CORPORATE STRESS

by Christopher Kempke

Copyright (c) 1990

Bremmer put down the Expando-Matic Desk Accessory, and touched the discrete red button on the side. A soft whirr sounded from inside the EMDA, and a drawer popped out containing a set of pens. Bremmer selected one, and used it to scribble on the set of technical diagrams that littered his desk. Pressing another button, he replaced the pen in the drawer. The EMDA acknowledged the weight, said "Thank you," softly, and closed. Bremmer sighed, and lay back.

"Thank you," said the EMDA softly. Bremmer sat up quickly.

"Thank you," it said, a bit more emphatically. A drawer in its side popped open. Bremmer removed one of the coins that lay there, replaced it. The drawer slid closed.

"Thank you," the EMDA said. Bremmer waited. There was no sound from the EMDA. He relaxed.

"Thank you," the EMDA said implacably.

The door behind Bremmer opened, and Linda, the office mailwoman, walked in. Digging through a basket of mail, she handed him several letters.

"Thank you," said Bremmer and the EMDA simultaneously. Linda's eyebrows rose, and she smiled. Bremmer opened his mouth to say something.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you thankyouthankyouthankyou!" the EMDA said in the same quiet tone which Bremmer was beginning to associate with dying rodents. The two of them looked at it in shock. All along the plastic device, drawers were opening and closing with wild abandon. The EMDA began to spin, slowly at first, then faster as it apparently gained courage. Small objects began working themselves lose from its drawers and hurtling around the room. Linda, standing, avoided the first few, then as the tumult began to fill the air, she dived, pulling Bremmer with her. Seconds later, a letter opener went through the space where she had been standing. Crossing the room in a metallic flash, it impaled itself with a loud thunk over the door. Bremmer's Home Wonders Associates sign dropped from the wall to the floor with a crystalline crash. Bremmer waited for several seconds. The letter opener quivered in the wall, but there was no sound; the myriad airborne objects appeared to have settled. Carefully, he raised his head.

"Thank you," said the EMDA. Bremmer reached around the back of the desk and unplugged it from the wall.

"Tha-" said the EMDA concisely. The two people on the floor looked at each other for a few seconds, then stood up. Bremmer blushed slightly.

"It has a few bugs yet."

"A few," Linda agreed, laughing. She turned and left, then popped her head back in. "You're welcome." she said to the EMDA.

Bremmer walked over to the door, removed his letter opener from the doorframe, and began the task of cleaning up his room.

A week or so later, Michelson plugged in the EMDA and looked at Bremmer.

"Linda was telling me about this thing's homicidal tendencies," he commented. Bremmer laughed shortly.

"It's fixed, now. Never fear."

"Then why are you crossing your fingers?"

Bremmer remained silent, and pushed the EMDA button. A drawer spun to him and slid open. Michelson removed a pen, held it a moment, and put it back. The drawer closed.

"Thank you," said the EMDA in a completely re-engineered voice. Nothing else happened.

Bremmer let his breath out slowly. Michelson smiled.

"Nice job, Bremmer," he said. "This is just what Home Wonders needs to boost sales. It's polite, convenient, and helps organize to boot. Let's see Computer Home Innovations beat this one!"

Bremmer bowed slowly, once, expecting the EMDA to thank him at any minute. It did not. "Thank you," he said, unaccompanied. He shook Michelson's proffered hand, then handed the EMDA to him. The older man left, carrying it.

Bremmer turned and looked out his window. From his forty-third floor window, he could see the entire city spread out below him, blotted only by the Computer Home Innovations tower six blocks away, it's dark mirrored steel reflecting the white mirrored lime of the Home Wonders Associates building. If ever he was on top of the world, it was now. The EMDA would give him world-wide fame, the promotion that had landed on his desk that morning would seal his financial security, even in the unlikely event that he retired next year as was his right. His wife had recovered her health, his son had called earlier that week to announce the arrival of their first granddaughter. Everything in the world was bright.

