LifeGames Corporatoin

by Michael Smorenburg

  It was early evening as Ken went through various messages on his phone.

  The Colonel had kept his word by phoning through some information concerning the investigation into Craig’s death. “They’ve picked up narcotics on the man’s body, Sir. As you suggested it looks as if Mr. Angelis had been dealing… cocaine… quite a sizable quantity.”

  Careful in making his statement, Ken had led the Colonel to believe that he was a deeply ethical and law-abiding citizen.

  The picture he’d painted of Craig was slanderous;

  “We’d been arguing about his deterioration at work, his absentmindedness and so on… It already cost him his marriage; I put it to him that his career wasn’t looking too rosy. Don’t get me wrong Colonel, he was a hell of a worker and well liked; maybe a genius. That’s precisely the problem… the reason it upset me to watch him tossing his life away on drugs!” Ken had paused to worry with his index finger at an itch near his eye, “His wife knows nothing of this of course. The man was very secretive; tragic…”

  He’d left the thought unsaid and looked down in the pregnant silence, pleased that the Colonel and his aide were swallowing the story. He’d pretended to compose himself; looking slowly skyward, shaking his head hopelessly, tears welling in his eyes;

  “…I’m sorry, I get really pissed off with these idiots… some things you’re supposed to grow out of.”

  “Of course, Sir.” the Officers had each sympathetically reassured him, acting as sounding boards for the man’s grief.

  “…You know, Craig was worth more than this nonsense,” Ken had laid it on thick, preparing fertile ground for escape routes if he ever needed them, “I kept this whole situation from his colleagues…. That’s why I asked him to my house to discuss it. I thought it would be better if the two of us could sit down, as friends, and thrash it out…”

  Another theatrical pause had built the empathy. “…’You’ve got a child, Craig… a wife who loves you that you’ve driven away…’ I told him.”

  As he’d spoken, Ken had been acting out the bogus scene for the men; dropping carefully crafted neuro-linguistic actions into his pantomime to cement key ideas into the officer’s minds.

  “…and that’s when he blew his stack, Colonel. I’ve never seen anything like it. I tried to stop him, but he was demented—he just took off.”

  Ken had carefully assumed an open body language, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees and his palms open directly toward the senior, the Colonel, a picture of grief.

  “Who knows a man’s mind? Perhaps the pressure of becoming a father late in life… could be coming from nothing and getting too much too quickly from me? I can’t fathom it, Colonel.”

  As they’d moved to depart, the Lieutenant went to use the facilities and Ken took the moment to slip some advice to the Colonel who had announced that he would personally break the news to the newly widowed Mrs. Angelis; “I don’t think there’s much point in revealing the drug angle to her… What good would it do?”

  He assumed the Colonel would convey the message to his underling.

  The following message on the voicemail was from Catherine, “I’m really devastated for you, Ken. I know you were close to him… Hmmm. I hate situations like this… sorry, I really don’t know what to say. I think I met him once… Well… very awkward; sorry all the same. Speak to you soon. Ciao, ciao.”

  Her Italian-style sign-off was a lovely touch, “Ciao, ciao,” Ken repeated aloud, trying to imitate her voice.

  On first hearing her voice he had noticed a little stir in his loins. “No way!” He’d thought, “She’s hot enough… but this is ridiculous.”

  He laughed at himself, trying desperately to reject any notion that there was also a lump in his throat; with concerted effort, he blocked the feeling.

  The idea of actually feeling emotion toward a woman terrified him, “Naagh… not me, mate!” He broke into song in the style of a young Cliff Richard at the dawn of pop music; “I’ll be a bachelor boy, ‘cause that’s the way to sta’ay…”

  He was still singing to himself in jovial mood when the next message began to play with an ominous intensity that instantaneously truncated the melody and his happy demeanor.

  The message began with an electric click, a popping sound that to Ken sounded like an international connection on a poor line, followed by a weird dragging static echo. Try as he might he could not focus on what it was; it sounded deathly. Ken listened closer, clicking from the handset to speaker; the sound filled his room in an eerie fog of intonation.

