Going Public
by Chris Stuck
Due to the success of our longest-running program, Kill a Black Guy, and its many spinoffs—Kill a Black Lady, Kill a Brown Guy, Kill a Brown Lady, and our latest, Kill a Black Kid—some of us at White Supremacy Incorporated, WSI for short, thought it was time we finally did an initial public offering. It was an indicator to many of us that the culture at WSI was changing. We were coming from behind the curtain, the company showing its big fat face. We old timers were a little uneasy about the idea, but it didn’t matter. We were being pushed out by younger, more zealous and less gifted employees, conspiracy theorists, Tea Party members, lame brains.
We old fellers thought our sector was so well-established, in business since the beginning of time practically, that we didn’t need an IPO. We’d all migrated from military and government intelligence back in the fifties. We’d started wars and infiltrated regimes. Secrecy was paramount for guys like us. It was how we got stuff done, how we had affairs under our wives’ noses, how we were closeted alcoholics and gay men. However, Tad, Jr., our new CFO, a thirty-year-old whiz in his own mind, pushed and pushed for the offering and, in the end, it was approved. There was nothing we could do. His dad, Tad, Sr., owned the company.
I didn’t particularly see the need for an IPO. But what was I gonna say? I’d been at WSI the longest and was on my way out. Unlike the new school bozos, we old guys weren’t greedy. We were thick as thieves with every facet of society already, from dusty small towns to the Dark Web and the Internet. An IPO would’ve just been throwing more wood on the pile. Why be greedy? No matter what good or service was being sold, we controlled the pipeline anyway. Sports leagues, TV, radio, computers, and, oh yeah, all those slick tech CEOs for all your favorite apps? Even the liberals? You guessed it. They worked for us. They were figureheads, puppets, fictional wizards. Most were actually actors or androids. Some were real breathing human beings, sure, but very few.
Whatever they were, we had them on the payroll. We liked to keep that kind of thing under wraps, though. According to our focus groups, monopolies and immovable forces were just downers to the average Tom and Sally. Everyone knowing we controlled the whole shebang, that kind of oppression, just wasn’t good for morale or the economy. Wasn’t having everything enough? After all, it was us old timers who let other sections of society, the Blacks, the Jews, the Muslims, have their part of the culture and the Internet, their own corners in The Cloud. We liked to keep the peace. It was only right. Unlike Tads, Jr. and Sr., we oldies were actually trying not to be monsters.
We old fellers thought our sector was so well-established, in business since the beginning of time practically, that we didn’t need an IPO. We’d all migrated from military and government intelligence back in the fifties. We’d started wars and infiltrated regimes. Secrecy was paramount for guys like us. It was how we got stuff done, how we had affairs under our wives’ noses, how we were closeted alcoholics and gay men. However, Tad, Jr., our new CFO, a thirty-year-old whiz in his own mind, pushed and pushed for the offering and, in the end, it was approved. There was nothing we could do. His dad, Tad, Sr., owned the company.
I didn’t particularly see the need for an IPO. But what was I gonna say? I’d been at WSI the longest and was on my way out. Unlike the new school bozos, we old guys weren’t greedy. We were thick as thieves with every facet of society already, from dusty small towns to the Dark Web and the Internet. An IPO would’ve just been throwing more wood on the pile. Why be greedy? No matter what good or service was being sold, we controlled the pipeline anyway. Sports leagues, TV, radio, computers, and, oh yeah, all those slick tech CEOs for all your favorite apps? Even the liberals? You guessed it. They worked for us. They were figureheads, puppets, fictional wizards. Most were actually actors or androids. Some were real breathing human beings, sure, but very few.
Whatever they were, we had them on the payroll. We liked to keep that kind of thing under wraps, though. According to our focus groups, monopolies and immovable forces were just downers to the average Tom and Sally. Everyone knowing we controlled the whole shebang, that kind of oppression, just wasn’t good for morale or the economy. Wasn’t having everything enough? After all, it was us old timers who let other sections of society, the Blacks, the Jews, the Muslims, have their part of the culture and the Internet, their own corners in The Cloud. We liked to keep the peace. It was only right. Unlike Tads, Jr. and Sr., we oldies were actually trying not to be monsters.
