Downsizing

Jess Simms

W e regretted having to let Janice go. She’d been with us since our early days, before the SaaS rebrand, the mobile app, the cloud-based automation platform. Top-notch talent, we’d always thought, but Technology had found deleted messages she’d sent to EcoTec in his last security audit. Clearly, she was the leak we’d been searching for. We had no choice but to fire her, he said.

Finance nodded along like it was obvious. The CEO tapped his stylus on his tablet in a pensive rhythm. Operations scowled, knowing he’d be the one to do the firing. Only Marketing argued, but he would; he’d always had a thing for Janice. We knew that was the real reason he said, “That’s a flimsy reason to fire our best developer six weeks before launch.”

“One of the coders saw her having coffee with their COO last Thursday,” Finance said.

Marketing said, “Maybe they’re headhunting her.”

“Still violates the non-compete.”

“Only if she takes their offer.”

“Will the new group of freelancers be up to speed by Friday?” the CEO said. Behind him, through the conference room’s glass walls, we watched our team trickling in. The early birds were already gathered by the whiteboard, a larger group awaiting their turn at the coffee station.

Technology said, “They should be.”

“We’ll fire her then.” The CEO stood and the rest of us followed. Janice arrived as we were coming out of the conference room. She’d brought the team maple bacon chai cronuts from the pop-up bakery across the street. We felt a bit guilty, given the morning’s conversation, but it would have been rude not to take one. The CEO ate two in a gesture of magnanimity.

It was a hectic standup. There were more tasks left in the backlog than we’d hoped to have six weeks out. The user interface was still in wireframes, the command code for the robots crawling with bugs, and we were way behind on production of the prototype printers for Professional+ subscribers. Though that one, at least, was a good problem. The sales team had exceeded expectations, nearly doubling our projections, as Marketing mentioned every chance he got. We’d told our investors they were buying in to the next Amazon and we’d live up to that promise, if we met that demand. If we didn’t, Janice wouldn’t be the only former employee dusting off their resume.

Either way, none of us would be going home before the sun sank, not tonight or most nights until nVent launched. Except for Janice, of course, on Friday, when she’d be escorted out by security. We eyed her as we outlined objectives, reassessed timelines, broke down roadblocks into their actionable tasks. She seemed to take it as a compliment when we announced that she’d be moving to the front-end design team. And if that was how she heard it, who were we to take that from her?

O On Monday mornings we visited the main production facility, after we’d gotten the team started. Operations drove, as always, the CEO in the passenger seat. Finance was always relegated to the middle rear as the most recent addition to the c-suite, hired last year on the advice of our business coach, who said a dedicated financial executive would make us more attractive to investors. Finance had taken the hazing in good stride at first. Now he rode with elbows poised at kidney level for when Technology or Marketing leaned too far into his personal space.

The production facility was outside the city, along a winding stretch of highway where billboards outnumbered buildings. We discussed who should replace Janice during the drive. Finance suggested one of the freelancers. Technology and Marketing met eyes and rolled them behind his back; freelancers looked at permanent job offers the way a slug would eye a pile of salt. But the rest of us didn’t expect Finance to understand that. We settled on an internal promotion and Finance lapsed into surly silence at having his suggestion so thoroughly rejected.

The production facility was nondescript. Gray prefab siding, gravel parking lot, no sign. The opposite of the office’s chic décor and aggressive branding. The CEO swiped his ID card and we followed him into the high-ceilinged interior. The main room was snaked by assembly lines. Wheeled, multi-armed robots stood at regular intervals along them, a few dozen in total. Most had come off of those same lines within the past week. They still had the shiny look of new things, domed heads and conical bodies reflecting the overhead fluorescents. The human workers supervised from grate-floored walkways ringing the outer walls. A precautionary measure after the previous week’s incident, when a software update had made the automated workforce go haywire. But the robots seemed to be behaving today, their grasping arms smoothly assembling the parts – fabricated mere minutes before by the room-sized 3D printers further back in the facility – into components for more robots, to be shipped out to the dozen other production facilities strategically placed across the United States.

The facility’s Foreman made his way down to greet us. He shook each of our hands in turn and called us all boss, like he always did. We’d wondered whether it was a sign of respect or subtle insubordination. Finance’s opinions on the matter were clear; his mouth tightened like a miser’s pursestrings every time he heard it.

