Firebirds Soaring

by Sharyn November

  Hands shaking, breathing rapidly, Appie sat down again at the workstation. She IM’ed Carolyn and willed her fingers to type the hardest words she’d ever written. “Carolyn, I think I’ve lost my laptop.”

  The reply came back almost immediately. “No, you haven’t. Didn’t you read your e-mail this morning? IT took all the marketing laptops for a software upgrade. You should have it back tomorrow. Can I help you with anything?”

  Appie sighed a long sigh. “No, thanks. Much relieved.” Well, that explained the security alert . . . except . . . wouldn’t IT have had the proper code so the alert would not have been triggered? Maybe it was a new guy. Appie returned to working on Excel spreadsheets, finding the marching numbers a soothing relief from panic mode, though the adrenaline coursing through her blood made concentration a challenge.

  As noon rolled around, Appie felt more in control, more on an even keel again. Everything would be all right. She’d get her laptop back tomorrow and work on the Mindportal notes then. There was no rush, after all, since the project wasn’t on any company timetable.

  She finally went to her e-mail page. Lots of messages. The one from IT this morning. A note from Rebecca, reminding Appie to send in the survey form. How did she know I hadn’t? wondered Appie. And then a new message appeared, with a bright red, flashing exclamation point beside it. From the VP of Marketing. Not a mass company mailing. It was only for her.

  “Please come to my office as soon as you can.” That was it.

  Appie read it three times to verify its reality. She numbly typed back a reply. “I’m on my way.” Everything was not going to be all right. She logged off, got up, and walked out the door, heading for the elevator like a convict headed for execution.

  The VP’s office was on the forty-fifth floor. Appie stepped out into a lobby filled with light from floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on a genuine, excellent view of the city. The VP of Marketing had a huge corner office that was remarkably bare of furniture—a long desk, chairs, one filing cabinet, one set of wall cabinets, and that extraordinary view.

  As soon as Appie entered, the man behind the desk got up and strode toward her, hand extended. He was gym tanned and ripped and wore a navy cashmere V-neck, khaki pants, Rolex watch. “Suits” never wore suits anymore. “Appomattox Kim? I don’t think we’ve formally met. George Huelva. Good of you to come right away. Have a seat.”

  Appie pasted a smile on her face and sat down. “What is this about, sir?”

  “Please, call me George. Sorry to call you in on your lunch hour. I was thinking of calling down for teriyaki. Want me to order something for you?”

  “No, thanks.” Appie’s stomach felt like a black hole of fear. She couldn’t possibly eat.

  George sat behind the desk again, leaned back in his ergo-chair, crossed one leg over another. He picked up a pen off the desk and began to play with it, turn-tap-turn-tap. “Appie, knowing the way gossip runs wild in a company like this, well, any company, we felt it was best to let you know officially, so that you wouldn’t get the wrong impression.”

  “Let me know what?”

  “This morning we decided to let Julio Tanaka go.”

  Appie’s stomach seemed to jerk sideways. This was not the particular bad news she was expecting. “Julio? He’s been . . . fired?” Her first thought, of course, was, Did I have something to do with it?

  Anticipating her thought, George said, “We understand you were just on vacation with him, and I want to assure you it had nothing to do with that. Per se.”

  Per se? Slowly, Appie asked, “If I may, George, why was he . . . terminated?”

  George gazed aside out the huge windows, raised the pen to his upper lip, and twirled it horizontally beneath his nose in unconscious imitation of a melodrama villain’s mustache. “Obviously it would be inappropriate to comment on the details. But suffice it to say that Worldtree has no place in it for cowards.”

  “Cowards,” Appie echoed without inflection. She couldn’t possibly think of any way that Julio matched the description of coward. If anything, she thought he was recklessly bold. “But I thought he was almost a five-star, sir—George.”

  George nodded and returned the pen to the desk. Turn-tap-turn-tap. “A grave disappointment, certainly. But I expect you’re wondering what this has to do with you.”

