Corporate Climber
by Zen McCann

  An after work Friday evening drink had turned to half a dozen. Not that I was on a tight schedule, hell there wasn’t any reason not to stay for six more. Jill was gone, three months, two weeks, four days seven hours for anybody that gives a shit. She said that our relationship wasn’t growing to meet her demands but her career could be improved with a job offer in Seattle Washington. I hoped it rained on her every day at her fabulous new job.

  I ordered number seven and contemplated the results of the intense visual inspection that two of my female co-workers had been giving me from the pool table. With my luck my fly was open.

  "God Damn I’ve had a shitty day. Good barkeep, a double Stolli’s on ice if you please." A voice from the stool beside me trumpeted breaking my reverie on the chance of some type of rebound relationship with Michelle or Tisha.

  I looked at the new patron.

  Short, chunky and pasty, wearing an expensively cut black silk suit. The well trimmed goatee accentuated a toothy smile.

  "Ever have one of those days?" He asked, taking my look as an offer of conversation.

  He looked like a banker or a stock broker. He could be a pain in the ass attorney looking to serve papers on somebody. Jill had probably filed a suit against me. Wanted the dog or the stereo.

  "Have them all the time in my business. Things aren’t as easy as people like to believe." He continued as his drink was delivered. "There is a butt load of competition out there. The boss is always trying to break my balls."

  He took a long sip of vodka. "Ah, now that is good. Russians know their booze, gotta love them. What’s your name friend?"

  "Jack Burton." I answered sipping my beer.

  "What do you do Jack? You ever have day’s where nothing goes right?"

  "I have them all the time. I’m working across the street on the new high rise." I answered before I even realized I was doin it.

  He raised his glass in salute. "A builder, a man who works with his hands then."

  I shook my head. "Not exactly, I’m working on the buildings computer system."

  "I have the right man then I think." He said quietly nodding.

  "What?"

  "The right man for a little conversation. An educated man, on the cutting edge of technology. A man of the new age renaissance so to speak."

  "Whatever." I had no idea what this guy was babbling about. I let about half my beer slide.

  "Barkeep another ale for my friend here." The suit called with a flourishing hand gesture like some Shakespearean actor.

  The stooge behind the slab gave me a funny look.

  "I think he means Budweiser." I explained.

  "So you ride the electric highway. Electricity that was one of my better ideas." My new drinking buddy said wistfully. "The boss said you’d never do anything with it when he saw that fat ass Franklin flying a kite out in a storm. But then I played Edison like fucking harp."

  This guy was some reject from Bellevue was all I could figure.

  "Hey which nut hatch did you jump out of?"

  "Pardon me?" he asked.

  "What the hell are you talking about? You sound as crazy as a shit house rat."

  "I was explaining how Tom Edison was having a pitiful go of it until I whispered in his ear so to speak. The poor bastard had about five thousand failures to his credit on that light bulb thing until I stepped in and said try a new filament for Christ sake. This should be as easy as sewing on a button. Well after that the light went on over his head, if you’ll forgive my little play on words."

  This guy was about two laps short of a finished race in the brains area.

  "You really think you discovered electricity. Man you are whacked."

  The bartender brought my beer.

  "Eddie," I said. "Meet the guy that discovered electricity."

  "Nice ta’ meet ya’. I invented beer nuts but some son of a bitch stole it from me." He walked off.

  "No I didn’t say I discovered electricity. I said it was my idea. I invented it. The whole concept, positively and negatively charged entity of nature the whole thing. Of course then I had to tell people how to put it in a bottle so it could be uncorked later for real devastation."

  "Right." I answered. "Who is it exactly that you work for? Candid Camera? What’s the gag?"

  "I work for . . . I work for a major corporation. I’m with the technology division actually. I used to be in what was called mergers and hostile takeovers, then we had to specialize. I got attached to the technology division permanently. So now its electricity, atom bombs, lasers, computer technology. That’s why I came to you computers and all."

  "What’s the name of this corporation?"

  "Why Hell of course." He said with an honest smile.

  I had to laugh out loud. "Don’t you mean Hell Inc. if you’ve gone corporate?"

  He shook his head. "We don’t have many legal problems that we can’t take care of in house ever since that whole Daniel Webster fiasco. You know we’ve never even had any problems with trademarking the name."

  I rolled my eyes. "Okay thanks for the beer. I’m going to turn around now and ignore you until you leave me alone."

  I did just that, or at least tried to.

  "Oh my, I do rattle on. I never even properly introduced myself. My name is Aldo Fury, director of the technology division. The boss calls it Section Five."

