Growing into the Job, Post 623: Inga the Secret Agent (Patreon)

The showroom was always relatively quiet after five, especially on a Friday. This was the first Thanksgiving for Valkyrie Motors’ New Corinth dealership, and Inga figured that had something to do with it too. Holidays!

Thanksgiving had been really fun, Inga Olsen thought, With family! But now back to - as Sigrid would say it - work work work!

All kinds of work!

It wasn’t empty - it was never really empty - but it had a hushed feel, like expensive places do. The polished concrete floors reflected the soft amber lighting overhead, and somewhere in the back offices a speaker played understated tunes - was that Christmas music already?? Ugh haha!! -  that was just loud enough to be kinda always there without encouraging anyone to sing along.

Who am I kidding I love Christmas!

Inga did anyway. Sing along. 

"...last Christmas, I gave you my heart..." she hummed under her breath as she straightened a stack of glossy Valkyrie Motors brochures for what was probably the fourth time that afternoon. She stepped back, adjusted her bra - it seemed too small AGAIN - under her uniform. Tilted her head. Then adjusted the top brochure by perhaps an eighth of an inch.

"...but the very next day..." HMMM hmmm hmm hmm hmm

"There," she declared proudly, to absolutely nobody. Perfect.

She smoothed the front of her white Valkyrie jacket before gliding between the display vehicles with the easy balance of someone who’d spent half her childhood on ice skates.  Sometimes she still caught herself moving that way, shoulders square, weight perfectly centered, even years after she’d finally accepted that 5’10” of height and curves like hers had ended any serious figure-skating dreams.

Her fingertips trailed affectionately across painted bodywork of new violet XX Fury that looked gorgeous under the showroom lights. The yellow XX Guardian beside it still wore the enormous crimson bow from the Black Friday event. “You look ridiculous,” Inga told it fondly. She considered removing it, decided she liked it, and left it exactly where it was. 

“You’re still talking to the cars?” Sigrid, another blonde, called from the service desk without looking up from a tablet.

“This one likes her bow!” Inga answered. 

“It’s a car, Inga,” Sigrid droned.

“She’s trying her best!” Inga laughed, confident that Christmastime was going to be good for the showroom. Everything felt...hopeful!

I mean, why wouldn’t it? We work at an awesome place owned by an awesome boss like Astrid. There’s going to be a lady President soon and we’ll have collars and cages for all the little men!

Well - woops! - maybe that’s jumping the gun!

Outside, dusk had already settled over New Corinth, the enormous glass façade of the dealership reflecting passing headlights like ribbons of white and red. Inside, however, it felt warm. Warm and safe. Even the guy customer over there, alone, looking for an XY match to his wife’s new XX Guardian, seemed at ease.

Haha joke’s on you. 

Women's voices drifted from the service department where a pair of technicians were finishing paperwork before heading home for the weekend. Someone laughed. Someone wished someone else "Happy late Thanksgiving."

Inga smiled to herself. She liked this dealership! A lot! Actually - she loved it. She loved this dealership. I mean, some people sold cars. But Inga liked to think she introduced women to futures they hadn’t known were possible.

That’s so Inga!

When Astrid talked about reshaping the industry, people always imagined boardrooms and billion-dollar acquisitions. Those are important, I guess.  But this, like...this was where it actually happened, right? One customer. One conversation. One woman leaving a little more confident than when she'd arrived.

One more Valkyrie on the road!

Inga reached the showroom window and looked out toward the parking lot. Then across the street. There was a market there. A young woman - late twenties, maybe - was loading groceries into an aging crossover while her husband wrestled two children into booster seats. The woman closed the hatch, headed for the driver’s side door. She looked across the street, directly at the illuminated VALKYRIE MOTORS sign. For a moment she simply stood there, probably thinking, while her husband got himself into the passenger seat. 

Inga couldn't help smiling. Come visit us someday, she thought, We'll find something perfect for you!

Her smartwatch vibrated softly against her wrist. Bzz. Bzz bzz. 

Three times! The secret buzz! Or, buzzes. Whatever. Not a text, not a phone call - something else!

Inga's smile changed, but she made sure it was only slightly. She glanced automatically toward the service department: still chatting. She saw how the blonde (who are we kidding we’re all blond!) Elina had found the lone customer guy, was probably selling him his new XY and telling him about the great financing deals. He was looking at her boobs, when he thought she wasn’t looking. Elina never wasn’t looking. 

Anyway, nobody was watching Inga, thought Inga. 

"Excuse me just a sec..." she called lightly, vaguely, toward the women in the showroom, already turning toward the quieter hallway that led to the customer lounge. No urgency, no, like, alarm. Just another little interruption.

Only once she was alone did she raise her wrist, and the display awakened instantly. A familiar icon appeared: 

<FREA Vehicle Session Initiated>

XX BEHEMOTH - MELISSA MONROE

<Connection established>

Inga's grin widened. "Oh...goodie - my favorite customer! Our giant.” She actually said that out loud? Inga!!

She tapped the notification on her watch. Its display didn’t do too much. No dramatic, like, location maps. No blinking red warnings. It was just clean white and elegant. Like a present for becoming an Agent. KOLECTV was fun to work with and they gave out cool stuff!

