Business Case

Tom was a sharply dressed man. Always. You noticed him as soon as he walked into a room, and this particular room was an office on the second floor. “Thanks for going over the financials in my business case”

“Of, no problem Tom, always happy to help”

“You’re a champ Sarah” Sarah tucked a lock of her curly auburn hair behind her ear. In the process dropping a bundled up tissue out of her sleeve. “Ah, sorry. I just can’t get used to the cold here. I feel like I’ve been sick for months.”

“It’s chilly out there alright” The two of them looked out of the small window in Sarah’s office. The white of the snow bent and curved and somehow managed to make lines against the other whiteness that gave impression that there was maybe something under the snow.

“So, does it look ok to you? Do the numbers all seem to stack up?”

“Oh yeah, it’s all fine really. Just maybe a thing or two” Sarah seemed a little uncertain. Tom looked back at her expectantly, waiting for her to speak first.

“I mean, the hurdle rate you’ve used is correct. And the NPV looks good… the payback period should get signed off…” She was looking more uncomfortable.

“What is it Sarah? I’m happy to relook at the numbers if need be. You know, when you go and see the Big Guy, it’s more of a sales pitch than a math lesson. The detail needs to stack up, but he’s more about the whole scheme”

Sarah had seen plenty of sales pitches that relied on inflated sales to make the business case stick. “Yeah, I understand. The numbers are all fine, they’re good in fact.”

“Great” a beaming, charming smile.

Sarah didn’t like to have her name associated with something if she wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. “If there is a weakness… well, it’s that, the whole thing kind of hinges on this one revenue item for it to work. This um… ransom amount. If you receive the full billion then there shouldn’t be any problems with the financial side of things.”

“Look, I know what you’re thinking, and to be honest I thought I’d leant more on the conservative side with that figure. The whole thing with a Death Ray is that well, it’ll cause a whole lot of death, and destruction. The world governments will do anything to stop the Big Guy from using it. In fact, I think he’s going to love this proposal. It’s classic stuff, the sort of thing he made his name on.”

Sarah sighed, at least internally she sighed, she didn’t want to get into an argument. She’d had so many since she’d arrived here at the hidden building in the middle of nowhere, frozen into secrecy. The conversation paused for a moment and they found themselves looking out the window again, each taking a metal deep breath in silence. The contemplative mood was broken suddenly though, when the siren started to sound, and gunfire could be heard from the floor below.  Sarah was panicked, looking around for her coat and hat. Tom, for his part was clam, he just pulled a pair of gloves from his suit pocket and started putting them on. “Don’t you have a coat or something warmer?” Sarah asked him as she gathered up the papers for the business case and stuffed them into a file as they were rushing out into the hallway and towards the stairwell “I’ll be fine. And unless that’s your CV, I wouldn’t bother bringing it. I don’t think there’ll be any cause to show up for work tomorrow.”

Stunned and panicked, Sarah didn’t quite take in what Tom was saying, she clutched the file to her chest, maybe just for warmth as they stepped out into the pale milky cold of the afternoon. This had always been a possibility, and she had a bag packed in her car at all times. It was time to put the plan into action, straight to the airport and onto the first flight going somewhere warm.

Bullets were flying but she hardly noticed as she ran to her car. She glanced back to see where Tom was but he wasn’t behind her. It looked like there was a man, lightly dressed, maybe just in a suit, walking in the snow away from the building. “Oh well” she muttered to herself “I don’t care if you freeze anyway” and she drove away from the chaos and cracking of gunshots. It was halfway to the airport when she looked down to the passenger seat. She still had the business plan. Maybe a billion dollars was optimistic, but a death ray could still be made to work financially.

Fishing

He lives close to the city, right on the edge of the action. He likes it more here, where things are going on, he likes to watch. The others live out deeper, away from all of the people, but it’s become his home here under the marina. It’s an upside down world for a fish, overhead are smooth bulbous forms and a ceiling that he can only peek through. Below him it’s muddy and craggy and changes in a non-uniform way. He doesn’t bother too much with the bottom though, his interest is above.

