Slum Enterprise - Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
“Get up Lee, time for work,” he thought to himself.
It was the middle of the work week, almost there, 2 days of short blissful freedom await. Annie and Penny were still sleeping as usual. Lee pulled the covers off and started his morning routine. He didn't feel as dreadful like most of his mornings, he actually had a little pep in his step.
He hummed a tune as he made his lunch and walked to his car with large strides. His head was pointed down, looking at the grass, leaves, pavement and cracks with ant hills. The common black ants must have been hard at work the last few days. He noticed that there were new mounds of brown and black dirt. Lee followed the mounds out to the curb where he found the city of mounds in between the curb and tar paved road meeting point. It is a large crack with much activity. Lee imagined what it was like to be an ant.
Everything was hundreds of times larger and everything was trying to kill you. What happened when it rained? If the city survived the force of exploding rain drops, the concrete curb valley would surely flood. The ants would pray and start secret societies that sacrificed baby ants to the rain gods to keep the dark clouds away.
They could however survive a light shower. After the rain stopped the ants would start immediate reconstruction and scream and chant ritual songs to the sun gods to blast rays of light to dry out their mounds and exoskeletons.
Still, a small river would trickle in the curb valley, it was just the residual rain that was still coming off the street and house driveways. This gave the black ant queen the idea to use this to the colonies advantage. She demands the worker ants to build docks and water craft for the transfer of food bits found at the bin garbage cans by Lee's garage. The plan would be to send the food downstream to the other ant colonies. She would become rich, she thought.
“Go, find me sticks, build me a ship to transport our supplies, let's charge a steep price, build me ports, someone assign me a port master, does anyone have captain experience? I need all the able-bodied workers to get on the move, and don't stop till the other colonies have to rely on our goods and services. Controlling the gutters is how we master our way of life, to bring prosperity to our colony and for the next generation I'm baking up in a few days time.”
“Yes, my queen,” an ant cabinet member said. His antennae were twitching nervously with excitement, but a shiver ran over him. He had many things to discuss with the work unions, the dangers of the operation were enormous. The biggest one was the giants.
The giants had pale skin and long blond locks that bounced as they ran. They had color jackets and large yellow boots. They liked to kick, crush and splash huge waves of water from the curb gutters onto the mounds, even the biggest mounds stood no chance. The cabinet ant shivered and turned a light shade of grey out of fear. He began to speak with urgency to the queen. “Your majesty, you must remember the giants, they lurk and destroy our colonies without mercy.”
“We don't have time to be paralyzed with fear, if that were the case, our families would never survive, we would all perish, taking risks is our only chance. The food in the bins won't last forever.”
“Of course, your majesty, you are most certainly right, I was just remembering our last tragedy, that was all, it still shakes my ant heart.”
The cabinet ant began to envision what had happened, he remembered seeing ant heads and body parts floating in small pools of rain water near his home village, the conley was destroyed, ants were grabbed and picked apart by nimble giant fingers.
“I know all too well about the horrors,” the queen ant said. “Now is our only chance to achieve greatness, we must continue to burn the ant midnight lamp, never forget the dead, but never let the dead hold you back from continuing on.” The queen ant paused thinking deeply.
“Lets not waste time,” she continued. “The young will soon hatch, bring forth the union leaders and begin the planning efforts. Who is our best civil engineering ant?” The cabinet ant responds with the name of the ant in which the English language cannot accurately portray on paper.
The cabinet ant left the queen’s great hall deep underneath the earth and entered a labyrinth of tunnels. He had a great task before him, while walking to the union headquarters room about 500 ant paces away he began to imagine the giants.
The powerful white giants of rainbow spectrum colors create earthquakes and mass floods. The great ant gutter river ports would face utter destruction. The survivors would cling to broken sticks and float lifelessly down the gutter river. They would wash ashore the gutter river beaches, the unlucky would perish down the sewer grates never to be heard from again.
“Intresting,” Lee said to himself. He got in his truck and drove the 5 right turns to his corporate office. When he arrived and went through the doors he had a strange feeling. Lee couldn't figure out what the feeling meant. He felt like there was a sinister presence lurking in the shadows. Nothing was out of the ordinary when he walked through the halls to his desk, everything looked like it was in place. But, his gut told him that there was something hidden.
