J. Gonzalez - The Corporation

“Michelle?” It was Alan. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Michelle said, the answer becoming clear to her now. She gripped the cell phone tightly in her hand and sat down on the unmade bed. “It’s just… thinking about it, everything you told me is so… overwhelming.”

“But you understand,” Alan said. “Right?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then you know what must be done? Why Corporate Financial wants you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know why the Coalition sees you as so important,” Alan continued, his voice measured and even. “None of us have been granted this opportunity. None of us have been able to penetrate Corporate Financial Headquarters. You see why time is of the essence?”

The implications were too obvious. There was no other way. Michelle saw that now. “If they do take me to company headquarters tomorrow, I’ll be prepared.”

“You know what it is we’re going to want you to do?”

“I have an idea.”

“And what’s your idea?”

“You want me to destroy them somehow.”

“Not just them,” Alan said. “But a specific area in the building. Specific people .”

“How will—”

“Not over the phone. Tonight, at three. We have a hastily assembled plan. We’ll talk about it then.”

“Okay.” Despite all she’d learned and the task that had been laid out for her, Michelle Dowling felt a strange sense of calm wash over her. It felt like everything she had been through in life with its many triumphs and failures had led her to this place, for this particular purpose. She was awakening to the fact that she had been semi-conscious for the past decade to what was really going on in the business world, that Corporate Financial was secretly taking over the lives and souls of the human race, turning them into a relentless hive of worker drones to sustain its own malevolent life force, a life force that had been born from the dark biddings of a ruthless, overzealous businessman over eighty years ago who believed that if he tapped into the demonic forces of his faith, they would grant him incredible power.

Had that power gone out of control? Or was this what Hubert and Frank Marstein had in mind all along? The enslavement of the human race to do their bidding.

“Three o’clock?” Alan asked. For the first time, Michelle detected a sense of hope in his voice.

“I’ll be there,” Michelle said.

MATT WAGNER HAD just arrived at his desk one minute prior to eight a.m. to start the day as an administrative assistant for McSweeny’s Advertising in mid-town Manhattan when his supervisor descended on him. “You’re late.”

Matt checked his watch. “I am?”

Doug Bradley frowned at Matt. As usual, he was dressed in a drab gray suit. His bald pate gleamed beneath the fluorescents. “What time did you wake up, Mr. Wagner?”

Matt looked at Doug, confused, wondering what this was all about. He always arrived five to ten minutes early to work. He wasn’t due to start until eight a.m., and the only reason he was one minute shy of being on time today was because he’d had to drop his daughter off at school—Deena normally did that on her morning commute. “Six-thirty as usual. Why?”

“Then you should’ve been here at six-thirty sharp.”

Matt searched Doug Bradley’s face for the tell-tale sign of mirth but saw none. Doug had been acting weird lately anyway. He’d always been somewhat of a hard-ass, but Matt had always gotten along with him. Whatever administrative task Doug asked him to do Matt did it; that was in his job description. After all, he was an Administrative Assistant. And while Doug was normally an all-business-all-the time type of guy, he had been known to drop his guard and joke around with the rest of the office staff from time to time. He hadn’t done that lately in… well, in months. Matt decided to parry back. “Yeah, and maybe I should just move in here,” he said, grinning. “I’ll just sleep under my desk every night.”

Doug smiled in approval. “That’s what I want to hear! Make sure you gather whatever toiletries you need on your lunch break, though.”

“Sure. I’ll just charge it to my expense account.”

Doug frowned again. “This is no joking matter, Matthew.”

Matthew . Whenever Doug called him by his full name, Matt knew he was serious. Doug still had that serious, bland look on his face. There was no sign his boss was joking. He was deadly serious. “You’re kidding, right? You want me to start sleeping here?”

“Everybody else did.” Doug indicated the rest of the department with a wave of his hand and Matt looked over at Monica’s cubical next to his. She was sitting at her desk, staring raptly at her computer screen. Matt caught the faintest hint of a rolled up sleeping bag and a pillow tucked beneath her desk against a filing cabinet.

Matt turned back to Doug. “April Fool’s Day was three weeks ago, Doug.”

“This isn’t a joke,” Doug said in that same tone. “In order for McSweeny’s to be competitive we need our employees to remain at the office ready to work when they’re needed. That includes during the time that used to be referred to as ‘off the clock’.”

Matt stared at Doug, trying to read the man’s face. This had to be a joke. Doug could be a real pain in the ass, but this was going too far.

“Had you not departed forty minutes early on Friday, you would have gotten the same message the rest of the staff received,” Doug Bradley said. “You would have known that starting today, McSweeny’s new initiative was rolling forth and that all employees were required to assemble at their stations Sunday afternoon in order to prepare for it. We are a twenty-four seven shop, Mr. Wagner. That means we need all available resources all the time. That means you.”

“I worked through my lunch last Friday and had a meeting in the second floor conference room at three,” Matt said, his mind tracing back to last Friday. “I told you I was leaving for home right after the meeting.”

“Needless to say,” Doug Bradley continued, ignoring Matt. “I trust this won’t happen again. Procure what toiletries you need for the evening, perhaps secure a bedroll and pillow if you need to, and remain at your desk come five o’clock.” After delivering this order, Doug Bradley turned and walked back to his office. Matt watched his retreating back with a sense of dumbfoundment.

He turned to Monica’s cube. The computer graphic designer was working on something, her attention riveted on her work. He confirmed that, yes, she did have a sleeping bag and pillow under her desk, then he strode down a row of cubicles and began checking to see what the hell was going on.

One of the marketing administrators, Clara Reed, was preening herself in a little compact mirror at her desk. She caught his gaze in the mirror. Matt saw a small cot folded up beneath her desk. “What’s that cot doing under your desk?” he asked.

Clara frowned and turned to him. “Personal things unrelated to work belong under our desks. Don’t you know that?”

“Yes, I know that, but what the hell is a goddamn cot doing at the office !” Matt couldn’t help it. He was growing angrier the more this bullshit was played out.

“It’s more comfortable sleeping on a cot than on the floor,” Clara said. For the first time it hit Matt; she sounded just like Doug Bradley—flat, emotionless, drab. It was like she was rehearsing lines from a script and she didn’t care about the emotional impact of her delivery.

“You slept here last night?”

“Yes.” She cocked her head at him. “Why weren’t you here?”

And with that Matt Wagner tore down the aisle of cubicles, trying desperately to find one co-worker who hadn’t succumbed to whatever bullshit joke this was, but as he threaded his way through his department and the Art Department and finally to Accounting, he saw that everybody had a cot or a rollaway bed or a sleeping bag tucked beneath their desk. Some people were still preening in mirrors; one Account Executive was still getting dressed in his cubicle. Heart racing madly, Matt Wagner tore back down toward his work station past co-workers who were busy working, some with their cots still laid out and nightgowns lying on the floor, a few even still asleep. And as Matt dove into his chair and scooped out his cell phone to call Deena, the phone on his desk rang and Doug Bradley approached him from behind and asked him to type up some important documents in a tone of voice that suggested everything was normal, everything was right, and Matt Wagner began to go crazy.