Six Figure Man looked at me as though I was Kolchak: The Night Stalker trying to convince him of the existence of vampires. “Standards?” His voice betrayed alarm. “Whose standards? Did you write these standards? Are they your standards?”

What I had mentioned was web standards. The blood drained from my face, and I suddenly felt very cold.

A friend who has been an unbelievably great help professionally at a time when I needed it suggested that I author a novel about “corporate culture, filled with your dry and wry wit and spot-on observations,” but this subject is better suited as a script treatment for Walker, Texas Ranger:

WALKER:
You’ve caused hundreds of good people to lose their jobs, Warrington. And it was all for nothing but to satisfy your own greed.

WARRINGTON:
(Unemotionally) I’m sorry you feel that way, Ranger. But the law is on my side.

WALKER:
Not any more. It’s over, Warrington. You’re under arrest for fraud.

WARRINGTON:
I resist your logic, and I also resist arrest.

(WARRINGTON makes a clumsy move for his pistol, only to receive a rapid series of triple-spin kicks to the head and midsection, until he collapses in slow motion.)

TODD, a young boy, breaks free from the crowd that has gathered.

TODD:
Yaaaay! I love America, Ranger Walker!

Tag scene: CD Parker evaluates my vegetarian chili, which he reluctantly praises as “Fine, boy, that’s just… fine.”

“Shut the door. I want to tell you about my ‘evil masterplan’.”

He snickered at his own words. He was way more Muttley than Dastardly, clearly, even in physical presence. His head, in a perpetual slump, even bobbled each time he reacted. “Laughing” was too generous a description; whatever sense of humour he possessed was frozen in development from when he was 7 years old. It was snickering, and it was invariably either his own Midwest snobbery for anything generated outside of his parents’ house or it was a pretext for an intrusion. Either way, it made David’s stomach uneasy. The other shoe seldom dropped on anyone else.

Muttley continued. David sitting down was barely a requirement for him to begin animatedly describing the “masterplan”. The simile was stupidly accurate, since like the cartoons it was ripped from, his masterplans always blew up in his own face. An office that once boasted hundreds was now down to a skeletal crew on a sinking ship. “I’ve decided to have you train everyone in the department in what you know. That way, you’ll be covered and have less work.”

David couldn’t decide whether Muttley was genuinely oblivious to the flimsiness of his position or if he was simply an exceptionally poor liar in spite of a lifetime’s practice. A teacher making an example of a gum-chewing student by demanding, “do you have enough to share with the entire class?” is not an experience that would ever justify singling an individual out for hard-earned advantage and unique experiences with the same demand. Muttley’s position was that everyone in his staff deserved to be the same but he was incapable of realizing and taking the necessary steps. Of course, he considered his own bloated salary to be an entitlement.

After a slight pause to consider this and with the slightest hint of resignation, he forwarded, “So, you want me to become the department trainer in addition to my present responsibilities?” He knew his move was played with wasted strategy, the game was always rigged. True quality is seldom subject to numbers; numbers can easily be fake.

Muttley didn’t know how to react. Genuine puzzlement glazed over his face. He quickly decided David was less smart and needed him to explain his idea patiently. “No, we’re not asking you to move you to another position or take on any formal responsibilities. You have too many responsibilities. That’s why we want you to take on this extra effort, so that when it’s done, you’ll have less to do.” Which was eminently true, thought David. By having “trained” everyone, the incentive to keep me employed would evaporate and I would have significantly “less to do.” At least the “evil” part was accurate.

Because sometimes futile gestures are the most artistic, David drew another breath. “Would it not be easier to simply pay me more for what I do, since you’ve already acknowledged I have qualifications, skills and performance above and beyond the standard requirement for this position?”

Muttley stared blankly for a moment as David waited for the logic to slide off as it invariably did.

Then, he snickered.

The car came to a stop, swerving past the gravel onto the grassy side of the path. As the two passengers removed themselves from the vehicle, the wind, though intermittent, sliced through layers of clothing. The reporter retired his Blackberry with a casual flick, and what little light remained cast broken images clinging to life with barely a token effort.

“I’ll take you to him,” she said impassively.

As they walked across the field, Andrea stopped momentarily at a headstone that read “In Loving Memory, Faithfull Unto Death, 1973-2010”. In happier days, she would have bemoaned the spelling error and the careless absence of appropriate punctuation. Today, she simply reacted with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, then she moved on briskly, taking no notice of the multitude of other stones by now known to her by an increasingly cold heart.

The reporter, on the other hand, naturally attempted to capture the names as they progressed, but the lack of light thwarted this desire. One tombstone looked impossibly modern, white and gleaming—Matt somebody? An adjacent one resembled The Thinker and belonged to an Adam. There were a multitude of angels and cherubs around an unusually pretty headstone, but in spite of the reporter’s steady gaze this time, he couldn’t see a name. It wasn’t there; the letters were missing. Maybe they were lost in the mail, or maybe someone just didn’t care enough to make the effort in the first place. Perhaps it should not have been such a surprise, years of loyalty so coldly brushed aside, letters that may have made the difference. Across the field, the reporter spied a segregated section of tombstones that bore the evidence of having been garishly decorated, but time and weather stripped away the artifice until only tin-coloured scraps clung in a desperate attempt to justify how special they thought they were. After their passing no one shared the enthusiasm for pinning medals. Now they were just a series of unkempt gravestones, like so many others.

Andrea stopped wordlessly at the sight of a man stood coldly at the base of an open grave at the end of the row. Wet dirt slid from the blade of his shovel as he acknowledged their presence.

His head cocked and the brim of his hat seemed to shift of its own will. The reporter shuddered as the man spoke.

“Always room,” said Rodney, “for one more.”

I’m pledging my time to you
Hopin’ you’ll come through, too