More Than Meets the Eye – Part 1

Dexter Hastings looked out of his office window of the corporate offices of Bay Holdings, the largest corporate real estate owner in the United States.  He smiled as he looked into the sun glinting off of the mostly empty skyscrapers of Manhattan Island.  Far below he could see the tent cities of homeless immigrants squatting on the once frenetic streets of this former bastion of American prosperity.  He shrugged his shoulders knowing that his escort and armored sedan could get him through any street provocation without the need for him to get involved.  He could reach a heliport or major highway to leave this troubled metropolis if it was necessary for another “demonstration” for the bourgeoise of who was in charge of this country.  At this thought he smiled again and went back to his enormous mahogany desk.

Looking at the quarterly acreage goal he nodded to see that all the quotas were met and the reductions in private ownership of wheat, corn and cattle farms had been reduced to the levels specified in the quarterly dashboard.  Everywhere he looked he saw green lights.  Except one.  Up in the northern quadrant of the Great Plains there was one red light on his board.  What the hell is that!  He clicked the red icon and a file; Grid 19, opened up.  It listed the farms that had been targeted for foreclosure by their local bank.  There were fifty farms all clustered within a radius of twenty miles that had looked like easy pickings last year.  All pressure points for their owners had been applied.  They even got the IRS to audit half of them to see if any fines could be levied against them.  And all the buyers they typically worked with had been instructed to lower the commodity prices they would pay.  Most if not all of those farms should already be in bankruptcy.  But not a single one had folded.  That was impossible.  Sure maybe a few might have found a private source of funds to allow them to limp along.  But all of them?

Dexter muttered to himself, “Something is fishy here.”  He rushed out of his office and barged into a conference room where some of his direct reports were having a meeting about the company team-building trip to Auckland.  He rapped the door behind him and said sternly, “I’m gonna need you in my office now, Barry.  Grid 19!”  And he rushed back to his office with a black look on his patrician face.

Barrymore Carver hustled into Hastings office with a worried expression and stood nervously in front of the huge desk.  He looked surprisingly like a frightened boy standing in the principal’s office.  He knew Grid 19 would be a big problem.  If there was a red light on the dashboard, whoever owned it had to have a story to tell Dexter that included a speedy resolution and a penalty prize to pay for the outrage.  Otherwise, the penalty was a walk of shame to HR and an armed escort out of the building.

“What the hell is going on Barry?  Oh for fifty?  Are you just tired of working here?  Have I brutalized you so thoroughly that you sabotage my dashboard like this?  Talk to me Barry.  Quick!

“Dexter, I worked on this Grid for months I put pressure on these people you wouldn’t believe.  I managed to cut off their power in the middle of a deep freeze.  I even had the government inspectors declare half of their beef cattle substandard.  I did everything but light their fields on fire.  But they made all their mortgage payments they cleared all their supply bills and paid all their taxes.  There was nothing I could do.”

Hastings shook his head, “And it never occurred to you that this wasn’t normal?  When have you ever seen fifty targets fail to succumb?  Never!  Now you are going down to the finance boys and you are going to find out where the money came from and if you don’t have an answer by tomorrow then just go find another job.”

Carver flushed, spun on his heel and took off for the elevators at high speed.  A smile broke out on Dexter’s face.  He loved pulling the wings off of flies.  It was what he was born to do.  He looked down at that red light blinking on his board and the smile left his face.  “Where the hell did that money come from?”