  I continued to ignore the freak beside me. He sighed loudly, finished his drink and shouted for another round for him and I. As rude as he was I figured Eddie would ignore him for half an hour, but surprisingly he brought the drinks right over.

  "I remember the day when I could walk into a place make my eyes glow red and shout greetings from hell, I’m a demonic apparition and half the place would clear out. The other half would fall to their knees and go to praying as if I’d give a shit."

  Out of the corner of my eye I say him motion with his hand. "Now days people are just to fucking cynical. Everybody wants proof. What can I do to prove it to you Jack?"

  I couldn’t resist. This guy was just too much.

  "Okay so you’re Satan and hell has gone corporate . . ."

  "No," He interrupted with a grin. "I never said I was Satan. He runs the place. I’m just a lowly division head. We used to be a part of the science department but it just got to big, so me and my crew handle all the tech stuff. Hardware weapons, computers, nuclear, lasers all that kind of stuff. The guys over in the old science division handle medical, biological, you know new germs, new diseases, cloning. Now there’s one I wish I had got in on. Somebody is going to cause some total fucking misery with that whole thing, what fun. There’s a bunch of divisions of sin. It would take hours to name them all."

  "Divisions of sin."

  "Corruption is a multi facetted project Jack. The world is a big place. You guys are breeding like rats. We’ve got five sections just in china alone. There are a lot of sins to be committed out there. The old man won’t give us a break either. He won’t quit until there’s complete and utter chaos. Bastard won’t give comp time for bad behavior either, I know. Otherwise I’d be laid up on a nice hot sulfur flume with those two little sinners over there."

  He pointed to Michelle and Tisha at the pool tables, who were still looking this way. "You know them Jack?"

  I nodded. "Yeah I work with them. We pull wire together."

  "Pull wire with them what the hell does that mean?"

  I shrugged. "It’s slang, means we’re are getting the system up and running across the street."

  "I’ll bet those honey’s would like to pull more than your wire Jack. They’re a couple fucking hoties." He licked his lips lewdly.

  "Don’t talk about them like that . . ." I turned to face this crazy man and glare him into civilized behavior.

  He was gone, Disappeared from right beside me. I looked over at my co-workers. Aldo Fury was there talking to them. All three of them were laughing. He must have a pretty good line for a short fat guy.

  Michelle looked over at me and waved. I waved back. What the hell was he saying I wondered.

  "Eddie can I get a Weller’s and water?"

  When I looked around Aldo Fury was at my elbow again. He moved fast for a fat man too.

  "What did you say to them?"

  "I told Michelle that you wanted to crawl all over her like a jungle gym, and I told Tisha that I was going to spank her like the nasty vixen that she is." He winked at me.

  "Christ, you are crazy. I have to work with those two."

  "Don’t sweat it Jack. They are very pliable young women. Lusty sinful girls, they’ll be coming over in a bit for drinks. Then maybe we’ll all go for a little romp."

  "I’m done with you." I ran my hands through my hair. "Just leave me alone."

  He slapped me on the back. "Come on Jack give me a chance to prove myself. Hey I’ve already fixed it up so you get laid. You don’t need that bitch Jill."

  I grabbed his shoulder. "How the hell do you know Jill?"

  "How do you think dumb ass. I am Satan’s little helper. I know plenty. I know she dumped you cause you’re spinning your wheels around here, no future. Damn, you’ve still got a hard on for her don’t you. I can fix that up. This is your chance to change all that. Once she knows you’re going to be rich. With a few million in the bank you’ll be as sexy as brad pit. She’ll decide leaving you was the worst thing she ever did. She’ll be back legs in the air."

  "I don’t want some mindless zombie."

  "With the right temptation she’ll do it on her own. She liked you Jack but she was tempted away by the lure of things that sparkle and shine. You can give that to her now."

  "If you know so much and you’ve got these powers how come you didn’t just give us something that would wipe us all out?"

  He motioned for another drink. "What do you mean, like just plunk an A-bomb in some caveman’s lap back at the dawn of time. Then whisper in his ear how to make it go boom?"

  I nodded and showed him my hands palms up, waiting for an explanation.

  "Doesn’t work that way Jack. God gave you jerks free will. I feel it was one of the big mistakes of all time. If it weren’t for free will I’d have each and every one of you break at least half of the big ten and then run you off a cliff like lemmings."

  His drink seemed to tip over by itself, splashing vodka on his suit.

  He jumped back and looked up. "Hey I’m not entitled to an opinion or what?"

