Chapter 10 - The Board of Investors [Dante, 12/18/2000]

From the far corner of the conference room, a distance that would have taken him several minutes to travel by foot, Dante heard the locking mechanism of the door disengage and the door opened.  He clambered over to the corner of the box where earlier he’d identified a hole tiny enough for him to peer though.  Through this hole and one other, he could basically see the entire conference room.

Two women wearing black blazers entered Conference Room B.  The top few buttons of their matching white button up shirts were undone, showing the etching of their well-defined collarbones.  They both had long, beautiful platinum-blonde hair, braided and tied tastefully to match each other.  The two matched in practically every way, in fact.  They could have been twins.

The Twins were expressionless, aided greatly by their dark aviator sunglasses anchored above their high cheekbones.  Both women wore a discrete white earpiece in their left ear. A spiraling white cord similar to that of a landline phone’s cord dangled down near their pronounced jawlines and disappeared into their waistbands. The wooden door shut behind them and the two mysterious women performed a quick visual scan of the room.  Their gaze seemed to align with and stop briefly on Mrs. Romero before gliding directly over and past Dante and locking onto Katie and Alex.

“Katherine Walker and Alexandria Bexley?” one of the Twins asked.

Dante looked from the mysterious women in sunglasses to Katie and Alex.

“Yes, that’s us.” Katie replied quizzically, and Dante looked back to see the women in sunglasses nod silently and solemnly.

The Twins reached into the inside pocket of their blazers and Dante flinched. Every movie he’d seen where a mysterious, well-dressed professional reaches into their blazer ended with that person pulling out a gun.  The beautiful, silent women didn’t pull guns. Instead, they removed small black devices that looked like security wands and toured the perimeter of the conference room.  They waved the black wands along every surface of the wall and along the floor. The room was completely silent as they conducted their investigation, their devices each emitting a quick bright red blinking light every few seconds.

Their elegant, slender necks craned as they reached up to scan each light fixture in the ceiling, pronounced jawlines below thick, unsmiling lips.  They continued their scan, waiving the wands over each of the cushioned black seats around the table and underneath it.

“Would you mind standing up, ma’am?” One of the mysterious women said to Mrs. Romero, who reluctantly rose from the chair next to Dante.

This was Dante’s first time looking at Mrs. Romero from behind and the sight above him nearly caused him to faint.

The material of her pants was thin and stretched tight over her bulbous ass, but not so tight as to restrict the movement of her enormous, fat cheeks.  The glutes had just enough freedom to momentarily jiggle as the 41-year old maid transitioned all of her weight to her sneaker-clad feet.

“Her ass…is so fucking fat…” he whispered breathlessly to himself, his heart racing within his heaving chest.

The seams of the 41-year old maid’s gray pants screamed in a frequency that only Dante could sympathize with as the platinum-blonde twins waved the scanner over Mrs. Romero. He swallowed nervously as the other Twin approached his box.  Expressionless, she peered down into the box and prepared to scan. The Twin’s left sleeve rode up her wrist just enough for Dante to catch a glimpse.  The Twin had some kind of tattoo on the inside of her left wrist, but he couldn’t catch a long enough look to identify what it was.

This must have been the moment she noticed Dante because her full lips parted, exposing two large bleach-white front teeth with a slight, cute gap.  She removed her sunglasses and Dante saw her eyes.  They were a pale, cerulean blue.  So incredibly beautiful that it made his heart skip a beat.

She was not normal.

The blue-eyed Twin was studying him now, her brow subtly wrinkling as she tried to understand what she was seeing.  Dante covered himself but it felt as if the platinum-blonde woman could see through his hands…

…with those piercing blue eyes.

Curious eyes.

Fascinated eyes.

Without a word, her plush lips sealed once more and she put her sunglasses back on.  The look of girlish wonder was gone from her face, replaced with nothing..the same expressionless void she and her twin had worn prior to noticing him.  Dutifully, the woman scanned Dante and his entire box. As she leaned forward, her blazer opened enough for Dante to see a firearm strapped to her right side.  Satisfied with the scan on Dante’s box, the blue-eyed beauty concluded her mini-investigation just as her twin concluded with Mrs. Romero.

“Thank you, Ma’am.” The Twin said to Mrs. Romero.  “You may sit back down.”

