Chapter Text
Attn: all employees:
Will the employee who left this corporate buzzword bingo sheet in the Boolean Conference room please call 1-900-555-5555 to be be fired by our automated human resources line.
Multitask Agile User Experience Big Picture Beta
Deliverable Result driven Action Item Paradigm Shift Viral
Synergy Lateral BINGO Leveraged Bandwidth
Lifecycle Revolutionary Value Add Best Practice Holistic
Fast Track Near Shore Road Map Bottom Line Low Hanging Fruit
Thank you,
Janet, Human Resources
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"To earn your wings, you must persevere." A photo of a baby owl clinging to a tree branch flung itself across the projection screen. Veridian Spatz (TM) speakers broadcast a swoosh noise with perfect clarity and inside your cerebral cortex surround sound. Jack from Research and Development clicked his remote. Gunfire sounded the arrival of the next words. "But practice makes perfect!" The words were in bright yellow, 3-D, Rockwell, Extra Bold. They had a green drop shadow.
Ted loved working at Veridian Dynamics. He'd told himself that when Jack had told them about trees that were old when the pyramids were built, which had something to do with a vacuum cleaner that Jack wanted to emphasize did not kill. The connection sounded tenuous, but the vacuum definitely had military applications. Ted made a note on the blue sticky note. Then crossed it off because it was an idea that worked better on the green sticky note.
Ted’s coat pocket vibrated. His fingers twitched around his pen. One week ago, Veridian had put out a "No Laptops, No Phones at Meetings" policy. He glanced around. Nirag from Division X looked like he was about to have an aneurysm, but those Division X guys always looked they were about to have an aneurysm. Sheryl from Legal was clutching her cell like she was about pray to it, but she was trying to cut down to four cups of coffee a day.
Ted looked down at his own notepad. There were sticky notes in five different colors on the page. They were in layers. They had contextual depth. This might be a bad sign.
On stage, Jack hiked his pants and dropped the remote. The owl swirled away to be replaced by a picture of some sort of a cross-eyed cat. Jack shrugged. "But we must remember," a point that Jack felt necessary to emphasize with his laser pointer hand, "that with the Pudu on guard, the Kodkod must lower his sights. Moths are hatching." The page design completely ignored the rules of C.R.A.P. (Contrast, Repetition, Association, and Proximity).
Ted forced himself to unclench his teeth. He also forced himself to stop crushing his notepad. He looked around. His eyes met those of the blond woman seated on stage behind Jack. He'd have checked who she was on the agenda, but Veridian had also put out an all e-office policy, and the printers would no longer print agendas. His pocket vibrated again. He didn't answer it. On stage, the woman blinked in what looked like Morse code or maybe her pocket was vibrating, too.
Jack said, "Nectar is a nice appetizer for Lemurs, but Moths are the main dish. And as I said, moths are hatching!" The projector displayed improbably large moths perched on a compact fluorescent light bulb. Yellow words in a mix of Copperplate Gothic, Franklin Gothic Demi and Impact declaimed (really that mix of fonts could only be declaiming), “The Lightenator light bulb of the future.” There was a chart behind the light bulb comparing the Lightenator with different competitors. The Lightenator was strongly in the middle.
The woman blinked an especially complicated pattern, and four men in black security uniforms rappelled onto the stage. They tasered Jack and dragged him away while still twitching.
The woman stood up. She picked up the remote and the laser pointer. Without looking where she was pointing, she turned off the presentation. She said, "I'm Veronica Palmer, and what you just saw was a demonstration of Veridian Dynamics new EyeText (TM)." She blinked. Ted's phone buzzed. She said, "That was me. I've just texted everyone in the room." She paused and lazily slid the laser pointer over the captive corporate audience. The red dot slid across Ted's chest. She said, "Well? Answer me!"
There was a still moment like when a printer decides that no maybe it will print the last page of your presentation. With the sighs of the addicted giving into sweet, sweet interconnection, the entire room pulled out their crackberries and frantically tap-tap-tapped. Nirag cried. Sheryl cackled to herself, "Subpoena that you bastards."
Ted looked at his own crackberry. The text was a link to a job post for a newly open position as a department head in Research and Development.
