Making the Galaxy Great

Jason sat in his office on Monday morning, lost in thought while his ridiculously expensive cup of Organic Fair Trade Sumatra coffee went from tepid to cold. The last place he wanted to be was at work.

Candice had not picked up Shelby until late Saturday evening, so Jason and his daughter had made a day of it. They’d eaten lunch at his favorite pizza pub, played paintball, then returned home to watch a teen romance movie about a nerdy guy who turned out to be not only smart but brave and ended up going to a dance with the hottest girl in high school, who turned out not to be a bitch. While Shelby had been absorbed by the innovative plot and cool clothes, Jason had time to obsess over what he’d seen on the amazing holographic device.

After Shelby had left (and after he’d endured another tirade from Candice about the sleazy life he was leading and his utter failure as a father) he’d spent the rest of the weekend poring over websites for photos and stories about alleged alien encounters. He even came across a few illustrations of aliens who somewhat resembled the girl in the hoodie, but none that looked like her the beings he’d seen on the device.

The office phone beeped. It was Jason’s boss, Morris Ambling.

“Need you,” he said in his I’m-a-big-ass-boss voice. “Right away.”

This meant that it was something that wasn’t really important. If it had been truly urgent, Ambling would have asked Jason to simply handle whatever was going on without the need to stop by his office.

For reasons clear to nobody, Ambling’s spacious office was almost directly opposite Jason’s in the single-floor building that housed the headquarters of Schnitzelberg Brewing. Jason could get there via one of two routes. He could go straight through the middle of the sea of cubicles in the center of the building, which would take him near Evie’s workspace. Or he could take the long way around, which meant meant passing by the front desk and Nadine Hastings, whose job was reception but whose true calling was inserting herself into the activities of every other employee in the company.

Normally, it was an easy decision. But he hadn’t talked to Evie since she’d left his house and he wasn’t sure he was ready to encounter her just yet, so he took the long way around. Nadine looked up suspiciously from her simulated wood grain desktop as he walked by.

“Where in the world are you headed?” she demanded, as if she actually had any reason — let alone right — to know. And as if he didn’t work there.

Bitch, said Jason to himself. Bitch bitch bitch.

“Umm, to see my boss,” he replied.

“Couldn’t you just go straight across?”

The middle finger of Jason’s right hand, which hung out of sight below the reception counter, flexed involuntarily at Nadine.

“But then,” he said slowly, “I wouldn’t get to see your shining face and brighten up my morning.”

“Really. Do you need brightening? Bad weekend?”

Jason, who was more than ready to move on, sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Ah,” said Nadine with exquisitely irritating vagueness.

Just then, Evie appeared, walking toward them from the Sea of Cubicles carrying some sort of bundle in her hands. To his disappointment, Jason noted that she was wearing leggings. Tight leggings to be sure, but still leggings.

“I thought I heard your voice,” she said brightly. “Here’s your shirt back. All laundered and ready to go. I tried to iron it but me and my iron don’t get along.”

Holy fucking piss and shit.

Jason could feel the color flee from his cheeks. Did she absolutely have to do that in front of Nadine?

Nadine’s eyes greedily danced back and forth from Jason to Evie. He wanted to run away, but he realized the longer he stood at reception, the longer she’d have to wait before disseminating the news to the rest of the company.

“Umm, thanks,” he said to Evie. “I had a blast playing ultimate Frisbee with you and your friends. I wish I’d changed shirts first, though.”

Evie’s face turned blank for a moment, then broke into a grin. “Oh, sure. Let’s play again sometime. Soon.”

“Jason, is that you?” a voice shouted from down the hall.

Jason gritted his teeth and walked toward Ambling’s office. He contorted his face into a long, confused-English-aristocrat expression, then strode into the office of his boss and overlord, Morris Ambling, the VP of Sales and Marketing for Schnitzelberg.

Morris motioned for Jason to have a seat, then leaned forward, elbows resting on his desk. His slightly receding slate gray hair was, as usual, swept up and back so that it resembled the prow of a battleship.Between the two men sat a framed photograph of Morris with some professional golfer at some famous course somewhere — possibly Georgia. For Jason, whose brief experience with golf included a cracked car window, the photo did not hold the same talismanic power that it did for Morris.

