Breathe

‘What will you do, kick me out? You can’t fire me, Hopalong, I’m not permanent.’

‘You’ll be here tomorrow if you want to work in this city ever again.’ With that, Clarke strides angrily away.

Ben pulls Miranda aside. ‘We need to get to the directors. If there is something going on, they have to be told.’

‘They already know, Ben. All they care about is making money.’

‘Oh, I get it, evil corporation takes over world. It must be so easy going through life with that good/bad thing going on in your head.’

‘You think they don’t know that something is wrong with the system? How can you be so naive?’

‘I nearly just got fired because I was downstairs listening to Howard explain about altered dimensions.’

‘So you’re not going to help me find Felix’s report?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Ben touches his sore stomach, knowing that a point has been passed. ‘We’ll search the office tonight.’

The building looks silvery against a dark sky. The office lights are still on, but most of the staff, including Clarke, have left. Ben and Miranda wait while Fitch shuts down her computer. ‘You can go home now,’ she says suspiciously, ‘both of you.’

‘We have some work to finish, Miss Fitch.’ Miranda smiles unconvincingly.

‘You know you’re not supposed to remain on the premises without a supervisor.’

Miranda holds up a sheaf of paper, making sure Fitch can’t see that the pages are blank. ‘Mr Clarke specifically asked for these to be finished tonight.’

‘Well … all right. But remember, you’re being recorded.’

Ben and Miranda wait for Fitch to leave, then head for Clarke’s office. Ben stands on a chair and takes a digital photograph of Clarke’s office from an angle just below the CCTV camera. He plugs the camera into his computer and opens the CCTV camera’s digital file. ‘Meera showed me how to do this,’ he explains, replacing the current digital feed with the file he’s just shot. It looks identical.

Miranda watches, amazed. ‘And to think you didn’t know how to turn a computer on four days ago.’ They enter Clarke’s office. Miranda searches the cupboards while Ben boots up Clarke’s terminal.

But Clarke has only reached the lobby doors. It is raining hard. He looks up at the sky, and turns back. His umbrella is still propped up in the corner of his office.

Ben and Miranda can’t find anything. Ben’s run of luck with technology ends as the computer sounds an intruder alert. And Clarke is coming up in the elevator. They frantically try to shut down the computer, but it starts deleting the hard drive, file by file.

‘I knew I shouldn’t have touched it,’ wails Ben, watching as the screen scrolls and wipes. ‘It’s clearing the whole lot.’

Clarke arrives at his floor and steps out of the elevator. He lopes noisily toward his office. He’s maybe thirty seconds away.

Ben watches helplessly as file after file is destroyed in total meltdown. In desperation, Miranda pulls the plug on the whole system.

Ben hears Clarke coming. He shoots Miranda a horrified look and drags her behind the door. Clarke steps inside and stops. He reaches down for his umbrella and pauses, sensing something amiss. Ben and Miranda hold their breath. Clarke is a fairytale wolf sniffing the air for humans. Time stretches into an agonised intake of breath.

But he goes. Ben kisses Miranda in relief, but she returns his kiss passionately. Perhaps she gets off on this, but it’s killing me, he thinks. ‘Do you reckon we’ll ever get to do this somewhere else?’ asks Ben, as they surface.

Miranda does her mischief face. ‘I thought you enjoyed danger.’

‘I’d enjoy horizontal.’

Rain is illuminated on the tall glass walls as they slow to a walk across the foyer. Miranda thinks aloud. ‘Well, if Clarke had the report file, he certainly doesn’t have it now.’

‘Then we’ll get to the truth another way.’

Miranda suddenly spins around and kisses him hard. ‘I can’t deal with this place any longer. I’ve decided, I’m not coming back next week.’ Ben stares at her in astonishment. ‘You don’t need this job, either. You don’t have to take a stand. Look what it does to people.’

‘You’re right, Miranda. I don’t need this job.’ He feels suddenly lighter. ‘Fuck, we can go anywhere we want.’

‘Tahiti.’

‘Tasmania.’

‘Alexandria.’

‘Istanbul.’

‘Cardiff.’

‘The Cote D’Azur. Cardiff?’

‘Spend the weekend with me,’ pleads Miranda. ‘Tomorrow’ll be my last day, then I’ll be free. Let’s celebrate. To corporate sabotage …’

‘And the death of big business.’

Miranda is right. He’s come a long way in four days.

6. FRIDAY 9:25 AM

The stormy weather has been building all week. Now the heat cracks, and thunder riffs around the office towers, hitting the business district in full fury. Cauls of rain wash across the bare quadrangles. Sheets of water slam and break around planes of windswept concrete. The workers scurry into the sheltering cathedral of the SymaxCorp building under black umbrellas. Religious places are always places of refuge as well as of torment.

Ben shakes out his umbrella, besmirching the perfect marble of the lobby floor with dark spots. He catches Meera near the elevator and steers her away from the gaze of the cameras. He wants to thank her for the helping hand yesterday. Miranda tick-tocks her way across the lobby toward them. She’s already been in for a couple of hours.

‘Today’s the big one,’ Meera warns. ‘They’ve been working all night again. I feel fucking awful and I haven’t even been here.’ It feels weird to hear a girl in a sari swear. They both recognise that there’s a crisis coming, but what can they do? They’re merely paid employees. Even nicknaming the Chairman after a vampire is tantamount to civil disobedience, and it’s as far as most of their colleagues will dare go. But multinational conglomerates are not taken down by the judicious wielding of sarcasm. There aren’t even many directors, thinks Ben, who can make policy changes. When a company gets this big, it becomes a machine with a mind of its own.

The lift arrives. There’s a girl inside who can’t decide whether to come out or stay in. She drops a pile of papers, looking half-dead. ‘Some people upstairs are getting very fucking weird,’ she says, as Ben, Meera and Miranda pile in. ‘Three o’clock this morning, there was a fist-fight between two teams over coffee- breaks.’

‘Why do they stay?’ asks Ben.

‘Hive mentality,’ Meera tells him. ‘We’re worker bees, conditioned from birth. That, and the incredible overtime.’

‘Why do we live this shitty life when we could be lying in the sun?’ asks the girl, not looking as if she expects an answer. ‘I haven’t had a tan since student riots closed our school.’

‘Clarke came in at five o’clock this morning,’ Miranda yawns. ‘He’s having a shit-fit about his computer. His entire hard drive has gone.’ She flashes a furtive smile at Ben. ‘I’m out of here the second I get paid.’

The morning starts bad and gets worse. Clarke is ensconced in his office with the door shut. Every once in a while, a muffled shout of anger comes through the wall. The work-floor is a mess. There are papers, files and half- eaten boxes of junk food everywhere. Someone has thrown their trousers into the fountain.

At eleven, Miranda grabs Ben and drags him off. ‘You have got to come and see this.’ She leads him down a floor, to the Accounts Department, and pushes open a door.

‘Apparently, they’ve been here all night. No wonder Meadows took a dive.’