Slum Enterprise - Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

The techs in the workshop room dispersed, the morale was at an all time low. Some of Lee's techs began to lose composure, they didn't know what to think of all this. What would they tell their wives, their families? How would any of this make sense? The CEO expected them all to make a shanty town in the office.

Winter was closing in fast.

There would be trash bin fires with ragged employees in fingerless wool gloves warming their hands from the cold. The cafeteria was gone, they would have to bring in food and start underground markets. The potluck markets they would call it. People who drove into work couldn't leave, new policy changes prevented anyone from leaving until 8 hours were lived/worked inside the walls. 

Department leaders created walled off areas with fencing and barbed wire, inside there would be canvas tents of all sorts. Gang and faction mentality formed quickly after that. Zone battles started ensuing, usually on Wednesday because that was when a lot of stress bubbled up and you still had a week of the work week left to go. 

In the common areas, the no man's land, facilities needed to be provided so a few of the scientific departments on the floor put aside their differences on what was the better science (physics or chemistry) and built a makeshift men's and women's bathroom. Guards were placed around the women's bathroom because the men kept cutting holes through the fabric stall walls that peered into the makeshift toilet. 

Some crazy R@D guy sledgehammered through the concert floor and dug madly for like 3 days until an old sewer line was found. The bathroom goers had to have good aim with their anus and shoot the shit to the opened sewer line for it to wash away and not stick to the hole side wall and ooze various bio gases back up to the office. Obviously, not many people had anus bullseye like aim so the office smelled foul.

The departments feuded mostly on the limited resources left laying around. Totes of paper and magazines, food in the dumpsters out back (to be sold and bartered with in the underground potlucks), pretty much any office supply, pallets of wood for burning in the barrel fires, etc. Soon more precarious items entered into the stream of the underground potluck black market. Knives and old metal bats would be smuggled in through shipping docks and stored in the basement area which was just a dark moist concert tomb. The black market started and ended there.

The department leaders started to arm their direct reports. Small skirmishes, beatings and slashings were normalized. With this more protection alliances formed. The lack of electricity was extremely difficult, everything was dark all the time. The sun hung low even in the afternoon and barely provided enough light through the office windows. It would never reach the interior of the corridors so torches and barrel fires or smuggled in flashlights would give ample protons. 

The department faction leaders had enough, it wasn't sustainable, the fuel could be used to heat their direct reports instead of being wasted lighting a back hallway.

All of the department leaders called a one day truce and began to plan how to resort power to the building. They decided to steal one of the large diesel generators from the next door office building across the street. It belonged to a different company, smaller and weaker than Green Earth Solutions (not part of the 500 club). 

The other company could see what Green Earth Solutions was turning into and placed a strict watch of shipping dock workers to  the building's generator. 

The factions sent their best in; the seniors, the supervisors, the middle management types still with career ambitions to go over and take that generator by whatever means necessary. Killing was prohibited, but beatings were on the table.

Lee didn't hear about the struggle, all he cared about was that they were successful and a few positions opened in other departments. 

Light bulbs were brought in and re-screwed into the ceiling ports, light was restored.

Now, the underground potlucks in the old cafeteria space were much more lively, HR SWAT knew about what was going on but decided to just keep eyes and ears on the operation. Now in the light, they could see the decrypted events taking place. 

Illegal goods and service tents popped up. Club and bar “party tents” made liquor from the good ol moon shine method. Employees escaped reality and got drunk and high on whatever drug was smuggled on that day. 

Brawls were becoming out of control. One ended in mass injury to about 20 different employees, the paper work mound was huge and the HR SWAT got chewed out majorly by the top brass. So, the HR SWAT had to crack down and up the guard counts. Now they could be seen everywhere watching and waiting for someone to step out of line. The potlucks went away for a few weeks, but started back up small in the after hours.

Day by day, the office turned into a complete slum. The type of slum you see a white news journalist reporting on human trafficking in a 3rd world market. It was a place where undesirables roamed and fed on the weak. The slums became everyone's reality for everyone who worked in the offices of the fortune 500.

 Lee thought about how the CEO had always said to “Embrace change, that's how companies survive.” He thought that the CEO was likely sitting in his high tower office in luxury, the gross margins on savings alone must have been so erection inducing that his assistance started a 3 part routine to make sure he would be drained of excitement fluid.

