“You already know why such a thing is out of the question,” Wilfred remarked.
“Yes, not uncommon with your kind, you grew up in a household where power dynamics were used by everyone to over-control everyone else. He who wielded influence and power best and could steal what crumbs of love were to be had away from other family members with rhetoric, ever-shifting alliances, secrets overheard that gave them the power of privileged information… won out.
“In short, you grew up in a microcosm of the corporate world—in the perfect factory for politicians and corporate types from middle management on up. Alcoholic parents make great control freaks, to ensure no one is in a position to out them or call them on their shit, with these and so many more subtle methods. But anyone confusing love with a desire to control can suffice.
“Only now, all grown up, you don’t know who you are outside of webs of intrigue. You’d be lost without people telling you what to do, and without ordering around others who live to be told what to do. You derive your sense of security from this remarkably secure and stable platform. It’s how corporations resist change in the exact same way that the aristocracy resisted change in a less democratic age, with the control of who knows what, and who is allowed to do what.”
“Please tell me we’re at the point where you settle back into politician mode, versus this in-your-face shit.”
Drew smiled despite herself. “Why don’t you take me on a tour inside your head, so I can do just that?” Here it comes, Robin thought. Here was what Robin was waiting for from the get go.
Wilfred chuckled and hacked at his own expense. “I was standing at the coffee machine this morning wondering if I really had the right to a second cappuccino, when an espresso would surely serve the company’s interests better. Less sugar meant less chance of a come down, more productive hours worked.”
“How does it make you feel when they take the sum of self-sacrificing gestures of this kind and weigh them with the self-sacrificing actions of the other employees, and then squander the combined equity working against the public good?”
“Nothing is ever so cut and dry at my level. Corporations have things they do that are good from many different perspectives, principally the vantage points of as many constituents as they can please. Assuming the constituents themselves can determine what’s in their best interests, also easier said than done. Sometimes a company can only determine the best path through the maze via analysts who alone understand the calculus well enough.
“I know you think there is a good guy and a bad guy buried somewhere in all of that, but the greater good, as you would have it… no one knows how to determine that. There are too many perspectives, alternative angles and arguments that can’t be considered in the timeframe you have in which to act.
“That’s why we build better supercomputers to play better war games, then write more inclusive software. What the Pentagon does, and what they do on Wall Street, isn’t terribly different from what we do, only we have better computers, and better analysts. I gave up any entitled sense of my access to the greater truth long ago.”
“If you did, your conscience wouldn’t haunt you so.”
Wilfred sighed. “The harder the greater good is to determine, the more expedient it becomes to narrow your focus, until it’s just the interests of your political alliance that you really care about, forget even what the larger corporation has set for goals for itself. You want it to look like what you’re doing is supporting the CEO, but you’ll only act on aspects of his agenda that further your ends, and mysteriously, other aspects will just take longer, long enough hopefully for that CEO to be replaced by someone else.”
“So the real purveyor of truth becomes some abstract higher integral order that arises out of the chaos of all these competing factions and political agendas.”
“Bingo.”
“Only, much like Einstein, you don’t think God plays with dice.”
“You seem to understand my position just fine,” Wilfred said ruefully.
“What I understand is that you distrust that God is really breathing life into this apparatus, using fallible human beings wielding power for all the wrong reasons and with only self-interests in mind, to get His job done all the same, being the only one who really can see the big picture. You don’t agree with St. Augustine that the devil too shall do God’s work.”
“We talk of God and religion in the workplace; we permit it, that is. Because, as it turns out, people fall within a spectrum of consciousness. Some are quite tribal, and refuse to think a thought of their own outside of what their in-group believes. Others are even more pre-rational to a fault, and very superstitious. A smaller number, who will climb higher in the organization, know how to push those buttons but can access reason.
“Still others, the few superstars, approach things trans-rationally, able to act as intuitives and visionaries, putting reason in the service of higher ideals. They see further than other men, whether or not they use those abilities to the greater good, or even try.”
“I see you’re a fan of Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics.”
“Though no one will talk about it with underlings,” Wilfred said, rubbing his hands together for extra warmth, “too explosive—yes, it’s one of the many corporate bibles. The kind of control it gives you, understanding how each person comes at the world, and how to push their buttons, is staggering.”
It was times like this Robin was reminded why he and Drew were together. She wasn’t just a master manipulator of people, she was someone who had studied what possible good those skills might be put to that might indeed serve Aristotelian ideals. Although Robin suspected the pupil might one day surpass the master, because Drew was too fond of her attachments, too indulgent with her designer living dictates, and the like, that day hadn’t yet come. That made her and her office hours a better brain trust than her entire library, which was impressive enough. Her mind contained the search algorithms for penetrating that hardened body of knowledge with the political savvy that could make of it something monumentally powerful; secrets that would remain hidden to non-initiates.
