Intermission the first

In which a man waits.

Goruiren Corporate Offices

In the heart of London there is a building shaped like an egg. It shrieks into the traditionally grayish sky for one-hundred-thirty floors until it completes itself along an oblong crescendo. It looms across all the streets and buildings nearby. The outside is an organized flurry of diamond-shaped support beams and darkened windows, collectively bulging at the center, an almost aphonic message, announcing to the world around to pray and pay attention, or at the very least resemble in nature such a structure as itself. In the lamp-lit, London night, like the one in which we find ourselves, where the cars are silent save for a sporadic, rare, and foreign cab, the huge building’s  lights are brightened with a purpose. They generate a pattern, dancing high and circling about, leading the gaze of a midnight gawker up and up, until it crests the top, finding there four red signal beacons, like massive frightful eyes, which keep watch over their city - the building’s city - and announces themselves as warnings to low-flying planes - from their perspective, creatures foolish enough to enter the august proximity. 

This is the epicenter of a great financial mass, its gravity pulling and intruding upon nations and their industries. It is the headquarters of the Goruiren company, the most efficiently and cleverly run business in the world. No one is certain how it came to prominence. They do know who rose with it. 

Executives, managers, and employees were known leaders in their industries. They succeeded everywhere - even where others had failed - tactically crushing their competition with ease and generating new sources of cash and influence faster than their taxation management departments could keep up. 

Like the building that housed its senior-most management, the company opened like a fist behind the world and closed in around it, slowly claiming it. Yet at night, from their offices in Beijing to London, the multinational was as quiet and somnambulant as an obsidian monolith. 

The building leads the gawker’s eyes up, the Goruiren stock prices climb, the management gets promoted, the televised advertisements all feature their logo, the sky, but this is all a clever instrument, a mere phantasmagorical slight-of-hand on the part of Goruiren’s owners. This is because the real goals and aims of the company’s leaders lie down beneath the sky, beneath the surface of the world, where the darkest intentions could harvest and feed while everyone stared, mesmerized by the show put on above. 

In through the doors of Goruiren’s headquarters, past the three burly guards at each entrance, a line of elevators sits on the ground floor. There are five in total, but a strange, empty spot exists for a sixth, as if it had been intended to be put in and merely forgotten by the builders. 

If one passed those guards and the security check points that followed and got to the elevators, one would present their identification card to a scanner, embedded with the personnel name, function, social security number, eye color, finger prints - every form of verification that the small rectangle of plastic could have stored within it. Then they would enter the elevator and announce their destination. 

Kimberly Mill, CFO, would say “Global Financial Administration” each morning. Joseph Connely says “Mail Room.” Fredrick Domingez says “Department of Accounting.” The elevator operators, for there was always at least one working, would listen to the requests and verify that the individual had business where they claimed and direct the elevator to drop them off in the appropriate place. There is only a handful of people that don’t need a card, and they are those who are going to the top floor, where the events of this night begin as they do every night, but will end somewhat differently than the status quo.

It is at his office in the top floor that the company’s CEO stands, having kissed all four of his secretaries good night, though the last one somewhat more aggressively than the others. He looks out his window over London and waits for his watch to tell him that it is 12:15 a.m. It is then, and only then, that he can take the sixth elevator - whose entrance only exists above ground on his floor - down to The True Department. Under his direction, it is poised and geared to destroy the empire of the once and future king, Arthur Pendragon. He will do this by any means necessary, and, should he fail, he will lose his life. 

“The kingdom of Mordred must prevail,” he whispered under his breath, patting and straightening his thirty-six thousand-dollar, custom italian suit. After checking his watch, he began heading toward the elevator. It was time. 

Reviews

[allie_arrowz]

i like the detail.

[Coyote Poetry]

I like the description of people and the location. Gave purpose to the chapter. I felt like I was on the road trip with the people in the story. A strong ending to a excellent chapter.
Coyote