He was very, very worried.

CHI's EMDA appeared on the market only a day after HWA's. Bremmer had been completely unaware that the rival company had even been working on such a thing, even more surprised when he had gone home and seen CHI's commercial on television. But all in all he was fairly happy; HWA's EMDA, HIS EMDA, was by far the superior product, and the consumers seemed aware of this. (There were even rumors that the CHI EMDA had a habit of flying into "Thank you" fits and hurling their contents over a wide area. This was never reported with an HWA EMDA.)

So the next week it was with particular surprise that Bremmer learned that sales on his EMDA had almost ceased, and CHI's EMDAs were in so much demand they couldn't be kept in stock.

Bremmer was sitting around his desk one morning moping and playing with a CHI EMDA, trying to see what advantages it had. Linda entered to hand him his daily mail, stood behind him for a while and watched.

The CHI EMDA was a roughly rectangular lump, tastefully decorated in a mottled camouflage pattern of greens and browns. Six buttons were spaced unevenly around the outside, and a power cord snaked off the back. Bremmer poked at a button; it fell off. He spun the device, pressed another. A drawer slid out of the lump about halfway from the top. As the drawer reached its fullest open position, the entire EMDA overbalanced and rolled until it rested on it. With a laugh, Linda reached over his shoulder and pressed still another button. Another drawer snapped all the way out, ending its flight about six feet away. She flinched, pulled her arm away.

"Must be a defective one."

Bremmer shook his head. "Nope. It's the fourth one we've bought. They're all like that, or worse. But CHI has sold almost a million of these things in a few days. I can't understand it."

He stood up and walked to the window. Linda followed; together they looked over at the dark tower of Computer Home Innovations. They continued to stare for several silent minutes, until a small black object detached itself from the top of the CHI tower and lifted into the air. Bremmer looked at it curiously.

"What is that thing? It's too big to be a bird, but I can't see it very well from here."

Linda shook her head to show an equal lack of knowledge. Bremmer returned to his desk and pressed a button on his HWA EMDA. The sleek machine opened a drawer; within lay a pair of HWA Golf Goggles. Bremmer slid them on.

A brilliant red display appeared in front of him, flashing columns of figures which completely obscured his view. After a second, the numbers stopped and the words "RECOMMENDED CLUB SELECTION: NINE IRON" appeared. In frustration, Bremmer thumbed the switch that shut off the golf computer, and spun the magnification dial.

With the goggles, Bremmer examined the creature which had left the CHI tower. Six foot leathery wings beat rapidly, but behind them lay a relatively humanoid figure, with a human face. The creature, whatever it was, carried a pitchfork in one of its short, clawed arms. Bremmer attempted to increase the magnification, but the words "RECOMMENDED CLUB SELECTION: 1 WOOD" suddenly obscured his vision, and by the time he managed to kill the computer again, the creature had vanished from view.

He described it to Linda, who shook her head and shrugged. "Never heard of anything like it. Maybe its somebody's pet."

"Some pet," Bremmer commented.

Linda was back after lunch, and dropped a sheaf of computer printouts on his desk along with the mail. Bremmer glanced at them briefly, then more carefully as an illustration on the top caught his attention. It was a carefully drawn dot-matrix image of the creature he had seen the day before. Dropping the rest of the mail into the HWA Artificially Intelligent Mail Reader, he grabbed the sheaf and turned to Linda in surprise.

"That's it! Where'd you find it?"

She smiled. "At the library. Under `S' for `Demon'. That's what you've got there-- a full-fledged Inferno Demon. The pitchfork's a dead giveaway, or so they say."

"But how did CHI get one? Where can we get one? And what the Hell's a magic demon doing in modern day New York?" He stopped as he realized he wasn't making sense.

"No, not Hell. Inferno. I think it's some sort of Agnostic religious place. In any case, obtaining one is very easy, the spell is listed in the book. But more interesting is what they can do!"

