There were policies and procedures for everything. For how to load a stapler. How to close your office door without bothering a coworker. A policy that stated that everyone had to keep their coffee cups covered in order to minimize spills on company carpet. A policy on appropriate knots for ties worn in the office. Half-Windsor was preferred because of its "time-saving properties vis-a-vis A.M. pre-work grooming rituals." Ugh.
The books included a system of demerits and pay docking that was so complicated and arcane it would require an ordinary person a lifetime of study and adjudication to figure out. But Topper got it quickly enough. It was supposed to be indecipherable, unknowable and unknown. It was that way by design.
It was a trap of rules that no one could avoid violating. It guaranteed that, in the performance of his or her job, an employee would be in violation of at least one part of these rules and policies at all times. And so the herd, as Edwin called them, would live in fear. An ideal system of control.
The elegance of it was that most people would feel guilty for breaking the rules. Unprompted, they might even report other employees in the interest of holding up what they saw as their end of an employment contract. They would think that they were doing a good job, doing right by the company, by ratting out their friends and coworkers for doing things that weren't even remotely wrong, but were against the rules. And they would live in fear that the same thing would happen to them.
Topper remembered Edwin once saying to him, "Love is powerful, of course, but it is fickle, unstable, of unknown and non-fungible quality. You simply can't build a sure foundation from the spongy and crumbling brick of love. But fear—fear and greed are the finest materials from which to build a world-class organization."
Most of what Topper knew about human nature involved the vile bits that no one wanted to talk about but everybody knew were there. And when he applied this thinking to Edwin's construct, he realized it was not designed to keep or preserve a workforce. It was built to squeeze people for every drop of productivity they had in them. Then, when there was no more gain to be had from them, it would destroy their spirit utterly. If policies and procedures were the recipe for an organization, what Topper held in his hands were the instructions for making a stew of human misery.
Topper was one of the few people who could truly appreciate the magnitude of Edwin's aim and accomplishment. Dull and ponderous as they were, these manuals were a truly a work of art. Sure, it was the black art of organizational command and control, but it was still art.
Topper knew that this work of art would make him very rich. That should have made him happy. At first, he pretended it did. He was proud of his friend. Edwin was so very brilliant. How many other men in the world were capable of such work? Ten? One hundred?
But as the evening wore on Topper had time to think, and worse, to feel. As he lay awake in his large bed, listening to the winter wind claw at the window panes, he remembered being a young boy, all alone, crying in the snow. He couldn't remember where he was, or why he was crying, but did it matter? His childhood had come with such an inheritance of sorrow there was no point to an inventory. There was more than enough to go around.
It was this cold, lonely feeling that lay beneath all of his debauchery. It was this feeling that drove his madness. Is the Fool happier than other men? Or he does he believe that all life is sorrow and it's best to get your yuks in when you can? For Topper, the yuks weren't enough anymore.
He'd spent his whole life fighting with the world. Fighting with anyone around him just because they were there. But a funny thing had happened. For the first time in his life, Topper had status. He had friends. Some of the people at Omdemnity actually liked him. He had a taste of something he had never had before in his entire life—a family.
Edwin's scheme was fine. Sure, stick it to the man. Stick it to your clients. Stick it to the other guy. These sure and savage principles were the bedrock of Topper's life. But to do it to your own people? Your—his brain hiccupped at the word—family? That was wrong. Had to be wrong. Evil, in fact, and not the cool, fun, sexy kind.
On the far side of his bedroom, the bathroom door opened. The expensive prostitute Topper had ordered in when he felt like celebrating stepped out onto the luxurious rug. Fresh from the shower, her hair still damp, she let the robe fall to the floor and asked, "Are you ready for me?"
Topper was shocked to hear himself say, "No."
The young, beautiful girl from Eastern Europe blinked rapidly. She couldn't quite understand. At 22, experienced and in the prime of her briefly flowering beauty, she was not accustomed to being refused. "You do not want for me to love you?" she asked, her accent growing thicker with her confusion.
"Nobody loves me. Go home."
