Hostile Takeover

by McLean, Patrick E.

  Gus looked up at him and said, "Thank you." Then he closed his eyes and slumped over dead in the snow. Somewhere, a mead-hall door opened and another warrior went to his just reward.

  Screaming with rage, frustration and pain, Billy flew high into the sky. So high that he rose above the heavy snow clouds, into the sunlit brilliance of the thin air beyond. This was clean, high air, where he had always felt unencumbered and free to be himself. But now, the upper troposphere granted him no peace. He arced over backwards and accelerated towards the ground.

  As he plowed downward through the cloud cover, the moisture streamed off his face. Some of it was snow melting against his skin. Some of it was tears. Billy couldn't tell the difference and he didn't want to find out.

  He slammed into the ground so hard it registered as an earthquake up and down the Eastern seaboard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Edwin felt the room shake. "Ah, true to the pattern to the end," he thought. Billy was using his power to tunnel through the Earth when there was a perfectly good elevator. There was an explosion of concrete and earth as a man with more power than sense clawed his way into the "command center."

  "Windsor!" Billy cried, coughing dirt and reinforced concrete dust from his lungs, "Stand and face me."

  "No."

  "I'm here for the gold."

  Edwin sighed. He said, "Then you should brace for disappointment. There is no gold here."

  "You can't hide it from me," snarled Billy, as he used the full range of his vision to scan his surroundings.

  "I'm not trying."

  "Your briefcase! I can't see through it, it must be filled with gold."

  "I told you," said Edwin, "There is no gold here."

  "Give me the briefcase."

  "You don't really want it," Edwin said, trying to be reasonable.

  "Yes, I do. And if you don't give it to me I will kill you and take it anyway. Haven't you heard? I'm a villain now."

  "Excelsior, if you strike me down you will still be an idiot."

  "Billy! My name is Billy!"

  "A rose by any other name would still be more cunning than you."

  Excelsior slammed his foot into the floor so hard, most of the lights broke and chips of concrete rained down from the ceiling of the reinforced room. "I can make this your grave Windsor."

  "Oh, very well. If you want my "treasure”—the gold at the bottom of the dungeon, the destructive serum at the heart of the mad scientist's lair, whatever foolishness you imagine this to be," he nudged the briefcase, "then take it."

  Billy walked across the room. Their eyes locked, as he bent down very slowly and reached for the case. Edwin held his gaze calmly. Even though Billy's face was mere inches away from Windsor's, Edwin did not blink or flinch.

  Case in hand, Billy stood up and took a step backward. Even though he could see no way that Edwin Windsor could have possibly been a physical threat to him, a feeling of relief flooded through him.

  "I thought so, you ain’t got nothing!"

  Edwin smiled at the double negative. Or perhaps he winced in pain. It was difficult to tell in the flickering, uncertain light.

  Billy raised himself to his full height and made his pronouncement, "I will let you live, Windsor. Even as a villain, I'm a better man than you."

  Edwin covered his eyes and waved Billy away. "Please forgive me if I don't show you out."

  Billy left the room carrying his prize and feeling triumphant. But when the door to the command center shut behind him, curiosity got the best of him. What was in the case, anyway? He knew it was incredibly dense. He knew that he couldn't see through it. That made it either lead or gold. There certainly was nothing like it buried in the earth around him. Had he just stolen a briefcase full of lead? Better check, just to be sure Windsor wasn't pulling anything.

  He put the case on a table and looked at it. It looked expensive. It was, in fact, the most expensive briefcase known to man. And that was before one took into account the contents. Underneath the expensive, hand-stitched leather was an expensive magnetic containment unit known as a Penning Trap. The irony of a trap that was actually a trap had not been lost on Edwin.

  Inside the Penning Trap's swirling magnetic field was the most expensive substance known to man, an entire gram of anti-hydrogen. By NASA estimates it was worth $62.5 trillion dollars. Of course, that was absurd. To make a market, you need a buyer. $62.5 trillion was nearly five years of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States. Not the kind of money that one spent on a substance whose very nature ensured that it destroyed anything it came into contact with. Perhaps “destroyed” was the wrong word. “Destroyed” implied that struggle was possible. Antimatter simply negated the matter around it. No argument or struggle involved. It was Edwin's kind of weapon. Of course it was horrendously expensive, but when it was the only way to get the job done...

