Chapter 12 Corporate Reaps Reward

Meanwhile, none of this had gone unnoticed inside the town's pseudo-prison tower; nothing the townsfolk ever did went unnoticed there. Shirezette had changed the classification of Geodon to that of petty businessman and then to plain businessman. This had gotten the attention of Planetary Enterprise headquarters, who considered everything that happened on this planet as subordinate to their business enterprise; and Geodon and his crew were conducting business that had not been initiated by headquarters, nor even had applied to do business here. This put Geodon in the category of a disobedient disruptive person.

Such unlawful behavior was not dealt with like on Old Earth, with its courts of law and penal system. The prison towers of every town on this planet were in reality the local sites of Planetary Enterprise and its enforcers; no jail cells for the offenders, but far more effective DIC's, Direct Instructional Commands were fashioned and injected into the offenders, resulting in instant behavior modification.

Shirezette received the orders to be incorporated into this electro-micropellet, encoded to match Geodon's DNA record on file, and then sent the instructions to the two guards that monitored Geodon.

Corlin and Elgecko received the instructions to activate the nearest transmission instrument to Geodon's current location; and then Elgecko fired the electro-micropellet into the skin of Geodon as soon as he opened the door to his home.

"Ouch!" Geodon silently exclaimed to himself as he opened his door. What was that strange pin-prick sensation that he felt at times, seemingly coming out of nowhere? The puzzling awareness quickly faded to just awareness of the uncomfortable little pain site but no longer contemplating what it might be; the instruction already working on him.

Arriving at the vacant store that they had rented, he gathered the other three together for a moment, and said that they needed to hire more people to work with them, people who could help expand the manufacturing of the cabinetry.

Just then there was a knock on the door, and a couple of men there said they were looking for work. "Perfect timing" Geodon said to them, inviting them in. "We happen to be in need of some help. What kind of work do you do, and what are you interested in doing" he asked them, unaware that this is not the way he would have responded normally.

"I'm Janks and this is my partner Sellby, and we are experts in management of businesses, and we currently are looking for work." one of them said. "We are retired and so all we need for pay is a 10% of a Standard Portion apiece." "You are hired!" replied Geodon, dimly remembering that the cabinetry they had already sold had brought an enormous amount of money into the activity, from which they could easily pay these guys. Geodon quickly began explaining the entire manufacturing process to the two new men.

Nansella, Juisette and Jockly all looked at each other; they thought that this activity was a foursome; none were employees nor was there a formal business, but it seemed Geodon had suddenly effectively proclaimed it was a business and hired two employees who were now going to manage them all, happening in a matter of minutes. Why had he not consulted with them? Another surprise for them, as once again a knock on the door, and a dozen men came in. Janks quickly hired them, and began showing them how to make the cabinets. Janks then told Geodon that everything was under control and he could go home, and Geodon left, without a glance at Nansella. Then Sellby came over to where Nansella, Jockly and Juisette were standing a bit amazed, saying "what are you three doing here? You are not employees. I must ask you to leave immediately" and so they walked out of the door, totally puzzled. Then all three of them said a little "ouch" as they were each hit by individualized micro-pellet instructions, and soon they were all heading back to their homes, the memory of the preceding moments fading away into thoughts of what to do with the rest of their day.

Nansella met Geodon as he was carrying one of the new molds toward the store, and he asked her to help him carry it. They set it down beside the front door of their former store, and as they turned to walk away, the door opened and one of the new workmen took the mold inside, without a comment, as if expecting it. Geodon and Nansella spent the next few hours carrying all their equipment from Geodon's workroom and similarly depositing it on the walkway in front of their former rented workspace, and as if by magic; each time immediately somebody came out and took the equipment and supplies inside. Geodon and Nansella did not feel surprised at all that this was happening, nor did they have a thought for the money their little business had made; it was all in the hands of the new folks, and no longer was of concern to them. The instructions encoded into the electro-micropellets shot into them had been coordinated by Planetary Enterprise so as to integrate into their planet-wide control system; all was working smoothly like clockwork, and there were no dissidents.

When Geodon's workroom and the rest of his home had been stripped of all the supplies, assembly equipment and even the cabinetry he emptied out on the floor and delivered into town to the store doorstep, he and Nansella prepared a meal and chatted about anything but the cabinetry and the associated business, as if they were unaware that it ever existed.

The next morning they headed toward the town's pylon, Geodon carrying two buckets of sand and Nansella carrying a bucket filled with rain gear and food. As they rode in the transfer pod, swinging up and down and up to the changeover point to link to the next pylon each time, clouds began to form overhead and by the time they had reached the lake's terminal pylon, it was a blizzard outside. Wearing their rain gear more for warmth now and shield from the icy wind, they made their way to their little lake area; the lake had not risen anymore. Back inside their cave room, they turned the lights on, and Geodon sent a request for a recharge of the main charge storage capacitor's rectenna, and to repeat the recharge at every chance one of that kind of satellite passed in range. The booming crackle of the few seconds of beamed energy against the third cave being bored also started up again, behind the protective barricade. Geodon hooked up some resistance wire directly across the main storage capacitor and used it to heat the cave room, turning off only when there only remained enough for lights and communications to be powered for a couple of days; the satellite recharging the main charge storage capacitor was frequent enough most of the time, to keep the heater going. He and Nansella just spent the time there enjoying the food and companionship for a few days, thinking that they deserved a vacation, although what from, was not quite a memory anymore in either of them. The electro-micropellets instructions had been very thorough.

