Chapter 10

Tuesday morning, Matt was up and getting ready to head to the warehouse.

“Hercules, I want you to come with me to the warehouse.”

‘I should stay, protect Molly.’

“No, Molly is in no danger. It’s too soon for the Matriarchy to try an attack again. I want you to go with me because we are going to play with Artemis.”

‘Okay.’

The door bell rang. Matt answered the door and Fred, William and Louise were all there.

“Hi guys. I just have a couple more things to grab and I’ll be right out.”

Matt ducked back into the apartment, grabbed his car keys and, phone charger and and some printouts. He went back out by the others with Hercules following him.

“Do you guys want to ride with me, or follow me?”

“I’ll follow you.”

“So will I.”

“Me too.’

“Okay, here is the address and directions in case we get separated.”

Matt handed each one of them one of the printouts, then turned and walked towards his car.

“Let’s go.”

Matt pulled into the parking lot at the warehouse. His friends had managed to stay with him the whole way and after they all parked, Matt led them to the main entrance.

When the entered Matt noticed a desk had been setup in the entrance area. One of the security people was sitting behind the desk. As Matt walked into the entrance, the security guard picked up a two-way radio off the desk.

“The boss is here. He has guests with him.”

A second guard opened the inner door from the inside.

Matt stepped through the door followed by his friends.

The inner guard closed and re-locked the door. “Mr Dellinger will be here shortly.”

A minute later Ted walked up.

“Good morning Matt. We were hoping you would show up this morning. We’re getting ready to have a meeting. Bring your guests along and introduce them before we get down to business.”

“That’s perfect, I wanted to get all of your impressions of the task ahead now that you’ve had a few days to think about the overall plan and the tasks you were given. Lead the way.”

Ted led them to an elevator bank that Matt hadn’t noticed before in the middle of the building and Took them up to the second floor.

Once out of the elevator Ted led them towards one end of the office space. Matt noticed the upper floor seemed to be laid out with an enclosed central space except for the elevator bank in the middle, a hallway going all the way around and a mix of offices and open space around the exterior.

“The main conference room is down this way,” Ted said. “There are some crazy offices down at the other end, but I’ll let Matilda tell you about those during the meeting.”

When they got to The conference room, it was a long room, with built in cabinets along both of the long walls, except where the door was on the inside wall on one end of the room. The far wall was just a blank white space. The table was large enough for 16 people if you were willing to be cozy. Matilda and Tony were seated on the far side and Sam was seated on the Near Side. There was a laptop computer box sitting on the table in front of Tony.

Ted took a seat next to Sam. His friends came in and stood by him. Hercules laid down in the corner.

Matt walked to the near end of the table, but did not sit down immediately.

“Let me introduce my friends before we get started.” He pointed out each person in the room in turn. “This is William Smith, Fred Stone, and Louise Adams. Guys, meet my leadership team. Matilda Victorsson is my CFO and corporate counsel. Tony Gray is my CIO. Ted Dellinger is head of security. Sam Tyson is head of product management.”

Matt sat down and continued. “Guys, have a seat at the table. William, you’ll probably want to sit near Ms Victorsson. I’ll get to why my friends are here in a minute. First I want to give you a little background. My dad was the commanding officer for a Marine Recon unit. He was stationed in Europe. He met my mom there and I spent my early years growing up on overseas military bases. My dad retired when I was 12 and we moved back to the states. I met my current circle of friends in junior high. Fred and I were both scrawny kids back then and we were all straight A students. The other kids started calling us the Nerd Pack and the name kind of stuck. There are eight of us in total. The group is Myself; Molly; these three; Jenifer, who you will probably meet eventually; Luke and Bob.”

Matt paused for a moment before continuing, “William kind of witnessed the attack on me on Friday so I needed to explain things at least to him. However, I was concerned that the rest of them might become targets so I came out to all of them last night. This business came up as well and William, Fred and Louise were interested in contributing in some way. I told them I would bring it up with you guys. Friends are friends, but business is business. Which ever one of you each of them will end up working for has the final say. Matilda, William is yours. He is working on a BBA and wants to get an MBA. He is primarily looking for a paid internship type arrangement.”

“Oh, good. None of the back office people in the initial batch of recruits from Mr. Alkaev sent us has the least bit of management potential and Tony, Ted and Sam all seem to think it’s pointless to ask for anyone better in that area.”