  Excelsior released the clasps and the case opened on its own. Servos pushed the sides down and lifted a complex electromagnetic apparatus as if it was something to behold. In fact, it was not. It was grey, covered in wires, and looked a bit like a poorly conceived high school shop project that had gone terribly over budget. But it did have a bright red button on it that read "DANGER! OPEN."

  Danger, scoffed Billy. What danger could there be to him? He was the most impervious thing he knew of. But as impervious as he was, he was still composed of matter. Very, very tough matter, but matter all the same.

  For all the clever jokes that could be made here involving "mind" and "matter" there is one sure and certain variation you can take with you to the grave: "In the grand scheme of things you don't matter very much, and the laws of physics don't mind at all."

  When Billy pushed the button, matter met antimatter and neither party was very happy about it.

  As the first tremor reached Edwin in the command chair, he thought to himself, "And now I am dead, killed ridding the world of an unbalanced monster. A hero at the end?" This absurd pill was all the more bitter for being true. For all his struggles to be true to principle, his final realization came in the words of Shakespeare, "Men were deceivers ever. One foot in sea and one on shore. To one thing constant never." Perhaps he never really knew himself at all.

  As the matter around the case was nullified, 500 Kv gamma rays irradiated the earth. On the surface, storage units buckled and rolled on a bubble of earth and light. Then they were sucked inward with sudden violence. As the roar subsided there was not even smoke. A crater filled with the irradiated detritus of storage unit junk was all that remained to mark what was surely the final resting place for Edwin Windsor and a once-innocent boy from the Midwest named Billy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  After three days, Topper couldn't take it anymore. He announced a corporate retreat, of a sort. "I don't like the word retreat," Topper explained, "it sounds too much like defeat. We're going to have an advance, instead. Like a conquering army or horde of rampaging barbarians. That kind of thing."

  Topper called the soon-to-be ex-CFO of Omdemnity Insurance into his office, explained what he wanted to do and told him that he needed a few million dollars in petty cash.

  Flabbergasted, the CFO said, "Sir, that's hardly petty cash."

  "Maybe where you come from, sweetheart," said Topper, "But we're going to Vegas, baby, Vegas! Don't look at me that way, it's a corporate retreat. I mean advance. Advance! We're movin' forward!" The phrase, "moving forward" had become Topper's rallying cry for his wide and varied program of reform. He said it so loudly, so often and with such enthusiasm that he felt no one could possibly argue with the logic of so brilliant a slogan.

  The CFO was not persuaded. He pushed his eyeglasses up on the bridge of his nose and asked, "And how much is this excursion going to cost?"

  Topper beamed with pride and said, "I'm glad you asked. Two part answer. First part is, you're fired. Second part is, why do you care? You don't work here anymore!"

  "But, Mr. Haggleblat!"

  "It's not gonna cost a
dime. We're going to make money on this deal."

  The now ex-CFO of Omdemnity Insurance made a skeptical face.

  Topper snapped his fingers and Stevie placed a stepstool next to the ex-CFO, who took a step back. Topper held up his hands as if to show the strange, number-minded creature that he meant no harm. "It's okay. It's okay. I just want to look you in the eye when I say this."

  Topper climbed the stepstool and motioned the accountant closer. Under the misapprehension that he still had a job, the ex-CFO fell for it. Topper put his hand on the man's cheek and said, "You gotta spend money to make money." Then Topper slapped the man as hard as he could.

  Topper jumped off the stool and snapped his fingers. "And let that be a lesson to ya!" He stormed out of the room with Stevie following close behind, carrying the stool.

