The Consultant (27 page)

Mr. Patoff was standing next to the closed door, smiling at him.  

Dylan looked quickly away. He and Raul were alternating between slide and swings, both of them trying to impress Allison Woolridge, but just knowing that Mr. Patoff was watching him put Dylan off his stride, and when he hazarded another glance in that direction, he saw the man, still smiling, striding across the playground toward him.  

Welling panic caused him to run instinctively in the opposite direction, but the playground was small, and even the adjacent field was fenced in, so there was no place to which he could escape. He turned to look over his shoulder. The man was still coming, and Dylan decided at the last moment to run over to the area by the monkey bars. There were more kids here, it was more crowded, and Mrs. Ruiz, who was on recess duty, was standing nearby with her whistle in hand. She could protect him if he needed it.  

Dylan climbed quickly to the top of the bars, looked around, didn’t see Mr. Patoff, and slid down the center pole. Squeezing out of the jungle gym, he found himself behind the metal structure, next to the fence, away from swarming kids…  

And facing Mr. Patoff.  

The man smiled broadly, but, as usual, the smile did not reach his eyes. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Dylan. Could we talk for a minute?”  

He didn’t respond, tried to ignore the crazy pounding of his heart.  

“I just have a quick question. What do you think of uniforms? We’re thinking that it might be good for everyone in school to wear uniforms.”  

Dylan shrugged his shoulders, desperately looking around, hoping one of his friends would bail him out.  

The man leaned closer. “What do you think about a uniform with a short skirt? Would you like to wear a short skirt? A frilly pink one?”  

“Get away from me!” Dylan yelled and ran away. Behind him, the man’s booming laughter sounded above all the other playground noises.  

It followed him across the blacktop and all the way back to class.  

That night, he told his parents about Mr. Patoff. They both assured him that there was nothing to worry about, but he caught the look that passed between them and knew that
they
were worried, and that frightened him.  

After recess, he’d wanted to tell Mrs. Higgins what had happened, but didn’t know how to bring it up so it would make sense. He couldn’t tell her, couldn’t tell the principal, and even though he had told his parents, they advised him not to worry about it. There was no adult, it seemed, who could protect him, who could understand what was really going on.  

“He asked me if I wanted to wear a
dress
, Daddy. Remember how he kept calling me a girl at your work?”  

Another look passed between his parents, but his dad put on a not-very-reassuring smile and told him to just ignore the man. He put a hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “He’ll be gone pretty soon. What did your teacher say? The end of the week? You can survive that long, can’t you?”  

He could, but he didn’t want to, and for the first time in his life, Dylan thought about telling his parents that he was sick so he could stay out of school for the next three days. The man would know, though, why he wasn’t there, and Dylan couldn’t let him win. You had to stand up to bullies, and even though Mr. Patoff was an adult, he was still a bully.  

Dylan would just have to stay away from him, ignore him in class, and stay close to the lunch monitors, and the teachers and moms on recess duty. But he would not back down. He would not run away.  

“Okay, Daddy,” Dylan said.  

His dad smiled at him, and it was a real smile. “That’s my little buddy.”  

But his parents gave each other that look again, and he realized that his mom and dad weren’t just worried and concerned.  

They were afraid.  

He went to bed that night and dreamed that Mr. Patoff was the wiggly man and was coming down the hallway toward his room, smiling and holding a pink dress on a pink coat hanger.  

TWENTY THREE  

TO: All Employees

RE: Clothing Color Preferences  

Although CompWare has not had and does not have official uniforms, it has been determined that a differentiation in the color of employees’ attire will foster a more professional attitude among company personnel, and will make it easier for both employees and members of the public to distinguish between individuals of management and non-management status. Beginning this Tuesday, April 23, vice-presidents, department heads, division heads, managers and supervisors will be requested to wear, in a style of their choice, shirts/blouses of a gold or muted yellow color similar to the one shown in the attachment herein. All other employees are requested to wear, in a style of their choice, shirts/blouses of a red color similar to the one shown in the attachment herein.  

Any questions regarding this change in policy must be submitted in writing to CompWare’s Human Resources department before the end of business hours today. Reading this email constitutes acknowledgement and acceptance of the policy change.  

Thank you.  

Regus Patoff  

Regus Patoff  

BFG Associates  

For Austin Matthews, CompWare CEO  

TWENTY FOUR  

Martin had been replaced.

When Craig arrived at his office, a hard-looking middle-aged woman was sitting in the chair where his observer was supposed to be.  

“I am Mrs. Adams. I will be here for a week,” she announced, staring straight at him with a stony expression. “Do not talk to me. I will not talk to you. I am conducting your work management study and will note your required duties, extra duties, all peripheral actions, and the amount of time you spend on each. This will be part of the aggregate data used by BFG to formulate a master plan for your company. I trust I have made myself clear.”  

“Perfectly,” Craig said. He looked at his watch. “I’m two minutes late,” he told her. “Better note that down.”  

“I already have,” she informed him.  

Craig walked past Lupe’s desk into his office, sharing a glance with the secretary as he closed the door behind him. One by-product of this work management study, he realized, was that, because of the presence of the observers, he and Lupe had very little time to talk anymore. The paranoid part of his mind wondered if that was intentional, and the rational part of his mind answered yes.  

Mid-morning, he went down to see the programmers, and Mrs. Adams silently followed along, staying behind him down the corridor and on the stairs, parking herself in an unobtrusive position against a wall in the programmers’ work area. Craig had come down to get quick updates on both OfficeManager and
WarHammer III,
and to talk about adjusting milepost timetables, but the moment he approached Huell’s work station, a group of programmers immediately began gathering around him. Accompanying them were
their
observers (how many did BFG have working here? Dozens? Hundreds?), and while a few programmers cast distrustful glances in the consultants’ direction, it didn’t stop them from bringing up what was on their minds.  