Dante cringed, watching the seat of the 41-year old maid’s thin pants nearly split and explode trying to contain the ever-expanding and splaying ass cheeks that practically spilled over the edges of the unlucky seat beneath her. He heard her grumble under her breath, something about being told what to do.

Trying to think of anything else on the planet other than Mrs. Romero’s planet-sized cheeks, Dante followed the graceful, purposeful steps of the Twins as they approached Katie and Alex. They were much shorter than the Twins.

The blonde with the cerulean-blue eyes scanned Alex and the other Twin scanned the laptop, the documents, and then Katie.  Just like with Mrs. Romero, the twins started at Katie’s and Alex’s feet and moved up their legs, over their hips and up their stomachs.

For the first time since the Twins entered the conference room, the device began erratically chirping once it centered between Katie’s left hip and left breast.

“May I?” The Twin scanning Katie asked, but her tone was not so much a question as it was a demand.

Katie obliged, moving her hands out to her sides, palms facing out, fingers curled, and her chest slightly puffed out.  The platinum-blonde woman carefully pulled back the lapel of Katie’s blazer and reached into the internal pocket.  She rummaged for a moment, and when her hand emerged it was holding a small tape recorder.

The platinum-blonde inspected it and then looked up at Katie, as if she were waiting for an explanation.

“I record all my notes via tape recorder.” Katie said, a hint of defensiveness in her voice.

“Yeah, she wasn’t going to record the conversation or anything. There’s not even a tape in there.” Alex said.

The platinum-blonde responded not to Katie nor Alex.  She simply removed the batteries and set them along with the small tape recorder in the hands of the cerulean blue-eyed twin who then stuffed them quickly into her blazer pocket.  The cerulean-eyed beauty calmly and sternly said, “You’ll get it back after the presentation.”

Katie nodded.

It was strange to see Katie confronted with such an authoritative presence, and as much as Katie was somewhat on Dante’s shitlist at the moment, Dante thought objectively that she handled it best she could.

Better than Alex, anyway.

Dante watched one of the Twins tap on their white earpiece and quietly state “10-24” before turning away and walking toward the doorway they’d entered.

Dante looked back and forth between Mrs. Romero, Katie, and Alex to see what they would do about the Twins.  They had taken position on either side of the only doorway in, each removing some kind of folded paper from their blazer pockets.  They peeled one side away and applied the sticky side against the small glass window of the only doorway in.  Each of the Twins’ papers joined in the center, completely obstructing any view into Conference Room B.

The Twins put the trash into their pockets. They resumed standing tall and quietly with their arms hanging naturally and their hands clasped between their hips. All three women stared on in silence at the static twins, not sure of what to say or do.

Dante spotted Alex and Katie embrace in a hug and whisper something in each other’s ears.  They then giggled quietly…nervously.

Katie said, “All sorts of things can happen when you’re open to new ideas and playing around with things.”

“Is that a quote?”

Katie smiled back at Alex and nodded, “Stephanie Kwolek.”

“Who’s she?” Alex asked.

“She’s the chemist who…oh, they’re here.”

Dante’s head was spinning and even in his confused and alert state, he could tell that he wasn’t the only one waiting anxiously in limbo as a conga line of professionally dressed women entered the conference room.  A total of seven ladies had filed in, most of them not so much as even looking at Katie and Alex as they selected seats at the table.

The second-to-last woman to enter was the only one who looked directly up to the girls at the front.  The woman was older, perhaps in her mid-forties.  She looked similar to Alexandria, with light freckles on her cheeks, green eyes, and raven-black hair.  Instead of a bob cut, this woman opted for a neat bun.

She smiled and discretely waved to the girls.  She carried in her free hand an unmarked, unlabeled white box.  Dante saw Katie smile and Alex return the wave as the older woman sat down right next to the only other empty seat that was at the head of the table.  She set the white box down on the wooden surface and slid it toward the center of the tabletop.  A heavy set blonde, without a doubt the heaviest one at the table, had been eyeing the box since the older raven-haired woman walked in and now she was  leaning in toward the box, temporarily lifting her incredibly wide hips out of her chair.  She flipped the white lid open, reaching in and removing a chocolate cream-filled donut and collapsed back into her seat.  A few of the other women followed suit, delicately grabbing donuts and setting them on napkins in front of them. The heavy set blonde was already halfway through her chocolate cream-filled donut when the door shut and locked quietly.  One more woman had just entered and the door was locked behind her. Dante noticed the Twins that flanked the door had perked up significantly upon this last woman’s entrance.