Scott, Stan, and Murphy were at their desks working, Lee was tad late today. Joe Fisher's watcher tower office door was closed, most of his techs were in the lab wrenching away on testing setups. Lee sat at his desk, pulled his computer out from his bag and docked it to his monitors. He turns to check in with Scott like he usually does and notices that he has on a strange outfit, not his same old grey work shirt and pants with black boots.
“Scott, another day right? How is the lab doing, are the benches underway?” Lee asked.
“Yes sir, the benches are running in accordance to your expectations, the rest of the team is in and monitoring their assigned projects operational status.” Scott answered in a military boot camp way. His clothes were also military, dark army green with red trim. Lee saw that Scott was wearing medals on his chest. Lee didn't want to upset Scott so he didn't comment on the outfit.
“Okay there trooper, at ease.” Lee said light heartedly.
“Yes SIR,” Scott yelled and turned back to his computer to punch in data with loud smacks on his keyboard.
To Lee's left over the cubical wall, he could see Stan gazing over at him. He could only see his eyes just above the wall. He knew what this meant. Time to get the morning news flash.
“Lee, don't freak out, but the department director, Matthew called a meeting, it just came out of nowhere, with the whole team, he never does this unless it's bad.
“Oh damn, do you have any idea what it is about.”
“My guess,” Stan paused and looked side to side, “layoffs and structural changes.”
“Oh come on, the companies have been doing great for the past 5 years, record profits.” Lee said.
“It wasn't enough apparently, the Execs and shareholders took one look at the world and saw the powder keg ready to blow, I heard the CEO took action and set up this massive conference with all the fortune 500 big shots. Lee, it's ready to go, the stocks will crash and the company is taking the measures it needs to survive.”
“What about us?”
“Us? What do you mean?” Stan almost laughed but held it together because in the end it was a serious matter.
“Look, the company has never cared, and never will care about us. Haven't you seen the HR SWAT, their secret police? I've tracked the numbers, an inside guy leaks me the data.”
“So what, doesn't every company have SWAT now? They say it's for the safety of the employee.”
“No, no, it's for the protection of the company from us, the common cog in the machine. They want to turn us cogs into grease for the machine, so we don't organize and fight back.” Stan said, he was whispering so Lee could barely understand him. He leaned over the cubical wall to hear him better.
“Havent you been paying attention to the news, the papers?, your pocket screen for christ sakes?” When Stan said this Lee felt the brick in his left pant pocket.
“No way, it's all junk.” Lee answered, he was proud that he was fighting against the brainwashing system in the Life System.
“Well…” Stan thought that was a ridiculous pretentious answer. “Well, then you don't even know about the construction company buyouts. I know you've seen the road construction crews, they have been painfully slow…”
“Now that I think of it, I never see any crews at all, just vacant equipment with our filters in them,” Lee said.
“Right, nothing beyond these orange and white cylinder cones.”
The realization shocked Lee. In fact he hasn't really seen any construction crews actually working. But, he did notice the increased yellow/orange vests roaming about the company's parking lot; more and more equipment seemed to spawn taking up precious parking space.
“The CEO’s had this huge conference, I dont even know where, its like its massive rumor, even my inside contacts heard from other contacts from their contacts that it was rumor, this shit must be locked down tight, a fucking conspiracy.” Stan said as Lee nodded his head listening carefully.
“From what I heard, they discussed this projection of the downfall of society and how corporations will survive. They already have so much influence, they practically built the neighborhoods that surround them, all the power and money is in their greedy little hands. Starting next week, everything will change.”
Stan had intense red eyes, eyes that must have been strained by lack of sleep and blue screens in his basement computer room.
“Lets not jump the gun here Stan, we don't know about anything,” Lee said. He was worried, this must have been the sinister emotion he felt upon walking in the office.
“The meeting is at 9am, you have 45 minutes to write your will.”
Stan said.
“Lets wait and see what Matthew has to say, I'm sure everything will be fine. I'm going to go check the benches.”
