by D. P. Oberon
Albert Rene’s voice came back. “Sara, we can’t let his keep occurring. Your last slip cost the company an opportunity that allowed ParaFlyte Aviatronics to get into an adjacent market.” Albert stood and held up his hands. “Our board is disheartened with this. We’re dealing with the Greatest Scientist and her Global Governing Body. It’s not just your neck on the line. Get it sorted.”
Then Albert Rene waddled out of her office.
Saradi stuck her middle finger out, and when the door closed she grabbed the tray filled with the empty cocktail glasses and flung it at the door. “ParaFlyte Aviatronics was a mistake I made ten years ago, ordure!”
#
Saradi looked out over the dark Paris skyline and seethed.
“AI, ultra-priority call to Alyona Pavlenko,” Saradi said, turning to stand in the middle of the room. The image of the seed-ship vanished as the word ‘calling’ twisted in the air. The call connected immediately.
Alyona stared uncomprehendingly at Saradi for a moment. Her face looked like somebody had taken it and run it through mud. Her eyes sunken pits, and her normally intricately plaited hair splayed over, revealing a mass of gray. Her unbuttoned white business shirt revealed the pale skin of her upper breasts. Her cheeks and jaw hollow, the skin sagging and stretching as if made out of candle wax.
Yet none of this registered on Saradi. What she saw before her was a nail. And she was a carrying a great big hammer.
The illusion of their two offices merging into a single room was complete as the call connected. Even the sounds and smells of Alyona’s office permeated Saradi’s. The Russian woman’s office smelled of frozen meat. As a vegan, Saradi found it disgusting.
“We have a lot in common,” Saradi said. “We’re both powerful women at the top of our game. We’re both mothers. We’ve both sacrificed our personal lives to get where we are.” Saradi took a deep breath. “Suka, why did you send me impure iordite?” She transferred the data that showed the manufacturing defect rate of the processed iordite at 99.99%.
Alyona flinched at the insult. She stared at the figure and shook her head. “Sara, I did not do this. That’s not possible.”
Top executives acquired professional acting training to deal with the press. Alyona wasn’t fooling her. “How many tons of iordite do your mines really have?”
“I wasn’t lying. That was what we could extract with the tractor-mechs at our disposal.”
“How much?” Saradi said. She needed to have some assurance, no matter how remote. Their forensics hadn’t been a help to her. The confrontation with Albert Rene left a sour taste in her mouth. It might affect her ranking and rating for the CEO role. She couldn’t afford to screw up the next move.
Alyona’s voice sounded like it came from a dying corpse. “If you squeeze … it’s never been done before and might destroy the entire mine. Maybe a million.” Her voice barely whispered the last word.
The answer was like getting kissed by Cupid himself. It was the only bit of relief Saradi felt since her confrontation with Albert.
“Sara, I promise I did not do anything. Albert did tell me earlier and I immediately sent auditors to our QC department.”
A knock sounded on the door and Saradi turned only to realize the knock came from Alyona’s end. A young woman entered and whispered furiously into Alyona’s ear. The woman eyed Saradi before leaving.
“My assistant just told me that we’ve found the people responsible and have dealt with them,” Alyona said.
“Who’s that? She looks like you.”
“Yulia, my daughter. Alrosa Mirny is a family business. My great great grandfather started it and I will eventually hand it down to my daughter.”
“No, you won’t,” Saradi said, shaking her head. “I’m raising the loan percentage to eighty percent. Alrosa Mirny will declare bankruptcy and I’ll initiate a hostile takeover. No other bidders because we’ve already bought you, considering you accepted the one trillion loan.”
Alyona’s head shook from side to side. Her mouth whispered, please. Her hair almost luminous.
Saradi brought up the finance spreadsheets. They glowed a dim green in the dark. The original loan percentage read twenty percent and she dialed it up to eighty.
“This is what happens,” Saradi said. “When you decide to screw with me. Alrosa Mirny is going to become my pet cow that I milk until its teats are bloody and its carcass bone dry.”
