Page 4 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
“I’m going to lie down,” I said quietly into her hair as she hugged me.
Slowly, she released me and leaned back to look into my face. “Do you still want to come with me to see Jenn?” she asked. “She’s only in town until tomorrow.”
I didn’t, but I also didn’t want to be alone, thinking about early retirement. “Sure.”
“Okay. We’ll leave in an hour.” Cupping my face between her hands, she said, “You’re going to be okay, Colin. I promise.”
“I can’t believe it,” Amirasaid, sounding shocked. “Lockheed Martin?”
We were sitting in a small wine bar on the Upper East Side, surrounded by a criminal amount of purple velvet and shimmery gold fabrics and roughly fourteen thousand pillows. It felt like I was slowly suffocating in someone’s poorly decorated boudoir. Across from us sat Jenn Castillo, Amira’s best friend from their undergraduate days at NYU and a brilliant engineer. Still dressed in the sharp pantsuit she’d worn to her meetings earlier that day, she shook her head ruefully. “I knew you wouldn’t approve.”
“They manufactureweapons! How could you agree to work for a company like that?”
The other woman swirled the enormous glass of wine in front of her. “They do more than manufacture weapons.”
“What happened to getting a position in academia? Or in the nonprofit sector?”
Jenn lifted her glass and took a long swallow. “What happened?” she repeated as she lowered her wine back to the table. “Life happened.” She started ticking off points on her fingers. “I have more than a hundred thousand dollars in student loans. If I take a job in academia or at a nonprofit, I’ll still be paying that off when I’m retired. If I can even afford to retire.” She lifted another finger. “Someday, before I’m middle-aged, I want to buy a home. Maybe have a kid. Have you looked at the real estate market lately? Do you know how expensive parenthood is in this country?” Another finger. “Five months ago I was diagnosed with a chronic medical condition that requires regular hospital stays and a battery of treatments. Lots of insurance plans won’t cover everything I need.” Her shoulderslifted in a small shrug. “Lockheed Martin is paying me almost four times what I’d make somewhere else, and their health insurance is top-notch.”
Amira reached across the table to grab her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay.” Jenn offered her a faint smile. “But it’s not as simple asThey’re evil, you can’t work for them.”
Amira released her and leaned back against the velvet-upholstered booth. “We promised one another that we’d change the world,” she said after a long pause, voice tinged with sadness.
“Idealism is easy when you’re twenty years old and have nothing to lose,” Jenn replied quietly. “But in my experience, it rarely survives contact with reality.”
We sat there in silence for a while. Only peripherally invested in the conversation at our table, I watched the well-dressed clientele around us talk and laugh as they drank their eighteen-dollar glasses of mediocre wine, wondering how many of them were facing literal termination at the hands of their employers. Not many, I suspected.
“What about you, Colin? You work for a bank, don’t you?”
I blinked and brought my attention back to Jenn. “Hmm? Oh. Yeah.”
“I bet they do some pretty unsavory things,” she said, giving Amira a pointed look.
Oh, Jenn, I thought.You have no idea.
“That’s different,” Amira insisted. “Banks aren’t intrinsically bad.”
“A lot of people would disagree,” Jenn replied. Her gaze turned back to me, challenging. “Let’s say your bank engages in predatory loans. Are you complicit simply because you work there?”
I wasn’t thrilled to be held up as some sort of object lesson. “I’m just a data analyst,” I murmured.
“But you’re still cashing their paychecks.”
Not for much longer. I was suddenly overcome by a wave of panic that pulled me to my feet before I realized what was happening. “I need to go,” I mumbled as I dropped a twenty on the table. “Nice to see you again, Jenn.”
“Colin, wait,” Amira said with a concerned expression.
“See you at home,” I told her. Then I hurried outside, my chest tight.
On the way home, I realized that the worst thing about my looming termination was how little it would matter to anyone but me. Though employed by the most interesting and dangerous company in the world, I sat in a bland little cubicle and did boring, tedious work. Dark Enterprises would have someone else in that cubicle before the day was out, their contribution to the company indistinguishable from mine.
It was unbearably depressing.
Later that night, when Amira knocked on my bedroom door and softly called my name, I buried myself under the covers and didn’t reply. I couldn’t face another pep talk about how everything was going to work out. Instead, I lay there in the dark, wishing for something—anything—that might save me.
Three
