“You’ll recognize that last fellow because he never gives up. A decision will be made, and at the next meeting he’ll propose that decision be reconsidered because he still doesn’t agree with it and has six new reasons why.
“These people are poison to an organization. You’ve hired some of them. You can’t hire several thousand people without getting dozens or even hundreds of people like that by mistake. When you find one, fire him. Right now. Sure, you might be wrong, but getting them out is more important than making sure. The loss of one good person won’t make up for keeping one of these poisonous vipers around.
“So it’s the quality of your firings that will determine your success, not the quality of your hirings. I know that’s a new perspective for most of you, because the bureaucracy made it nearly impossible to fire anyone, but those days are gone.
“The other thing you should do is share your warnings with each other. I’ve asked Mr. Diener here to set up a database any of you can add to. When someone warns you off a certain hire – tells you, ‘Don’t hire that guy, he’s poison.’ – share that with each other. When you need to fire someone, put him in there, too. We can’t drag these lead weights around with us.
“It won’t be long now until we switch over to the new administration. When we do, you’ll want the best organization you can have. Make sure it is by getting rid of the right people. Don’t be shy about it, or apologetic. Just do it.
“That’s all I had for you today. This video is being preserved for you by the Co-Consul. Encourage your top-level people to watch it as well.
“Let’s set a standard for how well we fire as well as how well we hire. It will serve us best in the long run.
“Thank you, everyone.”
The Emperor dropped from the channel.
The Switchover
Ardmore woke from pleasant dreams to find Burke snuggled up against him, her head resting on his bicep and her long, slender arms and legs twined around him like a vine on a tree trunk.
“You’re getting really solid, Jimmy. I like this. A lot, actually,” Burke said, kneading his other bicep with her free arm.
“I’ve actually gained some weight.”
“Of course, but it’s all muscle, and meanwhile your flab is disappearing.”
“I’m still built like a tree stump, Gail,” Ardmore said.
“And you always will be, Jimmy. That’s OK. You’re strong. Powerful, even.”
“I have a lot more energy now. The docs say that’s the nanites.”
“I like the energy part, too,” she said with a wicked grin.
She kissed him, then patted him on the chest, her long brown fingers contrasting with the whiteness of his skin.
“I’m getting up. See you at breakfast.”
She walked out into the living room naked and through into her own apartment. What they had thought were decorative niches in both of their living rooms was actually a communicating door between the living rooms of the first and second family apartments, which were mirror images of each other. It hadn’t been used in so long, they’d had to have Housekeeping come in and refurbish it, lubricating the motors and slides and replacing the seals that kept it from communicating noise.
It was terribly convenient. They could cross back and forth between the apartments without going out in the hallway, and they could still close it for privacy from each other any time they wanted. Mostly in the last few months, it had been left open.
Ardmore watched her walk out of the room with a sigh. She was so beautiful, he never got tired of looking at her.
Ardmore got up and began his morning ablutions. He had seriously stepped up his personal hygiene habits, and kicked it up another notch when he asked Burke where he could still improve. He knew he had a good thing going, and he didn’t want to mess it up over something minor.
The idea of living with her, ruling with her, and not being loved by her, was terrifying.
Ardmore got to breakfast first, though Drake was not far behind. Burke, in MDU, came in maybe ten minutes later.
“Good morning, Gail.”
“Good morning, Jonah.”
Burke sat down and gave her breakfast order to the cook.
“So what’s new?” she asked.
“I was considering when to switch the administration over and fire all the bureaucrats,” Drake said.
“So soon?” Burke asked.
“Well, the first time this transition occurred, there was no overlap at all,” Ardmore said. “The Emperor Trajan killed all the bureaucrats, and only then did they think of what to replace them with.”
“Yes. I was rereading that section of your book last night, and I was struck by that,” Drake said. “And I think the bureaucracy is increasingly in the way of our efforts.”
“Really?” Burke asked.
“Oh, yes,” Drake said. “They are causing no end of grief over not being able to hire replacements, and at the same time they’re taking up valuable office space we desperately need.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you can do it any time, Jonah,” Ardmore said.
Burke nodded.
“I think I’m good with that as well,” she said.
“Good. I’ll talk to Mr. Diener this morning.”
Drake looked back and forth between the two of them. They looked back, curious.
“You know, I haven’t said anything, but I’m really happy for the two of you,” Drake said.
“We’re happy, too, Jonah,” Burke said, and took Ardmore’s hand on the table.
“You set us up, Jonah,” Ardmore said. “You knew what would happen.”
“Well, I didn’t know, but I hoped. By letting you know you would be co-rulers, I made it the default condition. You would have to reject each other first, before looking elsewhere for love. And you’re both very nice people. So I hoped. I think it will make things much easier for both of you. But I didn’t really have a choice. I need both of you on the Throne. It worked out splendidly from my point of view. So far at least.”