*
Though White Supremacy Incorporated was our registered name, we all just called it The Company. Whenever a civilian caught wind one of us worked there, naturally, the first thing they wanted to know was our location. We had to be vague for security reasons, of course. All we could tell was the obvious. We were headquartered in the United States.
“Yeah,” people would say. “Everyone knows that.”
But that was as specific as we could get. It was the one secret everyone, even our dumbest Tea Party affiliates, had to abide by. All we could say was where we weren’t located. DC was too conspicuous. Though we usually had control of The White House, us being headquartered there would’ve just been stupid. New York City was also out because it was too busy. Who could think there? And LA and San Francisco were no bueno because they were just too expensive. We considered ourselves fiscal conservatives. In actuality, and this is just between you, me, and the lamppost, we were located in an undisclosed mid-western state with a lot of corn and wheat fields and flat areas where tornadoes ripped the place to shreds from late May through June.
We had garrisons in every other country in the world, naturally, but it was just easier for us to work out of America. The language was simpler, and people were dumber. Our huge, multi-floor facility was above ground and thousands of feet below it, and no one suspected it was anything other than a toilet factory, a product we still had to produce in order to maintain our cover. I forgot to mention that. We were in toilets as well. Every kind of toilet. All the toilets. Bidets and toilet paper, too. Some of us, especially these vicious youngsters, were some murdering sons of bitches, but we did at least have a sense of humor. Our company’s underground stadium, where we held our annual flag football tournament, was nicknamed The Toilet Bowl, after all.
“Yeah,” people would say. “Everyone knows that.”
But that was as specific as we could get. It was the one secret everyone, even our dumbest Tea Party affiliates, had to abide by. All we could say was where we weren’t located. DC was too conspicuous. Though we usually had control of The White House, us being headquartered there would’ve just been stupid. New York City was also out because it was too busy. Who could think there? And LA and San Francisco were no bueno because they were just too expensive. We considered ourselves fiscal conservatives. In actuality, and this is just between you, me, and the lamppost, we were located in an undisclosed mid-western state with a lot of corn and wheat fields and flat areas where tornadoes ripped the place to shreds from late May through June.
We had garrisons in every other country in the world, naturally, but it was just easier for us to work out of America. The language was simpler, and people were dumber. Our huge, multi-floor facility was above ground and thousands of feet below it, and no one suspected it was anything other than a toilet factory, a product we still had to produce in order to maintain our cover. I forgot to mention that. We were in toilets as well. Every kind of toilet. All the toilets. Bidets and toilet paper, too. Some of us, especially these vicious youngsters, were some murdering sons of bitches, but we did at least have a sense of humor. Our company’s underground stadium, where we held our annual flag football tournament, was nicknamed The Toilet Bowl, after all.
*
There were so many misconceptions about us. Politics, for example. Everyone thought we did most of our work there, and we did on occasion, but for the most part, we considered it child’s play. And don’t get a feller wrong. Our staff in the electoral realm has always been diligent. But they were never the sharpest hooks in our tacklebox. Many of them were actually really soft in the old noggin area. Us in upper management often laughed at how obvious yet oblivious they were. They played checkers while we played a game no one knew existed, a game that had no name. We actually dealt in true magic (yeah, we owned that, too) and sleight of hand, trickery so invisible and built into every societal framework that no one could separate it from the beams and concrete and wires and plumbing. It was stitched into everything, even the upholstery in your car.
Like the KKK and neo-Nazis, our political operatives were unfortunately the lowest of the low, ROTC compared to us Navy Seals. Sadly, this was also true of our technicians in business and the stock market, police departments and universities as well. Oh yeah, UFOs and aliens? I’m sorry to burst everyone’s bubble, but that was us, too. Conspiracy theories of all kinds were our tool and talent. We’d invented each and every one of them, the ones for us and against us. There wasn’t one soul in the trade that believed in God or the devil or any higher or lower power. We were The Power. Who was higher, or lower, than us? But, in the interest of secrecy, we did like the idea that some Satanists put out there, that the old red devil often wanted people to think he didn’t exist, just so he could continue doing his thing.
