By popular demand, another short story by author Michael Collins. Dark, horror themes.

Root Cause Analysis

After a few diffident shoves, the door opened, a switch flicked with a muted click, and light began to flood the boardroom; harsh white light from long, thin halogen bulbs affixed to the ceiling. A gruesome sentry line of dead insects littered the diffuser units covering the bulbs. The room was a nondescript rectangle with dirty off-white walls decorated with discolouring damp spots spreading from the corners. Dominating the floorspace was a wide, thick boardroom table, oval-shaped in dark mahogany which liquid spills and mug rings had well marked. The table had seats for twenty. Four large-screen monitors were mounted on the far wall. One had a spiderweb crack in one corner. In the table’s centre stood, like a fat tarantula, a black triangular conference phone, its power/holding light blinking red.

Into this room filed a curious assortment of figures: sharp-suited human businessmen, hoodie and jeans-clad bespectacled geeks with smooth, hollowed-out almost human faces, long-tentacled fish creatures, nine-foot-tall bipedal lizards. Muted conversations followed them as they slowly took their places at the table or gathered around the drinks trolley in a corner of the room. These little pockets of speech ran the gamut from the banal to the ominous to the inconceivable:

‘Marketing puts next quarter’s projections up 3.4%.’

‘I want him found, eviscerated and beheaded. Pictures in the newsletter as a warning. No goddam excuses.’

‘Elections on Szzleic have been rescheduled following the assassination of the Viceroy and his family – was that us? No, I don’t think so, although assuming we put our support behind Nyarlathotep we’ll be excellently placed to profit from the uncertainty. Cool.’

 ‘See the new Big Bang last night?’

Slowly the attendees took their seats, leaving the table’s head empty, conversation trailing off as their attention turned to the video screens. As a slim young woman with striking angular features and long jet-black hair entered and took the seat at the table’s head, the screen on the far left flickered a few times, the signal waxing and waning before the picture gradually cleared to show in disquieting close-up the face of an elderly woman, skin cracked and wrinkled, thin lips set together in a line of disapproval and eyes so pale and grey as to appear almost colourless.

The screen next to it came alive with an electronic howl, causing many inside the room to wince. Its grainy image showed a man at a large desk, behind which a window looked out onto a windswept desert view. The man at the desk would have been considered strikingly handsome – a robust square jaw, high cheekbones and warm brown eyes – apart from the huge scar that ran from his right temple down to the line of his jaw. The scar bled endlessly, dripping bright red onto the desk.

The next two screens flickered on, one showing a two-headed craboid figure, incongruously dressed in a three-piece pinstripe suit, and a small, neat female humanoid woman who seemed entirely natural sitting around any business meeting – if one ignored the fact that her skin was bright blue. All four of these strange, eldritch figures held clasped in hand or claw a slim binder.

The old woman allowed conversation in the room to cease, then began to speak. Nobody could hear her words. The woman continued speaking, leaning in, tapping at something unseen by the people in the room. Finally, in mid-sentence, the woman’s speech became discernible. Her voice matched her visage – old, cracked, and sinister.

‘- yet? Shit. Hello? Can you hear me? Shit’

The pretty dark-haired woman sitting at the table’s far head waved. ‘We can hear you now, Evelyn.’

‘Fucking stupid IT,’ Evelyn grumbled. ‘Why can’t we use telepathy like on every other level?’

The woman at the head of the table gave a silent shrug of apology.

Eveyln spoke again. ‘All right, let’s get started.’

‘A few bits of housekeeping before we move to our main subject.’ Her voice took on a familiar briskness; some of the attendees (mostly the humans), knowing exactly what was coming, visibly tuned out, shuffling through notes in folders or turning and chatting with their mates.

‘1 – Budgets. It’s two weeks away from re-forecast. I do not want the bean counters from Finance to be passive-aggressively knocking at my door at the eleventh hour, complaining that they have not received your latest changes. Get them submitted now. Failure to comply will incur immediate sanction.

2 – Three of you have not completed your mandatory inclusivity training. I need not name names – you all know who you are. Dominium is proud to be an inclusive and equal employer across all levels and species, and all executives consider it a crucial part of our multiversal success. You must complete your training before the end of the month. Failure to comply will incur immediate sanction.

3 – The recent town hall meeting was graced by the attendance of Chief Sorcery Officer Geolo Zendaya. Geolo shared some fascinating insights into Dominium’s recent pacification efforts of the Zlury rebels on the sixth-level Zxckltyerps Peninsula. This important and challenging work is crucial to our increased market share of psychic energy across the sixth level, and we should all be grateful to Geolo and his incredible team for their diligence and excellence. I strongly encourage you all to review the video as soon as possible. Failure to comply will incur immediate sanction.’

The old woman took a breath. ‘All right, that’s HR satisfied for the time being. On to business.