Matilda looked at William. “Stick around for the whole meeting kid. Your interview just started. One of the most important skills for a manager is being able to assess people. You need to be able to determine the strengths, weaknesses and motivations of the people who work for you. Well talk after the meeting, I’ll want to know your assessments of everyone and the business plan.”

“Fred, do you want to try for security or product management?”

“Product management? For a slave trading operation? Sounds interesting, I’m in if you’ll have me.”

“Okay. Sam, Fred is yours. He’s studying physics in school, but his dad runs a bail bond agency which he worked for last summer. He’s looking for a regular job, though probably part time during the school year, because he needs to get out from under his dad’s thumb.”

Sam looked at Fred. “Bail bond agency? Stone? I think I know your dad kid and despite having worked for the biggest slave trading operation in North America for the last few years, your dad makes my skin crawl.”

“Yeah, he has that effect on a lot of people.”

Sam looked back to Matt. “Bail work isn’t a bad start for what we do. I’ll give him a shot. Do you mind if I call one of my people to show him around?”

“Go right ahead.”

Sam pulled out his phone.

“Lilith, I need you to come up to the board room. The boss brought in a green recruit for us.”

“The boss says I have the final say. I want you to show him around, introduce him to the team, show him the kennels and the boss’s guest.”

“Yes, I’ll want a report on how he reacts to everything.”

Sam turned to Fred again. “Go wait out in the hall. Someone will be here shortly to show you around.”

Fred got up and left the room.

Ted asked, “So where does Louise fit in?”

“With Tony, but it’s more complicated and we’ll deal with it after the rest of the meeting,” Matt replied. “Matilda, I’d like your assessment of where you’re at and what you need to move forward. I’m also interested in how you got the office furnished so fast.”

“The furniture is all rentals. There are half a dozen companies in the area that provide rental furniture for offices. They all work weekends, to minimize the disruption to their clients. Our bank accounts are all set up, we even have a merchant account so we can take credit card payments and a PayPal account. I have RFPs out for bid for health insurance, life insurance and a 401K. I don’t need anything from you except signatures on contracts when they are finalized. Tony’s already set up accounting, payroll and HR systems. I’m working on configuring accounts for the accounting system. We need to figure out the executive office assignments.”

Matilda passed around a drawing showing a layout of the second floor of the office space.

She continued, “There are five very large executive offices on the other end of this floor. They are marked on the diagrams I handed out. The leadership team of the former occupants liked to play with the inventory. As such each had an over sized 800 square foot executive offices consisting of a 300 square foot main office, a 200 square foot bathroom and a 300 square foot bedroom/playroom. The offices along the warehouse side have windows that look into the warehouse. One of those should probably go to Sam.”

Matt tapped his fingers, thinking as he looked at the diagram. “I’ll take the outer corner office.”

“I’ll take the office that only over looks the warehouse,” Sam said.

“I’d like the remaining office overlooking the parking lot and the street,” Ted said.

Tony said, “I’ll take the other corner office.”

Matt said. “Okay, that’s settled. Any other business for you Matilda?”

“No.”

“Ted, what do we need security wise?”

“A lot. I’ve talked with Matilda about the prior operation. Their operational security was pretty good, but their physical security sucked. There are only key locks on the exterior doors which were often left unlocked. Key locks make access control problematic. The one bright spot is that all the windows and the ‘glass’ entryway are actually Lexan.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I want to replace the main exterior doors with stronger doors, and put electronic card reader locks on all the exterior doors, the server room door, and the doors between the offices and the ware house. The system I’m looking at comes with software for dynamic access control which is available for Unix/Linux systems. They also provide the software and hardware to make ID cards. I have a company coming out tomorrow give us an estimate. If Matilda and I agree that the price is good we can have the work done by next Monday.”

“That covers physical security, what else?”

“Not completely. I have some longer term plans, but those will be much more expensive and we can discuss them later. Sam and I have been working on coordinated uniforms for the security and product management teams. Well be getting several quotes along with sample designs later this week. We’ll review the designs with you before we settle on one.”

“Sounds good, but I’d like an outline of your longer term plans now.”

“Given the potential threat from the Matriarchy, I was thinking about having automated armored rolling shutters installed over all the windows and replacing the rolling doors for the warehouse.”

“I’ve heard of rolling security shutters, but armored?”