Morris tapped lightly with his fingertips on his austerely clean desk. “What’s up with social media?” he asked at length.

Jason was not sure that Morris actually understood what social media was, yet he seemed to know that it was critically important to marketing. However, Jason did not like to give away too much.

“Well, I guess you saw there was another breach at Snapgram,” he told Morris. He was fairly certain there was no such app or site as Snapgram, and equally certain that Morris did not know that.

“Hmmm,” nodded Jason’s boss. “That’s why I’ve always been suspicious. But you know, we have to be in that space.”

“Unfortunately, we do,” Jason agreed. Was this the only reason Morris had called him into his office? Or was it to talk about the Canadian trade agreement that the President had just nixed?

Jason reminded himself that Morris probably wouldn’t learn about the trade agreement until someone actually told him, since he neither read nor watched the news.

“But what about us?” said the older man. “What’s happening with us on social media?”

Jason considered an infinite array of possible answers, from sarcastic to disrespectful to downright nasty. Then he said, “Nothing right now. But I’m sure that will change once we start running our new ads.”

Morris’s eyes lit up. “Ah! That reminds me. You’ve got the B&B meeting on your schedule, right?”

Inwardly, Jason made a jerking-off motion with his right hand. Barnes & Bottwick, Schnitzelberg’s agency of record, was making yet another presentation of ideas for the first TV ads the company had ever run — for their flagship brand, Buster’s Beer.

Having seen three previous iterations of their work, which he’d thought were nothing short of atrocious, Jason anticipated the next presentation with even less excitement than his annual turn-and-cough doctor visit. There was no reason for a regional brewing company to employ the services of a New York agency whose niche was cosmetics. But that didn’t really matter, and Jason understood why.

“Yep,” he answered. “Wednesday at 2:00 — right?”

There was a pause while Morris nodded his head and tapped some more on his desk. Jason started to rise, but Morris seemed to awaken from his thoughts. “Ah, just one more thing, Jason. A special assignment.”

A special assignment? Jason felt frost begin to form in his veins. At last, the reason he’d been summoned.

“This . . . this comes from the top. You know.”

Do I? Do I know?

“Mr. Hauck himself,” continued Morris. “He feels, well, you know, he’s been successful all his life . . .”

If by successful, Morris meant that Carl Hauck had inherited the company from his father, who had inherited it from his father, and hadn’t managed to run it into bankruptcy yet, then Jason was inclined to agree.

“. . . And now he wants to give back. To the community. And that’s why we’re making a large donation to the . . . the . . . the mission.” When Ambling had finished speaking, it seemed as if he’d come to an important stopping point. He sighed a sigh of accomplishment.

After waiting what seemed a polite amount of time, Jason asked, “What kind of mission?”

Morris lurched back in his chair, startled by Jason’s lack of understanding. “The Oasis Rescue Mission.”

Jason searched his brain for a moment. “The women and children’s shelter? The big one downtown?”

Morris nodded. Jason furrowed his brow.

“We’re a beer company,” he pointed out. “Is that really a good fit? I mean, a lot of them are probably getting away from husbands and boyfriends who drink too much. Granted, they probably drink cheap beer and not ours, but—”

A sort of frown skipped across Morris’ shuttered mouth, as if trying to decide where exactly to land. “Well, you see,” he began, “that’s just the sort of you know . . . misconception that we’re fighting.”

Is it a misconception? Jason couldn’t wait for what was coming next. Was he supposed to organize a beer festival at the mission?

“You’ll be presenting the check,” said Morris.

What?

“Me? Why?” Jason’s veins went from frosty to permafrost.

Morris ignored the question. “So I want you to talk to them first and arrange a time. Get us some press. You know, the usual stuff. Let’s get some bang for our buck. Our bucks, that is.”

Morris chuckled asthmatically.Then he leaned forward again and stared at Jason. “You do remember your title, don’t you? Marketing Director. This is marketing, Jason. Why else would we do this?”