The Consultant

by Little,Bentley

  “Anytime.”

  He started for the door, turning before grabbing the handle. “We might be halfway through this ‘work management study.’”

  “But what comes after that?”

  “Exactly.”

  He’d been gone less than ten minutes, but Lupe passed him a handful of pink While-You-Were-Out messages when he returned. Neither of them spoke in front of Todd, but Craig sorted through the notes as he walked into his office. As he’d hoped, one was from Ang, and he shut his door and called the programmer, at first asking Ang to come to his office, then changing his mind and telling the programmer to wait at his desk, he’d be coming down.

  Rusty had always had a mouth on him—in retrospect, maybe he shouldn’t have revealed so much to the technical writer—and as soon as Craig approached Ang’s desk, a group of programmers gathered around, all wanting in on the action. There were no BFG fans in his division, and Craig felt a certain pride at that.

  But he was already thinking that maybe Phil was right, and the best approach was just to go along to get along, and wait the consultants out. What good, really, would it do him to know where the growing number of video feeds led, especially since, if word of their investigation got out, they could all be fired? Tony Hernandez had once worked for TRW, was more versed than the rest of them in workplace privacy issues, and he said that consistently upheld court cases had gutted employee privacy and allowed employers to monitor workers on job sites with almost complete impunity. That put the nail in the coffin. “You know what?” Craig said. “I changed my mind. We’re not going to do this. Just let it lie.”

  “Got it,” Ang responded, but it was said almost with a wink, and Craig knew they all thought he was just trying to institute some plausible deniability.

  “No, I’m serious,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. It’s not worth it, and there’s nothing we could learn that would help us in any way.”

  That seemed to get the point home. “They’re spying on us,” Rusty said.

  “And, apparently, they’re allowed to do so.”

  In order to make their retreat more palatable, Craig added a “for now” to his prohibition against investigating the cameras, and that seemed to placate everyone, even Rusty. It was a feeling of helplessness they had, that he shared, and they all wanted to do something about the consultants, though there was not really anything they could do.

  He went back up to his office.

  Found twenty new emails from BFG.

  Deleted them all without reading a single one.

  Feeling restless, feeling antsy, he stood and paced around his office. Getting a bottle of water from his little fridge, he stood near the window, drinking as he stared down at the campus. Below, two men dressed in black hoodies were making their way along the winding concrete path toward the parking lot, carrying a long covered bundle between them, a bundle that looked like…

  A body?

  No. It couldn’t be.

  Yes, it could.

  He probably should have called Security but instead sped down to the campus. Taking the stairs rather than an elevator, he held onto the railings on both sides, using leverage to swing over multiple steps in an effort to get to the ground floor as fast as he could. But by the time he ran outside to the spot he had seen from his window, that area was empty. He followed the path in the direction the hoodied figures had been moving, ending up in the parking lot, but saw no one on foot and no moving vehicles. Wherever they’d gone, he’d missed them, and now he’d never know what they were carrying.

  In his mind, the contours of the covered shape still looked like a body, and he tried to think of who it might be. Isaac Morales? The idea was ludicrous and crazy—only it wasn’t. Not after Tyler. Not after Anderson and Cibriano.

  Turning, he walked back into the building, this time taking the elevator. What the hell was going on here? If people were actually dying, he needed to tell the police or quit his job or…do something. But he had no proof that anything had even occurred, and the uncertainty and the incrementalism of it all left him feeling lost and helpless as he returned to the sixth floor.

  “Mr. Cho called,” Lupe told Craig when he reached her desk. “He’s in a meeting with all of the programmers. He wants you there.” From her tone and expression, he understood that Scott was angry, but she said nothing aloud, glancing meaningfully at Todd to her right.

  “Where?” Craig asked.

  “In the conference room.” She motioned down the hall.

  Thanking her, he walked purposefully to the conference room, which was already filled.

  “Where were you?” Scott demanded. “When I call a meeting, you’re supposed to be here.”

  Craig didn’t respond. What could he say? I thought I saw two men carrying a body? Any excuse would just prolong the department head’s tirade. He sat down silently in the nearest chair.

  “As I was saying,” Scott said, looking pointedly at Craig, “the investigation has determined that Jack Razon was the one who leaked a version of Zombie Navy. We’re now in full damage control mode. Mr. Razon, of course, no longer works for CompWare, and criminal charges will be brought against him. Our job is to continue to make sure that no sites, corporations or individuals have any version of our game. Legal is also sending out threatening letters and working to get all reviews wiped since they were obtained using illegally copied prototypes, although you know how that goes, the First Amendment and all that.” He fixed Craig with a hard stare. “How are you doing with the containment effort?”

  Craig was still having a difficult time processing the information. Jack Razon? The vice president hadn’t even been shown the game yet and was nowhere in the development chain of command. It was also well known that Jack Razon was not exactly the most tech savvy vice president the company had. Craig found it hard, if not impossible, to believe that Razon had independently wound his way through the tight security surrounding Zombie Navy and then uploaded a copy of the game onto the web. Even if he had had the expertise to do such a thing, what would be the point?

