12-03-2016, 03:42 AM
The pale orange light of a simulated morning sun shone brightly down on Tier-3, glinting off the gleaming, graceful towers, and raising a cool breeze along the pedestrian thoroughfares and skywalks of the bustling, futuristic city. It peered between the naked girders of a new tower's durasteel skeleton, aswarm with robotic constructors, and streamed gently through the glare-reducing window of a small, street-level bistro where Kelly MacAryn sat, reading and enjoying a slice of chocolate cake. He was washed and dressed, immaculate in a freshly-summoned suit, with his sleeves rolled up and his pinstripe jacket folded over the back of his chair. Even the gaping wound in his side was closed, healed by a judicious application of Omnilium and time, though his pressed-and-ironed white shirt hid a brutal scar that wouldn't be going away any time soon.
In the wake of his take-down of the NukaPepsi thieves, Pepsiman had debriefed the traveler personally and immediately, barely affording him the time to heal his wounds, let alone change his clothes. As when Kelly had first taken the contract, it was a meeting in Pepsiman's spacious executive suite, conducted using very few words. After summoning Kelly a cool, refreshing Pepsi, the Chromed Cola Crusader had handed him a folder labled 'Outsourced NukaPepsi Justice: Contractor Incident Report #282', containing twenty sheets of blank paper and a pen, then waited patiently for an hour and a half while Kelly wrote out the entire process of his investigation from beginning to end. His prose was dry, and included every relevant detail, even the name of his skycab, though he omitted personal developments such as the advent of his vector-sketch overlay technique.
After the report was finished, Pepsiman had read it through, had Kelly sign it, countersigned, and calmly closed the file. Then the PepsiCo chief executive had jumped up on the desk, put one hand on his hip, thrown a peace-sign high in the air with the other, and laughed uproariously. Following this victorious display, he'd ushered Kelly down a private hallway to the PepsiCo board-room: a spacious, well-lit, windowless meeting-space decorated in red leather, exotic ferns, and lacquered cherry-wood. There they met two serious, well-dressed old men who introduced themselves as 'Mr. Sawyer' and 'Mr. Tsuburaya'. Sawyer had shaken Kelly's hand, and Tsuburaya had favored him with a low, formal bow. Both had proven themselves to be practical men by congratulating the imposing, blood-stained, and raggedly-dressed specimen of a long-haired warrior standing in their lovely board-room on a job well done with what seemed like genuine warmth. Finally, they had presented him with a black leather brief-case.
Inside the case, nestled in a sapphire-blue silk lining, was a PepsiCo VIP chip-ID card, with Kelly's face on it, and his alter-ego's name. Beside it had been an orientation booklet detailing the rights, responsibilities and privileges that his new status entailed.
It was this booklet that he was reading now. Holding it one-handed, flipping a page with his thumb, he brought a morsel of cake to his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
Officially, in his persona as Alan Mayhew, Kelly was now an executive of PepsiCo, but in reality the position was mostly a sinecure. He was technically on the middle tiers of high-level management, analogous to a Senior VP of Operations, but separated from the rest of the org-chart. This meant that while the traveler was considered Very Important in a vague sort of way, he had no actual management authority, a negligible salary, and couldn't tell anyone what to do. He did, however, have all the advantages to which a PepsiCo senior executive was entitled.
Kelly's VIP status gave him broad, though not quite unlimited, access to PepsiCo facilities, and an automatic invite to all PepsiCo and PepsiCo-sponsored events. He had an account on the PepsiCo corporate intranet with the fourth-highest available level of overall access, and a subscription to the Executive Newsletter (available quarterly). He even had a modest expense account, though that wasn't nearly as exciting to him as it would have been to a Secondary. Far more important was his ability to query the PepsiCo Corporate Intelligence Database.
Access. Glorious Access. I didn't expect to make this much progress so quickly.
There were other perks as well. As a senior executive in good standing, Kelly had the right to address the Board over legitimate concerns of corporate policy, provided he filed the appropriate paperwork, and he had the option of purchasing some quite fantastic apartments on Tier-2 that weren't available without a nod and a wink from somebody in the loop.
Of course, all of this didn't come without strings. If Pepisman needed more of his kind of help, in order to retain his VIP status, Kelly would be required to respond. Plus, even if he didn't have any regular duties, Kelly was now a nominal employee of PepsiCo, and that meant he could be fired. He had to keep his nose relatively clean: a certain amount of skullduggery was forgivable, as he long as he made sure to protect the company, but if he did anything to bring down the wrath of the Empire then he was on his own. The traveler was allowed to continue doing contract-work, so long as none of it was for any competitors of PepsiCo's core business, but any behavior that directly harmed PepsiCo's image, property, or personnel would be grounds for a dismissal hearing - and the hearing would only be a special courtesy on account of his having shed blood for the brand.
Kelly took another bite of cake and flagged down a waitress, a short, pretty woman in a tracksuit with bright blue skin. He ordered a glass of milk with cinnamon in it, and then went back to his reading.
He turned the page and stopped, reading it again.
