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 Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 12:25 am
It was the paper work that got her, Marisol decided. More than her assistant’s nervous ticks, more than her grandmother’s shadowing, it was the arseload of electronic paperwork that got her. It was such an outdated term, paper had been eliminated from various bureaucracies years ago before even Dominga was a babe. They didn’t even use a paper forms as backup for the servers anymore; it was a thin sheet of synthetic quasi-paper made from a conglomeration of compressed plastics and foam. It survived almost eternally, was more weather-able, and overall a better guarantee than processed tree pulp. So paperwork should be relabeled something more to the tune of ‘documents’ or another suitably politically correct term for forms. All throughout this thought she had been tapping her stylus irritably against the fabricated diamond that worked as her touchscreen. An orange blinker had popped up at this point and taken her attentions back to the screen below her elbow. Marisol rolled up her sleeves again and brought up the item alerted to her. Locke, her secretary, popped up in the video view talking to the one person she had the camera set to find. Dominga Torres, President of Assai Pharmaceuticals, and her grandmother. The copper haired woman was about to close the audio deprived link before she saw her white-haired grandmother in the camera view. With an imperceptible sigh she flicked the volume on with a voice command.
“Marisol, my darling grandbaby.” She spoke with a thick Chilean accent and a pantomime of familial love. “I haven’t seen your face in the flesh in so long. I had assumed you had been at headquarters the entire time, but you aren’t.”
“I left a while ago dear grandmother. I express extreme despair on the fact that you didn’t receive the memo.” Marisol replied, albeit a bit curtly.
“I’ll have to check my inbox records then.” Dominga ignored or didn’t notice the sarcasm. “Well then where might you be? I had hoped to share a lunch and speak with you over some matters.”
“I will have to apologize. I am currently too far from the main building to make it in time for lunch, even with haste.”
“Dinner then.”
“Only if you can get a teleporting device not to work like an automatic flayer.”
“I’ll see about that then.” The wrinkled stick-like woman paused. “Your region is doing well, much better in fact, than the others. You make me proud.”
“I’m glad what I can accomplish as an employee inspires you.”
“You inherited your business skills from me, I always say.”
“Speaking of business, I have a meeting in a few minutes with Dr. Carvalas; the head of our Minsk lab. Do you mind terribly if I could return to concentrating on this with Locke?”
“Of course not, it is wonderfully nice to see you taking initiative unlike your father.” She spoke clearly emphasizing the last word and with that, left the room. Locke finally visibly breathed after the tension began to clear. He fixed his worried hair and attempted to return to normal quickly.
“I apologize for you being a captive audience for the power-play between my grandmother and I.” Marisol spoke, quieter than normal, and while wearing a distasteful expression. “Take a break and calm yourself. I pinged what I have signed over.”
She finished, closing the visual link between the offices thousands of miles away. She sighed loudly and leaned back in her spine-looking chair, running her slim fingers through her copper-brown and teal streaked hair. Marisol relaxed like this for a moment before spinning and then leaping from the seat. Issuing a few voice commands had gotten the terminal table locked as she went down her slim staircase, passing the linen closet, and went immediately to the rotary closet embedded in the living room. She snatched one of her many unremarkable coats and went out into the chilled afternoon. Mari took a deep breath of the air that would never be as bad as her stifling office. A smile suddenly graced her features after a few moments just standing there. Her boots made the familiar click on the sidewalk as she headed for a place she loved to just sit and think in, even if rumors said that things went down there. Though in her time on the eternally moist grass, she hadn’t seen anything, it was only a bunch of grass protruding from a gray-green dirt plot between a few dilapidated houses.
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Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 1:18 pm
The thing that pissed him off the most was incompetence, sheer and blunt incompetence. At the rate that his underlings were either getting caught or failing to sell, Dexter would be out of business and find himself at the mercy of his boss. With a few fresh new dents in his crowbar, Dexter left the conference room, unconscious goons laying spread eagle on the conference table. Dexter locked the door behind him; they’d be knocked hour for a few hours, and if any of the maids found their bodies, the police would be at his front door, along with a few soldiers. He pocketed some needles, along with a few doses of his highest grade morphine, put on a jacket and scarf, told the maid to turn the answering machine on, then went walked out the door into the cold.
“Idiots, all of them…” Dexter grumbled, kicking pebbles and other little bits of debris along the walkway. It should have been an easy deal; meet in the lot, exchange the morphine for the cash, then leave as though they had been talking about the weather –not much of a topic to talk about, as the weather was always the same. He took the left that would get him to his destination, finding a cola can to kick around. How did he, Dexter the prodigy, end up with such a job? Shouldn’t he be figuring out how to stop fallout poisoning, or find a way to treat infertility? Well, he would be if the MOTHERLAND would pay him more than the chump still trying to figure out how cold fusion worked. Instead, he just lay low while making deadly little bio gasses on the side. Morphine was his main gig, and it made for one hell of a business.
Dexter was shoved out of his thoughts by a passing bus, nearly splashing him with a puddle made by yesterday’s rain. “Learn to drive, you bloody wanker!” He flipped the bird to the bus driver, shouting in his thick British accent. He pulled his coat tighter about his body, and pulled his scarf up to mask his nose from the smog that the bus emitted. Why busses were still using such mundane engines, Dexter could only guess. That was beside the point, however. Dexter was at the location, and someone was there. Her hair was copper, streaked with teal. She was a slim little woman, probably no older than twenty. Why were people his age so addicted to the stuff? They hadn’t fought in the war, had yet to experience true emotional toil. They had no reason to get high off morphine; there only excuse was that ‘everybody’s doing it.’ His generation was a lot of idiots.
“I take it you’re Gabrielle?”
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