This is Ramses. How Can I Help You?

Ramses had once endured burial alive, dynastic collapse, ritual preservation, grave robbers, and several centuries of being worshipped incorrectly.

And even he would admit that customer service was worse.

Eternity Cable Services occupied a squat little office off one of Snowdrift Bay’s less flattering streets, tucked between a shutter repair shop and a place that sold artisanal candles with names like Moss Grievance and Quiet Regret. The sign out front flickered unreliably, which several customers had pointed out over the years as poor branding for a telecommunications company. No one inside disagreed. No one had fixed it either.

The lobby was full that afternoon.

Not full in a dramatic way.
Just full in the ordinary, soul-wearing way that service lobbies became when the weather was bad, the cable was worse, and too many people had decided their inconvenience was structurally unique. A child was dragging a number dispenser ticket through a puddle of spilled cocoa. Someone near the chairs was sighing with operatic force. In the far corner, an elderly woman was loudly explaining to no one that her remote had “developed opinions.”

Behind the front desk sat Ramses.

He looked, as always, immaculate.

His bandages were clean, precisely wrapped, and arranged with the same care other people gave to formalwear. His posture was upright. His expression was composed. His hands rested neatly atop the counter in a pose suggesting patience, discipline, and a vanishing tolerance for living people. The little plastic nameplate beside him read:

RAMSES
CUSTOMER SUPPORT

The title beneath that had once said How May I Help You? but someone had scratched it off years ago, perhaps out of realism.

Ramses lifted one ancient hand and adjusted the headset over his wrappings with slow dignity. Across from him stood the problem.

He was broad, red-faced, and already shouting.

Not warming up to shouting.
Not threatening to shout.

Fully shouting.

“This is outrageous!” the man bellowed, slamming both hands on the counter hard enough to make the pens jump in their cup. “Three weeks. Three weeks I’ve had to deal with this garbage!”

Ramses blinked once.

Then folded his hands again.

“Sir,” he said, in the dry, even tone of a man who had learned that calmness often enraged the already unreasonable, “I assure you I am fully capable of assisting with your concern.”

The man leaned forward until his face was far too close to both the counter and civilization.

“Capable?” he roared. “Capable? My cable cuts out every time a pigeon sneezes on the line!”

Ramses considered that.

Then said, “That does sound unstable.”

“Unstable?” the man repeated. “My television turns into confetti every time I try to watch anything after six!”

A woman in the waiting chairs glanced up from a crossword and muttered, “That happened to me once, but it was the weather wizard.”

The man ignored her completely.

“I missed the finale of Bake-Off: Gladiator Edition!” he shouted. “Do you understand what that means?”

Ramses did not, in any emotional sense, understand what that meant.

He understood the sentence.
He rejected the premise.

Still, professionalism required some effort.

“I understand,” he said, “that interrupted service is frustrating.”

“Frustrating?” the man barked. “Frustrating is a squeaky floorboard. This is betrayal!”

Behind Ramses, the amorphous blob-creature from technical support slowly took a sip of coffee and did not intervene.

Ramses kept his gaze level.

“Let’s start with your account number.”

The man jabbed a finger at the counter as if accusing it personally. “No! I am done with numbers! I want solutions!”

“That is unfortunate,” said Ramses, “because our system remains quite attached to numbers.”

The man slapped the counter again.

“I knew this would happen. I knew it. Every time I come in here, it’s excuses, delays, and dead-eyed nonsense from people who don’t know what they’re doing!”

Ramses’ bandages gave the faintest little shift at that.

Not enough for the average customer to notice.
But enough for anyone who knew him to understand that some internal threshold had been reached and politely stepped over.

His hands remained folded.

His voice remained calm.

“Sir. I am trying to help you.”

“Oh, help me?” the man said. “Help me? You probably don’t even watch television. You probably just sit there all day thinking about tombs!”

The woman with the crossword looked up again. “That feels racist.”

The man pressed on.

“Sarcophaguses this, pyramids that—what do you people even do back there?”

The correct plural, Ramses thought absently, was sarcophagi.

But he let it pass.

He had stopped correcting customers some time around his second century in the service industry. There came a point when precision no longer justified the energy.

The man was still speaking.

Still leaning.

Still pounding the counter with all the moral outrage of someone convinced missing entertainment had made him a persecuted class.

Ramses looked at him.

Really looked at him.

Then, without quite meaning to, he began tracing small shapes in the laminate countertop with one bandaged finger.

Nothing obvious.

Nothing theatrical.

Just the faint, absent-minded sketching of old symbols from an older language, the kind his hands still remembered even when his patience did not.

A line.
A curve.
A hooked mark.
A little repetition near the edge of the stapler.

The air changed.

Only slightly.

The overhead fluorescent light flickered once.

The man stopped mid-rant.

“What’s—” he said.

Ramses kept tracing.

The symbols glowed faintly, then disappeared into the counter as though absorbed by the grain.

The room went still.

The waiting customers noticed now.

The blob-creature lowered its coffee.
The woman with the crossword sat up straighter.
A small boy in the corner whispered, “Oh, cool.”

The red-faced man blinked.

His expression shifted from outrage to confusion.

Then to alarm.

“What’s happening?”

Ramses looked up.

“I did ask you,” he said, “to lower your voice.”

Then the man exploded into locusts.

Not bloodily.

Not catastrophically.

Just all at once.

One second there was a furious customer in front of the desk.

The next there was a dense buzzing cloud of angry, disoriented locusts where his torso had been, his shirt, shoes, and grievances apparently redistributed into insect form. They filled the air above the counter in a frantic little storm of indignation, circling the customer service sign with a furious hum that somehow still felt argumentative.

No one screamed.

That was the thing about Snowdrift Bay.

The woman with the crossword just sighed and said, “Well. That’s new.”

From behind the desk, the blob-creature gave Ramses a small, approving thumbs-up.

One locust bounced off the PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER dispenser with enough irritation to feel deliberate.

Another landed on the edge of the counter and rubbed its little front legs together in a way that looked offensively similar to continuing the complaint.

Ramses watched them for a second.

Then reached over, lifted the customer satisfaction clipboard, and wrote with calm precision:

Resolution: Successful
Customer Follow-up: Unlikely
Overall: 3/5

The locust cloud continued buzzing in tight, offended loops above the desk.

A few broke off and flew toward the ceiling lights.
A few seemed to regroup near the pamphlet rack as though trying to organize.
One landed briefly on the edge of a children’s coloring station before zipping away again with wounded authority.

Finally, after perhaps thirty seconds of futile insect outrage, the cluster found the open lobby window.

They streamed out into the afternoon in a loose, indignant cloud, still very much carrying the emotional energy of a man who intended to leave a strongly worded review if he ever regained thumbs.

Silence returned to the office.

Ramses set down his pen.

The woman with the crossword cleared her throat.

“So,” she said, “are we still taking numbers.”

Ramses looked up.

“Yes.”

She nodded once, satisfied. “Good.”

The phone rang.

Ramses picked it up with the same composed professionalism he had held through the entire event.

“Eternity Cable Services,” he said, voice dry as old linen. “This is Ramses. How may I assist you today?”

A beat passed.

Then he closed his eyes briefly.

“No, sir. Weather is not a personal attack.”

Outside, a few late locusts buzzed past the window in offended formation.

Ramses barely noticed.

Customer complaints, after all, were eternal.

And unfortunately, so was he.