The Corporation

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SUNDAY WAS A whirlwind.

She went to sleep finally at 4:30 a.m., physically exhausted but mentally wired, still fretting over everything she’d learned. She tossed and turned for an hour and finally arose at 5:30 to take a sedative—she always traveled with them because she always slept badly when she was away from home on a business trip, and she dropped off like a stone fifteen minutes later. She finally arose at twelve-thirty p.m. to the ring-tone of her cellular.

She groped for it. “Hello?”

It was Donald. “Michelle, we’re here.”

“Where are you?” She forced herself to wake up. She sat up in bed.

“On the outskirts of the city. Jay’s driving. We’re going to find a cheap motel and check in. I’ll call you later.”

“Great!”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes. “Just… sleepy.”

“We’ll talk later, okay?”

“Yeah. I need to take a shower and wake up.”

The shower made her feel better, and as she was toweling her hair dry, Alan called. “Sam hasn’t called yet?”

“No.” She had slipped on a pair of panties and was wearing nothing else. “Will he?”

“He might try to get you to do some work. This is supposed to be a day off. If he does call, make an excuse.”

“I can tell him I have a migraine.”

“Better yet, tell him you’re gearing up for Monday. He’ll like that.”

Michelle nodded, inspecting herself in the mirror. Her hair was wet and lay limply against her shoulder blades. “In light of what I learned last night, I suppose he will.”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Terrible. I finally took a sleeping pill.”

“Feel rested enough?”

“I suppose.” She quickly debated on whether to tell him her boyfriend and Jay O’Rourke were in town, then decided to take the plunge. “Jay found out where I live and drove out while I was in El Paso. He felt I was the only person he could trust, that since I was new to Corporate Financial I must not be like the rest of them. And… with what you told me last night I can see now how perceptive he was.”

“I can see why you didn’t mention anything to us last night,” Alan said. “When I first became aware of what was going on, of what Corporate Financial was doing, I couldn’t believe it myself. I didn’t want to believe it; couldn’t believe what I was seeing and experiencing, but finally I had to see it for what it is. Plus, enough of my close friends and co-workers were experiencing the same things, although not to such a degree. And other friends… they started changing drastically, just like the people Rachel knew at Graham Electronics. Once I started looking into stuff on my own and connecting the dots, the evidence was there and I became a believer. I’ve become more of a believer once I got in with the Coalition.”

“And what’s your story?” Michelle asked.

“Similar to Rachel’s,” Alan said. She heard him sigh over the phone. “Only difference is I was a real yuppie. Got my BA and MBA from the University of Missouri in Kansas City, moved to Los Angeles and got a job at a brokerage firm. Met a woman there who I fell madly in love with. Her name was Susan Vickers. We were very much committed to each other. Susan and I moved in together and I thought everything was going great. It wasn’t until we were together for something like ten years that I realized she was not the person I thought she was. At the time I was very career-oriented, very much into what I did for a living, but I always made time for vacations and leisure. I couldn’t get Susan to do anything outside of work; had to practically pry her away from her desk at the office to get her to go on vacation with me. That’s when I started noticing the differences, both in my relationship with her and in the general business climate around me.”

“Was Corporate Financial Consultants working with your employer?” Michelle asked.

“Yes, they were. I didn’t make that connection right away at first. That came later. What happened first was I broke up with Susan. It was hard on me, harder than I thought it would be. She didn’t…” Alan sounded like he was trying to find the right words to say. “…take the breakup like I thought she would. It was like it didn’t faze her, like she didn’t care. That’s what hurt me the most, the fact that she didn’t seem to see that I was hurting inside and she didn’t really care about our relationship at all.”

“Was she… one of them?”

There was a pause on the line. Then, softly, Alan said, “Yes. I found that out later. Five years into our relationship Susan started working with Corporate Financial on a huge project and was gone for months at a time with them. Once I started piecing things together on my own, I put two and two together. And… I realized it was mid-way through our time together that she began to… to turn… into one of them. And I… I didn’t even notice!”

