The Social Experiment: Ch. 01

From his hand flashed a black card with silver trimmings. A string of numbers, along with his name were embossed in titanium. It shimmered under the gentle orange light dimmed to a calm and romantic perfection. He ignored the smart phone vibrating relentlessly. “Fifty-nine missed calls” it read. It must have been important, but apparently not so for the card-holder.

“Merci beaucoup, Monsieur,” said the maitre d’hotel as he received the card from the affluent guest and placed it on a stainless steel plate draped over a golden cloth. The glossy black card could afford not even the faintest fingerprint mark. The staff of the hotel wore white gloves to assure their guests of impeccable service quality.

It was by far the perfect night for Mr Martini to spend with his wife. He had just gotten rid of his pestering, burdensome children in the morning, off to an international boarding school in the United Kingdom. They were sent on the first flight to English territories at the airport terminal by his housekeeper. The Dentley Preparation Boarding Institution was one of the leading preparatory schools for grooming elites from every corner of the world. Each year’s intake was selected five years before, and applicants on the waiting list had their hopes lifted for three years before actual confirmation or rejection. That being said, the chairman of Dentley Institution played golf with Mr Martini on a monthly basis. It only took the chairman one phone call to the admission department to secure the Martini ingrates VIP slots in the prestigious academy.

The headwaiter tactfully interrupted the silence between Mr Martini and his wife. His daily interactions with the wealthy made him accustomed to such atmosphere. ”How was the Creme Brulee, Monsieur?”

Mr Martini replied with a smile which was briefly polite, “marvelous,” as he allowed the headwaiter to clear his plate on the large table.

“Merci beaucoup, Monsieur. I will convey your compliments to the Chef de Cuisine Francois.” He went on to clear Mrs Martini’s dessert plate. “And how did you find the macaroons, Madame?”

Mrs Martini, who was quiet throughout the dinner, made her best portrayal of a classic socialite. “The macaroons were fantastique. Many colore. Simply beau.” She attempted, quite embarrassingly, to compliment the dessert in French. Her unrefined accent gave her away by the first word. It was the reason why Mr Martini never allowed his wife to speak in public.

Five macaroons of different colours and flavours were served for dessert on Mrs Martini’s plate. Four and a half macaroons remained. Desserts in the hotel were prepared by the world renown French chef. Each macaroon was baked to perfection. The five on the plate in front of her were worth seven hundred dollars.

“Quite evidently, Madame. Merci beaucoup,” the headwaiter replied politely as he cleared Mrs Martini’s plate as well. “I hope you enjoyed your dinner.”

The couple got up and exited the restaurant. “Au revoir,” the headwaiter bade them goodbye. As the back of Mr Martini’s expensive suit and Mrs Martini’s revealing bareback dress were out of sight, his young Commis Waiter whispered to him, “master, you didn’t pass them the receipt!”

“Much to learn, boy. These type of guests, they have no use for checks.” He looked at the redundant receipt at the cashier. Fourteen thousand, eight hundred and ninety-four dollars. The tips he received was a hundred dollars. And that was even way more than the amount he donated to the Royston Philanthropic Welfare Funds for the needy.

It’s not like the headwaiter could do anything about it. As far as he was concerned, he needed the wealthy to keep his job relevant. He would bow his head to anyone who owned a Black Card.

The card reader flashed green. In his hand was a black card with his face and serial number printed on it. The admin clerk trudged to his cubicle and inserted his security card into another device. Upon closer look, the fingerprint marks were noticeable under the dim orange desk light. A multiple number of scratches on the plastic card suggested that he always kept it close to his keys.

He cursed under his breath, waiting for his computer to start up. What could ruin a work day more than being called back to the office during the evening. He had bought a kilogram of roasted beef for his family to share during dinner. Apparently, his superior had no regards for private family life. Or rather, he had no respect for anyone’s life except for his own and his bosses. Poor Mr Kialos had to stop his dinner abruptly and rush back to the office to attend to an unauthorised security breach.

He remembered the housewife’s disapproving sulk as he left the flat. “What kinds of values are you teaching the children?” asked Mrs Kialos every single time he did something she did not approve of. In the spacious but empty office, he could hear her nagging in his head, louder than the buzzing sound from the air vents. “If I don’t appease that annoyingly demanding superior all the time, I won’t have the means to support the family,” he thought. But who would understand his pathetic plight other than his colleagues facing the same crunch from their own bosses and intolerant wives?