 We’re here to conduct an initial discovery RCA, regarding the recruitment of two targets on level nine. I think we all know what caused this calamitous fuckery, so let’s not waste any time: I’ve got a call with execs from Entertainment in thirty to run through a demo of their new bloodsports ad campaign and I will not miss a second of that, so let’s be quick about this.’

(One of the attendees leaned over to its neighbour, its fluttering gills betraying its nerves, and whispered, ‘What’s RCA again?’ ‘Root Cause Analysis, you dick,’ replied the man with a smirk. ‘’Sake, Derek, do try and keep up.’)

The blue woman in the corner screen stirred. Her voice was a hideous buzz, but its words were clearly decipherable. She pointed a fat, stubby, clawed digit through the screen at the dark-haired woman. ‘I still want to know why operatives on your level still cannot determine the true level of potential talent inherent in the assets you attempt to acquire. On my level, we’re aware – from gestation – of the potential talent of our assets. We know exactly where they are, exactly what they can do, and exactly when they should be acquired.’ She sighed, a curiously gentle exhalation. ‘Every time we try to acquire an asset from level nine it goes wrong. Why?’

‘You know why,’ said the scarred man. ‘Level nine – despite our frequent warnings – has invested far too much in technology’s dubious wonders, and the fancy electronic gadgets created to satisfy their insatiable demand for distraction. It’s the regrettable result of an existence favouring science (this word delivered with a sneer that broke open the man’s scar once again, causing fresh new blood to seep down his cheek) over magic.’

All heads – human, animal, cyborg, alien – turned to the young woman at the head of the table, who paused to flick back an errant strand of hair. ‘I would like to point out that the unique gestation period and the extended time required to nurture the young of this species, added to the strong societal bonds that occur, naturally make it difficult to perform the diagnostic and extractive steps that some of your colleagues may find easier on other levels,’ she said.

Her voice was low, composed, and rich, and her demeanour was calm, but a brief nibble of her lower lip betrayed Michelle Palmer’s nerves. She’d attended many of these meetings and had experienced the razor’s edge of banality versus terror that they existed on. At any moment, one of the executives might express displeasure at her performance and, with a curt gesture, approve her sanction– on more than one occasion, she’d sat there watching in horror as a faceless assassin silently entered the room and dispatched an unwanted failure with the slash of a knife across the windpipe. This meeting was different. This one she wasn’t just attending – this one she was leading, and it was her work and direction under scrutiny.

Her argument had cut through. Heads were nodding grudgingly on the video screens. The executive board was well aware of the unique challenges that work on level nine presented. But it was increasingly worth it: subjects were scarce on this level and uniquely powerful, alluring targets for the Dominium, making their acquisition difficult and ripe for error, but potentially invaluable once acquired, subdued and put to work nibbling and probing at the weak spots of existence. Projects launched on level nine were often given extraordinary leeway for this reason. Still, the ops manual existed for a reason, and the ops manual mandated an RCA for every after-action fuckup, even one on this challenging level.

On-screen, Evelyn was riffling through papers in her binder. Stopping at one particular page, she looked up. ‘You withdrew all resources from active monitoring of the assets after the incident?’ she asked.

‘It seemed prudent,’ said Michelle. ‘The assets had been alerted and became distressed. From our telemetry of the event and… debriefing of our agent, it became clear that a significant psychic event occurred. I didn’t want to run the risk of triggering something precipitous from the assets, so I ordered a complete drawback. We’re now monitoring them through telemetry only whilst letting things settle down. I’m aware of the limitations of telemetry in this area, but I am confident we’ll be able to detect any occurrence of importance.’

The blue-skinned woman grimaced, then nodded in agreement. ‘Tell me how telemetry is supposed to clearly recognise and diagnose talent in that disgusting swamp.’

Evelyn frowned, causing an explosion of wrinkled, crinkly skin on the video screen. ‘There should be no excuse when it comes to such important assets. I’ll contact the Head of Telemetry. Perhaps that department requires a shake-up.’

‘Your agent?’ asked the crab-thing, examining a document in its folder. The sheet of paper looked absurd in its giant red claw. ‘It reads to me as if the agent was to blame, disregarding orders and trying to manipulate events to its own ends.’

‘The contract has been terminated, and the agent dismissed,’ said Michelle. ‘A full knowledge transfer has taken place, and all IP has been successfully reclaimed.’

The blue woman looked up. ‘The agent wasn’t sanctioned?’ it asked. ‘Its mistakes were egregious. I’d expect full sanction after such a shit show.’

One of the hoodie-clad figures raised a hand. Michelle turned to it with eyebrows raised. ‘We don’t normally raise our hands in here,’ she said.

‘Although it’s not the worst idea in the world,’ chimed in Evelyn from the video screen in a tone of voice that literally dripped.

‘Sorry,’ said the hoodie. ‘May I?’

Michelle nodded.