Michelle felt the hairs along the back of her arm bristle. “You think she was trying to turn you at the time?”

“I don’t know,” Alan said quickly. “I really don’t think so… I met enough of those consultants at the time that I’m sure they tried to get to me but… I just don’t know.”

“So how long’s it been since you haven’t been with Susan?” Michelle asked.

“Six years,” Alan said, quietly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” There was another short pause and then Alan said, “When I started finding out what’s going on, it just made me more determined to fight them. They took the love of my life, totally destroyed her, and they’ve done it to so many other people who don’t have a clue to what’s going on or what’s really happened to their loved ones. I’m going to stop them.”

Michelle understood where Alan was coming from. If she were in his shoes she’d feel the same way, but part of her was a little afraid of what was happening. Every time she stopped to think about the scope of this thing, it terrified her.

“So what are we doing today?” Michelle asked.

“Lay low and rest,” Alan said. “Try not to go out today if you can. Order room service. Punch up some movies on the TV. You can put it on your expense account.”

Michelle laughed.

“Aside from that, if Gary Lawrence or anybody at Corporate Financial tries to contact you today and get you to work, politely beg off. And tomorrow come prepared to step back into the role.”

“Do you know what’s planned for tomorrow?”

“No.” Alan sounded a little concerned about this. “I have my suspicions, though. I plan to be at this first meeting. In fact, I requested to Sam that I want to be on this project with you. There’s a good chance that tomorrow will simply be a preliminary meeting and they’ll send you home after that.”

“You think so?” Michelle didn’t want to get her hopes up.

“It’s possible. I can’t promise it, but…” There was that hesitation again. “I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just… I didn’t really see the need for them to call you out here so quickly for this particular client unless Sam and Gary had something specific in mind.”

“Like what?”

Alan sighed. “I don’t know. And I don’t want to speculate more without doing some more digging.”

Michelle couldn’t help but feel a twinge of unease at the sound of Alan’s voice. After promising to stay in her room and get as much rest as possible and limit her phone calls from the LAN line inside the room, they ended the conversation and Michelle finished dressing. By the time she finished it was well after one o’clock and she was ravenous. After a quick consultation with the room service menu, she ordered a roast beef sandwich, a chef salad with ranch dressing, and a bottle of Evian water, and relaxed on the bed with the news.

The lead news story grabbed her attention. In what was being described as the worst incident of workplace violence in the United States, Victor Adams, a distraught thirty-seven year old former employee of Free State Insurance Company, went on a rampage Friday morning at the corporate headquarters of his former employer, killing the entire executive staff and over a dozen other people, most of them described as upper-manager types. He’d arrived at the building armed with various semi-assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols, and several hundred rounds of ammunition. The rampage had caused pure pandemonium at the sprawling corporate headquarters of the insurance giant, which was located in Orange County, California. “I just hid under the desk of my cubicle,” a frightened-looking dark-haired woman told the news anchor during one of the news broadcasts. “He passed right by me. He actually walked down every aisle of my department like he was looking for specific people. He wasn’t just shooting everybody, he was targeting upper management.”

Michelle picked up her cellular phone and dialed Donald’s cell number, unable to completely turn her attention away from the coverage. When he answered she blurted out, “Did you hear about that guy who killed all those people in California?”

“Yes, I did,” Donald said. “Jay and I have been following it.”

“Free State is one of Corporate Financial Consultant’s clients,” Michelle said. Everything she had not wanted to believe was now crashing down heavily on her, weighing in with its stark reality.

“That’s what we figured,” Donald said. She heard Jay in the background and then Donald came back on the line. “Listen, Jay is going out to an electronics store for some stuff. Think you can sneak away for an hour or two later this evening?”

“If I can, I’d like to.” She’d do anything now to see Donald and hold him in her arms.

“Can you give me Alan’s cell number? I’d like to talk to him.”

“Sure.” Michelle retrieved the number from her daytimer and rattled it off to him. “He knows you’re here by the way. I told him this morning.”

“Good. Jay wants to talk to him, too.”

