15 Prisoner

It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.

Deng Xiaoping

I continued to conduct the interviews into the late afternoon. The last of my victims was sitting uncomfortably in the chair, nervously rubbing his hands together and constantly glancing at Darwin, who had resumed his guard post on my desk.

Mendez was a curiosity to me. For someone in a middle management position, according to his record, he seemed to have an inflated opinion of his importance here. The causal flow around him was thin, but it extended in many directions. He didn't have much power, but what he had he used, down to the last ounce of energy, and his effects were felt all over the office, especially to employees I had already met with.

He was a petty dictator. Most of the rest of the special project team worked under him, and he was riding them hard. Whatever he was doing, he was leveraging it to vie for more power, more notoriety in the office. It was time to shatter the web he had created around him and see what flies were shaken out.

"So, Mr. Mendez, we meet again. I trust you were able to find the supply room?"

He started at me with mounting confusion. I waited patiently. Ok, perhaps not very patiently. I did want him off his game. Mendez was going to be my trigger. I had set up enough fear, tension and confusion throughout the office that just the right amount of pressure would send the involved parties into just enough chaos to reveal the underlying patterns.

"For the chairs, Mr. Mendez."

Those damned chairs. I could see it in his eyes. Those chairs that had attracted the attention of the whole office as he clumsily tried to manage both to the supply room. He could feel the eyes, laughing at him, mocking his ineptitude and weakness. It had never occurred to him to just take them one at a time.

"Yes, sir." he said quietly, once more imagining that he was being watched and judged through the glass walls by everyone in the office. He was beginning to hate me. Good. I wanted him to hate me. It was a necessary stop-over in my plan to crack him.

Hate is a blinding emotion. It makes you focus on exactly what the target of your hate wants you to see, if they know how to use you. I was an expert at hate. I recognized its smell, its temperature, its taste. Hate drew a film over your mind and the world was filtered through it. Hate is both a passion and a prison, it is a relinquishing of your personal control over the only thing that is truly yours, your choice. It allows someone who knows you well enough to pick up the reins of your heart and drive you wherever they want you to go.

It was now time to push him into the next phase, fear.

"Mr. Mendez, you have been here for four years." It was a statement. I wanted to maintain control. The fewer questions, the better.

"I have been looking at your records. Your official reports have been... colorful, shall we say. I have the actual data here as well, and a comparison with your reports is illuminating." I had no such information, but Mendez was supplying the details in his own mind.

Each of us commit a thousand little indiscretions over the course of our careers, everything from taking supplies home to using work time for personal projects, from showing up a little late to taking a break that is a minute or two too long. I was counting on Mendez to not be a Mrs. McTavish, though to be perfectly honest, I doubted the very existence of someone like her before we had met, and the chance of two in the same office were slim.

"Would you care to explain the discrepancies?" I paused briefly. He was stunned, still sifting through the many possibilities I might have been referring to. "I thought not," I said, cutting off any opportunity for defense.

"Now, regarding the additional project you have been assigned to."

"You know about that too? She said no one was to know!"

"Mr. Mendez, do you take me for an idiot?" My voice rose a little. "Why do think I am here? For this?" I waved vaguely at the terminal. "It is hardly worth my notice. The 'shuttle' project, however, has my full and complete attention. Who do you think assigned this department to it?"

Can a person be more that stunned? Aghast? Confounded? Shocked perhaps? I could see that Mendez was trying to explore this question. Darwin looked over at me reprovingly. I was overdoing it in his opinion, pushing a little too hard. But what he didn't understand was that I wanted Mendez to leap over that cliff into sheer panic. He was to be my patient zero.

"I do not think you appreciate the importance of this project. It is a critical factor in the future success of this department, this company, hell this whole planet for all I know!" It is a general truism that every company sees its own goals as being the most important things in the world. A general repetition of every company's mission statement merely served to give my words more weight.

"And frankly, Mr. Mendez, I have been very concerned with the progress of YOUR project of late. I am afraid that just won't do. I have come to take steps to ensure that this project DOES. NOT. FAIL!" I was wildly guessing now, though I was pretty sure Mendez was only half listening to me. I had now placed the responsibility for the success or failure of this project squarely on his shoulders. He was looking for exit plans, scapegoats, clerical and technical shields he could hide behind. If he denied control, he would lose the power he had worked so hard to gain. He could not stay and bear the responsibility, nor could he leave and lose his power. The fear of the consequences of his predicament dawned in his eyes.

One last push, from fear to desperation.

"First there was that major incident sometime ago. It may have seemed minor to you, but I assure you I took note." Every project has a settling in period and at least one of the initial assumptions going in will need to be significantly revised. It is the nature of projects to progressively adjust their underlying premises if they want to control the overall scope.

