by Tom Germann
I could picture her laughing and poking me in the side while saying that line. It kept going, but got more serious.
“I think you’re a good guy, shy guy. I thought maybe the one night was just a night of fun, but I think you would make a good friend. I’m sorry I don’t have a few more days to get to know you better. Maybe it’s better this way. I can focus on my classes and get into space instead of thinking about you and me in different positions half the night. You can focus on working for your knob boss.
You better remember that your work is always watching you. Anything you say or do, they can see and record. Read some of their waivers one day.
I am done my training in three months. Look me up after that and we can get together and have some fun times, unless you don’t want to.
Take care of yourself, shy guy.
P.S. I am making myself late doing this for you. You better appreciate it! Clara Brennan.”
I read it through again a few more times and then put it on a corner of the desk where I could see it. When I went to bed, I left it there, and in the morning, put it away safely in my suitcase.
The next few days flew by and then it was Friday and I had the weekend off to explore the city.
Before I left work, Ken asked if I wanted to go catch a few drinks and watch a local game on the screen at a local bar. The practice was that everyone went right over and ate and had a few drinks there while watching a game. When I first started trying to skip out, he was good enough to let me know that “this is how things are done.”
So I went. I ended up in this dingy little bar that had me worried that I was going to get stabbed or something. But a little after we both got there, the place filled up with corporate people. Most left after a quick meal, but a bunch of us stayed in the back quarter and kept drinking.
I recognized some of the people that were there, and Lesha was there sitting next to me; her name was actually spelled L-E-S-I-A. I was also pronouncing it a bit wrong, but she didn’t worry about that. Most people did. I met a bunch of other administrators and some low-level managers that they liked. The food was excellent and I could see why everyone came here.
I also noticed that the security sensors were older and in bad shape. Clara had told me things to look out for and she would have said this place was safe.
By the time I had left at the end of the night, I was staggeringly drunk and had a lot of good pointers from the people there.
I woke up Saturday morning, hung over and with a huge list of things to do in town.
I spent my weekend recovering and swore to never drink like that again. I had lots of good stuff to do visiting the sites and tourist traps all over the city, so my weekends were covered for the summer. Every Friday was a game, so I would be at the bar Friday nights, even though I promised myself I’d never overdo it like that again.
Between this and work I would be able to keep myself busy all summer, and leave here having had some fun. I was only able to scan the data on the Sunday as I was still in rough shape.
The following week was long and boring. There was so much data to go through and so many projects to bring myself up to speed on. A lot of the data was barely processed. But I worked myself through it and sometimes Ken would point something out over lunch or during a smoke break.
I saw some ways that the data could be skewed in reporting so that differing results would come out.
The Glentol Corporation was heavily involved with recruiting and training its personnel. There was a senior vice president that controlled this department. I thought that the Corporation had just got top-heavy with management until I looked at the different programs in place.
Just to train Clara on her course for those three months was costing the Corporation two hundred thousand dollars. If she completed the course and went on to specialized training for underwater or space, it would cost another five hundred thousand dollars to train her to work on one of the habitats or on the Mars project.
That didn’t even begin to include the cost of her equipment or normal pay. If she went to deep space and they gave her a full set of the new implants, then she was costing millions. That was millions for one person, and that did not even factor in her pay. Actually, her pay would not cost that much in the big picture.
This was why the contracts for the Corporation were always for a minimum of five years and some as long as ten.
There was no information on the deep space personnel. When I reviewed the data, I didn’t think any of them had ever come back to Earth; they just stayed in deep space forever. But they had to come back one day, right?
I asked Ken about this.
He just nodded and continued working. “You’re not seeing all the data, Timothy. After you have gone to deep space, you are always deep space until you die or are too old.”
That made no sense.
Ken stopped and looked up at me. “No, no. I can already see the circles your brain is turning in. That is completely wrong. Anyone who goes to deep space will run their contract for that until they are done. Most of those contracts are longer. But when they come back to Earth, and not all of them do, then they end up in another job earthside. But if they are ever needed, they can be called up again for active duty out there.”
That was a ripoff. Get the good pay and benefits, do your service, and then one day they send you back out when you are in your sixties?
When I asked him about how that seemed unfair, he didn’t even look up from his work but his answer made me reconsider how I had thought about it.
“Really, Timothy? The Corporation is going to invest how many millions of dollars in someone’s training and install top-of-the-line implants so that they can work in deep space making top dollar for a few years, and then they transfer back to Earth where they make much more money than someone else would? Then one day, the Corporation is desperate for that skill set and, ‘Oops, sorry, no one’s available’? This could affect humanity as a whole. An individual or individuals mean nothing compared to everyone.”
