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The Beginning of Sordida
It was a small, windowless conference room, completely bland and devoid of life, except that she was there. She was dressed professionally, but under her blazer she was wearing one of those tiny little tops. The kind that would actually fit an eight-year old, but on her adult body was stretched as far as possible. So I could see a definite and very exact outline of her lovely breasts under her open jacket. She had long dark hair and a face that could be really, really sweet and beautiful. I say could be, because her expression clearly said that she wasn't wearing this little outfit for my benefit. I could tell that she felt really uncomfortable being there with me. She wanted this to be over as soon as possible and frankly, I did too. But I guess it says a lot about me that even at a time like that I was just thinking about her and the way she was dressed.
He entered the room with that kind of "I'm busy and important" attitude that smelled so much like bullshit that I actually started to sneer before the door even closed. They glanced at each other, and smiled.
He said, "Hi Amanda" in a "hey baby" kind of voice.
"Hey Bret", she said in her own flirty tone, and suddenly flashed a radiant smile. Oh yeah. She could be really, really, sweet and beautiful.
They ignored me and started flirting for a couple of minutes. They were so doing each other, or perhaps about to be. I looked her bare left hand and then at his wedding ring. His wife was pretty, I could remember her picture on his desk. There were even pictures of perfect little kids in his office. An affair, oh great, I can't even get a girlfriend, and here is this guy with two beautiful women.
I felt depressed, slightly nauseous, and waited for the formality.
"We might as well get to it", he said and pulled out a document. He then started to read "Your use of company property for malicious purposes, has given us cause to terminate your employment." It went on and on, blah, blah, blah, HR bullshit to keep the company from being liable for anything, justification for stealing my invention from me, and then leaving me without a job. I stopped listening, glanced at the pretty girl again, and then just waited, not really thinking about anything.
He finally finished reading and passed me a document to sign. "Sign this, and we'll hand you your severance check."
"So I sign this and for a few weeks pay, I lose my job and my invention?"
"No one asked you to embarrass our company with that ridiculous bird."
"I did that on my own time."
He snapped, "I seriously doubt it will ever amount to anything, but it belongs to us. Please sign the agreement and let's end this."
Without saying a word, I just put my company badge on the table and walked out. I didn't even go back to my desk, or say goodbye to anyone. I was completely screwed, ashamed, and wanted badly to be alone. I had worked twelve years of my life for that company. And my sweet bird might never fly. They would never get it to work. I tried not to think about it, but couldn't stop.
For a couple of weeks, I slept a lot, drank, ate bad food and just laid around. Finally, I took inventory. I had a hefty sum of money and stocks, which I guess makes sense for an engineer that makes a lot and never goes out. And then there was the 401K, and some bankable skills. But, I was alone, with no family or friends and over 30. I was pretty much the definition of failure by my own assessment.
But over the next few weeks I slowly started to tinker again. Maybe it was the desire to show at least myself that I was not a complete failure. Maybe it was some burning need to create. I've never been that good at psycho-analyzing myself, but I know that I tend to get obsessive/compulisve about things, and at that point making another bird was my complete obsession.
First a little, thence to more, I sampled and hacked. A new bird took shape again. It was better than before, lighter, and tougher. This one just might fly. She was roughly a meter across, wing tip to wing tip, with binocular vision. I ordered new cool tiny Japanese lenses that were actually much smaller than a pair of bird eyes. One of the highlights of getting parts for me was when I found an improbably tiny ramjet engine that was just right for the bird. The Japanese passion for all things small, meant that the parts I needed were really already there, just waiting for me to order and assemble.
I also had a small military GPS chip that belonged to Cheneytek. Military GPS chips are actually a lot more accurate than the standard commercial variety. The one I had could get within 30 centimeters or so, depending on ionospheric effects, where as a commercial GPS is only good within about 15 meters. It was actually a breach of security that I had it in my home. And I had a lot of other equipment and government device software as well that belonged to the company. Apparently they never bothered to check into the activities of a former top weapon designer that had been fired and was obviously quite disgruntled. But perhaps Cheneytek was hoping that I would just disappear, which I guess is pretty much what I did.
But the hard part was the software to make it work together. So I coded, hacked, modelled, and patched together some of the Cheneytek device driver software that I had until finally I built a system that I thought would keep it in the air and on a course marked by the GPS.
She was all in black, to match my mood, and because it gave her a certain slick look. So in a few months, she was there, gleaming, staring at me in my room. Pleading for me to let her fly.
I was paranoid, secretive, just sure that "they" would take her away from me. My paranoia did have some basis as the government probably should have been keeping tabs on me. So I drove out from the city, past the farthest light and found an empty dry field for the first test flight. In the early hours as it just started to get light, I let her go. She got up a bit, 15 feet or so, stalled and came crashing down on her lovely nose. I cursed, cradled her, tuned a bit and tried again. She did a little better, banked a couple of turns this time, and came awkwardly down to a crash landing.