Like the KKK and neo-Nazis, our political operatives were unfortunately the lowest of the low, ROTC compared to us Navy Seals. Sadly, this was also true of our technicians in business and the stock market, police departments and universities as well. Oh yeah, UFOs and aliens? I’m sorry to burst everyone’s bubble, but that was us, too. Conspiracy theories of all kinds were our tool and talent. We’d invented each and every one of them, the ones for us and against us. There wasn’t one soul in the trade that believed in God or the devil or any higher or lower power. We were The Power. Who was higher, or lower, than us? But, in the interest of secrecy, we did like the idea that some Satanists put out there, that the old red devil often wanted people to think he didn’t exist, just so he could continue doing his thing.
*
Anyhoozle, at some point we got into Television. It wasn’t what the average human would call TV or the boob tube, however. For us, it meant distribution of info, which included any format that could be watched or heard, force-fed into one’s psyche like corn down a duck’s gullet. Television was just a term no one had retired yet, and plus, the youngsters thought it was retro and cool. Some of us oldies actually remembered a time when there were no televisions, when it was really hard to reach the masses. Back then, we just had the radio to scare the poo out of folks.
And honestly, we didn’t pay anyone to kill Black and Brown people, or even do it ourselves. We just cranked up our trusty whirligig machine and let it spin, its influence rippling out there like electromagnetic waves. Our zombie masses, cops and racists and certain white women, whipped themselves into a frenzy. We were so good that our desired outcomes always came true. Agendas, before people even called them that, were always our bread and butter. What was that old United Negro College Fund slogan? A mind is a terrible thing to waste? We tweaked that a little bit. A mind is a perfect thing to…well, you get the picture.
By golly, our hit, Kill a Black Guy, and its many spinoffs, appeared on TV and the news, and especially the Internet and social media, which had become our main platforms of brain manipulation. And views, too. We cared a lot about them and hits and clickbait. Everything under that umbrella was what our production staff disseminated to the world. And, really, it was a big comeback for us. We didn’t want to admit it, but we’d been making flub after blunder for decades, still were, here and there. Believe it or not, we didn’t want our work, Kill a Black Guy and the like, to be seen at first. We old guys had more couth than that. It caused outrage, but as time went on, as the climate changed, we realized our Television worked like gangbusters as a recruiting tool. The young and heartless here at WSI were right about that. It was a shift some of us weren’t prepared for: those who wanted to dislike only needing a visual example and a nudge in the right direction. Then they’d do our dirty work there on the ground, nasty, vicious work, I tell you, work we oldies didn’t really want to talk about.
And honestly, we didn’t pay anyone to kill Black and Brown people, or even do it ourselves. We just cranked up our trusty whirligig machine and let it spin, its influence rippling out there like electromagnetic waves. Our zombie masses, cops and racists and certain white women, whipped themselves into a frenzy. We were so good that our desired outcomes always came true. Agendas, before people even called them that, were always our bread and butter. What was that old United Negro College Fund slogan? A mind is a terrible thing to waste? We tweaked that a little bit. A mind is a perfect thing to…well, you get the picture.
By golly, our hit, Kill a Black Guy, and its many spinoffs, appeared on TV and the news, and especially the Internet and social media, which had become our main platforms of brain manipulation. And views, too. We cared a lot about them and hits and clickbait. Everything under that umbrella was what our production staff disseminated to the world. And, really, it was a big comeback for us. We didn’t want to admit it, but we’d been making flub after blunder for decades, still were, here and there. Believe it or not, we didn’t want our work, Kill a Black Guy and the like, to be seen at first. We old guys had more couth than that. It caused outrage, but as time went on, as the climate changed, we realized our Television worked like gangbusters as a recruiting tool. The young and heartless here at WSI were right about that. It was a shift some of us weren’t prepared for: those who wanted to dislike only needing a visual example and a nudge in the right direction. Then they’d do our dirty work there on the ground, nasty, vicious work, I tell you, work we oldies didn’t really want to talk about.
*
I’d started in the late fifties, our golden age, the typewriter and carbon copy era. We all lived in tract homes, and technology, other than the atom bomb, hadn’t been fully harnessed. Our branch’s initial relationship with circuit boards and deadly weaponry was like a toddler holding a spewing fire hose. We nearly blew up the world a few times, us and the Russians. It took some years and a few accidents to learn to control it. We were just beginning to unify and governmentize our interests, undamming our streams of income when people like Joe McCarthy unwittingly created a ton of business for us. The next thing we knew WSI was renovating, digging our headquarters deeper. We got company cars and bigger homes. We boinked our secretaries and their friends. It was boom times. The whiskey was flowing. Our humidors were filled with fine Cuban cigars.