“Our computers are being monitored,” Huell told him. “At
home
.”  

Craig frowned. “Are they CompWare—?”  

“No,” Rusty interjected. The technical writer looked angry. “
Personal
computers. And, I suspect, our phones.”  

“That’s illegal,” Craig said.  

“That’s what we’re saying.” Huell cocked a thumb back toward the observers. “Someone needs to tell
them
that.”  

“There was also that thing I told you about last week where someone inserted a program on my computer
here
,” Lorene said, “and it automatically erased anything I created.”  

“I’ll see what I can do,” Craig promised them.  

“Well, let those assholes know that they’re supposed to be helping us get
more
work done not
less
,” Rusty said. “If CompWare’s going to dig out of its hole, we need to start pushing out product.”  

Craig had been watching his observer—  

Mrs. Adams
 

—while talking to the programmers, and though the expression on her face was flat and unreadable, he knew where her sympathies lay. She was a direct conduct to Patoff, as were all the other observers auditing this scene, and he cut the dialogue short, not wanting his employees to get themselves in trouble because of their complaints. There would be time for a more honest discussion later. The programmers seemed to sense this, and while their anger was still palpable, they began drifting back to their work stations, letting the matter drop, apparently satisfied that they had let him know their concerns and that he would do what he could to address the problem.  

Although, there was not really much that he
could
do. The thread that seemed to run through everything these days was that the employee had no rights while the employer and the consultants were given free rein to do as they pleased.  

Shadowed by Mrs. Adams, he spent the next hour discussing OfficeManager and
WarHammer III
with the programmers while staying away from more personal topics. When he was finished, in order to make it tough for the observer, he took the stairs and walked down to the first floor instead of going back up to his office. He got a drink from the drinking fountain in the lobby, then took the stairs back up to the sixth floor. He knew she would note this bizarre behavior, but he didn’t really care. He wanted to make the bitch walk, and he experienced a small sense of satisfaction when he heard her breathing loudly behind him as he strode down the corridor toward Lupe’s desk.  

He spent the rest of the morning behind closed doors in his office, on the phone for the most part, going up the CompWare chain of command in an effort to find out what he could about the surveillance situation. Scott was an asshole as usual and no help at all. He couldn’t get through to Matthews, and the vice-president to whom he talked toed the party line and claimed there was nothing intrusive going on. Craig knew the programmers weren’t taking this lying down. As brave as they were to even bring it up in front of the observers, they weren’t stupid enough to come clean about everything, and he knew that one or more of them must be surreptitiously trying to disable the devices that were spying on them.  

The problem was that they didn’t know if the consultants were using
other
means to snoop. It was his job to find that out, and so far he’d been a failure.  

He needed to talk to the tech guys in his division after work, coordinate some kind of plan with them.  

For the first time in over a week, he and Phil were able to get off at the same time for lunch, and they hurried from the building before something came up to delay one of them.  

“So,” Craig said as they walked through the parking lot. “Did you see the new memo?”  

“Yeah, I saw it.” Phil snorted. “Gold shirts and red shirts? What’d they base this plan on?
Star Trek
?”  

Craig smiled. “I think we’ll survive the trip to the planet. We’re gold shirts. I am worried about the fate of Yeoman Jones, however.”  

“You think this is funny?”  

He sighed. “Not really.”  

“Neither do I. I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t be sending out résumés.”  

“You’re not the first one to mention that.”  

“I think you’d better drive,” Phil said as they approached his Honda. “My transmission’s making weird noises again. I don’t trust it.”  

“Are you going to take it in?”  

“Yeah. After work. Josie’s going to follow me and drive me home or to the rental car place if the dealer won’t give me a loaner.”  

They walked past Phil’s car to the end of the lot, where Craig’s Prius was sandwiched between two minivans. The fit was so tight that he had to crack open the driver’s side door, slide into his seat and back out of the parking space before his friend could even get in the car. His satellite radio was tuned to CNN, and as they pulled onto the street, two commentators on opposite sides of the political spectrum were agreeing that, war on terror or not, the federal government was abusing its power to a frightening
1984
-ish degree and destroying individuals’ right to privacy with its telephone surveillance techniques.  

Phil laughed derisively. “They just learned that they lost their right to privacy?”  

“Well, it’s gotten more publicity lately.”  

“Yeah? Well, we’re in the thick of it. We
know
there’s no privacy. The Great Unwashed might get their panties in a bind over NSA data gathering, but their grocery stores know more about them than the government does, thanks to that little scanned card that gets them such tremendous savings. And their browser not only tracks what sites they visit, but how long they spend on each, then sells that information to marketers. Not to mention the fact that morons are keeping personal data on easily hacked servers instead of on their own privately held storage material.”  

Craig smiled. “Well, in their defense, those servers are white, puffy and completely unthreatening ‘clouds.’”  

“As opposed to
Colossus: The Forbin Project
, which is what they really are.” Phil shook his head. He was silent for a moment, thinking. “You know, even by the Limbo Jack standards of today, BFG is pretty fucking scary. Big Brother is definitely watching
us
.”  

“The programmers are freaked out,” Craig admitted. “I went over there this morning, and got an earful about illegal surveillance at work
and
at home.”  

“You think that’s bad? I checked in on my corporate sales team, and the place was
silent
. Ordinarily, you’ve never heard so many complainers in your life. But they’re completely cowed. As far as they’re concerned, the walls are bugged, their computers have cameras and their every conversation is either recorded by hidden devices or monitored by those damn work management drones. Which means, from my perspective, that not a lot of work is getting done. Fear is not conducive to a productive work environment.”