Mr Kialos got to work immediately. He was not being paid overtime so the faster he completed his work, the more losses he could cut. An extra minute spent here in the office is an additional minute wasted. He screened through the innumerable sequences of codes and digits.

“Oh dear… This isn’t a glitch… Someone deliberately opened the external water vents…” Kialos ran full diagnostics on the entire building’s maintenance facilities. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered, trying his best not to freak out. If the problem escalated, the blame would be thrown to him, even though it was not his fault the technician on duty was off at a strip club with his superior, Mr Owdip. He immediately activated emergency protocol to shut all exterior vents and locked down the entire building. He picked up his phone and sent a text to his boss.

“External vents forcefully opened. Closed the vents and building in lock-down now. Require immediate assistance.”

According to protocol, in an event of an emergency, the direct superior and his superior were to be contacted immediately to assess the problem and measures taken to address it. If higher management were needed, it would be then escalated to their own superiors following protocol.

“You better have a nobel prize answer to why you are disturbing me at this hour, Kialos.”

Mr Kialos explained the situation to Mr Owdip’s superior.

“This is above my pay grade. I’ll contact higher management.”

As they followed protocol and went up the hierarchy, the board were attempting to contact the director cum majority shareholder of the company to no avail. Fifty-nine attempts, to be exact. The director must be attending to very important business. His time was expensive and scarce.

Mr Kialos put on his jacket and made his way to the first floor. After briefing the security guards on duty about the lock-down, they waited impatiently as the rest of the city slumbered.

How am I going to explain to Hyunmi that I won’t be coming home today? How am I going to explain to the management about this security breach? He thought about these questions until he fell asleep in the Martini Enterprise Building.

With both hands, he presented his muddied, tattered slip of A7 card to the building attendant. The building attendant lazily returned it to the owner after verifying his sequence of numbers handwritten on the flimsy paper. The black ink smudged several areas on the card due to sweat, grime and severe temperature conditions. It was by far known as an identity card, and no employee should identify it as anything other than a ‘card’.

Once the last of them had been cleared, the group made their way to a cargo elevator as the section leader pushed the “Basement 11” button. As the elevator screeched because of the overloaded weight of underweight workers, his stomach rumbled. He was not the only one feeling hungry. They only had about three minutes to wolf down their dinner before their leader rounded them up for the next assignment. Their dinner was provided by the company, if one considers a loaf of bread spread with butter dinner to begin with. Yet they were not about to waste even one crumb of bread for that additional dollar they save would make a huge difference.

Apart from the screeching elevator and rumbling stomachs, there was silence in the air. It was the silence everyone was accustomed to. The reasoning was simple – “Know less, less trouble”. They were paid for their hands, not their mouths, nor their brains. With the meagre food every day, they learnt to conserve energy to tide through the day. Since his employment, fifteen of them had suffered from heatstroke and fired from the company for under-performance for not adhering to the company’s ‘safe workplace’ policy.

“The company didn’t insure them,” whispered his co-worker, Boh Don.

“What about the hospital bills?” he asked.

Don shook his head in disapproval. “Grooper, do you think a company which feeds us bread for dinner would be willing to foot our additional bills?”

They were led to the sewages in their jumpsuits and protective helmets. The orange lights on Grooper’s helmet flickered.

“You need to get that fixed, Grooper. It’s not safe underground with a faulty light,” Don warned.

They were interrupted by the leader’s coarse and husky bellow. “You see these large tanks of water here? These are the city’s water reserves. The company’s founder is very proud of this fact, and it keeps him influential with the government. When he is powerful, we retain our jobs, so let us keep it that way. Our job today is to do maintenance checks on these tanks and make sure the pumps are functional.”

The workers started their checks when the rest of the world went to sleep. With the heat building up in the underground facility, it become harder to breathe. Someone might just collapse now, but no one was willing to give in to the condemned atmosphere.

“There’s always Royce’s Funds,” these labourers joked all the time. It was amusing, and to some point, comforting to call an elite by a nickname. It made them feel like they were part of society. As a consolation, it was the only thing they could ridicule their bosses for. Other times, they were the ones looking up while the rest out there looked down on them. Yet deep down, they understood that they only making fun of themselves and their pitiful plight. The Royston Philanthropic Welfare Funds for the needy never existed. The meagre donations collected usually gets depleted by admin cost and overheads. It was an era where volunteerism was merely a status.

“Boss! Something’s wrong!” Exclaimed one the of the workers, “says here vent is opened.”

The leader of these workers was bewildered. The vents from these reserves were never opened. He checked the logs. With his eyes widening in fear, he muttered, “Gosh… Alert security!”