The Luddite Conspiracy Ch. 01

I was tempted to place this in the Loving Wives category...in fact it was initially conceived as one of my Tribute Tales....but I decided otherwise for two reasons. First, lengthy LW stories generally follow the principal of starting with adultery and then moving into some combination of revenge, reprisal, recovery, and/or name clearing. Since the components that may or may not qualify this story as an LW story do not occur in the first 10,000 words, instead requiring a slow build and backstory, I worried that readers of that variety might feel like their time was being wasted.

The second reason is that my Tribute Tales are meant to be standalone works, and I have plans for some of these characters...

The Luddite Conspiracy

ACT ONE: Transmission

Wednesday

"You know, Neil, you need to be careful."

Even though the two men were less than a year apart in age, and they'd started with the company together, Charles Lofgrin's tone was chiding and parental. He had a tendency to lecture when he was worried, and he had reason to be worried now. Leaning forward and unhooking one finger from his coffee cup to point with, he eyed his contemporary. "Tracy Bunkley's just dying for a reason to put this whole fucking mess on your shoulders, my man. And if the big guys upstairs decide they need a scapegoat...I don't think they'd hesitate to let her do it. Not even you are so highly valued that they'd let the ship sink just to say they treated you fair." He sipped his coffee. "You're a step above rat in the order of things, when there's smoke billowing out the sides."

"That's the truth," Paul Keegan took a pull from his omnipresent cigarette, wincing. He looked almost as if the act were physically painful. Even though smoking was officially prohibited inside the building, it had been a long time since anybody had complained about Paul. Most of the men and women who worked in these offices were friends, or friends of friends, and the cigarettes were just a part of who he was. If people didn't always appreciate it, they accepted it anyway. In fact, seeing him without one was like running into a friend who had worn a thick beard for ten years only to find them suddenly clean shaven. It was incongruous.

He blew out the smoke. "Tracy has wanted to hang your balls from her rearviewmirror for years. Maybe since day one. She's absolutely wet for it, and I'm sure the little cunt is sharpening her knives. Just be careful in there. Don't goad her."

"I don't intend to," Neil's smile didn't reach his eyes. "That sounds more like your thing, anyway."

Cecile, the youngest member of the team, frowned. "Why does Tracy hate Neil? Did he do something? You know, to piss her off?" He leaned on the wall, crossing his arms. In addition to his young age, he stood out from his contemporaries in that he still had the athlete's physique that he'd earned in college, and in that his face was perhaps a bit more aesthetically pleasing. The main floor secretaries seemed to think so, anyway. Some of that was probably just the effects of youth, and most of the rest could be attributed to his lean, muscled build. He was also the most careful to be professional in his language and appearance, which didn't help him as much as it tended to bring to mind the image of a small child wearing Daddy's shoes.

Neil bit his thumb nail and scrunched up his forehead. "I wish I knew. But I don't think it was anything specific, really. Somehow or another I just always seem to rub her the wrong way. The harder I try to stay out of Tracy's way, to just put my head down and do my job, the worse it gets."

Paul snorted. "Come on," he coughed. "It's not that complicated." He pointed his cigarette at Neil. "You doing your job is exactly what upsets her. It reminds her that you're more qualified than she is. That's all it comes down to. That's all it ever came down to. Fear. You know the field, the people, the ins and outs of the business, the fast track alternatives and all of their perils. You know the history. You make informed and logical decisions. You have the respect of all of the people around you, and you respect them in turn. You never half-ass anything, and you always see everything through to the end. None of these are claims that Tracy Bunkley can make. Not one. Hell, I don't think anybody here can say that they've never heard rumors claiming that the bitch slept her way into management. Can't figure how...personally, I wouldn't touch her with Cecile's dick." The shared a laugh. "The bottom line is that Tracy hates you because she's scared of you, Neil, and you can't fix that so long as both of you are here."

"I dunno," Neil shrugged. "But I do know that all this talk of scapegoats is nothing more than paranoia. Nobody is getting fired today. Nobody's getting fired, period. The company's in a bad spot, sure, but moments like these are a reality of industry. They have an inevitability to them. They are unavoidable. And, they are something the higher ups expect to have to deal with from time to time. On top of all that, the error in question wasn't ours."