“I’m scared.” Michelle felt the first crumbles of fear start to tear into her.

“I know, honey. We’re going to do everything we can to find out what the hell’s going wrong.”

“I can just quit,” she said quickly. “I don’t need this job, I can get another job somewhere else. I won’t make as much money, but—”

“But it isn’t about the job anymore,” Donald said. “It goes a lot deeper than that now.”

The wall crumbled faster. Michelle drew in a breath and nodded, realizing he was right. “I’m just so scared. I never wanted any of this… never wanted to play a part in this… this… whatever this is! I never even wanted a career in the corporate world! You know that! I just want to live quietly and not have any trouble and be happy and be with you and… and that’s it! I just don’t want to deal with this!”

“I don’t want to deal with it either, but we have to,” Donald said, his voice soothing and calming. “They’re getting stronger. You feel that, don’t you?”

Michelle nodded. “Yes.”

“The things I’ve seen in Health Care, what you’ve seen throughout the business world, what we’re seeing happening throughout the country… this is big stuff, hon. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. Jay and I did a lot of talking last night and we did some research on the Internet this morning. Corporate Financial has worked in some capacity with almost every major corporation in the country. I looked into the corporate profits and CEO bonuses for all these companies and found out that all of the top executives nearly quadrupled their pay within the past decade while company profits remained stagnant. That’s pretty significant, don’t you think?”

“It is,” Michelle said. “Alan and Rachel told me some stuff last night that is just… mind boggling.”

“Who’s Rachel?”

“A woman who’s on our side.” Michelle gave Donald a quick recap of her conversation with Alan and Rachel late last night. Donald was silent as she spun the tale out, and when she got to the part about Hubert Marstein’s occult interests she thought he would scoff; he didn’t. “I know it sounds silly,” she said. “But… well, shit, Jay will admit it! Some of these people we were working with weren’t… alive! I mean, they acted like they were alive but they were like… animated or something. Like they were being controlled. And I felt that way about Dennis Harrington and Alma Smith.”

“The Red Rose execs come across that way to me, too,” Donald said. His voice sounded grave. “And I think we all need to be on the same page. Let me talk to Alan. I’ll call you a little later.”

“Okay. I love you, Don!”

“I love you, too.”

When she hung up she turned her attention back to the news coverage of Victor Adams’s rampage. A moment later there was a knock on her door. Room Service. A hotel employee wheeled a metal cart bearing her lunch into the room and left. Michelle ate her lunch quietly, her attention riveted to what was now being trumpeted as the Free State Insurance Massacre. Halfway through her salad a more detailed account of who the victims were flashed on the screen—the entire executive branch of Free State Insurance and some of the board of directors, and twelve other people, men and women, who were described by company personnel as upper managers. Human interest stories focusing on specific victims began to play; the dedicated company man who left behind a wife and young son; the doting grandfather who’d been with the company for thirty years; the hardworking woman who left behind a tearful husband and two young children. These were normal people, normal American citizens, the news anchor said, and their only crime was they’d shown up to work that day.

There’s got to be more to it than that, Michelle thought. She focused on the name of one of the victims, Ken Atkins, who was shot in his office as Victor Adams barreled into the IT division. She wrote the words Free State Insurance IT department and Orange County, California on a notepad and circled them. Then, when she was finished with her lunch, she went to the desk where she’d placed her laptop and booted the unit up.

Once she accessed the hotel’s WiFi network she spent the next three hours researching Ken Atkins’s name on the Internet as the news feed broadcast in the background. It took awhile—Google searches, trolling information technology message boards and blogs, but she found what she needed to know. The references were vague and infrequent, but they were enough for her to form an opinion. Ken Atkins had been regarded by his employees as an aloof asshole, an insensitive bastard of a manager who was a complete workaholic and expected not only his employees, but his fellow co-workers, to keep sixty and seventy hour work-weeks. Those that failed or refused were disciplined harshly, eventually being terminated. Others quit before termination could occur. Michelle jotted down notes, copied message board texts into word files and saved them in a special folder she created on her desktop and continued her research. It was obvious from even the scant information she was able to dig up—three or four anecdotes on various message boards frequented by IT professionals who talked shop and vented on the daily frustrations of their jobs, that this was more than enough to convince her. Ken Atkins hadn’t been just a family man—he’d been a corporate zombie masquerading as a normal, average American citizen. The media was extolling his family life, reporting that he’d simply been an average man who went to work that morning to provide for his family and was gunned down. They weren’t reporting that he was a corporate monster who terrorized his employees, threatened to fire them if they didn’t submit to his will or demand that they cease to have a life outside of the office. None of that was being taken into account.