The Foreman said, “I talked to Lee and Jerry. They’re both out of the hospital. Jerry’s arm’s gonna have him out for a minute, but Lee thinks he’ll be back by Wednesday.”

Operations thought that was good news because they wouldn’t need to hire. Finance thought that was good news because it probably meant they wouldn’t sue.

“Are we still on schedule?” Technology asked.

The Foreman said, “Ahead of it, if anything. Should have the whole automated workforce ready by Friday.”

“And you’re doing QA?” Faster wasn’t always better; Technology had learned that the hard way.

The Foreman pointed toward the lines. “That one on Belt Three, second from the left – first one off the line this morning and look at it go, now.” We turned to watch it insert sensors into a dome head identical to its own. The Foreman shook his head, eyes round with wonder. “Workers that make their own replacements. Never thought I’d see the day.”

W e left the facility with a positive vibe that carried us the whole way through the week. We’d known we had a good business model. Full vertical integration with minimal human intervention; the idea practically sold itself. It was only after our second launch delay that we started to question whether we could pull it off, and by then we were in far too deep to back out. Now we could see the finish line and each success bolstered our confidence. The product design interface was in beta testing by Tuesday. Wednesday, three more satellite facilities were fully staffed and operational. Thursday, a patch to the autonomous workforce’s task prioritization algorithm went off without a hitch.

Friday – the day she was supposed to be fired – Janice no-call no-showed.

When she hadn’t shown up by the end of standup, we retreated to the conference room for a discussion. The timing was too perfect to be a coincidence. But in the end, we decided, she’d simply spared us the need to fire her. At least, that was as far as our conversation got before one of the developers poked his head in and told us the Rainiers were waiting in the executive office.

If the Rainiers were here, Janice could wait.

The CEO was first out the door. The rest of us fell in behind him, through the bustling workroom and to the office on its far side. Charlie Rainier had taken the CEO’s seat behind the desk, his brother Dave in the massaging recliner in the corner. Their dark three-piece suits and chunky gold jewelry were at odds with the tech wardrobe of tie-less button-ups, but in a sense Charlier Rainier had a right to act like he owned the place. His money was the only reason the company still existed. We’d burned through our Seed and Series A funds, and when we’d circled back for a Series B no one else wanted to bite. Even the Rainiers hadn’t gone all-in. Their funds were a loan. One Charlie had already expressed eagerness to have repaid.

The Rainiers weren’t quite the mafia. We’d known, going in, that they invested in some questionable areas. It was part of the reason we’d agreed to the loan arrangement. We could cut ties once we paid them back. No risk of their dealings tainting our image. Except our initial timelines had been optimistic. A three-month launch delay wasn’t that bad, by tech startup standards, but that hadn’t been a satisfactory answer for Charlie.

Charlie’s look assessed our value and found it lacking. In the corner, Dave poked the massage controls then reclined, ankles casually crossed. Dave always came to these meetings but rarely contributed more than witty remarks. We’d speculated – out of their hearing – about why Charlie kept Dave around. Marketing thought comic relief, to set people at ease. Technology thought it was a distraction, like how a magician waves one hand so people don’t watch the other.

“I didn’t know we had a meeting today,” the CEO said. He took one of the two chairs facing the desk. Marketing eyed the other but Finance was faster, striding to it with an air of defiance. The rest of us folded our arms like we’d always planned to stand.

“The amount you’re in for, we have meetings whenever I feel like it,” Charlie said. He dug his thick fingers in his jacket pocket, pulling out a slim cigar and a book of matches.

The CEO said, “We don’t smoke in here.”

“You don’t say.” Charlie stuck the cigar between his lips. Struck a match. From the corner, Dave barked a laugh that Charlie silenced with a glare. Operations opened a window, then pulled the plate from under the potted cactus on the sill and put it on the desk at Charlie’s elbow. The CEO said, “When we launch in five weeks—”

“Will you?” Charlie interrupted.

“Yes. Absolutely. Most of our automated workforce is already deployed and our pre-subscriber count—”

“Do pre-subscribers pay?”