"You're sure about that?" Charles asked.

He nodded. "I don't buy for a minute that we fucked this thing up. We don't do that. Ever. So whatever happened didn't start with the people in this room."

They all exchanged glances. Cecile looked especially nervous, but it was Charles who asked, "You don't think they're recalling a half million cars on operator error, do you?"

"Maybe," Neil bit his nail again, staring down at the floor. "More likely there's a problem with the assembly line. Or some small figure got mistransfered when they went to plant. I could accept either of those as possibilities. But we've never been anything if we haven't been careful. Every test we ran turned up clean, and we ran them all again anyway. My team does not make mistakes, Charles."

Nobody said anything, but Paul nodded his head and pulled from his cigarette.

Charles tilted his head and changed his approach. "You know, guys, the thing that would drive me crazy were I you is that everything else about this car...and every other car you've ever built, for that matter...works perfectly. This is one small malfunction out of a hundred thousand major decisions and figures you've produced. For fuck's sake, what other job in this world has to have better than a 99.99% success rate?" he threw up his arms. "What other profession punishes you for anything that isn't absolute perfection?"

"Aviation," Neil said flatly. "Heart surgery. Marriage." the other guys laughed. "Well, some marriages. Anybody you want to put absolute trust in...anybody you want to trust with your life...you have to count on 100%."

"And that," Paul grinned, "is why I'm still single. I'm neither trustworthy nor trusting."

David Kearns took that moment to pop his head into the room. "We're on, guys," he said. "They just called for us."

"Yeah, hooray," Paul took one last drag from his cigarette and tossed it into the waste bin. "And twenty minutes late."

"Good luck," Charles waved as they headed out. Although friends with everyone on the team, he was not a member.

The four men walked into the board room looking confident and relaxed in spite of the severity. Inside, a middle aged woman with short hair and a suit coat sat eyeing them passively. Her jaw was tightly locked, and her too-plucked eyebrows arched angrily. A thin, irritated line across her face barely passed for lips. None of this was really an indication of how she felt, however. Tracy Bunkley just always kind of looked pissed off.

"Good morning, Tracy," Dave said, getting no response. Even though the group all worked closely together on a regular basis, and were in fact used to first name casualness, the woman in charge desired the effects of her seniority today. She wanted to distance herself from these people in the face of failure. And she wanted to remind them, and everyone else, that she was above being a member of any one team.

So instead, without glancing at Dave, she turned to look at the only other person seated on her side of the table.

"Mr. Vaughan," she said, "this is the team who built the Technica. You know their names. Team, this is Greg Vaughan." She flashed a smile like a handgun. "He's here to talk with you."

Greg Vaughan was a small man with a drab brown suit, a purple striped tie, and a passing resemblance to Paul Simon. Whatever Tracy was hoping for, he certainly didn't look threatening, especially when he held his hands up apologetically.

"I am really only here," he corrected, "to provide updates, and to get a little information if I can. I want to stress that nobody is getting fired or reprimanded today...and no one is currently in danger of being so. This meeting is all about opening up communication."

Tracy made a face like she'd just heard a tasteless joke. "Still," she said, "I feel it would be inappropriate for us to gloss over the severity of this situation for the sake of niceties."

"Nobody is questioning severity," Mr. Vaughan said in the slow phrasing of weary patience. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "And your feelings on the matter are well-documented, Ms. Bunkley." He turned to look at each of the men seated across from him. "Obviously," he noted drily, "the mere fact that we are having this meeting communicates a degree of concern from the top offices."

"If it's all the same to you," Neil responded, "we'd like it if you could start us off with your update. We've been kept pretty well in the dark up until now," he glanced at Tracy, "so half of what we've heard or think we know might turn out to be heresy."