“Maybe if you let God percolate through your head better, you’d see how indeed He might diffuse through the entire system. You might also have more faith in the Zen belief that everything is just right the way it is. Or conversely, you might feel the wind in your sails you need to soar past all resistance, both the kind you put up against yourself, and the kind coming at you from your contemporaries.”
Wilfred chuckled at such a notion. “Putting aside my own belief that God is dead— optimism, even more than grandiosity, as you say, requires a titan with the kind of spiritual strength to overcome all resistance to the contrary. Because changing hearts and minds takes years, even for CEOs who allegedly have all the power. Look at what Jack Welch went through at GE.” Robin recognized the reference from Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Noel Tichy, as he was sure, did Drew. It was one of the books on his shelves.
“So I’m down to being the coach in your head, saying, ‘you can do it’ until you can instill this voice inside you for yourself. You’re one of the few who can do it, you know? Who better than someone who has spent a lifetime in hyper-think mode, constantly evaluating every message going to and from the switchboard in your brain for veracity, hidden agendas, innuendo, double and triple meaning? Politics might be a bitch, but your political acumen makes you a titan.” Evidently, Drew would take time out to correct Wilfred’s thinking by arguing him to a place of greater complicity with the “I can do it” credo, Robin thought.
“Your first strategic move is to decide who above your head you need to rally to your side, and if they can be persuaded. Do they have the necessary mental real estate in place to even aspire to raising the titans in themselves. Or were they placed there simply to be a puppet on someone else’s strings. Who are the real movers and shakers in your company? And are they poised with a sufficient power base to turn the Titanic in time?
“If the climate is less than auspicious, you need to plant yourself in more fertile pastures before the seedling of your own titanic spirit can take root. Surrounded by an expanded power base, you’ll find it all the easier to feel the time and place justifies the confidence to act. You’re too expert in timing to do otherwise. But surely you’ve done this already, so tell me, what’s the verdict?”
Wilfred sighed. “I don’t care how well you read people, the masters of the game will always convince you they’re on your side. You can confide fully in no one. There’s just who has what on whom and who is beholden to whom. Philosophies, what each person believes in their hearts, mean little. Alliances are of small help for they shift with the prevailing wind. The other guy’s spies are everywhere.
“Even if your gut checks happen to be right, and you happen to inveigle yourself with the right people, it’s a very dangerous game, and no one wins for long before the first misstep costs you your livelihood. Why do you think those executives’ jobs come with a life expectancy of two to three years, if they’re lucky?”
“But surely you’re a rich man, who can afford to have his head cut off, at least metaphorically. As to actually having it cut off, your health is failing from living like this, so even that can’t be much of a threat anymore. Maybe your time to act is now because you’ve succeeded in minimizing your downside and your exposure. Hell, simply scooping up those young People’s Movement types, eager for a visionary leader, might be just the ticket. Even if they show political promise, they’ll need grooming. Being a big fish in a small pond will go far to allaying your anxieties, as well.”
Drew kept at it, finding fault-lines in Wilfred’s reasoning, then shoring them up from the perspective of goading him towards action.
Hearing Drew work her charm on Wilfred, Robin realized going forward he needed to partner with Drew a lot better in his investigations. Maybe Drew could have found ways around Hartman’s labyrinthine psychology. Even if she shaved just a few seconds off Robin’s reaction time, lives might have been saved. Not to mention that, as the pressure cooker of the global economic crisis kept turning up the heat, someone had to sweet-talk the victims who’d succumbed to meltdown back to mental health. Drew was the talker, not him. He could emulate her ability to correct their thinking well enough, given time, but the soft touch would remain forever entirely Drew’s department. By Drew’s own reasoning, Robin just didn’t have the lifetime of perfecting the craft needed to be a convincing liar.
SIXTEEN
Thor watched TV Man walking to his front door, carrying a bag of groceries. God, he really hated doing this to the guy. He didn’t bother anybody. Lived a quiet life. He even had good taste in movies.
The thought projection from this distance was easy. Especially against weak minds. TV Man lived mostly on a diet of fear and emotionally-laden self-deprecation. The fear-and-emotion-driven minds were the easiest to control. They pretty much primed themselves with imagery meant to immobilize them and justify their stuckness. Being blocked in their lives, not able to make any progress towards their goals, had the secondary gain of quieting the anxieties, forever putting off that day when individual identity and the emergence of a strong ego would mean totally severing the line with the mother’s tit. Their separation anxieties being what they were, best they keep that day forever on the horizon. Thor even felt empathetic towards his pathetic parenting. Dogs seldom did any better.
