current political crisis. And Carlson, who had calmly expected the troublesome Whiting to be either discredited or dead by her second week in office, was now demanding answers of the man that was supposed to have overseen her removal.
'I thought that you knew how to play the game for keeps,' he had told Smith in his icy, unforgiving voice. 'I thought you knew what measures needed to be utilized to protect corporate interests over on that flying dust ball they call a planet. Maybe entrusting you with the day-to-day operations of our most important holdings was a mistake. Please report back to me
In the world of corporate politics, where everything was said in doublespeak and innuendo, those were harsh, scathing words indeed. Smith knew that he was within bare inches of losing everything he had worked for over the years. All of the grappling and struggling and back-stabbing that he had done to rise to the position he now held, all of it would be for nothing if the Laura Whiting situation was not brought under control one way or the other. What had started out as an annoyance had quickly become the worst crisis of his entire career.
He sighed and opened up his desk drawer, pulling out a sterling silver box that was about the size of a charging battery for a hand-held laser. Inside was an airtight compartment stuffed with clipped marijuana buds harvested from the Agricorp greenhouses. The buds were of course the very finest available, the kind that were only sold in country club bars and exclusive restaurants for more than eighty dollars per hit. Smith received them for free of course. It was one of the perks of his job. In a felt compartment next to the buds was a small pipe that had been carved from genuine ivory, one of the most expensive substances in the solar system. He loaded the pipe up with a healthy sized pinch and ignited it, drawing deeply. He had been smoking a lot of marijuana lately, just to take edge off.
After exhaling and letting the THC work its way to his tired brain, he put his paraphernalia away and put the box back in his drawer. He then looked at his Internet terminal, which was in stand-by mode, the Agricorp logo the only thing showing. 'Computer,' he said, 'communications software.'
'Communications software up,' the computer answered as the screen changed.
'Addressee is Steve Carlson, CEO.' He took another deep breath and consulted some handwritten notes he had composed. 'Begin recording.'
The camera light on his terminal blinked on and he looked at the screen, his eyes making solid contact with it, his face showing the pleasant, subservient expression he used when talking to those higher on the ladder than himself. He spent a few moments spouting pleasantries, asking about Carlson's wife, children, and mistress just as if this were a normal business communiqué. Once that was accomplished he turned to the meat of the matter.
'I understand completely your concern that the Laura Whiting matter is still going on despite the passage of twelve weeks since her inauguration,' he said. 'I also understand the fact that you, as the head of the corporation, would question my abilities as CEO of Martian operations for failing to deal with it. I have no doubt that were our positions reversed, I would be asking the same questions of you and would expect detailed answers. I have always been a loyal manager for this corporation and I must tell you that I have done everything within my power here to dislodge Whiting from high office by one means or another. I have pulled out all of the stops and somehow she has managed to think ahead of us at every step of the way. Whiting is not a typical greenie, Steve, not in the least. Sometimes I'm forced to wonder if she's really a greenie at all. Allow me to summarize the measures we've attempted so far and how she has managed to counter them.
'The impeachment attempt. This was our first attempt to remove her from office and, though it had never been used before, it was the pre-planned method for dealing with such a gross abuse of trust on the part of a politician. The set-up for it was executed perfectly and without anything in the way of opposition from competing corporations. After all, Whiting was not just spouting damaging statements towards Agricorp, but towards all corporations and in fact our very way of life. Every Earth-based corporation on this planet rallied their lobbyists within hours of her inauguration speech and began putting pressure on the members of the legislature that they sponsored. Between us we owned every last one of the sixty-two members of this body and she should have been impeached unanimously within a week of taking her oath.
'Well, you already know how that one worked out. Whiting is a very charismatic speaker and she was somehow able to convince the common greenies to put enough pressure on their elected representatives to derail this process before it was even started. What was worse was the fact that she was able to pervert eleven of the representatives over to her point of view before a vote was even called for.
'And I'm afraid that this perversion of the representatives did not end there. As of this morning here in Eden, a grand total of twenty-nine planetary representatives, twelve of whom had been primarily sponsored by Agricorp, have renounced their previous affiliations and announced support for Whiting and her goals. These representatives will no longer take calls from lobbyists of any kind and will not respond to requests for communications from corporate heads. The Speaker of the Legislature is thankfully still in support of the corporations and she is still one of our employees as it were, but even she has been muted to a certain degree by the happenings here on this planet. For all of her power she is still nothing more than an elected representative that is vulnerable to the recall vote from her constituents. This has forced her to walk a very fine line in regards to which laws she votes upon and what other actions she takes. If she is perceived as being too biased towards us or any other corporation, we may very well lose her to a mass recall vote.
'That brings me to the second way we attempted to remove Whiting from office, namely the media blitz of negative publicity. As you are aware this is the most common and most effective way that we have of dealing with a rogue politician and it's something that has worked well since long before the colonization of this miserable planet. In this case I'm afraid that it is failing. Again, this is not due to any lack of participation on the part of other corporations. On the contrary, each one of the big three media conglomerates have been outdoing themselves in this effort. You receive the feeds back on Earth so I'm sure you know that you can hardly turn on a terminal to one of the big three channels or read one of their publications without finding something negative about Whiting. They've done stories about her past ties with militia groups, they've done stories about her business dealings and skewed votes as a representative, they've done stories hinting that she is a lesbian and a child molester. I'm sure that the people of Earth, if they've been watching this, are completely appalled by Whiting and are probably demanding her immediate removal. But here on Mars we're not dealing with rational people. These greenies watch the media shows but instead of demanding her removal or her indictment, they mock them. They regard them as comedy entertainment. Over the past seven weeks it has developed into something of a ritual that they gather in large groups, smoke marijuana and watch the latest show on Whiting so they can laugh at it. They have discussions in the Internet bulletin boards about how ridiculous the accusations were. The more inflammatory the charges brought are, the more amusing they seem to find it. Even Whiting herself has been poking fun at these shows in those damn bi-weekly addresses that she gives on MarsGroup. I'm afraid that we will not be able to count on the media blitz being any sort of deterrent to her behavior or any sort of vehicle for her removal.
'And then there are some of the other options that we've discussed in the past, namely those involving the Federal Law Enforcement Bureau, which as I'm sure you're aware has always been a great friend to all things corporate. I've been in constant contact with Corban Hayes, the director of the Martian FLEB offices here on Mars, ever since this crisis began. My instinct as a manager is to try to blame this fiasco on him and his agents, first for clearing Whiting for high office in the first place and then for failing to get her out once her true colors became known. That is my instinct but in this case I simply cannot assign any blame to him. As early as the third day of this crisis Hayes and his agents began a thorough investigation into Whiting on corruption and bribery charges. After all, she admitted during her inaugural address and in several subsequent speeches that she took unreported money from various corporations including Agricorp. You'll recall that I explained the plan that the two of us concocted to place blame on Sandy Callahan and several of her middle-management team for giving those bribes. While this would have cost us Callahan and a few others, and while it would have cast a slight pall upon our public relations, it should have resulted in Whiting's indictment and removal from office. Hayes was able to secure a search warrant for Whiting's financial records and bank accounts and everything seemed to be going well and then we hit the snag that killed the plan. All of that unreported money that we gave her over the years — every last dollar of it from the time she was an Eden city council member to her election to governor — it's still sitting in her election account. As incredible as that sounds, all twenty-three million dollars was logged and transferred from her personal account to her campaign account and it is still there, duly documented and technically completely legal from her standpoint. She did not spend so much as a dime of it for her own use. It is doubtful that Hayes would even be able to get an