Near the surface the fish swims along peering at the distorted view of the world outside of the sea. He prefers the still, calm mornings, he can see things more clearly when the surface is so solid and reflective. Occasionally he’ll see something that he takes particular interest in. Breaking the surface briefly his eyes quickly adjust to the light and dryness as he snaps a mental picture that’ll feed his thoughts and imagination for the days to come.

As much as he cherishes these glimpses he tries to keep them to a minimum, they give him away, they let the people know that he’s there, he worries that people will realise he’s watching them. He swims around the edge of the marina, staying close to the path that they walk each morning and night. This particular morning he is overcome by curiosity and breaches for a second time just before the woman he’s following heads back inland. The splash causes her to glance over her shoulder. He can see her searching the water with a squint, these moments cause him great fear. He’s seen what people can do to fish, seen friends hauled up to the other side of the sleek hulls he swims around. But he needs to watch, he needs more information, desperate that one day he’ll figure it out. One day the fish is going to catch himself a person.

Two Jags

It's when walking down the main street, my main street, the street through my 'burb. The place I bump into friends, the place I see those same people every day. Not friends, strangers really, but part of my community none the less. It’s when walking down this street, in this familiar and every day place that I first notice it, or notice the first one, or, whatever. That's when it starts. 

It's an old Jaguar, mid restoration, I don’t know, maybe thirty years old. The panels are all beat up and unpainted. Its exhaust is smokey and the engine sounds like sandpaper. I notice it for how cool it could be. Potentially. But what really made it memorable, that first time, was the driver. He was wearing a tweed jacket, his white beard was overshadowed by the moustache that sat upon it, tidily combed and twirling up at the edges. And in his mouth was a pipe. He looked like a caricature of himself; his appearance was not that of someone you'd forget easily. He certainly didn't look much like a mechanic obsessed with a labour of love. He looked like someone who'd been driving the same car for years. It was a cool car, but it was a tired car, that much was for sure.

Now the thing that gets to me, the part that I can't get my head around is the next day. It was a Sunday morning, and a sunny one at that. I was heading to my usual cafe, a greasy breakfast and strong coffee was beckoning to cure my hangover. I almost didn't notice it. He almost drove past me without me even realising. The bumpers were shining and the paint job was glossy. Through the windows I could see beautiful leather interior. The sound from the exhaust as it sailed past me was almost like music, so smooth and powerful sounding. I would not have even had made a connection with the day before if it wasn't for the driver, pipe smouldering away and facial hair even more elegantly groomed than on Saturday. 

I ran after him when the car stopped at the lights just ahead of me. Smiling through the window I asked the driver where his other car was today, and why two the same? Collector? He looked at me with the slightly puzzled look that people have when strangers accost them at traffic lights. "I don't have any other car son. This is the one I've been driving for nearly half my life now". The lights went green, the car in front of him pulled away, I heard a deep rumble and then his foot lifted from the clutch. The encounter over in a flash, I still can't figure it out.

The Sky

It's a quiet little town. Sure, you might've seen it in the guide books. A tourist town with plenty of people passing through, but underneath the veneer of foot traffic it's just a small town, you can walk around it in an hour or so, which has been Mr Little’s habit in the mornings since he arrived a day or two ago. 

It's a remote small town, with cold air blowing off the snow on the mountains behind it. And hot water bubbling up from under the rock beneath it. The remoteness is probably why he chose it. A perfect place to get away from it all, to shelter from what he knew was about to happen. Not that he knew how it would happen, that's why he chose to go somewhere out of the way, in case things were slow and chaotic and not the quick and final that he suspected.

He wasn't scared. He knew that he had a reputation for being scared but he felt the reputation was not wholly warranted. Sure things scared him from time to time, but no more than anyone else. It was just that they always pointed out when he got scared, especially if it turned out in the end to be unnecessary. They called him chicken, he wasn’t, he was just sensible. And if they thought that made him a chicken then that was their problem, not his. But that was behind him now, he wasn’t scared and he'd come to this little town for some peace and quiet. No one knew him here and no one was going to tease him or call him chicken if he was scared. Which he certainly wasn't. 