The HR SWAT would hand out the propagandist flyers sheets to all the workers as they came in through the front doors for the day. The hope was that this would uplift them all and instill a perseverance mindset into the company culture, all they had to do was survive. “But for how long,” Lee thought.

It was such a horrid place. Amazing how fast people turned primal  from once polite respectable white collar professionals into the greatest of bums. Lee noted that there was no difference between inner city hoovervilles he saw from behind the safety of his car glass window when he stopped at a stop light. 

The next biggest mixing pot of America was on every city street corner in the run down areas were pimps, drug addicts, tweekers, transvestites, a family man down on his luck, a priest trying to convert the weak, a grandma and a grandpa who lost everything in the market crash. Even dogs and cats took up the needle to escape the Life System that took a bite out of them just like how they took a bite out of their precious owners. 

Things fall apart fast, there is no safety net for anyone anymore. The old generation took it all and kept it locked in a safe and let it sink in the ship they rode in on with a massive iceberg shaped hole in the side.

Lee arrived at work. The slums were spilling into the parking lots. He parked his truck far away because he was worried petty thieves in trench coats and punk attire would steal his 16” alloy rims and tires. The rubber they could use for rubber gaskets in Green Earth filtration product, the aluminum would be used for making housings to hold the filters. 

He walked past groups huddled around the barrel fires in the backdrop of late November grey. Everything was still and there wasn't a hint of happiness felt by anyone. Some were starving in the concrete curb gutters with mounds of old newspapers on top of them. The employees in the parking lot were the lowest of the low, all they did all day was scrap cars and kill mice and rats with traps so they could roast them over the fire.

Lee approached the building's main entrance. It was now a rusty metal gate with nails protruding from it so no one had the idea to ram it with their bodies to break in. Two guards stood on either side in black riot gear, faces fully covered with goggles and black masks.

“Identification,” the right one asks.

“Lee Collins, Employee ID 762363, Testing Laboratories." Lee recited in a loud voice. 

The left guard opened up a laptop that he was stashing and nine keyed the number in quickly. The laptop loaded and gave a green rectangle box saying “approved”. Lee could see the reflection from the guards black tinted goggles.

“Approved,” the guard said with no human emotion. “Employee Number 762363, enter, your 8 hours starts now.” 

As Lee strolled past depressed, the right side guard handed him a new propaganda flier. He snatched it and tilted his head down but not fully so he could still see where he was going. Inside, there was a mound of trash and debris everywhere, it looked like a war zone.

The flier was for a company training event for new Exec leadership. A speaker, a special guest were to be brought in and have a motivational talk. 

“Pretty much another jack-off fest,” Lee thinks. 

The flier had a headshot of the guest speaker and another action shot her speaking in front of a crowd of Executives holding a clicker standing in front of an ‘inspiring’ presentation being blasted by a hot projector bulb. 

She was very pretty, middle aged and wearing a navy blue suit with pearls around her neck. Her name was Sharon Lancrete. The bottom flier had a quote by the CEO stating: “A very fine intellectual, I have learned most while attending her speaking events. I implore anyone who is ready for the next step in their career to attend. It's up to YOU to own your own development. Ms.Lancrete offers great insight into behavior in the corporate settings and how it empowers direct reports.”

Lee stared at the picture of Sharon, he was in awe of how she carried herself in the ‘action shot.’ She was smiling and had an intense look on her face like “I deeply care about what I'm doing, I can not be convinced otherwise.” 

It was cold inside. Lee had to walk through 3 different department zones before he reached his. First was through marketing, then sales, finally engineering which was across the hall from his testing laboratory. Marketing and sales had recently joined forces, they now controlled most of the office floor. They had the nicest facilities out of all the departments. Their canvas tents were well stitched, some of the bigger ones had ‘hot tent’ setups with smoke stacks sticking out from the roofs with long aluminum shafts that reached all the up to the ceiling where the smoke was vented out. This reminded him of the Nature Reserve. It was the splitting opposite of what he was observing now. From fresh air and beautiful nature to mechanical cold walls that look like if you touch it would also turn you to building material. It had a Medusa like aura about it, like hell in the arctic.