Ted wadded up the sticky notes and applied for a lateral promotion that afternoon.
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She knew who he was when he walked into her office. She'd seen his job application, his references, and his company-required gene scan. (Actually, his gene scan looked nothing like him, but she did keep looking.)
She leaned back in her chair. She said, "Veridian needs a cell phone that drives cars while irradiating bacteria." She smiled brightly like a ridge-backed fawn on a bright summer morning before the helicopters drop their presents.
"Gives new meaning to hands free." Ted didn't ask to sit down. He put his hands over the back of the chair facing Veronica’s desk. "We can do that."
She narrowed her eyes. "Veridian needs a new breed of cybernetic attack eagles."
He bounced on his toes. "That has military applications and could be used at airports to eliminate hazards to navigation." He tapped a few keys on his phone. "We can do that."
She leaned forward. "General McMillan is here for a demonstration of Veridian's carnivorous krill program. He needs someone to show him around town."
"Consider him shown." Ted smiled a white, wide smile that she approved of because it meant that he took care of his dental hygiene. "I want to be a value add to your department."
She felt this merited both hands palm down on her desk. "Consider yourself value added."
She approved his application before he'd left her office like a baby eagle gulping down an even babier fish.
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One month after Veridian completed offshoring development to reduce costs, the memo came down to near shore development and reorganize Research and Development along product lines. Ted handed the memo with the attached new organizational chart to Veronica. He said, "Same monkeys, different trees."
Three months after Veridian completed near shoring development to benefit from shared linguistic ties and temporal proximity, the memo came down to co-source development and reorganize Research and Development along employee specialization. Veronica handed the memo with the attached new organizational chart to Ted. She said, "Same monkeys, different
trees."
Two months after Veridian completed co-source development to benefit from out-house (Ted thought that maybe that one was on purpose) business competencies, Veridian bought all of their co-source partners and the memo came down to reorganize along pyramidal teams incorporating each of the stake holder groups. As Ted met with Veronica to discuss the reorganization, two men in lab coats came into Veronica’s office holding stacks of binders.
"I’m Dr. Lem Hewitt and this is my partner, Dr. Phil Myman." The taller man pushed his glasses up his nose. "We’ve just gotten the reorganization memo. We wanted to introduce ourselves." He waved his rainbow color arranged binders at them. "You’re Veronica Palmer, and you are Ted Crisp. Clearly you are both godlike, but we won’t be pushed around." He thunked the binder onto Veronica’s desk. Phil put his rainbow stack down more gingerly. "These are our completed projects. We wanted to be clear from the start that we’re not adverse to conflict."
Veronica wrinkled her nose at the binders.
Phil wiggled one finger in the air significantly. "There’s an Executive summary at the beginning." He darted forward and tapped one of the binders.
Veronica and Ted looked at the first page of the top binder and then closed it. Ted said, "Impressive list."
"It’s amazing. Your company photos didn’t do either of you justice." Phil breathed out slowly. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. "But by conflict, we mean that we’ll stand up for ourselves." He attempted to be taller. He was not successful.
Lem looked at the floor. "And by stand up for ourselves, we mean stand here. Being ourselves."
Veronica smiled with a great deal of teeth. "Hmm... new monkeys."
Ted leaned over and whispered. "You probably shouldn’t call them monkeys."
"Like you always do?" She paused. "Oh, you’re right. One of them is black." She pointed at them. "You’re Macaques." She rolled her eyes. "Or is that offensive? I can never tell these days."
Lem’s eyes widened behind his perfectly clear lenses. "Not at all. Macaques went into space."
Phil held his hands to his lips. "We’re space monkeys."
Lem shrugged. "Or used in animal testing." They high-fived each other. Badly.
Veronica looked at them with arched eyebrows. "Well, I’ve given you a species. You can go now. And take your binders. They’re cluttering my office." As they lugged the binders out of her office, Veronica said, "They’re very trainable. Lets keep them."
Three months later when Veridian completed absorbing the co-sourced partners in-house, a memo came down to off-shore non-core competencies and focus on both vertical and horizontal organizational structures. When Ted got the memo with the attached organizational chart, he held it up to the light, "Do you think they realize this is a cross?"
