I am proud to announce my new novel, Always Be Clearing Browser History, was released on Amazon, Nook, and other ebook retailers last week. The story follows a desperate office worker seeking revenge against those who he thinks has wronged him. I hope you enjoy!
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XMZZFT7
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/always-be-clearing-browser-history-bill-leviathan/1125840770;jsessionid=6C157EB8D782C1DF9FB2DA17C45103CD.prodny_store01-atgap01?ean=2940154253625
Here is the first chapter as a preview!:
“I’m sure this technical mumbo-jumbo is great for you guys, but you haven’t explained to me the value this will bring me. Where’s the SWOT analysis? Metrics? Milestones? Potential synergies? All I see is a half-baked proposal.”
The CEO was dressed sharp that day. He wore his crisp, pinstripe, double breasted suit jacket that he seemed so fond of. It was hunting season, and he needed to wear his finest hunting jacket. The only problem, I was his prey. Up there, alone, at the front of the meeting room, with only a PowerPoint clicker to defend myself. I never stood a chance. I was the fox, surrounded by the dogs and the hunters. I was their toy to play with until they grew bored and went home to dive into a pool of their money.
I looked to my manager, Bill. I prayed he would finally, just that once, come to my aid. He buried his eyes in the slide deck printout that sat in front of him. When I first submitted the deck to Bill for approval, he didn’t so much as look at the opening slide before approving it. He was just happy to have delegated the work to someone else, hoping to take credit for any success it might garner. Now, he appeared to be more invested in it than the divorce papers that littered his office desk. I knew what he was looking for. He needed to make sure his name appeared nowhere in the presentation. How could his coat-tail riding have backfired so spectacularly? I waited just one more moment. One more moment for him to save me. His eyes caught mine, he averted them, and covered his mouth faking a cough.
“Well, this technical mumbo-jumbo, as you call it,” I said, “is vital to understanding how important and beneficial this project will be. You’ll have to try and follow along.”
The CEO cocked his eyebrow as he eyed me up. All the other executives were taken aback by my response. They sat hunched over in their chairs, flanking the CEO on either side of him. Their bodies were old, frail, shrunken. More gremlin than human. They all turned to the imposing, barrel chested CEO for what to do next. He was the valiant knight come to save the inbred noblemen. What would he do to put me back in my place? Their knuckles shone white as they gripped the arm rests of their chairs waiting for the CEO’s next attack.
“Then, please, tell me the pertinent details. Tell me something that will have impact. Give me something with dollar signs in front of it. How much money will this cost me? How much money will this make me? Over how long?” The executives all relaxed back into their chairs satisfied that the crisis had been quelled by their glorious leader.
“Well, uh, that’s the problem with a project like this. It doesn’t make money. It’s for security. It’s to prevent money from being lost.”
“And how would it accomplish that?”
“By, well, preventing data from being leaked out of our network. Um, by preventing legal action taken on us from breaches, and, uh—”
“Can you provide me with examples of ‘legal action’ that can be taken against us?”
I looked again to Bill. That was supposed to be his area of expertise, knowing what sorts of rules and regulations were applied against the company and ensuring they were compliant with them. Again, and not to my surprise, he avoided eye contact with me and kept his head down, scribbling what I’m sure was gibberish on his notepad.
“I’m not entirely certain, but, I believe we could be hit with violations of Graham-Leach-Bliley, and, uh, maybe—”
“Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me you don’t know what you’re trying to protect us against?” The CEO chuckled when he finished speaking. The other executives followed suit, filling the room with practiced, sensible laughter. Enough to show support for the big man at the head of the table, but not so much to be patronizing.
“No, I do, it’s just that—”
“Listen, kid, I’m sure this little pet project means the world to you, but next time, when you come upstairs to pitch it to the adults, make sure you have it all planned out. Ok? You’re young, and naïve, and that’s ok, but you come off as unprofessional. Right now, you’re no better than any other bottom feeder parasite in this company who walks in here asking for money for this or that thing they’ve deemed ‘essential’ to the company. Next time, make sure to put in the work to set yourself apart and make an impression. It will do wonders for your career.”
I stood still, unsure what I was supposed to do next. I reached for my glass of water on the podium, gulped it down, and tried to keep my hands steady to hide my anxiety. The CEO and the executives all stood up. Bill did as well. He extended his hand to the CEO, and said, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Buchanan.” The CEO waited a moment, then shook Bill’s hand with a cocksure grin. Bill looked limp, having exhausted all his energy to prevent himself from fainting. The CEO and executives all turned their backs on me and left, not saying another word.
Outside of the meeting room, in the hall, Bill waited for me. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “You know, this is just a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Next time, we’ll need to make sure to buckle down and prepare properly for a presentation like that. We’ll need to work hard together to avoid an embarrassment like that again!”
I shrugged my shoulder to get his grubby little hand off me. The anxiety from the verbal lashing the CEO gave me had drained away and my face flushed with anger. I shouted as loudly as I was comfortable with in the hallway, “What the hell were you doing in there? You know how long I’ve spent working on this project proposal, and yet you just left me up there to fend for myself as soon as it turned just a little bit sour.”
“Well, next time, you’ll just have to spend a little more time on it to get the presentation right. You just weren’t ready for this. With a little bit of luck and hard work you might get there in time. It’s a learning process, Nathan, and I’ll be happy to be your guide!”