Michelle would have bet a year’s salary that if she did similar research on the names of the other murder victims she would have learned similar stories.

Alan Crawford called a little after five p.m. “I talked to Jay and Donald,” he said. “We want to get together tonight. All of us. Get you up to speed with what’s happening.”

“Okay. Where?”

“It’s going to have to be after midnight again,” Alan said. “More like three a.m., when they’re more sedate. They tend to recharge in the hours between midnight and six a.m. They may behave like vampires in a way—sucking the life force out of companies and the people who work for them—but they pretty much live and operate by daylight. So let’s say three a.m., my white Datsun again in the parking lot of the hotel.”

“I’ll be there,” Michelle said.

“How are you doing?”

“Okay.” Michelle told him what she’d learned about Ken Atkins. “The media isn’t reporting any of this. I’ve kept the news on all afternoon and there’s been nothing, not even anything about the personal lives of the executives Victor Adams killed.”

“All of the major media outlets have become Corporate Financial Consultant clients,” Alan said. “They’re going to keep all coverage of the people who were killed in this incident as heart-warming as possible. It would be seen as bad press to report disparagingly on the deceased, especially in light of this incident. Would make for bad ratings.”

“So what are we going to talk about tonight?”

“Not on the phone. Has anybody from Corporate Financial contacted you today?”

“No.”

“They still might. If they do, remember to beg off. We’ll get you up to speed tonight at three.”

“Donald and Jay… are they up to speed on everything?”

Michelle detected the briefest pause on Alan’s side of the connection before he responded. “Yes, they are. And they’re prepared. Which is why I want you to rest. You’re going to need to be prepared, too.”

“Prepared for what?” Michelle was getting tired of being given the runaround. “I need to know what the hell’s going on!”

“I didn’t want to mention it earlier, but I’ve since learned some things. And… well… I have every reason to believe that you’re going to be taken to company headquarters tomorrow,” Alan said. “If so, I need you to be alert and ready. You need to learn what Rachel and I found out today, what Jay and Donald know now. Jay has already done the preliminary work and has secured an electronic tracking device, as well as some electronic surveillance equipment.”

“Company headquarters in California?” Michelle knew the corporate headquarters for Corporate Financial was located in the rich, fertile region of the San Joaquin Valley. She’d seen photos of it in company brochures which depicted a sprawling, modern four story structure situated far on the outskirts of a town nestled at the foothills of the Sierra-Nevada’s. “They’re going to fly me out there tomorrow? How do you know this?”

“Intuition.” Alan paused for a moment. “Look, I have pretty strong suspicions they’re going to send you out there. Gary and Sam are extremely interested in you. You’ve played the corporate part so well that you have them totally convinced you’re not only prime material, they want to turn you immediately. They’re going to want to send you to Corporate Headquarters ASAP for some immersion training. They do this with all the consultants they feel are prime material. You definitely fit that bill.”

“Did you get sent to California for this immersion training?”

“No.” There was a sense of tension in the air that Michelle detected immediately. If they were in any other social setting, Michelle would have interpreted it as jealousy from Alan. But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. “Believe it or not, not every employee of Corporate Financial becomes immersed. Likewise, not all of the employees of their client companies become immersed. They tend to focus on the emotionally vulnerable, people with low self-esteem, who embrace their work because it’s really all they have.”

“I’m not like that and you know it!”

“I know that,” Alan said. “And you know that. But they don’t know that, even after all the background checks and psychological profiles they’ve done on you.”