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere, Jonah,” Ardmore said. “I’ll have her as long as she’ll take me.”
“And Jimmy’s a keeper in my book, Jonah. My big, strong man.”
“Good. I’m very happy for you. That’s some consolation for my meeting with Mr. Diener this morning in which I’ll make a whole lot of people mad at me.”
Drake got up.
“Well, it’s off to work for me. I’ll see you two later.”
“That’s my cue, too,” Burke said. “See you later, Jimmy.”
Burke escorted Drake down to the upper Imperial office floor, four floors below, and to his office. One Guardsman was already there, in the left corner as they walked in, and Burke took the right corner. Drake sat down at his desk.
Mr. Moody came in from his office through the adjoining door.
“Good morning, Your Majesty.”
“Good morning, Mr. Moody. Mr. Diener is on his way. Show him in when he arrives.”
“Of course, Sire.”
It was only a few minutes before Moody was back.
“Mr. Diener, Sire.”
“Be seated, Mr. Diener.”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Tomorrow is the day, Mr. Diener. We’ve carried them along long enough. I know General Hargreaves has been keeping the updated lists. So at midnight tonight or something like that, change all the permissions to the Palace Complex and the office floors. Imperial Guard on the inner doors at the entrances. Only one person through at a time. All that policy stuff you’ve worked out. Do it tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Sire.”
“They’ve been giving you trouble, Mr. Diener?”
“Yes, Sire. The usual complaints about hiring and being overworked and the like.”
“Well, we’ll fix that all tomorrow. Then they won’t be able to complain about being overworked.”
“Yes, Sire. And the other things? One month’s pay, vested pensions, guest apartments for one month, all t
hat?”
“Yes, Mr. Diener. I haven’t rethought any of the things we’d planned.”
“Very well, Sire.”
“Will there be any problem carrying this out, Mr. Diener?”
“No, Sire. I think we’re all set.”
“Very good, Mr. Diener. I’ll let you go and work on it, then. That will be all.”
“Yes, Sire.”
That afternoon, Burke was relaxing in MCU in Ardmore’s living room. He had continued to study all the personal files of the Empresses and Emperors from Ilithyia I through Augustus I. There was a lot of material, and he had been at it for months now.
“So tomorrow’s the day, Jimmy. Anyone who’s on the layoff list won’t have access to the Palace unless they live here, and anyone who does live here is restricted to the Residence Wings in all three buildings. Their Palace computer accounts will also be locked. Housekeeping will pack up their personal items from their offices and ship it to them.”
“That still makes me nervous, Gail, having all those people in the Residence Wings. They’ll be angry or sad or whatever, and they’re still inside the building.”
“He can’t throw them out on the street, Jimmy.”
“Why not? It’s not like they haven’t been getting nicely paid all these years. It’s a security issue, Gail.”
“I suppose. We’ll just have to be on our guard.”
“So to speak.”
A tree flew by the window.
“Jimmy!”
“What?”
He turned around to look, but there was nothing.
“A tree just flew by the window.”
“Are you OK, Gail?”
Another tree flew by the window. Ardmore had turned back around to look again just in time to see it.
“What the hell?” he said.
They both got up and went to the balcony, Ardmore clicking to open it in VR. They walked out and looked around, but didn’t see anything. Then a heavy-lift cargo shuttle came over the top of the Palace and settled down toward Palace Mall three hundred feet below.
On Palace Mall there was a veritable forest of trees, all balled and ready to plant. The shuttle hooked another one and rose up again, heading for the roof as the other heavy-lift cargo shuttle came over the edge of the roof above them and settled down toward Palace Mall.
“Jimmy! They’re planting the gardens!”
“Those are some pretty big trees for new planting, Gail. I guess they don’t want the Emperor to have to wait to see them grown out.”
“Oh, I want to go look.”
“We don’t want to be in the way, Gail.”
“We can stand in the escalator cupola, Jimmy. If that’s not in the way, we can’t be either.”
“I suppose....”
“Come on!”
They went out into the hallway to the escalator and up onto the roof. The area just around the cupola was clear, and so they stood there and watched them setting the trees in one of the copses on the roof. They were working from a plan and setting them on specific spots in an area below the final grade so they could fill it in up to grade when they were all placed.
In other areas, bushes were coming up in the elevator, and skid-steer forklifts were setting them in rows and clumps. The paths were mostly in, so the skid-steers and workmen had a way to get around.
“Jimmy, look at the pool.”
The epoxycrete pool had water in it, even though it wasn’t backfilled on the sides.
“That’s a test fill, so we can check for leaks before we backfill around it,” Stefan Gretzky said, walking up behind them.
“This is magical, Mr. Gretzky. What fun,” Gail said.
“Yeah, after all those years tending that damn checkerboard, I’m having the time of my life right now.”
Gail laughed.
“I can imagine. Anyway, we don’t want to be in the way. I just saw a tree fly by our window downstairs and had to see what was going on.”