We tried to keep it up during the sixties and seventies, but our influence lessened. The civil rights era, the Vietnam War, Black leaders, and the advent of feminism got a few of us canned. Nixon and Gerald Ford, those two nitwits, didn’t help matters. Some of us forward-minded managers had weathered previous storms and knew these things were actually boons. We took a step back and regrouped, recruited new blood, sharp minds with technical backgrounds, some with criminal records.
We let disco and cocaine and Jimmy Carter take hold, and by pure luck, all three weakened our usurpers. We suffered casualties as well, of course. Some of our brightest white thinkers couldn’t put down that white stuff, whether it was cocaine or heroin. As we trucked them off to skid row, lobotomizing them on the way, those of us who’d stayed clean, except for all the whiskey, wondered if it was because the substances were white that so many got hooked. Maybe we’d gone overboard with the “white is right” messaging. We would never know. Secret power was enough of a high for us that we never saw the attraction to such a fleeting, druggy buzz. In the end, we washed our hands of them and continued on.
We tried to keep it up during the sixties and seventies, but our influence lessened. The civil rights era, the Vietnam War, Black leaders, and the advent of feminism got a few of us canned. Nixon and Gerald Ford, those two nitwits, didn’t help matters. Some of us forward-minded managers had weathered previous storms and knew these things were actually boons. We took a step back and regrouped, recruited new blood, sharp minds with technical backgrounds, some with criminal records.
We let disco and cocaine and Jimmy Carter take hold, and by pure luck, all three weakened our usurpers. We suffered casualties as well, of course. Some of our brightest white thinkers couldn’t put down that white stuff, whether it was cocaine or heroin. As we trucked them off to skid row, lobotomizing them on the way, those of us who’d stayed clean, except for all the whiskey, wondered if it was because the substances were white that so many got hooked. Maybe we’d gone overboard with the “white is right” messaging. We would never know. Secret power was enough of a high for us that we never saw the attraction to such a fleeting, druggy buzz. In the end, we washed our hands of them and continued on.
*
Fortunately, we rebounded in the eighties. It was the fifties all over again, except on steroids and more Bolivian marching powder. We suffered more drug casualties, like everyone, but we weeded out the dopers and persevered. Politics, the dummy circus, was operational once more so we reluctantly had to work our magic there. The space program was an interest again, too, and many of us wanted to colonize the outer blackness, but we foresaw, correctly, that politics would be an easy place to work our hand, as long as we kept men the focus of our endeavors. Life was just easier that way. We loved women, but we knew our demographics.
And don’t get a feller wrong. There were plenty of ladies at WSI. A few rose up the ranks and became our heavy-hitters, so cunning I wouldn’t trust them even if they were my mother. But that breed of white woman couldn’t be predicted or trained up. It was a particular kind of gold we couldn’t mine, which we found out the hard way. Often white women who thought they were “regular,” many of them snooty bookish types who didn’t think they had a prejudiced bone in their bodies, would get involved in The Company, not realizing how deep we needed them to go. They got squeamish and watered down our message and, it’s hard to believe, I know, actually tried bring in non-whites just to make them feel not so white power-y. Yes, even at White Supremacy Incorporated, the notion of a diverse workforce was bandied about. It was the nineties, the PC era. Again, we had to cut the grass to see the snakes, do a whole dadgum reshuffle. Pensions were voided. People got canned like tuna. Some were even disappeared. It was as if these “regular” white women couldn’t see they worked at White Supremacy Incorporated at all, which was frightening when a feller really thought about it. But that was how good we were, by golly, how mesmerizing our messaging was.
Still, we were beset with mismanagement and just plain bad ideas for a spell. That always happened after a reorg. We’d gone from old white men in politics to younger white men, and many of those clowns were unfocused. When terrorism on our mainland forced us to divert funds to defense rather than recruitment, more branch managers got a boot in their ass, those who’d unintentionally caused some of these problems by meddling in Brown countries’ issues. So many things were slipping past us. We could’ve been so much more supreme, but for whatever reason, we just kept stepping on our own dicks.
