The Tragic Death of Corporate
Man
a hero for
capitalism;
champion of the
working class
by Tom Landaluce
Section 4:
Collision Looming in
the Corporate Ladder Lobby.
4.a.
It was called Jacob
Center for reasons lost to reams of
misfiled or boxed up paperwork, changes in management, alterations to corporate
strategy, and/or heavily over-calculated positions of denial.
At the center
was a structure one might call dark, sleek, ominous, foreboding, and whatever
fashionable terms of power and dominance happened to be in vogue at the time of
description. Yet its design was
unassuming enough to be casually overlooked or forgotten whenever a list was
made of noteworthy architecture in the downtown area or when one was
desperately searching for the home base of the very paradigm of evil
corporations, Incorporated Business Corporate Incorporated.
The Jacob
Center Tower
stood fifty-two stories high, and it was capped by a large pyramid which
comprised the entirety of the fifty-second floor. Curiously absent, along with the
traditionally omitted thirteenth floor, were those of the twenty-six and
thirty-ninth. The facade of the building
was smooth, paneled glass with solid black corner walls and no apparent ledges
or overhangs. The only significantly
unique element in its appearance were three, wide, windowless bands, the same
black as the corner structures, which broke the building’s height into four
separate sections like a stack of blocks.
As with most
buildings, the tower had its own share of rumors and urban myths hanging about
it. Most of these were circulated by the
janitorial staff, however, and were ignored by the predominantly white-collar
population that frequented the inner corridors.
Not surprisingly, most of these rumors revolved around the buildings architectural
oddities; the aforementioned absent floors being a large draw. The three dark bands that wrapped its
exterior were another area of interest.
Curiously, those bands began, respectively, above floors twelve,
twenty-five, and thirty-eight, and terminated below floors fourteen,
twenty-seven, and forty leading those nosey custodial types to suspect the
secret existence of floors thirteen, twenty-six, and thirty-nine. The bands were, in height, comparable to that
of three standard floors.
What was going
on in all of that space?
Another
feature that was of some concern to our inquisitive cleaning crew was that of
the building’s corners. Being solid
black, they outlined the building, but they were not merely paneled facades,
they had depth. The front corner of the
tower housed the executive elevator; used only by big wigs, head honchos, or
various branch managers of the four corner locations of Incorporated Business
Corporation Incorporated. The opposite corner
also contained an elevator. The service
elevator. None of this was unusual, but
the remaining two pillar-like corners of the building boasted no usage
whatsoever
One would
suspect that elevators for the staff or outside visitors would occupy these
remaining areas, but a central bank of elevators located beyond the front lobby
served this purpose.
It was a
commonly held belief among the janitorial staff that these two, apparently
unused, columns were fit with hidden doors which led to secret entrances for
the suspiciously absent floors thirteen, twenty-six, and thirty-nine. It should also be mentioned that one noticed,
should one be paying attention, a strange sensation when riding the staff
elevators which occurred between floors twelve and fourteen, twenty-five and
twenty-seven, and thirty-eight and forty.
No, it didn’t take longer for the elevator pass between these floors,
but there was a sense of falling, or accelerated lift when in these zones.
As for the
pyramid crowning the ominous, though often overlooked, structure of the Jacob
Center Tower … No one spoke of it. Those that dared had the unfortunate habit of
disappearing.