I had the happiest employees anywhere in the area. Contrary to popular belief, happy employees are productive employees. More importantly, happy employees are happy employees! Without any direct action of my own, my employees became my PR team. They spoke of myself (not by name, of course), and Final Solutions, with a conviction and awe heretofore reserved for saints. To them, I had performed a miracle: I had brought out the best in them. I had given them the chance to earn more monetary success and job satisfaction than they’d ever thought possible. Because of me, their jobs were their lives, and they loved it.
The original seven were the most grateful. I’d rescued them from The Wedding Party before it went under in disgrace, a story they regularly told to their skeptical clients. It became common for us to receive resumes from the current employees of our clients after finishing a consultation. The recession proved fertile ground for finding hardworking people searching for a job with good benefits, instead of a job that lined up with their adolescent ambitions.
Final Solutions and my reputation spread. I declined interviews about how I had grown a business in a recession, but Final Solutions began to pop up in financial articles, mostly locally. With some work, Zero-Zero-One and I were able to keep my full name and image out of the public view. I continued to do consultations under a few different pseudonyms. At work I was known as 000, my EIN, though Zero-Zero-One revealed that, behind my back, my employees called me a variety of nicknames, including, but not limited to, Triple Threat, Agent Double-Oh Zero, Three Degrees Below Zero, and, knowing my soft spot for the metric system, Freezing Point. It did not interfere with their work, so it did not bother me.
My identity remained a secret, so as people all over the region were fired in my name, I was able to live in peace. Except for that one time.
9.
One night I returned home. It had been a normal day. Our newest batch of consultants had just completed their second month of cases, and our numbers were rising. Our cases were increasing in proportion with our staff, but we were getting requests for service from bigger and bigger companies, who were more and more desperate to cut corners to stay afloat. Cutting corners sounds counter-intuitive in a floating metaphor, but I’m confident that you understand what I mean.
As a result, we were able to charge more for our services. Some of the companies were rather prestigious, and some of the necessary cuts we made were equally prestigious. Not everyone was happy. My employees reported a few threats, but I wasn’t worried, and they followed my example. A few months earlier I had offered my pro bono services to the county police department, to help them restructure their scheduling system. It took me two weeks, but every cruiser I passed on the road since threw me a friendly wave. Sometimes I got a salute.
On this perfectly normal evening I arrived home, walked up to the front door of my apartment building, and took out my keys. I let myself in, hopped up the four flights of stairs, and turned the corner to my apartment. I already had the correct key in my hand, and I had started to put it in the lock, when a man stepped out of the laundry room.
“I know who you are,” was all he said.
If he wanted to impress me, he should tell me something I didn’t know. I asked him what he wanted.
“I want you dead.” He revealed a small gun from his coat pocket.
I had no doubt that he was serious about it. I put down my bag. What a clichéd end to a perfectly normal day. I guessed he had an unregistered gun, that maybe it had taken him some time to get it, so he must have been thinking about this for a while.
“You have no idea.” He fumbled with the hammer. “I’m – I’m going to…”
He had never used a gun before. How sloppy, to buy a gun to kill someone and not practice with it beforehand. He had not made a plan. But I had a plan.
I left my keys in the lock, stepped forward with free hands, and reached for the gun. He panicked and grasped the trigger.
I jumped back, the hot barrel burning my hands. He looked surprised, but just for a moment, because then he was dead.
I called the police and an ambulance. I hoped the bean stew I had in the crockpot would keep for a few more hours.
EMPLOYEE ANALYSIS: 001
001 has an even, though nervous, temperament. Nervousness springs from a lack of confidence in doing her job well, resulting in losing her job. Her nervousness will dissipate after one month with Final Solutions.
001 is extremely intelligent but thinks she is stupid, so she works as hard as she can to make up for what she sees as a lack of brains. She is extremely effective. She does not wait for others to act or tell her to act. She does. She is the perfect candidate for any job in which she would not be subordinate. In a subordinate situation, she would quickly rise above her superiors and make them uncomfortable in their own jobs.
MOTIVATION: 9/10
CONFIDENCE: 7/10
COMPETENCE: 10/10
DILLIGENCE: 10/10
WORK QUALITY: 9/10
HOLISTIC VISION: 6/10
PUNCTUALITY: 10/10
PERCEPTION: 9/10
COOPERATION: 10/10
KINDNESS: 10/10
OVERALL RATING: 90/100
10.
I would never call Zero-Zero-One an idea person. She has ideas, but she never stops at ideas. She follows through every time. Whether her idea is where to order lunch, what business market to target next, or the best way to number new employees, she is always the first one taking action. Additionally, she has a large and open heart. Zero-Zero-One has less in common with Emelius Cartwright, but their existences are inextricably linked.