And don’t get a feller wrong. There were plenty of ladies at WSI. A few rose up the ranks and became our heavy-hitters, so cunning I wouldn’t trust them even if they were my mother. But that breed of white woman couldn’t be predicted or trained up. It was a particular kind of gold we couldn’t mine, which we found out the hard way. Often white women who thought they were “regular,” many of them snooty bookish types who didn’t think they had a prejudiced bone in their bodies, would get involved in The Company, not realizing how deep we needed them to go. They got squeamish and watered down our message and, it’s hard to believe, I know, actually tried bring in non-whites just to make them feel not so white power-y. Yes, even at White Supremacy Incorporated, the notion of a diverse workforce was bandied about. It was the nineties, the PC era. Again, we had to cut the grass to see the snakes, do a whole dadgum reshuffle. Pensions were voided. People got canned like tuna. Some were even disappeared. It was as if these “regular” white women couldn’t see they worked at White Supremacy Incorporated at all, which was frightening when a feller really thought about it. But that was how good we were, by golly, how mesmerizing our messaging was.
Still, we were beset with mismanagement and just plain bad ideas for a spell. That always happened after a reorg. We’d gone from old white men in politics to younger white men, and many of those clowns were unfocused. When terrorism on our mainland forced us to divert funds to defense rather than recruitment, more branch managers got a boot in their ass, those who’d unintentionally caused some of these problems by meddling in Brown countries’ issues. So many things were slipping past us. We could’ve been so much more supreme, but for whatever reason, we just kept stepping on our own dicks.
*
And contrary to what many thought, the country’s first Black president wasn’t our greatest nemesis, far from it. We’d dealt with many influential non-whites. We tried to get him to switch teams, as we often did with opponents, but he was as masterful as we were. In the end, we had respect for him, though we wanted to snuff his movement at every turn. We all used to play basketball together actually, us versus him and his secret service, many of whom were on our payroll. He’d still beat our asses. During one game, he juked me so badly I had to get my knee replaced. Being the fair sportsmen that we were, we let him have his time in the Oval Office, his little vanity projects, but we knew we’d have ours and more immediately after.
This brings me back to the IPO. Most of us older managers, sheez, even Eddie, the pizza-faced kid who fixed the copiers, could see our new guy, The Orange Man, and the IPO decisions were squirts from the same fount of madness. Our style and finesse were circling the drain like a couple turds. We’d once relished our secrecy, but now here we were, with a bunch of loudmouths and never-beens in charge, about to put our whole asses on front street if this backfired.
I’d been promoted so many times that I’d reached the pinnacle of my career. Because of a few missteps, a sexual harassment suit and a fondness for the giggle juice, my advancement was capped at Senior Manager of Communications, which I was fine with. It was what I deserved. Many at WSI knew a feller was all about doing good and not outshining anyone. Consequently, I became one of those heady figures people came to for my judicious advice, the old grandmaster. Since I’d learned some martial arts in the military and led the Tai Chi class at lunch, I’d even been nicknamed The Sensei.
I was going out of style fast, though, and starting to feel elderly. I still had a crewcut and smelled of Old Spice. I was thinking of retiring and cashing it all out. For the most part, I’d done a lot of brilliant work. I’d invested my money wisely. I had a number of fruit farms in third world countries. My farmworkers, all of them Brown or Black, loved me. I had a place to go when all this was over. I could bow out and hang with The Dick, one of my old vice president cronies. My ex-wives were dead, my daughters married off, with grandkids of their own. I could go and live out my days between each of my mango and banana and coffee plantations. I could start schools for all those Brown and Black people as a hobby, what many of the already-retired fellers called ant-farming and gold-fishing. Most of those kids would never be anything anyway. WSI ensured that. But who said they shouldn’t be useful members of society? Like I said, a feller wasn’t a monster. Though I’d worked at WSI for sixty years, believe it or not, I didn’t truly dislike anyone. I was sure of it.
This brings me back to the IPO. Most of us older managers, sheez, even Eddie, the pizza-faced kid who fixed the copiers, could see our new guy, The Orange Man, and the IPO decisions were squirts from the same fount of madness. Our style and finesse were circling the drain like a couple turds. We’d once relished our secrecy, but now here we were, with a bunch of loudmouths and never-beens in charge, about to put our whole asses on front street if this backfired.
