Leutz; in fact, he was sitting directly to the left of her seat at the head of the long table, close enough to smell her musky perfume.
“Good,” she said. “You’ve all been working hard the last two weeks, and I am happy to say that Silte Corp headquarters is now entirely autonomous, along with all of our regional locations which are now being controlled from here. But you all know this.”
Predictably, Leutz’s eyes began their dizzying motion behind her smart glasses and she paused. The boardroom was tense while everyone waited for her to continue. A few people looked around nervously. Mike glanced down the table. Aside from the helicopter rides, he hadn’t seen more than a few of his coworkers in one place at the same time since the relocation. Across and down at the other end Carl Bellowe and Diane Salpollo, the other two people with apartments on his floor at the Plaza, sat together, now and then glancing furtively at each other. Across from Mike was Hamid Farakel, Chief Supervising Manager and next down the ladder from Leutz. Mike wondered briefly why he was seated so close to the two most important people in the room. He was, after all, only senior management; Katherine Polcyk was a Senior VP and she was closer to the other end.
“The reason I’ve brought you all here today,” Leutz continued, “is to begin the next step of Project Unify. Mr. Silvan and I agree that the brain of Silte Corp—that is to say, us—is ready; now we need to prepare the body. The dregs of the Anti-Corp terrorists have focused their cyberattacks on major subsidiaries in the Silte family. They wisely haven’t attempted anything on Silt Corp proper ever since we moved our servers to the Arizona supercomputer, which they can’t touch. Their attacks, though, are crippling our more independent operations and, as much as I hate saying it, we’re losing our grip on the fringes.”
Leutz paused again before turning around and mumbling something. The giant wall screen behind her came to life. As she turned around, the screen showed an aerial view of a perfectly square building that was all dark glass panes, giving the entire thing a sort of indomitable mirror-like quality. Everything around the building became a shadow-form of itself in the reflections on its walls and roof.
“ Cytech Robotics,” Leutz said. “One of our more profitable ventures and key to our robotics research division.” She flicked her eyes to the side repeatedly, each time bringing up a new view of the building on the screen behind her. Eventually, the images showed the building’s interior, where employees were engaged in normal tasks. “These images are from yesterday. Cytech is active when it should be restricted to essential personnel only. When we tried to call our office there, we got this.”
She flicked her eyes one more time, and a logo came up: the white circle on a black bac kground the Anti-Corp used as a sort of insignia. But in the center of the circle were the words ‘People Against Corporatocracy’ instead of their usual name.
“I suppose you all know what this means,” Leutz said.
When nobody else spoke, Hamid Farakel said, “Cytech is lost. The terrorists took it from us and are running it themselves.”
“Thank you,” Leutz said sardonically, not so much as glancing Farakel’s way. “This is collateral damage. We expected losses like this, but they are happening at a quicker rate than we would like. That is why starting today you will carry on with our autonomy project by moving on to other Silte-owned companies. We’ll start with the largest parent companies: AT&T, Google, Starmine—the big ones with many subsidiaries of their own. You’ll be doing the same thing you’ve been doing here for the past week, only now you have the added task of identifying and flagging nonessential or dangerous current employees for removal.”
“And what about the smaller companies?” asked Chelsea Yallin, a Senior Manager on Mike’s
“Good,” she said. “You’ve all been working hard the last two weeks, and I am happy to say that Silte Corp headquarters is now entirely autonomous, along with all of our regional locations which are now being controlled from here. But you all know this.”
Predictably, Leutz’s eyes began their dizzying motion behind her smart glasses and she paused. The boardroom was tense while everyone waited for her to continue. A few people looked around nervously. Mike glanced down the table. Aside from the helicopter rides, he hadn’t seen more than a few of his coworkers in one place at the same time since the relocation. Across and down at the other end Carl Bellowe and Diane Salpollo, the other two people with apartments on his floor at the Plaza, sat together, now and then glancing furtively at each other. Across from Mike was Hamid Farakel, Chief Supervising Manager and next down the ladder from Leutz. Mike wondered briefly why he was seated so close to the two most important people in the room. He was, after all, only senior management; Katherine Polcyk was a Senior VP and she was closer to the other end.
“The reason I’ve brought you all here today,” Leutz continued, “is to begin the next step of Project Unify. Mr. Silvan and I agree that the brain of Silte Corp—that is to say, us—is ready; now we need to prepare the body. The dregs of the Anti-Corp terrorists have focused their cyberattacks on major subsidiaries in the Silte family. They wisely haven’t attempted anything on Silt Corp proper ever since we moved our servers to the Arizona supercomputer, which they can’t touch. Their attacks, though, are crippling our more independent operations and, as much as I hate saying it, we’re losing our grip on the fringes.”
Leutz paused again before turning around and mumbling something. The giant wall screen behind her came to life. As she turned around, the screen showed an aerial view of a perfectly square building that was all dark glass panes, giving the entire thing a sort of indomitable mirror-like quality. Everything around the building became a shadow-form of itself in the reflections on its walls and roof.
“ Cytech Robotics,” Leutz said. “One of our more profitable ventures and key to our robotics research division.” She flicked her eyes to the side repeatedly, each time bringing up a new view of the building on the screen behind her. Eventually, the images showed the building’s interior, where employees were engaged in normal tasks. “These images are from yesterday. Cytech is active when it should be restricted to essential personnel only. When we tried to call our office there, we got this.”
She flicked her eyes one more time, and a logo came up: the white circle on a black bac kground the Anti-Corp used as a sort of insignia. But in the center of the circle were the words ‘People Against Corporatocracy’ instead of their usual name.
“I suppose you all know what this means,” Leutz said.
When nobody else spoke, Hamid Farakel said, “Cytech is lost. The terrorists took it from us and are running it themselves.”
“Thank you,” Leutz said sardonically, not so much as glancing Farakel’s way. “This is collateral damage. We expected losses like this, but they are happening at a quicker rate than we would like. That is why starting today you will carry on with our autonomy project by moving on to other Silte-owned companies. We’ll start with the largest parent companies: AT&T, Google, Starmine—the big ones with many subsidiaries of their own. You’ll be doing the same thing you’ve been doing here for the past week, only now you have the added task of identifying and flagging nonessential or dangerous current employees for removal.”
“And what about the smaller companies?” asked Chelsea Yallin, a Senior Manager on Mike’s
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