TV Man dropped his groceries, and walked entranced toward Thor. He climbed the fence, and jumped over, earning some scrapes for his ordeal. Then he marched over to the drainage pipe, bent down on all fours, and lapped up the splendid effluent spilling out of it, straight from Hartman’s lab. Hartman had a rat cage in his lab that a feeder spit out pills for automatically every few hours. The machine was dysfunctional, spitting out far too much, and the cage was too close to the spillover drain. The rest was history. Now that Thor’s psychic abilities were so amplified, he could see the reason for his metamorphosis in his mind’s eye more clearly than he could see TV Man in the darkness. And he could see in the darkness pretty well thanks to his genetics. He’d been bred for patrolling English estates at night, one of many factoids floating around in Hartman’s head Thor had fished out long ago.
His mission complete, TV Man stood, and sauntered casually back to the fence, scaled it much as before, and picked up his groceries. He strode inside his home as if having never veered off course.
“How many times you have to repeat that exercise?” Brutus asked psychically.
“Until it takes.”
Brutus harrumphed his understanding, then went back to his patrol duties. He was not much for pondering the seamier side of their undertakings. That was fine. Thor had conscience enough for both of them, and the tortured soul to prove it. A dog’s life truly was simpler. A lot simpler than this limbo land in which he’d gotten caught up.
***
After strip-mining every Buzby Berkeley movie out of the TCM mix of oldies he could find, all Severick was left with was a barren land of black and white films with which he just couldn’t connect. He pressed the O-ring on the remote, whereupon he landed on a Discovery Channel special dedicated to Masanobu Fukoka, author of Sewing Seeds in the Dessert, and One Straw Revolution. To hear the narrator tell it, after traditional farming techniques had led to desertification of most of the world’s arable soils, his vision to reclaim the land not only made it possible to make the desert bloom, but to bring mankind back from the food abyss. Severick honestly had no interest in the subject, but there was something perversely fascinating about getting a dessert to bloom—without so much as incurring back strain—working with nature instead of against it. Apparently, Fukoka at the age of 78 tended over fifty acres in Japan singlehandedly using permaculture techniques he helped advance.
Severick pet the Maine Coon cat that had jumped into his lap. She was not usually this affectionate. That’s not what stood out for him, however. What made an impression was his increasingly urgent desire to feast on her brains, raw, by simply ripping her head off her neck—this while watching some of the most appetizing vegetarian cuisine literally popping into being before him on the TV courtesy of permaculture. Severick was a vegetarian. He contemplated the possibility he was having a mild stroke. Perhaps the aggressor-suppressing genes in his brain were under pressure from a burgeoning aneurism.
Finally, even the oddly sci-fi idea of aerial bombardment of fallow fields with hollow clay spheres, harboring any number of seed pollinators, on the premise that nature would select which species survived the grueling dessert and which did not—again minimizing man’s need to intercede—was not enough to pull focus.
He heard Sibilina’s neck snap in his hands, silencing her mewling with delight at his petting.
The next thing he was conscious of was burping, and looking down at the cat, still largely intact, fur and all, on the dining table, only missing its head. He put out a cigarette inside her hollowed out skull with the same satisfaction that usually followed sex. Only, he wasn’t satisfied.
He rushed to the fridge, ripped open the door. With the freezer, same thing. He knew he didn’t stock fresh cow brains and the like, but he had to check anyway. Maybe he’d bought some once upon a time on a lark; it was worth ruling out the possibility.
He threw on his jacket.
The meat aisle at the grocery was curiously devoid of brains: no cow brains, no sheep brains, no brains tartar, no brains in delightful little sushi wraps. He pulled his mind back from the reverie and rang the bell. The butcher was slow to respond, busy cutting up a cow’s leg. Why on Earth he bothered, was beyond Murphy’s imagining. He glared through the glass at him with a look of impatience that would have cowed most. The butcher, tired averting his eyes and pretending not to notice, finally wiped his bloody hands on his apron, and came out to the counter.
“Sheep brains? Cow brains?” Severick was dimly aware that greasing the wheels with a “Hello,” probably would have been a good idea, but somehow
couldn’t manage it.
“Sure. One of each?”
“All you have of both.”
The kid gave him a disconcerted look. His “Sure” sounded a lot more tentative than the first time he uttered that word. Nonetheless, he returned with all he had, and filled a grocery bag for Murphy.
“That all you have?”
“Yes, sir.” The kid was no longer meeting his eyes, as if ashamed for partaking in the exchange.
Severick dropped a hundred dollar bill without waiting for the kid to tally the total in the cash register and was off.
***
One last turn on the lathe, and Severick ejected the circular device he’d spent the last hour or so crafting in his garage workshop.
He threw a glance at the stuffed Maine Coon on the workbench against the wall, caught in mid-pounce as if forever on the brink of catching a mouse, and sighed.
Flipping next through food channels on the 19” flat screen to help pass the time, as he alternately burnished the steel piece in his hands, he turned the edges of his lips down and squirmed uncomfortably whenever a show featured cooking meat; the reaction was entirely visceral.
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