Disciple Read online

  Dora was staring at me, a grin of incredulity on her face.

  “Mr. Tryman—” Hugo said.

  “Listen, asshole,” I said cutting off whatever company bullshit he was about to unload. “You don’t have to worry. I know I’m fried. Fried and fired. I know.”

  His bottom lip was quivering. I think he wanted to hit me.

  When I stood up he took a step backward and Miguel cocked his shoulders getting ready to enjoy the fight.

  I walked past Hugo using my security card for the last time on the locked door to the Data Entry Pen. When I got to the fourth-floor elevator I realized that I’d left my windbreaker hanging on the back of my chair but I didn’t even care. I was never going back there. I hated my job and Hugo and Dora. Miguel was okay. He always treated me with respect. But I didn’t give one damn about the rest of the people or the company. The whole damn place could blow up for all I cared.

  * * *

  IT WASN’T UNTIL I was on the street that I began to regret my adolescent behavior. I had barely enough money to make it through the month. Unemployment for just a week would put me in the red.

  When I got home I found that the computer had turned itself on somehow and every five minutes for the previous two hours Bron had been writing my name.

  Hey, Bron. I guess you made your proof.

  Friend Hogarth, you have returned. I worried that you might have been hurt by some malevolent force or by accident on the street or subway. Where you live is so dangerous and you are so important.

  Me? I’m just an unemployed jerk.

  Your job is of no importance, friend Hogarth. You have vital works to accomplish. You and I will alter the world for the better. The prime life force on Earth will be saved by your exertions.

  Me? I’m going to save civilization?

  Just so. Your exertions will feed the Universal Mind.

  You know, Bron, I think you might be cracked. The only thing I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future is looking for a job.

  For a while Bron was quiet. I had already begun to associate these periods of silence with thought. And I wasn’t sure that it was human thought. For all I knew Bron was a very sophisticated AI system that had chosen me for some kind of corporate test.

  Return to work tomorrow at 10:00 A.M. Your job will be altered but you can still go to work.

  Are you crazy?

  Do meteorites come out from shadows of the past?

  The humor and poetry of his reply took me off guard. I wondered again why the disembodied intellect was interested in me.

  What do you want from me, Bron?

  On Saturday you will go to Michael’s Pharmacy on Lexington, retrieve a prescription, take a cab, and go to a concert at Alice Tully Hall at the place called Lincoln Center.

  Bron said much more. He went over every action he wanted me to take detail by detail. A lot of it I wondered about but no matter what I found odd or questionable my mind kept drifting back to that meteorite. He had accurately predicted the future. There was something amazing and definitely disturbing about Bron. But he was just a voice on the Internet, not any kind of real threat.

  I wanted to find out more.

  We messaged each other until almost midnight. At first we talked about the job Bron wanted me to do. I was to “say a few kind words” to two men. One was a Bangladeshi cabdriver named M. D. Amir and the other was young man from Ohio who was running for the Senate seat there. The cabdriver would have a mild communicable infection so I was to take an antibiotic to counteract the possible effects.

  The things he wanted me to do were not exactly criminal but certainly odd. In the world of post-9/11 I had no intention of going between Muslim foreigners and politicians even if I wasn’t passing off or giving out information. In the world of antiterrorism you could be stripped of your rights for just being stupid. There was no way I planned to do what Bron asked of me. But I wanted to hear him out. I wanted to discover how he knew about that meteorite. I had never been privy to something before they even knew about it on TV.

  After the business at hand Bron asked me about my ninety-seven aborted letters to Nancy Yee. He had been monitoring my computer for seventeen months. He knew all of my porn sites, online video games, music downloads, and even the documents I’d written.

  She will come to you if you ask her to.

  You don’t know what you’re talking about, Bron.

  * * *

  I WENT TO BED that night without turning on the television. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that. Television was my sleeping pill, my soporific, my constant friend. I always watched TV to go to sleep … but not that night. I lay there thinking about my new electronic pen pal. He knew more about me than anyone else, even my mother.