  "If we have free will and your job is so hard why is the world so screwed up?"

  He sat back down on his bar stool. "Because sin is kind of like dog shit. It’s everywhere, you can’t walk down the street without stepping in a pile of it. When you least expect it, plop, you step in it all messy and stinky. See we can give you all the pieces to the big puzzle that will fry your ass to an eternity of damnation, we can even use temptation to give you a few clues but we have to let you make the final choice yourself."

  "So it’s kind of a game between your boss and . . ."

  "No, no. You mortal beings see everything as competition I swear. It’s about balance. The balancing of the universe. And I have to tell you, you guys are slow on the uptake. At the rate we’re going it could take eternity to get mankind destroyed and shackled in hell."

  "How do you know that’s what’s going to happen? I thought we had free will. Maybe we’ll turn it around."

  He shrugged and sipped from a drink that was full again. I had never seen the barkeeper fill it.

  "To be honest Jack I don’t think so. You guys aren’t too smart as a whole. Actually you’re so dumb that it’s taking you forever to do yourselves in. You’re lazy too, why most of this stuff is simple as can be. Step one: discover radioactivity, step two: make a few glow in the dark numbers on watches, step three: build a bomb and blow up a couple cities. The next step should be simple enough nuke yourselves to dust whether it’s bombs or shoddy power plants. But no, you’re so lazy you decide you’re going to go ahead and use up every other resource on the planet before you really tap into the nuclear thing."

  "So you figure that we are not yet all chained in hell is due to the fact that we are stupid and lazy?"

  "Yep. Oh and the boss has a little theory that I like. Darkness and chaos is the true nature of things. Before God decided to stir things up and make light and give things form darkness and chaos were pretty much everywhere. Man those were the days. Eventually the candle will burn out Jack."

  He seemed excited by the prospect and for an instant I could almost swear his eyes glowed red. Probably just glare from the beer sign spinning overhead.

  "So what’s the deal, why me. Why did you stop in here and talk to me. I’m just a working stiff. Granted I’m not mother Teresa but I’m no Hitler either."

  He slapped me on the back again. "I like working with the common man Jack. We’ve got some guys that waste all their time looking for that superstar that one guy with the potential for mass destruction. You know your Iatolla’s, your Idi Amin’s, Sadam Hussein, not me though. The problem with those guys is they usually don’t pan out. Kilroy over in zealots section got lucky with Hitler. Nobody thought that damn house painter would get as much accomplished as he did."

  "Yeah I bet you guys are real proud of him."

  "We have our good days Jack. Makes me warm and tingly all over."

  "So back to me. What am I supposed to do here?"

  Aldo Fury snapped out of his little day dream.

  "Well there’s a couple way’s people usually go. One is you just roll over and say fuck it, take my miserable soul, it’s yours. I do a moderate business that way but it’s nothing to brag about. It’s mostly the crack-head, homeless, space cowboy crowd."

  He smiled at me. "Some of you on th to being empty. "What could I do? I install computers."

  He leered at a woman that was walking past behind us. Hey Toots, I’d like to strip you naked and do you in the ass."

  She smiled and touched the collar of her jacket. "Thanks I just bought it this week."

  "I could start your trip to hell real nice on the old Fury pole."

  "Thanks." She replied still smiling as she walked away. "You too."

  "They really don’t know what you’re saying?"

  "I told you I can say whatever I want. It comes out like honey to their ears."

  "How do I know what you’re saying to me isn’t some cloud you put over my mind?"

  "Jack have a little faith. Those are just parlor tricks we use to amuse people. You and I are cutting a deal here. If I don’t dot all the eyes and cross all the tee’s you might slip out on a technicality. The old man would have my ass. I have to tell you the straight rules." He pointed skyward. "Comes from top management."

  "So why do you want me again?"

  "The computer thing Jack. It’s the next great wave in sin, I’m positive. I’ve already done some disgusting things with pornography and pedophilia on the Internet but the potential is there for so much more. I see electronic terrorism on the rise. National defense codes cracked, stock markets crashed, Oh! here’s one how about air traffic control and shipping. This thing is big and there will be plenty of perks for you buddy. What do you say? I can help you with some programming ideas, sort of get you on line to the super highway. We can have our own web site, WWW.hell.com. What do you think?"

  "I do this stuff for you and I get whatever I want and at the end of things I get a nice toasty spot in hell is that about right?"

  "Hey you might as well party for awhile because in the end you’re going to end up there any way. You’ve heard the old saying—All your friends are going to be there? Well it’s true."