“And I’m sure next time I can again count on zero support from you. From the beginning to the end.”
“Hey, Nathan, just because you failed today doesn’t mean you need to lash out at me. This is life in the big city. If you can’t handle it, you might need to look somewhere else.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. The belittlement hidden behind his folksy prose and tone of voice. We arrived at the elevator. Bill pressed the down button. I scoffed and stormed off toward the stairwell door. He noticed, shouted, “Hey, wait a minute! We’re not done talking about this.”
“Fuck this bullshit,” I responded.
I pushed open the stairwell door. It flung open and smacked against the wall. Bill had chased after me. I never looked back, preferring to imagine rather than see how his chins and stomach trembled while he speed shuffled to catch up to me.
“What are you doing? I still need to talk to you,” he yelled into the stairwell.
I did not respond or acknowledge him in anyway. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. I had been running down the stairwell so fast that when I reached the exit door I ran right into to it. It stopped me in my tracks, delayed my exit, and gave Bill a chance to catch up. I flung the door open and then pulled it shut behind me, putting a physical barrier between Bill and myself.
I opened the door to our office. I raced to my desk, navigating the labyrinthine cubical farm to get to my secluded corner. No one else in the office seemed to take notice as I rushed by, almost at a run. Their idle chitchat or internet browsing was far more important than whatever it was I could be doing. I heard the doors to the office open, and knew by the huffing and puffing sound that followed that Bill had caught up to me. I ducked into my cubicle and grabbed my backpack and my work computer. There were two ways for Bill to get from the office entrance to my desk. I popped my head up to see over the cubicle walls and I saw the top of his bald head moving toward me. He took the route to my right, so I went to the left to dodge the encounter. By the time I got to the office door he had gotten to my desk, and asked aloud, “Where’s Nathan!?”
Dan, who sat in the cube next to me, responded, “I don’t know. Haven’t seen him today.” Thanks for the cover, Dan.
I made my way through the lobby to exit the building. I pulled out my work blackberry and sent a message to Bill and the rest of my team, “Not feeling well. Heading home for the rest of the day.”
I had escaped the office building, but I hadn’t escaped my growing anger. I had spent months on that God damned project. I worked with the networking team, architecture, infrastructure, basically coordinating the entire IT department to come to a consensus on how and why our environment was completely fucked from a security perspective. We had no visibility into what was going on in our network. It was just one giant flat network. Once you got in, you had access to everything. Everyone was concerned that their little realm of control was going to be compromised by someone else’s lax controls over their own, and we had no means to detect if that was happening. I had complied everything. I was going to showcase the problem and the solution down to every little detail, but it was all torn to shreds because the CEO grew impatient after five minutes. And Bill. That fucking coward Bill was just waiting for the moment to surrender so he could go back down to his office and continue to accomplish nothing. The higher-ups couldn’t be bothered to think for more than five minutes. The guys in the middle, like Bill, are too scared to bring up any big problems fearing it will only hurt their chances at a pay raise or promotion. It forced all of us down at the bottom to make due shoveling shit with our bare hands.
I needed to do something to get back at them. All of them. I needed to dig up some dirt. Something I could use as leverage against them. If I wanted to get anything done, or get any respect from them, I needed to force them to. The time for hard work and due diligence had passed. It was now time to sink to their level and sling some mud around.
I stepped into a coffee shop and setup my work computer on a table in the back corner. Corners are good. With my back facing the corner, my flanks were protected by the walls. People could only approach me from straight ahead. There are no surprises in corners. There is solace and safety in corners. I didn’t need to worry about other people bothering me in the corner. I only had the constant stream of soft rock ‘indie’ music and the banal chit-chat of other customers to bother me.
I decided my first target would be the CEO. The company was a writhing serpent, and I needed to cut off the head. I didn’t know his first name, though. I only ever heard him referred to as “Mr. Buchanan” or “The CEO”. I always trashed the corporate wide emails that his secretary sent from his account. I never took notice of his full name when making that email filtering rule. I got on the corporate VPN with my work laptop and looked him up in the directory. “James”. His first name was James Buchanan. Sharing a name with a US president was going to make it a bit more difficult to find any dirt on him through Google searches. All the results were lists of “Worst US presidents”. Maybe someday, if he works hard and succeeds in his goals, our James Buchanan can get on the first page of Google results in a list of “Worst US CEOs.”
I switched my quest for dirt from Google to Facebook. I was sure I would be able to find the CEO in some sort of friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend scenario. I was Facebook ‘friends’ with a few co-workers. I had updates from them blocked, but they still appeared in my ‘friends’ list. I could see Dan, and Karen, and I still had a pending request from my boss Bill. I could never bring myself to officially ‘Ignore’ his invite. For some reason, I pitied him too much to do it, as though hitting ‘Ignore’ would hurt him more than actually ignoring it. It was colder, less personal, to let a computer do the ignoring that I was fully capable of doing on my own.
I struck out on the multiple degrees of connection through Dan and Karen. I perused Dan’s profile more closely. He had ‘Liked’ the page for our employer, MegaFinance. The page listed everyone else who had also liked them. It was a who’s who list of all the people I found insufferable, or in other words, my colleagues and fellow employees. Eventually I found him through the company page. James Buchanan, proud CEO and Liker of MegaFinance’s public relations page.
