Everyone had laughed, thinking that it was some kind of joke. What a card our new owner and CEO is. What a pip. What a pistol.
The next day, he had another meeting. It was also agenda-less, wandering and seemingly unconnected with any action that could cost or save the company money. Edwin once again stood, buttoned his coat and said, "You are all fired." This time someone had the temerity to laugh while he was still in the room.
Edwin did not attend a third meeting. He let a week and a half pass. When the next paychecks went out, everyone he had fired received an envelope in the mail. Instead of a check, there was an invoice for office rentals and administrative support services pro-rated from the date of termination.
Several employees came to plead with Edwin. They needed their jobs. They couldn't understand why they had been fired. Some of them had been with the company a very long time, and after all these years of service…?
Edwin listened patiently to each of them. And then he said, "You are welcome to keep coming in each day, but we must charge you rent. We are a business, not a charity. We have responsibilities to our shareholders."
One man, fat, outraged and red in the face had said, "But you are the majority stockholder!"
"Yes, and you have not lived up to your responsibilities. Good luck in your future endeavors."
In the end, Omdemnity Insurance still had wasteful meetings. But Edwin neither saw nor heard of them, so his problem was solved. And he was freed up to really get to work.
He began his search for a specific kind of employee. Something more than just replacements for the useless men he had fired. Edwin created for them a very special and rigorous training course. One out of every 10 candidates graduated. Nothing was graded on a curve. And after a year, Edwin had produced a cadre of the most ruthless and efficient businessmen the insurance industry (and perhaps the world) had ever seen.
He called them The Adjustors. In a normal insurance company, an adjustor was a person who adjusted the numbers to fit reality. Not so with Omdemnity Adjustors. These men adjusted reality to fit the numbers. After all, reality is messy. Reality is whimsically cruel and imprecise. Numbers could be pure in a way the real world could never be.
As magnificent as the Adjustors were, they were not enough. One could not win a war with Special Forces alone. So Edwin had written page after page of policy and procedure. After a year of work he had described the roles and responsibility of every last employee in Omdemnity Insurance. He had created an elegant, interlocking system of rewards and punishments, rights and responsibilities. His genius had created a system designed to be staffed by idiots. By the time he was done, he had poured his heart into this work—and his grief as well.
Though it was a poor replacement for her, when he thought of this system, he called it Agnes.
As Topper stomped up the front steps, he thought, Yeah, I'm definitely quitting now. Soaked to the skin, even his considerable fury wasn't enough to keep him warm. He was never putting up with this shit again. Unh-unh, no way. He was going to make an angry beeline to Edwin's office, sting him a few times with insults and fly away as free as a metaphor gone bad. Yeah, he thought, as his waddle lengthened into a damp swagger—that's how I roll—weird and loose baby. Weird and loose. Nothing’s gonna slow me down.
Except that.
On the steps of Omdemnity Building One, a small boy sat hugging his knees and crying. Topper had seen a lot of strange things in his time with Edwin Windsor. After dealing with men who could fly or thought themselves the reincarnation of Charlemagne—and one guy with terrible psoriasis who claimed the absolutely useless power to be able to talk to fish—he didn't think there was anything left that could surprise him. He was wrong.
"Hey, little fella, are you okay?"
With eyes filled with tears, the boy peered over the top of his knees at Topper. "Did your Daddy bring you here too?" he asked.
"What? No, no. I'm not a kid. I'm just short, powerfully built and irresistible to women of a certain persua… anyway, that's not important. Why ya crying? Why ya sittin’ out here? It's colder than a witch’s tit."
"They were mean to me."
"Okay, okay. That makes sense. 'They' were pretty crappy to me too, when I was your size. It's okay: you're gonna grow up big and tall and strong and then you can beat them up, see?"
"I don't want to beat anybody up," the boy said without looking up.
"But it will be EASY!" Topper said, "They'll be all old and wrinkly by then and you can push them and their walkers over and say, 'Hah. That's what ya get for picking on the little guy.'"
"Did they push you down in the snow?"
"Yeah kid, lotsa times. But I always get back up again."
