Sphere 2

Sphere 2

July 25 1998

Playtime was a fairly well off toy company,  promising quality over quantity. We made the usual games and typical toys, but we also sold limited edition versions of our bestsellers that were just better. We weren’t a name that everyone knew, like Walmart, but we were steadily rising in popularity. Playtime was now officially partners with the local PRT, distributing promotional goods like action figures of everyone’s favorite heroes.

If a building was a person, then Playtime was a teenager. The building was in the awkward stage between homely looking and professional. It was taller then the two story shops next to it, but it wasn’t nearly tall enough to fit in downtown without looking out of place. The first of the building’s three floors was a jolly looking toy shop, shelves lined with cheaply made product. The second floor was the business level, where most of us worked to keep the company running.

There was a swath of cars parked outside the building, sleek black vehicles that maintained an intimidating homogeny. I straightened my hastily put on suit, trying to brush a few wrinkles out before I walked in. The bell above the door gave a cheery ring that that was completely out of place in the somber toy store. The lawyers’ heads all seemed to swivel was one towards me, registering me, before turning back to the employee they were apparently interrogating.

William Catstooth hustled over to me, grabbing my arm and pulling me back out through the door. William was nothing like a person imagined he would look like. He didn’t look like the CEO of a toy company. He was a large man, with a scraggly brown beard and thinning hair. He was wide, with large shoulders and a large frame that, coupled with his considerable height, made him look taller then he was. A tight smile stretched across his face, as if he had tasted something sour but wasn’t trying to show it. His voice was quiet, nearly a whisper. It was a far cry from his usual volume, which could be heard through a wall. “Alan, I’m so glad you’re here, the lawyers have been demanding to see you.”

I glanced back towards the window, seeing a few lawyers staring at me through the glass. “How many lawyers are here, a whole firm’s worth? What’s going on Will.”

He glanced around nervously, and I had to strain my ears to hear his words. A sense of dread filled my chest, “They found out about Jared.”

I swore under my breath. “Nepea. They’re actually arresting Jared? How’d they even find out?”

Playtime made two types of toys. The first was the mass distributed, plastic packaged toys. Figurines of the Triumvirate, of the local Seattle capes, and assorted plastic toys made up that section. Playtime also made custom toys. People would send in requests for specific toys, and we would deliver. The custom toys had the reputation of being durable, of being unique. Figurines of independent heroes, villains, Dungeons and Dragons figurines... all that and more fell under the category of custom orders. Custom orders were made by Jared, our tinker.

“I’m not sure, I think some asshole in accounting reported us. We weren’t as subtle as we thought during the audit.” My face must have twisted into a dark expression, because Will put his hand on my shoulder. “Breath, Alan. We’ll fire him later, right now we need to be calm. I’m not letting the whole company sink because of some stiff. Present a united front Alan. We didn’t know anything, remember that.”

I made a sound of acknowledgement, giving a curt nod before turning around and walking back into the store. The bell had barely finished ringing when one of the lawyers approached me, “Are you Dr. Alan Gramme?”

I saw the heads of various lawyers turn to stare at me. They were almost homogeneous, every last one of them dressed in a similar suit. There was no compassion, no pity in their eyes. Only a driven determination to ruin the company. An edge filled my voice, “Yeah. I am.”

The lawyer gave a curt nod, “Good. Come with me. I have some questions for you.” He started leading me to the second floor, to the office cubicles.

Play innocent. Act like an idiot, like I don’t know anything. “Sir, what’s this all about? I got called into work directly after my daughter’s funeral, no one’s told me anything.”

The lawyer fidgeted uncomfortably at that, staying silent as we walked down the hall. Good. Until I found the rat who sold out Jared, these lawyers would be a suitable target to vent onto. We entered a cubicle and the lawyer gestured for me to sit. I stood instead. “Do you know Jared Thurlow?”

“How could I not know the marketing head? I’m not an idiot,” I sniped back.

“No no, of course not.” The agent abruptly cut himself offs The silence that reigned for a few seconds heavily implied that something was left unsaid. “Sir, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I am Agent Davidson, PRT. We have evidence that this company has flagrantly broken the law.”

Try to keep him off balance, don’t let him gain ground, keep him on the backfoot. Deflect questions, drive the conversation. I can’t afford to let the company get smeared in the public. “Are you accusing me of being a criminal?” I forced disbelief into my voice.