"Whatever. I’m keeping my Macaques," said Veronica. She did.
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On Saturday, the company picnic was a disaster. Veronica looked at Ted and said, "I'm going to take you down." She threw a perfect game of horseshoes. The three-legged race got ugly. Really ugly. Ted beat Veronica. They both lost to the three-legged raceitron that Lem and Phil cooked up in the lab. And then it tried to kill them all. After Veronica killed it, Lem patted Phil's shoulder as he whispered, "War is hell."
On Friday, Ted ran into Veronica over the coffee machine. "I just finished three meetings in a row." Her reply was simple silence. She held up four fingers and mouthed, "I win."
They studied each other. If you want to crush your competition, you need to know everything about them. Their interests. Their favorite color. Their favorite food. Whether they like Piña Coladas (Ted liked Piña Coladas) and midnight walks along the dunes of the Cape (provided she was wearing camo gear and carrying her favorite bolt action rifle, Veronica enjoyed midnight walks on the Cape). Veronica finished “The Art of War” first. Ted finished “On Indirect Strategy” first. They both gave up reading “Relation de la guerre de sept ans, extraite de Tempelhof, commentée at comparée aux principales opérations de la derniére guerre; avec un recueil des maximes les plus important de l'art militaire, justifiées par ces différents évenéments” somewhere in the middle of the title. (Damn French and their fries and absurdly long titles about war. Veronica wanted to know what was up with that.)
They had Lem time them as they reviewed Test Procedure Specification reports. No one won. With TPS reports, there were no winners, only completed tests. (Technically, Ted won, but the timer interfaced with the building temperature controls and attempted to bring on a new ice age. The building had to be evacuated.)
On Friday, Pete from another Research and Development department laughed at them as he ate the last bagel from their break area and said, "We've been fast tracked on Bandersnatch."
Veronica’s eyes narrowed. She looked at Ted. Somewhere in the distance, “The Ecstasy of Gold” played on the loudspeakers. (It was a thing on Fridays at Veridian.) Ted nodded before the last note faded away. Vorple Blade made it to market three weeks before Bandersnatch made it out of user acceptance testing.
When they got the plaque, Ted said, "I love my job."
Veronica looked at the Platino (TM) plated plaque with their teams' smiling picture for the millionth Vorple Blade sold. She said, "I want to make hot monkey love to my job in front of the entire company." She paused. She looked at Ted. "I love my job."
"Clearly." Ted brushed a fleck of lint off the Plantino (TM) and inhaled the sweet smell of success. He paused and breathed in again. He looked at Veronica.
"Yes." She breathed in deeply. "Platino now comes in money scent."
"And that is Verdian's favorite smell." Ted didn't want to look away from the plaque.
They both beamed at the wall. Veronica had other plaques. Ted had other plaques. This was their first plaqueful success as a team.
They shook hands, but they didn't look away from their Plantino (TM) gently scenting the room with the sweet smell of victory. (This admittedly also smelled like Napalm, but “Ride of Valkyries” only played on Saturday mornings.)
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"Let's get this meeting started." Veronica sat down at the head of the table. "Ted, I need the SR 190 for the..."
"S. Holmes project." He pushed the revised system requirements for a cybernetic detective across the table. "It's been signed by the project lead and the key stakeholders. However, I will need some additional resources on the Mossy..."
"Bedfoam project." Veronica handed Ted a green sheet. "I've already requisitioned an additional week on the particle accelerator. But I will need a..."
"Already completed. It's in your inbox." Veronica's phone buzzed.
Lem whispered, "It's like they’re sharing a brain."
Phil leaned across the table, his face in his hands. "One beautiful, beautiful," a long sigh, "beautiful brain."
"It's like, it's like, synergy in perfect people form." Lem clutched the arms of his chair. "You're PPynergy."
Ted felt his smile metaphorically freeze. (Metaphorically, because that had actually happened at that meeting, the minutes of which the world was not yet ready for.) “Yeah, thanks, guys."
Veronica stood up. "In that case, I think we can cancel this meeting and get fifty minutes of our lives back." She looked at Ted.
He stood up. "I'm on it."