Not surprisingly for someone of his advanced age, Buchanan’s Facebook profile was open to the public. I could see everything he had ever done on that site. I started to dig through everything. I scrolled through all of his posts, looked at all of his images, checked all of his ‘Likes’ and pages he followed. There wasn’t anything I could use as dirt. Nothing to bring him embarrassment or to shame the corporation, forcing them to distance themselves from him and his politically incorrect views. No weird racist-old-man posts about immigrants or Obama. No embarrassing Halloween photos in black face. The best I could find were some short rants about “welfare queens” and entitlements and how this country would be great again if only everyone had the moral fortitude to lift themselves up by their bootstraps like he did. He was a serial fad dieter and exerciser. P90x, CrossFit, juice cleanses, gluten free, paleo, intermittent fasting, etc. On his fiftieth birthday, he claimed to have the healthiest colon in the world. He even included his colonoscopy pictures to prove it. Strange, but nothing that could be used as dirt. Not in today’s society, at least. The company isn’t involved in healthcare so it wouldn’t even count as a HIPAA violation. Facebook was useless. I sent him a friend request and prayed he’d accept. Maybe one day I’d get a notification in the event he did post something stupid.
Something tapped on my table. I looked up and saw a barista standing in front of me. I was a bit struck by her. She was young, cute, probably a recent college grad. An English major if I had to guess. I kept darting my eyes away from her, then back to her, trying to not to come off as a creep by staring at her, but unsure of how much time was elapsing during my gazes. Like staring at a car wreck while trying to keep my eyes on the road.
“Did you order anything?” she said.
“Uh, um, no. Why?” I asked.
“You can’t use the Wi-Fi if you didn’t order anything.”
“Oh, ok. I’ll have a small tea then.”
“Ugh. You have to order at the counter.”
She rolled her eyes, turned, and walked away. Not an unexpected result for me when dealing with a woman. I sheepishly gathered up my things and made my way to the counter. As I waited in line I kept watching the barista as she milled about the café, picking up left behind coffee cups and wiping coffee stains from tables. She eventually stopped at another customer’s table. They started talking. They were too far away for me to hear their conversation. She covered her mouth and started to laugh. That’s my problem. I don’t know how to make people laugh. I only know how to make them groan. What was it that he said? Had he shown her something on his computer? The latest hilarious meme? I squinted, trying to make out anything on his screen. He was on Facebook, looking at what appeared to be pictures of a rich old white guy and his perfect family. He was looking at, looking at… James Buchanan? The CEO of MegaFinance, not the US President.
“Can I help you?” someone said from behind the counter.
What were the odds of another person in the same coffee shop as me looking at the same Facebook profile of some medium sized organization executive?
“Excuse me? Are you going to order?”
It couldn’t be a coincidence. Was he a fellow co-worker? Another employee who had been scorned and was looking up dirt? Or just someone with a CEO fetish?
“Heeelloooo? Anyone home?”
I turned to address the barista behind the counter who was so intent on interrupting my Facebook coincidence hypothesis. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up past the elbow, revealing his spaghetti thin arms, which he leaned on against the counter to give off an air of indifference toward me. His rumpled chambray shirt was partially covered by an unbuttoned black vest, naturally to go with his thick horn-rimmed browline glasses. His hair was done up in a messy, quasi-pompadour that was trying to say, ‘This is just how I woke up this morning! I’m so spontaneous like that,’ but what it really said was, ‘I spend most of the discretionary income from my minimum wage job on a carefully crafted appearance.’ I stared back at him, not quite willing to order yet. He returned his agitation to me, scrunching his face and shaking his head at me, as though that would tempt me into complying with his demand for an order.
“A small tea,” I said.
“Name?”
“Nathan.”
He continued the transaction at the register. I handed him my credit card, which appeared to cause him physical pain. “It’s an extra twenty-five cents to use a card on orders less than five dollars.”
“That’s fine.”
He rolled his eyes and looked away from me. He grabbed a cup, wrote my name on it, and then grabbed the closest tea bag and threw it in the cup. He half filled it with hot water and set it on the counter. He yelled out “Nathan!” to the rest of the coffee shop to try and signal to me that he had already stopped caring about my existence. I picked up the cup, with the name ‘Neighthen’ scrawled across it, and the barista scoffed at me as I walked away.
I kept my eye on the other customer who had James Buchanan’s Facebook profile open. I decided to abandon my corner spot, and took a seat behind his right shoulder. Same as I was earlier, he was scanning through the profile, looking at old posts and photos. Every now and then he would bring up a chat program. I was too far away to see what he was sending and receiving, but it looked like he was using IRC as the chat program. He was using a theme that made the IRC window look like your typical ‘hacker’ program in a TV show: black background, green text, random shit scrolling on the side. I could tell he was hardcore.
He abruptly closed the lid on his laptop and got up to leave. I threw my backpack over my shoulder and carried my bulky work laptop in my arms to try and pursue him. I tripped over my own chair trying to get up and knocked the laptop against the table. Everyone around me turned to look at me, to see what had disturbed their perfect faux-European style café experience. Everyone except the man I was now giving chase to. While I fumbled with my things he had already made it out the door. I ran around the haphazardly placed tables to try and catch up. I think I clipped a woman’s shoulder with my elbow, but I decided to not give a fuck in the moment. All I heard was an exasperated, “Hey!” as I exited through the door.