Lee left the cubicle, as he saw that Murphy had some sort of nervous twitch going on like he needed a cigarette badly. He dashed across the slight line from Joe Fisher's glass door and headed to the lab back entrance. He walked through the green double doors and his nose was overwhelmed with the smell of hydraulic fluid mixed with diesel. All of Lee’s bench's stacklights were showing green. Some of his techs were in a circle conversing in the build area. Some were at the computer helm controlling the pumps and parameters of the test underway. Lee didn't acknowledge any of them, he didn't want to disrupt the work flow. Lee checked off the bench status on his clip board and checked his watch, “almost 9am now,” he said out loud.
As Lee left the lab and walked back to his desk he saw that Joe Fisher was out and about and hanging over the back of Chester Scott's cube. Lee approached slowly acting like Joe was some sort of humanoid T-rex that had a hard time spotting slow moving objects.
“Good morning Lee, a little late are we?” He was spotted. Joe had this jolly look.
“Joe I'm salaried, it doesn't matter what time I come in, as long as I hit my 40.” Lee said, annoyed. He wasn't in the mood to take passive aggressive shit this morning, especially with the prospect of layoffs in front of him. Besides, Lee was already reprimanded once for speaking out of line in the confines of the office walls, the HR SWAT made sure that it would never happen again. In one of the reconditioning training he was forced to watch, it was like that one scene in a Clockwork Orange. The program told him to never tell the truth, the truth was just too harsh, it hurt people's feelings and the company needs everyone to feel good at all times as it promotes productivity. As Lee shook on the dentist chair strapped in tightly the programme continued with philosophies that were the complete opposite of Lee's moralic system.
“Now Lee,” Joe continued in a condensing way. “Remeber what we talked about… you don't want me to involve HR SWAT now do we?” Lee didn't say a word, he just death stared at the ground growing red with anger. Lee believed that moments like these would make a man push the big red button and watch the world burn around him.
“The meeting is in a couple minutes,” Scott said, he broke the tension and got up. “Let's see what Matthew has in store for us comrades.” Joe looked at Scott and pointed at the Labs general direction.
Everyone followed behind Scott to the meeting place. They walked one by one through the lab's front entrance. Lee had that strange feeling again like he was being watched. He wondered what the HR SWAT was doing right now, how much of his conversation was on those magnetic tape reel to reel machines spinning above in the control room. He guessed there were extra forces on standby just waiting to drop through the cycling trapdoor and beat the employees with batons.
The line of lab employees walked through the lab corridors to the build room. The build room was a side space full of toolboxes, setup equipment, and 5 large metal work top benches painted green. It was a dedicated space for the lab techs to set up filter product assemblies before installing the whole thing on one of the test benches.
All 20 of the lab employees crowded in the stuffy workshop, they made a circle lining the walls. Matthew walked in with 2 HR SWAT on either side of him. He approached the group, broke the circle and standed in the middle with the entire team surrounding them. He stood and looked at everyone with a calm smile. Joe wanted to be in the center of the circle with Matthew but the HR SWAT pushed him back by shoving a club into his flabby stomach.
“Good Morning Team,” Matthew said in an uplifting corporate tone. “Before we begin, let me say how grateful I am to be part of such a hard working set of individuals.”
Lee was standing next to Murphy and Stan, Stan leaned over and added, “he needs to soften us up first.” From Lee’s perspective, the left side HR SWAT must have heard this and peered a soulless deadly gaze of goggles right at them. Stan stood straight up and put his eyes forward and zipped his mouth for the rest of the speech.
“Please refrain from any questions until I'm done. Stan, anything to add?” Stan shook his head.
“Good… All of you may have heard some rumors floating about recently, and that is about the possibility of layoffs. I can't lie to you… this is true. Layoffs will be conducted today and will wrap up by 5pm this afternoon. The Execs and shareholder leadership teams discussed long and hard about the pool of candidates on the chopping block. I'm happy to inform you that all of the lab is safe from termination." There was a huge collective sign from 20 sets of lungs.
“Now,” Matteth continued with more haste, “Now this doesn't mean that when you go back to your cubicals, everything will be the same, people on this floor, lovely dedicated employees will be let go. They are being told as we speak, the cubes will be destroyed immediately. I understand this can be disheartening but other departments were hit much harder than this lab. When you return to your desks, please be mindful of HR SWAT members escorting out the ex employees, they are just here to do their job and keep order in these chaotic times. It's for your protection. Please do not talk with any former employees, this is now against company policy, we don't want to have our perceptions skewed by someone saying rash comments during this melancholy event. We want to assure you.” Matthew quickly glances at the SWAT, “The company is doing this for its future longevity.”
