Chapter Text
"Pam! Pamela! Pamey-pam!" Michael Scott, regional manager of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch, called obnoxiously loud.
Pam, who had been on the phone all along, didn’t bother to look up at her approaching boss.
"Please, hold a minute," she said into the receiver before pressing a button on the phone base, just in time for Michael to reach her. "We can’t take Ryan back," she deadpanned.
Michael slumped on the counter.
"Ugh. But he was so perfect!"
"He really wasn’t."
"No one can be as good a temp as he was." Michael continued, ignoring her comment. "Did you know he went to business school?"
"Didn’t he get expelled though?" a man with wild hair and a baby face pipped up from his desk.
"Jim, do you know if that was before or after he got arrested for diverting company funds to back his own Kickstarter?" Pam pondered.
"I’m not sure, timeline’s a bit fuzzy," Jim replied, fake confusion etched in his tone.
"You guys are just jealous," Michael declared, heading back towards his office.
He took only three steps before he turned around and strode back to the reception desk.
"Pam?" He whispered urgently.
Pam hid her exasperation poorly, but Michael seemed oblivious.
"Yes, Michael?"
"Do we really have to hire a new temp?"
"The agency faxed the signed contract yesterday," she replied.
Michael grunted.
"And what if I fire him now?"
"You can’t do that. He’s not even here yet."
"Ok, but Pam. Pam. Listen." There was a pregnant pause. "What if he’s not as pretty as Ryan?"
"That’s definitely not a reason to fire someone," the receptionist deadpanned.
"Ugh. Fine," Michael relented.
———
"People often tell me I’m a very spiritual man," Michael confessed to the camera. "I don’t know if I am —although I must be or people wouldn’t tell me, right? But what I can tell you is that I believe in intuition. If I have a gut feeling about something, I listen to it. And you know what my guts are telling me about that new guy?"
Michael leaned forward.
"He’s bad news." He whispered ominously to the audience. "Just thinking about him makes me want to barf, and I don’t even know his name yet. My advice? Always listen to your guts. They don’t lie."
His stomach grumbled loudly.
"And don’t drink milk for breakfast if it smells funky," he added.
———
The sound of the entrance door opening and closing echoed through the relatively quiet open space. A young man approached the reception desk, looking very uncomfortable in his suit.
"Hi," he greeted Pam, sounding uncertain. "I’m Danny Fenton?"
"Hi Danny! We were expecting you. Welcome to Dunder Mifflin," the receptionist smiled warmly, getting to her feet. "I’m Pam."
She went around her desk to stand next to Danny.
"Everyone?" Pam called for her coworkers attention, before gesturing towards Danny. "This is—"
"No!"
Michael erupted from his office.
"No, nope, nopitey nope. You don’t need to introduce him, just show him to his desk and give him something to do," Michael ordered without giving a single look to Danny. "Let him organize the staples by color or something."
"Don’t be like that," Pam scolded.
Danny shifted awkwardly.
"Um…Is there a problem?"
Michael turned to Danny.
"Yes, there’s… " Michael’s eyes grew wide. "No problem at all. Did anyone ever tell you you look like Ryan?"
Pam blanched.
"Oh no."
Danny shot her a concerned look.
"Who’s Ryan?" he whispered.
Before she could answer, Michael had an arm around Danny’s shoulders.
"Tell me, did you go to business school?"
Danny squirmed his way out of Michel’s grip.
"I’m just fresh out of high school," he chuckled awkwardly, before shooting a pleading look at Pam that screamed "What’s going on??".
"Argh, Doesn’t matter," Michael dismissed as he turned towards the open space and clapped his hands, calling for his employee’s attention. "Everyone! Conference room, now! You all gotta meet the new temp guy!"
Michael was the first in the room. As the office workers got up to squeeze their way through the door after him, Pam held Danny back.
"See this man?" She whispered to Danny, pointing a finger at a red-headed middle-aged man. "This is Toby, our HR rep. You can talk to him if you need to."
"Er… ok?"
"Come on, kid," Michael prompted from the conference room.
———
"I have a lot of hope for that kid," Michael confided to the camera. "He has so much potential, I can feel it. He’s like a younger Ryan."
———
Danny walked into the conference room, looking unsure. He skimmed over the bored audience, before making eye contact with one of the cameras for the first time. He stopped dead in his tracks.
"Why are there cameras?"
"Oh, that? Don’t pay attention. They’re just filming a documentary," Michael brushed off. "They’ve been here for years, I don’t even notice them anymore. They’re like desks, they’re part of the officescape. You’ll get used to it."
"But I wasn’t told there would be cameras," Danny stepped back, looking from his new boss to the cameras.
"Aw, he’s shy," Michael cooed.
"I’m not shy! It’s just — it wasn’t part of the contract!"
"Actually, it was," Toby spoke up. "Did you take the time to read it?"