'As a special welcome for our newest and most dedicated executive, and a tacit acknowledgement of your leading role in bringing our most innovative product to market you will receive a six-month supply of NukaPepsi'?
There was an invoice on the page below, and instructions for arranging the delivery of his delicious, softly-glowing prize.
These numbers can't be right. How much soda do they think I drink? Six months times an average thirty days per month...three liters per day?!
What the hell am I going to do with FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY LITERS of radioactive soft-drink?
In the wake of his take-down of the NukaPepsi thieves, Pepsiman had debriefed the traveler personally and immediately, barely affording him the time to heal his wounds, let alone change his clothes. As when Kelly had first taken the contract, it was a meeting in Pepsiman's spacious executive suite, conducted using very few words. After summoning Kelly a cool, refreshing Pepsi, the Chromed Cola Crusader had handed him a folder labled 'Outsourced NukaPepsi Justice: Contractor Incident Report #282', containing twenty sheets of blank paper and a pen, then waited patiently for an hour and a half while Kelly wrote out the entire process of his investigation from beginning to end. His prose was dry, and included every relevant detail, even the name of his skycab, though he omitted personal developments such as the advent of his vector-sketch overlay technique.
After the report was finished, Pepsiman had read it through, had Kelly sign it, countersigned, and calmly closed the file. Then the PepsiCo chief executive had jumped up on the desk, put one hand on his hip, thrown a peace-sign high in the air with the other, and laughed uproariously. Following this victorious display, he'd ushered Kelly down a private hallway to the PepsiCo board-room: a spacious, well-lit, windowless meeting-space decorated in red leather, exotic ferns, and lacquered cherry-wood. There they met two serious, well-dressed old men who introduced themselves as 'Mr. Sawyer' and 'Mr. Tsuburaya'. Sawyer had shaken Kelly's hand, and Tsuburaya had favored him with a low, formal bow. Both had proven themselves to be practical men by congratulating the imposing, blood-stained, and raggedly-dressed specimen of a long-haired warrior standing in their lovely board-room on a job well done with what seemed like genuine warmth. Finally, they had presented him with a black leather brief-case.
Inside the case, nestled in a sapphire-blue silk lining, was a PepsiCo VIP chip-ID card, with Kelly's face on it, and his alter-ego's name. Beside it had been an orientation booklet detailing the rights, responsibilities and privileges that his new status entailed.
It was this booklet that he was reading now. Holding it one-handed, flipping a page with his thumb, he brought a morsel of cake to his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
Officially, in his persona as Alan Mayhew, Kelly was now an executive of PepsiCo, but in reality the position was mostly a sinecure. He was technically on the middle tiers of high-level management, analogous to a Senior VP of Operations, but separated from the rest of the org-chart. This meant that while the traveler was considered Very Important in a vague sort of way, he had no actual management authority, a negligible salary, and couldn't tell anyone what to do. He did, however, have all the advantages to which a PepsiCo senior executive was entitled.
Kelly's VIP status gave him broad, though not quite unlimited, access to PepsiCo facilities, and an automatic invite to all PepsiCo and PepsiCo-sponsored events. He had an account on the PepsiCo corporate intranet with the fourth-highest available level of overall access, and a subscription to the Executive Newsletter (available quarterly). He even had a modest expense account, though that wasn't nearly as exciting to him as it would have been to a Secondary. Far more important was his ability to query the PepsiCo Corporate Intelligence Database.
Access. Glorious Access. I didn't expect to make this much progress so quickly.
There were other perks as well. As a senior executive in good standing, Kelly had the right to address the Board over legitimate concerns of corporate policy, provided he filed the appropriate paperwork, and he had the option of purchasing some quite fantastic apartments on Tier-2 that weren't available without a nod and a wink from somebody in the loop.
Of course, all of this didn't come without strings. If Pepisman needed more of his kind of help, in order to retain his VIP status, Kelly would be required to respond. Plus, even if he didn't have any regular duties, Kelly was now a nominal employee of PepsiCo, and that meant he could be fired. He had to keep his nose relatively clean: a certain amount of skullduggery was forgivable, as he long as he made sure to protect the company, but if he did anything to bring down the wrath of the Empire then he was on his own. The traveler was allowed to continue doing contract-work, so long as none of it was for any competitors of PepsiCo's core business, but any behavior that directly harmed PepsiCo's image, property, or personnel would be grounds for a dismissal hearing - and the hearing would only be a special courtesy on account of his having shed blood for the brand.
Kelly took another bite of cake and flagged down a waitress, a short, pretty woman in a tracksuit with bright blue skin. He ordered a glass of milk with cinnamon in it, and then went back to his reading.
He turned the page and stopped, reading it again.
'As a special welcome for our newest and most dedicated executive, and a tacit acknowledgement of your leading role in bringing our most innovative product to market you will receive a six-month supply of NukaPepsi'?
There was an invoice on the page below, and instructions for arranging the delivery of his delicious, softly-glowing prize.
These numbers can't be right. How much soda do they think I drink? Six months times an average thirty days per month...three liters per day?!
What the hell am I going to do with FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY LITERS of radioactive soft-drink?