She beamed. "Yes, you are."
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Veronica knew that Ted had a kid. That he was a made man in the Kid Mafia, but Rose was just a word. A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet if genetically altered by Veridian using the family health gene scan associated with Ted's file. Sweeter because the cloned Roses could potentially come in a variety of scents (although, theoretically causing strong allergic reactions in 8% of the population).
But watching Rose was a revelation. It was an earthquake. It was cry havoc and let loose the dogs of paradigm shift. The ease with which she fired those drones. They thanked her. "Do you understand?"
"Um, no." Rose crossed her legs on the sofa. Potentially getting poop or whatever else it was that children had on their feet on the leather, and Veronica didn't care. Veronica was not good at making people not care. "I'm not good at making people not care. I'm better at making people care a great deal, at instilling terror in the minds of my drones. It‘s gift and a curse."
"Oh," Rose tilted her head and her adorable spiral curls did spiraly messy curly things just like the sun. "If I could scare people, maybe Kris Jarlson wouldn't keep following me at school."
Veronica sat down on the sofa with her. "Sometimes great beauty comes at a price. I can help you." She pulled out an array of hair bands. "First, we must start with power hair."
They had gotten to expressions of certain death when Ted came to get her and, surprisingly, Veronica didn't want to give Rose back.
The next morning she went to Veridian’s daycare, but they didn't have anyone that was right. And it turned out the cloning project was several years from Beta testing. She did pick up some candle roses. Unfortunately, although they both burned and made beautiful music, it was all sound and fury and signified nothing.
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Veronica was not the sort of woman who slept her way to the top. There was that slight favor that she'd called in to cousin Mycroft, but she'd paid that one back three times over. (Though he did keep calling about the family reunion.)
She normally didn't sleep with her drones either, but Ted was not a drone. Drones droned.
Ted had been clear. He had been concise. The font on his webex with the French Alaskans had been masterful. There had only been five slides. When he was done, they had a contract to build super cold glycol refrigeration units for the state of Alaska. The ink on the contracts was still wet.
She shivered thinking about that ink. "I think we should have sex." She tried a couple lines. Something about trembling and vulnerable and who was she kidding. She was a lioness on the hunt, and he was her font perfect panther-panda assassin. (It should be mentioned that she had used bamboo silk shampoo that morning, and she’d been craving panda all day which was what ultimately led to the panda assassin project.)
They had sex on his desk, and it was fabulous. Quick, because she had a dinner meeting, but still, really quite good.
Anyway, everyone knew that it was industry best practice to have at least one office romance at a company. So this was fine. Something to check off her list. If sometimes she watched the recorded webex that was to be expected. She also watched the sex video, but that was just analysis.
When she opened that recording and hit play, she let the sound of competence wash over her and smiled. (She also went out for dim sum.)
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Ted brushed the agenda with his fingers. "We need an expansion on our dongle."
Veronica arched an eyebrow. "Really." She looked through her reports. "I thought it was large enough."
Ted shook his head. "No, it's almost out of capacity. We need to expand or we won't be able to thrust forward on our upcoming action items."
Veronica blew on her coffee and took a sip. She licked her lips. "Then let's expand our capacity."
He tapped the next item. "We need to order some additional rubber for our heat resistant mouse. It's prematurely releasing its charge."
Veronica wrapped her fingers around her cup. Rubbed her thumb along the white ceramic. "Done. That would be a bad user experience."
She took another sip and smiled. "We should follow up on the next item. Hands that shoot electricity. It will be good for stimulating the bottom line."
Ted's fingers made a figure eight on the agenda. "And it works perfectly in an agile environment. It's a very flexible agile project."
Veronica smiled into her coffee with cream. "We do like flexible agile projects."
"Yes, we do." Ted's fingers slid down to the next item. "On this next one, by making a simple improvement on our throughput on the frontend, we can easily increase our bandwidth."
Veronica put down her cup. She leaned back in her chair. "What you're saying is that we need to pluck the low hanging fruit."
Ted smiled. "Yes. This is low hanging fruit."
Lem yelled, "I want to pluck low hanging fruit."
Phil clapped. "Me too. This is the most exciting planning meeting I've ever attended."