She was clearly very special. She walked with an other-worldly confidence, instantly and effortlessly owning the room as she took the remaining seat. Dante surmised it was left specifically for her.  She looked…familiar.  Dante thought he might have seen her on TV at some point, but he couldn’t put his finger on where.  She was a much older woman, perhaps the oldest but Dante wasn’t sure.  It was a close call between this woman and the fat one devouring the donut.  But despite her age, the few extra pounds, and the significant gray mixed in with her pixie cut blonde hair, she looked glamorous.

She was the only one that Katie and Alex specifically and immediately greeted. The older woman parked her wide rear into the only open seat remaining, which was the seat at the short-side of thetable farthest from the television. It was the seat at the head of the table.

“Good morning, Senator Langley.” Alexandria and Katie said with a warm smile and head nod.

“Ms. Walker…Ms. Bexley…good morning.” Senator Langley replied, folding her hands neatly on the table.

“Senator Langley, esteemed Board…welcome...” Katie said, clasping her hands and subtly bowing before the group of women.

Continuing where Katie left off, Alexandria mirrored Katie’s pose and spoke, “...and thank you all so much for taking the time out of your busy schedules to hear our presentation.”

“Thank you, dear…” the woman seated next to the senator said.  It was the woman that came in second-to-last and had brought the donuts…the one with raven-hair that matched Alex’s.

“It has been about a year since we last spoke and since then, the Board of Investors has grown by two.”  The woman held up two fingers and wiggled each finger independently.

The older raven-haired woman looked to Sofia, perhaps the only person besides Dante that the woman did not know.

“My name is Joan Bexley. I am the CEO of BexCorps, a biomedicine and genetics group. To my right is Wanda Turner. She is the lead geneticist at BexCorps and she’ll be translating all the engineer lingo that I forgot after I traded in my labcoat for this stylish pantsuit.”

Wanda was an African-American woman with long, black hair in tight beautiful curls.  She wore stylish jeans that hugged her curves and a blue, untucked button up shirt.  She looked to be in her early 40’s.

There was dull but present laughter at Joan’s corporate joke.

“To Wanda’s right is the one and only Brooke Beckett.  She was the natural heiress to a considerable group of cosmetics and womens’ clothing manufacturers, all of which are experiencing a remarkable decade of growth under her leadership.”

Brooke smiled and nodded her head. Dante pegged her to be in her late 30’s and he was convinced that he’d seen the petite woman on a swimsuit cover when he was much younger.  He recognized the Farrah Fawcett-reminiscent hair style and the beauty mark above her upper lip on the left side of her face.

Joan Bexley motioned to the other side of the table.

“Directly across from me is Suzanne Hudson. Don’t let her baby face fool you; this young woman likely has more money and influence than most of the women here.”

Suzanne smiled and let her narrow shoulders slump slightly in an attempt to appear humble. Judging from her adorable, young face Dante guessed she was 20-years old…and yet her gray cardigan and immaculate braids of blonde hair made her appear older and more mature.

“Most, but not all!” A voice of grit and gravel belonging to a nearly stuffed mouth piped up from next to Suzanne.

“Next to Suzanne, you’ll meet the charismatic and charming Joyce Emerson.  Like Suzanne, Joyce is one of the most wealthy entrepreneurs in the country.  Also like Suzanne, the origin of her wealth is a well-guarded secret.”

Joyce had barely finished swallowing the last bite of her chocolate cream-filled donut before her chubby, sugary fingers were searching for her next.  She appeared blonde, although her hair contained more gray than anything else. The woman appeared to be in her 50’s and was morbidly obese, seemingly pushing the chair’s side supports to its limits as well as her tight satin pantsuit.  Dante heard the friction of her haunches rubbing forcefully against those side restraints as she sat back down with her second donut.

“Yes…secret…as it shall remain.” Joyce said, the words muffled through a mouth full of sugary dough and cream.

“Next to our two secretive entrepreneurs, we have the beautiful and influential lobbyist named Darlene Gonzales.”