Bremmer paged through the sheaf until he reached a page covered in the glowing, speckled ink of a HWA Highlighter pen. The first words on the page caught his eye: "capable of mass mind control."

"So that's how CHI is selling their EMDA!" He put the sheaf down. "So how do we get rid of it?"

Linda shrugged. "It's not in there. Only the spell to summon one."

There was an explosion behind them as the Artificially Intelligent Mail Reader caught fire. Bremmer grabbed a plastic bucket of water he kept under his desk for just such emergencies as Linda pulled the HWA Fire-B-Gone fire extinguisher off the wall. Putting her finger through the trigger, she began sqeezing it rapidly. With each pull, a thin trickle of water dripped from the Fire-B-Gone. She threw it aside in frustration just as Bremmer hurled his bucket onto the Mail Reader. Thick clouds of steam filled the air, and the two of them sank down to the floor to avoid the mist...

Just as the Fire-B-Gone really began to shoot. Lying on its side, the large tank began to spin under the pressure of the watery foam now spraying from its nozzle. Faster and faster it spun, coating the room in white suds before its tank finally ran empty and it slowed to a stop.

Bremmer and Linda stared at one another for a few moments. Silently Linda got up and left the room, leaving a dripping trail behind. Bremmer stood and shook himself off, the reached for his HWA Automatic Drying Unit. Before turning it on he reconsidered and sat down at the desk, still dripping.

Carefully, so that the now-wet paper wouldn't fall apart, he turned to the page containing the summoning spell, and read it carefully. There were a number of long magic words and warnings of dire consequences if they were spoken incorrectly, and a list of ingredients to be mixed together to form an ink with which to draw a pentegram. Bremmer grimaced as he read the list; CHI had broken dozens of laws, including murder several times, to come up with all of these items. Even just the list of creatures from which vital internal organs were required was substantial.

"So much for summoning one ourselves," he said aloud to himself. But the glimmerings of an idea touched his mind, and he grabbed a sheet of sodden paper and began to write furiously a list of items he might need.

By the next day, he had assembled his materials, and, by the time Linda arrived with his mail, he was busy stirring things together in a large cauldron in the center of the room. She blinked and shook her head as she entered, then looked at him curiously. He looked up.

"Root beer, powdered daisies and rose petals, milk, sugar, baking powder, mustard, ketchup, honey, chalk dust..." Bremmer continued listing off items as he placed them into the cauldron. When he finally finished, he brushed off his hands and stood.

"All the warnings in the spell description are about the words, not the pentagram ink, so I can't imagine that it makes a whole lot of difference what goes in there. Probably that stuff is just there to deter small children from playing with it."

Linda was unimpressed with his logic. "What if you're wrong? This is a demon that you're playing with. Somebody could get hurt -- clawed or mauled or eaten or something." She paused. "Why do you want to summon a demon, anyway?"

Bremmer smiled. "I don't want to summon one, I want to dispel one. It says there that a demon can only be called once in a thousand years, so if I can make it go back wherever it came from, CHI won't be able to get it again. And it won't eat me; I think that it's a vegetarian."

Linda just shook her head as Bremmer carefully dipped a paintbrush in the rose-scented mix he had just created and painted several lines on the floor.

Linda watched, then spoke. "Isn't a pentagram supposed to have five sides?"

Bremmer counted quickly. "Five, six, what's the difference? I'm not going to give it time to count, anyway."

"I'm beginning to understand why nothing at HWA works correctly," she muttered under her breath, but Bremmer was far too busy to pay attention to her.

"All right," he said at last. "Now all we have to do is get it into the pentagram."

Linda smiled. "How about just sending it an invitation?"

Bremmer narrowed his eyes. "Don't be stupid." He picked up a box behind him, and took off the lid with a flourish. "Devil's-food cake," he announced proudly. He placed the burned mass in the center of the pentagram, and sat down in the desk chair. "Now we wait."