He was standing at the street corner, looking back and forth down one of the roads. I put the brakes on my rush and tried to walk by him as casually as possible. Every now and then I looked over my shoulder to catch a glance. Eventually I made it to a tree in the sidewalk. I stepped behind it, with the tree between him and me, and edged my head to the side of the tree to try and get a good look at him. Thinking back, I was as subtle as if I was standing in the middle of the street staring at him through binoculars.
He was still standing on the street corner. There wasn’t much to see. Average sized guy. Looked skinny, though hard to tell through his baggy clothes. He wasn’t much of a fan of colors. Black jeans, black hoodie pulled up over his head, and big, dark aviator sunglasses. It was overcast that day. There was no reason for the sunglasses. What little skin I could see was pearly white. He must not have cared for even the smallest amount of sunlight. I could empathize with that. The only bit of color on him was a tuft of curly red hair the poked out from underneath his hood.
A black car with a dark tint on all the windows pulled up in front of him. I was beginning to notice a theme. The hooded figured opened the rear door and got into the car, which drove off in a hurry, tires screeching and marking the pavement. The license plate on the car was difficult to read. It looked like it was grayed out by soot. I couldn’t read any of the letters or numbers.
Afterward I stood dumbfounded behind the tree. What was I trying to accomplish by following that guy? He was looking at the same Facebook profile as me – so what? Did that give me the right to stalk him? My brain was fried. I needed a rest from all that nonsense. My goal of uncovering some dirt to blackmail the CEO had failed, and I imagined up some conspiracy with a hooded man to take my mind off it. That was all. I needed to go home and get some rest. There would be other opportunities for me to get back at James Buchanan, my arch nemesis who had already forgotten I existed.
The next morning started out as well as I could have hoped. I didn’t need to snooze my alarm more than once, I didn’t accidentally use soap in my hair, I didn’t have any toothpaste drip onto my shirt, and the yolks in the eggs I made for breakfast didn’t break when I flipped them. The bus to work was on time, and when I arrived at the office, I was the first one there. No one to goad me about yesterday’s failed meeting. No horribly misinformed political discussions over cubicle walls. No one listening to dubsteb so loud on their headphones I could hear every drop and break from across the room. I was able to get some work done in peace.
That lasted for an hour, at least. Then Karen showed up. She walked into the office blurting into her cell phone. “Yeah, uh huh, no way! I don’t believe it!!” Believe it, Karen, whatever it was, believe it. Karen sat kitty-corner to my cube in our two by two cubicle block. I heard her rummage through her bags. Zippers unzipping and rezipping, items being tossed onto her desk, papers being shuffled, the haptic feedback from her phone as she typed on it. I heard everything but her computer being turned on and her typing in her login credentials. I then heard what I dreaded most, Karen walking out of her cube in the direction of my own.
“So,” she said from behind me.
“Yes, Karen?” I didn’t turn around to address her. I kept looking at my monitors, pretending there was something important on them.
“I heard about your meeting yesterday.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Huh, nothing. I just heard you got chewed out real good by Bill.”
“Bill? Is that what he told you?” I let the anger get the better of me and swiveled around in my chair toward her intending to let her know what really happened. The pure, unadulterated truth that could only come from me. I wasn’t about to let Bill take credit for anything that happened during that meeting. “The only thing Bill did was apologize to Buchanan. He extended his chubby little limp wrist out and Buchanan only shook it out of pity.”
Karen laughed. I don’t know why I told her anything. I knew she didn’t really care about what happened. She just needed both sides of the story to be an effective gossip. I hate myself for being such an office bullshit enabler. I slouched into my chair and let out a sigh, hoping it would signal to Karen that it was time to leave me alone, that I was in my grumpy mood again. Something from outside caught my ear and I looked out the window. Five cop cars had pulled in front of the building, lights flashing and sirens blaring. An ambulance followed after them.
“What’s all that for?” Karen asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. She went back to her own cube. I was just happy that we were no longer talking about the meeting. Karen started talking on the phone with someone. “Really? No way. That’s unbelievable.” It sounded like more of the same conversation when she first walked in. Her tone was a little more melancholy, though. I heard Bill’s phone ring from behind his closed office door. Then Karen’s phone rang. She picked it up, and said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s unbelievable.” This time she sounded on the verge of tears, her voice quiet and cracking. I checked my email inbox. The folder I filtered all the corporate mass mailers to had exploded. I opened the folder, and there were a bunch of nonsensical emails from people throughout the company inside. People were replying-all to mass emails asking what people knew. Knew what? There was something everyone else seemed to know, something they didn’t want to include in those emails. Something they were afraid of admitting knowledge to publicly. Mass hysteria had taken over the corporation, and I was somehow the only one left out.
The door to the office swung open and slammed against the wall. It was Bill. He yelled out, “Everyone, team meeting in my office, now!”
Karen had bolted out of her chair toward Bill’s office. I took my time and stammered my way there. When I got in, Bill looked furious at me, and barked at me to close the door. I did so, and as soon as the door was closed, Bill let out a deep sigh. He looked like he was just punched in the gut.
“I’m sure you guys have already this through the grapevine—”
No, I hadn’t.
“But it has been reported to me that, that—,” Bills eyes had gone bloodshot, and tears rolled down his face. He took a moment to grab a tissue and wipe his face dry, and handed a tissue to Karen so she could do the same. He continued, “James Buchanan was found dead this morning in his office.”
