you should be fine. Unless corporate has a problem with it."
You give her one last glare before turning around and trotting back to the door. You stick your head out, careful to keep your hooves fully inside (you don't trust Trixie that much). "Hey! Starlight!"
The mare in question jumps slightly at your call, dropping a book she'd been holding in her magic. She cranes her neck back and gives you a genial, if startled smile. "Hey Dash. Everything going well? Having fun?"
"I thought this was supposed to be a horror show! What the heck's up with all this psycho mumbo jumbo?"
She fully turns to you and frowns. "Psycho mumbo jumbo? There wasn't supposed to be any of that." A flash of a teleport puts her right in front of you, her head sticking through the doorway in an inverse of yours. "Trixie! I thought we agreed we weren't going to put in the shower scene?"
"I didn't!" comes a whining retort.
You poke Starlight to regain her attention. "No, I mean like psychologic mess-with-your-head stuff."
"Ah." Her eyes widen in understanding. "In that case you're going to have to be more specific. There's a couple of rooms that probe psychological fears."
You stomp your hoof in irritation. "The one where I was in an office! I was working in a cubicle and doing math for a living and I was this fat old grey mare with cats and no ambition and my joints didn't work. Sweet Celestia, I felt so old! Like at least forty! Why was I old and fat and forty?!"
"Ah, that room." She sighs and puts on a resigned smile. "Well I was hoping to wait till everyone was here before revealing this secret but... surprise! We added a couple of rooms tailored specifically to you and Twilight and the rest of the girls."
"You... what?" you ask, your anger dulling as it gets mixed with confusion.
"Trixie and I—well to be honest mostly me—wanted to make it extra special, so the surveys that you and the rest filled out were a bit different from the simpler ones we had other ponies in town do. Also Luna was a great help pinning down your exact fears."
You're still not sure exactly how to respond to this revelation. "So... I'm afraid of office work?"
"Close. That was your fear of a future of banal mediocrity." She smiles as if breaking down your psyche (and admitting to getting help from a mind reader to do it) is a totally normal thing to be discussing. "Fun side note; that was one of Pinkie's big fears as well. Isn't that neat? Not Twilight's, though, which I thought was strange before I remembered that she pretty much had a future of greatness set in stone ever since Princess Celestia took her on as her student."
But apparently pulling off a Sonic Rainboom wasn't enough to earn you the same kind of self-assuredness. This is definitely something you're going to have to unpack later. Probably with Fluttershy. And maybe some hard cider.
But until then you've still got a challenge to complete. So with a few words of thanks to Starlight for the explanation, you return to your exploration of the haunted house.
...though you take special care to remember exactly which room it was that contained the office. You don't want to experience that again.
There doesn't seem to be anything to interact with in this room, but there are three hallways that branch off that head LEFT, FORWARD, and RIGHT.
If your Fear Meter is full, you must select the fourth option.