I can't move. My head is the only thing protruding above the pavement. "You're sick in the head woman. Leave me alone." I yell at the strange girl.
"I can't leave you alone, you see. It is part of destiny, Fate has decreed you only two paths. One path is the life of a glorious tool for good..."
"You mean a tool used to enslave the populace in some freaky drug induced... Ow." she stands up and kicks me in the side of the head.
"The other path is a path of destruction, which you seem to be following just now."
"its just a dream, its just a dream." I repeat trying to remind myself. But the dream is so realistic. The pain in my skull is so sharp. "Ignore her and she will disappear, ignore her and she will disappear."
"Nice try Mr. McCasey. I'm not going away. I will haunt you till your judgment comes."
I am so tired. Night after night, she comes to me, traps me, tells me things I don't want to hear. Vanessa is worrying. She knows I am avoiding sleep now. The mental effects are bad enough, but I am feeling the physical effects too. My mind is distracted, at work, at home. It is like the dream of my sleep doesn't end, it just keeps trying to push into my mind when I am awake, it is taking more and more effort to keep focused on what is happening in the real world.
I sit in my office, alone. I take an aspirin. Luckily Harold is the only person who suspects my stress is from something other than the merger. Focus, I must Focus. Dear valued clients and partners, We are proud to report the statistical data from this last quarter... We are tired.. oops. We work tirelessly to bring you services that will maintain and even increase your over head in the pavement... ghah. increase your overhead savings. We have plans currently in the works that will help you fulfill your purpose as Fate... I put my head down on the desk. Focus, I must focus. I am better than this. I can control my mind. No one else controls it for me. I control my own fate. I sit up strait. and look out my office window. It feels like a good time to take a stroll around the company.
I make my way out the door and begin strolling through the cubicles. A bit of pride fills my heart to see such diligent workers who have all adopted the dream I created. A dream that has helped stretch the resources of thousands of corporations across America. Now we are working on developing corporate educational material. I head towards the R&D department. I arrive to see Harold standing there talking with the group. I step in behind Harold.
Harold quickly whips around at my entrance "Ahh, John. Welcome." Harold's eyes widen for a second but he tries to hide his surprise.
"Hello Harold. How are the educational materials coming along?"
"They are progressing nicely." Harold quickly grabs a few things off the table and begins trying to pocket them.
"What are those?" I can hear the tinkling of glass striking together.
"Oh nothing, it's nothing." From the looks on the developer's faces, it was not nothing.
"Well if it is nothing then surely you wouldn't mind showing me."
Harold looks around with the specific face of an opponent beaten. He takes a small brown bottle out of his pocket, labeled "relaxation". I look into Harold's eyes.
"You went to that woman again didn't you?"
Harold nodded, "Well since the one that gets rid of headaches worked, I wanted to test the other ones, So I decided to have our R&D take a look at them."
"Harold, I said I don't want any business with that woman."
"I will fund it out of my own pocket."
I look at the R&D employees and then back to Harold. "Come outside so I can have a private word with you Harold." Harold looks at the R&D team them back at me. We step outside. I speak in a calm voice. "Harold, I don't have a good feeling about these oils. You know how I am about Alcohol, drugs, and anything else that artificially alters your mental state. I think that some of these oils do that."
"Well then we can avoid the ones that alter the mental state and still distribute the ones that just give physical effect. Like the migraine one."
"We are not a medicine company Harold."
"We could do it as a sub company, a side project. These oils work, think of the opportunity."
"No Harold. We have enough on our hands as it is trying to manage the merger, we don't need something to distract us. We need to focus."
Harold looks at the floor and breathes heavily. "I guess you are right."
I head back to my office. It was good timing. I shake my head and try to clear my mind of the situation. I take a different path back to my office. I go through the cubicles and start running through the names of the employees just to keep my mind focused. Janice, Ben, Daniel, Jeffry, Maria, Isabelle, Trent, Joseph... Wait Trent. I remember the night with Jack. I take a step back and look into Trent's cubicle. He is a nervous redheaded fellow. Very efficient, very quick with the computer, and above all, the reason why I hired him is because he has a strong code of ethics. Trent ferociously flipped through the pages of a stack of folders and was quickly checking the monitor. Something seemed to be bothering him. He punched the keys on his various calculators.