At the end of month thirty-eight of Final Solutions, I was contacted by a Prominent Editor of a book publisher. He was the brother of a former client. He had read about me in the newspaper, and contacted his brother to get my information. By now, it was difficult to track me down personally. Since the incident in my apartment building, Zero-Zero-One and I had taken extra measures to keep my privacy sacred. I declined all in-person interviews, and mostly released information through the press, using someone else as a mouthpiece. I was in a powerful but dangerous place. I got a lot of attention also because I was not yet thirty years old. My face, which was still unusually youthful, always startled anyone who met me, no matter what name I gave them. My hair was a limp mousey brown with a single streak of white hairs on the left side. Often at public events I attended as one of my pseudonyms, an employee of myself. Once I went as a reporter, outraged that myself did not show up, and was invited out with the rest of the press for a big party. That night was very insightful to the life I could have had if I had been a different person. If I had been that different person, I would say that it was the greatest night of my life.
When Prominent Editor contacted me, it was the first time in three years that I had any spare time. Final Solutions was more or less running itself, thanks to the hard work of Zero-Zero-One and the other Numbers.
Prominent Editor reached me via email. He wanted me to write a book about my success. He had heard great things about me, both from his brother and from other companies who had used my services. Despite my absence in the media, he knew I was making a name for myself through my work, and thought that others could benefit from my experience.
What he was really saying was that people would be willing to shell out money to read a book by a reclusive millionaire. What he didn’t tell me, and what I knew from my own research, was that his company wasn’t doing so well. They only published self-help and how-to books. In the past few years, their sales had dropped because most people turned to a computer or a smart phone to answer their self-help and how-to questions. Though some of their forward-thinking employees expanded their publications to coffee table books and inspirational drivel, the executives were unwilling to abandon their original mission statement.
I wrote Prominent Editor immediately. I told him that I had always wanted to write a book, and he was giving me the perfect opportunity. However, I had very concrete ideas
for my book. I would provide him with a full manuscript in one month, and he had to publish it within eighteen months. He was allowed to do his editorial duties and make suggestions, but when print time came, I had the final word. These stipulations, and the word-of-mouth about my persona, intrigued him enough that he agreed.
The sound of my laugh sent Zero-Zero-One rushing into the room. “Are you all right?”
I nodded and explained the situation, a big grin lighting up my face.
Zero-Zero-One plopped into the chair where she, and few other people, always sat in my office. “You’re going to finish a book in a month? That’s really fast.” She stood up and headed back to work. She’s a doer, like I said. “If anyone can do it, you can. I bet it’ll be good too.”
I really had always wanted to write a book, so I knew what I was going to do. It was a little different than what Prominent Editor and his executives wanted me to do, but it would sell better. And isn’t that why they wanted me to write the book in the first place? It would be a nice surprise for them.
First, to keep my identity private, I created a protagonist. This protagonist and I had a lot in common, but we were different enough that he would serve as a likable proxy for my experiences. I, bland as I am, would never sell well as the main character for a book. I sent my new material to Zero-Zero-One every night. She was amazed by how fast I wrote and entranced by my idea. Of course she liked the real me better than the protagonist, but she understood that not everyone was open-minded enough to see me for who I am. She also thought that the plot moved along at a nice clip.
But you were writing a non-fiction book, you interrupt me to say. Non-fiction books don’t have plots, do they?
I will answer your question with a question. What is non-fiction, really? “True” stories? If something is labeled “true” than it is assumed that it contains some truth. Non-fiction does not have the sole claim on truth.
Second, before you say it, non-fiction isn’t history either. History is completely unreliable. I am sure that the employees who were fired because of my services would have very different stories from the ones I was telling in my book. Who would be telling the truth? Who would be lying?
I did fictionalize my story a little bit. That’s what always happens. Fiction is easier to digest. I was not intentionally rewriting the past, merely reforming the chaotic nature of life to fit a manmade mold. Sometimes time has to be restructured, or characters combined, or neuroses explained, to make sense of the past. It’s our natural inclination whenever we recall a story to a friend. There always has to be a bad guy.
The protagonist, unlike myself, needed a name. No one would want to read a book in which you don’t even know the name of the protagonist! Zero-Zero-One convinced me to change the name of the book from Final Solutions to Ultimate Conclusions. Final Solutions, we agreed, had that St. Jude ring of hopelessness to it that the public might not embrace. She also suggested that I add the protagonist’s name to the beginning of the title. It would sound authoritative and profound, and the popular reader would enjoy saying the name of the book they were reading, and feed on the authority and profundity that it lent them.
At the end of the month I sent Mr. Cartwright’s Ultimate Conclusions to Prominent Editor. It was published sixteen months later.
Mr. Cartwright’s Ultimate Conclusions
Chapter 1
Emelius Cartwright was 1.8 meters in height, 81.8 kilos in mass, and 100% efficient. He was loyal to the more accurate metric system, though he was a born American, and there were certain other factors about his mannerisms, his dress, and his patterns of speech that left people with the indelible impression that he was British royalty. The general population had no trouble accepting the facts that he was 1.8 meters tall and contained 81.8 kilograms of flesh, and they readily embraced the utter fabrication that he was a citizen of the United Kingdom with some land holdings; but not one person had ever accepted, upon hearing, that he was 100% efficient, and so as he proved his efficiency time and again, the general population was perpetually surprised.