Then I saw someone, across the field, in the distance. A farm hand on an ATV, just out doing his work. Panic hit me, like electricity running through my body, and caused me to flip out. Someone had seen me. Someone had seen her fly. I had this sudden feeling that I was not being careful enough. I ran to the car and drove off down the dirt road as fast as possible, skidding and sliding from side to side around every corner. I checked the rear view mirror for the next 20 miles. I just knew that somehow, some way, the government, or people from Cheneytek, were out to get me, and once again take what was mine. It was a bit ridiculous now that I look back on it, but at the time I was under a major blanket of paranoia.
I walked around for days, looking over my shoulder, filled with the burning desire to let her fly, and yet over come with the fear.
Eventually I started to calm down, but I felt that I had to get away, somewhere far away in the middle of no where so I could feel safe. I found rental property in Nevada, hundreds of miles from any city. I drove for a day, met the owner, a half-crazed old man, who reeked of liquor. We squinted out over the land. Dry desert and canyons, very little grass, almost no trees, mainly just red dirt. The land had a cabin, with no electricity, no water, no anything. But it was quiet, wide open and the nearest neighbor was at least 20 miles away. It was the perfect place to fly. I rented the property for a year. I just told the guy that I needed a place to be alone.
He nodded, just said, "Well there's plenty of that here. I'll leave you to it."
In many ways, it was the best year of my life. All my time was devoted to her, consumed with flying. I took each crash as though I were personally injured. Then I would be back to the city for a week or so to find more parts, then flying, crashing, and flying. Coding, tweaking, trimming, she became more and more beautiful. And when she finally soared, my heart went with her. I could feel the rush of air. Flying. She skimmed the ridges, glided down canyons. She sent me pictures of desert rocks. They were cartoonish pictures because of the low bandwidth. But it was amazing seeing through her eyes. We practiced landing in remote places. There were days when I would walk for hours just to find the spot that she crashed in. But we got so much better, her and I
At the end of the year, we were masters of the air. I could send her to a GPS location within centimeters of a target, and she would beam me pictures and come home again. She could fly on her own. I taught her to fly low, bank up canyon walls, land in tight spots. And home again. Now always, home again. We tracked a mountain lion. I sent her to watch, early in the mornings, by a certain pool, she would go and wait. Then flying behind the lion, we tracked it through a day. Sitting on rocks or tree limbs when it waited. There was an odd feeling of controlling, having power, just because I could watch.
I had done it. Now we could fly. Even if I was the only who knew I had done it. Even if I couldn't sell it to anyone because of the screwing my company gave me. I had still done it. Just for the sheer joy of creation. I decided to keep it a secret, because I knew that my old company would file suit and claim my bird.
I felt better and more confident than I had in my whole life. My doughy body was now taut and tan. I was probably in the best shape of my life. And all of this was because of the bird, and now it was done, so it was time to leave the desert. I moved back home, to my little condo in San Francisco. It was almost perfect for me. A crappy, semi-industrial area, no one would probably notice a black, crow like creature flying in the dark. And we would head up the bay a little to the beautiful part of San Francisco, what a lovely place it would be to fly. I had no plans other than to just enjoy my invention and play with it.
That first night, my palms were sweating as I let her go. I tracked her down 11th street. She flew over the wharf, and out over the bay for the first time. Then she banked and headed up the bay, sailing by the Giant's ballpark, gliding under the Bay Bridge. She took a couple of pictures for me. I stared as they slowly painted on my screen. She was banking, gliding around the bridge, out over to Treasure Island. More pictures, slowly appeared on my computer. I cried, I was so happy. Sure they weren't all that great as far as pictures go, but to me they were incredibly beautiful. Then home again, she flew into the window, and landed on her perch. That night I dreamed I flew around the bay, a flying dance in the fog.
We flew so many places, all summer long. Always flying in the night. Preferring the fog to clear skies, shunning the day. I don't think that we were ever really noticed. We did the Golden Gate bridge on so many nights. There was the night that we buzzed the tour boat going to Alcatraz. It must have appeared like a crazed bird coming down from the fog, only a few meters over the boat.
But after a time, even the flying became boring. I was so angry that I couldn't share this, so sure that if I caught someone's attention, I would lose her. I couldn't believe that I had gotten so fucked by that lawyer Fergusen. He was probably even screwing that beautiful girl from HR that was there when I was fired.
So I decided to get some revenge. I was hatching a plan to use the bird to learn details of his life and get back at him.
The Lawyer's Affair - the HR girl
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