Once upon a time, there was a woman named Cassandra. She worked for a multinational oil company– you know their name but for legal purposes, it cannot be included in this story– and reached a fairly high position in the company. She had worked very hard to get this job, and was very proud of the fact. She was also very beautiful, and many people whispered that she had gotten her job because of it. She was not very proud of this fact. She disliked her natural beauty, as it distracted people from her intelligence.

One day, her coworker– who we will call Apollo, but for legal purposes, his real name must be omitted– revealed to her some secrets of the company. They were very dangerous secrets, and Cassandra was appalled. Many people would die because of these secrets. Apollo then expected Cassandra to sleep with him in exchange for these secrets. Cassandra was appalled. She refused, and Apollo cursed her and skulked away. Everyone believed she had slept with him though, as she was very beautiful and that is just what beautiful women do.

Cassandra decided to go to her boss with the secrets, but he laughed at her and came onto her. She refused him, as she usually does, as it was a habit of his to harass her. This time, though, she reported her boss and Apollo to their company’s HR department. They did nothing with her report. She was very beautiful, so what did she expect? Men were going to try to seduce her.

Cassandra then tried to report the company’s abhorrent secrets to the government, but even they would not believe her. She seemed like such an airhead, and the secrets didn’t seem possible. Besides, the government had a very good relationship with the oil company, and who would want to ruin that to investigate what were likely lies from some bimbo?

Cassandra tried then to go to the press with the secrets, but even though the newspaper was sympathetic, they did not have the budget to handle the legal case against a big, multinational company. The secrets were probably not true anyways. But they were.

This whole process wore Cassandra down, and she eventually gave up on trying to expose her company. She could not stand staying at the company, however, and was fired after snapping at her boss during another bout of sexual harassment.

Many years later, the company’s secrer deeds were revealed by a man. There was a lot of outrage, and a lot of deaths were caused by the company. A few people were fired, but they received large severance checks and left to join another multinational firm.

Cassandra never worked again in the oil industry. They say that her name was put on a list. Unlike that of Cassandra, however, the stories of the other names on that list will likely never be heard.

The End