“No way. That’s unbelievable,” I said.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XMZZFT7
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/always-be-clearing-browser-history-bill-leviathan/1125840770;jsessionid=6C157EB8D782C1DF9FB2DA17C45103CD.prodny_store01-atgap01?ean=2940154253625
Here is the first chapter as a preview!:
“I’m sure this technical mumbo-jumbo is great for you guys, but you haven’t explained to me the value this will bring me. Where’s the SWOT analysis? Metrics? Milestones? Potential synergies? All I see is a half-baked proposal.”
The CEO was dressed sharp that day. He wore his crisp, pinstripe, double breasted suit jacket that he seemed so fond of. It was hunting season, and he needed to wear his finest hunting jacket. The only problem, I was his prey. Up there, alone, at the front of the meeting room, with only a PowerPoint clicker to defend myself. I never stood a chance. I was the fox, surrounded by the dogs and the hunters. I was their toy to play with until they grew bored and went home to dive into a pool of their money.
I looked to my manager, Bill. I prayed he would finally, just that once, come to my aid. He buried his eyes in the slide deck printout that sat in front of him. When I first submitted the deck to Bill for approval, he didn’t so much as look at the opening slide before approving it. He was just happy to have delegated the work to someone else, hoping to take credit for any success it might garner. Now, he appeared to be more invested in it than the divorce papers that littered his office desk. I knew what he was looking for. He needed to make sure his name appeared nowhere in the presentation. How could his coat-tail riding have backfired so spectacularly? I waited just one more moment. One more moment for him to save me. His eyes caught mine, he averted them, and covered his mouth faking a cough.
“Well, this technical mumbo-jumbo, as you call it,” I said, “is vital to understanding how important and beneficial this project will be. You’ll have to try and follow along.”
The CEO cocked his eyebrow as he eyed me up. All the other executives were taken aback by my response. They sat hunched over in their chairs, flanking the CEO on either side of him. Their bodies were old, frail, shrunken. More gremlin than human. They all turned to the imposing, barrel chested CEO for what to do next. He was the valiant knight come to save the inbred noblemen. What would he do to put me back in my place? Their knuckles shone white as they gripped the arm rests of their chairs waiting for the CEO’s next attack.
“Then, please, tell me the pertinent details. Tell me something that will have impact. Give me something with dollar signs in front of it. How much money will this cost me? How much money will this make me? Over how long?” The executives all relaxed back into their chairs satisfied that the crisis had been quelled by their glorious leader.
“Well, uh, that’s the problem with a project like this. It doesn’t make money. It’s for security. It’s to prevent money from being lost.”
“And how would it accomplish that?”
“By, well, preventing data from being leaked out of our network. Um, by preventing legal action taken on us from breaches, and, uh—”
“Can you provide me with examples of ‘legal action’ that can be taken against us?”
I looked again to Bill. That was supposed to be his area of expertise, knowing what sorts of rules and regulations were applied against the company and ensuring they were compliant with them. Again, and not to my surprise, he avoided eye contact with me and kept his head down, scribbling what I’m sure was gibberish on his notepad.
“I’m not entirely certain, but, I believe we could be hit with violations of Graham-Leach-Bliley, and, uh, maybe—”
“Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me you don’t know what you’re trying to protect us against?” The CEO chuckled when he finished speaking. The other executives followed suit, filling the room with practiced, sensible laughter. Enough to show support for the big man at the head of the table, but not so much to be patronizing.
“No, I do, it’s just that—”
“Listen, kid, I’m sure this little pet project means the world to you, but next time, when you come upstairs to pitch it to the adults, make sure you have it all planned out. Ok? You’re young, and naïve, and that’s ok, but you come off as unprofessional. Right now, you’re no better than any other bottom feeder parasite in this company who walks in here asking for money for this or that thing they’ve deemed ‘essential’ to the company. Next time, make sure to put in the work to set yourself apart and make an impression. It will do wonders for your career.”
I stood still, unsure what I was supposed to do next. I reached for my glass of water on the podium, gulped it down, and tried to keep my hands steady to hide my anxiety. The CEO and the executives all stood up. Bill did as well. He extended his hand to the CEO, and said, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Buchanan.” The CEO waited a moment, then shook Bill’s hand with a cocksure grin. Bill looked limp, having exhausted all his energy to prevent himself from fainting. The CEO and executives all turned their backs on me and left, not saying another word.
Outside of the meeting room, in the hall, Bill waited for me. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “You know, this is just a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Next time, we’ll need to make sure to buckle down and prepare properly for a presentation like that. We’ll need to work hard together to avoid an embarrassment like that again!”
I shrugged my shoulder to get his grubby little hand off me. The anxiety from the verbal lashing the CEO gave me had drained away and my face flushed with anger. I shouted as loudly as I was comfortable with in the hallway, “What the hell were you doing in there? You know how long I’ve spent working on this project proposal, and yet you just left me up there to fend for myself as soon as it turned just a little bit sour.”
“Well, next time, you’ll just have to spend a little more time on it to get the presentation right. You just weren’t ready for this. With a little bit of luck and hard work you might get there in time. It’s a learning process, Nathan, and I’ll be happy to be your guide!”
“And I’m sure next time I can again count on zero support from you. From the beginning to the end.”