Veronica picked up her coffee. "As I was saying, let's pluck the low hanging fruit."
Ted slid his fingers to the next item and said, "Exactly."
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Veronica's day had gone like this.
She waved her hand in front of the paper towel dispenser. The motor ran, but no paper towels came out. "Why are there never any paper towels on this floor?" She had to dry her hands on a passing drone. (Because dammit, she did wash her hands. She wasn’t evil.) It was annoying.
She got coffee, which she had to drink black, because there was no creamer. There was never any creamer.
Chet called her into his office to ask her to bring in the deadline on the deliverables for the product that she didn't know anything about for the meeting that she hadn't attended. Although, somehow she was on the meeting minutes. She said, "I'll email you the project plan."
She headed to her office so she could shoot something.
"Veronica, just the person I was looking for." Ted stepped into the elevator.
Veronica considered this. "I think I like being just the person someone is looking for. Or would I rather be the hunter? I do like hunting man. Anyway, you were saying?"
"We're ready for the Buzz Honey demonstration." Ted pushed a button, and the elevator took them away from the floor of no creamer. Of no paper towels. Of, well, actually Chet didn’t work on their floor.
When they got there, Veronica led the way, because after the day she'd had, there was no way she was following anyone. When they got to demonstrations, Veronica looked up at the glass ceiling. Dr. Bhomba waved at her from on the other side. She asked, "Why is there a glass ceiling? I thought this was a demonstration of bees that eat aluminum and make vitamin rich honey.”
Phil flipped up his face shield. "It is."
Ted leaned over. "It's Transparent Aluminum. We got the patent when we purchased Plexicorp." He handed her the controls. She operated them to open the box on the other side of the not-glass ceiling. She watched the bees eat the ceiling over her head. (Dr. Bhomba clinging to the wall was just a bonus.)
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"If I were to turn my uterus into a human veal farm, I would want to do it for you." Veronica paused, shocked like a fawn confronted with a clown. A giant clown with glowing red eyes. She reviewed the events as to how she'd gotten here. She'd volunteered to watch Rose while Ted went out of town to bail his brother out. Something to do with a Warehouse in South Dakota.
She'd taken Rose home. Offered her some wine like a good host.
Rose had looked up at Veronica like such an adorable mini-person. "I'm eight." At Veronica’s head tilt, she’d said, "I don't drink wine."
"Oh," Veronica hadn't thought of that. She wondered what kids drank. Koolaid? Milk. She wondered where one bought milk. Maybe a store. "Good idea. Best not to start. Most people don’t have my constitution. Demon Merlot is to blame for so many things. She looked in the refrigerator, which was always a bit of a surprise. "Oh, Evian. Children drink water, don’t they?"
Children did drink water. Of course they did. Veronica knew that.
She’d been wondering if she should tell the joke about the monkey and the stock options again, because Rose really did need to find that funny if she was going to survive as a woman in a man’s world, when Rose said, "I think our nanny is pulling a fast one." She’d pushed her glass around on the dining table. "She keeps saying she’s sick and can’t watch me, but I don’t think she’s sick." She sighed the sigh of the long suffering and oppressed, which made Veronica want to hunt down her oppressors and oppress them to see how they liked it. "Dad says that she’s sick."
"Ted likes to take the high road." Veronica nodded sadly. Oh, so very sadly. "I like the low road. It’s wider and has more options." She tapped her cheek considering her options. "Did you read the Art of War?"
Rose shrugged, which possibly meant no. Or some other thing. It didn’t matter. Veronica loved discussing tactics and strategy and surveillance. By the time they’d worked out a method to put a low cost tracking device in the nanny’s purse, they’d moved on to firing guns in Veronica’s home target range. Veronica had to suppress a sniff. Guns made her think of her grandmother, who had always carried a Smith and Wesson .38 in a silver studded holster that she’d been given by Annie Oakley. "She taught me to shoot. That means you only have three degrees of separation from shooting like the Oakley." Veronica had widened her eyes to emphasize the importance of only three degrees of separation. She only had two degrees herself.