"Hello Trent."
"SSHHt" he puts his hand out. he waves his pencil at the screen counting, then he pushes some buttons on his calculators, then he marks in the folders. I wait patiently as he goes through a few other motions until finally he scribbles something down on a paper. Then he sighs and sits back, he picks up the paper, looks at it, switches to a different window on the computer and frowns. He looks over at me. "Oh, Mr. McCasey. Sorry about that. Had I known it was you I'd have..."
I put my hand up "Don't worry about it. I am glad you are so intense in your work. I just had a personal question to ask you."
Trent raises an eyebrow and gives me a look that says, Huh.
"I just wanted to know if you have met my Wife or not?"
Trent scrunches up his face, concentrating, "I don't think I ever have, not on purpose no."
"So you've never been to my house?"
"Was I supposed to?"
I shake my head a little. "No, it is just that my kid said that a man named Trent has been coming over to visit my wife. I didn't think it was you, but I just wanted to make sure."
"Oh." he said. His eyes returned to his computer screen. "Nope, I've never met your family. Is that all you wanted to know?"
"Yeah, that is all."
"Well, Sir, could you look at this then."
I shrug and poke my head into his cubicle. "What is it?"
"I've been doing some accounting work and I have found that a lot of the bank transactions, the transactions that we have recorded on file, and the estimates, aren't all matching up at all. Currently, if some of the figures are right, they show differences of up to eight hundred thousand dollars. I have used every resource I have access too and I can't figure out where all these discrepancies have been coming from."
"Hmm." I try to think of a reason, but nothing is coming to me. Event the merger shouldn't have cause that large of a difference. "How about you give your mind a rest on the matter and I will look into it and see if I can find out what is going on."
"Well sir, the reason why I was looking is because I didn't have much else to do. So if you take this off my hands, I don't know what I would do with myself for most of the day. That would feel wrong. If you could grant me access to more information I might be able to find it myself. You could monitor everything I get into, and I would report what I find. Would that work?"
"It sounds reasonable enough. I will write you up a permission form. Good work Trent."
"I can't leave you alone, you see. It is part of destiny, Fate has decreed you only two paths. One path is the life of a glorious tool for good..."
"You mean a tool used to enslave the populace in some freaky drug induced... Ow." she stands up and kicks me in the side of the head.
"The other path is a path of destruction, which you seem to be following just now."
"its just a dream, its just a dream." I repeat trying to remind myself. But the dream is so realistic. The pain in my skull is so sharp. "Ignore her and she will disappear, ignore her and she will disappear."
"Nice try Mr. McCasey. I'm not going away. I will haunt you till your judgment comes."
I am so tired. Night after night, she comes to me, traps me, tells me things I don't want to hear. Vanessa is worrying. She knows I am avoiding sleep now. The mental effects are bad enough, but I am feeling the physical effects too. My mind is distracted, at work, at home. It is like the dream of my sleep doesn't end, it just keeps trying to push into my mind when I am awake, it is taking more and more effort to keep focused on what is happening in the real world.
I sit in my office, alone. I take an aspirin. Luckily Harold is the only person who suspects my stress is from something other than the merger. Focus, I must Focus. Dear valued clients and partners, We are proud to report the statistical data from this last quarter... We are tired.. oops. We work tirelessly to bring you services that will maintain and even increase your over head in the pavement... ghah. increase your overhead savings. We have plans currently in the works that will help you fulfill your purpose as Fate... I put my head down on the desk. Focus, I must focus. I am better than this. I can control my mind. No one else controls it for me. I control my own fate. I sit up strait. and look out my office window. It feels like a good time to take a stroll around the company.
I make my way out the door and begin strolling through the cubicles. A bit of pride fills my heart to see such diligent workers who have all adopted the dream I created. A dream that has helped stretch the resources of thousands of corporations across America. Now we are working on developing corporate educational material. I head towards the R&D department. I arrive to see Harold standing there talking with the group. I step in behind Harold.
Harold quickly whips around at my entrance "Ahh, John. Welcome." Harold's eyes widen for a second but he tries to hide his surprise.
"Hello Harold. How are the educational materials coming along?"
"They are progressing nicely." Harold quickly grabs a few things off the table and begins trying to pocket them.