And for the first time in many years, Topper cried like a child, all alone in the snow.
When Topper opened his eyes, Stevie was shaking him awake.
"Okay, okay, knock it off," said Topper.
"You've gotta get up."
"Wherzza fire?"
"You're needed at the office."
"What? What the hell time is it?"
"4:30 in the morning."
"Oh, no. Somebody's conning you, Stevie. There's no such thing as 4:30 in the morning. There's only a 4:30 in the afternoon," Topper said, rolling over and covering his head with a pillow.
"If I don't get you to work, they're gonna fire me."
"What? That's ridiculous!"
"They'll just send those guys in suits and get you anyway. Look, Mr. Windsor asked for you. You've gotta come."
"Okay, okay. I'm getting up. But somebody's getting a piece of my mind. Oh, and Stevie?"
"Yes, sir?"
"You are ugly in the morning," said Topper.
Despite the risk of getting fined, Stevie smiled.
Topper slept for most of the car ride in. Riding the elevator up to the top floor of Omdemnity Building One, he could hear the commotion even before the doors opened. It was the buzz of an office full of excited people in full swing. At 5 AM. What the hell was going on?
When the doors opened, he saw two Adjustors in full sprint, running past the elevators and pushing a flat-screen display on a wheeled cart. More people followed. No one took notice of Topper.
All the commotion was headed towards Edwin's office. As Topper rounded the corner, he could see that one end of Edwin's office was packed with Omdemnity employees. Here and there, Adjustors moved with a quiet, official grace.
Edwin stood behind his desk at the far end of the office, arms behind his back, and stared out into the savage winter night as if it were a vicious pet he kept on the other side of the glass. The mass of people were keeping a respectful distance from Edwin's desk as if held back by some kind of force field. Topper shoved knees out of the way until he was able to make his way to the front of the room. "Make a hole, President of Vice coming through."
"Sir, the satellite feed is coming up now," said one of the Adjustors, as the monitor came to life.
Edwin turned from his contemplation of the darkness. He nodded at Topper, "Nice of you to join us."
"What the hell is going on, E?"
"I'm not sure," Edwin said, and indicated the screen. "Daniel is on his way there with an assessment team. They think they have a security feed." The images on screen were broken and choppy, clearly from an outdated security system. The screen was black, then white. Then black again.
"Where is this?" Topper asked.
"United Motors Factory in Detroit," said Daniel.
"We insure them, right?" Topper asked. The grim look on everyone's face answered the question for him. Liability hung thick in the air. Topper checked the room. So many people torn from their beds on a cold winter night. What the hell was wrong with these people? He knew them: they had families and lives and kids. They were civilians, not professionals like Topper. Then he remembered. It was in the manual. They had to come when called.
"Is this is only feed we have on site?" Edwin asked quietly.
"Working," answered one of the Adjustors.
Suddenly the feed went dead. "God damn it Jerry!" someone snapped. Jerry, the World's Worst Adjustor was sprawled on the floor, having just tripped over the power cord. He got up, ducked his head and moved quickly to the back of the crowd.
For a moment, all eyes were on Jerry. The glances were a reprimand, of course, but beneath the reprimand was the collective relief that somebody else screwed up and it wasn't them. As the video feed flickered back on, Jerry was forgotten.
On screen, bolts of lightning struck the wall of the factory and huge chunks of concrete were vaporized. A flash revealed a figure with his hands raised. It was still impossible to see any detail. More lightning, more destruction.
Behind him Topper heard someone say, "Isn't that their brand-new, zero-waste-to-landfill plant?" The person continued babbling on about United Motors green initiatives, the geothermal cooling system they installed in the ground, state-of-the-art this and the bullshit that, but all Topper heard was, "Expensive, expensive, expensive."
They all watched as a force of nature, somehow wielded by a man, systematically demolished the plant. From time to time they looked to Edwin. The tall man sat motionless with his elbows on his desk, thumbs underneath his chin, and index fingers forming a triangle in front of his cold, motionless lips.