“Hey, Nathan, just because you failed today doesn’t mean you need to lash out at me. This is life in the big city. If you can’t handle it, you might need to look somewhere else.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. The belittlement hidden behind his folksy prose and tone of voice. We arrived at the elevator. Bill pressed the down button. I scoffed and stormed off toward the stairwell door. He noticed, shouted, “Hey, wait a minute! We’re not done talking about this.”
“Fuck this bullshit,” I responded.
I pushed open the stairwell door. It flung open and smacked against the wall. Bill had chased after me. I never looked back, preferring to imagine rather than see how his chins and stomach trembled while he speed shuffled to catch up to me.
“What are you doing? I still need to talk to you,” he yelled into the stairwell.
I did not respond or acknowledge him in anyway. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. I had been running down the stairwell so fast that when I reached the exit door I ran right into to it. It stopped me in my tracks, delayed my exit, and gave Bill a chance to catch up. I flung the door open and then pulled it shut behind me, putting a physical barrier between Bill and myself.
I opened the door to our office. I raced to my desk, navigating the labyrinthine cubical farm to get to my secluded corner. No one else in the office seemed to take notice as I rushed by, almost at a run. Their idle chitchat or internet browsing was far more important than whatever it was I could be doing. I heard the doors to the office open, and knew by the huffing and puffing sound that followed that Bill had caught up to me. I ducked into my cubicle and grabbed my backpack and my work computer. There were two ways for Bill to get from the office entrance to my desk. I popped my head up to see over the cubicle walls and I saw the top of his bald head moving toward me. He took the route to my right, so I went to the left to dodge the encounter. By the time I got to the office door he had gotten to my desk, and asked aloud, “Where’s Nathan!?”
Dan, who sat in the cube next to me, responded, “I don’t know. Haven’t seen him today.” Thanks for the cover, Dan.
I made my way through the lobby to exit the building. I pulled out my work blackberry and sent a message to Bill and the rest of my team, “Not feeling well. Heading home for the rest of the day.”
I had escaped the office building, but I hadn’t escaped my growing anger. I had spent months on that God damned project. I worked with the networking team, architecture, infrastructure, basically coordinating the entire IT department to come to a consensus on how and why our environment was completely fucked from a security perspective. We had no visibility into what was going on in our network. It was just one giant flat network. Once you got in, you had access to everything. Everyone was concerned that their little realm of control was going to be compromised by someone else’s lax controls over their own, and we had no means to detect if that was happening. I had complied everything. I was going to showcase the problem and the solution down to every little detail, but it was all torn to shreds because the CEO grew impatient after five minutes. And Bill. That fucking coward Bill was just waiting for the moment to surrender so he could go back down to his office and continue to accomplish nothing. The higher-ups couldn’t be bothered to think for more than five minutes. The guys in the middle, like Bill, are too scared to bring up any big problems fearing it will only hurt their chances at a pay raise or promotion. It forced all of us down at the bottom to make due shoveling shit with our bare hands.
I needed to do something to get back at them. All of them. I needed to dig up some dirt. Something I could use as leverage against them. If I wanted to get anything done, or get any respect from them, I needed to force them to. The time for hard work and due diligence had passed. It was now time to sink to their level and sling some mud around.
I stepped into a coffee shop and setup my work computer on a table in the back corner. Corners are good. With my back facing the corner, my flanks were protected by the walls. People could only approach me from straight ahead. There are no surprises in corners. There is solace and safety in corners. I didn’t need to worry about other people bothering me in the corner. I only had the constant stream of soft rock ‘indie’ music and the banal chit-chat of other customers to bother me.
I decided my first target would be the CEO. The company was a writhing serpent, and I needed to cut off the head. I didn’t know his first name, though. I only ever heard him referred to as “Mr. Buchanan” or “The CEO”. I always trashed the corporate wide emails that his secretary sent from his account. I never took notice of his full name when making that email filtering rule. I got on the corporate VPN with my work laptop and looked him up in the directory. “James”. His first name was James Buchanan. Sharing a name with a US president was going to make it a bit more difficult to find any dirt on him through Google searches. All the results were lists of “Worst US presidents”. Maybe someday, if he works hard and succeeds in his goals, our James Buchanan can get on the first page of Google results in a list of “Worst US CEOs.”
I switched my quest for dirt from Google to Facebook. I was sure I would be able to find the CEO in some sort of friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend scenario. I was Facebook ‘friends’ with a few co-workers. I had updates from them blocked, but they still appeared in my ‘friends’ list. I could see Dan, and Karen, and I still had a pending request from my boss Bill. I could never bring myself to officially ‘Ignore’ his invite. For some reason, I pitied him too much to do it, as though hitting ‘Ignore’ would hurt him more than actually ignoring it. It was colder, less personal, to let a computer do the ignoring that I was fully capable of doing on my own.
I struck out on the multiple degrees of connection through Dan and Karen. I perused Dan’s profile more closely. He had ‘Liked’ the page for our employer, MegaFinance. The page listed everyone else who had also liked them. It was a who’s who list of all the people I found insufferable, or in other words, my colleagues and fellow employees. Eventually I found him through the company page. James Buchanan, proud CEO and Liker of MegaFinance’s public relations page.
