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.\u00a0 He smiled as he looked into the sun glinting off of the mostly empty skyscrapers of Manhattan Island.\u00a0 Far below he could see the tent cities of homeless immigrants squatting on the once frenetic streets of this former bastion of American prosperity.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He could reach a heliport or major highway to leave this troubled metropolis if it was necessary for another \u201cdemonstration\u201d for the bourgeoise of who was in charge of this country.\u00a0 At this thought he smiled again and went back to his enormous mahogany desk.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Everywhere he looked he saw green lights.\u00a0 Except one.\u00a0 Up in the northern quadrant of the Great Plains there was one red light on his board.\u00a0 What the hell is that!\u00a0 He clicked the red icon and a file; Grid 19, opened up.\u00a0 It listed the farms that had been targeted for foreclosure by their local bank.\u00a0 There were fifty farms all clustered within a radius of twenty miles that had looked like easy pickings last year.\u00a0 All pressure points for their owners had been applied.\u00a0 They even got the IRS to audit half of them to see if any fines could be levied against them.\u00a0 And all the buyers they typically worked with had been instructed to lower the commodity prices they would pay.\u00a0 Most if not all of those farms should already be in bankruptcy.\u00a0 But not a single one had folded.\u00a0 That was impossible.\u00a0 Sure maybe a few might have found a private source of funds to allow them to limp along.\u00a0 But all of them?<\/p>\n
Dexter muttered to himself, \u201cSomething is fishy here.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He rapped the door behind him and said sternly, \u201cI\u2019m gonna need you in my office now, Barry.\u00a0 Grid 19!\u201d\u00a0 And he rushed back to his office with a black look on his patrician face.<\/p>\n
Barrymore Carver hustled into Hastings office with a worried expression and stood nervously in front of the huge desk.\u00a0 He looked surprisingly like a frightened boy standing in the principal\u2019s office.\u00a0 He knew Grid 19 would be a big problem.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Otherwise, the penalty was a walk of shame to HR and an armed escort out of the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the hell is going on Barry?\u00a0 Oh for fifty?\u00a0 Are you just tired of working here?\u00a0 Have I brutalized you so thoroughly that you sabotage my dashboard like this?\u00a0 Talk to me Barry.\u00a0 Quick!<\/p>\n
\u201cDexter, I worked on this Grid for months I put pressure on these people you wouldn\u2019t believe.\u00a0 I managed to cut off their power in the middle of a deep freeze.\u00a0 I even had the government inspectors declare half of their beef cattle substandard.\u00a0 I did everything but light their fields on fire.\u00a0 But they made all their mortgage payments they cleared all their supply bills and paid all their taxes.\u00a0 There was nothing I could do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hastings shook his head, \u201cAnd it never occurred to you that this wasn\u2019t normal?\u00a0 When have you ever seen fifty targets fail to succumb?\u00a0 Never!\u00a0 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\u2019t have an answer by tomorrow then just go find another job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carver flushed, spun on his heel and took off for the elevators at high speed.\u00a0 A smile broke out on Dexter\u2019s face.\u00a0 He loved pulling the wings off of flies.\u00a0 It was what he was born to do.\u00a0 He looked down at that red light blinking on his board and the smile left his face.\u00a0 \u201cWhere the hell did<\/u> that money come from<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,2510,1289,237,4,242],"tags":[3269,76,1290,265],"class_list":["post-30493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-american-archipelago","tag-fiction-writing","tag-my-fiction","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n