A Billion Ways to Die

by Chris Knopf

  “To what end?” I asked.

  “To prove to management that the company’s investment in this stuff actually helps our financial picture in addition to being a nice-to-have PR gimmick.”

  “What if I prove the investment is a colossal waste of money?”

  “Then we’ll have to fire you and get someone who knows how to prove what we want you to prove,” she said, then quickly added, “Just kidding.”

  Though I wasn’t too sure about that.

  “Okay. Fair enough. Who do I need to convince I’m the right guy for the job?”

  “Me. And Dr. Rajendra Gyawali, head of Corporate Research and Strategy. Chuck will go along with his recommendation.”

  “Charles Andalusky?” I asked.

  “You are correct, sir. You’ve done your homework.”

  “Can you tell me anything about Dr. Gyawali?”

  “He’s Nepali, like from Nepal, not Naples. They tell me he’s a genius, and I’ve got no reason to argue with them. I’ve placed a half-dozen people into his office over the years, but I haven’t the foggiest idea how he picks. I just know it helps if I like you.”

  I almost asked her if she did, then thought the test was avoiding putting her in an awkward position, even though she was the one who put herself there in the first place. So I kept silent, which I sensed from her manner was the right thing to do.

  “So,” she said, looking down at my résumé, “all your contact information is here?”

  “The cell phone is the best. It never leaves my side.”

  “Splendid,” she said, in an encouraging, yet inconclusive way.

  RAJENDRA GYAWALI worked in a completely different office, in another building across town that housed the corporation’s technical support services. It made me wonder if the corporate structure was organized around social aptitude, which meant housing all the geeks and data wonks in the same building.

  Where Jenny’s habitat was fresh but sterile, Gyawali and his team of researchers lived under high ceilings, amongst military-style metal office furniture, lab benches, computer rooms and white boards spanning all four walls of messy conference rooms.

  Gyawali himself, in contrast, was dressed for a gallery opening—all business, but hardly casual. A handsome man with a tall forehead that likely helped his reputation for genius, tightly packed hair, pale skin and Ricardo Montalbán features. He moved as gracefully as he dressed, and we spent the entire interview, more like a guided tour, strolling down the halls and through the building’s cluttered, shopworn work areas.

  He asked three highly technical questions related to probability theory, recursive functions and statistical analysis. He nodded when I answered, then spent the rest of the meeting sharing his frustration with an upper management that knew nothing about his department’s inner workings, yet felt free to provide ongoing advice on how those workings might better perform.

  “Thus my professional responsibilities are about 10 percent implementation and 90 percent justification.”

  “I can help you with that,” I said.

  “That’s my fondest hope.”

  TWO WEEKS later I got the gig. My hopes had been on the rise ever since HR contacted Natsumi, who told me her recommendation was given with only the barest of reservations.

  “Reservations?”

  “It had to sound real. They were mostly about your girlfriend in Singapore, whom I made clear I didn’t like. Jenny’s not entirely comfortable with her own boyfriend, by the way. He might be a little too controlling.”

  Evelyn and Little Boy also left upbeat messages, the relief in Evelyn’s voice palpable.

  “I simply told the woman the truth,” she said, “that I thought you were ideally suited for the job. I didn’t tell her I’ve admired your analytical skills since you were three years old.”

  Little Boy thanked me for making him a doctor of arboriculture, for whom I’d ostensibly performed a study into the relationship between mental health and urban leaf biomass.

  “I told her leaves make me happy. What can I say?”

  That night, Natsumi cracked a bottle of red wine and I went crazy over a single bottle of Sam Adams Winter Lager, still celebrating the occasion felt more than a little strange. Not just for me.

  “Are we happy you got a job, under false pretenses, though a job you could legitimately win with your own credentials, or are we happy we found a way to sneak you into Andalusky’s operation at Fontaine, or what?”

  “We’re happy the tree limbs are full of leaves. Leaves increase our happiness. I know this to be true. I did the study.”

  “You’re right,” said Natsumi. “A single beer does make you a little loopy.”

  A single beer chased with a carafe of fear, now that I’d actually figured out how to infiltrate the corporate lair of my enemy, with no idea what I was going to do once I got there.

  WITH THE exception of a few years working directly for a market research firm, I’d been a freelancer my whole career. This often involved long assignments, sometimes up to a year, so I had some sense of the rhythms of a steady job—getting up, showering, shaving, making coffee, driving into the parking garage, scanning my name tag at the turnstile, making more coffee, sitting at an assigned desk and tackling one or more defined projects, with or without the collaboration of fellow employees.

  My inaugural duties at Fontaine focused on a water project in Jordan where their government, supported by a grant from the US State Department, was building a pilot desalinization plant. They needed to compare the cost of building and running the plant, meant to supply irrigation water for local, traditional agriculture, against a strategy of water conservation that would theoretically force farmers into higher value crops using more sophisticated technology.

  After about a month of solitary, concentrated labor, I was able to show how an increase in the fresh water supply not only supported Jordanian exports, it dovetailed perfectly with the emotional and cultural needs of the farmers themselves. Presented properly, my report had the potential to represent a nice feather in the cap for Chuck Andalusky and his Economic and Cultural Development Department.