"Then there were these last two incidents, both of which occurred under YOUR WATCH. I will have an answer from you!" I paused in my tirade just briefly enough to let the words sink in. We weren't talking about some vague event in the past, but facts that I now knew about. I was much more comfortable here.

"First, the flow of certain key information ceased completely three days ago. The official report is not due until next week, but mark my words Mr. Mendez, I am watching every move, every day. Why have you stopped the source? Where is the information going if not to ME?" Now I waited. I was holding him responsible, and had all but accused him of colluding with the enemy, whoever that was in his mind.

Finally he responded. "Me!? Sir, I had nothing to do with that, sir, I swear it to you! I wasn't even allowed direct contact with the prisoners! I just channeled their information to the right people, making sure I broke it up so that no one had enough to understand the shuttle project! The recordings of the interrogations were sent up for transcription and the scans of the schematics and formulas and... sir all I did was manage distribution. It's not my fault we slowed down, sir! We were just getting less information! Then none at all! It all stopped three days ago! I can't do my job sir if I have no information!"

Prisoners! Why was 3p Mining and Refining keeping prisoners? It was entirely legal for them do so, if they had the strength to fend off the objections of weaker parties and the justifications to satisfy the stronger ones.

After the Collapse, virtually all organisations and communities attempted and experimented with a variety of form of self-governance. Many companies had reverted to a modified, some called it 'enlightened' form of feudalism. The company gave you protection, livelihood and meaning in exchange for your labor and loyalty.

The natural corollary though was that in order to effectively manage their 'employees,' company policies and codes of conduct were in actual fact 'laws' that carried with them punishments. Most companies had discipline areas, and not a few had prisons. These were usually reserved for employees who have become unreliable, while at the same time possessed of sensitive and damaging information that, if it were released to the competition, would result in serious damage to the company's goals.

I needed one more question answered.

"So you say. If that is so, then answer me this! Where is Imanda Selim? She also ceased coming in three days ago. The timing is not coincidental! Why has her absence not been reported to me? Do you even know what she did?"

"Yes sir!" he blurted out, relieved that he had at least one answer to my barrage of questions. "She was our scientific transcriptionist! I would pass her any formulas that the prisoners would provide and she would convert them into common notation, then file them with the project."

"You idiot!" I retorted. "Did you tell her where the formulas were coming from?"

"No sir! I swear I didn't sir! She came to me once and asked if she could get more clarification on a formula. She said that is wasn't like anything she had seen before. I told her nothing. I just told here to get back to work and get it right!"

"And when was this?"

"Four days ago sir." he said quietly. "She came back with the finished formula and asked me to get it verified, because she wanted to be sure she got it right. I sent it back downstairs, and got a reply a few hours later. It was another formula, the corrected version, and I passed it to her. She didn't come in the next day and has been missing ever since."

"Missing? How do you know this? We have been getting messages from her, saying she was ill."

"That was me sir," he confessed. "I didn't want HER to know that something was wrong. I have been looking everywhere for Imanda, sir. But she isn't answering and she isn't at home!"

"How can you be so incompetent! Do you realize that you may have completed destroyed this company? Have you never heard of corporate espionage! She is probably selling the information as we speak!" I was warming to my role.

A new voice cut in. "That's enough!" Darwin hissed menacingly.

Mr. Jones had returned, and she had brought her two armed guards with her.

She looked at Mendez. "Get out."

I was surprised at the speed that a person could accelerate to in such a small space. Mendez was gone, racing to his desk no doubt and to the chemical comfort his likely had stashed there.

"Ah, good, there you are. Do come in." I said calmly, petting Darwin to settle him down. I was still in control, and I wanted him to know it.

She nodded to the two guards. "Stay out here. Don't let anyone in."

"Yes. Ma'am," the junior guard replied. This earned him a look from the captain. There was something strange going on here. They both turned sharply on their heels and faced out. Darwin had retreated under the desk, and for some reason refused to come out.

Mr. Jones sat down in the chair without waiting for an invitation this time. "What the hell are you up to, Friedman. My office is in a panic, and you have done nothing but sit here and intimidate my employees all day! When are you going to start looking for Leena?"

"Oh but I have been, Mr. Jones. I have been. And I now know where to start looking. I need to see where she worked."

"I have already offered to take you to her desk," she reminded me.

"Oh, I know. But I have no need to see the staged workstation you have set up, no matter how elaborately you have put it together."

"Staged?" she was surprised, again. You would think she would be used to it by now.

"Of course. However, I will need to see Imanda Selim's workstation. Then, you can take me to Leena's desk. Downstairs. In the prison cells."

Mr. Jones really did need to open herself up to the reality that I was going to be one step ahead of her for all of this. It would at very least save her from what was fast becoming her default expression: shock.