Geddes started the meeting without ceremony in a voice that never rose above conversational. He explained his temporary regression and asked if anyone else had experienced something similar. They glanced at each other, then back at Geddes. All shook their heads.
“Good,” he said, “but if anyone starts to feel depressed or experiences hallucinations, chances are you'll be where I was three days ago. It's temporary, but you should check in at the clinic or contact Dr. Knoe. She'll be with us awhile.
“And now, ta da, it's planning time. Number one on my agenda is defense. Randy here" He indicated Newgate, who was staring at an iPad, "has learned that the feds have put a new guy in charge of finding us. He's an advertising exec and just happens to be the guy who put Chill on the map by exploiting my hypothetical in Sacrifice.
“His agency planted the rumor that we actually had spiked a couple cases of Chill with Vulcana and that they were unkowingly distributed. It was very cleverly done. They insisted it was only a rumor, and because there were no complaints of people experiencing ill-effects after drinking Chill, there was no call for the company to recall the product. Chill quickly became the cool drink among teens.“
“I didn't know American teenagers cared about empathy,” said Gladys Alabi.
“My daughters do,” said Em. “They won't even let me kill a cock-a-roach. I do it anyway, when they're not looking.”
Newgate said, “The empathy part was excluded from the rumor. The publisher had already pulled the book after the brouhaha in the news about the guy who killed himself because he couldn't get rid of his erection. So this ad agency, Gahagan Nixon, puts a bootleg copy online with all the references to empathy edited out. Bottom line, the punks think they'll get the bottle of Chill that has the drug that will give them a permanent erection.”
“They don't mind that a guy's already killed himself?” said Chesapeake Security head Anthony Cromwell.
“They're teenagers,” said Gladys Alabi. “It won't happen to them. They live forever, remember?”
“Just the boys drinking it?” Cromwell asked.
“My daughters love the stuff,” said Em. “I won't allow any soft drinks in the house, but I know they drink it anyway. Is that Vulcana stuff really in Chill?”
“No,” said Geddes.
“But if it was what would it do to women?” said Em.
Geddes frowned. "You haven't taken it yet?"
"No, sir. I was sick the day you were giving the shots."
"We'll have to take care of that right away. Today, in fact."
"I don't like shots. And you didn't answer my question."
Geddes stood up and stretched. “Ask Gladys,” he said. “Ask Dr. Knoe. Ask Ms. Usher. We require every adult associated with Wilde Labs to take it.”
“That's right,” said Em. “I read the book. The original one. I remember that part.”
“What parts don't you remember?” said Geddes, feigning a look of shock.
“It wasn't very well written, Aloysius. Sorry.”
Geddes, staring at Em all the while, sat back down, reached for his water bottle and drank from it, making a distracting crinkly sound as the thin pastic gave way under the grip of his fingers.
“Seawell, can't we fire this woman? We don't need any new killing machines. She's served her purpose,” he said, suppressing a grin behind the water bottle.
“You need me for maintenance,” Em said. She made no effort to hide her smirk. “If there's a problem, I'm the only one knows how they work.”
“She's right,” said Seawell. “Plus I've asked her to develop a stun feature in the microlaser. We could've used that back at The Cottage.”
This had the effect of a minor chord appearing suddenly to halt a merry scherzo. All faces around the table went serious. Em's shifted from smirk to sad. She lowered her eyes to the table.
“How you coming on that,” Geddes said.
“Slow, but I'll have it.” Her eyes glistened when she looked up.
Geddes nodded and quickly changed the subject. “I'm bothered by this federal interest in something that's clearly not a public health hazard. The kid who killed himself – that was tragic, we can't deny it – left Wilde on his own, as I understand it, against Dr. Knoe's advice. She and Gladys and Mr. Pinkerton are confident they could have prevented it from happening.
“It was the very first formula, before the one I took by accident. You could have relieved that young man's problem, am I right, Glad?”
“Yes, sir. We had an antidote ready at the time. If he had stayed at The Cottage we wouldn't be in the mess we have now.”
“Anyway, for some reason no official at any level of government has approached us – Ms. Usher or Mr. Hendrian or even Ruth...the President – with an inquiry of any kind. All Gladstone has to go on is what I wrote in my book, which was clearly identified as satire. I did that for the express purpose of giving us some cover, and my purpose was twofold.
“I wanted to put what was happening on the record, mainly because I was concerned about what I was getting into and what it might mean in the broader sense, and I wanted to keep it muted in the event what was happening was bigger than I imagined. I didn't want to be waving a red flag for somebody like Bart Bullshit, who would charge at it like the mad bull he is wholly capable of being.
“Gladstone and I go back quite a ways. If you read my White House journal you know that while he can come across as an obnoxious buffoon, he can surprise the hell out of you.”
“You called that satire, too,” said Em. “I didn't take it seriously.”
“I did, Em, and for the same reason. I had to protect the president, both from a possible assassination and from the possibility her chief of staff was losing his mind. I was on a tightrope there. I had to leave some room for interpretation.”
“Your writing was better in that one.”
They exchanged polite smiles.
All rights reserved by Mathew Paust 2012
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Comments
1. The former “mcguffin’’ Vulcana , too fascinating a concept to remain a mere plot mover, is now forefront. I simply cannot wait for Em to take it. That better be a detailed post. Two posts.
2. The third person perspective, allowing you to give us omniscient knowledge of both sides of this conflict.
3. The moral oppositions you clearly delineate on both sides. We know where everyone stands, and yet we don’t quite know yet which team of players we support. And I bet you don’t either.
4. Serious themes, as I have mentioned before. The nature of masculinity, the male-female dynamic…
5. Very vivid characters. Even Geddes is getting interesting! Trueblood? A slick tricky guy!
And most of all, the joy you seem to bring to it.
Hemingway said, “Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones,” which is what you are doing in each self contained chapter.
r.
That's a great quote from Hemingway, unfamiliar to me. He's right, of course, but I'm wondering if he said it in a jealous reaction to Tolstoy, who managed brilliantly to do both at once. Not that Hemingway was a minimalist by any stretch, but he kept his focus close. And often his "smaller" pictures loomed large with universal resonance. Frankly I'm more interested in story, but I know that to tell it well the characters have to be interesting.
"In fiction, a MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or maguffin) is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist (and sometimes the antagonist) is willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to pursue, often with little or no narrative explanation as to why it is considered so desirable. A MacGuffin, therefore, functions merely as "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction".
James M. E. Organizes ` hen coop.
We stay in Chicken-Hut `sleepover.
`
Let's have a giant Sleepover in NYC.
Goblins crash. Wear Polka Dot PJ's.
The more the Merrier. Hop in Sacks.
We can cuddles in Same Sleep Bags.
Hitchcock was Odd. He Loved Birds.
I fear a bird cock Rooster Peck Jake.
Kerry can Be Circe? She loved swine.
Kerry Be Turned into Frances Bacon.
editors write Keep Readers Upbeat?