The Man Who Sold Mars

by K Anderson Yancy

  Half asleep I said, “Hello.”

  Gardner asked, “What are you doing in bed?”

  “Sleeping?”

  Kevin said, “You never sleep—“ and paused, cutting himself off as a thought formed.

  Asleep, Tatyana laid her arm across my chest.

  And Gardner had his own moment of discovery. “Tatyana’s coming—“

  Kevin laughed. “Or came.”

  Gardner laughed, “I told you she would. Hey, is she hot or what?”

  # # #

  Purse, valise, and folders in hand, I walked into Gardner’s office to talk with him and Kevin, but they were too absorbed in their talk with .Stephen to notice me.

  “Yes, she is. It was a double bogey.”

  I wondered, “You double bogeyed. I didn’t know you golfed. When did you pick that up?”

  # # #

  Kevin, Gardner and I were surprised and totally speechless. We had no idea Selena was there.

  Quick I covered, “I mean Tatyana is coming and bring some of her staff too.”

  “That’s –“

  # # #

  I realized a possible meaning to Stephen’s “double bogie”, the most probable, and was not happy to say the least.

  Fuming, I told him, “You need to put away your putter and make it back here right away. We have a lot to do.”

  Furious, I stormed out, but waited until I was outside of Gardner’s office to wipe away the tears. Why doesn’t he want to be with me?

  8. Girl Fight

  Within Young Stellar Resources’, YSR’s, corporate offices penthouse, executive conference room, Selena, George, Kevin, Gardner, Tatyana, and I evaluated potential acquisitions, while Hemmingson made a drink at the bar.

  We’d worked hard, but I drove us harder in our tasks, “Ladies and gentlemen we have the same old drill before us that we’ve done time and time again. This time it differs in that instead of assembling existing technology to maximize their values, by using them to obtain conventional results in unconventional means; we are also shooting for an unconventional result . . . Mars.”

  George’s words conveyed all our sentiments, “Success is never unconventional.”

  Kevin agreed, “Here. Here.”

  And Gardner, “I second it.”

  I returned us to our tasks. “Granted, it’s been years since I earned my masters in aerospace engineering at the U.S. Navy’s Post Graduate School in Monterey, California and served at NASA. But, working closely with Tatyana—“

  “I bet.” Selena’s words sliced through like a cyclone.

  In an uncomfortable silence, the group reacted to her comment in their own way, but all ignoring it, hoping to remain neutral to the underlying conflict. Swift, for the benefit of all, I continued.

  “And with a host of experts, we’ve assembled a number of choice global acquisitions that will propel the price of Young Stellar Resources, YSR, through the roof—“

  Smiling and in perfect unaccented English Tatyana said, “And on to the stars.”

  I nodded yes. “Some of these companies will sell themselves willingly. Some won’t.”

  Hemmingson topped off a drink, “That’s always the case. Business as usual. The scopes just broader.”

  Selena tipped her wine glass towards Gardner and he obliged her and poured, while she talked. “Standard procedures. Direction and misdirection. Award contracts to firms we’re not interested in. Ignore others we are and buy in silence through an array of global groups.”

  “Yes.” I agreed. “We have to be very public with many firms, regardless of our interest. Always keep Mars and Young Stellar Resources, YSR, in the spotlight.”

  Selena mouthed thank you to Gardner, he nodded you’re welcome, and she continued. “Always keep Mars and YSR in the spotlight for the better. Not a problem. Not a day has gone by when YSR has not been. In a month it will be hourly and in another, YSR will never be out of it.”

  Gardner grinning with the possibility of our collective futures said, “And we’ll keep the shares of YSR climbing and climbing and climbing.”

  Kevin glanced down at a list of his questions, “My staff has completed the review of the info you sent and probably like most of your staffs’ agree they all appear to be good choices. Whether they want to be or not.”

  Selena addressed anti-trust concerns, “Senator Symko will never allow us to acquire all these U.S. firms. He’ll have the Federal Trade Commission rule we’ll have a monopoly in “some” industry and there’ll be unfair trade. He’s going to be expensive.”

  Mike Hemmingson’s ear picked up and he took his eyes off the couple in the adjoining building having torrid sex in a closed office. They failed to realize that despite the surrounding offices all having opaque tinted windows, they could all still see out and into theirs. But on the other hand, it may be they did realize it and enjoyed the voyeuristic company. But “multi-tasking”, his attention on us and them, Hemmingson spoke. “William Symko?”

  Selena answered him, “Yes.”

  “Mr. Family Values. Not a problem. I know his mistress. We met at the RNC, the Republican National Conference, four years ago. Had a threesome with one of the cocktail waitresses, this hot Latina from Romania. WOW!!! We’ve been like that ever since. Billy boy is not a problem. With hobbies like forced feminism, having his ass raped, infantilism and much, much more, he is not a problem.” Curious he glanced completely away from the window. “Hey, Tatyana. I’ve been meaning to ask you this. Where’s your accent?”