  “I think we’ve got them all,” Craig told Scott, “but we’re still checking to make sure.”

  “Good.”

  He shook his head. “Jack Razon? Really?”

  “Really,” Scott said, his voice hard.

  Craig still didn’t believe it, and he thought of Isaac Morales, who had probably been framed by BFG. He wouldn’t be surprised if this was the same situation.

  He wouldn’t be surprised at all.

  EIGHTEEN

  Lupe heated up her Lean Cuisine, took a diet Snapple out of the refrigerator and went down to the weight loss meeting. Last week, they’d tried convening in the break room on the sixth floor, but too many people had shown up, so this week they’d decided to book the third floor conference room. Today was the official weigh-in, and a doctor’s scale had been obtained from somewhere and set up against the wall opposite the door.

  Lupe was one of the first to arrive. She sat down at the center of the long table in the back, eating her lunch as other women gradually filled up the empty spaces around her. Rebecca from Finance was organizer of the gathering, and she walked in last, striding straight to the front of the room.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said. “We’ll make this quick, since I know some of you have abbreviated lunch hours. But before we weigh in, I’ve asked Mr. Patoff to give us a little pep talk.

  Patoff?

  Lupe instantly regretted coming here today. The last thing she wanted to do at lunch was listen to the consultant. Why was he even involved with this? It was an extracurricular activity, arranged by employees for employees on their own time. Shouldn’t he be doing what he was hired to do? Looking for ways to keep the company viable? She filed that away for future reference.

  Besides, Craig was right. She didn’t really need this meeting. While she might want to take off a few pounds, she was by no means overweight, particularly in comparison with some of the other secretaries. But she was halfw
ay through her lunch, and it would be awkward to walk out now. Like it or not, she was committed.

  The consultant entered, beaming, nodding at women as he walked by. “Hello, Liz. Shelley! How are you today?” He seemed to know everyone by name, and by the reaction he was getting, most of the other secretaries were thrilled by his presence. How was that possible? Lupe glanced over at Pauline Praeger, who caught her glance, shook her head and shrugged her shoulders to indicate her own confusion.

  At the front of the room, Rebecca was smiling broadly. “Mr. Patoff,” she said. “Thank you so much for stopping by. We are truly honored by your presence.”

  He moved next to her. “It’s my honor to be here.”

  “We were about to have our first weigh-in, and I was hoping you could give us a little encouragement and inspiration.”

  “Be glad to,” he said, and spread his arms to include all of the women in the room. “You’re all overweight,” he told them. “Most of you are fat. Some of you are obese. And that is not acceptable. You might fool yourself into thinking you’re a ton of fun, but the truth is that men find you disgusting.” He pointed to a woman at the front table. “Olivia,” he said. “I know you’re unmarried. Do you think you’ll ever be able to get a husband looking like that?”

  The woman reddened, looking down at the remains of lunch in front of her.

  “Even those of you who are married, you know your husbands aren’t into you anymore. How often do you have sex? Twice a month? Once? You know that’s not satisfying him. He has to be going elsewhere.” He turned to Rebecca. “And when’s the last time you could even look down and see your bush beneath that blubber? You think a man likes to look at a gunt when his woman takes her clothes off? Show a little pride.

  “In short, you all better lose some weight. Because this is your last chance, your last hope. If you don’t get yourself in shape now, you never will. You’ll end up dying alone, and it’ll be a miracle if they don’t have to take out a wall in order to forklift you into a piano box.” He smiled, bowed. “Thank you.”

  Lupe was horrified, but Rebecca led the applause, which was surprisingly enthusiastic. “Thank you, Mr. Patoff. Very inspirational. Very inspirational, indeed.” She addressed the seated women. “Now everyone stand and line up on this side of the room.” She pointed to the wall on the right. “We’re going to weigh in. I will fill out a card for each contestant, and we’ll update it every week for the next six weeks. After that, we’ll see who lost the most, and that person will win the money.”

  “We need to make this fair,” the consultant chimed in. “Everyone needs to strip down before stepping onto the scale so we can get an accurate weight.”

  “Good idea,” Rebecca said.

  “Everything off,” the consultant said. “Underwear included.”

  Lupe left.

  Gathering her Lean Cuisine tray and her iced tea bottle, she deposited them both in the trash can by the door as she walked out. She expected a mass exodus behind her, but only Pauline followed in her wake. Everyone else remained.

  “What the hell was that?” Pauline said in the hallway.

  Stopping to turn around and look at the closing door, Lupe shook her head. There were squeals and giggles from inside the room, and she didn’t even want to think about what might be happening in there.

  “Maybe he’s a chubby chaser,” Pauline said.

  Lupe’s eyes met those of the other secretary, and instantly they both burst out laughing. The laughter felt good.

  Until she looked to her left.

  And saw Todd standing there, tapping away on his tablet.

  She stopped laughing. At least a dozen other consultants were lined up by the wall next to him, and as Lupe strode angrily toward the elevator, Todd broke away to follow her. Another man trailed Pauline, heading in the opposite direction.