“The first month as a deposit. We’re using a subscription model, you see, and the way it works is there are three tiers that—”

“So you don’t have my money yet,” Charlie said.

The CEO’s jaw clenched. “No. Not yet.”

Charlie spun the cigar tip slowly against the plate. “Big team you guys got out there.”

The CEO said, “A lot are freelancers.”

“Those cost more than employees, don’t they?”

“In the short-term, but it’s cheaper long-run. A lot of startups use them.”

“How many of those are still around after five years?”

Dave barked a laugh. “Not many, Charlie.”

Charlie said, “And I hear you’ve got competitors already sniffing around your territory. You’re not worried about these freelancers running to them with your secrets?”

We were more worried that Charlie knew EcoTec was eying our IP but we tried to keep that close to our vests. The CEO said, “They’ll be with us through launch and by then it won’t be an issue. We’ll still be first to market. Trust me – you’ll get your money back. Maybe a bit later than we thought at first, but it’ll happen.”

Charlie’s cigar flared orange. He released a leisurely smoke plume then said, “We made a simple deal. One I thought big businessmen like yourself would understand. I loan you money, you pay it back. On the date we agree to. Not when it’s convenient for you.”

Charlie rested the cigar in the planter tray and leaned his elbows on the desk, fists together. He never looked more like a mobster than when he smiled. “Good news for you boys is I believe in second chances. So here’s the new deal. Either I walk out of this office with my money, or we’re gonna find you another way to contribute.”

Finance went paler than usual. The CEO was outwardly stoic but we knew his tells. That twitching vein above his left eyebrow. The tap tap of his right index finger on the chair arm. He said, “You know the first one’s impossible.”

“Well, then. Welcome to the team.” Charlie shifted the cigar to the corner of his mouth. He stuck his beringed hand out not quite halfway, so the CEO had to stand and lean to shake it. We bristled but what could we do except swallow the disrespect and listen as Charlie said, “Now let me tell you what you boys are gonna do for us.”

W e didn’t argue until after the Rainiers left. The CEO scraped ash into the trash while the rest of us found seats: Technology and Finance on the desk, Marketing behind it, Operations slumped awkwardly into the still-reclined massage chair. We didn’t meet eyes as we talked.

“How do you even launder money?” Operations asked. “I mean there are systems involved, right? And if we fuck up we can’t just dip back in and tweak the code. We’ll trip some fraud detection algorithm and next thing we know the office is swarming in FBI.”

Marketing groaned. “That’d be death for the brand. A whiff we’re doing anything illegal and we’re toast.”

Technology said, “So we’re fucked either way, basically.”

“No, we’re not,” Finance said. Soft, like he’d surprised himself by speaking. Then his jaw firmed. “I can do it. I’ve done it before.”

We had the questions you’d expect. When, and why, and for who. But Finance said it wasn’t important. That was all we got out of him before the phone rang. It was the production facility Foreman. The CEO put it on speaker.

“I think you’d better come down here, Boss,” he said.

“What’s the problem?” the CEO asked.

The Foreman said, “It’s… there’s just something you’ve gotta see.”

In the SUV, we waited for Finance to pick up the thread and explain himself. When he didn’t, we made the long drive in silence.

T he gravel lot outside the production facility was nearly empty, a single pickup truck parked near the doors. Inside, no people watched from the walkway. The robots puttered along, unconcerned with the lack of supervision. The Foreman blustered out from the back wiping his hands on an oily rag, his shirt stained and rumpled. We’d never seen him flustered. Our guts churned with sympathetic anxiety.

“I told the daytime team we had a chemical leak, sent them home early,” the Foreman said. “That gives us some time to figure out what to do with her.”

The her was a corpse. The Foreman found her in one of the plastics extruder vats. The pump had seized up so he’d drained the tank to clean it and found her stuck against the grate. He’d called us then started searching around, discovered her phone on the ground. She’d been taking pictures, was what the Foreman figured. Probably she climbed up the tubes on the outside of the tank but lost her grip, trying to hold on one-handed. And we knew, even before he passed the phone to Operations, that it must be Janice.

“Where is she now?” the CEO asked.

The Foreman said, “Still in the tank. I didn’t want to touch anything until I talked to you.”

