An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov)

by Thomas Gondolfi

  “Good, and we can piggyback that with some profit-taking against our energy reserves in the country.”

  “Objections? No? It is carried. BirskTek, would you please implement this action immediately. Any new business?”

  “I’d like to propose a solution to the Green Action Militia’s recent depredations on each of our organizations,” Nanogate announced.

  “A solution?” spouted Percomm Systems, as he shifted to try to get more than sixty percent of his personal bulk into his chair. “Preposterous!”

  “The member from Percomm Systems is out of order again. Proceed with your proposal, Nanogate.”

  “As you all know, we’ve seen an alarming increase in the actions of the group known as the Green Action Militia.” Several of the executives nodded in agreement. “Each of our corporations has suffered the attentions of these terrorists. I’d like to propose a course of action to bring these losses to our gross profits and personnel back in line.”

  “How?” the pudgy man interrupted again. “We’ve all tried. They’re like wily feral animals. Oh, occasionally we get one or two, but never enough to even cut into their recruiting.”

  The chairman raised his walnut gavel to control the Percomm Systems’ executive officer, but Nanogate caught his eye and waved him off.

  “Too true. Our actions have not only been ineffective, but going even further, they’ve added to our own troubles.”

  “That sounds a bit farfetched,” commented the chairman, breaking his own rule.

  “May I have the indulgence of the panel for a few moments to prove this?” Nanogate, the newest addition of the group with only six months of tenure, didn’t have the clout of the others. His peers often outvoted his pet projects. A solidographic projection atop the table tabulated the results.

  “The member will proceed,” announced the chairman.

  “One of our conglomerates’ major products is arms. We sell to any group that can pay the price. As a result, we have good modeling systems for the interactions that take place below the purview of the system government. I’m speaking, of course, of the black market. We’ve applied that modeling to our current crisis. In short, the data I’m projecting over the table shows that our actions have only removed the less successful members of their movement. Worse, their failures—our successes—only bring them more sympathy and attract recruits to their cause.

  “The models project a range of outcomes that at best case show within sixty months, even with our chokehold on the media, fifty-eight percent of the public will be behind the GAM. This would lead inexorably to a requirement for major and costly concessions, cutting profits nearly eighty-three percent.”

  While no sound uttered from any member, eyeballs clicked in Nanogate’s direction. Attentions that had wandered to thoughts of sexual conquests, hobbies, and other business immediately refocused themselves directly upon him.

  “Remember, I’m talking best case here,” Nanogate added for emphasis. Two members actually turned in their seat to face the most junior member of their august company. “Worst case, our projections show their support growing exponentially. If not checked, this would result in the breakup of this committee and the destruction of business as we know it.”

  No one said a word for nearly a minute.

  “How is that possible?” Pudgy demanded, the first to break the shocked silence that permeated the room. He stood, a breach of unwritten etiquette, to emphasize his next question. “How do we know your simulations are accurate?”

  “I’ll be more than happy to have my experts talk to yours. Our databanks on this matter are open to all.” The significance of that gesture, in an age where knowledge equates to wealth and power, wasn’t lost on the other members. Not one of them would have the information checked.

  “So is there a solution?” asked CNI, one of four female members.

  “We need to eliminate the GAM as a significant force.”

  Even the chairman couldn’t let this inconsistency pass unchallenged. “But didn’t you say that attacking them would only make them stronger?”

  “No. I said our current methods were less than ineffective.”

  “Then what more than trained troops and police could possibly suffice? We all spend a small fortune keeping forces trained, informants paid, and an army of field operatives trying to sniff them out, not to mention bounties offered for key members.”

  “If I might digress for a moment to basics taught to us by the late zaibatsu of Japan: eighty percent of any problem can be solved with twenty percent of the resources needed to solve the entire problem. I’m suggesting only solving that which is cost-effective. I only ask the required effort from each of you as you have the ability.