The agent shook his head, “Sir, we have evidence that the Playtime business has been involved in illicit activities. I’m not saying you’re a suspect, we’re just trying to do our jobs.”

I raised my voice, jabbing my hands into my pockets. I wouldn’t have to worry about the body language arms and hands provided now, “Can you do your job another day? On the day where I’m not missing my daughter’s funeral maybe?”

The agent’s voice had an edge to it, “Please cooperate with me and we can get through this as fast as possible. Do you know of any illegal actions your company has taken?”

Don’t mention Jared. “No, of course I don’t. I’m not a criminal. What’s this all about?” I knew exactly what this was about, I’d helped manage it after all, but I couldn’t afford to be caught.

Agent Davidson pulled a folder out from his suit jacket, laying it on the table. He opened it, pointing to a sheet. “It’s about this, Dr. Gramme. This is the list of resources and materials the company has bought to produce product, recorded over the past 12 months. And this,” the agent turned the page and pointed at another chart, “is the amount of resources that went into your retail products. You might notice something off about this list.”

Agent Davidson passed the packet to me. Nothing was out of the normal on it. I had personally looked over this sheet, signed it  to confirm it was accurate. What was wrong with it? “I don’t see it.”

A slight toothy grin crossed the agent’s face, “You don’t see it? Let me spell it out for you. Your numbers don’t match. Look at the amount Mazak Playtime ordered. Now look at the amount they used.”

I glanced down at the sheet. The numbers mostly matched, only off by the slightest amount, nothing too unusual about it. “I still don’t see it. The numbers don’t match perfectly, but that’s to be expected.”

“Doctor Gramme, please look at the amount of brass you ordered. You’ll notice that brass doesn’t appear on the second sheet. Playtime is ordering brass, but they aren’t using it to make toys. And yet, when we checked for brass, we found none. Care to explain?”

I paused, mind racing over my options here. Jared was about to be arrested. There wasn’t anything I could do. If I gave an excuse, they’d demand to confirm it. And if I did that, they’d know I knew about Alan. They would have grounds to arrest me as an accomplice. More importantly, I would be out of a job. I would be painted as a liar, my name slandered to the ground. I wouldn’t be able to reliably put bread on the table. Catherine would have to struggle to make ends meat, Lori would grow up without a father. No, I couldn’t be arrested, couldn’t try to take some Jared’s blame. I had to firmly push it all onto Jared. Which meant I had to take the hit to my pride, to be made out as incompetent.

“I didn’t even notice it. So many papers pass over my desk, things become a blur.” It was a complete lie, I was practically a workaholic on the clock. I read every reported, made sure to understand it. I could only hope I didn’t show too much hesitation.

Agent Davidson’s ferocious grin faltered for a moment, before widening, “Dr. Gramme, you are the logistical head of Playtime, and such an obvious detail just happened to slip past you? I asked around about you, you aren’t the type to miss something, if what your coworkers say is true.”

“I’m only human. I make mistakes sometimes. At the end of the day, I get tired.” Admitting I was fallible hurt. It was true, but it still hurt, a heavy feeling settling in me as I acknowledge it.

“It’s a pretty big mistake to make, Doctor. If you keep it up, you might be out of a job.”

My eyes narrowed. I worked hard, I did my job. If anyone deserved to be fired, it was the rat who sold Jared out. “Is that a threat? That’s a rather unprofessional statement to make, wouldn’t you say?”

“But am I wrong, Doctor Alan Gramme? Incompetent people either gain competence or gain unemployment. I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”

The sarcasm, the toothy smug grin, the repeated implications that I was incompetent, it all was slowly building up. I wasn’t a violent person, I considered myself a fairly mice guy. But right now? Right now I wanted nothing more then to punch the agent’s lights out. I didn’t want to lose my job, but the urge was so tempting. “You mentioned Jared when you came in. Why?” I knew why, but I had to change the subject.

“You already know why. Or you’re actually that incompetent. Thank you for your time, I’m done with you.”

[hr=3]

Two hours later, William, Jared, and other important figures in Playtime were crammed into a meeting room. A frown was spread William’s face, and he seemed small despite his size. He was angrily muttering to himself, hunched over the table.

Next to him was Jared, who looked distinctly uncomfortable in his outfit. His long brown hair was down instead of in a ponytail, and he had replaced his casual jeans and tie-dye shirt with a button shirt and khakis. It was an outfit that was distinctly anything but Jared. Even the tinker’s slouch was gone.

