Firebirds Soaring (20 page)

When she got to the raunchy want ads in the back, she resurfaced and set the paper aside, leaving it for the next casual reader. Appie sauntered back into the shop, tossed her empty cup away, looked up at the clock. It was 8:20.

“Omigod!” Appie ran for the elevator, tapping her foot in impatience as it seemed to take forever to crawl up the shaft to her floor. She swiped her card and ran into her cubio, flinging herself into her workstation chair. The screen was flashing its “Warning: Unauthorized Entry” again, and Appie tapped in her password, grumbling, “Shuddup, I know, I know.”
Damn, Julio was right
, Appie thought.
Rapture of the Void makes you useless for the routine.

As soon as she logged on, there was an IM from Carolyn. “Appie, where have you been? Are you okay?”

Appie’s hands hovered over the keyboard. She was about to claim her alarm didn’t go off, but the company could check that sort of thing. So she stayed vague. “Sorry, lost track of time. I’ll work through lunch. Give me the schedule.”

Appie groaned as the day planner appeared on the screen. Database work this morning. Training in the afternoon. Several side tasks for “if you have time.” One of them was labeled “New designs from Mercator.” Pleased for any delay from the doldrums ahead, Appie clicked on it.

Another window opened to display two-piece unisex sets in black, gray, or white. They still looked like pajamas or gym gear, but as promised, they were covered with writing. Appie zoomed in for a close-up to read some of it.

Appie didn’t find it fun to read these, rather they annoyed her, like being nagged by an erudite parrot. She signed off on the project with a “Great, good job. Send me samples.” Just to get it out of her work queue. Then she descended into the slough of database hell.

She came up for air around ten A.M. Normally, Appie never took “breaks,” but with a shortened lunch coming up, a break seemed infinitely desirable. She could justify it by noodling some more on her notes regarding Mindportal. She looked around. Her laptop was gone.

Panic rising in her chest, Appie searched the area around her bed. No laptop. She stood on her toes and surveyed the cubio like an alert meerkat. There just wasn’t any room in the place for a laptop to be hidden. She remembered the security alert this morning and her panic deepened. Security was tight at Worldtree, but thieves were ever innovative and workplace theft still happened.
Someone knew I had left the cubio this morning
. It would be a bad blot on her record if she had to report it stolen and get it replaced. But it was Worldtree equipment with Worldtree software and data, and
not
reporting the loss would be worse. Worst of all, of course, was that it contained her notes on Mindportal.

Hands shaking, breathing rapidly, Appie sat down again at the workstation. She IM’ed Carolyn and willed her fingers to type the hardest words she’d ever written. “Carolyn, I think I’ve lost my laptop.”

The reply came back almost immediately. “No, you haven’t. Didn’t you read your e-mail this morning? IT took all the marketing laptops for a software upgrade. You should have it back tomorrow. Can I help you with anything?”

Appie sighed a long sigh. “No, thanks. Much relieved.” Well, that explained the security alert . . . except . . . wouldn’t IT have had the proper code so the alert would not have been triggered? Maybe it was a new guy. Appie returned to working on Excel spreadsheets, finding the marching numbers a soothing relief from panic mode, though the adrenaline coursing through her blood made concentration a challenge.

As noon rolled around, Appie felt more in control, more on an even keel again. Everything would be all right. She’d get her laptop back tomorrow and work on the Mindportal notes then. There was no rush, after all, since the project wasn’t on any company timetable.

She finally went to her e-mail page. Lots of messages. The one from IT this morning. A note from Rebecca, reminding Appie to send in the survey form.
How did she know I hadn’t?
wondered Appie. And then a new message appeared, with a bright red, flashing exclamation point beside it. From the VP of Marketing. Not a mass company mailing. It was only for her.

“Please come to my office as soon as you can.” That was it.

Appie read it three times to verify its reality. She numbly typed back a reply. “I’m on my way.” Everything was not going to be all right. She logged off, got up, and walked out the door, heading for the elevator like a convict headed for execution.

