The Enthusiasts

32

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley – Robert Burns, To a Mouse

Maxim's lap was beginning to feel warm. Hot in fact. His holoportal, even in power-saving mode, had created a heat zone which spread like wildfire over his upper thighs. This was sending an urgent sense of alarm radiating over his most sensitive areas. He was uncomfortable. His eyes wandered, striking at different points around a chic interior penthouse suite he was to now call home. It was the most luxurious suite in the company fleet, and something meant to be coveted yet never spoken of publicly. A gloomy bit of rain spat at him from above. It seemed to curve toward his head, sailing mid-air, destined to spatter and then hold position on the glass next to him before softly gathering more drops large and small, culminating, momentarily defying gravity against the floor-to-ceiling thick translucent slabs of heated compressed sand that encased his west-facing company-issued "sanctuary" (which certainly fell short in comforting him today). He had dismissed the janitorial and culinary support staff with a few sullen wrist flicks and a tightly furrowed brow. He had wiped his schedule clean for the next three days — something he hadn't ever done. Vivian knew something was up the moment he messaged her with instructions to cancel any calls and meetings scheduled for the day. She managed to respond with nothing more than, "I'll clear everything for you, sir." Now, here he sat, still and quiet. Heaving a heavy sigh. His head was balanced against a curve-backed chaise lounger, the only piece of furniture he had kept from his last suite. Everything else in the expansive penthouse was formed to order from The Equinox – Executive Suite Package. Maxim had immediately chosen to upgrade after wanting to at least reap some of the rewards assumed after such a major promotion. The chaise was set parallel with the west-facing wall of glass that lined his dreary outside view. He felt as though he was nearly touching the gray overcast clouds from the seventy-first floor of Executive Place — the tallest white rectangle in the West. The top six floors functioned almost entirely as glass lookouts for its inhabitants to oversee the world, as it was, spanning the Nevada desert. It figured the weather would be lousy. Maxim was empty inside, emotionally gutted after receiving some unexpected news he wasn't sure he'd recover from. He was questioning himself as the new, self-made company head. His mind was still spinning after reading the highest-classified information he had been forced to sit on shortly after becoming CEO.

The Vault was an autonomous systems protocol that he, and presumably anyone else currently living, had been unaware of. It had casually opened up as a secure link in his inbox immediately following his first log in session after becoming ordained as CEO by his brainwashed board members. The mysterious message had requested that he activate and have access to its contents given he was the first CEO of Spectra in nearly a decade.

Since the passing of its last single figurehead (a seventy-eight-year-old man named Winston Savour, who held the CEO position at Spectra through its highest growth-through-acquisition phase in history) nine years and eight months earlier, the company had been running via an agreed-upon board member, democratic method of governing. They had broken up the developed autocratic leadership once held to a more liberal nine-men-control-the-fate-of-the-world approach instead. The idea had been rallied around by most upper-class company Executives for years prior to Winston's death, and when the day of Winston's passing finally came, there was little argument that the company would be run by a group of long-tenured Executives who would vote on actions to be taken by the company in future decisions. Almost everyone had agreed that the business they operated had become more than just a business in the face of it assuming control over the U.S. Military, charged with protecting the assets and natural resources they held which were essential to all life on Earth. But regardless of the past events that had brought Maxim to this point, none of it mattered. He had opened The Vault and learned of company secrets that he, in many ways, wished he'd never discovered.