Jared had a lackadaisical manner of speaking, but no one could fail to notice the amount worry his voice contained. “I’m fired, aren’t I? There’s no way you guys aren’t about to send me away.”

William raised his head, “Not necessarily, Jared. There are still options left, we could-“

“Firing Mr. Adriandax is our best option.” Stacey was the woman in charge of our finances, of managing the budget and funds for the year. “I’ve run the numbers. Firing him is the only legitimate option we have.”

William glared at Stacey, eyes narrowing to slits, “Jared is one of the founding members of this company. The custom toys he can create are what made us known. It’s why people care about us in the first place. You can’t just throw him out like gum on your shoe. We can just relocate him. Limit his overtime hours and change his position. He’ll be in a customer service role, but he would still be with the company.”

Jared’s hand went to his hair, “I’ll do that. Send me down to retail!”

Stacey shuffled some papers, “Mr. Catstooth, I don’t think you are fully grasping the situation we’re in. We are dangerously close to going bankrupt. We broke the law. All of us did. We are being fined 50 thousand dollars. We can’t afford that.”

I cleared my throat, “We can afford that. It’ll be tough, we’ll have to save any penny we can. We’ll have to lay a few people off, but we can survive.”

Stacey’s head swiveled to state at me, hard eyes radiating disappointment, “Are you volunteering, Mr Gramme?” She paused, “I didn’t think so. You should know, Mr. Gramme, that we can’t afford to lay people off. We’re already near minimum capacity as it is. Wages will have to be scaled back. Ours included.”

Jared fidgeted with his collar, “I’m fine with minimum wage, Ma’am. Honest, I’d be happy to work for minimum wage if it meant I didn’t have to leave.”

William nodded, “He’s fine with it Stacey. We’ll just scrimp, cut costs. We’ll survive.”

Stacey made a low noise in her throat, “You are all forgetting one important detail: PR. I doubt we can manage to keep this a secret, too many people know about it in our company. Even if we hush everyone up, there’s nothing stopping someone from outing him again. We don’t have any hush money because of the fines, so it would be hard. People will know about this. Nepea-5 is controversial, but it’s legal. We will lose customers when this gets out. We can’t afford that, we need every customer we can get. We need to fire Mr. Adriandax to send a message. If we just send him to retail, people will see him. People will see that we broke the law and let Mr. Adriandax get off with a slap on the wrist.”

A silence filled the room, one that stretched out as everyone considered what she said. Jared’s eyes were wide, flitting from person to person around the room. “You can’t seriously be thinking about this? You can’t!”

Jared was a friend. He was a great guy to hang with, he was easy to talk to and he was understanding about everything. But he was a Parahuman. And that was illegal under Nepea-5. The company had used Jared to get off the ground, the custom orders were what put us on the map. Could we survive without them?

We could. We had to survive. We would pull every trick we could and we would win. This company would not fall. “I’m sorry Jared, but she has a point. We can’t afford to have controversy surrounding us, not after what happened today.”

Jared abruptly stood, hands on the table. His voice was raised to a shout, “What the hell, Alan! What the fuck! I thought we were friends, man! I thought you were on my side!”

I held my hands up, “I am, Jared, I am. This doesn’t mean we still can’t be friends. You’re overreacting Jared. I don’t hate you, I just have different priorities now.”

“Yeah, I see that you do, Alan. I see that you do. Putting money in front of people, I see how it is.”

“It’s not like that Jared!”

“I don’t see how it isn’t. Fuck it, you know what? Go ahead, fire me. I don’t give a fuck about this company if you guys aren’t even about to protect one of your own! Peace, cause I’m fucking out!” Stacey made a slight choking sound as Jared flipped the room off and marched out the door.

A silence filled the room, conversation slowly starting back up about what direction the company would take. I didn’t hear it, I was lost in my own thoughts. Jared didn’t deserve this. He was a good guy, a nice guy for the most part. And then he had moments where he got like this, where he went off on everyone nearby. The bridge with him was brunt. There was no way he would forgive me for this. I pushed any doubt aside about my decision. I made the right choice for me. That’s what mattered. I would regret it, but I wouldn’t change it. Still, a gnawing sense of guilt rose up in me.

I wish that Jared’s job had never ended.