The Business Acumen

by submission | Aug 27, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Author : David E Hoffee

T. Claudius Swifford sipped arabica from the back of his vintage, metal-colored, chauffeur-driven Triton Mercedes as it swooped to meet the maglev. He briefly recalled the scone and juice he’d been served for breakfast as he perused the Singapore vids. In the tiniest moment reserved for himself, he thought, am I eclectic, or eccentric? And as the chauffeur attended his door at the parking level of Swifford Industries, Mr. Swifford couldn’t help but pause for a moment to honor the economic masters who’d come before him. This was the top of the world–a fine place to be.

Mr. Swifford could afford very large, very thick glass doors at the entrance to his office. He could also afford someone to open them. That someone was Reginald Tolucci, or just “Reggie.” For seventeen years, Reggie opened and closed and polished and secured for Swifford Industries, while he lost four kids and a wife to the water. “Not covered,” they told him, and he had to watch them slip away, while he opened–closed.

In the office, Mr. Swifford’s stock vids hovered in their places. Elsewhere, Mark Yager’s double-toast tried to return, as the never-on-time transit careened and rattled. Swifford Industries swallowed Yager in white, as he assumed the team-leader position, floor seventeen, area three, or just 17/3. Yager’s numbers had been incredibly good during the first two quarters, but the fourth-quarter projections were harpooning third-quarter business. Yager’s team saw confidence, not the toast, trying to escape. Upstairs, the weather had left a fine mist on the Triton Mercedes. Yager’s brow was shiny, as he felt the absence of numbers echo through his brain.

Team 17/3 could barely contain themselves during a brief spike at 1400 hours; but alas, the toothpick economy didn’t last, and by 1630 hours, comm wanted Yager at the top of the building, floor 1, level 1. That would be Swifford’s office.

Yager adjusted his posture, dredged up confidence to argue for his team. Mr. Swifford waved his hand, and a screen disappeared. Yager smiled his winner’s smile.

“Mr., um, Yager, is it–yes,” Swifford droned, “where, sir, are your numbers?” He shifted left in his massive leather seat.

“We bring you here, teach you, give you water, juice, and FOR WHAT? How many times has this been?” And Yager unconsciously stepped back, off-posture, off-smile, and Swifford lept up and drew in a single, fluid motion, center-mass, dead on, one shot from the company-issue pearl-handled .45 in another tribute to the mighty business integrity gone by.

The glistening, metal-colored Triton Mercedes hums at 1700.

“How was your day, sir?” Reggie asked, as Mr. Swifford approached the door.

And, as T. Claudius Swifford always replied, “Reggie–it was a fine day for business.”

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A Useful Trinket

by submission | Aug 26, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Z.D. Erickson

Boyd pressed himself tightly to the crumbling brick of the library’s colonnade. As the thin layer of scaled fiber-optics bent the light of distant streetlamps around him, his mind raced.

There’s an old thieves adage; The theft itself is rarely difficult. It’s getting away with the merchandise that becomes problematic. He had always found this to be eerily true, until now.

Bypassing the lab’s security protocols had taken almost a year of research and planning. Not to mention the money he’d had to shell out to that pissant Timothy Marcus. The boy’s ability to infiltrate complex computer systems was near-legendary, and unfortunately he knew it. Just the thought of that smug, pimply grin set Boyd’s blood to boil(was I ever that pompous, even at fourteen?), but he couldn’t question the little snot’s efficacy. When the time had come, it had been as simple as snatching a fresh-baked pie from a midsummer’s windowsill.

And now, even with a fleet of helicopters circling the campus like hungry buzzards and facing a small army of ground troops armed to the teeth, the ease of his escape made Boyd laugh silently to himself. His new prize truly was worth every penny he would get for it.

When William Garner had first brought him the job, he’d laughed in his face.

“They’re willing to pay almost fifty mil for an enhancement suit? They must be off their respective rockers Bill.”

“It’s not just any old enhancement suit my good man(Bill’s was a true rags-to-riches story, and now that he’d started making some real bread he’d wrapped himself in this insipid, forties era nouveau-riche persona. Phrases like “my good man”, “I do so detest…”, and “those poor, underprivileged wretches” were now all too common.), from what I could figure out it’s the be-all-and-end-all of current military technology. It not only monitors all vital functions, it stores a plethora of synthetic hormones, designer neurotransmitters, and recuperative enzymes. They’re released into the bloodstream in response to tissue damage, alterations in CNS activity, or on direct command. It also renders the wearer resistant to extremes of temperature. It has a mixed gas delivery system that allows one to function under assault from aerosolized bio-weaponry, or even underwater. It’s lightweight, but bulletproof, and has joint actuators that increase the wearer’s speed, strength and maneuverability tenfold. And, get this old chap, it has a fiber-optic skin that makes it almost completely invisible under normal conditions. At worst it will keep you up and running under brutal conditions. At best…you’ll be unstoppable! And it’s under development in a biotechnology lab at MIT, so security won’t be as bad as all that.”