  As Topper walked through the building, Adjustor after Adjustor fell in behind him. By the time he got to the front of the building, Topper was being followed by a small army of expressionless men in impeccable suits. Topper marveled at how well Edwin had trained these men. They had so completely become their corporate functions that they seemed to have forgotten they were individuals. And now Topper was going to remind them who they really were. He didn't want a well-oiled machine, he wanted an unruly, unholy, pillaging tribe.

  Like the Pied Piper of middle management, Topper led the Adjustors waiting buses. From there they went to the airport where they boarded a chartered flight.

  "Does anybody know where we're going?" Topper asked the plane full of Adjustors. Since none of them knew with an absolute degree of precision, they maintained efficiency by not wasting time on speculation.

  "Enh? Nobody? Okay, I'll tell you. We're going to VEGAS BABY! VEGAAAAAS!"

  There was no response from the crowd.

  "And you know what we’re going to do there? We're going to have FUN! And that's an order. And after we've completed that very important task, then we're going to work together to make a shit-ton of money."

  Still nothing.

  "What's the matter with you guys? Doesn't making a shit-ton of money sound like fun?"

  Topper got a smattering of light applause, like one might expect to hear at a golf match. Jesus, thought Topper, this is going to be tougher than I expected.

  It had been a dark and sweltery night. Topper awoke to find his head pillowed on a gigantic breast. His ear was tickled by both the nipple and the heartbeat of the beautiful woman with whom he shared his bed. A breast and a beautiful woman's heartbeat; on the most primitive level, he was completely satisfied. But there was more. Oh, there was more. For, since coming to Vegas, Topper's motto had become: Nothing succeeds like excess.

  As he got out of bed, he had to crawl over two more beautiful, amply endowed women. He knew none of their names, and that made it all the better for Topper. As he placed a knee on a particularly soft bit of woman, she gave an absurdly erotic moan of protest. He considered waking her up for a recap of the night’s debauchery, but then he thought better of it. Let the ladies sleep the sleep of wicked exhaustion. Topper had work to do. After all, he was an important man now. A rich man with a company to run.

  Under the weight of his hangover, he staggered from the bedroom and into the light. The view that greeted Topper was of desert mountains and impossibly blue sky. For a man with a view like that, anything was possible. Far, far beneath him were the little people in their little world—the Las Vegas strip and attendant cities and principalities, casinos, flop-houses, swimming pools, taxicabs and broken dreams.

  He squinted against the bright light of morning and wandered counter-clockwise through his living room. His penthouse had a 360-degree view of the world around it. After 43 degrees of walking, he came upon the coffee table where he had left the pile of cocaine the night before. He chopped off two generous lines with a Joker card and inhaled them like a pig sucking down truffles.

  The drug did its trick and Topper felt new false strength and confidence. As a cocaine lion roared in his heart, he opened his mouth and yelled, "Time to make some money!"

  "Maybe you should take it easy," said a concerned, gravelly voice from behind him. Topper turned and saw Stevie pushing a room-service trolley filled with breakfast.

  "Aw, hell yeah, breakfast!" said Topper as he advanced towards the food.

  "You look like death," said the loyal chauffeur. "You should slow down a little."

  "Slow down? What is that?" Topper said through a mouthful of bacon—sweet, sweet bacon, the fatty cocaine of meat products. "I tell you what, when I stop havin' fun, I'll take a break. I'm having the TIME OF MY LIFE! Besides, we're close with them, I can feel it. We're going to turn this company around."

  "Uh-huh," said Stevie. "You want to bet on that?"

  "Oh, baby, there's nothing in this town I don't want to bet on."

  "You haven't seen them for a few days, have you?"

  "What, it was the weekend! I wanted them to have some fun and loosen up. They needed it after living under Edwin's thumb."

  "Do you know what day it is?"

  "Whattaya mean? It's Monday."

  "Try Thursday!"

  "Wow, not only was last night great, it lasted four days! I love this town."

  After breakfast, Topper cleaned up and took the elevator down to the meeting rooms. The Adjustors—or Badass Division, as Topper had renamed them—were in their morning meeting around a u-shaped conference room table. They were paying careful attention to a man in a cheap suit who stood next to an easel with a pad of paper on it.