  Appie’s turn to nod. “Of course.”

  George sighed and looked again out the window wall. “There was a project we had assigned to Julio. A very important project. We have learned that he chose to hand that project off to someone else. It has turned out that someone was you.”

  The pit in Appie’s stomach sank deeper. As if that were possible. No need to dispute the fact or ask how Worldtree knew this. “Yes, he did,” Appie said softly.

  “May I ask why you didn’t tell anyone about this?” Turn-tap. Turn-tap.

  There was only one possibly acceptable answer. “Ambition. He told me it could make my career. I believed him. I wanted to wait to make the big splash. So I wanted to wait until I had developed a proper assessment before telling anyone.”

  George nodded again. He pushed back in his chair and crossed his arms on his chest. “Well, I want to assure you right away, Appie, that you’re not in trouble. Julio may have chosen to do the wrong thing, but we think his instincts may have been right. We’ve been watching your progress, and we think you show great promise. Great promise.”

  “Thank you.” Appie still didn’t dare breathe.

  “So. The Mindportal project is yours. And I have to tell you, Harold is very interested in this client. Very interested.” Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

  Harold would be Harold Staffer, conservative, brilliant, quirky CEO of Worldtree, who had taken it from a small consulting office to the global spiderweb it was today.

  “Oh. Wow,” was all Appie could say in reply.

  Suddenly all smiles, George sat up and leaned forward on the desk. “So tell me—I know you’ve met with the people at Mindportal and made some notes—tell me what you think. Give me your preliminary assessment.”

  “But . . . I’m still working on the notes,” Appie said, delaying for time to think.

  George shook his head, waving the pen around. “C’mon, c’mon, this is marketing! The first impression is always right. Tell me what you think.”

  “Well,” Appie sat back. For some reason the quotes on the clothing came back to haunt her. Goodness without wisdom . . . impose the law of its being . . . If not now, when? Her hands, gathered in her lap, opened up, as if holding an offering. Sunlight, tinted golden by passing clouds, spilled through the window wall into her open hands, momentarily dazzling her. She felt strangely removed, sitting as if hovering in space. Some combination of fear and awareness that this moment was Very Important joined to create a mental space of its own. A dizziness that was not dizziness momentarily took her, as if she were suddenly weightless, as if magnets moved against her mind. She felt it, the Connectedness-of-All-Things. She understood that she sat at a fulcrum of a mutable future, dependent on her action in this moment. And then the moment passed, leaving behind a feeling of calm, courage, and certainty. She looked up at George, knowing what she had to say. “It’s a bad idea.”

  His smile turned to a scowl instantaneously. “What is?”

  “The intention is that Worldtree will use the Mindportal helmet as a morale booster for employees and the Mindportal company is looking at this application as a way to gain user acceptance, right?”

  George sat back, still scowling. “In a nutshell. But your notes seemed overwhelmingly positive.”

  So they had seen the notes. Damn them. “The notes were incomplete. I hadn’t gotten to outlining the downside yet.”

  “What downside?”

  She ticked off on her fingers. “One. It’s lawsuit hell. As soon as the first employee has an epileptic fit—”

  “But the stats say the device is no more dangerous than a cell phone—”

  “And you might recall certain wi
reless companies paid out millions in settlements. Doesn’t matter how safe the helmet actually is. We’ll have to spend bundles proving it isn’t. Two, religious rights.”

  “What? This has nothing to do with religion!”

  Appie shook her head like a stubborn bull. “Even the people at Mindportal implied there was a spiritual element. A certain number of employees will refuse to use the device on religious grounds. Again, lawsuits may ensue. Legal can tell you how sticky those will be. And if there’s any impression that Worldtree is trying to create a corporate cult”—As I suspect they may hope to, Appie added to herself—“the media would have a field day. Stock would tank. Stockholders would flee in disgust.”

