Machine Man (serial)

The beautiful girl led Cassandra Cautery and me to what I can only call a sitting room. I say this as someone who is not totally sure what a sitting room is. I mean something that looked stolen from an 18th Century Victorian mansion: heavy drapes, busy wallpaper, and chairs with curving, detailed legs. Turned, I think is the word. I felt elegant just being here.

“You know who we’re meeting,” said Cassandra Cautery, once the girl had gently closed the door on us. This was not posed as a question, although I didn’t know the answer. “The Manager.”

“The manager?”

“The Manager.”

“Which manager?”

“The Manager,” she said. “The Manager. You know. The Manager.”

“That’s his title?”

“Of course not.” She began pacing around the chairs. “His title is Chief Executive Officer. But everyone calls him the Manager. Because that’s what he does. He manages. You know when Congress wanted to shut us down after the Boston VL38s turned out to be not so non-lethal? Of course you don’t. Because he managed it.”

As a general rule, I did not pay attention to company communications. They only made me aware of inconvenient obligations. But now Cassandra Cautery mentioned it, The Manager did sound familiar. I think his name had come up in a few of Jason’s lurid stories, the ones he told to impress other lab assistants. They ended like: and nobody ever saw them again. “The Manager.”

“Exactly.” She slipped one thumbnail into her mouth and began gnawing at it. “The Manager.”

85.