Vaughan nodded, shuffling through papers with an unreadable expression. "Essentially, gentlemen, the problem is as follows," he placed his glasses on his face and read from a sheet he'd drawn from the pile. "First, we have an error of sorts in the recent update of our most popular family sedan, the Technica. This much you know. You may also know that the error has been referenced in seventy-three separate collisions...almost all of them minor or injury free. It appears to have a tendency to occur when the vehicle has come to a full stop and then resumes acceleration, so all the accidents have been low velocity events. That, at least, is a blessing. Now, we received word yesterday that three major insurance agencies are filing a joint claim against this company claiming an additional fifty-seven accidents on record that they say can be attributed to the design flaw in question. They're seeking six point eight million dollars-"

"This design flaw," Neil said flatly, "IS in question, by the way."

"Hum." Vaughan adjusted his glasses with indifference and continued. "As I said, the lawsuit seeks six point eight million in damages. While not insignificant, neither is this number horrific. The real expense of our little automotive hiccup will be far greater. Our most popular vehicle has now become something of an albatross. Our name is this month's automotive punchline for late night talk shows. And all of this occurs at a time when we are only just in the act of recovering from a near-crippling financial low point due to a weakened economy and foreign competition. I need not remind anybody here that, if this issue is not effectively and quickly resolved, it could potentially be a killing blow event for this company."

"If that's the case," Paul leaned forward on his elbows, "then we should be out there examining the recalled units and trying to ascertain what went wrong. Not sitting in a board room."

Tracy waved dismissively. "An FMEA has already been initiated. We simply didn't think it was appropriate," she leaned on the word like a lectern, "to include the individuals responsible for the recall."

"Responsible?" Neil turned a calm face on her. "Nothing was wrong with our design as submitted, and I think you know that. How many cars have we built for this company? How many remodels have we overseen? This was just a standard update, nothing flashy. It wasn't even a fresh build. No way could we have messed it up. Operator safety is our strong point. It's our driving emphasis. It's our bread and butter."

"And why is that, Mr. Fenner?" Tracy smiled at him.

Neil flinched ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly. "Don't," he said. "Just don't."

She shrugged.

Glancing between them, uncertain what was happening, Vaughan continued. "What we'd like to get today is any information you have that might guide us in determining just where issue lies." He picked up his notebook, and started writing. "Firstly, can you take me through the process of producing the car, starting with just after the initial design was written."

"The yearly update, or the original model?"

"The update is where our focus lies, obviously."

Neil shrugged. "There's not much to say. Once we had our design roughs approved, and our prints run through, we built the mule car. It's exactly how we start every upd-"

"I'm sorry," Vaughan smiled, "I go months at a time without hearing the backroom terms. A mule car is?"

"A mule car," David answered, "is one of the previous year's builds, from the factory floor. It's taken and modified based on our new designs, so that we can test new changes. It allows us to do a sort of preemptive check to see that our figures are all in line. Sometimes we take two of them and use them to test different aspects of the update before putting it all together. It's a cost-effective and very successful way to try things out before pumping out hundreds of cars. In this particular case we opted to run three distinct mule cars in succession, because we were updating the DBW and Neil wanted to be absolutely sure it was safe."

"The drive-by-wire?" Tracy leaned forward. "I'd forgotten about that. Could the problem be housed in the wire system somewhere?"

Paul shook his head. "No way. This appears to be an acceleration issue, I'll grant you, and usually that would make the DBW a suspect, but it should actually be a fail safe against the kind of acceleration you described. It hands over total control of the engine's torque to the ECW, where it's coded in for the brake to override the accelerator, so even if something went wrong there the software would still allow the operator to brake to a stop."

"Not if the software never got the signal," Tracy argued.

"If this were a case of a faulty by-wire," Cecile observed, "you would have a lot more accidents on your hands." Tracy threw him an irritated look before tilting her head in acquiescence.

"It is a place for us to look, though," Vaughan noted, scribbling on his pad. "Who knows? Maybe something is wrong with the software."

"I know. And I'm telling you, that's not it." Neil frowned across the table at them. "We mule tested three times, rough and ready. And then we did a pilot build and tested again."

"You'll find that the paperwork on that is in order," David noted.

"With Tracy's signature on every page," Paul added drily.

Tracy flashed annoyance at him. "My requests are in order as well, okayed by accounting as well as R&D."

"If you don't mind," Vaughan looked up over the paper in his hands, "this is hardly a paperwork issue." He glanced through his set of questions. "Is there any place in particular you might recommend we look for problems? Anything that stands out as a possible cause?"