  “But—”

  “Three!” Appie announced, taking a deep breath because now she would have to lie, even though it was for a good cause. “The Mindportal device will not create more productive workers. Julio saw this, and that may be why he didn’t want to touch the project. He called it Rapture of the Void, falling in love with nature, what have you. It takes you out of the mundane. You feel more calm, yes, but then the last thing you want is to go to work. You’re more likely to dwell on big-picture questions.”

  “Big picture?” echoed George, undoubtedly imagining Worldtree as the only big picture worth discussing.

  “Yeah. Family, environment, poverty . . .”

  George blew air out between his lips in disgust. “Opt-out shit.”

  “That’s my point,” said Appie. “And remember the marketing truism that Happy People Don’t Buy Stuff. The people at Mindportal confided to me that they hoped this device could eventually bring world peace, an end to war.” Take that, Harold, who was reported to have major investments in military-industrial companies. She hoped he was listening in.

  “Hah!”

  “They have their own agenda, George, and it’s not the same as Worldtree’s. It’s a bad idea, George. Especially if it works as Mindportal claims.” And that Appie was able to state with absolute conviction.

  George stared at her, biting his lower lip, arms folded again across his chest. “That’s your assessment?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  His nostrils flared and he stared out of the window for long moments. He stabbed the pen into his desk blotter once. Twice. “All right. Thanks. Write me up a full report and I’ll send it on.”

  Appie quoted another aphorism she had seen on Mercator’s clothing. “The truth will set you free. But first it will make you miserable.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Go on. We’ll be in touch.”

  Appie left his office and got into the elevator feeling . . . immense relief. It was all going to be okay. Just not in the way she’d expected. She returned to her cubio and typed up the points she had just outlined to the Marketing VP. She then e-mailed the report to George, with a blind carbon copy to Rebecca the Conduit, who read everything and passed it on. “Ooops,” Appie said with a smile. Worldtree might take our time, our lives, our ovaries. But they will not take our souls.

  She didn’t know if she’d be “let go” or if she’d resign first. Either way, the end was near. Appie checked her bank account online and found she had a good start on a nest egg, given that she almost never bought anything. And her available credit was through the roof. She’d heard there was a sizable opt-out community on Orcas Island. Maybe there was one in North Dakota, too. The world, her future, felt limitless, like a flat endless prairie stretching out the horizon, vast as the sea. She wondered if there were fresh lilies down at Pike Place Market. She’d always liked lilies. Appie logged off her workstation and walked out the door to go find out.

  KARA DALKEY is the author of fifteen novels, mostly historical fantasy, and about a dozen published short stories, both fantasy and SF. Her most recent release is a reprint of her novel Euryale, a fantasy set in ancient Rome, published in the paranormal romance line of Juno Books. When not writing or being an office drone, she has lately been taking courses in boat piloting so that she and her sweetie can explore the islands of Puget Sound in their mini-yacht.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This story came about as a reaction to the best-selling nonfiction book by Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat. This eye-opening, highly influential work about the progress of globalization and what it means for American companies and workers basically says that young people in America had better be prepared to give their all for the sake of their jobs in the future, since they’ll be in competition with Chinese and Indian youth who are eager to do so. Friedman himself seems to dismiss the question of whether the lives of American youth, caught up in the globalized treadmill, will be worth living. But that is precisely the question young people need to ask themselves as they think about college and career: “What can I do, who can I be, in order to have a life worth living?”

  So “Flatland” is about that question. I believe our culture will be facing some increasing contradictory stresses in the years to come, around the old concerns of work vs. family and work vs. self. How much of yourself and your life are you willing to sacrifice to the success of American business?

  The Mindportal device is based on an actual invention used in a university research study. I predict that eventually such a device will find its way to a hi-tech gift shop near you. What it gets used for, however, and the results, will be very interesting to see.