  “I just use if for the visitors.” She switched to heavily accented Russian English. “To give them the total Russian experience.” Then back to non-accented English. “I speak several languages with native fluency. English – American and British - and Russian of course, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek—“

  “You’re fluent in Russian, French, and Greek. It figures.” Selena gave a laugh of contempt following her words.

  Bristling to the insult with regard to her morals by reference to the sexual acts, “Russian”, “French”, and “Greek”, Tatyana charged. “Do you have a problem with me?”

  “As a matter of fact—“

  Hemmingson joked to lower the tension, “Woooooooo! Girl fight. Kevin, get the Mazola Oil.”

  “Olive. Lower in cholesterol.”

  Hemmingson continued directing. “Fine. Gardner the Twister.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Hemmingson pulled out his cell. “I’m ordering the pizza and beer. If you want veggies on it, tell somebody else.”

  George ended all the “stuff” at the meeting for now and forever.

  “I will only say this once. I have invested a great deal of my money and more importantly my time into this venture to make even more money. I do not lose. Ever. And, I will not let who is sleeping with whom and anyone’s feelings about that, affect my investment. To the extent that personalities impact the operation of this enterprise it is Stephen Young’s. Young Stellar Resources, YSR, needs a face and a personality. And the personality people see is the one we manufacture. The truth of the world is that the masses need a face and a name to make abstract goals tangible and attainable. Alexander The Great conquered the known world. His armies have no mention. Football quarterbacks win games, not quarterbacks and their combined teams. Alone Neil Armstrong went to the moon.”

  “Allegedly.” All of the others answered except me and George.

  I looked at them amazed, thinking, What is this? Why do all these very knowledgeable people think we did not go to the moon?

  And George agreed with them, “Allegedly. And, Stephen Young as we present him to the public is going to Mars. That manufactured personality is the only personality that will intrude on any meeting I’m present at or will impact the value of my investment.”

  In silence, the group weighed the gravity of his words and tone.

  No nonsense, he continued. “Now, as for the acquisitions. I have a list of questions I would like answered. First . . . “

  9.
All Dreams Are Madness

  From the studios of Bloomberg News an anchor informed the world.

  “Young Stellar Resources, YSR, continues it meteoric rise as Mars fever sweeps the Earth. After announcement of yet another aerospace takeover, the stock split eight ways only 20 days after a four way split to trade at—

  I turned off the television in our limo ending the news broadcast and made my apology to my companions, Selena and her twelve year old daughter, Patricia.

  “Sorry, I’ve seen it a million times today.

  Selena smiled, “That’s OK.”

  And Patricia, “De nada.”

  I turned on the radio, The Rainbow Connection played,

  “Why are there so many songs about rainbows

  And what's on the other side?”

  Patricia’s eyes lit up magically. “I love that song.”

  I thought of the magical message in it and smiled, “Me too.”

  Ecstatic, Patricia sang along with the radio.

  “Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,

  And rainbows have nothing to hide.

  So we’ve been told and some choose to believe it

  I know they’re wrong wait and see.

  Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection,

  The lovers, the dreamers and me.”

  While the song played, I watched Patricia with great joy. Seeing how personal the song was to her, I grinned with a deep secret. She noticed, instantly knowing the secret we shared and wanting me to ask her about it and I did.

  “So, have you?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “Yes.”

  Selena had been studying us and unable to decipher the message asked, “What are you talking about?”

  I glanced at Patricia, “She hasn’t. Has she?”

  “No.”

  “Haven’t what. What are you two up to?”

  The limo pulled in front of Juilliard and the Lincoln Center For The Performing Arts.

  I announced our arrival. “We’re here.”

  Patricia, abuzz with anticipation, nearly bounced for joy.

  The driver opened the door and she bounded from it. Stately, Selena followed and I joined them.

  From above a flock of pigeons strafed the ground just in front of them. Everyone nearby looked up.

  # # #

  Except Stephen, straining, he kept his vision Earthbound, refusing to look toward the stars. I’d noticed this before and puzzled over something that I’d wondered about him for quite some time.

  Inside, with great excitement, Patricia led me and Stephen to our seats and we sat just as the lights dimmed and in love, Stephen took my hand and I blushed.

  The curtain opened on to the stage, a wild, eerily lit forest with low fog.

  Lightning flashed and thunder rolled as three haggish witches entered in their own unique way from various places throughout the audience to converge on stage.

  The First witch gazed at the others,

  “When shall we three meet again?

  In thunder, lightning or in rain?”

  The Second answered,

  “When the hurly-burly’s done?

  When the battle’s lost and won”

  And the Third,

  “That will be ere the set of sun.”

  Together they chanted,

  “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,

  Hover through the fog and filthy air”

  And so the enthralling production of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth began, continuing on it flowed to a courtyard of Inverness — Macbeth’s castle. Banquo’s teenage son Fleance stood with caution in the distance watching, while Banquo and Macbeth spoke in conspiratorial whispers.

