Chapter 117 A Promise Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold (Part 5) *Beep*, Glory Employee Card…
"Beep, Excellent Employee Card, please proceed~"
Beneath the towering building, an extended hovercar came to a stop. An android, with a stiff, enthusiastic smile, opened the door, and a group of people with abnormally excited expressions filed in.
Du Yu took out a silver coin about the size of a thumb, put it into the coin box next to her, and the android standing next to her nodded to her. Du Yu smiled back and found a seat in the back row.
This outdated coin-operated device clashes with the futuristic feel of the hovercar, looking like a black dot on a white porcelain plate.
However, Du Yu learned from the original owner's memories that the coin box served a purpose—to increase the sense of accomplishment of these outstanding Blue Grid employees when they boarded the bus by inserting Glory Coins before boarding.
The hard-earned Glory Coins, if they have no physical form and are merely cold numbers on a computer account, will have a significantly reduced effect on motivating employees.
It must be said that the person who introduced the Glorious Coin system was an absolute genius.
At Lange Communications, the company's senior executives live in luxurious mountain villas with enough space to build a golf course; while the company's middle and lower-level employees can only squeeze into employee apartments of less than 50 square meters. They probably lose some motivation to work if they look up at Lange Mountain every day when they go to work.
Any mentally sound person would feel that the distribution is unfair. Those who are entitled to live in mountain villas may not care about the feelings of lower-level employees, but it's not worth reducing their work efficiency and income because of these sentiments.
The original owner's family was a large family, whose members possessed resources that ordinary people could hardly obtain in a lifetime. However, not all members could live at the top of the group, in that mountaintop villa that symbolized the pinnacle of power and wealth in the Blue family.
It was the original owner's father who proposed the Glory Coin system. It was because of this suggestion that he gained the favor of the company's chairman at the time, and thus rose step by step until he betrayed the former chairman, seized control of Blue Grid, and became one of the rulers of the Upper City.
The so-called "Glory Coins" refer to the monthly rewards given by Langge Communications to the top performers in each department. There are no departmental levels; even the lowest-level sales staff have a chance to earn Glory Coins if their sales performance is three times that of the average employee in their department.
Employees who receive Glory Coins can choose to exchange them for generous rewards such as double bonuses for a month or an increase in base salary. However, almost all outstanding employees each month choose to spend their Glory Coins on visits to the mountaintop villas.
Yes, that's right.
The hilltop villa area is the residence of the company's senior executives. However, at the same time, middle and lower-level employees can also get the opportunity to visit by spending Glory Coins. In fact, the senior executives who used to live in apartments will treat these lower-level employees, whom they might not even glance at in the company, with the highest level of hospitality, as if they were VIP guests.
It is said that at the mountaintop villa, a simple cold dish costs the equivalent of a month's salary for an ordinary employee, and the executives' attitudes are so good that it almost gives one the illusion that they are also living there.
The uses of Glory Coins go beyond that.
Every year, among the top ten employees who have earned the most Glory Coins and have visited the mountain villas, one will be randomly selected to stay in the mountain villa area.
Not only will the winners enjoy free high-end accommodation, but their positions within the company will also be upgraded based on the level of their accommodation—it's no exaggeration to say they've been promoted overnight.
According to incomplete statistics, after implementing the Glory Coin policy, the average work efficiency of all departments at Blue Grid increased by 1.5 times. Furthermore, employees frequently devised various methods to improve work efficiency, thereby reducing the number of employees needed and significantly lowering the company's labor costs.
For the company, all Lange offered was very cheap food and water, and a vague hope of getting rich overnight, which made the lower-level employees work almost desperately.
The original owner of this body had no experience with the specific operations of Blue Grid, so she didn't have a deep understanding of the Glory Coin system after its introduction. She even personally entertained an employee who came to visit her home, and at the time she just found it novel and fun.
But in Du Yu's view, the Glorious Coin system almost squeezes human potential to its limit.
The difficulty of obtaining a Glory Coin is not fixed. After obtaining the first Glory Coin, the difficulty of obtaining the second Glory Coin increases significantly. Not to mention obtaining the third or fourth Glory Coin to get on the honor roll.
Du Yu recalled several names that the original owner remembered, names that had appeared at the bottom of the honor roll, and sneered inwardly.
Even if not all of these names belong to the Gu family and the Du family, the two major blue grid families, most of them are from small, intricately connected families that are dependent on the Gu family and the Du family.
Even among the award winners who came from social welfare institutions, most of them had the support of these families.
Speaking of which, Du Yu couldn't help but feel curious.
The City of the Sun has spared no effort in promoting the social support system, to the point that even natural childbirth is subject to fines.
But when Du Yu recalled the people the female protagonist had interacted with in the novel—the Bian family, the Gu family, and the Du family—she realized that they were almost all from families.
Is abolishing the traditional social system with the family as the smallest unit, blocking the channel for personal wealth accumulation, and then absorbing destitute employees in the form of companies also part of the reasons for promoting the social support system in the City of the Sun?
Du Yu had no way of verifying her terrifying conjecture, but just thinking about it sent chills down her spine.
"Excuse me for taking up your valuable time. Could you please move aside to make room for me?"
A cautious yet rambling question came from in front of him, snapping Du Yu out of his daze. He shifted his leg to the side to make room for the woman who wanted to sit down. He couldn't help but feel impressed. People in the upper city were so civilized. If this were in the lower city, and he hesitated for even a second longer, a knife would probably be slashing at his leg right now.
