2.b.i
“SYNERGIZE IS
THE BEST WAY TO OPTIMI–” the CEO’s voice froze and a series of lights flashed
behind his eyes. There was a clicking
whir emanating from somewhere beneath his nose.
After a few minutes the lights ceased their flashing and the whirring
noise abated.
A team of
field tech boys stood gathered around him.
They wore thick black-framed glassed and employed severe parts in their
slickly combed hair.
“Got him,” one
of them said. “He’s back online.”
“Run a
battery,” said another one. He was
dressed differently from the others.
They wore collared, short-sleeved shirts the color of Post-It notes,
thin black ties and black pants. He
sported a black blazer with large elbow patches the same pale yellow as the
shirts.
One of the
tech boys reached for a black attaché, opened it, and pulled out what appeared
to be a miniature car battery and an equally diminutive set of jumper
cables. He attached a yellow and black
clamp to the battery terminals while another tech boy popped open the buttons
on the CEO’s shirt.
“Wait, what’s
going–” the CEO began, but the tech boy pounced, clamping the alligator teeth
of the jumper cables on the CEO’s exposed nipples. After that the CEO’s conversational
repertoire was reduced to screams and shrieks.
“Is… Is that
what’s supposed to happen?” asked another tech boy, this one wearing a
sleeveless collared shirt in the pale yellow shade and black shorty-shorts
instead of the long slacks.
The tech boy
in the blazer grinned and said, “Oh yes.”
“When… When do
we… take those things off,” the tech boy in the shorty-shorts asked, his face
squirmed with the CEO’s every howl.
“When the timer
goes off, newbie,” said one of the other, standard issue attire tech boys. A ding sounded from the attaché and a dot
matrix form printed from it’s side.
The CEO
stopped screaming.
“See.”
The tech boy
in the blazer looked over the printed form.
“Hmmm.”
Shorty-shorts
asked, “What’s that form tell us? Does
it have the results of his diagnostics?”
“That is its
secondary function,” the blazered tech boy said. “Primarily, it contains hardcopy data of
everything his body witnessed while he was offline.”
“What’s
wrong?” a standard tech boy asked as the scowl on blazer’s face deepened.
“It’s The
Greed,” he said. “Things just got
interesting, boys.”