Slumrat Rising

Vol. 3 Chap. 86 Maximizing Shareholder Value

“I don’t know what I did to you-”

“But I bet you can guess.” Truth grinned, and smashed the heel of the shoe down on the CEO’s toes. He was pretty sure he broke three of them. Daragah curled into a ball, grabbing his foot and making a high pitched keening noise.

“This probably seems incredibly unfair. I mean, you didn’t force anyone to do anything, right? You are just out here, making opportunities for people to live their best lives. Financial independence for people who would otherwise live hand to mouth.”

Truth squatted down next to Daragah. The CEO was hyperventilating but wisely keeping his mouth shut. No panic buttons, Truth noticed, nor any particular defensive spells in place. Strange. He would have figured this guy would live in terror. Truth certainly would be a lot more concerned about vengeful “brand ambassadors” coming for their promised happily ever after.

“Must say I am impressed. Here you are, helpless, knowing that your remaining minutes will be filled with torture and humiliation, and you are managing to keep more or less quiet. Didn’t see it going that way.”

Daragah opened his mouth, gasping, then his teeth snapped shut again. Truth narrowed his eyes. He reached down and grabbed a pinky finger. Daragah looked at him in horror. Begging with his eyes. Truth snapped it ninety degrees up, then another ninety degrees clockwise. Daragah started silently crying. Even the keening noise had stopped.

“GOD DAMN IT! FUCKING MEGASHROOM!” Truth stood, swearing. “I should have FUCKING KNOWN!” He gave “Daragah” a casual kick in the ass. “My whole goddamn life, right up until I left home, was poisoned by you fucks. And lots of others just like you, of course, but COME ON. CEO of Megashroom AND you were the former CFO of XextraTee? I could spend a year torturing you, and never regret a second of it.” He sighed. “Torturing “you.” Damn it all. Who are you exactly? Or are you geased?”

“Daragah” went very still, then started seizing, his eyes weeping blood. Truth swore and cast Cup and Knife. The spell seemed to slide around the man, like it was trying to find the right way in, and how to send the harm “back.” Truth felt his own energy reserves dropping fast. Whatever had been done to him, it wasn’t something simple.

Truth frowned, pushing on the spell. “Daragah” had been set up as the fall guy. He might not be a good person, but whatever was killing him wasn’t “right”. The spell finally seemed to agree, but Truth could feel the boiling ball of curse-energy floating around. Like ball lightning, looking for a ground.

Truth sent it into the sign hanging on the side of the building. Seemed appropriate.

“Daragah” sat up with an explosive gasp, grabbing his feet, his fingers, touching his face and mouth. “Oh God! Oh God, I’m free!”

“Great. Super. Yaay.” Truth sat on the desk with a thud..

>

Why do you care?

>

Are you one hundred percent sure you aren’t a demon?

>

These days, not as much as I once was. Truth sighed.

“Alright, so… talk. Who are you and what’s going on here?”

“Daragah” jolted. “Oh God!” He started scrambling back. Truth picked up a pen from the desk and threw it hard enough to pierce through the carpet and lodge into the floor. The fangs had flashed out silently and invisibly. Truth smiled grimly at the cowering man. And waited.

“I’m. My name. Is Anthony Wrenn. I’m not the person you are looking for. I’m not Daragah Kolch.”

“I can see that. Your existence is very disappointing. Justify it. Explain why you are here, and not him.”

“What? Oh God. Um.”

“Let me save you a little time- God will have no involvement in any part of what goes on here.”

“Oh G-! Um! I’m the anointed king!” Tony was panicking. Which even Truth was willing to admit was fair enough.

“Anointed king?”

“Yes. I made it to the top, you see.”

“Of?”

“The Pyramid. Double diamond ambassador, black steel, orichalcum, frozen mythril, I did it. I was the guy who did it. That one in a million that actually sold enough product and recruited enough people that I got all the way to the top of the pyramid at MegaShroom.”

Truth rocked back. “That’s possible?”

“It took a hell of a lot of hard work. A lot of sacrifices. I lost… a lot of things along the way. But I did it. I made it all the way to the top. I was clearing over a million wen a year, most of it tax free.” Tony didn’t look very proud of that fact.

“Alright, so you schemed and betrayed your way to the top of the MegaShroom pyramid. Then what?”

“I get invited into a conference room. There are all these guys, I know all these guys, they are the top brass at MegaShroom. All the executives. The Board of Directors is there, all of them. Kolch is there. He tells me… that it’s time for my reward. He takes off his jacket, his shirt, pants, gets totally naked, and lies down on the table. And they. They.”

“Kill him?”

“Eat him. He had this look on his face, like he was in the most incredible pain and the most incredible ecstasy at the same time. They literally bit chunks off him. Pulled out muscles and ate. Ate till they should have exploded. Guts pushing out, all bloated, seven thousand wen suits covered in blood and other things.” Tony was shivering, wrapping his arms around his knees and rocking back and forth.