“Background checks? Psychological profiles?”

“It’s done on every candidate who applies for a position with Corporate Financial. You aren’t even aware of it. They probe into your financial records, do criminal record checks, perform light surveillance. What they witnessed was a more or less single woman in a committed relationship who is dedicated to her work. You fooled them well.”

Michelle didn’t know what to say. She usually pulled out all the stops whenever she interviewed for a position, and she always kept her private life very well hidden. Her personal life wasn’t her employer’s business. Personal references were always limited to former co-workers, never personal friends or family members. “So they snooped on me. What did they find out?”

“The same thing I told you when I revealed my undercover nature to you yesterday,” Alan said. “I got a look at the file they compiled on you.”

Michelle didn’t know whether to be furious or afraid; she let the matter drop and plunged ahead. “Fine. So now you and they know every detail of my personal life. What else do you want to know? How many times I’ve smoked pot or how many extra-marital affairs I’ve had?”

Alan ignored the question and remained focused. “The important part to remember is they think you fit their bill. You have an immense talent at playing the role of the obsessed corporate worker. You make other white-collar professionals who are obsessed with their work and nothing else feel vindicated in their obsessiveness, that they can trust you, you’re like them. They take you into their confidence. When you perform your duties to their expectations, they’re happy. When you perform your duties and behave like them you earn their respect. This has happened with the higher echelon of Corporate Financial, who have come to regard you as one of them. They want you to become one of them, and for that you must go to California to undergo immersion.”

“But that’s what I don’t understand,” Michelle said. She moved away from the desk, away from the laptop and began pacing the room. “You obviously fooled them! Why do they want me?”

Alan’s voice was low, serious. “How long has it been since you’ve seen or heard from your parents, Michelle?”

Michelle froze; she felt her skin bristle. “Does this have anything to do with my parents?”

“In a way, yes,” Alan said. Michelle detected hesitancy in his voice.

“They want me because my parents…” The words were hard to come by; Michelle tried to formulate her thoughts but her emotions were overriding. She took a deep breath to compose her thoughts. “It’s my parent’s, isn’t it? My parents are… immersed… is that what you call it?”

“That’s right,” Alan said.

“What does… this mean? Immersion?”

“It means you become one with the company,” Alan said. It sounded like he was choosing his words carefully. “You become part of it, they become part of you. It’s like… you become an extension of the company, a perfect worker bee who exists solely to live and work for the company and sustain its life force. Like I said, not every consultant becomes immersed, and not every employee of Corporate Financial’s client companies become immersed. Those that don’t become… well, they become slaves.”

“Slaves,” Michelle whispered.

“Yes, Michelle. Slaves.”

“But surely there’s some people who don’t put up with that kind of bullshit. People quit their jobs all the time due to over-demanding bosses and exploitive labor practices.”

“Yes they do. But that’s all going to come to an end soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s pending legislation in the House and Senate that will tip the scales very heavily in the favor large corporations over their employees. Much of this legislation has been passed little by little over the last ten years—repealing overtime pay for non-clerical and non white-collar office workers a few years ago was one of them. There’ve been others over the years that appear less obvious, but one of the bills currently before Congress will be even more sweeping. It will guarantee that if an employee voluntarily leaves his place of employment or is fired for any kind of disciplinary action including failure to perform his or her duties to the satisfaction of the company, other companies can bar them from employment. Of course this would be at the other employer’s discretion.”

Michelle was adding this all up in her head and found the implications horrifying. “But that would be…”

“Illegal? Not really. Our government is being influenced by them, so they’re changing the laws to benefit them. Horrifying? A form of blacklisting? Sure. It would also essentially force people to remain in their positions, otherwise they’d have no source of income. Of course, lots of people are self-employed or work at small companies away from Corporate Financial’s influence. They won’t be affected… at least not yet. But the people who work at companies that will be affected? Should they leave or be fired they would be unable to find a job at another firm because by the time this legislation goes into effect, every company in the United States, large and small, will be controlled by Corporate Financial Consultants and will be not only using their methods, but will themselves be immersed.”