They’d exchanged so many secrets. Well, mostly Veronica because Rose was young and therefore, like most people, her secrets were boring. Veronica had told Rose about her grandmother, and her grandfather’s affair with Eleanor Roosevelt, and having her grandfather deported over the affair.
"I bet you’re grandmother was sad." Rose watched as Veronica put up a new target. This one in the shape of a mugger. Veronica preferred people shaped targets.
When she told Rose about feeding pudding to her sister at night, Rose fired a Beretta .22 (because of her small fragile wrists) and said, "That seems mean. If I had a sister, I wouldn't do that."
Veronica fired her Smith and Wesson .38. Special. "Easy. I'll give you my sister." She paused. "Although, she is old by now." She fired a classic V shape into the target.
Rose fired the .22. It was like watching a little angel cry while firing a gun. "I wish I had a sister."
Which was how Veronica found herself theoretically offering up her uterus for reproduction and ordering them veal in Bearnaise sauce from a little place down the street. Rose fell asleep covered in sauce and gun oil on the sofa.
In the morning, Veronica went back to the daycare center. But even though they had a lot of new inventory, there were no curly haired viral insanity inducing heart breakers in stock.
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She heard the singing down the hall. (This didn‘t say much about the sound proofing on Ted‘s office. Something to look into.) "R. O. S. E. O. And Rose-o was her name o." Veronica opened the door.
Ted looked at her. Rose looked at her. The singing stopped.
"Hi.” Rose swung her feet and spun the office chair she was sitting in. “We’re singing Bingo." Rose looked thoughtful, because she was a very thoughtful intelligent little person. "We could do your name next."
Veronica looked at Ted. He grinned his wide white dentally hygienic smile. "We've already done dadi-o."
Veronica thought about this. "You're on, Tedi-o."
He didn‘t laugh, which was good. It would have been redundant. "Sounds good, Vrona."
"I think you'll find that I can fit my entire name in." Veronica put her hands on her hips and stood at her best akimbo. "And I'm going to crush you like a baby carp. I've heard you sing."
It was a bloodbath, but the best kind.
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Veronica eyed the two polycoms and the cell phone lined up on the conference room table. She adjusted her headset. She looked at Ted. "Ready?"
"Ready." He adjusted his headset.
Veronica dialed into the Mid-Level Bi-Annual Global Weaponized Squash meeting and announced them. Ted dialed into the Jabberwocky stakeholder business specification review meeting and announced them. Veronica dialed into the Hurricane Resistant Dog tri-level analysis meeting and announced them. They muted and waited.
It didn't take long. What followed was a complicated dance (probably a pavane or a gallop; oh medieval fight club, you are missed) of "Yes, that is correct," a nod from Ted, and Veronica plugged into Ted's polycom while Ted plugged into hers. She handed him the crackberry. "Could you repeat that, I'm afraid there was an echo on the line. It sounds like you're underwater in a tunnel at the bottom of a mine."
Ted unmuted the crackberry. "It's on page 63 of the specification. The flames are recursive." Remuted and at an IM from Veronica, plugged into her polycom, which was his polycom; while she plugged into his polycom, which was her polycom and he said, "There will be a 36% increase following elimination of the additional step saving the tiff file in hologram format."
He handed back the crackberry while unmuting the polycom. She said, "The fido spywear program is on track for early January UAT."
The cords of their headsets coiled and tangled. Twisted in on each other over the long hour as they plugged in and out. In and out. Switched places. Slid from mute to explanations. They even both answered email. It was the most complicated work of multi-tasking the corporate world had ever seen. And they could tell no one that they had been triple booked. (Actually, they told everyone. It was amazing.)
As they turned off the polycoms and the crackberry, they leaned back in their office chairs.
Veronica dropped her headset to dangle loosely to the floor. "I think I need a cigarette."
"You don't smoke." Ted tossed aside his headset. It clattered on the table top.
"We could have sex." She unbuttoned her blouse's top button. "I've been reviewing the recording and I have some ideas for how you can improve your performance."
Ted loosened his tie. "How I can improve my performance?"
"It's all constructive criticism." She checked her calendar. "I don't have another meeting for an hour."
He checked his calendar. He took off his tie.
T.H.E. E.N.D.I.O.