Sales and marketing was heavily guarded. It was walled off by a chainlink fence and barbed wire  spiraling on the tops. HR Swat lined fences. Deep inside there was a commune section of shops, fire pits for cooking, and resting areas. They had it all, it was the only functional department left.

Inside some of the outer tents Lee could see the outline of a screen that was lighting the tent from the inside. Lee knew they had computers, probably the only ones left on campus besides the CEO building. 

This was important to the CEO, money still had to flow in from product sales. Sales needed tracking spreadsheets and marketing needed software to make advertisements to sell products. Lee didn't know this at the time, but the warehouses (scattered all across the country) had enough combined stock to keep selling for 2 years without disruptions.

He walked fast over to the next zone, engineering. Their zone was not as well provided for like Sales/Marketing but they made do with what they had. All the surplus products and prototypes were used as makeshift walls for zone protection. 

They only had one computer with one software package on it; 3D modeling software so the engineers could work on critical design improvement projects. Similar canvas tents were scattered around the built up wall that looked like a heap of trash at the city dump. The engineers guards had the best weapons, this made sense to Lee as their engineering minds would come up with craziest ideas on using what material they had to bash a skull more effectively. With all these weapons on the shoulders of the awkward engineering team members, sooner or later they were gonna use them on somebody. It's just like when countries beef up the military for years, there's a reason why they decided on the foreign policy tactic. 

The engineering zone switched focus from the product design projects and now just made weapons full time. They specialized in clubs, spiked bats, knives and cross bow mechanisms, and blunderbusses. 

“Oh shit, if this place gets gun powder it will be like China during an emperor parade in the 9th century.” Lee thought. 

Lee picked up the pace and crossed the halls to his zone. He was sweating and it was chilled by the cool smokey damp air inside. Without an HVAC system it was ground zero for the new super hybrid pneumonia virus. It smelled like garbage juice and human fecal matter, the methane lingered low to the floor. As Lee moved in legs it would stir up the high atomic weight gases and make everything smell like a trench filled with dead bodies. Workers tried to stay as still as possible in their tents to prevent the movement of the stale air. 

Chester Scott was guarding the department entrance. He was holding a sharpened broom stick. He saw Lee coming towards him so he opened the gate. “Another day in paradise, how ya doing Lee?” Scott smiled.

“Oh ya know, living the dream.” Lee responded. Chester poked himself on the barbed wire lining the top of the gate and pulled his hand back to suck the blood off.

“Tentiuts got nothing on me.” Scott said. “Lee, I have something to talk about later after my watch shift is done, I'll find you.” 

Lee walked into his zone, it was sad and run down. He arrived at his little canvas tent, still in the same location his desk and cube used to be, he had a simple cover and blind that hung over him. There was a small propane cooking top in the corner with a few pots and pans scattered about and a large canteen filled with tap water from his house. 

Lee made a chair out of wooden pallets he stole from the shipping docks. He didn't have a computer anymore, just a pocket screen in his left pant pocket. Inside the lab, the benches and machines were beginning to seize up from the lack of use and maintenance. Testing projects stopped coming in a week after the construction crews stripped everything out. 

The lab was dark and mouse infested, it had no windows. No one went in there, only his team would venture and tap the only resource cache they had to survive off of and trade at the potlucks.

Next to Lee's tent was Stan Hentz’s hoarding area.

For a while, Stan held onto his sanity, then the slums started to chip away at reality in his mind, he was left to his devices with zero distraction. A person with zero distraction and reason will pick up anything to soothe the pain. Day after day he lost his mind and didn't talk. Stacks of boxes and papers consumed him so he built a wall that closed him off. Stan had an abundance of sought after supplies like copy paper hiding in those cardboard boxes but he never joined an underground potluck. Lee didn't hold it against him due to the fact his brain matter was becoming less dense as the hours passed.

Over in front of Lee's tent was the hot tent that both Joe and Mattewth took refuge in. Usually, directors would have their own tent but  he was never provided one and he didn't know how to build. Lee never visited as he disliked them very much. 

They had real beds and an actual kitchen stove that was donated by Joe because he recently went through a kitchen remodel; it was hooked to a propane tank.

Lee sat on his little cot depressed three inches off the floor that was starting to crumble. He wondered about the labs around campus, 6 in total that were in separate buildings of their own. Lee assumed that these labs were in a similar situation. The teams and resources were all spread out, something had to be done.