"Thank you." The woman thanked him, and before taking her seat, she looked around with barely suppressed excitement in her eyes. She finally couldn't help but strike up a conversation with Du Yu: "Dear friend... wait, are you also a proud employee of the company? I didn't see you at the awards ceremony."
With the original owner's memories and the synthesis system, it wouldn't be difficult for Du Yu to forge a "Glory Coin"—that thing didn't require much technology to begin with.
However, the number of Glory Coins issued by Blue Grid Communications each month is limited. Even if the Glory Employees in different departments do not know each other, once everyone arrives, anyone who knows addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division can tell that there is one extra person.
Faced with her question, the stranger remained remarkably calm, her eyes showing no sign of panic. Instead, a smile played on her lips as she stared unblinkingly at the woman who had spoken to her. Deep within her pupils, two mysterious halos seemed to surge.
Receiving no response for a long time, the woman's social smile froze on her face, but the next moment, her eyes were filled with a daze, as if she had forgotten what she was about to do. Her gaze seemed to pass through the air, across Du Yu's seat, and then unconsciously returned.
Finally, she yawned out of boredom, sat up straight, and started tapping on her personal terminal, seemingly forgetting that there was a strange stranger next to her.
【Dream of Me】
Du Yu's smile vanished, and he watched with a pained expression as the number of uses for the synthesized item dropped to "1".
【Compound Name: Dream Me】
[Instructions for use: Living life too seriously leaves no energy for dreams, right? Wear these contact lenses, and you'll be a fool dreaming in reality, a madman promising fantasies while fully awake, walking through the gaps of cold reality with illusory dreams.]
[Number of uses: 1/3]
This "Dream Me" item was, of course, "copied" from Le Feiyou's trait "Daydreamer". In Du Yu's hands, this trait, which can be described as a cheat code, is no longer bound by the level of the ability user, and is simply a divine tool in terms of distorting the mind and tampering with consciousness.
However, this ability might be a bit too overpowered. Although Le Feiyou and Xu Xunyuan's ability levels are almost the same, the probability of synthesizing [Dream Me] is much lower than that of synthesizing [Portable Curtain]. The number of times it can be used after synthesis is also pitifully three, which means that each use is one less time available.
Fortunately, the usage limit for [Dream Me] is quite broad, with each dream recorded as one use.
When Du Yu boarded the train, her wish was that the androids responsible for checking tickets and security would not overlook her unusual condition. Her second dream was that the other passengers on the train would not notice that there was an extra person next to them.
The reason for using "Dream Me" only after a woman has started talking to you is that although "Dream Me" is useful, if too many people are involved at once, the dream is too far-fetched, or you may "wake up" from the dream prematurely.
However, if there is already a passenger next to her, she can divert the attention of others to the side, and the dream will last longer.
If it weren't for the ridiculously high level of security at the mountaintop villas—with their 24/7 infrared monitoring, weight change detectors for specific areas, air humidity measurement meters, supernatural energy meters, and spirit realm protective shields—Du Yu wouldn't have resorted to such a roundabout way to infiltrate the mountaintop villa area.
"Welcome, proud members of the Blue Grid company! We have seen your hard work. Now it's time to enjoy this glorious and dreamlike day!"
Suddenly, a push-back sensation came, and the android delivered its sentimental lines in a stiff tone. The employees inside the car didn't seem to mind the awkwardness of the tone. In their eyes, filled with anticipation, longing, or ambition, the hovercar slowly drove towards the mountaintop.
"Welcome, proud members of the Blue Grid company! We have seen your hard work. Now it's time to enjoy this glorious and dreamlike day!"
Once the purpose of the Glory Coins is determined, Glory employees can choose the person they want to visit at the mountaintop villa according to their contribution level. The hovercar, like a bus, stops one by one to drop off the Glory employees. At each "stop", the android automatically repeats what it just said.
The woman sitting next to Du Yu was the third to last to get off the bus. Du Yu saw a well-dressed woman outside a villa not far away warmly embrace her, her face beaming as if they were old friends who hadn't seen each other for years.
As the hovercar drove toward the next villa, the woman's flattered smile was still reflected in the car window.
"Beep beep—"
Even if no one contributes enough points this time, the hovercar will still follow the established procedure and take the tallest and most magnificent villa, or palace, as the last "stop"—the pinnacle of Lange's power, the place that countless employees yearn for and worship, the home of the original owner for more than ten years, and the residence of Du Qinghai, the current chairman of Lange Communications.
"Welcome, proud members of the Blue Grid company! We have seen your hard work. Now it's time to enjoy this glorious and dreamlike day!"
As the final syllable of "Glorious Dream Day" faded, Du Yu donned his [Portable Curtain], pulled out the map drawn by the original body, raised his left hand, and a cane with a bright yellow star at the top appeared in his palm. He gently tapped the small garden circled by the original body, and a small whirlwind swept by.
"Welcome, proud members of the Blue Grid company! We have seen your hard work. Now it's time to enjoy this glorious and dreamlike day!"
Having completed today's mission, even the android's cold, mechanical voice sounded a bit cheerful. The empty hovercar returned along the same route, and the morning sunlight streamed into the windowsills, illuminating the smiles on the faces of the "glorious employees."
-----------------------
Author's Note: There's been a bit of a family emergency. I'll update briefly to maintain my attendance record, and then I'll revise and fix any bugs later.
——
Edited, it's viewable now. A sandstorm hit last night, the windows wouldn't close, and the glass kept banging against the walls. I was completely devastated at 1 AM. Luckily, the glass was sturdy and didn't break [cracked].
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
