Kaleb Nation - Harken

“Well that’s what we’re studying today,” he declared, searching for the end of the power cord. “I taped some of the news coverage and we’re going to watch.”

Watching a video...the day was getting slightly better already. Everyone’s collective sigh of relief could be heard across the walls. Mr. Candas lifted a hand.

“But you’ll take notes,” he added. Grumbling sounded throughout the room. I reluctantly retrieved the notebook I’d started to stow, plopping it open onto my desk.

“I’m not sure if what happened yesterday counts as history yet…” I said under my breath. Mr. Candas, ever vigilant, sent a glare my direction.

“It’s part of your worldviews. Some important people died in that,” he said. “I say it counts.”

That really didn’t make much difference to me but I wasn’t in the mood for fighting back. So Mr. Candas plugged the screen in amidst the shuffles of our papers and pens.

The tape began but there was no sound. A cable was unhooked somewhere, so Mr. Candas jumped behind the TV as the video continued to play. It was a newscast from the day before, showing a helicopter view of a wrecked city. Buildings were toppled like blocks, all the fancy windows and decorations now like the ruins of old Grecian temples . Earthquake rubble . Cars were knocked aside like a giant had played golf with them.

The report didn’t stick on that for long though, switching almost immediately to an older bit of footage showing a tall man in a navy blue suit, being pulled by the arm through a crowd of reporters. Under his face was the chyron: HAROLD WOLF, CEO of DREYCORP . The graininess of the footage betrayed how old the video was, likely sometime in the 1980s if I could gauge the hairstyles right. It switched to a photograph overlay on the screen.

Finally, something I found interesting. I could see his Glimpse as clear as the day outside our windows, lurking behind his youthful, overconfident smile and the still-outdated, slicked-back hair. Assurance. Absolute, total control over everything around him. Pride. These were signatures of people who had money, but even stronger in the super-wealthy: those who’d taken the leap from millionaire to billionaire. No matter what they did, no one could hurt or stop them. They could circumvent any law, cover up any crime, and have any misdeed go unseen. They were almost like gods that walked among us, unfettered by our lowly restrictions.

I enjoyed reading eyes of people like that: people who I didn’t see in the ordinary places. Their Glimpses were like exotic pets that I could mentally collect, rarities I could never find in a park with a bunch of ordinary people. Luckily, I didn’t need to get close to Harold Wolf to read his eyes because a photograph did the trick.

I’d never tried to figure out the full mechanics of my ability, even though I wondered sometimes. How was it that a camera could uncover the Glimpse for me, when I would never see Harold Wolf in my life? Was it the momentary click of the shutter that forced it from a subject’s eyes? Something else? Either way, a photograph brought down the mental walls, exposing the insides to me.

Mr. Candas found the cable. The volume exploded through the twin speakers, everyone jumping to cover their ears.

“ … seen here in 1979, when he was named head of Dreycorp and began what could be the largest about-face in corporate history for a company on the brink of bankruptcy...” The TV anchor’s calm voice came out as a scream. Mr. Candas stumbled to turn it down, instead slamming the pause button with the photograph frozen on screen.

“This is Harold Wolf,” Mr. Candas said far too loudly, probably because he’d been deafened.

“Do you know who that is?” he said, pointing both hands at the screen.

“Harold…Wolf…?” the class stated the obvious in slow, disjointed unison. Mr. Candas looked ready to jump off a roof.

“Thank you, Captains Obvious,” he murmured. He turned his back to us while shaking his head, the marker squeaking against the white board.

“You’re right, but who is he,” Mr. Candas said with a sigh. “Why was Mr. Wolf so important in the world?”

No one raised a hand. The marker continued to scribble—Mr. Candas didn’t even check if anyone had tried to answer. He was familiar with our inherent laziness by now.

“Mr. Wolf,” he said, “was CEO of the company Dreycorp.”

He looked over his shoulder. Our faces were like a collection of mannequins.

“Do you buy sandwiches?” he asked. There was a bunch of nodding.

“Then you should know what Dreycorp is, because you’ve paid them lots of money,” he said. “Every piece of your sandwich was likely Dreycorp made or contains some Dreycorp ingredient. That makes him a billionaire.”

He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t have time to go into it. You’ll learn this in college. But basically…”

He scribbled a word onto the board: DREYCORP INDUSTRIES .

“Everything in the world boils down to which companies make the things we need to live and work,” he said, cupping his hands in insistence. “Energy, oil, technology. Food most of all.”

He shrugged. “And when a corporation controls a good part of one of those industries, they almost become a world power in themselves. It’s not like we can simply tell them we don’t want food.”

“We could grow it ourselves,” a girl in the front of class said.

“What if they own all the seeds?” Mr. Candas countered. “It’s all about who controls the supply. Food is essential to life. It’s how Harold Wolf became so wealthy. Because we all need what his company provides.”

Mr. Candas punched the play button, and immediately the tape began again. The reporter picked up where she’d been cut off, describing the business of Dreycorp, the camera panning across rows of crops swaying in the wind, farm animals and giant barns with the heads of cows sticking through while they were milked by machines underneath their fat stomachs. It switched to the snow-covered door of a giant vault buried in the ground—a vault of seeds, she said, to protect copies of every plant in the world. A seed bank.

Then it changed to another picture of Harold Wolf. He was much older than he’d appeared in the previous, hair beginning to lighten and lines now creasing around his eyes, which had begun to look sallower with age. He was pale, with eyes of green and a beard covering his chin.

The Glimpse had changed. Harold Wolf was working hard to hide his emotions, but not even that could get past me. Behind the oh-so-well disguised smile, I saw that fear had entered into his gaze. At first I thought it was fear of death, which I would have expected for a man of his age. But when I studied it deeper, I saw that Harold Wolf was actually terrified of something different, something that loomed in his future. I detected a fear of a secret being found out, like a debt that he owed or a misstep he’d made and couldn’t remedy.

Crime money? I wondered. I was already almost sure of it. Somehow he’d gotten in debt to someone even bigger, and he knew that they were coming after him. A man who feared nothing had learned the meaning of terror.

“Everyone watch and take notes. Concentrate on how this affects industries!” Mr. Candas commanded. Inside, I wanted to shake my head. Harold Wolf had probably felt relieved in that crumbling building, knowing that the earthquake was quicker than the death he’d have faced at the hands of whomever he was afraid of. How many years before some so-called investigation would uncover what he’d been hiding?

I suppose I could have made a good living in government work. But that was only if they could match my current hourly rate.