Chapter 19
I was just wrapping up my work for the week and thinking about going out with Ken and the rest for the game and a few drinks when Ken took an incoming call. Mr. Smythe had left at noon, so it should have been an easy wrap-up of work. Until Ken looked at me while talking. “Yes sir, I will pass the message on, sir, and make sure that he knows what files to bring. Have a good trip, sir.”
“Timothy, Mr. Smythe is leaving for China tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. This is an excellent opportunity for you to learn how to interact with other parts of the Corporation. There will be several meetings over the three days and you will be involved with all of them. I am sending you a list of files and presentations that need to go with you.”
I was going to be stuck working on this till just before departure so Mr. Smythe could look good. I was so screwed.
Ken was still working away and then cleared his throat to get my attention. “Timothy? I don’t mind helping you get all this done, but perhaps you could actually start work and not have me do it all?”
I looked over. “Umm, sure, Ken. Sorry I was just feeling a bit, mmm.”
Ken never even looked up; he just nodded. “I understand that this is a bit of a shock and will be a busy few days for you. But the sooner you start, the sooner it’s finished.”
I sat down and started pulling data together. By eleven o’clock that night, we were done and walked out the door.
I packed a small bag with my things, got cleaned up, arranged for a wake-up call at 4 a.m. and had a taxi on standby for 4:20.
I woke up, shaved, and was dressed and downstairs in time for my taxi to the airport. I cleared through customs and everything else by 5 a.m. My flight had been arranged and I was going in the economy seats in the back. Mr. Smythe was going in first-class seats. It was going to be a very long flight.
I grabbed some breakfas
t and some EZ sleep travel pills and waited by the gate.
I was wondering if the boss was going to make it, as they were just starting to board us, when he walked out of a small lounge on the side with a drink in his hand, waved at me with a smile, handed his ticket to the steward and just walked on board the plane. I slowly boarded along with everyone else. I could see him after I boarded. He was sipping on a fresh drink and watching a show on his pad.
I moved back and took my seat. I was going to pop my pills and go straight to sleep, but decided to hold off. I hadn’t watched much on my pad for a long time. After we took off, I flipped through some shows and caught up on a few episodes of Billy Banger. I started watching the news and how the economy was growing. The growth was faster than expected and the experts were blaming or praising the development of the solar system and the development of the deep space program. Even with the distant colonization efforts on that new planet, the expectation of the ‘experts’ was that this growth level could not be sustained. They were calling for the economy to take a big downturn within the next two years.
All I could think was these ‘experts’ were playing on people’s fears.
If we kept trying to build up, then that was infrastructure development and was expensive and took a long time. That super carrier that was nicknamed the “Mama Pig,” as unflattering as it sounded, had taken thousands of colonists out to the new planet. If that could be built up, then humanity could explore that much more of deep space. Not to mention the benefits of a new colony world in a different star system.
I understood that it was ‘haunted’; any civilized race either destroyed itself or made the jump to star travel. The nuclear weapons that had been used on that planet had been used a long time ago. Segments would be off-limits for hundreds more years, but eventually we could begin terraforming. This was a bigger project than anyone realized.
But it didn’t matter now. My eyelids were getting heavy and I popped a pill to help put me under and I was out.
I woke up two hours out of our destination, and aside from cramps, I felt actually rested. I bought some food and drank some water and caught up on the files that Ken had helped me get ready. I found some of his notes and he had told me some common-sense stuff. I was there as fluff. To show that Mr. Smythe was important enough for assistants that basically did nothing.
I was going to control the slideshows during his presentation.
I drank some more water. We landed and I cleared off. By the time I was cleared through customs and had my bag, the boss was gone.
He was good enough to message me that he had taken a limo to the new hotel that had just opened and had himself a suite. He had let them know I was following whenever I bothered to get there and had a room reserved.
I thought corporate policy was to always use corporate resources, and there was a good corp hotel a bit further away, but we were going to a private hotel.
I took a taxi and walked into a palace.
The front desk let me know my room number, and I was able to find the boss’s room. After I got settled in, I looked up the floor plans. I basically had a shoebox while he had an eighth of a floor.
I spent three days at meetings sitting in the control booth on the side while the boss went to the front and introduced the recruiting and training programs.
During question and answer, I sat there cueing him the answers.
I never sat in on a meeting or met anyone other than other technicians and assistants.
It was all a blur to me and I spent a lot of hours in the booth watching. I was able to get copies of all the material being presented and had a good idea on numbers and expectations. Our office pushed the algorithms and search programs that the programs used for recruiting.
It was brought up that numbers seemed low given how many were going through for testing. The answer always seemed that we had to have the best quality recruits.
