Read Online Freedom Incorporated by Peter Tylee - Free Book Online Page A

head
continued to eat, and he grew less steady on his feet by the
day.
    He placed a thin manila
folder on Jackie’s desk. “It’s for the, uh, shareholder
meeting.”
    Jackie didn’t take her
eyes off him and didn’t reach for the folder. She waited for him to
explain.
    She waited a long
time.
    Eventually
Paul said, “There are some puzzling, uh, yes, troubling figures
projected for the final quarter.” When he
frowned, h is big bushy eyebrows came
forward so far they nearly pushed his glasses off. He
removed the spectacles and took a moment to rub a tired hand over his
ruddy face. “If you could take a look at them, uh, before the
meeting then that’d, uh… that’d be great.”
    It was times
like these that Jackie had no idea why she bothered with Mr
Savage. Like any of his work will make it
to the meeting. Jackie reminded herself not
to smile. What a fool. You’re my puppet,
dear Savage, you’ll do and say everything I want you
to. “Okay, I’ll take a look.”
    Paul nodded his thanks
with a friendly smile. Jackie was yet to decide whether it was
genuine or whether he could turn warmth on at will. She wished she
could do that.
    “ Thanks, uh…
Jackie.” Paul took his leave and shuffled in the general direction
of the door, unaware that Jackie Donald’s eyes were boring into his
skull from behind. With what seemed like a colossal effort, he
closed the doors behind him.
    And, finally, he was gone
from Jackie’s sight.
    “ Stupid
dumb-shit goddamn motherfucker.” Jackie had learnt to swear from
her one and only boyfriend back in college. She rocked in her chair, inwardly
twitching at the thought of Paul Savage running a shareholder
meeting. But it had to be that way. Paul was the public head of the company.
Only a handful of people knew Jackie was the real CEO. She could count them on one
hand: Paul Savage,
James Ellerman, Michele Roche, Esteban Valdez and Carole Lam. And
the WEF of course, but they didn’t really count.
    She opened
Paul’s folder with a scowl of contempt and scanned his lame excuse
for a report. How dare he drop something like that on her desk? She
wondered whom he’d asked to write the report. That was, after all,
the way he worked. The man hadn’t done anything original that
Jackie had ever seen. Paul had scratched a few indecipherable notes
in the margins and underlined a few words, probably to pretend that
he understood the content. Jackie pushed it to the corner of her
desk in disgust. She could imagine the conversation she’d have to
have now. You made some good points in
that report Paul, but I think we should focus on this in the
meeting – and hand him the list of items
she wanted him to cover.
    Sometimes she
wished she could work with someone competent. But competence might
threaten her position, and therefore her vision. And as things were
she felt almighty . T he power she wielded as CEO of
UniForce was unparalleled. Sure, leaders from some of the other
giga-coporations brandished more financial power, but Jackie’s
fingers stretched in ways that were more important.
    Gently she
closed her eyes, conjuring an image of the world she intended to
create. A world where people feel safe to
leave their doors unlocked at
night . She furrowed
her brow. Where nobody would dream of
raping a young girl. She’d buried the memory
so deeply into the folds of her psyche that she no longer flinched
at the word ‘rape’. There was a time when it would have sent her into a tailspin
depression, but that was before she’d
started taking Genyrex, the Xantex wonder
drug.
    Pity. Sometimes she wished the people
around her understood her vision. Sometimes she wished they had the
intellectual capacity to fathom that it was actually possible. The
fact that she intended to make billions in the process was just an
added bonus. And the fact that some people
need squashing… She shrugged. Too bad. Some people deserve to have their lives
ended under the heel of a shoe. My shoe.
    Personal
security