The statements the crew members make to anonymous corporate officials reveal an intense psychic and emotional pressure they all experience. So, if we don’t have a complex plot of adventure, an interesting external world to explore, characters we can love or hate, what makes The Employees such an interesting and powerful experience packed into a hundred and thirty or so pages? The ship is as sleek and empty as a modern office space, like the white hallways of the TV show Severance, and all we see of New Discovery is a long valley that the crew members sometimes visit.

The ambience is that of a spaceship, called the Six Thousand on a distant planet called New Discovery, but there is little conventional world building. So we can’t feel like we’re getting to know individuals. We can only guess if any of the crew are behind more than one statement and, if so, what that indicates about the changes they are experiencing. That is perversely appropriate since the corporation they serve, as the preface makes clear, only sees them as functionaries and tools of corporate processes, who seem to be gradually failing in fitness for purpose in their workflows. Though vividly brought to life through their statements that reveal more and more extreme responses and dramatic changes, the characters are without names or histories enabling readers to identify with them. That is all there is for a plot in The Employees, and it’s hard to identify with the anonymous speakers.

The employees olga ravn