The dread Michelle was feeling now had never felt so heavy. It felt like the weight of the world was crashing down on her, smothering her. Part of her wanted to just end it all now, pack up her stuff, call Donald, tell him she was leaving Chicago, driving back to Pennsylvania and getting her stuff and fleeing somewhere, anywhere, away from the madness of the twenty-first century with all its global-speak and emphasis on twenty-four seven. But another part of her insisted that this was her fight, that it had been her fight since she was a child and was forced to grow up in a loveless home while her parents worked and slaved away at jobs that brought stability and a roof over their heads but nothing else—no love, no emotional security, no sense of warmth or human kindness. It was her fight now because she had been thrust into this environment at an early age, right after high school, and had been forced to endure the icy tone of her mother’s voice when she learned she was pregnant with Alanis, had lived through hearing her mother tell her to get rid of her unborn daughter lest it ruin her career with the company. It was her fight because she had seen the light shortly after losing Alanis that the great monolithic machines of corporations, those entities that were human-powered, had lost something. It was no longer a goal to make money and turn a profit. It was no longer enough to simply do well in business and serve your customers and community. It was no longer enough to strive to be the best you can be in your chosen industry. Now companies had to encompass all, had to control all, including the very people that had created them and worked at making them what they were.

She thought about what Alan and Rachel told her last night, about Hubert Marstein’s supposed occult interests and she shuddered. She imagined Frank Marstein carrying out his father’s will somewhere in some isolated mansion, praying to some dark god in order to gain even more riches, more control. As a strict Agnostic, Michelle didn’t believe in a literal devil or even in God for that matter. But she always had a firm belief in the spiritual life and had always felt that it was neither benign or malignant. It could either do harm or good, depending on the will of the person who believed. Certain people had negative vibes and positive ones; she’d met enough people over the years from all walks of life who exhibited both. If Frank Marstein had poured enough of his negative energy into some kind of force that was strong enough, and had surrounded himself with people with similar dark agendas, wouldn’t that feed off one another and grow in time? And by utilizing whatever training methods—immersion or whatever it was Alan Perkins called it—couldn’t that be like some form of mind control? Brain-washing even?

“Michelle?” It was Alan. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Michelle said, the answer becoming clear to her now. She gripped the cell phone tightly in her hand and sat down on the unmade bed. “It’s just… thinking about it, everything you told me is so… overwhelming.”

“But you understand,” Alan said. “Right?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then you know what must be done? Why Corporate Financial wants you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know why the Coalition sees you as so important,” Alan continued, his voice measured and even. “None of us have been granted this opportunity. None of us have been able to penetrate Corporate Financial Headquarters. You see why time is of the essence?”

The implications were too obvious. There was no other way. Michelle saw that now. “If they do take me to company headquarters tomorrow, I’ll be prepared.”

“You know what it is we’re going to want you to do?”

“I have an idea.”

“And what’s your idea?”

“You want me to destroy them somehow.”

“Not just them,” Alan said. “But a specific area in the building. Specific people.”

“How will—”

“Not over the phone. Tonight, at three. We have a hastily assembled plan. We’ll talk about it then.”

“Okay.” Despite all she’d learned and the task that had been laid out for her, Michelle Dowling felt a strange sense of calm wash over her. It felt like everything she had been through in life with its many triumphs and failures had led her to this place, for this particular purpose. She was awakening to the fact that she had been semi-conscious for the past decade to what was really going on in the business world, that Corporate Financial was secretly taking over the lives and souls of the human race, turning them into a relentless hive of worker drones to sustain its own malevolent life force, a life force that had been born from the dark biddings of a ruthless, overzealous businessman over eighty years ago who believed that if he tapped into the demonic forces of his faith, they would grant him incredible power.

Had that power gone out of control? Or was this what Hubert and Frank Marstein had in mind all along? The enslavement of the human race to do their bidding.

“Three o’clock?” Alan asked. For the first time, Michelle detected a sense of hope in his voice.

“I’ll be there,” Michelle said.