“Yeah, for the trees on the front half of the gardens, it’s safer to come in over the front wall than to come up the back and all the way over the gardens, what with all the workmen about. So some of it’s coming up the front. This part over here we brought up the back wall.”
He pointed off in the other direction where a bunch of trees had been planted and little skid-steer bulldozers were pushing mounds of topsoil over and between them. Workmen with shovels were working in the tight spaces.
“How are trees this size going to do as new plantings?” Ardmore asked.
“Well, the whole garden is irrigated and drained. That’s the key: irrigation and drainage. So they’ll be OK. And they aren’t really big as trees go. Nothing over twenty feet. You don’t want anything really big up here. They catch the wind. A big tree comes down and it makes a hell of a mess.”
“All right,” Gail said. “We’ll get out of your way. We just had to peek.”
“That’s all right. Any time you want.”
The next day there was a line at the Imperial Palace entrances in Imperial Park North, South, East, and West. Everyone who was being laid off had received a message this morning marked Urgent not to even come in. They would not be allowed entrance to Imperial Park, much less the Imperial Palace complex. Imperial Guardsmen stood by at each entrance to check people through one at a time.
Some people showed up anyway. The Imperial Guard was unfailingly polite, even if some of the former employees weren’t.
“But I have to get my things.”
“As the message explained, Ma’am, Housekeeping will pack your things and ship them to you. You can update your address of record if you want them sent somewhere else.”
“Listen, you. Do you know who I am...?”
Of course, she wasn’t anymore, at least not with regard to her title, but the reality had not yet set in.
There was some of the same confusion in the Imperial Palace, as well as the Imperial Research and Imperial Administration Buildings. The elevator security features had been turned on, and elevator cars would only go to floors for which everyone in the car had access.
Some people thought they would get into a car and then get off at a floor they could no longer access, but the car refused to budge until the people in the car all had access to the floors selected. Imperial Guard stood by in the elevator lobbies to ensure troublemakers couldn’t prevent anyone from getting anywhere.
Housekeeping worked all day clearing out offices and packing personal effects for shipping. It was a big job. More than forty thousand people worked in the three buildings, and over a third of them were being laid off. That was just in the Palace complex.
The whole government administration ground to a halt. No one knew what to do, as their bosses were gone. Just plain gone. And there was no replacement, no substitute, no instructions of what to do.
All anybody who still had a job did that day was talk about what was going on and what did it all mean.
At lunch that day, with all the chaos going on around them, Ardmore, Burke, and Drake were talking about next steps.
“What I found, Jonah, was the complete department listing,” Ardmore said. “Several versions actually, from Trajan’s first one through to Augustus the Great’s last one.”
“All four thousand and some-odd hundred of them?” Drake asked.
“Yes, Jonah. Every single one of them. I found the listings in the Emperor’s own files.”
“And how many of them are there now, Jimmy? Below the level of the people we just canned.”
“Sixty-five hundred.”
“Half again as many? For what, Jimmy?”
“Some of them are not useful, Jonah. Some of them are just featherbedding. And I suspect some of them are the result of some manager splitting a group underneath him to have more reports at a higher level, jockeying for promotion.”
“So what do we do, Jimmy? I can’t go through six thousand departments.”
“Give it to Budgets, Oversight, and Projects, Jonah,“ Burke s
aid. “Let them figure it out. That’s their job, isn’t it?”
Ardmore nodded.
“OK. Sounds good to me. I’ll let King, Aronson, and Meknikov figure out what to do about it. And I’m also going to have to talk to those sixty-five hundred managers. give them some direction while we sort everything out. Do we have a list of who they are?”
“I believe Mr. Diener does, Jonah,” Burke said.
In the end, Drake recorded a video message that afternoon for the six thousand managers. They all received it first thing the next morning in their message queues.
“Hello, everyone.
“We are switching over to a new and more efficient method of managing the Imperial government. That is what all the fuss yesterday was about. We got rid of half a dozen or so layers of management between you and me. Nobody who actually works for a living was laid off. They might not have thought of themselves as deadwood, but they were.
“We are going back to the structure of government that was used by the Four Good Emperors, the first four Emperors of the Galactic Empire. They didn’t have all that bureaucracy, and, for two hundred and forty years, they did a much better job without it than we have in the last hundred years with it.
“The fundamental premise of this method of government is to assume all of you, the group managers, are adults and don’t need someone jiggling your elbow, and second-guessing you, and telling you how to do your job. You already know what your group’s charter is, you know how to do your job, so do the best job you can for me.
“Above you now, at least in some sense, are six Offices, the Offices of Budgets, Projects, Oversight, Troubleshooting, Investigations, and Consulting. Each of these Offices will be getting information to you on the services they will offer. Suffice it to say if you need some kind of help, which we expect to happen from time to time, there are organizations there to help you.
EMPIRE: Renewal Page 16