  “This is the eighty percent solution I offer.” A small stack of bound wood-pulp papers slid around the table, with each representative pulling off the top copy. Nanogate waited as they each scanned the four widely spaced pages. When each of them looked up, he continued.

  “I call for a vote.”

  “Before the vote,” remarked the chairman, quickly scanning the pages before him, “I’d like to point out that there’ll be an initial increase in losses on the order of twenty-three percent over the first quarter.”

  “What’s the schedule for reduction?”

  “My team’s simulations show that by the end of the second quarter, our losses will be down by forty-five percent and eighty-two percent by the end of the third quarter.

  “As a whole, the GAM is probably a necessary evil. They provide an outlet to the populace that will, at the end of our campaign, be relatively harmless.”

  “Please place your vote.” The computer tallied ten “Aye” votes.

  “The next item on the agenda is planning the reduction of the food supply next year…”

  * * *

  Smoke wandered liberally but leisurely up from a tiny clay pot in the center of the almost barren room, filling the top of the chamber like a ghostly inverted bathtub, even to the dirty rings of previous gritty fills. In a perfect lotus position, a young Latina blended into the serenity room near the smudge, only the barely audible sounds of an ocean surf interrupting the silent tranquility. Even the most open-minded physician would be concerned about the slowness of her breathing and heart rate, if anyone so lofty would deign to enter her world.

  The twenty-something chica’s long, crude-oil-colored hair hung down over her right shoulder in direct contrast to the bare skin on the left side of her head. Buttoned only in one place, her white lab coat, bearing numerous random stains, fell loosely over her legs, partially hiding the glyphs tattooed directly into her caramel-colored skin.

  From the outside of the room’s only door came the tiniest of scratches. Her breathing increased and her body languidly unwound from itself as she stood, showing even more of the ebon symbols against her evenly tanned skin. Her knees locked, and with legs clamped together she bent in half at the waist, placing her palms flat on the floor. Without moving from this position, her long aristocratic fingers lifted a lid and placed it over the smoldering pot. A quick exhalation doused the tiny flame beneath.

  Unrolling back to her full height, her gaunt form rose over 180 centimeters. Only the barest crest in the upper part of her smock gave any indication of sex. The black runes covered every visible centimeter of her skin below her neckline. She walked with a gliding grace toward a small mechanism in the far corner. A spring-wound conveyor lifted a trail of sand, pouring it over a series of wooden and metal plates. Turning off the motion, she silenced the ocean's simple cadence. Opening the door, she repatriated the sounds of Portland's bustling city into her sanctuary.

  "Good morning, Plutonia," Sonya said in a soft soprano to the tiniest wisp of gray fur that wound around her ankles. A large orange and white tomcat joined Plutonia in praising their human companion. The mewing chorus of seventeen other felines, plus the shrill barks of one small Pomeranian, joined the admiration. Live pets, banned everywhere on Earth for the last fifty years,
were her only roommates.

  Sonya started a pot of boiling water over a simple gas grill, yet another of her illegal activities. As she waited, she spread five kilos of homemade pet food into a wooden trough on the floor. Plucking three broad leaves from a mint plant in a window box, she laid them into the top of a tall wooden drying box and took a similar number of dried leaves from a slit in the bottom. Between her palms she ground the brittle leaves to a near powder into a tiny metal bulb. The old-fashioned teapot worked hard to develop its shrill, piercing cry after starting from a low, lonely note.

  As Sonya dipped the tea bulb into a petite porcelain cup, Plutonia jumped up to the beaten and scratched white polymer tabletop. The cat stepped over and around bags of nitrogen compounds and detonators, and a stack of incomplete pipe bombs to sit unconcerned amongst the potential destruction and clean her fur.

  Sonya pushed aside a plastic bag of gunpowder, set down her teacup, and eased herself into a patio chair whose green color clashed with just about everything nearby. Sonya took a moment to stroke her tiny friend and croon encouragingly at her in a low, raspy voice. She knew a customer waited in her living room. She sensed him arrive during her meditations, but her morning tea took precedence. Her customers often suffered much longer waits than this man would endure, especially as his tabby only had a minor chest cold.