  Something in the background made his hair stand on end.

  Two seconds… three seconds of the driving sonorous cacophony haunted through the veil, and suddenly Craig’s voice, tortured and stretched cut crisply through; “STOP!” his voice was faint as a whisper, but charged with imposing authority. Abruptly the line went dead.

  Ken was appalled, staring agape at his handset.

  A feeling of dread permeated to every corner of the room, its unfamiliar sensation gripping him.

  “Fuck!” he said aloud, not wanting to touch the handset as it lay where he’d put it, not sure what to do with it if he did.

  “How could this short message have shaken me to such a degree?” His mind was somersaulting.

  Gingerly he picked it up—the digital readout on the voicemail indicated that the incoming call had been logged at 16:36 that afternoon—a mere few hours before.

  Ken realized it was the exact time he had been on the other line to David, Craig’s corpse should have been safely in its refrigerated drawer down at the police mortuary, his slack vocal cords having long-since uttered no more.

  “It’s some kind of mistake,” he reassured himself confidently, preparing to rerun the message, intent on listening for any telltale transition in the message that might betray over-dubbing.

  “POP…” the weird background activity… “…STOP!” disconnection sound—space—new message; “Hi Ken, Nancy here. It’s five to five. Catherine’s on for 10am tomorrow, I’ve confirmed it on the email to you. I hope you’re okay and don’t worry, everything’s under control here. Bye.” Disconnection sound—nothing.

  Ken paused the replay. Nancy’s message indicated 16:54, it was within a minute of her own time check, “How the hell did an old message from Craig find itself in the middle of two current messages from today?” he was perplexed.

  He skipped back and forth, running through the messages several more times. He maximized volume to study the clicks and pops and other eerie sounds, but none of it made any sense at all.

  Ken was no sound technician, yet what he was hearing seemed to gel and have a muddled pattern. Defeated in trying to fathom it, he forwarded all three messages to his email, hoping something in their sequence might explain why they were improbably in sequence; his IT department could take a look at it in the morning.

  Exhausted, he made ready for bed, but try as he might he could not shrug off the mysterious dread that persisted and haunted him throughout the long, fitful and exhausting hours to dawn.

  Chapter 5

  “Our Pentagon boy’s stabilized, Ken… Looks like he’ll pull through, but the press are sniffing around the hospital,” Suspecting that Ken would be in the office early, 2nd in charge, Henry Fowler, had been waiting for him to arrive since 7am.

  “He’s conscious?” Ken was relieved; the degree of the man’s recovery would dictate the depth of the military’s investigation.

  “Yep… but doing some strange babbling that nobody can make head or tail of. On about demons and spooks… sounds rather X-Files… weird stuff. Oh yes, Leon says your name came up in his ranting. Your name… and Craig’s.”

  Leon was the resident PhD Psychiatrist in LifeGames’ employ—in charge of hypnosis.

  A chill ran up Ken’s spine; his mind immediately jumping to the recording on his handset and email.

  Henry continued waffling, “What seems odd to me is that the guy probably read about you in the press… but
who knows Craig’s name? Strange.”

  Ken was logging into the central server; he didn’t look up from his monitor and ignored the speculation; “Any further clues of what put him in hospital?” Ken had thought it important to ask the question to keep the decoy rolling away from the truth he alone knew.

  “Nope, but we’ve still got the Time Dilation unit shut down. The good news is that the standard Commercial Side is going like hell.”

  The Commercial Side was company jargon for the ordinary, non-Time Dilation, virtual training procedure.

  “Yesterday I had three hours on the blower to Lufthansa, they’re expanding the crew analysis to executive management as a quarterly review! We’re prepping modules to run executives through for dealing with mid-air disasters, missing planes and major collisions… told you they’d bite. With them in the bag we’ll pull all the others in. They’ve got an image to uphold and the right attitude for technology.”

