Ray Sullivan SciFi Zone: Project: Evil – The Site Progress Meeting part 3

Project: Evil – The Site Progress Meeting part 3

‘You’re supposed to be dead!’ shouted O’Feld, turning to Daw. ‘Surely his being alive is gross misconduct?’ he asked. Daw consulted the appropriate policy, then nodded.

‘According to policy we should pretend to hold an enquiry, take statements from everybody before ignoring them, execute him then decide on his guilt,’ he said, adding, ‘or innocence, apparently.’ Daw looked at the version number of the policy before scribbling the offending word out, removing the ambiguity.

‘That doesn’t sound right,’ said O’Feld. ‘Surely we don’t need to take statements?’ Daw shrugged, he didn’t write the policies. Then he realised that, actually, he did. So he scribbled out the need to take statements, but retained the bit about ignoring them, just in case.

‘It’s what we’ve always done,’ he explained. ‘We can just fabricate them if you really want to keep them, like the police do if you think that will save time?’ he suggested, looking at his watch. The kebab stall was due to open soon, in-between the kebab stall staff security rounds. ‘I’ve got a few generic ones prepared here,’ he said, waving a sheaf of papers that essentially said ‘I did it’ on them. O’Feld took the statements and scanned them quickly.

‘Does he have to sign one?’ he asked, never having got that close to the application of company policy before.

‘Not really,’ answered Daw, ‘we brought the forgery team out here with us; it’ll give then something to do.’

‘Great,’ said O’Feld, ‘get Lurch to test his new facility out with him. Anything else?’ he asked, looking at his watch. ‘Because it’s about time I carried out my rounds of the facility,’ he declared, thinking about the kebab stall opening times. The senior engineer raised his hand.

‘I’ve got a report to make,’ he said. Apart from the sounds of Slippy Doggy Doo being dragged away by Lurch, nobody spoke, but most checked their watches. Undeterred the engineer continued.

‘We found a spare pot of paint, the table’s painted,’ he said, beaming. O’Feld started patting for a weapon while he tried to work out how quickly to kill the man. The engineer continued. ‘Apparently one of the junior engineers thinks that we should be considering the impact the coat of paint will make on the rocket’s performance.’

‘The rocket with four stages and engines designed for three, with four henchmen it wasn’t designed to lift, never mind the massive stainless steel table we intended to remove before shipping?’ queried Brian, looking at his project plan, wondering how the hell that was likely to affect the rocket performance, deciding it was unlikely. The engineer didn’t break pace with his delivery.

‘No need to worry about the henchmen, they can’t fit in the rocket thanks to the stainless steel table,’ he said. O’Feld stood angrily.

‘No henchmen? That’s unacceptable,’ he shouted. The engineer shrugged; it was that or lose the rocket dungeon, you can’t have it both ways, he thought. O’Feld sat, deflated; it was his lifelong ambition to send henchmen pointlessly into space and to cut secret agents in half with an otherwise pointless laser. ‘The laser?’ he asked, looking at Brian.

‘Laser’s fine,’ said Brian, omitting to mention that it couldn’t be powered up thanks to the kebab stand, the meeting kettle and O’Feld’s TV set taking all the available power in the facility. The paraffin intended for the generator was being used for the kebab rotisserie and the goat intended to power the stand-by generator was currently rotating on the kebab stand. It was only by intercepting batteries, such as the ones he’d taken out of Slippy’s boogie box, that kept the kettle and O’Feld’s TV running. O’Feld seemed satisfied, in fact he nearly put the safety back on.

‘Right, if we’re not sending henchmen into space then we don’t need to train them how to die starved of oxygen in a weightless atmosphere. That should ease the budget a tad. Perhaps you could use them to demonstrate the cutting power of the laser, Brian?’ he asked, pocketing his pen, monocle, pistol, Kukri, mace and chainsaw. ‘Next meeting, just before the launch sequence starts,’ he suggested, heading towards the kebab stand.

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