Not surprisingly for someone of his advanced age, Buchanan’s Facebook profile was open to the public. I could see everything he had ever done on that site. I started to dig through everything. I scrolled through all of his posts, looked at all of his images, checked all of his ‘Likes’ and pages he followed. There wasn’t anything I could use as dirt. Nothing to bring him embarrassment or to shame the corporation, forcing them to distance themselves from him and his politically incorrect views. No weird racist-old-man posts about immigrants or Obama. No embarrassing Halloween photos in black face. The best I could find were some short rants about “welfare queens” and entitlements and how this country would be great again if only everyone had the moral fortitude to lift themselves up by their bootstraps like he did. He was a serial fad dieter and exerciser. P90x, CrossFit, juice cleanses, gluten free, paleo, intermittent fasting, etc. On his fiftieth birthday, he claimed to have the healthiest colon in the world. He even included his colonoscopy pictures to prove it. Strange, but nothing that could be used as dirt. Not in today’s society, at least. The company isn’t involved in healthcare so it wouldn’t even count as a HIPAA violation. Facebook was useless. I sent him a friend request and prayed he’d accept. Maybe one day I’d get a notification in the event he did post something stupid.
Something tapped on my table. I looked up and saw a barista standing in front of me. I was a bit struck by her. She was young, cute, probably a recent college grad. An English major if I had to guess. I kept darting my eyes away from her, then back to her, trying to not to come off as a creep by staring at her, but unsure of how much time was elapsing during my gazes. Like staring at a car wreck while trying to keep my eyes on the road.
“Did you order anything?” she said.
“Uh, um, no. Why?” I asked.
“You can’t use the Wi-Fi if you didn’t order anything.”
“Oh, ok. I’ll have a small tea then.”
“Ugh. You have to order at the counter.”
She rolled her eyes, turned, and walked away. Not an unexpected result for me when dealing with a woman. I sheepishly gathered up my things and made my way to the counter. As I waited in line I kept watching the barista as she milled about the café, picking up left behind coffee cups and wiping coffee stains from tables. She eventually stopped at another customer’s table. They started talking. They were too far away for me to hear their conversation. She covered her mouth and started to laugh. That’s my problem. I don’t know how to make people laugh. I only know how to make them groan. What was it that he said? Had he shown her something on his computer? The latest hilarious meme? I squinted, trying to make out anything on his screen. He was on Facebook, looking at what appeared to be pictures of a rich old white guy and his perfect family. He was looking at, looking at… James Buchanan? The CEO of MegaFinance, not the US President.
“Can I help you?” someone said from behind the counter.
What were the odds of another person in the same coffee shop as me looking at the same Facebook profile of some medium sized organization executive?
“Excuse me? Are you going to order?”
It couldn’t be a coincidence. Was he a fellow co-worker? Another employee who had been scorned and was looking up dirt? Or just someone with a CEO fetish?
“Heeelloooo? Anyone home?”
I turned to address the barista behind the counter who was so intent on interrupting my Facebook coincidence hypothesis. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up past the elbow, revealing his spaghetti thin arms, which he leaned on against the counter to give off an air of indifference toward me. His rumpled chambray shirt was partially covered by an unbuttoned black vest, naturally to go with his thick horn-rimmed browline glasses. His hair was done up in a messy, quasi-pompadour that was trying to say, ‘This is just how I woke up this morning! I’m so spontaneous like that,’ but what it really said was, ‘I spend most of the discretionary income from my minimum wage job on a carefully crafted appearance.’ I stared back at him, not quite willing to order yet. He returned his agitation to me, scrunching his face and shaking his head at me, as though that would tempt me into complying with his demand for an order.
“A small tea,” I said.
“Name?”
“Nathan.”
He continued the transaction at the register. I handed him my credit card, which appeared to cause him physical pain. “It’s an extra twenty-five cents to use a card on orders less than five dollars.”
“That’s fine.”
He rolled his eyes and looked away from me. He grabbed a cup, wrote my name on it, and then grabbed the closest tea bag and threw it in the cup. He half filled it with hot water and set it on the counter. He yelled out “Nathan!” to the rest of the coffee shop to try and signal to me that he had already stopped caring about my existence. I picked up the cup, with the name ‘Neighthen’ scrawled across it, and the barista scoffed at me as I walked away.
I kept my eye on the other customer who had James Buchanan’s Facebook profile open. I decided to abandon my corner spot, and took a seat behind his right shoulder. Same as I was earlier, he was scanning through the profile, looking at old posts and photos. Every now and then he would bring up a chat program. I was too far away to see what he was sending and receiving, but it looked like he was using IRC as the chat program. He was using a theme that made the IRC window look like your typical ‘hacker’ program in a TV show: black background, green text, random shit scrolling on the side. I could tell he was hardcore.
He abruptly closed the lid on his laptop and got up to leave. I threw my backpack over my shoulder and carried my bulky work laptop in my arms to try and pursue him. I tripped over my own chair trying to get up and knocked the laptop against the table. Everyone around me turned to look at me, to see what had disturbed their perfect faux-European style café experience. Everyone except the man I was now giving chase to. While I fumbled with my things he had already made it out the door. I ran around the haphazardly placed tables to try and catch up. I think I clipped a woman’s shoulder with my elbow, but I decided to not give a fuck in the moment. All I heard was an exasperated, “Hey!” as I exited through the door.