“Sara, don’t do this. Please!” Alyona staggered across her office and slumped on the ironridge desk that looked like it had come out of her mine. A pale sun eked through the rectangular windows behind Alyona showing the Yakutsk winter.
“You will destroy our family’s heritage. I built Alrosa Mirny to what it is today. I want to pass it Yulia, surely you can understand that?”
Saradi jerked as if cold water had been splashed on her face.
“No, I expect my daughter to build her own life. There are not going to be any handouts. I despise parents that do,” Saradi said.
Alyona reached for something in the drawer and pocketed it in her voluminous fox coat. She stood. If Saradi put out her hand she could almost touch Alyona’s face in the hologram.
“There are forces at play here beyond either of us, Sara.” Alyona trembled with fear. Her cold breath puffed in the air. Her hand reached for her coat pocket half withdrawing something that held a flat black sheen.
“You should kill yourself for being so incompetent, Alyona. If I ran Alrosa Mirny it wouldn’t be in obscurity. You’ve run your company into the snow.” Saradi sniffed disdainfully.
Alyona’s hand withdrew a small handgun that she stared at as if mesmerized. It looked like everything else in her office: rough and jagged, from an older time.
“Get on your knees and blow your brains open, Alyona. That’s what your incompetence deserves.” The lava of anger roiled in Saradi and overflowed. This idiot had caused her entire bonus to be forfeited. Saradi had to go back to Claas with her tail between her legs because of this woman.
Alyona’s eyes opened wide but they were vacant. She followed Saradi’s instructions as if mesmerized. She went to her knees. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Saradi. They’ll come here now and you won’t stand a chance at getting a single rock.”
“Put the gun to your head, you useless pizda!” Saradi leaned over so that she hung over Alyona’s face like a descending vibro-blade. “Do it, pull the trigger. Kill your useless self.”
Click. Bang. A spaghetti of brain matter fountained into the air. The hologram projection of brain parts flew through Saradi, making her flinch.
Alyona Pavlenko slumped to the ground in her office. Her silvery hair matted with chunks of glistening red.
Saradi breathed out slowly. She closed her eyes and terminated the call. She accessed the last two minutes of the call in the IT archives and deleted it. Nobody needed to see those last two minutes.
Saradi put an ultra-priority call to her attorney, Prethi De’Silva, and told her she might need her services in the near future.
Lastly she made a phone call her legal department to initiate the work for the hostile takeover.
Saradi slumped back in her chair and breathed out in relief. Now she could stand a chance at getting the iordite. She would need to figure out just what percentage of a chance. She was in a better position now, with direct control over the mine.
She would go to visit it the very next day.
Chapter 7 – Marital Woes
The nightmare plagued Saradi over and over again. The sound of the gunshot and splatter of brains. In the nightmare, the brain parts turned into squelching maggots that corkscrewed through her eyes, blinding her, and then eating into her brain, killing her. She always woke when she died. The third time she woke she fumbled for the cognac bottle by her bedside table but the sliver of remaining golden liquid didn’t even wet her lips.
Saradi took a hot shower and let the silvery steam permeate her entire body. The heat scalded her brown-bronze skin,
and she flushed as she rubbed at her forearms.
Later, she lay in the Jacuzzi with the sweet lavender scent of the soapy water bubbling around her. She called Aunis Reeves, right there, and told him she wouldn’t be coming to work. He didn’t even ask what sickness to record it as.
It was the second time in Saradi’s career that she had called in sick.
Saradi went downstairs and stared despondently at the empty table. She wished Novalie was here so she could have breakfast with her. She ate oats with soy milk, and in the last final mouthfuls just kept excavating and dumping the oats with her spoon. Unfinished, she pushed the bowl away and left it for the serv-bot to clean. She went to the garden.