  Rajendra Gyawali hadn’t posed this initial project as a test, though we both knew it was. So I worked hard not only vetting the data underlying the report, but polishing the report itself into what I hoped was a gleaming demonstration of logic, insight and strategic acumen.

  Gyawali left me alone to do this, a credit to his management style, asking only that I give him a date when I could go over my preliminary findings. I gave him the date, not telling him I planned to use the meeting to roll out a finished product.

  There were other workers in neighboring cubicles with whom I was polite and friendly when they tried to engage, though with my face stuck all day in the computer screen, I hardly invited further conversation.

  So I was somewhat surprised when I arrived at my meeting with Gyawali and found a conference room full of people, some of whom I saw every day at nearby workstations. Most of them displayed a jittery unease laced with arrogance that typified young techs. A few were my age and older, more jaded and wary. Two were women, one overweight blonde with short, thick fingers, too much makeup and masculine clothes, the other sylph-like and fragile, pretty in an unadorned way, as if placed by HR to balance out the group’s female morphology.

  “I might not have mentioned to you that we have a type of peer review system, not unlike what you remember from graduate school,” said Gyawali, and I thought, no kidding you didn’t mention it to me. “The only rule is no holds are barred. Everyone in the room has been given the same brief I gave you, with the same data streams and project parameters. While not asked to prepare a report, they’ve had plenty of time to review the materials, which I’m sure everyone has.”

  He looked around the room at expressions belying both embarrassment and coy triumph. I made a note to pitch my story at the triumphant.

  “I’m sorry, but I went beyond the data provided to other sources,” I said.
“It’s all there, just supplemented.”

  “That’s fine, as long as it’s documented,” said Gyawali.

  I used PowerPoint slides to present the highlights of the report and help glue together the chain of logic, though I delivered the meat of the matter orally, believing that mental pictures were always more potent and convincing than images thrown up on a screen. I had given probably hundreds of these presentations during my life as an independent researcher, without the benefit of administrative support, or the soothing protection of a large firm led by grey-haired Yodas and fueled by young, overeducated work dogs. So I had to be all things, naked before anxious clients, usually surrounded by jealous in-house staff waiting for any opportunity to unseat the interloper, to show their bosses the foolishness of seeking talent beyond what was readily at hand.

  In some ways, the audience this time was a blessing, especially during the Q&A, when I could both reinforce my case and make instant allies by flattering the questioners and giving them room to hold forth in front of the boss.

  Not every opinion, however, supported my position. In fact, several seized the opportunity to stage frontal assaults on both the logic of the presentation and the effrontery of the presenter.

  “This all looks to me like yet another pandering to so-called native customs,” said one roundish guy named Ansell Andersen, whose fleshy lower jaw, thrust forward, and narrow forehead, left only a small opening for his squinting eyes to peer through. “We’re so hell bent on being culturally sensitive that we condemn these people to perpetual poverty.”

  He looked at everyone in the room but me when he spoke, but I answered him.

  “While there is certainly poverty in Jordan, the farmers in question are anything but poor, except in affordable water resources,” I said, referring back to statistics derived from the World Bank and the Gates Foundation.

  “Compared to what?” Ansell asked. “I think the de-sal plant should go forward, but not to drown olive fields. The type of petrochemical industry that makes the most sense for the region needs water as much as it does crude oil, and it doesn’t have to be potable.”

  “That’s a reasonable proposition,” I said, “though the data tell us that the agricultural benefits outlined in this report and industrial development can both easily be supported by the de-sal plant under consideration.”

  “Tells you, doesn’t tell me. I assume you’ve done other studies on reverse osmosis and water utilization in arid climates. I didn’t see that reflected in this presentation,” he said, flipping through the papers in front of him as if just realizing they were there.

  “You wouldn’t because this is my first,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, as if grappling with the shock of it all, “then I guess it’s fortunate Dr. Gyawali made our own extensive studies available for you to skim over.”

  Again, his eyes panned the room, yielding a few smirks, and an equal number of averted eyes. Then he sat back and let his attention be diverted by scribbled-on sheets of chart paper left behind by a prior meeting.

  Gyawali, whose face was blank as a statue throughout the presentation, and subsequent critiques, asked for other comments. After a pregnant pause, a guy with a Frank Zappa soul patch and a bald head gave a solid, positive review, pointedly avoiding eye contact with Ansell and his followers. Others followed suit, until the pleasant scent of approval cleared the room of negative vibes. When remarks from both sides appeared exhausted, Gyawali thanked everyone and sat patiently as they cleared the room.

  “I hadn’t asked for a final presentation,” he said when the two of us were alone. “Just preliminary findings.”

  “It was hard to distinguish preliminary from conclusive as I did the research, so I just pushed on through to a logical end.”

  “You did.”

  “It’s my first bit of work here,” I said. “First impression and all that.”

  “You certainly made an impression.”

  “Your people all had good points,” I said.