  Macbeth asked Banquo to help him in a coupe to become king,

  “If you shall cleave to my consent, when tis,

  It shall make honor for you.”

  But Banquo torn, said he would consider it.

  “So, I lose none

  In seeking to augment it, but still keep

  My bosom franchised and my allegiance clear,

  I shall be counseled.”

  Macbeth, pleased with the answer, bid him good night.

  “Good repose the while.”

  Banquo bid him good night as well.

  “Thanks, sir. The like to you.”

  Banquo and Fleance exited and the lighting of the scene brightened with supernatural colors and auroras; distant thunder rolled with increasing volume as it neared, until it was on top of Macbeth. And, the audience leaned slightly forward involuntarily with increasing interest.

  Our intensity burning, we took everything in as a gobo emblazed the set with the darkened form of a dagger before Macbeth, turning and moving as he approached, beckoning and calling, but always remaining just out of his reach.

  “Is this a dagger which I see before me,

  The Handle toward my hand?

  Come let me clutch thee.

  I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

  Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

  To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but

  A dagger of the mind, a false creation

  Proceeding from the heart oppressed brain?

  I see thee yet, in form as palpable

  As this which now I draw”

  He draws his dagger resigned to his fate.

  “Thou marshal’st me the way I was going,

  And such an instrument I was to use.”

  On stage, Lady Macbeth, my little sister, Catherine, who’d just turned 21, stood in the royal bedroom as Macbeth, bloody and emotionally drained entered. The bloody daggers he used to kill King Duncan still in his hands. At once, she takes charge of the situation.

  “Go get some water

  And wash this filthy witness from your hand.—

  Why did you bring these daggers from the place?

  They must lie there. Go, carry them and smear

  The sleepy grooms with blood.”

  Macbeth beyond distraught at himself and at his act of murdering a man and kinsman and friend, who only a few days earlier he’d fought like a demon to defend his throne, refuses.

  “I’ll go no more.

  I am afraid to think what I have done

  Look on ‘t again I dare not.”

  Lady Macbeth tries to sooth and comfort him, but to no avail.

  “Infirm of purpose!

  Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead

  Are but pictures. ‘Tis the eye of childhood

  That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,

  I’ll guild the faces of the grooms withal,

  For it must seem their guilt.”

  Lady Macbeth exited with the bloody daggers and the play continued its tale of supernatural, treachery, deceit and their consequences, until barefoot, disheveled, nearly exposed in her night clothes, Lady Macbeth walked in a guilt ridden trance, while a doctor and a gentlewoman observed her with great concern.

  Compulsive, Lady Macbeth rubs her hands in her sleep trying to remove the last of the blood she imagines is still there from the assassination of King Duncan, but the last of the spots, stubborn, refuse to be removed.

  “Out, damned spot, out, I say! One. Two.

  Why then, ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fi, my

  Lord, fie, a soldier and afeared? What need we fear

  Who knows it, when none can call our power to

  Account? Yet who would have thought the old man

  To have had so much blood in him?”

  Shocked and in disbelief at the realization that the Macbeths assassinated King Duncan, the doctor turns to the gentlewoman, “Do you mark that?”

  And in her guilty trance, Lady Macbeth continues rubbing the phantom spots of blood on her hands.

  “The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is

  She now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean?

  Here’s the smell of the blood still.

  All the perfumes of Arabia will not
>
  sweeten this little hand. O, O, O!”

  Later, on stage, Macbeth sat on his throne, mad, ferocious, manic, and prepared for battle. In the distance, Women screamed in mournful dirges and Seyton entered.

  Macbeth demands of him, “Wherefore was that cry?”

  Seyton answers, “The Queen, my lord, is dead.”

  Macbeth is crushed and lost with the news of the loss of his love.

  “She should have died hereafter.

  There would have been a time for such a word.

  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

  To the last syllable of recorded time,

  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.”

  Enraged, he drew his sword to engage the approaching armies. And in time, two combatants, as prophesized engaged one another. Swords raised Macbeth and Macduff charged. Macbeth filled with a hellish fury determined not to yield to boy King Malcom, the rightful heir to the king of Scotland, leading a British army to retake his throne. And Macduff, the Thane of Fife, filled with vengeance to take the life of the man responsible for the murder of his wife and children.

  Tired from the battle and the toll Macbeth’s coup had taken on him, his family, and nation, Macduff holding Macbeth’s severed head advanced to the forces lead by boy King Malcom. Drawing his sword, Macduff planted it in the ground, before the king, placed Macbeth’s head on top its handle, and kneeled in reverence and loyalty to King Malcom.

  The fantastic performance over, on stage, to thunderous applause, the cast of Macbeth presented itself before the audience for its curtain call with regal grace and style.

  Behind the stage, in the green room, Stephen, Patricia, and I walked towards Lady Macbeth, the play over, The Lady was now Catherine again.

  Surprised to see us, Catherine smiled with great joy and then exchanged hugs with all of us.