  Ken needed to concentrate as he navigated through the network into Craig’s computer; Henry’s babbling was distracting and irritating, and he tried to shut it out, giving no encouragement or feedback.

  But Henry was oblivious to Ken ignoring him, he steamed on in a buoyant mood. He intensely disliked Craig and had not shed a tear. Today was just another workday.

  Ken had spy software running on every computer of executive staff; the software took a screen image every thirty seconds, and logged every keystroke made.

  Inside Craig’s desktop, he was running a search for a .wav file, a sound file, searching for any possible recording that might contain a sample of Craig’s voice. Only the occasional word from Henry’s rambling penetrated his mind.

  Ken hated it when Henry tried to imitate his personal style of slick talk, which he was now doing. Henry was a suit, a nerd, he should stay within his own grey little personality.

  Unperturbed by Ken’s lack of enthusiasm, Henry was still happily rambling on about Lufthansa, “I told Jimmy to steer us their way. Once they’ve signed on, it’ll be a flood. We won’t keep up,” He was beginning to get into gear, “…and my money would be on Cathay or Emirates being next. I told Jimmy to forget the American airlines, forget British… their nose is going to be out of joint if the Germans do it before them. They’ll only come into the program once they think that a dignified period has past.”

  Ken grunted on impulse, wishing he hadn’t because it only encouraged the fool.

  “Virgin may be the problem. If Branson sees that the training’s working he’ll probably try to copy our systems and go into competition before you know it!”

  Ken was sick of it and needed to derail Henry before his anger popped, so he cut him short; “You ready for our ten o’clock?” It was clear that Henry was a frustrated marketer who couldn’t wait to meddle in Jimmy Castle’s Marketing Department.

  Any excuse that he could find, Henry was in on any of Jimmy’s meetings, chipping in his penny’s worth of opinion. Jimmy hated the interferences, but he had admitted that Henry possessed an instinct to spot a market opportunity.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Henry beamed. There was relish in his eyes.

  “Jimmy will be delighted!” Ken said just as Nancy stuck her head around the door. Her eyes were ringed dark with insomnia and puffy from crying

  “Morning,” she said in a manufactured perky voice, she was not one to ever impose her sadness on others.

  “Morning Nance, how’re you doing?” Ken asked out of conformity.

  “Bearing up,” she assured, her mouth curled a forced smile.

  “I got your email and phone message last night, thanks. By the way, what time did you leave the message?”

  “Just before five, didn’t I give the time? I usually do.”

  “Yes, sorry… of course you did. I forgot,” Ken smiled and then added, “What time did the General wake up?”

  Nancy shrugged, but Henry answered, “Around eight last night. Leon called it through, under the circumstances I suggested we not bother you.”

  “I’d like to have known… but thanks.”

  The strange chain of coincidences seemed to be escalating. Craig dying in the small hours, his voice appearing later in the afternoon, then the General finally waking ranting and babbling about Ken and Craig. It was a silly correlation, but one Ken couldn’t avoid making.

  “How many dictation recordings have you got of Craig’s, Nance?” Ken asked.

  Craig was a stranger to the keyboard and Nancy typed from his dictations.

  “Shew,” Nancy blew through pursed lips and rolled her eyes, “Hundreds on my laptop. You after anything in particular?”

  “Not really… just a voice sample… silly… unlike me but… I dunno… maybe closure? Bit of a history with him you know, guess I want to just hear his voice once more,” he played the sensitive card masterfully as Nancy and Henry both nodded thoughtfully.

  “I’ve got a ton—I’ll email something over.”

  “Please.”

  Nancy disappeared to do his bidding.

  “The police think that it could have been drugs, Ken… Craig’s death,” Henry solemnly ventured.

  Ken was staggered by Henry’s express knowledge of the incident, “Where the hell did you get that, Henry!” Ken tried too late to obscure the alarm in his voice, but it had rung through.

  “Sorry Ken, I got sidetracked with Lufthansa, I was going to talk to you about it… An officer was here yesterday going through Craig’s personals; he had a search warrant. Did you know they found a large quantity of cocaine in Craig’s car?”