Just then a scared man in the garb of an Adjustor came stumbling out of the building. It was Jerry. For every rule, there is an exception. For every set, there is an outlier. Such was Jerry. He was the one Adjustor who didn't fit. A good egg trying as hard as he could to fit in a bad basket. In the past, Jerry had been a source of great amusement to Topper; just now, Topper couldn't remember what the joke was.
"Oh, thank God, is he okay?" said Jerry.
Topper was pretty sure Adjustors were forbidden, by policy, to believe in God, but he gave that a pass and said, "Aside from some hurt feelin's, yeah, I think he is. What happened?"
Jerry hugged his boy as if he was afraid someone would take him away. Which, given the kinds of things Omdemnity Insurance did, was a reasonable worry. "Oh, God, how am I going to get him home? I'm late for work as it is." He stroked Timmy's head frantically and Topper noticed that Jerry was shaking. Then Jerry's eyes snapped up to Topper. "Did you hurt him?"
"No. NO! I just found him sitting here. Come on, I'm a bad guy, but I'm not a fucking asshole." Topper quickly covered his mouth. "Sorry, I don't spend much time around kids. What are you doing bringing a kid here anyway?"
"It's National Bring Your Kid to Work Day."
"Jerry, we don't have a Bring Your Kid to Work Day."
"But I thought… Oh, jeeze, I'm so stupid."
Topper looked at father and son for a moment and then said, "Take him home, Jerry, Omdemnity's President of Vice commands it. This is no place for a kid. Ya gonna be okay, kid. Ya gotta good Dad—a little stupid about where he works, but he's gonna take care of you. Ya gonna grow up big and strong and nobody's gonna bother you again."
Little Timmy nodded and made a snuffling noise as he wiped away tears with the back of his wrist.
Topper looked up at Jerry and said, "He's gonna be okay, y'know. Take it from me, little guys are tougher than you think."
As Jerry carried his son off into the parking lot, Topper called after him, "Ya know, you're a real jerk for bringing your kid to a place like this!" But inside, he wished his Dad had cared enough to take him into work. Hell, he wished his Dad had cared even enough to stick around after he was born.
Topper pushed his way into the lobby, grateful for the warmth. In the middle of the grey, utilitarian room stood a flat-faced security guard. He seemed to be cloned from the same shaven-headed, gut-bulging model they all seem to be cloned from. As the guard looked at Topper his expression didn't change. Topper didn't like that. He believed it was important to get a reaction out of people. Good, bad, didn't matter. But indifferent was unacceptable.
Topper walked up and invaded the guard’s personal, bad-touch space. It was an old trick. He learned early on that no matter how big or strong a man might be, he was always protective of his crotch. There was no arguing with such a primal fear. And, at Topper's height, every twitch of the head or hand gesture could be interpreted by the brain stem as a potential attack. In spite of his tough-guy attitude, the security guard took a half-step back.
Topper said, "Okay, now that I've got your undivided attention, what happened with the little kid?"
The security guard's eyes crossed a little bit as he tried to figure out the correct response. Topper could almost see his mind turning the carefully memorized pages of a procedure manual. Topper decided to help him out. And mess with him at the same time.
"So, yer, uh, rulebook there, it makes an exception for me, right?" Topper asked as he took another step forward towards the man's balls. Instinctively, the security guard flinched and took a half step back.
"Well, it's not in the rules, but my supervisor—"
Topper advanced again, "So I'm probably pretty important, right?"
"I, well, uh"
"Duh, duh, duh," Topper mimicked him. Then he presented his business card. It was an innocuous motion at most times, but the speed and intensity with which he did it, at a very dangerous height, caused the security guard to jump slightly. He took the card and read, "President of Vice."
"That's right. I'm the Vice-President of this whole shebang. Not exactly a figure anybody looks up to," Topper made another fast motion, just because he liked to see the guy flinch, "but I do outrank you by several thousand percent. So, if you will, Officer Krupke, make your report."
"My name's not Krupke," said the security guard.
"Whatever. What happened to Jerry?"
"He brought a juvenile into the facility. When I informed him that juveniles were not allowed in the facility, he mocked my authority. I warned the perpetrator to stop…"
Topper's criminal defense lawyer instincts kicked in. "Wait, wait, perp? PERP? The guy didn't commit a crime. He just didn't listen to a rent-a-cop."
