Eileen Gunn: Stable Strategies and Others

In signing up for his bioengineering program, Harry had chosen specialized primate adaptation, B-E Option No. 4. He had evolved into a text-book example: small and long-limbed, with forward-facing eyes for judging distances and long, grasping fingers to keep him from falling out of his tree.

He was dressed for success in a pin-striped three-piece suit that fit his simian proportions perfectly. I wondered what premium he paid for custom-made. Or did he patronize a ready-to-wear shop that catered especially to primates?

I listened as he leaped agilely from one ridiculous marketing premise to the next. Trying to borrow credibility from mathematics and engineering, he used wildly metaphoric bizspeak, “factoring in the need for pipeline throughput,” “fine-tuning the media mix,” without even cracking a smile.

Harry had been with the company only a few months, straight out of business school. He saw himself as a much-needed infusion of talent. I didn’t like him, but I envied him his ability to root through his subconscious and toss out one half-formed idea after another. I know he felt it reflected badly on me that I didn’t join in and spew forth a random selection of promotional suggestions.

I didn’t think much of his marketing plan. The advertising section was a textbook application of theory with no practical basis. I had two options: I could force him to accept a solution that would work, or I could yes him to death, making sure everybody understood it was his idea. I knew which path I’d take.

“Yeah, we can do that for you,” I told him. “No problem.” We’d see which of us would survive and which was hurtling to an evolutionary dead end.

Although Harry had won his point, he continued to belabor it. My attention wandered — I’d heard it all before. His voice was the hum of an air conditioner, a familiar, easily ignored background noise. I drowsed and new emotions stirred in me, yearnings to float through moist air currents, to land on bright surfaces, to engorge myself with warm, wet food.

Adrift in insect dreams, I became sharply aware of the bare skin of Harry’s arm, between his gold-plated watchband and his rolled-up sleeve, as he manipulated papers on the conference room table. He smelled delicious, like a pepperoni pizza or a charcoal-broiled hamburger. I realized he probably wouldn’t taste as good as he smelled. But I was hungry. My stiletto-like tongue was there for a purpose, and it wasn’t to skewer cubes of tofu. I leaned over his arm and braced myself against the back of his hand, probing with my stylets to find a capillary.

Harry noticed what I was doing and swatted me sharply on the side of the head. I pulled away before he could hit me again.

“We were discussing the Model 2000 launch. Or have you forgotten?” he said, rubbing his arm.

“Sorry. I skipped breakfast this morning.” I was embarrassed.

“Well, get your hormones adjusted, for chrissake.” He was annoyed, and I couldn’t really blame him. “Let’s get back to the media allocation issue, if you can keep your mind on it. I’ve got another meeting at eleven in Building Two.”

Inappropriate feeding behavior was not unusual in the company, and corporate etiquette sometimes allowed minor lapses to pass without pursuit. Of course, I could no longer hope that he would support me on moving some money out of the direct-mail budget….

During the remainder of the meeting, my glance kept drifting through the open door of the conference room, toward a large decorative plant in the hall, one of those oases of generic greenery that dot the corporate landscape. It didn’t look succulent exactly — it obviously wasn’t what I would have preferred to eat if I hadn’t been so hungry — but I wondered if I swung both ways?

I grabbed a handful of the broad leaves as I left the room and carried them back to my office. With my tongue, I probed a vein in the thickest part of a leaf. It wasn’t so bad. Tasted green. I sucked them dry and tossed the husks in the wastebasket.

I was still omnivorous, at least — female mosquitoes don’t eat plants. So the process wasn’t complete….

I got a cup of coffee, for company, from the kitchenette and sat in my office with the door closed and wondered what was happening to me. The incident with Harry disturbed me. Was I turning into a mosquito? If so, what the hell kind of good was that supposed to do me? The company didn’t have any use for a whining loner, a bloodsucker.

There was a knock at the door, and my boss stuck his head in. I nodded and gestured him into my office. He sat down in the visitor’s chair on the other side of my desk. From the look on his face, I could tell Harry had talked to him already.

Tom Samson was an older guy, pre-bioengineering. He was well versed in stimulus-response techniques, but had somehow never made it to the top job. I liked him, but then that was what he intended. Without sacrificing authority, he had pitched his appearance, his gestures, the tone of his voice, to the warm end of the spectrum. Even though I knew what he was doing, it worked.

He looked at me with what appeared to be sympathy, but was actually a practiced sign stimulus, intended to defuse any fight-or-flight response. “Is there something bothering you, Margaret?”

“Bothering me? I’m hungry, that’s all. I get short-tempered when I’m hungry.”

Watch it, I thought. He hasn’t referred to the incident; leave it for him to bring up. I made my mind go bland and forced myself to see his eyes. A shifty gaze is a guilty gaze.

Tom just looked at me, biding his time, waiting for me to put myself on the spot. My coffee smelt burnt, but I stuck my tongue in it and pretended to drink. “I’m just not human until I’ve had my coffee in the morning.” Sounded phoney. Shut up, I thought.

This was the opening that Tom was waiting for. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Margaret.” He sat there, hunched over in a relaxed way, like a mountain gorilla, unthreatened by natural enemies. “I just talked to Harry Winthrop, and he said you were trying to suck his blood during a meeting on marketing strategy.” He paused for a moment to check my reaction, but the neutral expression was fixed on my face and I said nothing. His face changed to project disappointment. “You know, when we noticed you were developing three distinct body segments, we had great hopes for you. But your actions just don’t reflect the social and organizational development we expected.”

He paused, and it was my turn to say something in my defense. “Most insects are solitary, you know. Perhaps the company erred in hoping for a termite or an ant. I’m not responsible for that.”

“Now, Margaret,” he said, his voice simulating genial reprimand. “This isn’t the jungle, you know. When you signed those consent forms, you agreed to let the B-E staff mold you into a more useful corporate organism. But this isn’t nature, this is man reshaping nature. It doesn’t follow the old rules. You can truly be anything you want to be. But you have to cooperate.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” I said, cooperatively. “I’m putting in eighty hours a week.”

“Margaret, the quality of your work is not an issue. It’s your interactions with others that you have to work on. You have to learn to work as part of the group. I just cannot permit such backbiting to continue. I’ll have Arthur get you an appointment this afternoon with the B-E counselor.” Arthur was his secretary. He knew everything that happened in the department and mostly kept his mouth shut.

“I’d be a social insect if I could manage it,” I muttered as Tom left my office. “But I’ve never known what to say to people in bars.”

For lunch I met Greg and our friend David Detlor at a health-food restaurant that advertises fifty different kinds of fruit nectar. We’d never eaten there before, but Greg knew he’d love the place. It was already a favorite of David’s, and he still has all his teeth, so I figured it would be OK with me.