I hated to think it, but Mr. Smythe was wrong. We needed a lot more Marines to cover all the hotspots that seemed to be coming up.
I understood that some meetings needed to be held in person so that there was human interaction. But this series of meetings could have been held by sim just as effectively and at a fraction of the cost.
The last morning there, before we were to fly out, the boss went to a last meeting; it was outside of the core. I had to pack my things and move his bags to the first-class lounge at the airport.
The biggest surprise for me was when I hit the checkout and they presented me my bill. The boss was traveling on a corporate account. I didn’t have one. The bill was going to cost me two weeks’ income.
I didn’t scream or freak out. I got receipts and every confirmation possible and paid.
That scumbag had taken me here and set me up. Maybe he just didn’t know, or more likely, didn’t care about anyone else besides himself.
I knew what the other assistants had told me; this meeting was the standard. The ‘meeting’ was a round of golf. Management would get together and play while talking about realistic expectations.
I sat at the airport and drank some water. I had spent twelve-hour days at the conference centre and then more hours compiling reports for the boss. Short sleep and small serving sizes of food were killing me.
I hadn’t had the chance to work out properly for weeks now.
The flight was held up as the managers were late getting back, and the four that showed up ended up in first class, of course.
We took off and I scanned through a few episodes of some old-school science-fiction movies. They didn’t grab me, so I reviewed some business files and updates while listening to Rammstein again, and then when I felt myself slipping away, popped a pill.
I was out until we were almost back.
I woke up, ate something and drank some water, and then waited for landing.
Mr. Smythe was waiting for me on the other side of customs. He was good enough to be tapping his foot and looking upset that I took so long.
I walked up to him and before I could say anything he started. “Well, I could be home by now, but I was stuck waiting for you.” He smacked a package against my chest. “Here, swing by the office and drop this off. Let Ken know that I won’t be in tomorrow. Make sure all the files and reports that were requested have been compiled and ready for review. I will be in early on the following day and intend to send those off after I review them.”
I just had time to say, “Yes, sir,” before he had turned away and was walking out the front door and to a waiting limo.
It was 3 p.m.
I took a taxi to the office and was there before 4.
I saw Ken and he just stared at me. “Timothy, why are you here?”
I explained what I had to do and he just stared at me some more with a blank look. Then he stood up. “Let’s go for a smoke.”
So we went upstairs and he bought me an energy drink out of one of the vending machines.
He asked me for the whole story on the adventure. I have to say, I was pretty blunt and didn’t put that positive a spin on it.
Ken listened to all of it and then started asking questions.
“So you didn’t stay in the corporate hotel? Were you told this in advance? Were you told to get a corporate account set up? Do you have all your receipts? Are you sure Mr. Smythe told you to come to the office direct from the airport? He didn’t mean tomorrow morning a bit earlier?”
I answered everything and then started taking more hits on the energy drink.
Ken nodded and laid out a plan. “We are going downstairs. You will have all your receipts ready to go tomorrow morning, and we will drop off everything to the cashier. Fill out an itinerary on your time tonight. Include ALL the details so you get what you are entitled to. We are going to lay out the files for work tomorrow. Then you are going home. Eat and sleep. In that order. Move!”
We w
ent downstairs, and after an hour, I was done. Ken had continued working on whatever his tasks were. He reviewed my work quickly and let me know we were good to go.
I grabbed something to eat on the way home and collapsed in my room.
I barely made it in the next day on time, but I did it.
Ken sent me to the cashier with a warning on how long they took and that they were uptight.
I waited for thirty minutes until they reviewed my itinerary.
It was like being grilled by a secret police force. After twenty minutes of being grilled while being recorded, a chit was submitted and I was told to wait two weeks. I would be messaged when I could come down to collect the claim.
The only reason it was so fast was they checked with Ken. Otherwise I would likely be there for the whole day.
When I made it back to the office, I assembled all the files and passed them over to Ken to review. That took the entire day and I ended up reviewing a lot of raw data. The questions that had come up in China kept running around in the back of my mind. Most of the simulations showed that we should have more potential recruits from the gaming centres. We were getting some and they were high quality. But why were the overall numbers so low?
Mr. Smythe was always carefully analyzing the data and inputting changes into the algorithms. The more I thought about it, the stranger that sounded. Someone so senior shouldn’t need to spend as much time as he did on evaluating, unless he was obsessive-compulsive. From everything I had seen, he was not.
When it was complete, I sent the file to Mr. Smythe and then cleaned up to go home.
The next day I was early. Mr. Smythe walked in at 9:30. He looked over the files and then sent them off.
A reply came back later in the afternoon with the files attached. Ken sent that over to me for review.
The raw data was still the same, but it had been altered. I could see the algorithm that was used, and this was off from what we were using.
