Welcome to Percotran -Part VI

By Richard Davidson

The first thing a person would notice about Alexander is that he’s very polite. Never the one to cause anybody trouble, Alexander was about as nice a guest as you could ever hope to have. He’d been raised that way, of course, and was always prepared to dutifully suffer whatever it took to survive; careful not to call too much attention to himself.

That’s really what got him into this predicament in the first place, he was quietly musing, as he watched Captain Pearson and his crew get stinking drunk. Alexander was a little too full from dinner to imbibe much, so he was doing what he usually did at parties; sitting quietly and paying close attention to what other people did, which was actually a pretty sound idea at this particular melee.

He was hopelessly drawn to the tall Warrior Woman he’d been sitting next to earlier, and he cursed that attraction, for it felt like folly to a beaten down Corporate Lackey like Alexander. I mean, get real. That Snakehead guy tried “accidentally” brushing up against her earlier for a cheap thrill, and now he was dead.

She was leaned over, talking to the First Mate, and without even letting her gaze leave his, thrust her mighty sword backwards in a lightning quick arch that gave the impression she had never moved, and yet the head came down, crashing to the floor with a vague thud, which was quickly absorbed by the merriment all around.

Alexander would’ve never tried such a pathetic ruse to begin with, of course. He was one man who certainly didn’t take women for granted, and on the rare occasion he’d been out on the town with an actual woman, there had been rave reviews for weeks, even years to come about what a wonderful time she’d had.

He went to only the nicest restaurants; got tickets to first rate shows; dressed in tailor-made clothes; and was witty and charming for the entire evening, and you could always count on it. For a guy who had his head buried in his work most of the time, Alexander was a real smoothie.

And it was genuine, too. Alexander had a real serious desire for a mature relationship, and hot sex with a dangerous psychopath just didn’t seem to be much of a step towards that, no matter how he looked at it.

What Alexander didn’t know, of course, was that she belonged to a race of women with extremely powerful pheromones, that had been specially bred for a thousand years, by a people known as the Waltechians, who had fled their homeland when Percotran bought out their Mother Company.

The level of training Kasheeba (that was her name) had endured by the age of six would have killed Alexander at the peak of his life. The Waltechians had to have alot of babies, because only one in eight would survive to adolescence, and even then would only have about a 12% chance of making it to adulthood.

At least that’s what the Sociology Professors at Percotran University were teaching these days, but even they would’ve been forced to admit they hadn’t had contact with Waltecha for hundreds of years.

The man with the lens for an eye sidled up to Alexander.

“It’s too bad ya have ta die tonight, boy, you’re gonna miss a great raid.”

He slapped Alexander hard on the back and laughed.

“You’re just going in the front entrance, with another party going in the side?” Alexander asked.

“What’s ‘at?” Lensman snorted, “aye, that’s right.”

“Why don’t you surround the place?” Alexander asked what he thought a legitimate question.

The man with the lens in place of his eye started laughing so hard that the floor was shaking.

“D’ya hear that, lads?” he screamed out, drool hanging from his chin.

“The Boy wants ta know why we don’t surround Percotran!”

The entire room erupted in raucous laughter, and several of the men gathered Alexander up onto their shoulders, and began passing him around. Everything became a blur as the spun him this way and that, and Alexander could feel that Prime Rib fighting it’s way back up, which would really be a shame too, because it was the best meal he’d had in ages.

Alexander felt sudden, dire pain in his right shoulder, as a three inch knife with a pearl handle was buried there by one of the more exuberant partygoers.

“The prey is marked,” Alexander heard an unintelligent voice jabber, “may the hunt begin!”

Alexander was already far from whoever had stabbed him, jolting violently back and forth from person to person when suddenly,

“STOP!” raged from the lungs of Captain Pearson, and damn if everybody in the room didn’t do just that.

“You all sicken me!” he raged.

“This man is to be put to death tonight, and is facing it with courage and dignity. How DARE you make a mockery of the IPC, and the rituals of the Ancients.”

Two of the Captain’s Honor Guard lay Alexander shivering on a velvet couch, covering him as a Medtech tended to his shoulder.

