The Voting Machine

A Different View

Chet Castle's office was like a luxury penthouse, complete with foyer, a meeting room, a gallery and sweeping skyline views from downtown to Santa Monica.

I'd been to this office back when Marcus was the CEO, but Chet had completely redecorated it since then. I walked passed a bodyguard with a blonde crew-cut, a man who seemed impossibly tall and clean.

He showed me into the room that had been converted to a gallery. It was now decorated with professional-quality color photography of Chet's travels to exotic locales around the world. I stared in wonder at scenes of Chet exploring the South Pole, Africa, the Amazon, and the Himalayas.

In most of these photos, Chet was in the center of an expedition team, carrying an ice pike or steering a jungle boat with mosquito netting around his face. They were unlike any pictures I'd ever seen in my life. Chet had been to these places in person. He saw more of the earth's wonders in one year than most of us would see in our entire lives.

The photos seemed like a form of proof, sending a message to guests in executive suite: the man they were about to meet had seen and understood things the rest of us could barely even imagine.

The largest photograph on the wall showed Chet scaling an impossibly high cliff in a blizzard. My childhood friend Flytrap told me about the boys who grew up in the rich, sheltered world who never knew violence or hardship in their own neighborhoods. He told me that something in their brains craved the excitement so they would go out and risk their lives. They'd break their bodies racing cars or doing snowboarding stunts. A lot of these guys would end up coming to Flytrap for narcotics and painkillers to medicate themselves.

It didn't matter whether you grew up rich or poor, Flytrap told me, danger was the ultimate drug and most men couldn't resist.

"That's me on K2 last year." I heard the soft, confident voice of Chet from behind. "We were in the Bottleneck, above the Abruzzi Spur. If you lose your bearings on the ice cliff, it's a free fall. It takes less than a minute before you hit the rocks thousands of feet below. The consequences of any error are very clear. Your life will be over in about thirty seconds."

"Make one mistake and your life is over?" I said. "Why would you go there? Why would you put yourself through the terror?"

"We all go through terror, Temo, whether we like it or not. Life is terrifying," he said. "I go there to remind myself."

Chet grinned and led me away to a far corner of the gallery, to a picture of the ancient pyramids in Tenochtitlan outside Mexico City.

"Your real name is Cuahtehmoc," he said. "You know the story of your namesake, don't you? He was an Aztec prince who ruled over one of the most beautiful cities in history. Then the Spanish came to the New World and took it all away. They tortured and killed Cuahtehmoc. They wiped out his whole family and civilization. Cortez destroyed a people and way of life that had lasted for thousands of years."

"I don't understand why you're telling me this."

"My point is that what happened to Cuahtehmoc could happen to any of us. Cuahtehmoc was a prince from the most powerful family in the history of his people. And he was exterminated in the blink of an eye by something he couldn't have possibly predicted. How could he know these Spanish were going to come, with guns and horses, things he had never seen, and kill everyone he'd ever known? There is so much in the world that we can't possibly understand. And what we don't understand can attack us in the blink of an eye. It can destroy everything we've ever known. That's the true meaning of terror."

"Terror is universal," he continued. "Our government spends trillions of dollars in the war against terror. We talk about defeating terror, no matter what the cost. But we can't defeat terror. It will always be there. We've got to take it head on. We've got to stare terror in the face."

Chet looked out the window to the west side of the building. The view below us included Garage 3, where call center agents parked their cars before trudging in to spend their days dialing deadbeats. With all the layoffs, the garage was nearly empty, even during business hours.

"I know what I've done here at Passion is painful," Chet confessed. "Dismantling the call center, releasing thousands of workers. It's never easy to lose a job. It's never easy for anyone to be out there trying to figure out how they're going to make a living. I know your colleagues must be terrified, Temo."

"Of course, they're terrified," I said. I wasn't sure whether to call him Chet or Mr. Castle so I didn't mention him by name. I'd gone through some drama about names with the previous CEO and I didn't want to deal with this now. Still, I was giving Chet my true feeling. I wasn't being as polite and careful as I should've been to negotiate a sweet severance deal. Something about the strangeness of Chet's approach caught me off guard and forced me into speaking honestly.

"It's hard to find a new job nowadays," I said. "So people are struggling. And that's what makes me wonder. Did you really have to do it?"

"Do what?" he said.

"Did you really have to let them all go?"

Chet looked uncomfortable. His mind was racing for a credible response, as if no one had ever asked him this question before. I knew there was a reason that billionaire executives like Chet kept their distance from their low-level workers. It was difficult to interact with people who lived in such different circumstances than your own. I am sure Chet was worried there might be some low-level employee out there like me who would be crazy enough to ask a tough question and put him on the spot. That's why the bodyguard was there.

"You're asking whether I had to let go of your co-workers?" He seemed to be double-checking, as if he couldn't believe that I had the gall to ask him that.

I spoke in a soft voice, making an effort to sound mild and courteous. "I mean, we're talking about thousands of people. You know what's happening to people out there. First, they lose their jobs. Then they lose their health insurance, they lose their homes, they lose their marriages, they lose their minds."

"Temo, those employees I let go, they need to go and stare terror straight in the face. We all need to do that. That's part of being human. Look at me, out there on the Bottleneck on K2. One false move and I was a dead man. What happened to your colleagues was inevitable. If I didn't fire them, then someone else would have. That's because the world is changing faster than any of us could've imagined. That change is going to hit us all head on."