We walked with him past the clanking assembly lines. There was a chemical tang in the air in the extruder room, not the usual hot plastic smell but raw, antiseptic. The Foreman had propped a ladder up against the drained tank. We climbed up one by one to peer down and over at Janice coated in the plastic, her face frozen in surprise.

The right thing to do, of course, would be to call the police. Report an accident. There would be security camera footage that showed her breaking in, scaling the tank. Clearly we weren’t liable. But now didn’t seem the best time to draw law enforcement attention and – as Marketing reminded us – the general public didn’t always wait for facts to make a judgment. Plus there’d be questions. Why she’d broken in. What she was photographing. We could avoid all of that if we disposed of her body quietly. The question was how. Charlie Rainier probably knew the answer but we weren’t exactly in the position to call in a favor.

“You could activate the tank cleaners,” the Foreman said. We’d forgotten he was there, so deep in our debate, and we startled, staring at him. He shrugged. “It ain’t the company’s fault, what she did, like you said. Anyway I like working here. You all take good care of me.”

Whatever his motivation, it was a good suggestion. Between the chemicals and the heat, the tank cleaning cycle reduced Janice’s body to a pile of bone fragments. We emptied them into a trash bag that we took with us when we left. We weren’t quite sure what we were going to do with it. But we were damn sure the Foreman was getting a raise.

W e ended up tossing Janice’s bones into the dumpster of a fast food place along the highway. An undignified end but, as we kept telling each other, she’d done this to herself. The team noted her absence Monday morning. We told them HR had reached out, muttered the right phrases of concern. But she’d been putting in long hours, we said; she was far from the first person to burn out in the late stages of the development lifecycle.

Dave Rainier showed up on Wednesday to liaise with Finance on the new money laundering side of our operations. It was the first time any of us had seen the younger Rainier on his own. The pair of them holed up in the executive office and the rest of us distracted ourselves with work to keep from frowning at the office door, wondering what message Charlie was sending, having his brother come alone.

Time lost meaning at this stage of a project. The long hours blurred the days together. Then we blinked and, poof, it was two weeks to launch and we were on schedule. Interfaces beta tested. Printer production on track with subscriber counts. Finance excelled at the money laundering, apparently, but we tried not to think too much about that. Until the day he emerged from his meeting with Dave Rainier and rounded us up in the conference room.

“They don’t plan to stop,” Finance said. “Dave was just talking about upping how much we clean for them. He’s already planning ahead to next year.”

Marketing cursed. The CEO’s jaw clenched. Operations sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. We’d considered this possibility – Charlie had been vague when we asked about timelines – but we had hoped this would be temporary. Just until we paid the loan back. It was deflating to have that bubble burst. No matter how much success we gained, we would always be one stupid mistake away from losing everything.

“What happened to Janice… could it be replicated?” It was Operations who voiced the question but it had been in all of our minds. The hardest part, we thought, would be getting Charlie there. But we were an agile team, adept at strategic planning. We’d solved bigger challenges on the path to launch. This was just one more glitch to debug.

W e stayed after the team left to plan. The first challenge was ensuring Charlie came alone. There would be too many variables if he brought Dave. Luckily, Finance had learned a bit about Dave’s habits, knew he spent two hours every Thursday night in an isolation tank. His unplug time, he called it; he always turned his phone off.

The next challenge was ensuring the facility would be empty, but the Foreman’s cover for Janice’s removal proved a good excuse. We told the team we’d scheduled a maintenance check-up. Maybe a needless lie; once we said they’d get a paid night off no one seemed too interested in why.

Thursday night – eight days before the launch – the CEO called Charlie and told him: we have a problem. It was our leak, he said; she’d gotten herself killed trying to steal our secrets. He started to describe the scene we’d discovered a few weeks prior but Charlie cut him off, said he’d meet us there in twenty minutes. We paced inside the door until his Cadillac pulled up. We let Charlie in and he took in the empty walkways, the robots working the lines. His nose twitched like he smelled bullshit. The CEO started to give him the tour but Charlie cut him off.

“I don’t got all night,” he said. “Where’s this body of yours?”