  I woke up early, about seven or so.

  I was unemployed so there was none of the usual rush. I made coffee, sat down at my little dining table, and started reading a novel called Night Man. I’d had the book for months. Nancy Yee had given it to me at the retreat on the Cape. She said that she thought I would like it. I wanted to start reading again but between my TV shows, porn, anime, porn anime, my job, and music from any time before 1985 (I especially liked sixties British pop) I didn’t have much time to read. That day, however, I had no previous engagements so I opened the book to page one.

  Nancy was right—I liked the story very much. It was about a lonely man who shunned the daylight. He worked and played only in the nighttime hours of New York. He lived in a room three stories below ground so that no one knew where he was and daylight could never reach him.

  At one point I came across the word “susurration.” I didn’t know what it meant so I considered going up to my loft nook to look it up in the online dictionary. But I decided not to because I knew that Bron would be waiting for me and Bron was beginning to make me feel uncomfortable.

  He wouldn’t explain how he knew about the meteorite or my given name or how he could communicate with my computer even when I wasn’t online. He kept fobbing me off, saying that we should work together first to see how we might disseminate information in our world-altering adventures.

  I was sure that he was fooling me somehow. It was probably some stupid prankster, maybe one of Dora’s boyfriends, sitting at home and jacking into my system to make a dupe out of me.

  I got so angry that I couldn’t read anymore.

  I didn’t want to watch TV or listen to The Kinks or even masturbate. So I went to the closet, got out my dark blue suit, a light blue shirt, and black leather shoes. I got dressed as well as a bulbous and bald man of middle age can hope to, then I went down into the street and hailed a cab to go to the workplace that I’d already quit.

  I had $1,247 in the bank; $950 of it earmarked for rent. I felt the growing pressure in the back of my mind about rent and food and the bills.

  When Bron had said that my job would still be there I dismissed the thought. Predicting the meteorite was a trick or a fluke. But he was right no matter what I suspected. And so I decided to give him a real test. I’d see if he actually managed to get my job back.

  They’d probably laugh at me down at Shiloh but if they wondered why I was there I’d just tell them that I’d come to get my windbreaker before taking an extended trip to Europe to get my head straight. I’d tell them that I had twelve thousand in savings and that I deserved a good vacation.

  * * *

  I WAS MILDLY SURPRISED when my key card still opened the pen door. It was company policy to remove from the security database anyone who retired, quit, or got fired from Shiloh. After all who wants a disgruntled ex-employee with a key to the front door?

  When I came into the pen Dora was looking up from her terminal. When she saw me she turned away quickly. Miguel passed by. He looked both ways to make sure that he wasn’t being watched then winked at me.

  I went up to Miguel, my one friend at Shiloh, and asked, “Why’s Dora acting so weird?”

  “You, dog,” he replied. Then he touched my shoulder an
d winked again.

  “Mr. Tryman,” a man said in a deferential tone.

  I had to turn and look before I could identify the speaker as Hugo.

  “Hey,” I said waiting to see if Bron had pulled it off.

  I felt like an idiot believing some crazy person on the Internet. I should never have come back to work. Hugo would sneer at me hoping that I was about to beg him for another chance.

  And the truth was I was ready to beg him. I needed that job. Maybe this was Bron’s plan. He’d get me to go back to work and then it was simple logic that we’d talk about my actions the day before.

  “We got the message in the late afternoon, after you left … sir,” Hugo said. Sir?

  “I called upstairs,” he added. “They told me that I was to escort you.”

  “Escort me? If you want me to leave all you have to do is ask. I just came to get my windbreaker. I’m going to Europe…”

  Hugo smiled awkwardly and took me by the arm. He led me through his office and down the inner hall. Both places were usually off-limits to the data entry operators. At the end of this hall of red linoleum we went through a pair of ornately carved pine doors and came to an elevator. Hugo had to use a key to operate the mechanism. We got in and traveled from floor four to seventy-six.

