"A crackling thriller brimming with both paranoia and philosophical conundrums."
-KA Bedford on Thomas World
Events
Thomas World Launch Party
September 7, 7:00 PM
Harwelden Mansion
Tulsa
Links
Buy Thomas World online
Rift: Excerpt page five
You could say that Batista and I enjoy a pretty good relationship considering neither of us respects the other professionally. His distaste for my corporate apathy doesn't prohibit him from inviting me to his house every month or two for slow-cooked baby back ribs and buttered corn-on-the-cob. I ask about his ailing father (prostate cancer) and his athletic sister (she was an alternate for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake) in spite of the insidious way his artificially-upbeat management style infects our office. Batista and I coexist in spite of our differences, and for this I owe him a certain amount of gratitude. He owns the power to terminate my employment at any time, to replace me with a younger accountant who would surely bring a fresh attitude to the work I take for granted, and yet he doesn't. I don't mind admitting that his reasons for this baffle me.
This time, though, something was different. When I predictably
uttered "Meets Plan," Batista replied, I don't think so. He
pointed out that I had absolutely no interest in NeuroStor
other than the paycheck the company issued every two weeks.
In fact, as Batista launched into his motivational speaker
voice about how NeuroStor was looking for Go-Getters and Forward-Thinkers
and teammates who would Walk the Talk and genuinely enjoyed
being part of the Corporate Family and blah blah blah--you
get the picture--as he droned on about all this I honestly
thought he was about to fire me. Perhaps he wanted me to think
that. Because when he finally got around to his offer, I was
ready to entertain anything. Of course, he didn't just come
right out and ask. First he revealed that NeuroStor wasn't
just an information-age startup that had learned to mimic
the neurological structure of the human brain to develop faster,
higher-capacity digital storage devices. No, the company had
really been formed to develop another product that required
this sort of massively improved storage. He also made clear
that this as-yet-unrevealed-to-me product was a secret only
a select few NeuroStor team members guarded with their lives.
And when I asked what it was, Batista gleamed and explained
how they had developed a way to transmit matter from one place
to another using a wrinkle in quantum physics.
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