by Alan Ryker
But that never happened…I’m having a flashback to something that never happened.
I brush aside the waves of confusion and focus on the enormous news at hand.
“Sounds great,” I say, my excitement and disorientation combining so that I can’t play it cool at all. “I’m so glad to have helped.”
“I bet you are, because I talked to the guys, and if this deal goes through, you’re moving up to junior GP. Say goodbye to the dungeon. And in a few years, if the liquid event is as big as it looks like it’ll be, well…Let’s put it like this: performers get rewarded. We’ve run the numbers, and our multi-million dollar investment could net a multi-billion dollar profit.”
He laughs, takes a deep breath. “Sorry. This deal is potentially so big that even I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s hatch the chickens before we count them, and let’s buy the eggs before we do that, right? I’ll let you know about the trip details. Don is still massaging his schedule. Good?”
“Good.”
Tyler pats me on the shoulder, then turns to the rest of the room. “And let this be a wake-up call. I know what it’s like to slog through hundreds of applications until your eyes glaze over and your brain goes numb. I know that you’re looking for any reason to reject an application to get it off your desk. I know that you’re trying to mitigate risk. I know that they need us a hell of a lot more than we need them, that for most of the companies we invest in, there are ten we don’t who would give us the same return. But there are exceptions, and you need to be able to spot them. Who your parents are matters. Where you went to school matters. Being willing to put in twelve, fourteen hour days day after day matters. One or all of those things landed you your spot in the dungeon. None of those things will get you out of the dungeon. Do your job well, and you get to stay here. Right here in this windowless room, pulling a very decent paycheck. It’s the details that will get you out of here. Anyone can see the solid choice. It’s spotting the exception that will get you out there, that will get you a percentage.” Tyler laughed. “I do love to give speeches. Okay, back to the grind, and keep your eyes peeled.”
I’m watching my cellmates as Tyler speaks. Michael is seething. Amanda is blank. Todd is smiling, knowing that the kindness he’s shown the new guy could pay off big in the form of an ally in the upper ranks.
The door shuts. Amanda gives me a nod, then turns back to her computer. Todd rushes over and thankfully blocks out Michael’s death stare and massive, grinding jaw.
* * *
Three weeks back I was working late when I decided to switch from going over fresh applications to my coworkers’ rejections. The Dungeon might better be called the Shark Pit, because in a feeding frenzy it wasn’t the shark who ate the most fish who survived, but the shark who ate the most of his brethren.
The pile of rejections I’d never seen was three times the size of the new applications I worked on, as it contained the refuse of all three of my cellmates. So I was cherry-picking, grabbing at anything that looked interesting enough to keep me awake, to keep my eyes focused on that screen which I’d been staring at for thirteen hours and which felt like was melting my brain.
We all knew what we were doing, and most of the rejections were easy calls, anyway. But an application by Fortress Defense Inc. grabbed my attention with its cool name, then with it’s current business, then cemented my interest with its proposal.
Fortress Defense began as an arcade game company. Of course arcades died a long, slow death at the hands of consoles awhile back. Fortress held on by making game experiences you couldn’t get at home, highly immersive games, many utilizing primitive virtual reality technology. Even that market died as the last arcades began to close and, no matter how cool the game was, they wouldn’t sell without any customers. So they switched gears.
They began creating military training simulators. Games by another name. They had much more experience than any defense contractors in creating intense games and working with VR, stretching its capabilities in cheap hardware. The political environment was just right, and they got a defense contract and sold their machines to the Army, making a killing.
The Army found that most soldiers benefited greatly by the training. They stepped into desert cities feeling as if they’d been there before, because they had been, virtually. They were less overwhelmed, and therefore less likely to freeze.
The Army reported a couple of problems, though. Some soldiers still froze up. Some never could take the stress of real combat, or even just walking a real combat zone. The VR games were intense, and weeded out some who should never step on the battlefield, but others were able to see it as the game it was, perform great and then fall apart at the real thing.
They also reported that some soldiers who’d had lackluster performance in simulation were amazing in the field. In the simulator’s role as a tool to choose commanding officers, this was a huge failing. The problem was that these soldiers were so able to keep their cool that the simulator was only a game to them, and was unable to inspire their best performance.
Fortress Defense had a slight edge over their competition, but if they could fix these problems, they could sell their machines to every branch.
The issue was cognitive. It was in the nature of the product, the fact that it was really a game. No matter how realistic they made their simulations, they couldn’t get rid of the soldiers’ knowledge that it wasn’t real.
Except that they thought they could, and they tested their method on themselves. A bunch of mild-mannered game programmers and computer engineers took a low dose of LSD and then began the training simulation. The result was absolute realism, to the point of several mental breakdowns requiring extended leaves of absence.
That was exactly what the military wanted: to find out who couldn’t take the stress of combat before putting soldiers into combat. The results would be fewer casualties, fewer suicides, less PTSD.