They didn't wait long. Within a minute, the window shattered, and the demon swept down into the pentagram. Pulling a knife from its back pocket, it began cutting the cake into bite-sized morsels, paying no attention whatsoever to the two people in the room. Bremmer grabbed the sheaf of papers from his desk.

"Where did you find a dispelling spell?" Linda whispered.

"I didn't," Bremmer said. "I'm just going to try reading these words backwards."

Linda choked and began looking for an exit, but the demon was between her and the door, stabbing little chunks of cake on the tines of its pitchfork and gobbling them off. Bremmer began to read.

Seconds went by, as the demon finished the cake and Bremmer's words droned on. Finally, the creature in the pentagram looked up, its eyes widening as it realized what Bremmer was doing. It began to speak as well, its speech high and fast. Various pictures on the walls around the room began to shake. Bremmer sped up his reading, and pronounced the final syllable loudly and clearly. A trap door opened beneath the the demon, and it disappeared in a roar of flames.

The pictures detached themselves from the wall, hovering menacingly in the air, and were slowly joined by the books from the shelves. Bremmer thought quickly as they began weaving fast, quick patterns in the air, the books opening and closing rapidly, making a loud drumbeat sound. Suddenly, an idea occured to him. Opening his desk drawer, he lifted out an HWA EMDA, labeled "Prototype" in large letters. Setting it on the desk, he pushed its button until all the drawers popped open.

The books and photographs approached nearer, leisurely, joined now by the sharp, jagged fragments of the shattered window.

Bremmer gestured to Linda to plug the EMDA in, then lifted a large dish of pennies off of the top of the desk. He poured as many pennies as would fit into each drawer. The drawers snapped shut.

"Thank you," the EMDA said in a dying-rodent voice. Linda's eyes widened at the sound, but she grabbed two HMA Fly-Die Flyswatters, and handed one to Bremmer. He accepted it. "Thank you," said the EMDA.

The two of them began beating at the aerial assault, the wildly gyrating Fly-Die swatters like living things in their grasp, spinning, slapping, and mechanically sneaking up on the attacking items.

"Thank you," the EMDA said after a brief pause.

The glass now tore at their arms, and the pictures battered incessantly at them. The books, hanging back, kept up the steady drumbeat. Blood began to flow from dozens of scratches.

"ThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThank..." said the EMDA quietly. Bremmer grabbed Linda and the two of them dropped to the floor just as the EMDA began to spin. As it reached its maximum velocity, the drawers began to pop open, and a cloud of swift, heavy coins filled the air, forcing the glass, pictures, and books to slam into one another and the walls. A steady drone of "Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou" was kept up the whole time, but within seconds the flying army was gone.

Linda pulled the plug on the raving EMDA. Slowly, the two of them stood up, stepping carefully across the destroyed room to the now-glassless window.

"Look!" Linda said, pointing. Bremmer looked.

The dark, foreboding tower of CHI was dark no longer. Every trace of glass in the building shimmered and exploded outward, shimmering like a billion diamonds in the sun, then vanished into thin air. Moments later, the entire structure began to sink into the ground, losing a story or so every second until the building had completely vanished.

"They must have built the skyscraper using the demon's magic. I guess it wasn't prefab after all."

Bremmer restrained a comment as a buzzer somewhere signalled that it was time for lunch. The two of them made their way carefully toward the dented, battered door.

When they got there, Bremmer paused, then returned to his desk. Opening a drawer, he dug for a few moments and found what he was looking for; he placed the "Maid: Please make up this room now" sign on the door as he left.

Christopher Kempke is a Computer Science graduate student at Oregon State University. His interests include writing, computers, magic, juggling, bridge, and other games, not necessarily in that order. His major goal in life is to become a professional student, a goal which he is rapidly attaining.

kempkec@ure.cs.orst.edu