Claas tended the garden. The veins on his hands bulged as he used the large shears. Saradi paused a moment to take in the view. In the distance, over the bulging ferns, several palatial homes floated in the air with their great big gardens. On the horizon the huge filter fans and shielding that kept High Melbourne free from air-tinge floated. They looked like white stars in broad daylight.
“Honey, do you feel like going to the gym today?” Saradi asked.
Claas turned with his eyebrows raised and gently lowered the shears. “You’re not going to work?”
She shook her head, avoiding his eyes by staring at the S-shaped pool behind him.
“Let’s do it,” Claas said, giving his wife a hug and kiss.
A deep guilt filled Saradi as she clung to him and lay her head against his shoulder.
The University of High Melbourne gym smelled of ironridge barbells and dumbbells intermingled with workout sweat. The equipment appeared chipped and battered. A single serv-bot hovered at the reception and its head glowed green as it authenticated their gene-IDs and let them through.
Saradi laughed as they got on the jump-pad and ascended to the second level, which was slightly quieter than the lower level. This floor held a mixture of weight and cardiovascular machines, whereas the ground floor only offered weights.
“What so funny?” Claas asked, his long eyelashes clumped together by sweat as he pulled on the lateral bar. For some reason he kept his collar up as if he didn’t want the cold to get into his neck. He finished his rep and then inserted the pin into the lower plate, putting more weight on for his next rep. At six foot six he gave the impression of being light and willowy with that triathlete build but he was whipcord strong.
“Remembering the memories of this place,” Saradi said.
Claas took a breather as he prepared for his next rep. A line of rowing machines sat to their left. A young man in a tight top puffed his cheeks out as he rowed. A young lady opposite them did lunges in tight pants. “Enough eye candy for both of us,” Saradi murmured.
“That’s exactly how I met you,” he said, nodding at the rowing machines. “You were on the rowing machine with the level ramped to max. And I told you to lower the level because you might hurt your back,” he said.
She laughed. “And I asked if you had a problem with a girl being as strong as a boy.”
“Yeah, and then the next time I saw you on the rowing machine you’d ramped it down a few levels. I rowed next to you.”
“And the rest is history,” Saradi finished. “You see, they should have singles nights at gyms.”
“I remember that week we trained together. You didn’t ask me anything about me or where I was from or what degree I was pursuing. We just talked about training.” Claas shook his head. “Those were the good times.”
“Simpler times,” Saradi corrected. When she didn’t have an executive job or a child. When they were nineteen and the world hadn’t taken on the jaded tones of a thirty-five year old woman.
“Your turn,” he said, stepping away from the lateral pull down machine.
Saradi took the pin and shoved it down to the last weight. Claas snorted and shook his head. Saradi grabbed the edges of the handles and pulled. She shifted the entire stack of weights with ease and only broke a sweat in her third set.
“That’s cheating,” he said. “You weren’t upgraded when I met you.”
“I think I was more determined to beat you back then. I knew you were an athlete because you always wore your university triathlete club jersey. Made me want to train harder,” she said, as they moved on to the bench press.
Claas put fifty kilograms to either side of the bench and slid under the bar. He stared up at her. “I think I fell in love with you that week. You told me all your goals, and by what date you were going to achieve them. You had everything mapped out. I’d met a lot of girls before then, but you were just like a damn sun pulling everything into its orbit.”
He put his hands on the barbell and pressed out ten clean bench presses.
“More like you wanted to get into my nice tight pre-birth vagina,” she said, giving him a look as they swapped places.
“You’re a level ten upgrade, honey, it’s still nice and tight,” he said, looking down at her.
Saradi poked her tongue at him and finished her set. She felt alive and well after the exercise. It had been too long. Her upgrades didn’t require her to exercise, but she always felt better when she did.
An hour later after they showered and met each other in the lobby, Claas stared at her.
“What?” she said, feeling self-conscious.
“You look like Cleopatra’s female guard,” he said.
She took his hand and kissed it. “And you my dear husband, look like—”
“A blond version of Erik the Red?” he suggested.
They laughed.