Darlene waved and flashed a bright, white smile.  She was Puerto Rican and appeared one of the youngest there aside from Suzanne.  Maybe late 30’s?  She pushed her long, wavy black hair off her shoulder and mouthed “good morning” before taking a tiny bite of her donut.

“And last but certainly not least, as you all know her, this is Senator Renee Langley.” Joan said, gesturing toward the head seat where the 52-year old Senator sat.

“Thank you for introducing us, Mrs. Bexley.  Can you help these lovely young ladies out and summarize last year’s meeting? The one that I was unable to attend?” Senator Langley asked.

“Certainly, Senator.” Joan Bexley said with a smile, removing a small notepad from her breast pocket. She set upon her nose a pair of horn-rimmed black glasses and cleared her throat.

“On July 12, 1999, Ms. Walker and Ms. Bexley presented to us their revolutionary reduction technology: a hand-operated genomic indexing and manipulation device called ‘The Sizer’.  At the time of last year’s meeting, The Sizer was capable of 50% Reduction of Mass on inorganic targets…with a failure rate of roughly ‘3 in 5’…”

Joan’s green eyes rose up from the paper and peered over the drooping glasses on her short nose.

“...and I’m certain there have been vast improvements which we’ll hear about shortly.”

Alexandria nodded her head silently and excitedly.

Joan resumed referencing her notepad. “I have some other notes and sketched out schematics here from Wanda documenting some of the more technical details such as power consumption, recharge rates, protein contact mapping…”

As she spoke, Joan’s eyes fell on Joyce Emerson, who was leaning forward from her seat, reaching for her third donut.

Joan abruptly flipped her tiny notebook shut and returned it and her horn-rimmed glasses to her breast pocket.  “...and a lot of boring scientific info some of you may not be interested in.”

She continued. “The board approved Ms. Walker and Ms. Bexley’s humble request of $50,000 USD with three objectives in mind.  Would you girls like to take it from here?”

“Happily. Thanks Mrs. Bexley.” Katie said cheerfully, pressing the spacebar on her keyboard, starting up the Powerpoint presentation as Joan Bexley took a seat.

“Picking up where Mrs. Bexley left off, I’ll take us right to the slide of the 1999 goals.”

Katie skipped forward a few slides, stopping on a list, each with a bright pink stamped check mark:

Goal 1: Increase ROM (Reduction of Mass) percentages of The Sizer to 85% or greater.

Goal 2: Decrease RFE’s (Reduction Failure Events) from 60% to at least 40%.

Goal 3: Upgrade Sizer reduction technology for reduction of organic matter.

Goal 4: Enlist volunteers for next steps.

“We are proud to report that not only have we met each of these goals, but have exceeded expectations.  For example, we were able to increase The Sizer’s ROM to an impressive 98.7%, meaning that The Sizer is now capable of reliably reducing its target to a minimum of 2.3% of its original size…”

The slide on screen showed lines of snipped computer code paired with long, handwritten calculations.  There were several organic molecule structures drawn out as well, and all of it was too much for Dante to try and process at that moment.

He looked out at the Board of Investors.  Joyce took another huge bite of her fourth donut and turned her wide, confused eyes away from the presentation to whisper something in Suzanne’s ear. The two chuckled quietly.

The BexCorps geneticist named Wanda was urgently scribbling the contents of the slide into her notebook like an eager student.  Dante saw her thick dark lips mouth the words “incredible”.

The remaining women all had varied degrees of engagement with the dry content, but they all appeared excited to get to the good stuff. Katie continued.

“In addition to improving just how small The Sizer could reduce its target, we also improved its accuracy.  Originally, 3 in 5 reduction events…or 60%... resulted in failure.  Our calculations indicate the success rates are now over 95%.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dante spotted a dark-skinned hand raising up.

“Yes, Dr. Turner?” Katie said.

“Yes. Sorry to interrupt…” Wanda said, “...but did these improvements negatively affect the non-ideal events?”

Katie replied quickly, “Great question.  The short answer is ‘yes’.  The longer answer: In laywoman’s terms, we have maximized The Sizer’s accuracy.  Dr. Turner has asked the very sensible question of what happens when The Sizer ‘misses’.” Katie said, doing air quotes. She continued.