Danny opened his mouth in protest, but closed it soon after. He crossed his arms, skulking.
"Fine."
———
"Do I really have to do this?" Danny asked, looking at someone off-camera.
He frowned, probably in reaction to the answer he got.
"Ugh. Look, I just really need the money. Moving here was kind of a spur of the moment thing, you know? I guess I’ll just keep looking for something else in my free time," Danny told the camera.
He closed his eyes in defeat.
"Who am I kidding? I don’t have free time. I’m stuck here," he groaned.
———
Michael clapped his hands.
"Alright! Now that it’s dealt with, everyone welcome….?"
"Danny," the temp filled in unwillingly.
"Danny!" Michael repeated louder. "I read all about you. I knew from the start you’d be a great match for our office! I personally chose you to fill our ranks."
Danny rubbed his neck.
"Er… Thanks?"
Jim raised a hand.
"Yes?" Michael acknowledged.
"If you chose him personally, how come you didn’t know his name?"
"I did," Michael said slowly. "I was just giving Danny a chance to introduce himself."
Jim looked skeptical.
"Uh-hu. Then I guess you can also tell us where Danny is from?"
"Of course! He’s from… Scranton. Born and raised," Michael declared with a big smile on his face. "Right Danny?"
The new temp made a face.
"Where are you really from?" Pam asked warmly.
"Er… Amity Park?" He answered, rubbing his neck. "Look, do we really have to—"
"No way." All heads turned to the very unstylish man who just got to his feet, looking awed. "You mean the haunted town in Illinois?"
"You heard about it?" Danny asked, surprised.
"We all have, it’s often on the news," Pam supplied.
"For real?" Danny seemed genuinely surprised.
"If you’re talking about that town that fakes ‘ghost attacks’ to lure tourists in, then yes," Jim explained plainly. "At least once a month."
"Oh but trust me, those ghosts aren’t fake. The fights we see on TV? Totally real," the unstylish man asserted.
"Dwight, come on…" a latino man complained. "The only reason we even hear about Amity Park is because their publicity stunts get wilder every months."
"It’s become a running gag at this point," Jim added for Danny’s benefit.
Dwight moved to the front of the room, looking each of his colleagues in the eyes.
"It’s real. I didn’t believe it either at first, but my cousin Mose did. We went to check it out for ourselves. It’s all true. Tell them, Danny."
Danny shot a quick look at the camera, looking uncomfortable.
"Er… Sorry to disappoint, but yeah, they’re fake."
"They’re not!" Dwight exclaimed, looking at Danny, scandalized. "The ghost kid saved me! A car was flying right towards me and he made me intangible. He touched me, right here!" Dwight protested, pointing at his upper-arm. "You’re from there, you must have seen him at least once!"
An exasperated "Flying cars? Really, Dwight?" was heard coming from somewhere in the audience, off camera.
"Look, it’s not real. The ghosts are just… er… holograms." Danny said, poorly masking the uncertainty in his voice.
Dwight scoffed, crossing his arms.
"Yeah? They do a lot of property damage for ‘holograms’."
"I mean… It does make it look more real, doesn’t it?" Danny supplied.
"Dwight, the kid says it’s fake. I think he would know better than you," Michael intervened, once more wrapping an arm around Danny’s shoulders. "Don’t you, Danny?"
"Please don’t hold me like that," Danny whined, finding himself forced to squirm his way out of Michael’s grasp for the second time. "Shouldn’t we be working instead of having pointless debates?" he chuckled awkwardly.
"Yes! Yes we do. Back to work, everybody! You heard the temp!" Michael clamored enthusiastically, before turning to Danny. "I’ll show you to your desk."
As everyone slowly trickled out of the room, Dwight stayed rooted on the spot, glaring at Danny.
———
"He’s hiding something," Dwight told the camera, looking every bit the hunter. "Look at this."
He held up Danny’s resume, showcasing it to the camera.
"His full name is Daniel James Fenton. From Amity Park. And you know who else is named Fenton and is from Amity Park? Drs Jack and Madeline Fenton, famous ghost hunters and researchers."
He lowered the resume and bent forward, his face almost filling up all the screen space. Paper was heard being scrunched of camera.
"There’s something he doesn’t want us to know, and I’m going to find out what it is."
———
"He said what now?" Danny asked the camera, dumbfounded.
He rubbed his face tiredly.
"Crap, why is it that I always stumble on nutjobs like this? I could be starting on my first semester of astrophysics but nooo, I ended up here instead," he muttered, probably thinking he spoke too softly for the microphone to pick up.
He looked up at the camera, staring it dead in the lens.
"Look, I’m not hiding anything. Is it that crazy for a guy fresh out of high school to want to move away from his crazy town? Get a first job experience, earn some money to pay rent?"
He shook his head, looking a bit too done for a first day at work.
"Unbelievable."