The Corporation
To call him the shorter of the three men wasn’t exactly accurate.
He was... less tall. That’s a better description. Semantics, true, but the fact remains that all three were practically giants.
The less tall of the three wore a beard and a bald head. His suit fit him like a glove; it flexed appropriately, it clung where it meant to, but it was strained. He was a big man, and the wool blend was perfectly tailored to make it obvious that there was coiled power beneath the pinstripes. His suit was practically seething, ready to burst.
He was the most aggressive of the three, by a long shot. This fact was offset by his glasses; they gave him an almost bookish look. It was a contrast, to be sure. He was raw power and pure terror, but learned. The glasses mixed with the gray in his close-cropped beard to give him an almost paternal air to go along with the look of intelligence. She found him fascinating.
Flanking him, each a head taller, were two other men who occupied a lot of space. They wore matching dark blue pinstripe suits. While they were very large men, they didn’t seem as heavy as the one in the middle. Not to say that the fatherly one was fat (although he could have been, under the suit. It was hard to tell; power was obvious, his weight less so) but these other two were very obviously athletic. One appeared to be the youngest, perhaps in his early thirties. He wore his brown hair swept back, a little long. He had mid-eastern or Mediterranean features. His demeanor seemed calm, quiet. He, too, wore a close-cropped beard, well trimmed, dark brown, and neat. A smile seemed to play at his lips.
The third man must have been at least five inches passed six feet tall. He was lithe, pale, with white hair and stark blue eyes. He didn’t walk so much as glide as the three men approached a conference table. She swore there was a white corona that surrounded him, but her eyes kept being drawn back to the man who had arrived first, and who still remained seated.
Where the three large gentlemen who entered the boardroom demanded attention and commanded respect simply by their presence, the fourth man in the room seemed to avoid it. He lounged, one leg propped up on an arm of the rolling executive chair, leaning back. He, too, was in a suit, but it was darkest of midnight black. His shirt and tie were virtually invisible in their absence of light, and seemed to shift with inky darkness. His perfectly manicured fingertips rested against one another as he steepled his hands; he looked genuinely amused as he spoke first.
“I didn’t realize you’d bring the entourage.”
The only response in the room was her clacking away at the steno-type.
Anger rolled forward from the less tall man.
No emotion presented from the lithe man.
The Mediterranean man continued to smile peacefully.
The seated man smirked irreverently.
The woman did her best to remain invisible, tucked as she was at a tiny desk in the corner of the boardroom.
Finally, the three newcomers took their seats directly across from the man in black.
Seething wrath, the fatherly figure leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. His words were a menacing whisper. “We need to discuss your quotas. Third quarter earnings in your division are way up, and it’s driving loss in our main line.”
Laughter floated across the table as the man in black sat up. “Right to it, eh? No preamble, sermons, or bullshit. My, my. You’ve come a long way. Fine. Yes. It’s been a good run, lately. Why is this a problem?”
“Are you fulfilling contracts? Have you broken compacts? Where are the copies of the new deals you’ve brokered? Are your agents fulfilling their purchase orders and avoiding hidden amendments?”
“Yes. Yes. Submitted per our arrangement. Yes, and mostly.”
“Accounting disagrees. The paperwork doesn’t match your take. You’re under reporting your margins and falsely filing the earnings statements.”
The man in black leaned back again. His smirk never left his face.
“Father. You know as well as I do that not every earning requires a contract. I have you to thank for that. You made it so when you forced customers to actively choose your product lines and streamlined them towards mine by default. I didn’t make that rule, you did. They know how it workds.” With his last sentence, he flicked his eyes towards the stenographer and vaguely waved in her direction. She pretended not to notice.
She pretended not to shiver.
“There hasn’t been a global conflict in decades. Your earnings should be consistent with population growth, surely, but not since times of war have you moved this much product.” Anger was palpable in every word, and the ancient wood of the table almost seemed to ripple as the obvious leader in the room spoke.
Through his smirk, the relaxed board member quipped, “Jesus, dad. Relax.”
At this, the happier of the three men in blue suits leaned forward. “I think all we need is an explanation. Have you lied about your numbers, brother?”
“I’m no goddamned monkey. Half-brother at best, and it’s kind of my thing, right? You guys do your side of the business, I handle mine. It’s pretty clear that folks are choosing my division over yours. It doesn’t require a genius or a brilliant marketing campaign.”
“Yet, you are marketing. Constantly.” This was delivered in a whisper by the calm, quiet man at the table.
“People have gone deaf to your constant preaching, guys. Your spokesmen simply aren’t what they used to be. Too many played for my team while wearing your jersey, so to speak. Not my fault.” His constant smirk and smile gave his words a sing-song character, and he propped his feet up on the edge of the table. Confidence and arrogance roiled off of the man in black.
The same whispering calm chimed in again. “But we are the light and the way.”
“Not according to the news. Or the movies. Or smut on the internet. Face it, guys. I am pop culture. You’re yesterday. Technology is my new crossroads, people come to me, and folks sleep in on Sundays.”
A resounding thundercrash sounded in the boardroom. The stenographer nearly jumped out of her skin, and she let loose a whimpering, startled scream.
The father figure had risen to his feet, one fist still on the table from where he’d slammed it down.
“I’ve been patient with you since Job. Even after Franz Ferdinand and then the Sudetenland. I’ve largely ignored your bullshit in Africa for the past century. The last time you had proportional earnings like this I made Noah a shipwright.”
Stunned silence filled the room as every eye turned to the chairman of the board. He stood, the epitome of wrath.
His eyes darted to his entourage. “I listened to you two. The kinder, gentler me was the face we put forward. ‘Rebranding,’ you said, was the way towards the future. Well. It’s time to rebrand again. Maybe we need a complete reboot of the product line.”
Everyone anxiously waited for any new commandment.
“I tried water last time. It worked for a while, and the problems were washed away. I need proposals for a reboot on my desk by this time tomorrow. We’re reintroducing the Old Me, and this is the end of days for current business operations.”
The oldest man departed in a flash, leaving the other three seated at the table. The man in black continued to smirk. “So let’s brainstorm, gentlemen. I have an idea I’d like to run past you. It’s something I’ve been working on for a while, but I think we can kick it in to high gear. The best part is that there really are people who think it’s not real, like they think I’m not real. Who would have given them that idea, huh? Crazy, right?”
The stenographer shivered. For the first time in a long time, she was happy to be a functionary in the Purgatorial bureaucracy, removed from the results of the insane ideas unfolding in front of her. She’d done her time in the world, and her life had been a good one filled with ups, downs, and some truly fun poor decisions. Those are probably how she’d ended up being put to work in the System. Her current job’s retirement plan kept her positive; another thirty years, and she’d be moved upwards and onwards beyond hell adjacency. Listening in to the boardroom brainstorming as she typed, she counted it a blessing in disguise to have already served her time on earth. She wasn’t sure what reality television was, why it would determine an election, or how warming the globe would lead to catastrophe, but she was happy in her ignorance.