Looking out the door, they found that the storm had calmed down; was still below freezing and snow was piled in drifts. Geodon used the sand-adhesive-ultrasonic slurry to fabricate a crude snow shovel, then used it to scrape some of the pathways clear around their little vacation home; the path to the cave that had been resumed to be bored by satellite beam fragmentation had gotten a few meters deeper; Geodon temporarily stopped the blasting processes and went to inspect the progress, as it probably had gotten into the area where surface formation suggested a lava tunnel might exist.

Entering the artificial cave, he soon found that indeed a dark hole had appeared in the upper back of the cave. Going back to get a flashlight, he then peered into the hole; the light reflected off a smooth surface several meters away; it indeed appeared to be a lava tube. This could make expansion of their little lakeside facility more interesting. He replaced the protection barrier on the pathway, and sent the instructions to resume the solar satellite's beam-blasting. Nansella was quite curious about the discovery too, so they delayed their return home for a couple more days of cave blasting, although their food stash was getting a bit low.

Halting the blasting from the satellite again, both of them brought flashlights and peered into the hole in the back of the cave. There were rock shards all over the floor of the lava tube a meter below the floor level of the cave; and some shards had already been blasted off the opposite side of the lava tube, where the satellite's highly concentrated solar energy had shocked the rock face there too, crumbling it to the floor. Climbing down into the tube, their flashlights shone off into blackness in both directions; the air inside seemed quite musty and probably was low on oxygen, for breathing, although pausing a moment they could feel a gentle air movement down the tunnel, air apparently being drawn into the cave through their new opening into it. They walked a few meters in the other direction in the tube tunnel, and there was no detectable air movement there. So they concluded there was another opening somewhere down in one direction from their opening into the tube.

Returning to the snowy world outside, Geodon reinstalled the safety barrier preventing access to the new cave, but did not re-activate the satellite's blasting, for now. Enjoying a last snack from the small remaining provisions there, they packed up and headed back along the snow drift piled trail, back to the pylon. Before heading up the elevator of the pylon, they first made a quick visit to the dock on the side of the vast lake that supplied the town's agriculture with water, and found that it too had risen the same amount as that of their little lake; it looked likely that there was a water level equalizing path between the two lakes. Then they headed back to the pylon, into the transfer pod with their empty buckets, and soon got picked up and swung down along the string of pylons heading back to town. The world looked quite strange out there, all covered with snow; except for places where the black lava rugged ripples had overhangs that the snow drifts had not completely filled in. Nansella took some photographs of the scene there; the snow never reached as far as town, and in fact rain was quite rare there too. The slow rhythmic swing down and back up to transfer, then down and back up again to transfer to next pylon's arm, felt like a very different experience, with the black-speckled white world out there, the sky overcast too but snow was no longer falling. It seemed like a soft fluffy world through which they were riding, like on a horse on a huge white merry-go-round, minus the calliope music.

Arriving at the town's pylon, they put their raingear into the empty buckets, to carry them home. As they walked together toward Geodon's house, passing by the town prison structure, their mind was blanked to awareness of the odd huge tall round shape. But inside, Corlin and Elgecko were not so oblivious of the pair walking below them. Corlin fired a electro-micropellet into Geodon, and Elgecko immediately had his data awareness merged with the subconscious of Geodon; he first quickly faded away the puzzle about the weird sting sensation, then he was urged to reminisce about his adventures of the past several days, while Elgecko copied the interesting part of the data into the facility'e data banks, which were copied to the central data bank of Planetary Enterprise Headquarters. But Shirezette was right on it, something new and interesting coming in for her scrutiny. The little lake facility had long been one of her interests, watching its development by Geodon and Nansella, something different from the business-as-usual of the general townsfolk's activities. The discovery and penetration into the lava tube was of special interest to her.

As it was also to Planetary Enterprise Headquarters. While individual businessmen were part of the basics of this planet's economy and was encouraged, providing taxes for the Planetary Enterprise business, PE also considered this planet and all on it to be their property, people and their little enterprises. Nothing escaped their attention, making sure there were no surprises; everything was watched by computer to evaluate every little activity for how far it deviated from the norm. The little lake facility had gone quite a way from the center of normality and now was alerting top management about it. Although at first evaluation it did not seem to provide opportunity for profit-taking, like the former business that Geodon had created, it was to be kept in close observation, to see if it was worth the while for Planetary Enterprise management to take it over, just like they had done for the cabinet making business. Retirees like Geodon and Nansella were expendable, granted a few years of life after working, as example to keep the other people working hard toward retirement; but any productivity of a retiree was considered property of Planetary Enterprise Corporation. But also a little leeway was allowed, to get the retirees to do the work of setting up some profitable thing, before moving in to take it over, assigning it then to be done by PE employees, the businesspeople of the planet. Retirees had the strength of their lifetime of work on the planet, and were the best source of new ideas for improving things on the planet, easy goodies for top management; but they would not let the retirees receive any benefit from their creative efforts, their activity was just erased from their mind and their assets taken over by the PE Corporation. It enabled top management to live the absolute luxurious easy life, unquestionable power.