Topper can see the sadness upon him. The pointlessness of it all. So many times has he heard his friend hold forth on the same subject that now Edwin doesn't even need to speak. On screen is a man capable of generating a tremendous amount of power—something on the order of a million volts per meter. This power could be harnessed in so many more profitable ways. And it is being used for simple destruction. Even though the tall man's lips aren't moving, Topper can hear him sing the refrain, "Is no one else even thinking? Am I the only sane man in the world?" At the end of the argument, in the very pit of Edwin's soul, this is why he must take over the world. It is simply too badly managed.
What Topper does not know is that this time it is different. It is not mere analysis. Right now a new idea is crystalizing within Edwin's mind. His anger is cold, but his realization is clear—now he has the resources to indulge his wrath. And what's more, now he has a business case for doing so. A new strategy for keeping the madness of the world at bay appeared in his mind. Now that he understood it, he saw it as a logical and inevitable evolution.
On the screen, most of the plant was burning. The light from the flames made it easier to see the figure that was the source of the destruction. He strode into the foreground without fear. His skintight costume had no cape. His arms and legs were accented with lightning bolts; a larger lightning bolt on his chest contained the letters “PB.” The man running the laptop froze the feed and left that picture on screen. There was silence as the entire room considered their new opponent.
"Lead?" asked Topper, immediately thinking of the symbol for lead on the periodic table. "This guy's name is Lead Man?" Topper realized that this was a joke too far. "Okay, okay people. We gotta think. Does anybody know this guy?"
"Well, he's not a hero, or he wouldn't be destroying the factory," said someone.
"Un-hunh," said Topper, "What else? Research, we have to find out who this LeadMan is and how we ground him out but good."
"Uh, sir?" said an intern in the back. "Lead doesn't even conduct electricity all that well."
"Yeah, yeah, clearly the guy's idiom needs some work. Now I want everybody on this guy until—"
"Klibanov," said Edwin. Nobody really heard it, but the entire room fell silent at the sound of Edwin's voice. "We need Klibanov."
"Oh, boy," said Topper heavily, "okay, everybody back to work. Your President of Vice can handle this."
No one moved, they just stood around staring at the image on the screen.
"C'mon!" Topper screamed, "What are you all standing around for? We got work to do!"
A woman from the reinsurance division gave voice to the question on everybody's mind. "Does this mean we're actually going to pay a claim? Pay out money, I mean?" This was a first. Since Edwin had acquired the company, Omdemnity had not paid a single insurance claim. It was contrary to the business model. An insurance company was an organization designed for the accumulation of cash. To think that they would actually pay a claim was heresy.
Edwin stood up, buttoned his jacket and said, "I assure you all, we will not be the only ones paying for this incident. You know your jobs. Do them."
As the room emptied, Topper stayed close to Edwin. "E, what can I do?"
"Review our contract with United Motors. See if we can limit the damage."
"I tried to put those loopholes in there big fella, but you made me take them out, remember?"
"Topper, please."
Topper nodded and shuffled from the room. In the hallway he stopped and made a yawn and stretch that was twice his size. He wasn't used to being up this early in the morning. Not sober anyway. As he lowered his arms and the world came back into focus, he saw Jerry sitting on a chair all alone at the end of the hallway. He had cupped his head in his hands and looked like he was crying.
"Ah, shit," said Topper. This wasn't good. He hoped that none of the other adjustors had seen Jerry like this. The way they were trained to pounce on weakness, Jerry wouldn't stand a chance.
"Hey," Topper started, smacking Jerry in the shin, "what gives?"
Jerry looked down. There were no tears in his eyes, but he looked just awful. "Oh, it's you. Uh, you know. Nothing, it's all fine. I, uh—"
"Jerry, what is it?" Topper said with uncharacteristic tenderness.
"Ah, it's my kid. Jerry Junior. He's home sick. I got him this week and now he's all alone."
"Sick?"
"Yeah, he caught a cold sitting on the front steps when—"
"Jerry, I took care of that."
"I know, I heard. Thank you."
"Yeah, that guy pissed me off. So what are you doing here?"