He was standing at the street corner, looking back and forth down one of the roads. I put the brakes on my rush and tried to walk by him as casually as possible. Every now and then I looked over my shoulder to catch a glance. Eventually I made it to a tree in the sidewalk. I stepped behind it, with the tree between him and me, and edged my head to the side of the tree to try and get a good look at him. Thinking back, I was as subtle as if I was standing in the middle of the street staring at him through binoculars.
He was still standing on the street corner. There wasn’t much to see. Average sized guy. Looked skinny, though hard to tell through his baggy clothes. He wasn’t much of a fan of colors. Black jeans, black hoodie pulled up over his head, and big, dark aviator sunglasses. It was overcast that day. There was no reason for the sunglasses. What little skin I could see was pearly white. He must not have cared for even the smallest amount of sunlight. I could empathize with that. The only bit of color on him was a tuft of curly red hair the poked out from underneath his hood.
A black car with a dark tint on all the windows pulled up in front of him. I was beginning to notice a theme. The hooded figured opened the rear door and got into the car, which drove off in a hurry, tires screeching and marking the pavement. The license plate on the car was difficult to read. It looked like it was grayed out by soot. I couldn’t read any of the letters or numbers.
Afterward I stood dumbfounded behind the tree. What was I trying to accomplish by following that guy? He was looking at the same Facebook profile as me – so what? Did that give me the right to stalk him? My brain was fried. I needed a rest from all that nonsense. My goal of uncovering some dirt to blackmail the CEO had failed, and I imagined up some conspiracy with a hooded man to take my mind off it. That was all. I needed to go home and get some rest. There would be other opportunities for me to get back at James Buchanan, my arch nemesis who had already forgotten I existed.
The next morning started out as well as I could have hoped. I didn’t need to snooze my alarm more than once, I didn’t accidentally use soap in my hair, I didn’t have any toothpaste drip onto my shirt, and the yolks in the eggs I made for breakfast didn’t break when I flipped them. The bus to work was on time, and when I arrived at the office, I was the first one there. No one to goad me about yesterday’s failed meeting. No horribly misinformed political discussions over cubicle walls. No one listening to dubsteb so loud on their headphones I could hear every drop and break from across the room. I was able to get some work done in peace.
That lasted for an hour, at least. Then Karen showed up. She walked into the office blurting into her cell phone. “Yeah, uh huh, no way! I don’t believe it!!” Believe it, Karen, whatever it was, believe it. Karen sat kitty-corner to my cube in our two by two cubicle block. I heard her rummage through her bags. Zippers unzipping and rezipping, items being tossed onto her desk, papers being shuffled, the haptic feedback from her phone as she typed on it. I heard everything but her computer being turned on and her typing in her login credentials. I then heard what I dreaded most, Karen walking out of her cube in the direction of my own.
“So,” she said from behind me.
“Yes, Karen?” I didn’t turn around to address her. I kept looking at my monitors, pretending there was something important on them.
“I heard about your meeting yesterday.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Huh, nothing. I just heard you got chewed out real good by Bill.”
“Bill? Is that what he told you?” I let the anger get the better of me and swiveled around in my chair toward her intending to let her know what really happened. The pure, unadulterated truth that could only come from me. I wasn’t about to let Bill take credit for anything that happened during that meeting. “The only thing Bill did was apologize to Buchanan. He extended his chubby little limp wrist out and Buchanan only shook it out of pity.”
Karen laughed. I don’t know why I told her anything. I knew she didn’t really care about what happened. She just needed both sides of the story to be an effective gossip. I hate myself for being such an office bullshit enabler. I slouched into my chair and let out a sigh, hoping it would signal to Karen that it was time to leave me alone, that I was in my grumpy mood again. Something from outside caught my ear and I looked out the window. Five cop cars had pulled in front of the building, lights flashing and sirens blaring. An ambulance followed after them.
“What’s all that for?” Karen asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. She went back to her own cube. I was just happy that we were no longer talking about the meeting. Karen started talking on the phone with someone. “Really? No way. That’s unbelievable.” It sounded like more of the same conversation when she first walked in. Her tone was a little more melancholy, though. I heard Bill’s phone ring from behind his closed office door. Then Karen’s phone rang. She picked it up, and said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s unbelievable.” This time she sounded on the verge of tears, her voice quiet and cracking. I checked my email inbox. The folder I filtered all the corporate mass mailers to had exploded. I opened the folder, and there were a bunch of nonsensical emails from people throughout the company inside. People were replying-all to mass emails asking what people knew. Knew what? There was something everyone else seemed to know, something they didn’t want to include in those emails. Something they were afraid of admitting knowledge to publicly. Mass hysteria had taken over the corporation, and I was somehow the only one left out.
The door to the office swung open and slammed against the wall. It was Bill. He yelled out, “Everyone, team meeting in my office, now!”
Karen had bolted out of her chair toward Bill’s office. I took my time and stammered my way there. When I got in, Bill looked furious at me, and barked at me to close the door. I did so, and as soon as the door was closed, Bill let out a deep sigh. He looked like he was just punched in the gut.
“I’m sure you guys have already this through the grapevine—”
No, I hadn’t.
“But it has been reported to me that, that—,” Bills eyes had gone bloodshot, and tears rolled down his face. He took a moment to grab a tissue and wipe his face dry, and handed a tissue to Karen so she could do the same. He continued, “James Buchanan was found dead this morning in his office.”
“No way. That’s unbelievable,” I said.