  “Chubby chaser!” Pauline called out, and Lupe could not help smiling as she pushed the Up elevator button.

  ****

  Once again, Huell Parrish stayed late to work on the Office-Manager updates. He knew this was his big break, which was why he wasn’t even putting the hours down. If he could kick ass on this project, and they thought he was doing it within regular work hours, without accruing overtime, it would show the powers-thatbe that he was ready for more responsibility, that he deserved a promotion. At any other company, he would already be a supervisor based on experience and seniority alone, but CompWare was run differently. He was hoping the consultants would change that, although his work on this project should help him advance no matter which way the wind was blowing.

  After running a compile, he exited, shut down his computer and came back in, calling up the main menu.

  Underage Diddlers.

  Huell stared in horror at the banner title of the website that appeared on his computer. Beneath the words, photos of young girls masturbating were displayed on the page. Quickly, he exited the screen, but instead of returning to one of CompWare’s internal networks, another website showed up.

  Dick Loving Daughters.

  He shut off the machine, his palms sweaty. How in the hell had that happened? He could probably find out easily enough by tracing the route, but in the front of his mind was the fact that the consultants had everyone’s password and ID. No doubt they were tracking all employees, and to them it was going to look like he’d been accessing kiddie porn sites.

  With CompWare’s computers.

  And if he did trace the route, they would probably think he was trying to erase the evidence of his own misdeeds.

  Ever since that “Photos of CompWare Women Sucking Cocks at Christmas Party!!!” scam, neither he nor anyone else he knew had even thought about accessing an outside site, particularly a porn site. But this had been automatic, as though a command had been inserted that forced his computer to go to specific locations no matter which key was pressed.

  That was impossible, though. He’d been working on this machine for hours. No one else had had access to it, and he’d experienced no glitches, seen no indication that anything was amiss.

  Could a rogue command have been inserted into the compile?

  It was possible, and for the first time, he thought that maybe this wasn’t the consultants.

  Maybe Lorene had done it in order to get her hands on Office-Manager.

  The idea gave him pause. The two of them had been working together pretty smoothly, but he knew how much she’d wanted to be in charge of the project, and he wouldn’t put it past her to sabotage him in order to make herself look good. She was a sneaky one, as ambitious as he was, and she was more than capable of pulling off something like this.

  Well, two could play at that game.

  Moving to a different terminal, her terminal, he logged in under the department’s generic sign-on, then created a new password and produced a quick and dirty program that would automatically erase any OfficeManager updates created on this machine. He hesitated briefly in a moment of uncertainty—could it really be Lo-rene?—but then submitted the program, signed off, shut down the terminal and walked away.

  Let the bitch try and talk her way out of this one.

  ****

  Jack Razon had no idea where he was.

  He had closed the door to his office after lunch for his usual early afternoon catnap, had nodded off at his desk…and had awakened in darkness, tied to a chair, arms bound behind him, legs strapped together. He felt disoriented, but only because the world around him was pitch-black; it didn’t feel as though he’d been drugged or hit on the head.

  How had he gotten here, then?

  And where was here?

  “Help!” he called, but his throat was dry, his voice was weak, and his cry for help ended in a coughing jag that almost made him vomit. Closing his mouth, he tried to generate some saliva, then made another attempt. “Help!”

  “No one can hear you.”

  It was impossible to tell, in the darkness, from which direction the voice came, but Jack recognized its owner
immediately.

  Regus Patoff.

  An overhead light switched on, a blinding harsh white after the gentle softness of gloom, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, he saw that he was in what looked like the same narrow bare-walled room where he’d had his initial interview with the consultant. In front of him was the same metal table, and sitting in a chair on the other side of the table was Patoff. The only difference this time was that Jack was bound.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded, hoping he sounded more angry than scared.

  “You know very well what’s going on.” The consultant fixed him with a stony gaze.

  “This is illegal. You’re not only going to be fired, but I’ll make sure you go to jail.”

  There was no response.

  “Let me out of here now!” he ordered.

  The consultant smiled indulgently. “Jack, Jack. You know we can’t do that.”

  For the first time, he felt the taste of real fear.

  “You need to be punished for what you’ve done.”

  “I haven’t done anything!”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “What?”

  “Do I need to spell it out?”

  He was becoming frustrated. “I guess you do, because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  The consultant’s eyes were flat, hard. “In direct violation of your employment contract, you released over the internet a test version of the game Zombie Navy, potentially costing CompWare millions of dollars in lost profits.”

  “I didn’t do that!”

  “With users able to download and play a version of the game for free, why would they shell out money to buy Zombie Navy? You may have single-handedly bankrupted the company. At the very least, you have caused significant financial harm during a fragile rebuilding period.”

  “I didn’t do it!” Jack insisted.

  “You keep saying that, but we know you did.”

  “I don’t even have access to new games! I couldn’t have done it!”

  There was a significant pause and Jack jumped on it. “Maybe I’ve been set up,” he told the consultant, “maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. I don’t know. But check it out. I swear it wasn’t me.”