“You will SEE why no one surrounds Percotran,” the Captain said to Alexander. He pulled a map of the world down from the ceiling, and Alexander couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The world had three continents. What used to be Africa was now Cellulex Incorporated. What used to be Europe and Asia was now Bogotron Affiliated. And what had in Alexander’s time been North and South America was Percotran International. All of the continents were much smaller than they had been, and there was no Antarctica or Australia.

The Pacific Ocean, which was now called Oceana, covered over half the world.

“This is the world of IPC,” the Captain said with love, waving his hand over the massive blue of Oceana.

“It is truly sad that an Employee of the most powerful corporation in the world doesn’t even know what the world looks like.”

“I’m not from this world,” Alexander said with determination.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” laughed the Captain, “we’ve already scanned you quite thoroughly. You’re definitely human.”

“That’s not what I mean. I come from another time. I worked for Percolex, back before the Merger.”

“You have already tried this story,” the Captain bellowed. “Why do you persist with such nonsense?”

“It’s true,” Alexander repeated. “I was an employee of a company called Percolex. I lived in a country called the United States of America, and there were thousands of different companies all over the world. And NONE of them were countries.”

“And did these companies have shareholders?” asked the Captain, throwing his head back in laughter once again.”

“Of course they did,” said Alexander. “Some of the employees were even shareholders.”

Now the entire room broke up laughing, and stomping, and breaking things in a cacophony of glee.

“ENOUGH!” came a voice from the far side of the room.

It was Kasheeba.

She walked forcefully up to Alexander, and drew close, staring deeply into his eyes.

“If you lie to me, I will kill you.” she said, her threat sounding like music in Alexander’s dazed mind.

Breathlessly, Alexander told her everything he could think of about himself, his life, his view of the world; basically the same sort of things he would’ve talked about if the two of them were out on a date.

“You are a very strange man,” she informed him. “You talk of things I do not understand.”

The room was completely silent, except for the sound of her boots clicking on the floor as she paced before him.

“I believe,” she said after a long pause, “that there is some truth to what this man says.”

Captain Pearson looked dumbfounded.

“I’m not saying that his story is true; only that he seems to believe much of what he says, and of one thing I am completely certain.”

Alexander couldn’t wait to hear what that one thing was.

“This man is not an employee of Percotran International.”

Alexander felt a bit relieved, if only for a moment.

“Then he is a spy!” a voice screamed from somewhere out in the room. Alexander couldn’t see where.

The room was abuzz with conversation again, with quite a few shouted suggestions for the best way to kill Alexander coming through clearly enough, and then Kasheeba quietened them down once more.

“For a spy to get as far into Percotran as he was is truly an impressive feat,” she announced.

“It is a shame we cannot use a man such as this, but I fear we could not trust him.”

Captain Pearson took advantage of the pause.

“We will give him the most honorable of all deaths.”

“I thought I wouldn’t even see it coming,” Alexander complained, his hands tied behind his back as he was marched at swordpoint onto a wooden plank hanging over the bough of the most enormous ship he’d ever seen. The ocean was hundreds of feet below. Alexander wasn’t the least bit worried about sharks, as he was quite certain he wouldn’t even survive the fall.

“Do you have any last words?” Captain Pearson asked, holding out his arm to prevent the man with the sword from forcing Alexander out any farther.

“Oh please, MAY I?” Alexander said in his most sarcastic voice. He didn’t go there very often, but didn’t see what he had to lose.

“I would just like to thank you all for being idiotic fools who aren’t going to live much longer than me, all to get your hands on a small stockholder who won’t buy you the bargaining power of a flea.” Alexander didn’t have time for searching for analogies, so that would have to do.

“Most of you will die in the bloody hand to hand combat you relish so much, and good riddance to you, too, by the way; and those of you who make it into Percotran’s Boardroom will be vaporized by whatever new device their Research Department has come up with to vaporize people.”

“And in those few seconds before you die, there’s an endless possibility of things you could think about. Any one of them is available, from a brief recap of your life to sexual fantasies, to a reflection upon those you have loved.”

Alexander took a deep breath.

“But what I want you all to think about, and really THINK about, is the hilarious notion that you had in your possession an employee of Percolex, who had stock in not only that company but Ecotron as well, stock that wasn’t diluted by the Merger.”

And with that, Alexander jumped.

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