XX BEHEMOTH - SESSION ACTIVE

Driver: Melissa Monroe (Asset fEP000.82)✓

Passenger: Jay-Jay (Asset mFHEC000.01)✓

Location: State Route 17 Northbound

Battery: 95%

Navigation: Active

Conversation Summary Available

Ooo. She’s with him. In Big Mama. Or, at least I think that was the name she gave her new XX Behemoth. 

Inga grinned.

“Good girl, Big Mama” she murmured into the watch. The Frea system in Melissa Monroe’s car didn’t answer. Honestly, Inga liked that. She’d tried one of those chatty assistants once and lasted maybe…three days? It kept interrupting her. Frea AIs knew when to speak and, more importantly, when not to.

She tapped Conversation Summary

The page expanded into neat little bullet points:

Occupants discussed weekend travel.

Driver expressed excitement regarding destination (detailed below)

Passenger affect: relaxed. Minimally conversive. Expresses hunger.

Cabin atmosphere: positive.

No safety intervention recommended.

“Aww,” Inga said before she could stop herself, “they’re going away together for the weekend!”

Good. Melissa deserved a nice weekend. The girl had been working hard, doing that charity event yesterday. Now, why had the Frea AI in Big Mama alerted her, about this ride, this conversation? What did it want her to hear?

A second notification had slid silently across the bottom of the display.

Flagged Phrase Detected

That made Inga blink. “Oh?”  She tapped again.

Instead of the whole conversation, Frea AI presented only a short excerpt surrounding the flagged words, neatly transcribed beneath a tiny speaker icon. Good! “No unnecessary data. Only what matters,” she said, aloud. Astrid had said that once during a company address streamed to every dealership. Inga had written it down. She had a lot of little things like that written down, in her little notebooks on her desk, in her car, the ones in her bedroom at home. 

Anyway…right! The conversation:

Melissa Monroe: “…I know she is going to be sad you’ll miss your swim lesson, but we’ll see her soon. I think she’s starting to become part of our little henhouse hive.”

Jay-Jay: “what does that mean?”

Melissa Monroe: “It means I can feel her now, a little. Kinda like I can feel Josie and Randi and Amelia and…ooo. Marisela and Amelia are together again, right now…”

The transcript stopped there.

“Huh.”

Inga tucked an errant strand of bright blonde hair behind her ear and read it again. Not because it sounded threatening, ‘cuz it didn’t - did it? It just sounded…Melissa. Inga had listened in to a bunch of conversations the customer had had in her new XX Behemoth. Melissa was warm, inclusive. A little goofy, honestly. I like her!

The watch gave another gentle pulse.

Recommendation Available: Forward excerpt?

Not an order from, like, her spy-bosses at KOLECTV. Not a flashing warning. Just a little suggestion from Frea. 

Inga rested her thumb against the edge of the watch without pressing it. She’d learned early on that whoever sat on the other end of these reports wasn’t interested in every little thing. Astrid always said good systems knew the difference between information and noise. The engineers repeated it. The managers repeated it. Eventually everyone did. Don’t waste people’s time, right?

She read the transcript again. “Hmm. ‘Henhouse hive’? ‘Become part of’? What did Melissa Monroe mean?”

Inga tucked another strand of hair behind her ear. Anyone watching would have thought her furrowed brow was adorable. “Melissa does have funny little expressions,” she said to herself. Inga had listened in enough, over these past couple weeks, to almost get to know her. “Maybe she sees her friends as her family or henhouse or hive or whatevs.”

The Giantesses in, like, the old Norse stories talked like that, sometimes, right? 

Plus, everyone becomes family, eventually, right? If you spend enough time with them? Work can get to be like home. Honestly, Melissa would probably call the XX Behemoth “part of her hive” if somebody gave her long enough.

The watch waited patiently.

Recommendation Available: Forward excerpt?

Her thumb hovered over the button.

She remembered Melissa standing in this very showroom only weeks ago, ducking under the doorway with Dr. J. beside her, laughing so hard she’d nearly cried because Inga had insisted the Behemoth deserved “a proper Valkyrie blessing” before its first drive. Most customers forgot salespeople before they’d even made it home.

Melissa hadn’t. She’d remembered all three of their names. 

Inga smiled, and made her decision. “Nah.”

She tapped Dismiss.

“Sorry,” she said softly, more to the watch than anyone else. “That’s just Melissa being Melissa!”

The prompt disappeared without protest, the dashboard returning to its neat little overview.

Vehicle operating normally. No driver assistance required.

There. Much better. Inga knew that somewhere north of New Corinth, the XX Behemoth continued gliding toward the lake, quiet beneath the fading November sky. Inside, Melissa and Dr. J. were almost certainly talking about something completely different by now.

Inga found herself hoping they had a lovely weekend!

She slipped the watch beneath the cuff of her white Valkyrie jacket and headed back toward the showroom, where Elina was almost certainly charming that poor husband into adding the panoramic roof package.

She put on her biggest, salesgirliest smile - and adjusted her jacket over her big, salesgirl tits - and went to see if she could help.

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