  She sipped her hot tea with both hands firmly around her cup. It brought back fond recollections of her mother. Sonya could see her sitting in the kitchen brewing some potion or another—this one for wart remover, that one as an AIDS cure, the other one as a love potion. Her mother, an aging woman even in Sonya’s earliest memories, lived in a one-bedroom slum apartment. The reek of cooked cabbage and raw salmon pervaded all of Sonya’s recollections. They were the smells of home, however revolting to most. She could remember helping her mother simmer sauerkraut for use as a poultice against baldness. The day before the Metros murdered her, she said to her daughter, "Girl, you are equal parts empathy, knowledge, and magic. You’ll be a formidable witch one day."

  * * *

  The dreary little man swayed back and forth from one foot to another in front of the big obsidian desk. He held his hands together so tightly that his skin broke into a pattern of blanched white and angry red.

  “So we discovered the books didn’t balance if we did them on independent machines. They did balance when we did it on the network,” he said, trying hard not to back away.

  Nanogate sneered. A small bit of his mind enjoyed his subordinate’s discomfort. The staff psychologist designed his office for the purpose of intimidation. The slanted floor and huge desk made people feel small. The slate-gray walls chilled the entire room with an untouchable distance. Even the faux waterfall in the corner added an icy mist reaching far across the visitor’s area.

  “How much?”

  “Fourteen point six million over the last two years.” The little man couldn’t help it this time, and backed up almost ten centimeters as he reported.

  “These books include our combined conglomerate dealings?”

  “Yes, sir.” The accountant’s shoulders slumped. Nanogate could read his vassal’s eyes. His employee felt two pieces of bad news might finish him. “Without it you get an incomplete picture.”

  “Who could be responsible?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but for that breadth and the areas it doesn’t touch it can only be Kensington, VP of accounting.”

  “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, uh…”

  “Rupert Wingley. Accounting grade four.”

  Nanogate didn’t feel like shooting the messenger today—but only today. “You are promoted to grade six, Rupert. I thank you for your diligence.”

  “Thank you. Thank you, sir!”

  Nanogate nodded and waved his hand in dismissal. The accountant beat speed records out the massive granite doors in spite of his great fortune. Nanogate pushed a hidden button under the surface of his black stone desk.

  The rush of the waterfall provided the only sound as a slight man glided in. He stood barely 140 centimeters tall, with Nordic features of blonde hair and blue, sleepy eyes. His muscles always drew attention. They didn’t bulge on his body, but protruded unexpectedly, because places where fat should pad the flesh to fill the hollows, it didn’t. He looked like an old-fashioned medical dummy with only bones, muscles and a coating of skin.

  He wore a pair of body tights so formfitting they looked more like toe-socks poured from yellow vinyl up to the waist, with nothing covering his hairless chest. Everything about the man screamed KILLER, even without a visible weapon or body modification.

  “Mr. Marks, I have a job for you,” Nanogate said from behind the darkness of his desk.

  “Of course, sir,” his visitor offered in a quiet, calm voice.

  * * *

  From a distance, Tony’s condominium looked indistinguishable from the seven thousand other upper-middle-class dwellings in his building. Against the condo’s covenants, a small metal plaque, “Valhalla,” forced his door to stand out amongst the multitudes that appeared otherwise identical, save the oversized silver numbers on each.

  Tony entered and tossed the large box onto his dining room table. “I really feel great about saving that old crone,” he remarked to himself, “but what if she sues me? What if I lose everything? I’d hate to have to move.”

  He needed something to soothe his mind and murmered, “Music— mellow classic rock.” Strains of “Hotel California” by the Eagles filled his tastefully decorated home. Tony flopped down on one of his imitation black vinyl sofas and kicked at what appeared to be a white bearskin rug.

