The Fourteenth Adjustment

by Robert Wingfield

  “Now I’m off all the substances, I can think straight again. I’d like to come and help run our company.”

  “I thought you wanted a divorce.”

  “And you said I couldn’t have one, because I was a ‘hyperactive junkie’ and would squander my share on chemical stimulants if the proceeds were split. You got me committed that time.” She looked hurt.

  “I could reconsider.”

  “If you do, I’ll take the lot. The lawyers will be most gratified. ‘Where there’s a split, there’s profit’, as they like to advertise on day-time TV.”

  “They do like to stir things up, especially here, with all their red-tape and laws on top of laws. It could take decades, and bankrupt the company. It would be cheaper to sell up, and just give you half.”

  “You think I’d settle for half?”

  “What?”

  Suzanne gave a grin which took Tom right back to those wonderful days when he first met her, several lives and several universes away. It was a different him, and a different Suzanne, but the memories and feelings had stuck with him. The essence of Tom was still Tom, even though he looked a little different and was certainly more successful and popular than his earlier existence. Suzanne hadn’t changed. In each universe, each time he met her, she looked exactly the same, despite the varying personalities. Those original feelings were hard to ignore. He shook his head. “What would be the point?”

  “What indeed?” she said, “which is why I want to learn how to be useful, and maybe perhaps...”

  “You are starting to like me again? It wouldn’t be anything to do with Caryl fancying me, would it?”

  “Don’t give yourself airs and graces,” said Suzanne. “You might be popular with the public, and you might now be different from the materialistic shit I married, but I’m choosy about who I allow into my underwear. No, I’ve had time to think, and I’ve seen how you turned SCT around since your accident, or whatever it was, and I actually want to be part of it. I’ll even start by making the tea if you like, to show you I’m sincere.” She smiled at him.

  Tom’s heart melted. “She always could do that to my resolve,” he thought. “Okay then,” he said out loud. “When you get out of this place, I’ll introduce you to Mrs Tuesday. She is keeping the catering under control and is the only one who can make a cup of tea that actually tastes like tea, and a cup of coffee that tastes like the ground beans smell when you first open the bag. If you can learn those skills, I will be most impressed.”

  “Then we have a deal,” said Suzanne. “I’ll come with you now.” She pulled the drip out of the back of her hand and stuck a piece of sugar-free gum over the hole.

  “But you’re not cured.” Tom glanced around nervously.

  “I am now,” she said. “Give me your coat. I’m making a break for it.”

  Tom and Suzanne slipped past Reception without raising any comment, even when Tom lost his footing and slid down the hallway on his rear. The grumpy girl was still tapping messages to her presumably equally grumpy friends in a grumpy language that Tom didn’t recognise. Out of the ward, they found the lifts. “Three,” said Tom, as Suzanne's finger hovered over the button labelled ‘1’. “That’s Ground Floor.”

  “No wonder I couldn’t escape last time I tried,” she said. “I went down to the first floor, got lost and was sitting on a heating pipe trying to keep warm, when one of those dreadful multi-legged insect things found me and brought me back.”

  “They have quadrillipods here?” said Tom. “Pesky animals get everywhere, but they do a good job of the floor polishing and telling you the time. I should bring some fly-spray next time though.”

  “They told me they do the jobs nobody else wants to do, including polishing the floors, so perhaps leave them for a while, huh?”

  “I suppose so. Here we are at the car. Oh what’s that on my windscreen?”

  “Looks like a penalty notice.”

  “I paid for a ticket . It was on the window.”

  “It’s not there now,” said Suzanne. “You must have forgotten.”

  Tom opened the door. “No, here it is on the floor. I’ll go and see about this.”

  “Is it really worth it? Surely there’s enough money to pay the fine?”

  “It’s the principle.”

  “I suppose it is,” said Suzanne, settling into the passenger seat. “Don’t be long, and don’t hit anyone, even though punching is now legal in cases of extreme bureaucracy.”

  Tom found the attendant busily applying sticky notices to a row of other cars. “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You put a notice on my car. I can’t get it off. I did have a ticket. Look.”

  “Let me check.” He laid the ticket on his reader and shook his head. “The magnetic strip seems to be blank, sir. I think this permit may be a forgery. Where did you get it?”

  “Out of the machine over there.”

  “And you didn’t buy it from one of the touts?”

  “Of course not. I think I ran one over on the way in, though.”

  “That’s good. We’ve been trying to clear them away, but with the price of parking, they can make quite a good living. I can’t check every ticket on every windscreen, can I?”

  “I thought that was your job.”

  “Oh no, with all these criminals trying to dodge the charges completely, I have my work cut out.”

  “I most certainly did get my ticket from the machine. Can’t you give me a break here?”

  “More than my job’s worth, sir. You have to pay up or I won’t remove the sticker from your screen.”

  “How much?” Tom sighed.

  “I’ll do a quick check... Failure to buy, failure to display, forged ticket, you’ve gone over time now, talking to me, challenging me, questioning how I do my job... that’s about three-thousand drachmae if we round it up, and with compound interest at 50 percent per day, if you don’t pay now... it could be quite expensive.”