Mr. Cartwright was never surprised by this, however, as he knew enough of human nature to expect their surprise, and because the time and energy wasted on a state of surprise and its accompanying exclamations (Well, look at that! Never in my life! I can’t wrap my mind around it!) was a practice only of the largely inefficient.
So Mr. Cartwright was, in many circles, considered a fascinating anomaly: to some, a miraculous byproduct of years dedicated to hard work; to others, a tragic casualty of years dedicated to hard work.
To Emelius himself, he was just doing his best.
11.
I feel very responsible for the hubbub that eventually arose from the introduction of Emelius Cartwright. I created him. One never would have guessed, if one knew the story of how the book almost wasn’t, that he would become an international sensation.
Once again, the world has Zero-Zero-One to thank. She was beside me every day that I was writing the book, and she loved it. She loved that it was possible for me to receive the acclaim she thought I had earned, even if it would only go to my initials and the image I had created for myself in Emelius Cartwright.
The publishing company did not feel the same. To say they were unhappy with my bait and switch would be an understatement. Prominent Editor loved the book as much as Zero-Zero-One did, and so when he realized that the self-help book I was supposed to be writing was actually character-driven crime fiction, he staked his job on it. When boxfuls of the book arrived at the office and the executives finally started to pay attention to it, they were outraged. They put the books in their warehouse, fired the Prominent Editor, and sent me a strongly-worded letter from their lawyers.
I called Zero-Zero-One into my office. Her feathers were considerably more ruffled than mine. I told her that the publisher was going to sue me. I additionally told her that they didn’t have legs to stand on, since I had not violated my contract. I was fairly wealthy by then, but I could not afford a lengthy legal process, even if I didn’t lose. Then I handed her my research on the publisher. I stroked the numbers on my father’s old calculator while she read.
“They’ve been in the red for years.” She met my eyes. “They can’t afford a lawsuit either. Why are they doing this?”
They had no choice. The business community knew enough about my upcoming book that if it wasn’t released, or if it was released as is, then the publisher would never withstand the scrutiny. If they could suck me dry, they might be able to limp along for a couple more years.
Zero-Zero-One shook her head. “That’s bad business. They’re trying to take you down with them.” I had never seen her so angry.
I assured her that there was nothing to worry about. We would offer the publisher an out-of-court settlement. In addition, we would buy the sole rights and all the copies of my book. Then we would send one to every newspaper reporter who had ever requested an interview with me.
Zero-Zero-One’s eyes glittered as she began to understand my idea. “Should I hire your editor as well?”
I nodded. There was something so comforting about being with someone who got all the things one was too busy to explain.
Prominent Editor joined us that afternoon to head up the marketing of Mr. Cartwright’s Ultimate Conclusions. He sent the book to the inquisitive newspaper reporters as well as many of his personal contacts in the publishing world. He sent it to seasoned authors, librarians, and teachers. He felt an intense loyalty to me; I had saved him from his dead-end job at a company that was going under. He put in extra hours and all of his best efforts to ensure our mutual success. His job became his life.
Excuse me if this is a story you’ve heard before. I know I have.
Mr. Cartwright’s Second-to-Last Question
CHAPTER 7
Emelius never felt comfortable at company parties, but he rarely felt comfortable anywhere than in front of his calculator, or at least in front of a blank piece of paper. A blank piece of paper
could be anything he wanted it to be, and a calculator could only be what it was. They were perfect society.
But it was good for business to accept invitations, and he would be able to save at least six dollars on dinner for the evening, so he accepted.
A small menorah and a large Christmas tree greeted him at the door. There was no executive assistant, as secretaries were now called, sitting at the front desk, so Mr. Cartwright saw himself in. He immediately became audience to a chaotic, though not totally rowdy, holiday party, in which usually stodgy businessmen were donning reindeer sweaters and office frenemies were singing karaoke together. Mr. Cartwright moved further into the room. There were only two variables to which, if he’d been pressed to hypothesize, he would attribute the sudden change: Christmas music and alcohol.
“Mr. Cartwright!” the HR director called. Her name was Emily, which was convenient because there were no other Emilys working at the office. She walked up to Emelius and extended her hand. He took it, because it was Christmas after all. “I’m so glad you could make it.”
“Quite a party you have here,” he said, following the appropriate social script.
Emily followed suit. “Come here. I’ll introduce you to everyone.”
Of course, everyone at the party already knew Mr. Cartwright; he had consulted for the HR director about three months ago, and since making his suggested adjustments, they were solidly in the black for the first time in a year. The HR director was so relieved that she had invited Emelius to their party, as a thank you. She was one of those women who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Emily pushed Mr. Cartwright into a small circle of coworkers, standing about with ignorant smiles. He immediately recognized them from the analysis: Employees 031, 029, 007 (who was far too confident, even without knowledge of his arbitrarily assigned number), and 018. One man, three women; 007 was making it easy for himself. Mr. Cartwright calculated that the unexpected arrival of an unknown male would upset the game a little bit.
Mr. Cartwright and the Final Solution Page 3