We walked him back, past the metal extruder room. The window into it was three-layer glass and we could still feel the heat as we passed it. Inside, molten metal flowed in vats. Charlie twitched an eyebrow, said, “Looks like that’d burn a body up. Why not throw her in there?”

It was a question we hadn’t prepared for. Technology was quick on his feet, ready with words like contamination and structural integrity that made Charlie wave him off.

We’d propped the ladder back up against the tank, the hatch open like an invitation. Finance and the CEO made a show of holding the ladder for Charlie to climb up. Technology pulled out his phone like checking the time. A few taps and one of the robots rolled into the room, its wheels inaudible over the low rumble of the extruder. It charged full-speed at the ladder’s base. Charlie’s eyes went wide and he toppled – but not the whole way in. His arm shot out, gripping the edge of the tank as the ladder clattered to the ground. The robot wheeled through, spun around, then disappeared back out the same door it had entered.

“Motherfucker!” Charlie shouted. He eyed the ground, some ten feet below his dangling loafers. The fall might hurt but wouldn’t kill him. We met eyes, mentally switched tracks to plan B while Charlie ranted, “What the fuck kind of operation are you running here? Fucking homicidal robots rolling around the place?”

While Charlie shouted at us to pick up that goddamn ladder before he broke an ankle – interspersed with his intention to turn that fucking robot into scrap – we turned and left.

And maybe Charlie heard us activate the latch, locking him in. Surely he heard the revving-up hum of the decontamination system, saw the white clouds billowing from the vents. Probably the flashing red lights and blare of alarms told him he was in trouble even before his eyes started burning. But we didn’t see any of that. We followed the CEO straight through the assembly line floor and out the front door. It was a peaceful night. The air was cool, fragrant from the pines ringing the parking lot. We breathed deep, savoring the smell of life.

It took four hours to air out the room after the decontamination. We drove Charlie’s Cadillac back to his office then passed the time reviewing launch day announcements, requesting last edits on the marketing deliverables. When the door locks released we went in to find Charlie with his limbs curled like a dead spider, swollen tongue jutting from his darkened lips.

There was more of Charlie left to dispose of than we’d hoped but on the plus side we wouldn’t need to shut the line down to drain the tanks. And Charlie had given us a parting gift. His offhand comment when passing the metal extruder lingered in our minds; all of the backup methods we’d brainstormed to dispose of him had been far messier.

At Technology’s orders, two robots veered from the line. They hoisted Charlie between them and carried him into the metal fabrication room. Technology hadn’t been completely bullshitting when he mentioned contamination. There was a slight risk, but it should be dispersed enough, he said, that the parts produced from this vat wouldn’t be compromised. Charlie would become screws and bolts, his cells worked into reinforcing beams and corner brackets. The important part was: no one would find him.

T he disappearance of somebody like Charlie Rainier doesn’t go unnoticed. But we weren’t the only ones who owed the Rainiers money, and the police didn’t know we were the last ones to see him alive. We were questioned and monitored but never accused. Honestly, we were too busy with the launch to worry about it much. nVent was a breakout hit. By the time things calmed down enough for us to step back and take a breath, the police had already moved on.

But we hadn’t fooled everyone. At our next facility tour, the Foreman asked about the decontamination cycle with a knowing look, doubting our claim we’d activated it by accident. And Dave – Dave knew. Luckily, we weren’t the only ones who’d been under Charlie’s thumb, and Dave might have benefitted from his death more than anyone. The risk-reward just wasn’t there for private lending these days, he said. His vision for Rainier Investments was venture capital. Charlie had never been on-board but now the company was Dave’s and he grew into his new role at its helm. He still wore a smirk but its edges had sharpened, and he’d abandoned quippy comments in favor of blunt honesty. Everything, he told us, had a price. The price of Charlie’s life, apparently – and Dave’s silence, and an end to our creative accounting – was five hundred grand added to our balance plus 5% of the company’s shares when we had our IPO in the fall, which now seemed guaranteed to make a killing.

It wasn’t a bad deal all things considered, we decided. Our trail of failures had taught us that sometimes a small loss paved the way to a bigger win. If anything, Finance said, we should be happy we’d reached the point we could call half a mil a small loss.

“You’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet,” he said, or some other platitude, and we nodded along, half listening, already thinking ahead to what was next.

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