J. Gonzalez - The Corporation

“Yes?” he asked, his voice pleasant.

“We’re from the Automobile Club of Southern California,” one of them said; she was young, female, attractive, dressed professionally in a blue suit. “I’m Karen Haller, this is my associate Barry Haskins.”

“Oh, what do you know!” José brightened at the mention they were from the Club. He and his wife, Glenda, had been retired from the club for eight years. “I used to work for the Club.”

“We’re from Human Resources,” Karen said, and at first José didn’t think anything was wrong with her mannerisms or tone of voice—that would come later when he was separated from Glenda later that day and imprisoned in the Data Center of the insurance giant’s basement. “We’ve come to collect you and return you to work.”

“Excuse me?”

Barry opened the screen door and, before José was aware of what was happening, they were grabbing him, pulling him outside. “Come with us,” Barry said.

“Hey! What’s going on?” José was beginning to be frightened.

“José, who is it?” Glenda came to the door; she’d been in the back bedroom that used to belong to their adult son. José, Jr. was now married and lived out of state. When she saw what was happening, she panicked. “ What are you doing? Let go of him! ”

Another pair of well-dressed HR Representatives approached the house. They walked past the struggling José and walked up to the screen door. When Glenda saw them approach, she slammed the front door and screamed at the top of her lungs. José was only dimly aware as he struggled in the grips of the young woman and the man who were dragging him away from his house that the two other people were battering their way into his house. “ Help !” he yelled, hoping somebody was home in the neighborhood this morning. He opened his mouth to yell again and a fist crashed into his face. The blow brought him to his knees; his vision went blurry. God help me, he thought as strong arms grabbed him and half-dragged, half-carried him to a waiting car where he was thrown into the back seat. His last coherent thought before he began to really panic was he hoped Glenda could hold them off long enough to call the police.

AND SO IT happened around the country as thousands of people who had the day off, were retired, or had recently quit their place of employment were forced back into the labor pool.

Four hours later a report went out to Wall Street that productivity had risen sixty percent. Analysts were excited. The economy was picking up. Companies announced that they were planning to add more people to the work force. The value of the dollar rose twenty percent. Stock and bonds rose sharply. Board members and executives were happy at this news.

Buried among the ongoing news reports that day were the scattered reports of a rash of kidnappings and assaults. Those that were reported received scant notice, a few paragraphs in daily newspapers and on news websites at best. And because these crimes were only reported on local news outlets they didn’t receive national attention. To those who were unaffected by the Reign initiative it was business as usual. After all, crime was pretty much common in places like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles—basically any big city.

For law enforcement agencies, day care workers, and health care providers it meant something more. It couldn’t be explained, but as police officers responded to calls of kidnappings and assaults, and talked to witnesses who described friends and neighbors being carried off by people in suits, or as day care workers and teachers tried to reach parents frantically, or as doctors butted heads with administrative personnel regarding emergency treatment for patients who were brought in for a wide array of problems, one common thought was on all their minds: something is going horribly wrong .

MICHELLE DOWLING KNEW that things were happening, that Corporate Financial was really getting things in motion as she sat in the back seat of the Lexus Sam Greenberg was driving through the suburbs of Berkeley heading to the mountains.

Michelle was dressed in a tan business suit and a white blouse. Her carry-on bag was in the seat next to her; her overnight bag stashed in the trunk. She glanced at her watch: it was four-thirty p.m. Pacific Time, Monday afternoon. Normally after spending a day traveling she’d be dog-tired, but not today. She was too wired.

Everything today had turned out just as Alan predicted it would. When she met up with Alan, Donald, Jay, and Rachel early this morning in the parking lot of the Comfort Inn near Chicago O’Hare’s airport she was happy to see Donald; she’d hugged him fiercely. Donald had held her and whispered that whatever happened he was going to be there for her. She’d nodded, then turned to Alan to get down to business.

They’d quickly filled her in. Sam Greenberg and Gary Lawrence were going to whisk her away to Calistoga, California tomorrow for immersion training, Alan said. But first they were going to meet with Red Rose Medical Insurance. “That’s just a ruse to get you out of your hotel,” Alan had explained. “What’s going to happen is about thirty minutes into the meeting, Gary will ask to see you and you’ll walk out of the conference room. He’ll tell you that he wants you to fly to California immediately, that he has a flight booked for you. Sam has most likely already left and you won’t see him at the meeting, but Gary isn’t going to tell you that. He’ll escort you to your room where you’ll get your things and he’ll take you to the airport. He’ll probably board the same flight as you. Sam will meet you at the airport with a car and take you to Corporate Financial Headquarters.”

“And then?” Michelle had asked. She’d shivered in the cold. They were hunkered between two parked cars, sitting in the front and back seats with the doors open facing each other.

Jay had shown her what was next, passing surveillance equipment to her and explaining how they worked. The microphone was to be pinned to the outside of her blouse and was hidden inside an attractive pin. The earpiece was to be worn in her right ear and her hair was to be down, covering both ears. Another device, which Jay explained was a GPS tracking system, was to be worn on the inside of her blouse. “Both the audio and GPS are bouncing off a satellite,” Jay explained. “The audio has a great range, and I should be able to hear you even if you whisper.”

She was to wear the surveillance and audio equipment with her business attire tomorrow, with the exception of when it was time to go through airport security during travel (“Go into the ladies room at the airport and stash them in your carry-on bag,” Jay had instructed. “Keep them in this packaging.”). She was also instructed to carry her laptop into the Corporate Financial Headquarters building when she arrived and, at the first available moment, connect to their network. “They’ll probably be on DHCP so you should be able to connect right away. If they give you a network ID or password, it probably won’t give you much access—don’t worry about that. First thing you should do is try to connect to their intranet and look for a map or diagram of the facility or anything that gives us an idea on their physical structure. Download that into a word file and email it to me.” Jay gave her a yahoo email account, which she committed to memory. “Anything else you find out like passwords, security, that kind of thing, send on to me as well.”

Alan told her that she should familiarize herself with the building when she arrived, and that they’d most likely start her on immersion training the following morning. They’ll have a hotel room reserved for her and they’d probably want to take her out to dinner on the night of her arrival. They’ll want to be in her presence as much as possible that day. “That’s all part of the immersion training,” Alan said. “It will begin tomorrow when you board that plane with Gary Lawrence.”