“I can’t move. I can’t even blink. There is some kind of enchantment in the chair. They made me watch it all. They scrape together all his… grease. All the fatty bits around his organs and under his skin. They scrape it into a brass bowl and heat it up. They render the fat. Pour the hot, melted fat over my head. It should have burnt. It did burn. But I could feel it transforming me. I… started to think I was Daragah Kolch, but I still knew I was Anthoney Wrenn.”

“And you knew you couldn’t act outside the character of Kolch.”

“Yeah. Not every second of every day, but I couldn’t say anything. I had to be him.”

“Ah.” Truth thought it through for a moment, but was drawing a blank. “Why? Why any of that?”

Tony started laughing, a broken, hopeless noise. “It seems like you understand how we operate. The human consequences of our business model.”

“Oh yes. You really start to appreciate the value of MegaShroom Suppositories when your mother steals all your money to pay for them.”

“Mom, huh? Actually, that’s pretty normal. Seventy five percent of our ambassadors, associates and members are female.” Tony nodded. “We train them to tell other women that it’s a way to bring in extra income and develop financial independence, even if they are stuck at home raising the kids.”

“I remember.”

“Yeah. Slum family, I’m guessing? Either that or the suburbs. Those are our best hunting grounds. Anyway. Why are they doing all this? Simple.” Toney’s face pulled into a very crooked grin. “Limiting shareholder liability.”

There was another pause after that.

“Explain that.”

“It’s how companies work. You have this artificial person, the Corporation. The corporation has one job- make the shareholders money. The shareholders are only at risk to the extent they have invested. That is, they can never lose more than they have put in. No matter what debts the company runs up, the worst that can happen to a shareholder is that their investment gets wiped out. They can’t be personally liable for the debt. Same with crimes. A corporation could kill a million people, and the shareholders wouldn’t be responsible at all. Legally.”

“Okay?” Truth asked, thinking that it wasn’t really okay.

“Everybody agrees this fake person exists. They can hire people, pay taxes, enter contracts, conduct litigation, they can do almost everything a normal human being can do. All without a body to kick or a soul to damn. But that’s human law. What about God, and God’s law? There isn’t word one in any holy script about corporations.”

“Still not really seeing where this is going?”

“An artificial person, created by the shareholders but its mind, its driving spirit, is the company officers. Most particularly the CEO. Literally the Chief Executive Officer. Most responsible person for doing things.”

“Ah. They found a way to pin moral responsibility on you and your predecessors?” Truth asked.

“Yes. They think they found a way to fool God. The CEO is changed every year. The top performer becomes the next CEO. They are anointed with oil, elevated and confirmed in their role by the invisible entity that is Corporation.”

Tony grabbed his knees again, rocking back and forth this time. “The other officers and the Board all eat the old king, absorbing some of the sin, but it’s really about turning the king into a sacrifice. Then the new CEO, a person who has definitionally sacrificed others for their own gain, is forced into their role. Daragah Kolch. Asshole extraordinaire.”

“Why keep the same identity going? An artificial person to absorb the real sins of the company. Which is an artificial person.” Truth asked.

“Something like that. I think there probably was a real Daragah Kolch at some point. Maybe things are different at XextraTee.”

Truth stared blankly out the window for a minute. There wasn’t much to see. Just a big, multistory parking lot. Pretty generic office too, now that he was looking at it. Plenty of “I’m So Great” pictures, awards from trade groups, that kind of thing, but all the furniture looked catalog standard. Bland. There was less here than it seemed. Then he frowned.

“Wait, you said the board of directors is in on this? Aren’t they shareholders too?” Truth vaguely remembered hearing something about that.

“Yes, all of them. Some of them own more than ten percent of the company, which, as you can imagine, is huge.”

“So the whole process is pointless. Self defeating.” Truth threw up his hands.

“Sin eaters.”

“The Praegerite Priests?”

“Yes.” Tony nodded. “The board members are very prosperous, and therefore favored by God. It is quite cheap, comparatively, for them to have their sins absolved.”

Truth nodded. “I see. It’s almost beautiful. A perfect complement to the sales structure. In addition to bearing the cost of buying inventory, developing marketing channels and sweat equity, the employees also bear the cost of the shareholder’s moral decisions. And since this is Jeon and the Church of Praeger is what it is, all that accumulated blood money makes it easier to wash away sin, not harder. It truly is beautiful.”

“I don’t know what they will do now that you broke the spell. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had lawyers or hitmen on the way. Either one would be in character.”

Truth nodded at that. “Oh, I’m going to do what I originally came here to do. I’m going to have you replaced with a stunt double. Yeah, MegaShroom is getting into an exciting new line of work. There may be some short-term downside pressure on earnings, but the long term benefits to me may be substantial.”

“What?” Tony looked bewildered.

“Yes, MegaShroom is going to spread rebellion. Insurrection. Anger at the choking grasp of Starbrite on the world. Some of you may die. All of you may die. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”