Fortress Defense hired a pharmacologist to study the medications currently on the market. None were ideal. They needed to develop their own. They had a starting point. They’d found several patent-lapsed formulas they thought they could tweak to get the proper results, but it would take a lot of money to develop and then to put through the proper FDA tests.
If they could expand their simulators into every branch of the military, the potential payoff was enormous. Defense money wasn’t like other money. Most government contracts overpaid by two or three times, but defense…Defense money was how the government gave tax dollars to their rich friends, and the profits were beyond belief.
Beyond the military, if Fortress Defense Inc. became the only name in simulation, with small software modifications these machines could be sold to law enforcement, opening another huge market.
Michael had rejected the application, and for good reasons. The Gerhardt Fund required a solid sales record. They didn’t give money to startups. Fortress Defense had a solid sales record, but only of simulators, not of pharmaceuticals and simulators. They had no proof that their current customers would be future customers. We saw that situation a lot, where a company decided to branch out and thought their current success would guarantee venture capital, but the differences made their situation more like a startup. Startups were too risky. Angel investors handing out their own money might assume that risk, but the Gerhardt Fund had limited partners who expected returns on their money.
The other problem with Fortress Defense was that it wasn’t a biotech company. Yes, this new move was into biotech, but really it was ancillary. Our LPs had made their millions in medicine. Many were doctors. They understood medicine, so they invested in medicine. They wouldn’t understand Fortress Defense. The Gerhardt Fund passed up good opportunities every day because they were in the wrong fields.
Michael played by the book. He was solid. But he didn’t look much past the filter. When he dabbled in day trading, like we all did, he never varied from his buy and sell formulas, to such a degree that he let his software sell for him.
He never lost big, but he also never won big. When his investment had tripled, he sold, regardless of if it might shoot to a hundred-fold profit later in the day. He didn’t look for exceptions. What he didn’t see was that the potential rewards made Fortress Defense at least worth a deeper look. Any of the junior or senior GPs would have seen it, but they couldn’t spend their days going through the slush.
For about a minute I considered passing the application back to Michael, telling him his mistake, giving him the chance to pass Fortress Defense up to the bosses.
I didn’t seriously consider it, though. Not even for a minute. It was more like a thought experiment of what someone who wasn’t me might do.
* * *
So now everyone in the company knows that at best, Michael could be utilized in the Dungeon, and at worst, he should be let go for someone more intuitive and he could go work for a mutual fund or something where the investors would be ecstatic to get 10% annual return.
He looks like he wants to kill me.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to say on the jet?” Todd asks.
I drag my eyes away from Michael. It’s difficult. When I was a kid we had a cat who would stare at me like he was better than me and I covertly kept a little squirt gun handy to blast him when he wouldn’t look away.
“I just found out two minutes ago when you did.”
“And I’ve already thought of about fifty topics. You’ve got two hours alone with them. They’re all tired of each other. You’ll be the new toy. It’s a huge opportunity.”
Todd sometimes seems like he received brain damage during a keg stand gone wrong, but there’s a reason he has even an entry-level spot at the city’s hottest venture capital fund.
“That’s a good point.”
“You’re the golden boy. You might never get this lucky again. Don’t squander it.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll think on it.”
He slaps me on the shoulder and stands up. “And remember who gave you such great advice. Don’t forget me when you get a window, brah. My God, a window. Actual sunlight!”
Taking a notepad, I begin to scribble ideas for topics of conversation as I go through applications. The others can pick up the slack today.
As the adrenalin wears off, my worries from earlier that morning begin to creep in. I’m still unable to sense a significant difference between these two sets of memories.
I shake it off. I’m doing it. I’m a hair’s breadth away from realizing my lifelong goals. I’m living the dream.
3
I work late, as usual, but after a time I’m not really working. The day began with a strange, disorienting dream, but I figured the strangeness would fade. It hasn’t. In fact, as my mind has desperately worked to do the impossible, to place two sets of memories on top of each other, things have only gotten stranger.
I didn’t feel this way yesterday. Yesterday I was fine (except for the yesterday in which I was horribly disfigured and living—no, existing—in my parents’ house, the yesterday which I only know is false because today I’m not burned), but if I have double memories of that time, how can that be? I haven’t had double memories for months, though I have double memories of months.
It feels like my brain is trying to expand to absorb all this, but there’s not enough space in my skull to hold the paradox.
Work is impossible, so I gather my things and head out. When I get home, I don’t even bother to go inside. Janet’s at work. I head straight to the parking garage. I need to get some food, and I need distraction. The last thing I need is to sit alone in an empty apartment and think.
Tiny’s Pizza is busy, because Tiny’s is always busy. It’s only a block off the college campus, and being an urban campus, night classes are nearly as popular as day classes.
Tiny’s pizza is surprisingly good, considering they could make anything and if it were cheap enough students would shove it down without complaint.
