Wednesday, February 2, 7:30 p.m. - Headquarters of HAL, Inc.
Click. The camera captured the word PIG. Big, bold, bloody letters across the ergonomically contoured desk. The word mocked the desk's jazzy, sweeping lines in exotic white ash and contrasting honey-butter and black. PIG. The de rigueur epitaph for any crime scene since that day in 1969 when Charlie Manson's girls scrawled it on the walls and doors of a Beverly Hills mansion.
"Teach ya, pig. Teach ya, teach ya, teach ya." The whispered litany echoed in the chilly silence.
Click. 666 smeared in blood across walls intentionally painted the bland, mind-numbing putty color of printers, computers, and all things technical.
"No day like today to teach ya, pig."
Click. A gory pentagram on the framed cover of Datamation.
Click. Click. Pentagrams for Byte and InfoWorld. The pig didn't deserve any kudos for stealing someone else's ideas and calling them his own.
"Teach ya, pig. Teach ya to lie and steal and use people. Teach ya what happens when you try to walk all over me."
Click. Seth Sadey. A casually elegant PIG in gray micro fiber slacks and a midnight-blue cashmere sweater, darker around the heart where blood percolated around the knife used on Bagel Wednesdays. Skin Flint Sadey who never bought bagels on his own dime. Tyrant Sadey who was not so formidable spread-eagled on the dull, dull, dull beige carpet. Dead Sadey who was as impotent as the snow angels that appeared all over town after yesterday's snow storm. With a squishy stress ball sporting the company logo stuffed between his fat lips, he'd never again sneer or curse some poor schmuck who didn't respond to his stupid questions in a nano-second or less.
"Teach ya, pig."
Click. Thirteen books in a halo around Sadey's head, every one a manifesto on the paradigm of excellence in the workplace. The unbroken bindings and unbent pages corroborated a long-standing rumor that Sadey had never actually read the chest-thumping, how-to's written by the five-hundred pound gorillas of corporate America.
A vinyl-clad hand pushed Sadey's custom-made chair of premium Italian leather away from the wall. The chair and its new occupant went into a spin, a slow carousel around the bloody words and pictures, around Sadey himself before it collided with Sadey's desk and nearly knocked his laptop on the floor. The laptop's screensaver revolved through I'm-getting-a-divorce snapshots of Sadey in Cancun with the marketing admin whose only qualification for the job was her well-deserved reputation as the local slut and a father who had invested heavily in HAL.
A touch of the keypad bought the laptop to life. So, Sadey hadn't followed his own edict about password protecting screensavers. That was unexpected, but lucky. Even after fumbling with the camera's USB cable, it only took a few minutes to upload the pictures onto Sadey's laptop. A few tweaks and photographs of the corporate bloodsucker replaced Sun & Fun in Cancun. An offering to the gods of commerce.
"The gods are alive, pig. Magic's afoot." The self-styled Corporate Avenger chuckled.
A few more minutes to modify the pictures and add the lyrics. The upgraded screensaver was a vast improvement. Version 1.1. If there were only some way to upload the pictures to the company website so everyone could enjoy them, but the webmaster might balk. An email after everyone left worked just fine.
The Corporate Avenger rolled over to the window facing Washington Square. Across the way, the Lincoln-Douglas monument rose out of the fresh snow, dark as a tombstone. The streets were empty, but several cars with HAL parking stickers still sat in the reserved spaces in front of the building. Better not linger, backlit against the light on Sadey's desk, visible to any one heading up Hampshire Street.
The Avenger rolled back to the desk and checked the company's instant messaging to see who was still on-line. As everyone suspected, Sadey had masked his on-line presence with some software sleight of hand that allowed him to silently monitor everyone else's work habits. Night after night he must have trolled this list in search of a new victim, in search of a reason to storm in the next morning, wrapped in righteous indignation, and ream out someone for lack of commitment.
"Not tomorrow, pig."
As if they sensed freedom at hand, the green names on the list turned yellow and black as the geeks signed off and headed home. Until there was nobody left who had a Rivertown name. Nobody important.
The Corporate Avenger logged onto to Sadey's email and addressed a memo to HAL employees world-wide. All twenty-three of them. Subject: Do the hard thing for the business.
© Copyright 2005. All Rights Reserved. Michalea Moore