‘Sanctioning an agent isn’t like decommissioning a server. Sanctioning removes all future possible utility.’ The man spoke as if reciting from a textbook.

Michelle said, ‘We’ve all been through enough organisational redesigns to know never to discard a resource that might come in handy in the future.’

The heads on the video screens nodded again, although the craboid managed to look unimpressed.

Evelyn shuffled her papers and re-settled herself in her chair. ‘So, to summarise, this was an unusually difficult acquisition of multiple assets on a level known to present unique challenges, aligned with a poorly chosen agent who acted precipitously, against directions and in discordance with project objectives. This seems to me to be the delta between the expectations and the reality in this particular event. Is everyone agreed?’

Mumbled agreement swirled around the table and video screens – until the craboid spoke, its voice a slippery, atonal dirge, in perfectly understandable English, albeit with a strong French accent. ‘The proper allocation of resources is the purview of the project manager. The agent chosen for this operation – a resource, as all have recognised, entirely unsuited to the task – was a resource allocated by the project manager. For that decision alone the project manager should be removed immediately and issued sanction.’

All heads in the room swivelled in unison to face Michelle. She glanced at the video screens to see a slight smile crossing Evelyn’s face. She took a moment to compose herself – a brief internal deep breath – before responding, knowing that the wrong phrase, spoken in the wrong tone, would end her life.

‘Whilst that is true, Xandar,’ said Michelle, addressing the crab-thing, ‘the fact of the matter is that the agent was chosen despite the… personal flaws displayed, because it possessed the most suitable skill set and experience germane to the task at hand. Moreover, it was given the clearest instructions, under a very strict mandate, of how to proceed. This-‘she waved an exquisitely manicured hand at the folder in front of her – ‘All this is documented in the risk log, to which you all have access.’

A few murmurs from the room; Michelle paid them no mind. The faces on the video screens showed as little reaction as did poker pros at the final table: nothing that could indicate whether she had talked her way out of oblivion. No matter; Michelle had her own trump card to play.

‘The last and most appropriate point to mention is that the contract terms agreed with the agent included no financial remuneration and thus no impact on the programme budget. This presented a significant incentive towards proceeding with this resource and has contributed in no small part towards the project remaining under budget for a number of years.’

Nods of approval came from the blue woman and the scarred man; staying under budget was the catechism which absolved all sins. Evelyn raised one thin eyebrow in what Michelle read, hopefully, as approval. She fixed her eyes at the craboid. Expressions and emotions were impossible to discern across its cracked alien features. Not that Michelle needed to – she could feel the hate coming through the screen in hot red waves. Yet it stayed silent. Your move, asshole, she thought at it.

She returned her attention to the others. ‘Was there anything else?’ she asked. She addressed her question to all the executives. There was only one figure she needed an answer from, however.

The screens all blinked out at the very instant Michelle asked the question, and she felt her heart plunge down the lift shaft of her chest. For what seemed like eternity she couldn’t breathe, and she felt the burning gazes of the others in the room crawling over her. The assassin, the blade and the end of her life were seconds away. She could feel it standing over her. The buzzing overhead lights flickered as if in sympathy.

A harsh, atonal shriek issued from the conference phone in the centre of the table. Then, Evelyn’s voice: ‘-ar me? Hello? Can you hear me? Fucking IT!’. As if her foul language had summoned them back from the internet’s void, the screens flickered again and the faces of the execs re-appeared.

‘You’re back, Evelyn,’ said Michelle, mentally retrieving her heart from the depths of her stomach. ‘Could you repeat?’

Evelyn had her head turned, was obviously talking to someone off-screen. ‘You get the fucking CIO in my office right now. I’ll feed him his own fucking eyeballs!’

‘Hello, Evelyn?’

She turned back to the room, irritation turning her thin grey eyes into slits. ‘Am I back?’ she said.

‘You’re back, Evelyn,’ said Michelle.

‘Nothing more from me,’ said Evelyn in her horrid voice. ‘Anybody else?’ There followed instant agreement from the other execs.

‘Excellent,’ said Evelyn. ‘I expect an immediate update of any change in the status of the assets. We’ll meet again next quarter to discuss new acquisition possibilities. If there’s no other business?’

Silence from the other screens and heads shaken in the room.

‘Four minutes ahead of schedule. Excellent.’

All screens, apart from the craboid’s, winked out. Gradually the meeting attendees gathered their things and began shuffling to the door, resuming their earlier conversations. The craboid tossed its folder off screen and leaned forward as if to confront Michelle. As it did so, the screen issued another electronic whine – this one almost plaintive – and fizzed out into black blankness.

Michelle sighed. She drew a slim hand across her brow, which had suddenly broken out in sweat. This one she’d won. There was no guarantee – there never was – that she’d win the next one. She took one last glance around the room, nodded faintly to herself, flicked the switch to return the room to its dank darkness and closed the door behind her as she exited.