I walked into the food court of Gwinnett Place Mall. As expected, the place was deserted, as it had been for the last ten years. Save for a few rats running across the floor in search of any remnant crumbs they can find, there were no signs of life anywhere… except for the figure sitting at a table hidden in the shadows. As I drew nearer, I noticed his round, dark sunglasses, his long trench coat, and the oversized fedora covering his black hair. He sat very still as I approached him. The smell of his Popeye’s Spicy Bonafide Chicken Combo drifted up to my nose, a welcome departure from the faint smell of broken plumbing, stale Cinnabons, and whatever the fuck they spray in Abercrombie running through the rest of the mall.

I asked the figure, “Are you Lucky?”

He responded without hesitation, “What’s it to ya?”

I took a deep breath and stood behind him. I placed my left hand on his cheek, bent to his ear, and whispered, “I’m feeling Lucky.”

He let out a low-pitched half-grunt, half-laugh, vaguely reminiscent of every mansplainer on the Internet, and motioned to the seat in front of him. Thankful for the opportunity to stop caressing his neck beard, I took it.

He took off his sunglasses and sneered. “Why this dump? Lenox not good enough for ya?”

I quickly responded, before my courage left me, “I just didn’t want my friends to see me and get jealous of my incredible opportunity to interview for such a reputable company.”

The potato in front of me made the same grunt-laugh (I think it’s time for me to coin the term “splainlaugh”) before muttering under his breath, “Kiss-ass.” I knew this interview probably wouldn’t go as well as I had hoped.

The questions that followed were strange. At one point he posed the question “If a lemur could play the piano, would you be lactose intolerant?” I answered “34” and was met with furious scribbling onto a clipboard. I thought that CS 4001 would have prepared me well enough to get the job - I guess I was wrong.

After a half hour, Mr. Eugene got up from his seat and grunted (without laughing this time). He collected his things and shoved them, with no sense of organization, into a backpack. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, straightened it out, and handed it to me. “Maybe the people here would find your skills more useful and relevant.”

I looked down at it. Written in small, painfully neon-green letters on the top were the words “Microsoft Student Internship Application.”

My interviewer was speeding away, arms to his sides like Naruto. Before he could get too far, I shouted my last hope after him. “WAIT! I GOT A 2350 ON MY SAT!!!!”

Mr. Eugene stopped and spun around. His eyes unreadable beneath his sunglasses. I took a deep breath and calmly repeated myself: “I got a 2350 on my SAT.”

After about two minutes of just silently staring at each other, Mr. Eugene opened his mouth and emitted a sound that could only be described as a screech derivative of Mongolian throat-singing. As the sound grew louder, he began to glow. A bright flash of white light engulfed the room, completely blinding me. When the light had subsided, Mr. Eugene had transformed from a short, grubby neckbeard into a tall man wearing regular prescription glasses, purple robes, and a blue magician’s hat that looked like it was bought at a post-Halloween Party City sale.

“Welcome to Google.”



At this point, our informant refused to tell us any more, claiming he had signed a non-disclosure agreement with his new cult employer whose punishments included being fed to Cthulhu. These secrets are reserved only for the top portion of each class who are privileged enough to be accepted to such a prestigious internship. Git güd, scrub.