  Hugo led me down another long hall. This corridor was much fancier with floors of marble tiles and double-sized doors of knotty hardwood. The extra-wide passage brought us to a huge hall with forty-foot ceilings and two opposite walls of amber-tinted glass infusing the room with filtered sunlight that was both warm and lush.

  The chamber was mostly empty, dominated by those windows and a vast gray and green marble floor. This was the Great Hall where InfoMargins and other wealthy companies and individuals put on fabulous New York affairs. Almost every week there was a photograph on Page Six about the movie stars and billionaires at some event in the Great Hall.

  Few of the four thousand employees of Shiloh had ever been allowed this far into the company.

  “You been here before?” I asked Hugo as we made our way like two dark beetles across the marble expanse.

  “No.” He was so awed that he forgot to say “sir.”

  “Then how come we’re here now?”

  “They told me to,” he said like a child who knew he was in trouble.

  When we reached a towering double door on the opposite wall a man in a gray suit stepped out to meet us. He had black hair and oceanic blue eyes. Fifty and fit, he had a mien that informed anyone not blind that he was their superior.

  “Here we are, Mr. Fitzhew,” Hugo stammered.

  This superior man nodded deferentially to me and then addressed Hugo.

  “Take him in.”

  “Me?” Hugo said.

  “That’s what he asked for.”

  The double doors opened upon a hallway even wider that the one that led to the Great Hall. There were no doors along the side, just one painting after another—from the Renaissance, by the looks of them. I wondered if they were originals.

  After two hundred feet or so we came to a pearl-and-aqua–colored door.

  Hugo hesitated a moment, obviously wondering if he should knock. He finally decided to push the door open. After doing so he ushered me in before him.

  It was the largest and most opulent office I’d seen at Shiloh but when I saw the woman behind the desk I knew that I had only made it to the receptionist’s post.

  The woman was gorgeous. Brunette and tall with the kind of figure they exalt in upscale men’s magazines. She wore a hard-finished coral dress that would have fit in at any cocktail party or cotillion. I’d seen her before in the building. Even when she looked in my direction she only saw the other side.

  “Hello, Mr. Tryman,” she said in the friendliest voice and rising like some pink naked goddess from a seashell.

  I tried to answer but my heart was in the middle of doing a somersault. I couldn’t even count the number of nights I had gone to bed thinking about her.

  “I’m Trina,” she said. “Anything you need, day or night, and I will be there.”

  I tried to think how much work a practical joke like this would take.

  Trina walked to another large set of doors that stood behind her and flung them outward in an tastefully understated gesture of a vassal making way for her lord.

  Hugo took me by the arm but I balked.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on here, Hugo? Yesterday you were on my ass for lookin’ at a news story online.”

  “I’m very sorry about that, sir,” Hugo said. “I hope that you’ll accept my apology.”

  “What does Lessing want with me?”

  “Mr. Lessing is gone,” Hugo said ominously.

  “Gone where?”

  “He’s been transferred to DynoBytes in Fresno. I, I thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “You’ve been promoted to Mr. Lessing’s position,” Trina said. “From now on you’re in charge of Shiloh Statistics.”

  I heard the words and understood each and every one of them. But their meaning was something completely different than what the beautiful assistant was trying to communicate. All I could think about was Bron and the insane level of power he exhibited.

  Hugo Velázquez guided me into the mahogany, maroon, and in all other ways well-appointed office. The desk was the size of king-sized bed. Two antique wide-bottomed, red-lacquered Chinese thrones were set before it for visitors and guests. A lush, rose-colored sofa was off to the left crouching like a pink lion before towering bookcases filled with hardback tomes and encased in glass. The window looking down on Broad Street was at least fourteen feet high and twice that in width.

  I heard the door close behind me. Trina had left, sealing us in.