  “I’m not paying. This is an outrage.”

  “Suit yourself, sir, but you can’t drive away, without a valid ticket to get you through the barriers and across the piranha swamp. Also, if you even try, you will be arrested for driving with an obscured field of vision. The penalties are steep for traffic misdemeanours.”

  “But they send the summonses by email. All one has to do is ignore them.”

  “Not any more, sir, since TBP took over the legal system. We have enforcers now, in lovely uniforms, but it is not an issue. You won’t be able to leave the car park without paying.”

  “Trouble?” asked Suzanne as Tom returned, shaking his head.

  “Not really. We seem to be in the middle of a car pogrom. There are bad things afoot. Not to worry, I don’t think our man realised what this car actually is.”

  “And what is it?”

  “Fitted with four of the latest Doku-drives. We can fly out of here.”

  “Off you go then.”

  “Problem is, I can’t see out of the windscreen for this sticky notice covering it all up.”

  “I tried to get it off with my nail file,” said Suzanne. “It won’t shift. There’s a note to say that the only way to remove it without paying up, is to replace the windscreen, and an offer of discounts from TBP Windshields if we present the parking fine after they’ve replaced it.”

  “We might have to do that. Can you see where we’re going?”

  “If I lean over and put my head out of the window, yes.”

  “Then your first job as a new employee of SCT is to be my eyes. Tell me if I’m going to hit anything (over-officious jobsworth bastards not included).”

  As the Pig-Ugly lifted gently in the air and headed towards the sea and the haven of SCT Island, a man in a smart uniform with the label ‘TBP Supervision Services’ filmed it from his handheld and sent the resulting footage directly over to TBP Traffic Enforcement headquarters for processing, along with a copy of the violat
ion notice.

  Attendants

  In which a plot develops

  T

  om pressed the call button for a second time. “Where is my Chief of Security?”

  “You gave Vac permission to have a holiday, sir.” Amber looked up from her notepad.

  “By the way, did you have a good break? You are back early.”

  “All that dancing and singing and having a good time, sir. Too much for me. I miss the numbers, and the political intrigue of big business.”

  “I’m trying to stop all that.”

  “I think it would spoil the company, sir.”

  “Heard any rumours recently then?”

  “Nothing that I didn’t start myself, sir. The I.C. girls lap it up. Saves having to waste effort on memos. I tell them what I want to share, and it’s around the company in minutes. The rumour mill is the most efficient form of communication.”

  “I.C.?” said Tom. “Remind me.”

  “It’s what used to be called ‘Human Resources’ when management cared bugger all for their staff.”

  “I.C., I see,” said Tom. “Rumours though; that’s what I’m worried about. How does anyone know what the management is really thinking? Without that shared knowledge, how can we make progress, pull everyone together, move towards a common goal?”

  “Previously, it hasn’t mattered,” said Amber. “They know what the oxymoronic phrase, ‘management thinking’, is all about: screw the employees, screw the customers and maximise our bonuses.”

  “Haven’t I changed all that?” Tom said ruefully.

  “I suppose so, but old habits are exterminated with exertion. I tried sending memos, but the original staff just laughed and didn’t believe a word anyway, and the new staff used them to make paper planes and daisy chains.”

  “Yes, got to keep the loonies on the path,” said Tom, humming one of his favourite tunes. “Perhaps I should stand up in front of them and say something?”

  “Like what? The company is profitable, keep up the good work, we’re going into space, big time, and the canteen is now doing pancakes on Tuesdays?”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  “They know that already. The staff is so motivated that they do their jobs, love coming here, and consider it a privilege to be off the main continent, which, as you know, is becoming somewhat overburdened with regulations and under-burdened with greenery.”

  “Someone told me the adjustments to the Statute now exceed two thousand.”

  Amber nodded. “They tried to get a committee together to see about repealing or merging some of the regulations, but there wasn’t a guideline for that and it got voted out when it was put up to the higher authority, ‘The Care-home for Out-of-touch Purposeless Old Faltering Fathers’, for ratification.”

  “At least we won’t have any trouble from those worthies in COPOFF,” said Tom. “Nothing useful ever comes out of there, especially anything that could affect us with the business. As long as they get their expenses for being asleep all day, they seem to be happy. I wonder how they are funded. Certainly not through the Government, who seem to be taking all tax income for expenses and holiday homes.”

  “Traffic penalties,” said Amber. “The laws have become more severe. They now pick on anyone who won’t fight back, with parking, speeding tickets, and fines for doing just about anything: walking in a clockwise direction, breathing with the mouth open, chewing on a public highway and looking sideways while driving...”

  “Remind me not to go to the mainland again,” said Tom. “It sounds worse even than when I collected Suzanne.”

  “A lot has happened in the last week. Swingeing new powers, changes of government, Fuksit, washing only permitted on Mondays; that sort of thing.”

  “But we are safe here. Nothing to worry about if we don’t leave the island.” Tom did not sound convinced.