Lee shuffled his face and stared back at the ground, he gets awkward when things become long winded, he likes to be concise and get straight to the point.
“The amount of uncertainty facing the markets is very worrisome. You may have seen news about the world collapsing with war, famine, greed, ect. The CEO wanted to be proactive, so he invited the fortune 500 CEO’s to a conference in an undisclosed location. This was a once in a lifetime event, never before seen. All the world's most influential men all in one great hall carving out a path for humanity. God, how I wish I was there to see it…” Matthew appeared like he entered into a trance and daydreamed what it would have been like to be in a room with such viscosity of successful people. He must have wished he could be one of those CEO’s. That's why he spent his whole life climbing the ladder.
Lee was actually impressed Matthew made it this far because he heard from a few engineers that were under him when he was a middle manager that he was one of the biggest idiots they ever met.
Matthew refocuses back on the crowd, he looks sad.
“The 500, including the beloved CEO, wrote a new constitution, a new plan, a new deal, a new method to bring prosperity back to the corporations and then to the world. Our beloved saint, the Saint of the Trinkle Down was watching in the sky above smiling, completely overwhelmed with joy that we all could put aside our capitalist competition and work as one for the people.”
Lee and Stan just stood and thought “what the fuck is this guy talking about.”
“You may have noticed the construction equipment, step one was to buy them out.” Matthew blurted.
“What the hell for?” yelled one of Lee's technicians. Matthew turned to face the outspoken perpetrator.
“I'll tell you why… to create the new work place of the future.”
The group of 20 looked on with confusion, they began to shuffle and sway in place, legs tired and clear;many were thirsty and hungry from a lack of substantial breakfast. Even Joe Fisher was confused, he only knew about the layoffs. This clearly made him upset since he really wanted to be in that “good ol boys club.”
“You all don't need any of this.” Matthew pointed around the room. “You don't want the nice dull colors and grey cubical walls. You don't want grey carpets or fancy conference rooms. You don't want the company library, the TVs and breakrooms, the kitchenettes, the breastfeeding rooms, the monitors and docking stations, the coat racks and umbrellas, bathrooms, heat or AC… any of it.” Matthew began to sweat, his white slicked back hair looked like Hitlers 20 minutes deep into a rally speech. He placed his arms back to his side and took a deep breath and regained composure.
The room erupted with outcry, Lee's team began to protest and yell. Lee figured that the CEO meant to strip the office clean of everything. The circle of workers reduced the radius between them and Matthew. The HR SWAT wielded their black clubs and squatted down into battle position (by digging their boots into the wax lab floor with perforations for grip.)
“Everyone calm down, let me explain, please understand,” Matthew pleaded.
Murphy stood back and with Stan and Lee, he leaned over to say, “this is fucking crazy.”
“Please, please just one more thing.” Matthew was behind the guards with the techs inching closer. Matthew was stepping back towards the door planning an escape. “The construction teams will be starting Thursday morning, that's tomorrow. They will be stripping everything out. So please, everyone take home your personal items.”
“Fuck that, where are we going to work? We can't all just sit on the bare concert floor.” Scott said.
“Ah yes, great catch, the carpet will be torn out as well.” Matthew added. Another one of Lee's techs yelled, “Please tell me the bathrooms are staying, the heat, winter is approaching."
“Oh no, the plumbing and electrical systems are being canned on Friday by a specialist crew. The copper scrap will greatly increase our gross margins, we have already canceled the facilities contracts with the city.” Matthew said with a great smile, he had one foot out the door.
“Dont worry everyone, by Monday morning, the office will have transformed into the work place of the future. The finest canvas roll and tents, wood piles, rusty barrels, and barbed wire fence will be waiting!” Matthew said yelling over the shoulders of the HR SWATs padded riot gear.
“All you have the privilege to create your work place of the future in the assigned areas that we have zoned out for the remaining employees in each department. You can build anything you desire.
Matthew turned around and ran, the SWAT followed.