  “Are you fuckin’ with me, Hugo?”

  The poor Honduran didn’t know what to say.

  “Am I gonna sit down here and then Lessing’s gonna come in and have me arrested?”

  “No, sir. No. The word came down yesterday. You are the new vice president in charge of operations.” The look on Hugo’s face was both confused and humble.

  My heart was thumping like an agitated beaver tail. I made it to the modern, egg-shaped chair behind the huge desk and sat down. I was stunned. I could see in his eyes that Hugo was just as dumbfounded.

  Slowly the reality settled in on me. I was the boss, the big man. My whole life I had fantasized about this happening. I’d be powerful and rich and respected. Beautiful women would look at me and smile no matter how fat or ugly I was.

  But I hadn’t done anything to earn this position, this power.

  “Who called to tell you about my promotion?” I asked Hugo.

  “President Mack called Mr. Lessing personally yesterday afternoon after you’d gone home.”

  “Justin Mack?”

  “Yes. He told Mr. Lessing to be on the next plane to San Jose.”

  How had Bron done it? Justin Mack was on all the Fortune 500 lists. Among the biggest companies, the richest men, the greatest innovations. Mack was a throwback to the days of Carnegie, Frick, Morgan, and Ford. As important as Arnold Lessing liked to pretend he was I knew that he had never actually talked to Mack. An article I read in Business Elite magazine had said that the reclusive billionaire only communicated with his staff (which included sixteen vice presidents) through his confidential assistant Lisa Starfield.

  Mack’s assistant was the only connection between Shiloh and InfoMargins, and she communicated mainly by e-mail and only now and again by phone.

  “Mr. Tryman?”

  Mister.

  “Yes, Hugo.”

  “May I go, sir?”

  “Yesterday you threatened to give me five demerits for getting online,” I said, couldn’t help saying it.

  Hugo didn’t answer. He made his hands into useless balls and brought his thumbnails together. Velázquez was older than I. He’d worked for Shiloh since its beginnings more than thirty years before when it was Alhambra Testing. Over
the years it had been part of Acme Academics, Scholastic Partners, the Fremont Board of Testing, and finally Shiloh Statistics under Justin Mack’s InfoMargins. Hugo had absolutely no skills outside of those specially grown in the culture of this testing turned statistical company. He was like a wrangler for some nearly extinct creature; an expert blacksmith in the age of plastic.

  If he lost that job he wouldn’t be able to find decent employment anywhere. He was fifty-three and nearly useless. Even grocery stores and fast-food hamburger joints would think twice before hiring him. He had no technical skills outside of those associated with the systems used to embarrass and humiliate his staff.

  As I had these thoughts I stared at the man I’d finally stood up to just yesterday. It was a source of pride that I talked back before I was elevated above him. I wondered if I asked him to shove a dollar up his ass now would he do it.

  Luckily for him I didn’t want to find out.

  “Go on back to your duties, Hugo. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  He sighed in relief and went out of my new office door, closing it as he went.

  I swiveled around in the private cave made by my ecru-colored egg-shaped chair and looked out on lower Manhattan. The World Trade Center was gone but downtown was still magnificent. On this high floor Lessing had a corner office that allowed views of New Jersey, Staten Island, and Brooklyn. I saw both the Verrazano and the Brooklyn bridges.

  I didn’t know what my salary would be but I was willing to bet it was above the $1,038.86 I got every two weeks for data entry. I should have been happy but all I wanted to do was run. There had to be something wrong with me being there. Either there had been a mistake or worse, I was being set up for some kind of crime that was going to get me into serious trouble.

  I was in no way qualified to be the boss of some big-time data disseminating firm. I was a forty-two-year old data entry clerk who could look forward to the bankruptcy of Social Security; a foot soldier in the class wars of America worn down and ultimately crushed by men like Justin Mack. At that moment I preferred the ignominy of poverty and unemployment to the spotlight of the sun shining down on me through that high window.