The short line moves quickly due to brusque employees, and I take my tray with two big slices of pepperoni and look for someplace to sit.
I shouldn’t have come here. Madison and I must have eaten here hundreds of times. She’s sitting at every table, eating a slice of thin crust vegetarian, the worst value, which drove me nuts, and gesticulating as she went on about some philosophic theory or some student’s or professor’s thoughts on it. She always made it seem like a life or death situation. She could share her intensity like that, if she chose to, if she deemed you worth talking to. How had I made the cut? And if I was worth it, where did she go?
Minutes have passed, I think, and I’ve been standing in the middle of Tiny’s Pizza holding my tray. I notice someone giving me oblique, hostile glances.
Oliver.
Oliver was a classmate of Madison’s, and followed her around like a puppy. I’d come close to having a talk with him about it a few times, but she always talked me down, saying he was harmless and socially dysfunctional and didn’t realize how he came off to people. Besides her looks, smarts and personality, I think Oliver was obsessed with her because she was the only person who tolerated his presence when it wasn’t absolutely necessary to do so.
He sits alone, of course. So I take the seat across from him.
“Hey, Oliver. How’s it going?”
He glares at me. I haven’t talked to him since Madison disappeared, though several times before I graduated I felt eyes on me and looked up to find him watching me from a distance.
“I was doing fine,” he says, looking back at his open book and pointedly finding the place he left off with a fingertip.
I nod to the book. “You must be pretty close to graduating.”
“As close as Madison would have been. This is my senior year.”
I nod, take a bite of pizza. It had cooled during my lost moments.
“What are you doing next?” I ask through a mouthful of pizza, then give a sharp laugh, swallow. “I’m sorry. You must hate that question. Maddy always did.”
He smacks the book shut. It’s a survey of analytic philosophy. Maddy didn’t like analytic philosophy, preferred the stuff some Europeans were doing around the same time.
“I’m not going to sit here and reminisce with you about her.”
“Why’s that?” I ask, setting my slice down. I know why.
“You know why.”
“Because you think I did it.”
“Exactly.” His thin face goes red, but from anger. I wouldn’t have expected this from the mousy little nerd. “I don’t know why you did it except that your type always destroys things it can’t understand.”
“My type? This should be interesting.”
“Yeah, your type. The frat boy, business school, weight lifting cave man. What she saw in you I’ll never know.”
He’s losing it. People are looking over at us as his voice rises and his face flushes deeper. He shakes. He’s been thinking all this for months, for longer, since he met me. He probably had me pegged as Maddy’s downfall for years before she disappeared. What he’s said seems excessive except that it’s only the barest glimpse of the fury raging inside him.
“Actually, I told the police I thought they should talk to you about it. I think several other people did, too,” I say.
“Why would I ever hurt Madison? Why?”
“Maybe because you’re completely obsessed with her and couldn’t stand that she was with someone like me. How did that change her in your eyes? Did she become less perfect after she fell for a caveman?”
“Don’t turn this around…”
I don’t think Oliver had anything to do with Madison’s disappearance. When it first happened I was grasping at straws like everyone else, but as weird as Oliver is, he’s not dangerous.
I say, “The cops looked at you just like they looked at me. My point is that you should know that things aren’t always as they seem from the outside.”
His hands shake as he begins to pack his books into his bag.
I say
, “Don’t you think that maybe she just left? Did either of us really understand her?”
Oliver barks out a laugh as sharp as a chisel hitting rock. “No, she didn’t leave. She wouldn’t have left you. Nobody could understand how she’d fallen for some businessman, but we could all see how hard she had. She was crazy about you. I knew her before you did. Being with you changed her. She never would have left you.” Oliver picks up his tray, as even in his rage he’s unable to break Tiny’s self-busing policy. “I’m saying that because if there’s some tiny piece of you capable of human feeling, then I want it to suffer with the knowledge of what you destroyed.”
I don’t watch Oliver walk away. I don’t look up to meet the eyes of the other students watching me. I stare at pizza I can’t eat, as the few bites I’ve already taken jump and bubble in my gut like a pot ready to boil over.
Madison disappeared in between the time I left Pajino’s and the time I arrived at the party. She was not abducted from the party. There is parking lot security footage of her getting into her car on her own and driving away. There are only two possibilities. She left and kept going, or she left to meet me and I killed her. I know the second isn’t true. What I didn’t understand is that everyone else understood the first couldn’t be true. I didn’t know Madison before I knew her, of course. Yeah, her friends had told me how being with me had seemed to bring her to life, but I guess it hadn’t sunk in.
Madison didn’t abandon me.
But what about when she left me to lay in that hospital bed, so despondent that I wished the machines and doctors would just let me die?
That didn’t happen. That didn’t fucking happen.
Am I crazy enough that I killed her and don’t remember? Jesus Christ, is any of this even happening? Am I dreaming? Will I go to sleep and wake up again in my old bed in my parents’ house?