And so here he was, suited and booted, and everything Bill had said was true. Boyd didn’t know if the adrenaline rush he was feeling was from the thrill of the chase, or as a result of the suit’s enhancement mechanisms, but he had never felt more powerful in his life.

He might decide to keep this prize after all.

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Undoing Schrödinger

by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 22, 2006 | Story

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

The sign over the cathouse door reads simply “Preacher’s”. There will be liquor up front, and women for sale out back. Pulling a stool up to the empty bar, I know I’m here for neither.

“What’ll it be?” She studies the lines on my face, waiting for a reply.

“Whisky, rocks” I pull out a crumpled pack of Marlboro’s, shake two free and offer one. “Smoke?”

“No thanks”, she answers, placing my drink on the bar. “Five bucks, run a tab?”

“Sure.” I speak around the cigarette clenched between my teeth.

“You look familiar.” There’s a glimmer of recognition, and she reconsiders the cigarette, helping herself. “Do I know you?” Retreating to the back bar, she searches my face quizzically while lighting the cigarette.

“Not exactly, but there’s an interesting story there.”

“Shoot.” Her reply is indifferent as she hoists herself up on the back bar, boots beneath wide denim cuffs bracing her against the cooler between us.

“You ever hear of a guy named Schrödinger?” She raises an eyebrow and shakes her head. “No? Well – pretty famous physicist in his day, he took issue with some quantum mechanics theories.” I pause for a quick slug of whisky. “He came up with this experiment where he’d stick a cat in a box, with some random killing mechanism, one where he could be sure of the cat’s inevitable demise. At any given moment there’s an even chance that the cat’s either alive or dead, but he suggests, based on the theory of the day, that at any given moment the cat is simultaneously alive and dead.” I pause here for moment, to see if she’s still with me, and continue.

“So, having had way too much time to think about this, I start to wonder, not about the cat being dead or alive so much as the future of each particular cat. See, if the cat is both dead and alive, then each cat has its own future, one where it lives, and one ‘sans le chat’. Schrödinger’s poor cat, being both alive and dead, finds itself existing in two possible futures.”

“It made me think about my own life.” I stop to drain my glass, spinning the ice around a few times before sliding it across the bar. “In eighty-seven, my Peugeot and I fought with a cement truck. I came out ok, but what if I didn’t? What if I lived and died? Then again in ninety, I took a bullet from some prick robbing a Sunoco. Same thing – what if I lived and died then? The more I thought about these possible forks in my past, more stood out. In ninety-five, there was one of me whose girlfriend slept with my best friend, and one of me whose girlfriend didn’t. I beat my best friend to death with a three wood, but again, one of me didn’t. There was one of me that married my faithful girlfriend, and one of me that skipped town. In ninety seven, after the married me saw his wife drive her car into a bridge abutment, one of me quit drinking, found God and moved down here to Nevada. That’s pretty obviously not the me you’re talking to now though.” I grin, which if it fazes her, doesn’t register on her freckled face. “While one of me was being born again, one of me was arrested for manslaughter. It was during my incarceration that I really tuned in to all the fragments of me, spread across all the parts of my fractured timeline.”

I stop here, motion to the empty glass, and light another cigarette. I’m looking to her now for some reaction, but she’s a blank slate. Maybe she’s heard shit like this every night her entire life and just puts up politely hoping for a good tip, or maybe this doesn’t sound that far out after all. I can’t tell, she just fills the glass and helps herself to another of my cigarettes.

“Anyways – it all pretty much came into focus then. I’d felt for a long time like I’d been spread too thin, like I wasn’t ever really all in one place. It took a while, but knowing where and when else I was, I started cleaning up, consolidating myself. There’s only two of me left now, which is what brings me here.”

“Up those stairs is the man that I remind you of, the Preacher that owns this place.” This wasn’t a question. “He’s the me that quit everything, the me that found God and never beat his best friend to death.” I smile now as I push the stool back, stand, and lean forward placing both palms on the bar. “How about you go up there and ask him to come down here. Probably best if you don’t stick around after that. When we’re done, there’ll just be one of me that lives, and one of me that doesn’t. Funny we wound up here though… I guess the universe really does have a sense of humor. Go on now, I’m likely to be expecting me.”

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