I’d been promoted so many times that I’d reached the pinnacle of my career. Because of a few missteps, a sexual harassment suit and a fondness for the giggle juice, my advancement was capped at Senior Manager of Communications, which I was fine with. It was what I deserved. Many at WSI knew a feller was all about doing good and not outshining anyone. Consequently, I became one of those heady figures people came to for my judicious advice, the old grandmaster. Since I’d learned some martial arts in the military and led the Tai Chi class at lunch, I’d even been nicknamed The Sensei.
I was going out of style fast, though, and starting to feel elderly. I still had a crewcut and smelled of Old Spice. I was thinking of retiring and cashing it all out. For the most part, I’d done a lot of brilliant work. I’d invested my money wisely. I had a number of fruit farms in third world countries. My farmworkers, all of them Brown or Black, loved me. I had a place to go when all this was over. I could bow out and hang with The Dick, one of my old vice president cronies. My ex-wives were dead, my daughters married off, with grandkids of their own. I could go and live out my days between each of my mango and banana and coffee plantations. I could start schools for all those Brown and Black people as a hobby, what many of the already-retired fellers called ant-farming and gold-fishing. Most of those kids would never be anything anyway. WSI ensured that. But who said they shouldn’t be useful members of society? Like I said, a feller wasn’t a monster. Though I’d worked at WSI for sixty years, believe it or not, I didn’t truly dislike anyone. I was sure of it.
*
This was around the time the IPO idea was just a-brewing. It was a few months away. The advanced planning had been done, the underwriters retained. It was all a go. My underlings thought I was crazy for leaving early. During Tai Chi, they said, “But, Norm, or I mean, Sensei, you’re going to miss so much. At least think of the money.” We’d all been there quite some time and had, years before, forfeited higher salaries for more stock in the company. We were all vested.
I shrugged. “Ehh, what’s more money?” We were barefoot, doing our slow movements, the moist soles of our feet sinking into the soft white exercise mats. I told the underlings I had enough cash. I was already a millionaire five times over.
“Be smart, though. Retire and cash out after the offering,” they said. “If you wait, you’ll be worth so much more. Think of your grandkids and great-grandkids, the white race as a whole. Racial wealth is a helluva thing.”
I’d thought it all through. I was already going to make a buttload before the IPO. I knew everything they were saying, but I had a tickle in the old noggin. If the offering did what everyone expected, I wouldn’t want to retire. I’d be sucked back in. I was eighty-one. I’d die in The Toilet Factory. I often thought of all those old coke heads who’d gotten booted in the seventies and eighties. They were somewhere drooling on themselves, panhandling, if they were still above ground at all. I was just as addicted. I pondered my marriages ruined by my workaholic tendencies. I thought of my dead ex-wives and mistresses.
After all, it was me who made The Company into a content farm of sorts, who started calling our “facility” a “campus.” I was the one who thought we should have employee apartments on premises so our overtime workers would have somewhere to crash and never feel like they wanted to leave. Many of the lower grunts didn’t know it, but White Supremacy Incorporated, at my direction, piped into its ducts a certain kind of air that made you cheery. All the water in the fountains and coolers was laced with the same chemical. We had state-of-the-art exercise equipment. Our food court and its wares, spiked with the happy stuff as well, was catered by celebrity chefs who we had this or that kind of dirt on. All that was going to be hard to leave. And though I wasn’t a fearful person, I was worried the monster of my own invention would somehow kill me. I wouldn’t get to sit on a beach with my toes in the sand. Instead, the young cubs I’d trained up would eat me alive, rip my heart out of my chest, hoist it aloft, and devour it.
I shrugged. “Ehh, what’s more money?” We were barefoot, doing our slow movements, the moist soles of our feet sinking into the soft white exercise mats. I told the underlings I had enough cash. I was already a millionaire five times over.
“Be smart, though. Retire and cash out after the offering,” they said. “If you wait, you’ll be worth so much more. Think of your grandkids and great-grandkids, the white race as a whole. Racial wealth is a helluva thing.”
I’d thought it all through. I was already going to make a buttload before the IPO. I knew everything they were saying, but I had a tickle in the old noggin. If the offering did what everyone expected, I wouldn’t want to retire. I’d be sucked back in. I was eighty-one. I’d die in The Toilet Factory. I often thought of all those old coke heads who’d gotten booted in the seventies and eighties. They were somewhere drooling on themselves, panhandling, if they were still above ground at all. I was just as addicted. I pondered my marriages ruined by my workaholic tendencies. I thought of my dead ex-wives and mistresses.