  "I don’t know it sounds nuts to me. How do I know you wouldn’t screw me over. I always hear you guys screw anybody that deals with you guys over."

  Michelle and Tisha walked up.

  "Hey are we going to have that drink or what?" Michelle asked with a smile directed at me.

  "Shut up bitch or I’ll gut you like a fish." Aldo Fury hissed. "I’m trying to close a fucking deal here. Jack you’ll get everything in the contract."

  "Is this guy funny or what?" Tisha asked, oblivious to what he had actually said. "And that virtual reality program sounds like it’s what you were looking for on the security system."

  "Come on Jack let’s cut to the chase. What’s it going to take to button this up? Come on let’s drink this champagne."

  He raised a glass of bubbly liquid.

  I looked at my hand. The heavy tumbler of whiskey and water had turned to a champagne flute.

  "Wow champagne, this is an occasion." Michelle said raising a glass and not even wondering where it came from. "Let’s have some fun."

  Aldo Fury glared at her. "I told you to shut your yap meat puppet or I’ll pull off your arms and legs like a bug."

  "No." she answered. "My place isn’t far. We can go over there and be more private."

  I looked at Aldo and realized something.

  "You can’t do any of it can you?" I asked him.

  "Any of what?"

  "The threats that you make. You can’t cash in on them."

  "What do you mean? I represent Satan and all the minions of hell Jack Burton and you wish to debate my power when you could be benefiting from them?" He looked a little miffed.

  "I know you can cloud peoples minds make them hear or see things." I held up my glass. "You even have some good tricks going with the materialization. But when it comes right down to it we have to do all the dirty work. We have to let you in the door right?"

  He put both hands against the bar edge and I noticed how long his nails were when they dug into the wood surface.

  "Maybe I haven’t made it clear how I use the power I have over people, and how it can be used to your advantage. Michelle why don’t you give Tisha a big wet sloppy kiss."

  The two women kissed and Tisha didn’t resist.

  "That doesn’t prove shit to me. Because you trick a couple impressionable women into some mock sexual show doesn’t convince me."

  "What’s it going to take? Am I going to have to shoot fire out of my ass? How about if I get Tisha here to walk out side and in front of a truck? Would that so you what I can do? I feel an old pull toward suicide in her."

  I held up a hand to quiet him. "I just want to be sure I have it straight. I help you by pulling some seriously criminal computer hacker type stuff that will cause thousands of people suffering . . ."

  "More like millions Jack think big." Aldo mad an expansive hand gesture. That suffering will in turn cause more suffering and sin and so on." "In return I can have anything I want. At least until the contract is up?"

  Aldo pointed a chubby finger at me. "You got it Jack. It’s like a pyramid scheme and you’re the bottom guy you have the easiest job. Just get it started and you reap all the benefits."

  "Tell them to knock it off." I nodded at the girls who were still examining each others tonsils.

  "Hey you two knock that shit off." He growled.

  "You know I think we’d both like to go home with you Jack." Michelle said. Tisha nodded with giddy light in her eyes.

  "Have we got a deal Jack?"

  "Just one more thing. You said you’d do something to convince me."

  "I haven’t convinced you. I’ve got these two ready to jump your ass right here. I changed whiskey to champagne. I have to be careful what I do in public or we get riots things like that. The boss doesn’t like a lot of publicity."

  "You only have to do one thing to convince me Mr. Fury. I promise it won’t draw a crowd."

  He started rubbing his hands together. "Name it kid. What? You want me to have Jill call you? I’ll have her call you right here."

  The thought of hearing her voice even over the phone seemed very appealing.

  I smiled. No if I want to talk to her I’ll call."

  "What is it then Jack."

  "Go to hell, and don’t ever come near me or my friends again."

  His face went slack. "You little prick. I thought we had something going here."

  My smile was still in place. "Hey I’m too lazy and stupid to try and corrupt the world. Now go to hell and don’t come back."

  He pulled a mini-recorder out of his pocket and clicked a button.

  "Make a note. Set up a meeting with Bill gates. Maybe We can make him the anti-christ."

  Tisha screamed. I looked her way. "Michelle what is your hand doing o my ass."

  "Calm down I tripped."

I looked back to where Aldo Fury stood. He was gone, only his glass and the scratches in the bar remained.

  "What happened to your friend?" Michelle asked looking around. "He was here just a second ago."

  "Don’t worry about him. He got called back to the office. You girls want to play pool?"

© 12-29-98 Zen McCann

March 1999 HofP