It was after a late lunch when he noticed. He was heading back to his hotel and saw a strange sky. Nothing you'd particularly perceive to be a danger, not unless you were constantly scanning sky for a sign that it would all come falling down. He knew now that the time had come. He didn't even bother going back to his room. The hotel sprawled in two wings over flat and tidily kept lawns, he headed straight for the wing that housed the bar. It was a beautiful old building, but while it obviously received a lot of maintenance attention it still couldn't shake the aura of faded glory that it appeared have picked up some time in the last thirty years. 

On the ground floor of the eastern wing of his grand old hotel was a bar and restaurant which faced out towards the gardens. At the end of the room was a large fireplace that put out a comforting heat. He took a large cosy seat close to the fire and ordered himself a drink. The waiter was distracted as he came back with the drink. People were gathering near the window and talking in hushed, panicked tones. The waiter almost tripped as he approached "your champagne Mister Little. Shall I charge it to your room?"

"Yes, thank you" there'd be not need to settle this particular account. 

As the waiter scurried back to the bar he thought he heard Mr Little say something, he was too panicked by what was going on outside to stop and go back. But he's sure he heard him say, "I told you all, this would happen".

Luck

The man in the hat walks through the city and feels a sense of community. You may not know him very well, most people don’t, but he’s there, hat resting on his head and umbrella sitting comfortably in his hand. As he goes about his day to day life he has an impact that is more than could be imagined by the people he comes across, those vague acquaintances who give him a smile or a polite nod then carry on their way. Small but good deeds are his doing. It makes him happy to leave a small trail of joy. That bus that turns up just as you get to the stop? That's him. The chance encounter with a friend you’d been meaning to catch up with? That’s his doing too. He makes small coincidences and fortunate timing seem like they happened for no reason, that’s a part of his skill, the casualness that makes you believe it’s just chance.

He likes to give out his good luck. It makes him feel much better than the other trail he leaves behind. There has to be balance, of course, but he'd prefer if he could deal only with the good. Sometimes he tries to hold the bad in, but that only makes it worse when it does come out, better to let it drip in small but cruel drops. He's the bus that you miss when you're running late, and the car that splashes water on you as it drives past on a cold winters evening. He’s also the responsible for that note you thought you had in your wallet but must have dropped. He doesn’t take the note, no nothing like that. You did drop it, he just helped it slip from your grasp.

He hasn't let the bad out for a while now. It's building, no, built up already and it needs to come out. Luck is like that sometimes, it can be come all at once. The man in the hat feels the bad luck coming and he can also feel the force of balance taking over. There’s a reason you don’t know the man in the hat very well, and trust me, you wouldn’t want to. No single person should have too much luck, and certainly not all at once. If you get the occasional pat on the back from him, well you also get the occasional trip. Most often the good outweighs the bad, luck isn’t a deciding factor, it’s a randomness that keeps life interesting.

But there’s one person who the man in the hat has touched more often than he knows he should. They’re almost what you would call friends, or the closest that the man in the hat has ever had to a friend. They got on right from the beginning, meeting when they were just young. The man with the hat was more helpful than he knows he should have been. The Friend has become successful, very successful by almost any measure. This success of course has been won mostly by his own hard work and skill. He’s amassed a fortune and has been living a full life. But along the way, growing up and through his early career, the Friend had much more help from the man in the hat that he should have done. The man in the hat has kept his distance in the more recent years, happy to watch the Friend from afar and try not to think about what he’s done for him.

Balance always takes over. It’s weight tips the scales slowly but it can’t be stopped. As the man in the hat leaves his café with a wave to the barista he heads towards the intersection at the end of the block. He see’s the Friend approaching in his sports car. The man with the hat, as often is the case, isn’t recognised, the car carries on through the set of lights. Somehow, the driver of the truck coming from his left doesn’t notice the red light. The driver doesn’t even slow down, if anything his foot gets a little heavier on the accelerator. Even at city speeds, the weight of the truck, plus the weight of the six Porsches stacked on top of it, plus the not insubstantial weight of the driver himself, all together they are too much of a force for the Friend and his little car. Physics takes over the situation efficiently, but far from cleanly. All of the Friend’s luck has come back to him at once. The man in the hat walks on, he’s more solemn than usual, he still smiles and waves at people he recognises or those who recognise him, but he doesn’t stop to chat. He doesn’t want them to get to know him, or he them. It’s much safer to keep a distance, friendly but not friends, yes, definitely safer that way.