The VP’s office was on the forty-fifth floor. Appie stepped out into a lobby filled with light from floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on a genuine, excellent view of the city. The VP of Marketing had a huge corner office that was remarkably bare of furniture—a long desk, chairs, one filing cabinet, one set of wall cabinets, and that extraordinary view.

As soon as Appie entered, the man behind the desk got up and strode toward her, hand extended. He was gym tanned and ripped and wore a navy cashmere V-neck, khaki pants, Rolex watch. “Suits” never wore suits anymore. “Appomattox Kim? I don’t think we’ve formally met. George Huelva. Good of you to come right away. Have a seat.”

Appie pasted a smile on her face and sat down. “What is this about, sir?”

“Please, call me George. Sorry to call you in on your lunch hour. I was thinking of calling down for teriyaki. Want me to order something for you?”

“No, thanks.” Appie’s stomach felt like a black hole of fear. She couldn’t possibly eat.

George sat behind the desk again, leaned back in his ergo-chair, crossed one leg over another. He picked up a pen off the desk and began to play with it, turn-tap-turn-tap. “Appie, knowing the way gossip runs wild in a company like this, well, any company, we felt it was best to let you know officially, so that you wouldn’t get the wrong impression.”

“Let me know what?”

“This morning we decided to let Julio Tanaka go.”

Appie’s stomach seemed to jerk sideways. This was not the particular bad news she was expecting. “Julio? He’s been . . . fired?” Her first thought, of course, was,
Did I have something to do with it?

Anticipating her thought, George said, “We understand you were just on vacation with him, and I want to assure you it had nothing to do with that. Per se.”

Per se?
Slowly, Appie asked, “If I may, George, why was he . . . terminated?”

George gazed aside out the huge windows, raised the pen to his upper lip, and twirled it horizontally beneath his nose in unconscious imitation of a melodrama villain’s mustache. “Obviously it would be inappropriate to comment on the details. But suffice it to say that Worldtree has no place in it for cowards.”

“Cowards,” Appie echoed without inflection. She couldn’t possibly think of any way that Julio matched the description of coward. If anything, she thought he was recklessly bold. “But I thought he was almost a five-star, sir—George.”

George nodded and returned the pen to the desk. Turn-tap-turn-tap. “A grave disappointment, certainly. But I expect you’re wondering what this has to do with you.”

Appie’s turn to nod. “Of course.”

George sighed and looked again out the window wall. “There was a project we had assigned to Julio. A very important project. We have learned that he chose to hand that project off to someone else. It has turned out that someone was you.”

The pit in Appie’s stomach sank deeper. As if that were possible. No need to dispute the fact or ask how Worldtree knew this. “Yes, he did,” Appie said softly.

“May I ask why you didn’t tell anyone about this?” Turn-tap. Turn-tap.

There was only one possibly acceptable answer. “Ambition. He told me it could make my career. I believed him. I wanted to wait to make the big splash. So I wanted to wait until I had developed a proper assessment before telling anyone.”

George nodded again. He pushed back in his chair and crossed his arms on his chest. “Well, I want to assure you right away, Appie, that you’re not in trouble. Julio may have chosen to do the wrong thing, but we think his instincts may have been right. We’ve been watching your progress, and we think you show great promise. Great promise.”

“Thank you.” Appie still didn’t dare breathe.

“So. The Mindportal project is yours. And I have to tell you, Harold is very interested in this client.
Very
interested.” Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

Harold would be Harold Staffer, conservative, brilliant, quirky CEO of Worldtree, who had taken it from a small consulting office to the global spiderweb it was today.

“Oh. Wow,” was all Appie could say in reply.

Suddenly all smiles, George sat up and leaned forward on the desk. “So tell me—I know you’ve met with the people at Mindportal and made some notes—tell me what you think. Give me your preliminary assessment.”

“But . . . I’m still working on the notes,” Appie said, delaying for time to think.

George shook his head, waving the pen around. “C’mon, c’mon, this is marketing! The first impression is always right. Tell me what you think.”