"What I would recommend," Neil said, "is that you let us work with the FMEA team. Directly."

"It's been...requested...that you not be involved with that process. There is a concern that it might look bad, in light of some increased media attention, that we failed to involve a third and impartial party in evaluating the problem. We don't want Dateline suggesting that we give engineers who screw up a chance to hide their mistakes."

From the smug look on Tracy's face, they all knew who had proposed that particular issue.

"Fine," Neil resisted the urge to bite his thumbnail. "Have you tested the effects of going WOT on it?"

"WOT?"

"Wide open throttle. Producing high manifold pressures. I don't know that it will lead anywhere, but if this is truly an acceleration problem then I don't know why it wouldn't be worth seeing if the vehicle behaves normally under extreme acceleration conditions."

"And how does one, uh, produce WOT?" Vaughan asked.

Even Tracy grinned at that one.

"The common term for WOT," Cecile said drily, "is flooring it."

"Oh," Vaughan blinked at him, his face blank. Then, "Oh!" He blushed, and scribbled something on his notepad. "Anything else?"

Neil thought about it. "I would look at the pedal linkage, personally," he said. "I think that, these being low speed collisions, the issue might not be with acceleration so much as with the brake pedals themselves. That doesn't make sense, because we didn't update them or make adjustments to anything around them. But there it is."

"I don't think that's worth looking at," Cecile blurted out. "Like you said, we didn't change it. In fact, we didn't make any changes anywhere near the linkage."

Neil nodded. "I know. But the nature of the accidents-"

He was interrupted by Vaughan's cell phone ringing. "One minute please," the lawyer said, holding up one hand as he answered it. "Hello? Yes.....I'm with them now.......Oh. Oh, I see.............should I discuss this with the team, or......Okay......I understand."

He hung up, putting the phone away and looking stricken. "I'm afraid I have some bad news, gentlemen. The situation is in the process of becoming a great deal more serious. This morning, Newsweek magazine contacted us to request access to our personnel and facilities as they research for a new article. We couldn't exactly turn them down, of course. They'll be sending a reporter out on Monday...Moira Adams, actually."

Neil raised his eyebrows and shared a look with Paul. Their expressions were hard to read.

Cecile leaned forward. "Isn't that the woman who did all those reports on the Chicago mafia wars? Went underground and wrote about that guy they call the Mad Dog?"

"It is. She's about the biggest name in news right now, and until her fifteen minutes is up she will be a very dangerous person to have around. The impetus for her investigation is an incident we were, until last night, unaware of. An incident we had hoped to contain."

"What exactly was this 'incident?'" Paul asked.

Vaughan's shoulders lifted and fell as he took a deep breath. "Six weeks ago, a family of three was involved in an accident that has been...attributed...to our design malfunction. The man who was driving suffered minimal injury. His wife, however, is in a coma with severe head trauma. Their four year old daughter, sitting in the back seat, was killed."

Paul cursed, and Cecile suddenly looked very sick. He stared across the table at Tracy, who did not return his stare. Neil became very still, suddenly, not even breathing.

"How did this happen?" David asked.

"They were stopped at a four way, from what I understand, when they began to drift into oncoming traffic. The car was struck from the side by a speeding pickup truck full of teenagers. One of the teenagers also died in the crash." He looked around the table, focusing on Neil. "I am sorry. Please know that nobody blames you, and you should not blame yourselves. Instead, we should-"

But Neil interrupted him. "I quit."

Paul leaned forward. "Neil. Don't-"

"I'm sorry, Paul. But I mean it. I quit."

Vaughan and Cecile were staring wide-eyed at him. Paul and Kearns frowned and glanced at each other. Tracy looked smug.

"Excuse me?" Vaughan tilted his head. "I must be misunderstanding. Why wou-

"You got it right. I said I quit." Neil pushed his chair back, almost stumbling over it as he turned to go. "I'm done. It's over." He turned and fled from the room. The other members of his team jumped up to follow him, making apologies as they left. None of them caught the hungry grin that spread across Tracy Bunkley's face.