  “Did they? You seemed reluctant to defend your work.”

  “It can defend itself. Or not.” I slid the bound printout and a flash drive across the table. “If you want to share with anyone else.”

  He nodded, as if not quite hearing what I said.

  “The PowerPoint was a little Hollywood for my taste,” he said finally, “but the argument was sound and the conclusions hard to dispute, from my point of view, at least within the context of your operating premise and the data at hand.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I’ll need to vet your supplemental sources. They may not meet corporate standards. We’re conservative. People in government stare at everything we do.”

  “They’re as good or better than what you gave me. So I think we’re okay there.”

  “You’re not including the quote from Pink Floyd,” he said, without humor. “The one on the first slide.”

  “That was for color, Dr. Gyawali.”

  “This is nearly ready to take to the big building. We’ll need to do some tweaks. Edits, really. And no color,” he said, his face darkening a little. “You’ll need to trust me on this. I know the audience.”

  “Whatever you think,” I said.

  He nodded and told me we had to let go of the room for the next meeting. Though he seemed to be lost in thought when I stood up. It wasn’t hard to imagine a lot going on behind that towering forehead. I gathered up my papers and popped my presentation out of the AV computer and was heading for the door when he said, “Mr. Goldman.”

  I stood holding the doorknob.

  “Dr. Gyawali.”

  “Rajendra. Where did you obtain that table you cited from the International Desalinization Bureau on the projected pace of membrane development?”

  I tried to remember, having scooped up information from so many sources over such a short time period. Typical of my work style in those situations, I tended to capture, record, annotate and dash ahead, assuming I could reconstruct the pathway at some later date.

  “Not sure, but it’s in my notes. I can look it up.”

  He shook his head.

  “Not necessary. It’s just that I’m on the IDB steering committee on membrane technology and I wasn’t aware we’d released that projection.”

  And then I remembered. I’d hacked their servers when I saw how it easy it was, and must have grabbed that chart as strong support for my hypothesis, forgetting in the flurry I was nosing around the bureau’s confidential files, and completely unaware of Gyawali’s involvement.

  “The Internet sure makes it hard to keep stuff under wraps, doesn’t it?” I said.

  “Indeed. It’s like the Wild West.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “We know you don’t do lunch, but we ordered pizza and won’t be able to eat it all,” said Manfred Getz, a native of Germany who sat a few cubicles away. He stood at my door with the slender, pale woman, who introduced herself as Imogene. Both had been at the peer review.

  “Only if I can help split the cost,” I said.

  “We insist on it,” said Imogene.

  I followed them down the hall to a small conference room that also served as a staging area for IT, which meant there was barely room for the two pizza boxes, soda, stack of napkins and a large Styrofoam cup full of french fries.

  “This is Manfred’s idea,” said Imogene, lifting the overflowing cup of fries. “As if there’s inadequate trans fat and low-density lipoprotein content in the pizza.”

  “You always eat at least half.”

  She opened the two lids.

  “One veggie and one carnivore. As if one is any better than the other.”

  “We curse the food before we consume it,” said Manfred. “Helps the digestive process.”

  “All looks good to me,” I said.

  After we settled in and had pizza draped over our plates, Imogene said, “We liked what you did the other day. Your de-sal presentation.”

  “Thanks.”

&nbs
p; “Sorry about Ansell,” said Manfred. “He’s a bit of a provocateur.”

  “He’s an asshole,” said Imogene.

  “That, too.”

  “There’s nothing you could have presented that he wouldn’t have challenged,” she said. “It wasn’t your argument, it was you.”

  “I’ve never spoken to the guy,” I said.

  “Gyawali hired you,” said Imogene. “That’s all Ansell needs to know. By definition, that makes you an enemy.”

  “Ansell was acting director of the department when they brought Rajendra in over him,” said Manfred. “You can figure it out from there.”

  “I can’t believe Martin hasn’t had a single bite of pizza and we’re already hanging out all our dirty laundry.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’m used to that stuff. Gyawali should get points for having such an open environment. Tolerant guy.”

  “Unless you’re crazy enough to use PowerPoint.”

  They both smiled broadly.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “PowerPoint is forbidden.”

  “Really? I didn’t know.”

  “Flip charts only. Not filled out ahead of time. Black markers, chisel point. Handouts eight and a half by eleven, twelve point type max for headings, eight point in the body of the text.”

  “He didn’t tell me any of that,” I said, talking around a slippery wad of pepperoni-soaked dough.

  “It was supposed to be preliminary,” Imogene said to Manfred. “He hadn’t given you the presentation specs.”

  “Sometimes it pays to be ignorant,” I said.

  “That’s yet to be decided,” said Manfred.

  “You’ve inspired me to add Kurt Cobain lyrics to my weekly summaries,” Imogene said.

  “But you like Gyawali,” I said.

  “He’s brilliant,” said Manfred.

  “And repressed,” said Imogene.

  Manfred seemed distracted for a moment by an itch under his thick blond hair. Imogene leaned back as he scratched as if to avoid flying debris.