“More like a nice, sweaty, yummy triathlete,” she said.
“Speaking of yummy, shall we grab a bite?” he asked.
“Deal,” she said.
#
The walked out through the courtyard in front of the gym. Saradi’s unruly short hair mopped itself over her forehead.
Outside, down the stairs, their aero-car lay umbilicaled to the dock, hovering silently. Up went the trunk, in went their bags, and they were off again, heading through the university grounds toward their favorite old haunt, Vegan Degan.
“You know, my parents greatest dream was for me to get into this university,” she said, gesturing around at the beautiful old buildings, fully restored to pristine condition, and the lush islands of green grass ringing the walkways.
“Oh yeah, I remember that,” Claas said. “You deferred your degree. I’ll never forget that. It was the first time you took me back to meet your parents.”
She laughed, putting her hand around his. “Hey, I needed some backup.”
“Didn’t stop them from going crazy. And then I really wanted to leave but you wouldn’t let me,” he said.
“When you’re nineteen and Horizon Biorobotics offers you a full time, job you don’t even think about it.”
“Yeah I was a bit surprised at how your parents reacted. I didn’t know people loved university degrees that much. My parents were quite laid back about education,” he said.
“Asian parents,” she said. Thinking about those years past. It seemed like another life. “I ended up quitting the degree entirely. That’s probably what killed them the most, not attending graduation.”
Claas shrugged. “You came to my medical graduation. And now look who’s earning the most money.”
“That’s what I told my parents. Compensation in a capitalistic economy has got nothing to do with a piece of paper. Sure, the right stamp doesn’t hurt. But you need to be ambitious. To do things. I mean how many smart kids went to university with us and where are they now? Most have average jobs and average lives.”
“I think Nova would be happy just to be a painter,” Claas said.
They were well out of the university district now. Ahead of them the aero-trams floated past carrying a cartload of students who’d finished university for the day. The green bushes lined the sides of the ancient brick laid floor. This is what Saradi liked about the university. In Autobus-Mannschaft everything was so new and pristine that it smell
ed fake.
“Yes, well. That one doesn’t have much ambition; that’s for sure,” Saradi said.
Claas looked at her and patted her hand. “As long as Nova’s happy. That’s the main thing.”
She would’ve snorted at that but they’d reached Vegan Degan.
The restaurant looked like two huge slabs of tofu merged together with a slathering of lettuce. A large archway beckoned them in. Inside it was fairly busy.
They ordered scrambled tofu with onions and chipotle on the side. Saradi ordered a soy latte extra hot and Claas ordered a macchiato.
Saradi closed her eyes and enjoyed the spicy soft-yet-rubbery texture of the scrambled tofu in her mouth when she felt her husband looking at her.
“Sara, I’ve been meaning to talk with you about the other night. When I got sick. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to mix the pills like that.”
The food turned to dust in Saradi’s mouth. She swallowed, took a sip of brackish coffee, and made a face.
“Nova sees how tired the meds make you. She needs you as an active person in your life. I think you should stop the meds,” Saradi said.
“I can stop the meds,” he said. He paused for a moment and an unusual stillness descended on him. His fingers splayed against his forehead. “Sara, I’ve thought of hurting myself.”
Saradi grabbed his hand and held it tight. She stood, her shadow falling over him. “Listen to me,” she hissed. “We have a daughter.”
He looked up at her with watery eyes, the edges of his eyes and lips trembled. He nodded at her, sinking his face down again.
“It would be better if I had the implant,” he said. “It can regulate mood.”
When did he become such a soft individual? He’d been a triathlete in his prime when they’d met. This cracked porcelain shell of a man didn’t resemble that man at all.
“Your implant will be here sooner than you think. My bonus is coming,” she lied. She’d lost her bonus because of that Pavlenko bitch. She patted his skeletal hands.
“Okay.” He sighed. “You’re right. I’ll skip the meds. I need to be there for my daughter.” And then it was his turn to grab at her hand as she sat back down on the chair.