“Well…back when The Sizer’s failure events were around 60%, the target could in some cases spontaneously reduce to around half the target size.”

“So…” Alex cut in, “if we wanted to reduce a 12-inch ruler to half its size, it would work perfectly 2 out of 5 times.  The other 3 times were what we call RFE’s, or Reduction Failure Events. During RFE’s, the 12-inch ruler could be reduced to as small as 3 inches, 200% smaller than the target reduction size.  That, or reduction wouldn’t work at all.”

“Well put, Alex.  Expanding on that analogy, if we were to perform the same reduction on that ruler today, The Sizer would successfully reduce that 12-inch ruler to 6 inches 95% of the time.  This incredible improvement in reduction accuracy comes at a cost, unfortunately, which is blatantly obvious in the math and I believe that is exactly what you were alluding to, Dr. Turner.” Katie says with a smile, and Wanda returned the smile with a nod.

Katie continued. “With the improvements, RFE’s would occur only 5% of the time.  One such failure outcome would still be no reduction at all, which is not all that consequential.  The more problematic outcome, or at least its intensity, is directly proportional to the increase in reduction accuracy.”

Alex interjected, “To put it simply, since Reduction Failure Events are so much more infrequent, the negative effects of said failures are much more significant when they actually do happen.”

“Exactly.” Katie said, “Last year, an RFE on the ruler could have resulted in the 12-inch ruler’s new size ranging from 3-inches to 9-inches.  Today, that same ruler under reduction failure could in theory reduce that ruler to 1/16th of an inch, which comes out to 9,600% smaller than the target reduction size.”

“And this applies to organic materials as well?” Senator Langley asked curiously.

“We suspect the percentage is actually much higher than 9,600% for organic materials, but we are still running the numbers on that.” Alex responded.

Katie and Alex’s feminine, cheerful voices continued but they became fuzzy and incoherent to poor Dante. He felt a growing rage which created in him a nausea; he felt like he was going to vomit.  Katie and Alex had set a target reduction size for Dante of a quarter of an inch.  If he understood Katie correctly just now, there was a 5% chance that he would have continued shrinking down 96 times smaller than that!

These girls seriously had him stand on that plush carpet in their apartment, fully understanding that there was a small but non-zero chance that he could spontaneously shrink down to 1/384th of an inch!  That would be barely 66 micrometers! No…he was organic matter so it could have been even smaller!

‘I would have been fucking microscopic!’ Dante thought angrily.  He couldn’t believe that they’d so comfortably rolled the dice with his life!  There was no way they would have been able to recover him at that size. And they did it not once, but twice!!

Either of those two times, he could have shot like a shooting star into the girls’ plush gray carpet, never to be seen or recovered again, condemned to spend the rest of his life buried in the carpet fibers of these two intelligent, selfish girls.

For a few moments in the hotel room this morning, when he found himself wedged between Alexandria’s toes, he was afraid that she might never notice him…of course that was a silly thought.  He was small, but toes are sensitive.  If she didn’t see him right then and there like she did, then she would have definitely noticed him eventually.  If he were microscopic in those nylons…that would basically be where he’d spend the rest of his life.  Living amongst these pretty, intelligent, selfish, destructive girls…but for all intents and purposes he would be alone.  An equal to no one..not even the toes he would struggle to remain between lest he be pulverized by a planetary sole.  He was furious. He was seething.

Senator Langley raised a hand, interrupting the girls as they spoke about the various technical hurdles associated with upgrading The Sizer to work on organic matter.

“Girls…I’m sorry to interrupt.  I am seriously impressed with your dedication and prowess…and I do not say that lightly.”

Senator Langley looked to Joan Bexley and Wanda Turner.  “Ladies, as the resident experts here, are you satisfied with Ms. Walker and Ms. Bexley’s scientific explanations of progress?”

Joan looked toward Wanda who enthusiastically nodded her head.  A big smile grew on Joan’s face as she said, “Indeed, we are.”

“Wonderful.” Senator Langley said, returning her gaze to Katie and Alex.  “We have full confidence that you’ve dotted all your i’s and crossed all your t’s.  Would you mind moving onto what I’m told is the demonstration portion of this presentation?”

Dante felt his heart leap into his throat.

~