Microstory 401: Floor 42 (Part 1)

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Alpha, the Executive President of Analion Solutions stood uncomfortably close to the caution tape. His wife waited patiently behind him for a response but received none. He was not ready to give up his position within the organization, and he sure as hell wasn’t ready to dismantle it entirely. So many people’s lives relied on the continuing success of the company. He couldn’t let them go hungry because of this one mistake. The strange part about it was that no one seemed to know exactly what went wrong. With other so-called “scandals” of this nature, they always came out with the truth that someone buried a damning memo, or shredded a report from quality assurance, or did something. But honest to God, Alpha never heard anything about this. As far as he was concerned, there was no way to prevent what happened. The real tragedy was that the incident called into question everything the company ever did. Every good thing they made was now under heavy scrutiny. They just built this magnificent new tower using their own workforce, and now the government was telling them that they couldn’t stay here? What was that? How did they have the right? No one was forcing the employees to be here, if they wanted to go home, then fine. No, that wasn’t the right way to look at it. Alpha needed to drain himself of emotions and look at the problem analytically. That was his specialty. That was how he was able to build his empire in the first place. Yes, every problem had that one bad egg that needed to be teased out. Was it a research and development mistake? Was it a finance error? Hell, Alpha was even smart enough to see whether the food they chose in the cafeteria could be the root of the problem. It was time to meditate, and to prove he wasn’t scared of his own creation, he was going to do it on top of the atrium window they claimed was “unsafe”. He asked his wife to leave so that he could be alone. After the elevator doors closed, he climbed over the tape and sat down with his eyes closed. And then he began to fall.