  Candas Jane Dorsey

  DOLLY THE DOG-SOLDIER

  You do a job, you want to know why, and how it turns out. Here are the things that happened to Dolly. 1. The Colonel picked her out from all the ones in the litter. She remembers it only slightly. It was a long time ago. She remembers that then, all of them used to run together like wolves and tumble together at noon and night like puppies. When the Colonel came to the arfenedge with his wolven eyes and his sweet talk to the Sisters, soon the litter went to live at his halfway house out in the country.

  Halfway to hell, Dolly thought later. Not much later. How she learned the word hell was this: a teacher came to separate the litter out into ones-at-a-time. She knew he was a teacher because he said so.

  “I am Wayne, and I’m here to try to teach you little savages a thing or two. That means you call me Teacher, or sir, or Mr. Wayne if you think I’m feeling friendly, and you listen to what I say, and you learn something.”

  “You look like an Airedale to me,” said Tezzy, who liked this new tool of words and liked to bite, too.

  “Dammit to hell,” said Mr. Wayne. “You wash out of this programme and you’re back on the sidewalk, and probably with some scars to show for it! It’s in your interest to listen to me now, and not be a mutt.”

  “Sir, we were in the arfidge,” said Terry. He was Tezzy’s littermate, from a mom who’d liked her needle too much when he was about six, people years, and he’d dragged Tezzy out of the path of cars ever since. He’d troubled to learn to talk before then. “Wun’t they take us back?”

  “Let me tell you all something,” said Mr. Wayne wearily. At least, he looked weary to Dolly as he sat down and gestured the litter—Dolly guessed she better start calling them a pack now—to come ’round him and shush up. “This Colonel we work for doesn’t let anybody go. I came here seven years ago for a three-month contract. Am I teaching in the countryside? No. I’m here in an armed camp surrounded by a pack of little street wolves, trying to turn you into something the Colonel can use.”

  Dolly huffed politely, her nose turned away. He’d said they were a pack! It was official, then. She thought she detected a bit of street dog on him, under the fine clothing and the good grammar. And indeed, at her sneeze, he looked at her and said, “Unless you have a summer cold, I’ll assume you want to speak.”

  Dolly could hardly get her tongue out of the way of the flood of words. “What is dammit and what is hell? What is contract and what is assume? How will use and how much will hurt? ”

  So maybe it wasn’t the Colonel who picked her out later for special training. Maybe the Colonel just noticed somehow from his God-eyes, what Dolly
soon learned to call surveillance, just how Mr. Wayne’s eyes focussed on her dully at the start of her speaking, then sharpened and looked back, like he finally had something to listen to properly. The other littermates—pack kids now—were laughing and making fun like usual, but Dolly was modelled on a different breed from them.

  “Shut up,” said Mr. Wayne to them, and then to Dolly, “Hell is a place of punishment. Dammit means people are stuck there like they were in prison. It’s from the word damned, which means ‘condemned’ or ‘sentenced.’”

  Tezzy started to speak, and Mr. Wayne turned to her. “Shut up and learn something. You need a real bone to chew on, and you’ll get one. You’ll get the world according to Colonel Quartermaine. That ought to be enough.”

  He went on to all of them, but Dolly knew he really continued to speak to her. “And the use is unclear, but I think it goes without saying that it will hurt. Sometimes.

  “As for contracts, a contract is a deal between people. This pack and I had better make one now: I contract to tell you the truth as best I know it, and you contract to pull up your socks and learn something, so you can take some kind of control of your own lives. Knowledge is power.”

  “What is ‘power’?” said Dolly.

  8. Soon after her capture, Dolly had some surgery. It was painful and took a long time to recover from, but when she had, she looked very different from how she once did. The only visible sign was a scar at her lip, which she learned to say was from a violent incident in her childhood.

  2. Okay, so she didn’t actually see the Colonel for months. It all mushes together in memory, until recently when she has tried to sort it out. Long before then they realised Mr. Wayne really was a nice man, just trying to stay toughened up like them. Much later Mr. Wayne turned into just Wayne, but that was for Dolly and is in another part of the story.