After all, it was me who made The Company into a content farm of sorts, who started calling our “facility” a “campus.” I was the one who thought we should have employee apartments on premises so our overtime workers would have somewhere to crash and never feel like they wanted to leave. Many of the lower grunts didn’t know it, but White Supremacy Incorporated, at my direction, piped into its ducts a certain kind of air that made you cheery. All the water in the fountains and coolers was laced with the same chemical. We had state-of-the-art exercise equipment. Our food court and its wares, spiked with the happy stuff as well, was catered by celebrity chefs who we had this or that kind of dirt on. All that was going to be hard to leave. And though I wasn’t a fearful person, I was worried the monster of my own invention would somehow kill me. I wouldn’t get to sit on a beach with my toes in the sand. Instead, the young cubs I’d trained up would eat me alive, rip my heart out of my chest, hoist it aloft, and devour it.
*
The day The Company went public, everyone was waiting with bated breath. I’d stuck around, of course, being the addict that I am. I could’ve been in Bermuda or Martinique for a quick vacay before heading to my places in Honduras or Ecuador or Nigeria. But I was still hooked, feeding the monkey. It was my last day, and I was even still working while everyone was out partying in the cubicles. Many of us thought, as we often did with all our stratagems, that it would go over without a hitch. How could it not? Out of every hundred things we tried, ninety of them took.
But many of us were nervous. Some of the older guys under me, pessimists and alkies, sucked down cigarettes in the designated smoking area and took nips from their flasks. They were in their late forties and fifties, jaded red-faced fellers. Some hadn’t been so smart with their money, had terrible divorce lawyers, many mortgages and multiple wives and families in different states who didn’t know about each other. Those guys, our travelling account execs, really needed this. They were good but overextended men whose lives were hanging by dental floss. Believe it or not, some of us weren’t that bad. Some of us, people like me from the old days, always thought if we were in the background and not so upfront and in people’s peepers that we really weren’t doing anything bad for humanity. We were shepherding the world in the right direction. We’d just fallen into this and stuck around. It was a paying job, sort of honest work. We were no different than the British Royal Family, who thought God had chosen them to lead.
I spent most of the morning writing a playbook for my successor, so my position wouldn’t go to pot as soon as I’d left. Around ten in the morning, the minions had switched from coffee and Kahlua to Champagne and mimosas, many of the youngsters quite stinko, dancing on their desks. Through my glass office walls, I could see them waving for me to come out, mouthing, “Norm! Sensei! Get your geriatric ass out here and party. We’re gonna be rich!”
I waved at them over my computer monitor. “Soon, soon,” I mouthed, smiling at them like they were my grandkids. I kept watch of the digital ticker on the bullpen wall, counting down to trading time. I eventually finished my playbook and then stood at the printer as it spit out page after page. I gathered the fat bundle in my hands, two whole reams of paper, the history of my entire life in the trade, and shuffled all those pages, straightening them with a few taps on my desktop. I thumbed through the entire mess a last time and set it down with a thump, fixing a final crooked page. It was thicker than an old phone book, and in there lurked a few wrecked marriages and three daughters who hadn’t spoken to a feller in a decade, a stent in my heart and a stint at Betty Ford.
As soon as I walked out into the bullpen, I was greeted by those crazed youngsters. They handed me a mimosa and a Bellini. Since I didn’t booze anymore, I just held them for a bit, smiling, and then set them on someone’s desk. I pulled up a chair and loosened my tie, rolling up my sleeves like I used to when I’d come home from a long day and play with my daughters. Everyone was gathered around another digital ticker with the stock info looping endlessly from one end to the other. There was a long countdown, and when the numbers finally went live, all of them off the charts, everyone flipped out. People flung streamers, blew kazoos, and tossed confetti. I could see some of the account nerds sit back, their eyes spinning as their brains did the calculations. How much were their shares worth? But they quickly snapped out of it when a looser secretary ripped off her blouse and showed her big boobs like it was Mardi Gras.