“Well,” Appie sat back. For some reason the quotes on the clothing came back to haunt her.
Goodness without wisdom . . . impose the law of its being . . . If not now, when?
Her hands, gathered in her lap, opened up, as if holding an offering. Sunlight, tinted golden by passing clouds, spilled through the window wall into her open hands, momentarily dazzling her. She felt strangely removed, sitting as if hovering in space. Some combination of fear and awareness that this moment was Very Important joined to create a mental space of its own. A dizziness that was not dizziness momentarily took her, as if she were suddenly weightless, as if magnets moved against her mind. She felt it, the Connectedness-of-All-Things. She understood that she sat at a fulcrum of a mutable future, dependent on her action in this moment. And then the moment passed, leaving behind a feeling of calm, courage, and certainty. She looked up at George, knowing what she had to say. “It’s a bad idea.”

His smile turned to a scowl instantaneously. “What is?”

“The intention is that Worldtree will use the Mindportal helmet as a morale booster for employees and the Mindportal company is looking at this application as a way to gain user acceptance, right?”

George sat back, still scowling. “In a nutshell. But your notes seemed overwhelmingly positive.”

So they had seen the notes. Damn them.
“The notes were incomplete. I hadn’t gotten to outlining the downside yet.”

“What downside?”

She ticked off on her fingers. “One. It’s lawsuit hell. As soon as the first employee has an epileptic fit—”

“But the stats say the device is no more dangerous than a cell phone—”

“And you might recall certain wireless companies paid out millions in settlements. Doesn’t matter how safe the helmet actually is. We’ll have to spend bundles proving it isn’t. Two, religious rights.”

“What? This has nothing to do with religion!”

Appie shook her head like a stubborn bull. “Even the people at Mindportal implied there was a spiritual element. A certain number of employees will refuse to use the device on religious grounds. Again, lawsuits may ensue. Legal can tell you how sticky those will be. And if there’s
any
impression that Worldtree is trying to create a corporate cult”—
As I suspect they may hope to,
Appie added to herself—“the media would have a field day. Stock would tank. Stockholders would flee in disgust.”

“But—”

“Three!” Appie announced, taking a deep breath because now she would have to lie, even though it was for a good cause. “The Mindportal device will not create more productive workers. Julio saw this, and that may be why he didn’t want to touch the project. He called it Rapture of the Void, falling in love with nature, what have you. It takes you out of the mundane. You feel more calm, yes, but then the last thing you want is to go to work. You’re more likely to dwell on big-picture questions.”

“Big picture?” echoed George, undoubtedly imagining Worldtree as the only big picture worth discussing.

“Yeah. Family, environment, poverty . . .”

George blew air out between his lips in disgust. “Opt-out shit.”

“That’s my point,” said Appie. “And remember the marketing truism that Happy People Don’t Buy Stuff. The people at Mindportal confided to me that they hoped this device could eventually bring world peace, an end to war.” Take that, Harold, who was reported to have major investments in military-industrial companies. She hoped he was listening in.

“Hah!”

“They have their own agenda, George, and it’s not the same as Worldtree’s. It’s a bad idea, George.
Especially
if it works as Mindportal claims.” And that Appie was able to state with absolute conviction.

George stared at her, biting his lower lip, arms folded again across his chest. “That’s your assessment?”

“Yes, it is.”

His nostrils flared and he stared out of the window for long moments. He stabbed the pen into his desk blotter once. Twice. “All right. Thanks. Write me up a full report and I’ll send it on.”

Appie quoted another aphorism she had seen on Mercator’s clothing. “The truth will set you free. But first it will make you miserable.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go on. We’ll be in touch.”

Appie left his office and got into the elevator feeling . . . immense relief. It was all going to be okay. Just not in the way she’d expected. She returned to her cubio and typed up the points she had just outlined to the Marketing VP. She then e-mailed the report to George, with a blind carbon copy to Rebecca the Conduit, who read everything and passed it on. “Ooops,” Appie said with a smile.
Worldtree might take our time, our lives, our ovaries. But they will not take our souls.