  “Percomm Carmine at work.” The solido of a flowing brook filled the middle of the room, until a few moments later the face of a beautiful Pacific Islander replaced it. Her dark skin contrasted the white brilliance of her long hair and white lace bodice. “Nice lightning bolts,” Tony playfully commented about the pattern of blue over each of her just barely hidden areolas.

  “Hi, baby! What are you doing at home? Playing sick? I can’t come and play nurse today.” Her tone implied that her nursing would have very little to do with the medical profession.

  “I wish. No, I had some trouble on the TriMet. I helped an old woman survive a coronary.”

  Her smiling face transformed into a frown that showed a harsher side of her beauty. “Why did you do that? She might sleaze you and I don’t scope having a bluecoat bibling me to rodent your mental state. If they spent the dime and didn’t just Nil you.” Anger brought out the gutter in her speech. Carmine, despite her limited intelligence, had pulled herself up from the streets from a Nil—a person outside of the databases who could be killed by anyone just for fun—to a respectable member of society.

  Tony smiled to put her off guard. “You mean you wouldn’t lie for me, Mink? Nah, don’t worry. You know I can always land on my feet.”

  “Don’t you ‘Mink’ me! I’m only your mink when you behave! Her family might send a Private Enforcer. I’m not mixed up enough to think that’s behaving. I don’t want a corpse for a sweetie. Hell, they may even box you.”

  “Enough. I got the point. Shall we meet for lunch?”

  “Nope. Betty’s taking me to Powell’s bookstore for a romp in the stacks.”

  He smiled. She often joked about her liaisons. She probably only planned a shopping trip of some kind, or a visit to the manicurist for new nail implants. “Don’t wear her out too much. She’s due to come back here tonight.”

  “Tease!” she said, sticking her tongue out at him, flashing the blue lightning bolt tattooed there as well. “Wilted Rose?”

  “Tomorrow night, half-dozen. I have a late appointment tonight. Later, Mink.”

  “I’ll ‘Mink’ you,” she said in mock anger as she switched off the percomm.

  * * *

  The rich, musty smell of autumn harvest filled the Rose Garden Arena as Sonya, wearing only her tattoos and a loose brown chemise that went down to mid-thigh, wandered arou
nd through the milling swarms of people. Despite how people packed themselves in between unlicensed hucksters and questionable food stalls, a zone of emptiness 2 meters across flowed with her. Random decisions and free action always seemed to keep that zone open with Sonya in the center. No one noticed the gap.

  She breathed deeply to draw in the spicy draft of roasting chilies, bruised thyme, garbled lavender, and simmering mystery stew heavy with the stink of cabbage. She stopped at a stall with dried herbs in plastic containers and an Hispanic proprietress. The pots encircled her four layers deep. “Te de diosa,” Sonya said.

  While pivoting around, the woman grabbed leaves and pieces of bark out of seemingly random bins and stuffed them into a loose plastic bag. With her bare hands she gently stirred the dry concoction before sealing it with a plastic tie. Sonya handed her a credit slip in exchange, dropped her goddess tea fixings into her woven marketing bag, and moved on.

  Two Metros, decked out in full assault gear—the only way a policeman would be seen at street level—strolled by with their own radius of emptiness around them. The members of the throng would take one look and decide to visit a stall in the opposite direction. The two toughs walked right by Sonya without a second glance, even as she passed through their own safety zone. The pair ambled up to a small food vendor, whose face went ashen.

  “Pagueme el seguro,” one of the cops ordered in a no-nonsense tone.

  “I don’t speak Spanish.”

  “You spoke it well enough last week, bitch. Insurance now or we’ll remove this unlicensed stall from the premises.”

  Sonya stood behind and watched, nibbling on some dried tomatoes from an earlier purchase.

  “I only have half,” the proprietress complained, quickly handing them a handful of small plastic bills. “Business has been off.”

  The taller of the two tongued his mic. “Dispatch, I have a forty-three sixteen, illegal merchant without a permit. Our twenty is Rose Garden Arena, grid fourteen. We are removing it now.”