Since a feller was retiring and had been at White Supremacy Incorporated the longest, exactly sixty years, everyone seemed to think this event was my going-away, my day of sorts. The numbers were growing each time they went across the ticker, making every one of us bajillionaires. People were shouting, “Sensei! Sensei!” smacking me on the back. A few secretaries kissed me on the cheek. Even Tads, Jr. and Sr., those privileged vicious pigs, came over and lifted me up on their shoulders and paraded me around the office.
Shouts and hollers of happiness could be heard all across the world, it was said, but that may have been our own propaganda talking. A feller wanted to believe it. This was my life’s work, and I was at the end of it. Didn’t I have the right to be proud? Even people who weren’t white had bought shares, and quite frankly, I can’t say I was shocked. After all, if you knew anything about history, you were aware of one simple, indisputable fact: When you did business with White Supremacy Incorporated, by golly, you were bound to make a killing.
But many of us were nervous. Some of the older guys under me, pessimists and alkies, sucked down cigarettes in the designated smoking area and took nips from their flasks. They were in their late forties and fifties, jaded red-faced fellers. Some hadn’t been so smart with their money, had terrible divorce lawyers, many mortgages and multiple wives and families in different states who didn’t know about each other. Those guys, our travelling account execs, really needed this. They were good but overextended men whose lives were hanging by dental floss. Believe it or not, some of us weren’t that bad. Some of us, people like me from the old days, always thought if we were in the background and not so upfront and in people’s peepers that we really weren’t doing anything bad for humanity. We were shepherding the world in the right direction. We’d just fallen into this and stuck around. It was a paying job, sort of honest work. We were no different than the British Royal Family, who thought God had chosen them to lead.
I spent most of the morning writing a playbook for my successor, so my position wouldn’t go to pot as soon as I’d left. Around ten in the morning, the minions had switched from coffee and Kahlua to Champagne and mimosas, many of the youngsters quite stinko, dancing on their desks. Through my glass office walls, I could see them waving for me to come out, mouthing, “Norm! Sensei! Get your geriatric ass out here and party. We’re gonna be rich!”
I waved at them over my computer monitor. “Soon, soon,” I mouthed, smiling at them like they were my grandkids. I kept watch of the digital ticker on the bullpen wall, counting down to trading time. I eventually finished my playbook and then stood at the printer as it spit out page after page. I gathered the fat bundle in my hands, two whole reams of paper, the history of my entire life in the trade, and shuffled all those pages, straightening them with a few taps on my desktop. I thumbed through the entire mess a last time and set it down with a thump, fixing a final crooked page. It was thicker than an old phone book, and in there lurked a few wrecked marriages and three daughters who hadn’t spoken to a feller in a decade, a stent in my heart and a stint at Betty Ford.
As soon as I walked out into the bullpen, I was greeted by those crazed youngsters. They handed me a mimosa and a Bellini. Since I didn’t booze anymore, I just held them for a bit, smiling, and then set them on someone’s desk. I pulled up a chair and loosened my tie, rolling up my sleeves like I used to when I’d come home from a long day and play with my daughters. Everyone was gathered around another digital ticker with the stock info looping endlessly from one end to the other. There was a long countdown, and when the numbers finally went live, all of them off the charts, everyone flipped out. People flung streamers, blew kazoos, and tossed confetti. I could see some of the account nerds sit back, their eyes spinning as their brains did the calculations. How much were their shares worth? But they quickly snapped out of it when a looser secretary ripped off her blouse and showed her big boobs like it was Mardi Gras.
Since a feller was retiring and had been at White Supremacy Incorporated the longest, exactly sixty years, everyone seemed to think this event was my going-away, my day of sorts. The numbers were growing each time they went across the ticker, making every one of us bajillionaires. People were shouting, “Sensei! Sensei!” smacking me on the back. A few secretaries kissed me on the cheek. Even Tads, Jr. and Sr., those privileged vicious pigs, came over and lifted me up on their shoulders and paraded me around the office.
Shouts and hollers of happiness could be heard all across the world, it was said, but that may have been our own propaganda talking. A feller wanted to believe it. This was my life’s work, and I was at the end of it. Didn’t I have the right to be proud? Even people who weren’t white had bought shares, and quite frankly, I can’t say I was shocked. After all, if you knew anything about history, you were aware of one simple, indisputable fact: When you did business with White Supremacy Incorporated, by golly, you were bound to make a killing.