The security guard gave him a blank look.
"Okay, Magilla, then what happened."
"My name's not Magilla."
"I know, ya slow bastard, I'm calling you a gorilla. Which currently seems to be insulting to the intelligence of gorillas! Now, what did you do to Jerry?"
"When he didn't comply with my instructions, I subdued him using an electro, elect, electromagnetic device to disrupt his control of muscular—"
"You TAZED the guy? In front of his KID?"
"Omdemnity Corporate Manual, Section 8: Security. ‘All disturbances will be dealt with quickly, quietly and efficiently.’"
"Jerry wasn't a disturbance. He's a little bit of an idiot, but he's not a disturbance. He's an employee."
"I don't make the rules."
"Yeah, but you don't have to be a dick about the rules, do ya?"
The security guard noticed looks of alarm on the faces of Omdemnity Employees passing through the lobby. He realized that this unusual situation was covered by the book. It made him feel so much better to have a rule to follow. With joy in his heart, he abdicated responsibility and said, "Sir, I must inform you that you are creating a disturbance."
"Oh? OH! I'm making a disturbance? Disturbance, HAH! This is nothing. When I make a disturbance, believe me, you'll know it."
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to control yourself." Now sure of himself and his purpose and his position in the great rulebook of life, the security guard felt big and mean. He had nearly three feet and 200 pounds on Topper. It did not look good for the little man. But did Topper care?
The security guard put a hand on Topper's shoulder and gave him a light pressure backwards. Topper smacked right off. "Get ya hands off me."
The security guard put a hand on his Taser.
"Oh, you don't need that to take care of a ickle-lickle man like me," Topper taunted.
"No," said the bigger man, "I just like it."
"You pull that out and you're gonna regret it. You're gonna regret it for a long time," Topper said quietly. The security guard gave a little chuckle, knowing that the rule book would now protect him from Topper.
"I've informed you that you are making a disturbance. Section 8 C, sub-paragraph 4 of the—"
"Then what are you waiting for?" Topper taunted. "Hunh? Skin that SmokeWagon and get to work."
The guard slid the weapon free from its standard police-issue holster. Topper waited until it was pointed directly at him and then he lunged like a rabid Cocker Spaniel. The speed and ferocity of the angry little man headed straight towards his crotch made the security guard jump. He fired the Taser. But this was a mistake, because Topper had locked on.
Topper grabbed one ball in each of his tiny little hands and squeezed for all he was worth. As 10,000 volts coursed through Topper's body, it was conducted directly into the security guard’s nuts. He cried out in pain, "NUHNUHNUHNUHNHUNHAAHHAHAHAHAHAAH!" The guard’s struggle to take his finger off the trigger was in vain. The electrical current clenched his hand around the trigger tightly. Of course, a similar effect was operating in Topper's hands.
Topper was also in agony, but it only served to make his high cackling laugh ring louder and louder through the marble of the lobby. Finally the security guard jolted and jittered the Taser out of his grip. Both men lay panting on the floor.
Topper was the first to recover. He put his foot on the larger man and said, “Ya know, being a bully is fine. Until a bigger bully comes along." Topper kicked him in the teeth. "Or just a mean little sonofabitch like me."
Topper ripped the tiny metal darts out of his chest and threw them on top of the defeated man. "You're fired. The President of Vice commands it."
After a brief working lunch, Edwin's office was invaded by a video production crew. As rule, Edwin avoided the spotlight, but as CEO and primary owner of Omdemnity Insurance, there were certain roles he needed to fill. So he sat in his chair and endured having his face dabbed with makeup. Next time, he promised himself, he would use a figurehead. It was venerable strategy, long honored among the Japanese. Why change the Emperor when it is the Shogun who matters?
"There you go, you're just beautiful."
Edwin cocked his head like a bird and looked directly at the thin, sickly-looking man who had applied the make-up. It only took a moment of Edwin's uncomfortable gaze, and the man went away.
Beautiful? Edwin was concerned with far more important things than beauty. Beauty was fading. Beauty was fleeting. But capital—ah, capital lasted. Built fortunes, companies, countries.