  Ken feigned disinterest and nodded minor acknowledgement, focusing his attention back to the pile of papers cluttering his desk. In truth he focused intensively, tuned to every word and intonation Henry uttered, trying to get a measure of how much the man knew or was likely to figure out.

  “Drug takers right here… under our nose. I never liked the guy—told you as much.”

  Ken formulated a response; he rose and moved over to shut the door.

  “I’ve known about his problem for a while, Henry,” he began to explain. “Hadn’t you noticed how absent minded Craig became?” As Ken spoke he was nodding his head just perceptibly, lightly drumming his fingernails on the desk like a miniature horse galloping, affirming his lie, welding it into Henry’s mind.

  Henry began to nod in time, “You know, now that you mention it… but drugs? I thought he was maybe ticked in the head.”

  “I tried to keep it under wraps, Henry. It wouldn’t do team morale any good,” Ken asserted, “that’s why I had him round to my place last night… gave him an ultimatum to quit the drugs or resign his position.”

  “I know, the officer told me,” Henry chirped triumphantly.

  Again Henry’s insight stumped Ken, and a small panic rose that he had misjudged the Colonel.

  “Was it the Colonel or the Lieutenant?” Ken quizzed—the answer to which would seal the fate and career prospects for the man who had broken his unspoken hint to keep these matters confidential from the office.

  “Only a Lieutenant came here—he said his boss had gone to break the news to Craig’s wife… or widow should I say.”

  “I’ll deal with him…” Ken made a mental note. “Okay… Well… it’s true, there’s no point stoking the rumors and bringing the man down, so just keep it to yourself. The whole situation at my place blew up over the issue; Craig went crazy when he realized that I knew about his addiction, he panicked… got out of control; I’ve never seen anything like it, he laid a strip of rubber the length of my driveway… God knows how they’ll clean it up—and he destroyed my entrance way.”

  “His wife know about it?” Henry asked.

  “I doubt it. I think that’s what sent him off the deep end, when I brought up her name he thought I was threatening to reveal….”

  Nancy knocked.

  “Come in,” Ken called.

  She stuck her head around the door, hesitating.

  “Come on in Nance, we
’re not hiding from you.”

  “I mailed you four recordings.”

  It was quite unlike Ken to be sentimental, but she guessed that every man had a right to a change of heart in the face of tragedy. More curious was his interest into the specific times that different events had occurred; her call, the General waking; she knew him well and this was out of character. He was trying to cover something up.

  “I think we all need to get on with other things,” as if he’d read her mind trying to fathom his, his voice was suddenly brittle.

  Both Henry and Nancy saw the tide of Ken’s mood swing and Henry excused himself to go about his daily chores.

  “Coffee?” Nancy offered a peace settlement.

  “Please… and get Stuart Reese from IT up to see me urgently. When I’m done with him, I want to see Anton. I’ve gotta see both of them before ten, thanks love,” Ken was fond of Nancy and her peace offer had instantly doused his irritation.

  When he was alone, Ken listened again to the emailed voicemail; to the “…Stop!” recording. Then he immediately listened to one of the four-dictated recordings of Craig’s voice that Nancy had sent to him.

  He re-listened to the extracts until Stuart’s timid knock sounded at his door. “Come on in, shut the door. Coffee?” Ken smiled genially at the youth.

  “No thanks, Mr. Torrington,” Stuart was nervous and expecting the worst with all manner of persecution cramming through his mind; Could it be the problem with the General, or something with Mr. Angelis?

  Stuart was a sound engineer, and his specialty was looking after all audio aspects of the Commercial Side.

  Summonses to the executive suite were rare and the only time he’d ever spoken directly with Mr. Torrington had been at his sound-mixing desk when visitors needed to be impressed. Ken would generally ask him technical facts and other specifics regarding what he had been doing at any moment in the sound mixing process; all fairly canned for the visitors’ benefit.

  “Are you sure you won’t have a cup? I’m having,” Ken couldn’t have been friendlier.