  The walls of the room were lined with sheets from the pad that contained seemingly incomprehensible diagrams. Since no one had seen him yet, Topper decided to watch quietly and see how it played out.

  "So," said the man in the front of the room, "if you remember from last time, the group had decided that Timothy was going to conduct a survey of best practices of..." he stumbled over the words, "bank robberies and report back to the group. Timothy?"

  A young man in a black suit, one of the undifferentiated mass of Adjustors that Edwin had assembled, stood up. Right away, Topper didn't like him. He was one of those kids who always had the answer for the test, but never had any good questions of his own.

  "Well, I couldn't find any secondary research at all on the subject. In fact, what little I could find was anecdotal at best," Timothy said, with no confidence whatsoever.

  "Go on," the man in the cheap suit said encouragingly, "Tell us what you found."

  "Well," said Timothy, "I found some sites on the internet, and there was this, uh, movie…" He trailed off, looking at his feet. The awkward pause hung low in the corporate miasma. Undeterred, the consultant charged onward.

  "Okay, okay, this isn't a problem. We've learned an important learning here, Timothy. We have a known unknown now. What I'd like to do now is conduct a SWOT analysis of a bank, and the retail banking sector in general." He flipped a sheet of paper over the back of the easel and divided the fresh page into four parts. "For those who aren't familiar with this tool, we're going to write down what we know about the Strengths, Weaknesses, Op—"

  Topper could take no more. He climbed on top of the table and said, "What is THIS BULLSHIT?"

  All eyes turned to him. Surprise quickly turned to understanding among all the Adjustors. This was Topper. This was what he did. But the consultant took offense to this dwarf interrupting him when he was in full consultant swing.

  "Excuse me, sir, but are you part of our working group?"

  "Part of your working group? Part of your—I'm the Chairman and CEO of this outfit! You are part of MY WORKING GROUP! Understand?"

  The consultant was flustered, but bravely soldiered on. "Oh, Mr. Haggleblat, I am terribly sorry I didn't recognize you. It's just when you were so disruptive, I thought—"

  "You thought that perhaps some other rabid dwarf had snuck into the building and infiltrated your meeting with a sinister design to—hey, wait a minute, you don't work for me, do you?"

  "No, I'm an outside
consul—"

  "BULLSHIT! What is this bullshit?" Topper paced the length of the table and addressed the Adjustors. "Gentleman, guys, fellas, whattaya doing? What do we need this pencilneck for? Why'd you bring him in?"

  "Well, we wanted to make sure we were doing the best job possible," offered Timothy in a voice that suggested that unless he could find some secondary research on his own opinion, he wasn't prepared to trust it.

  "Well, I don't want you to do the best job possible. I want you to do a fast job. A brutal job. I want you to have fun. Y'know guys, FUN. You remember fun? Back before school and intramural soccer leagues and always being the kids who did their homework? Anybody?" Topper was met with a blank stare. "Ah, c'mon, you know, those long afternoons spent hitting things with a stick and lighting stuff on fire cause your buddy stole a pack of matches? Breaking things just to hear the sound that they made?"

  Sensing weakness, the consultant tried to seize control of the meeting again, "I have found that a SWOT analysis can be quite fun when—"

  Topper whirled on him again. "What? What did you say?"

  "I said a SWOT analysis be quite a lot of fun when —"

  "Yeah. Right there. Fun. Tell me some other things that you think are 'fun.' And don't bullshit me. I'm the King of the Bullshitters and, believe me, I'll know if ya bullshitting me."

  "Well, uh, getting together once a month to celebrate coworkers birthdays is fffffff—" He trailed off as Topper swaggered up the table and stood mere inches from his face. The consultant thought to himself, he's just like a charging dog. Just hold your ground, Thaddeus, hold your ground.

  "Birthdays?" Topper asked in a soft whisper.

  "W-w-w-well, yes, birthdays," said Thaddeus, "A special time to show your appreciation for—"

  "Do you have AAAAAAANY idea what we do here?" Topper asked him.