"What are those?" I can hear the tinkling of glass striking together.
"Oh nothing, it's nothing." From the looks on the developer's faces, it was not nothing.
"Well if it is nothing then surely you wouldn't mind showing me."
Harold looks around with the specific face of an opponent beaten. He takes a small brown bottle out of his pocket, labeled "relaxation". I look into Harold's eyes.
"You went to that woman again didn't you?"
Harold nodded, "Well since the one that gets rid of headaches worked, I wanted to test the other ones, So I decided to have our R&D take a look at them."
"Harold, I said I don't want any business with that woman."
"I will fund it out of my own pocket."
I look at the R&D employees and then back to Harold. "Come outside so I can have a private word with you Harold." Harold looks at the R&D team them back at me. We step outside. I speak in a calm voice. "Harold, I don't have a good feeling about these oils. You know how I am about Alcohol, drugs, and anything else that artificially alters your mental state. I think that some of these oils do that."
"Well then we can avoid the ones that alter the mental state and still distribute the ones that just give physical effect. Like the migraine one."
"We are not a medicine company Harold."
"We could do it as a sub company, a side project. These oils work, think of the opportunity."
"No Harold. We have enough on our hands as it is trying to manage the merger, we don't need something to distract us. We need to focus."
Harold looks at the floor and breathes heavily. "I guess you are right."
I head back to my office. It was good timing. I shake my head and try to clear my mind of the situation. I take a different path back to my office. I go through the cubicles and start running through the names of the employees just to keep my mind focused. Janice, Ben, Daniel, Jeffry, Maria, Isabelle, Trent, Joseph... Wait Trent. I remember the night with Jack. I take a step back and look into Trent's cubicle. He is a nervous redheaded fellow. Very efficient, very quick with the computer, and above all, the reason why I hired him is because he has a strong code of ethics. Trent ferociously flipped through the pages of a stack of folders and was quickly checking the monitor. Something seemed to be bothering him. He punched the keys on his various calculators.
"Hello Trent."
"SSHHt" he puts his hand out. he waves his pencil at the screen counting, then he pushes some buttons on his calculators, then he marks in the folders. I wait patiently as he goes through a few other motions until finally he scribbles something down on a paper. Then he sighs and sits back, he picks up the paper, looks at it, switches to a different window on the computer and frowns. He looks over at me. "Oh, Mr. McCasey. Sorry about that. Had I known it was you I'd have..."
I put my hand up "Don't worry about it. I am glad you are so intense in your work. I just had a personal question to ask you."
Trent raises an eyebrow and gives me a look that says, Huh.
"I just wanted to know if you have met my Wife or not?"
Trent scrunches up his face, concentrating, "I don't think I ever have, not on purpose no."
"So you've never been to my house?"
"Was I supposed to?"
I shake my head a little. "No, it is just that my kid said that a man named Trent has been coming over to visit my wife. I didn't think it was you, but I just wanted to make sure."
"Oh." he said. His eyes returned to his computer screen. "Nope, I've never met your family. Is that all you wanted to know?"
"Yeah, that is all."
"Well, Sir, could you look at this then."
I shrug and poke my head into his cubicle. "What is it?"
"I've been doing some accounting work and I have found that a lot of the bank transactions, the transactions that we have recorded on file, and the estimates, aren't all matching up at all. Currently, if some of the figures are right, they show differences of up to eight hundred thousand dollars. I have used every resource I have access too and I can't figure out where all these discrepancies have been coming from."
"Hmm." I try to think of a reason, but nothing is coming to me. Event the merger shouldn't have cause that large of a difference. "How about you give your mind a rest on the matter and I will look into it and see if I can find out what is going on."
"Well sir, the reason why I was looking is because I didn't have much else to do. So if you take this off my hands, I don't know what I would do with myself for most of the day. That would feel wrong. If you could grant me access to more information I might be able to find it myself. You could monitor everything I get into, and I would report what I find. Would that work?"
"It sounds reasonable enough. I will write you up a permission form. Good work Trent."
(Ok, Faithful readers, November fast approaches, and with it, the impending Nanowrimo. Because of this, the blog will take a month long hiatus. Well, from this story at least. I might put up excerpts from my Nanowrimo work, you know, to keep you all happy.)