  “We were until Vac and the security team left…”

  “I only gave him permission for a short break. So where is his number two? Someone is usually here as soon as I press the call button. I don’t know how they do it. I’ve checked the corridor, and it’s always empty, but when I get back to the desk and call, he always comes straight in. Did he not leave a deputy?”

  “I think they’ve all gone. The Skagans are on group vacation.”

  “But I only told Vac.”

  “He speaks for all his people, sir, who have done such a fine job in protecting the island.”

  “You mean we have no security at all, right now?”

  “It might not be a problem. After all, they only spent their days marching around importantly and trying to find things to do.”

  “Mostly building walls and fences to protect me from imaginary ‘insurgents’ I think,” said Tom with a smile. “We have a better defence complex here than the main financial reserve on the mainland.”

  “You could have stopped them wasting their time, sir. I feel you might be a bit lax in your management style.”

  “I didn’t have the heart,” said Tom, “and also it deflected their energies away from that resolute desire of theirs to fight.” He paused. “You don’t suppose they’ve gone on another one of their invasions?”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Oh good. There must still be someone left. Avanti.”

  “Nice cup of tea, Mr $mith (sic)?” The Catering Officer appeared: small round woman, large round tea-urn on a trolley, short grey cigarette wedged in her ear.

  “Oh, Mrs Tuesday. Yes, how did you know?”

  “I always make a nice cup of tea.”

  “No, I meant, how did you know I was thirsty?”

  “Moisture sensors,” she said. “When you get agitated, the humidity around you increases, and then you need refreshment. I’ve brought Bourbons.”

  “Are you monitoring my office?”

  “Of course.” Mrs Tuesday looked surprised at the question. “How else would I know?”

  “When did that happen... and how?”

  “One day I came in and you said, ‘I’m gasping for a cup of tea’. I felt I had let you down, and could do more to anticipate your needs, so I got Young Pete to install a humidity scanner.” She pointed at an art-deco stature of a naked lady holding up a bottle of ale. “It’s connected to the Galactinet of Prying Things.”

  “That was a present from Mr Nishi of the Nishant Corporation for buying all those Hynishota cars from him so we could fit the Doku-drives to them to make them fly.”

  “It was, sir, but Young Pete found it also contained a listening device, which was transmitting conversations from your office over to Nishi’s HQ in Musoketeba. I got Pete to fit a humidity detector instead.”

  “Nishi spying on me? How dare he? This is an outrage.”

  “Here, have a nice cup of tea. I knew you would need one.” Mrs Tuesday poured two cups of steaming liquid.

  Tom felt his annoyance slipping away. “That is exactly what I need right now,” he said, “after this new shock.” He looked at Amber. “Should I send a letter of complaint to Nishi for breaching our trust?”

  “Already dealt with,” said Amber, taking one cup and placing Tom’s in front of him. “I took the precaution of setting up a small department to cover it.”

  “Is that the new ‘Intermedia and Miscommunications’?”

  Amber nodded.

  “It must be a Phoistian Slip, saying what it actually does.”

  “Are you referring to the great Oilflig Phoist, the founder of Civilisation and Opportunism?” said Amber. “What do you mean?”

  “If you’ve not heard it before,” said Tom, “a Phoistian Slip is a deliberate lie told to mislead an entire population. As Oilflig himself said, ‘If you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, then you should not work in politics.’”

  “In that case, yes. I&M are there specifically to feed a pack of lies to Musoketeba, intended to give them a sense of unease, and therefore better prices for us.
We have some fine voice actors on the payroll, and the script writers are exceptional.”

  “You knew about this spy device?”

  “Of course.”

  “And Mrs Tuesday?”

  “Quite right, Dearie.” The tea-lady knocked her cigarette out on the side of the trolley. “And Security and I.C. and...”

  “That would be everyone apart from me?”

  “What about everyone apart from me?” Suzanne strolled in through the door, yawning. “Sorry I’m late, Mrs Tuesday. Did I miss anything on my first day at work? Is it lunchtime yet, and are we still having problems with the door hinges making those sleepy sounds?”

  “Don’t you worry your little head about it,” said the woman, kindly. “I’ve only just started the tea round. We were telling Mr $mith (sic) about the humidity detector.”

  “Oh, you mean the one in that rude statue which used to have the spying device?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “Thank you all,” said Tom with a sigh. “Suzanne, if you go off with Mrs Tuesday, perhaps she can teach you to get up earlier, and also make a decent cuppa. Is that okay, Mrs Tuesday?”

  “You leave her with me, Dearie. I’ll turn her into a new woman.”

  “I’m not sure...” Suzanne looked worried.

  “You said you wanted to start anywhere in the company,” said Tom.

  “I didn’t mean right at the bottom.”

  “This is not the bottom,” said Tom quickly, as the tea-lady’s face clouded. “Mrs Tuesday is an essential member of the executive team. Her work in morale and communications is without compare. Stick with her and learn how a company really does operate.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Mrs Tuesday, letting her breath out sharply. “I was going to explain to your... wife, that tea and coffee are only part of the job. Come along Mrs $mith (sic), there is much I can teach you.”

  “A good cup of tea,” said Tom, smacking his lips, as the door closed behind the catering ladies.