“I know the guy who designed them. They’ll take a hit from anything short of an anti-tank rocket. He built a company around them, He’s done a few installations for the US Military, but honestly, most of his customers are overseas, he’s not picky about who he sells to.”

“What’s the cost ballpark?”

“It’s going to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly as much as a million to do a building this size.”

“Don’t put it off. Call him as soon as the higher priority items are done.”

“Will do boss.”

“Tony, you’re clearly well ahead of where I thought you would be.”

“Yeah, IT, particularly on the infrastructure side isn’t a 9 to 5 job. We are used to nights and weekends. I was here Saturday with my top infrastructure people and we found the server room and assessed it’s condition. The cabinets were all stripped out, probably sold by the Feds. But the building’s network wiring is intact and the Separate HVAC system for the sever room is operational, though it needs servicing, which has been arranged.”

“But you have systems up and running already?”

“Like the commercial rental furniture places, companies that supply IT hardware work weekends for the same reasons. I had a call out Saturday morning to a company I’ve worked with before. We’ve got a good size router, two blade server racks and 4 blade servers already installed. The severs are all running Linux I was able to download open source applications for all the major business functions, even a dating service system on to a USB drive from home and we have installed and configured all the basic business systems on the servers we have. We’ll have 12 more severs delivered at the end of the week and will have them up and running by next Monday. I also have a storage area network unit on order, but that will take longer.”

“What about employee computers?”

“We have laptops for everyone with Linux and Open Office installed.” Tony slid the box in front of him towards Matt. “This one is yours. There is a card with your user ID and initial password. You’ll have to change the password right away. There are docking stations with a monitor, keyboard and mouse set up in each of the offices and the desks for all the office people.”

“How about phones and internet?”

“Another spot we lucked out. The building is already set up for a fiber optic line. Once that’s lit back up, which the phone company should be doing this afternoon, we’ll have plenty of bandwidth. The Feds stripped out the old private branch exchange, but the phone company will be installing a new one for us tomorrow. We’ll have three toll free numbers, one for product management, one for dating site customer support and one for web store customer support. We’ll also have a direct dialing capability both inward and outward with a block of one hundred phone numbers to start.”

“Why one hundred numbers? Do you really think we will need that many short term?”

“No, we don’t need that many for now, but it’s the smallest sized block the phone company sells.”

“What’s the overall timeline to being up and running and what are the obstacles?”

“All the base business systems should be up and running by the end of this week. We should be able to start development on the dating site and on-line store by next Monday, and have the whole team working on it by mid next week. There are open source platforms for dating sites and e-commerce. They will need to be customized and linked together. I would say, we could have the sites up and running in four to six weeks from next Monday. The biggest obstacle will be the web page layouts and graphic arts. I don’t have anyone on my team that is good at that.”

“We’ll address the graphics arts issue in a second. Sam, how are things looking with your team?”

“With only your ‘guest’ to take care of, the whole team was able to spend most of the day yesterday brainstorming. I have draft proposals written up on protocols for product contacts, pick-ups, deliveries, basic training, and premium training.”

Sam passed Matt a stack of documents.

Matt picked up the top document and skimmed through it quickly. It was the communications protocols. It called for an order to call in by any combination of e-mail, voice phone, or text message configurable in the product’s on-line profile. There were also some basic scripts for who ever was managing the product management phones for various situations including scheduling a pick up or training.

“Have you gone over this with Tony? Will he have the systems in place to support this.”

“We’ve discussed it.”

“Tony?”

“We’ll have call center and customer relations software set up to handle the toll free numbers and the contact protocols.”

Matt looked at the pick up/delivery protocol document. It called for standardized delivery / pickup vans which would have a number of pro grade aluminum dog crates installed and a selection of trench coats available. The handler making the pickup would ring the door bell, give the product his ID number and instruct her to call in to confirm the pick up. Once the pick up was confirmed. The handler would enter the dwelling and the product would be required to strip and then put on a trench coat. The product would be taken out to the van wearing only the trench coat and shoes and once in the van be placed in one of the dog crates. Delivery basically reversed the procedure.

Matt laughed. “I like the the whole protocol and I especially like the van idea. Do you have somewhere specific to get them done?”

“I know of a shop that does custom work on both cars and vans and doesn’t ask questions about what you want secret compartments or other odd things for.”

“Call them. Lay out what you want and get an estimate for an initial prototype. Run the estimate past Matilda and get the expenditure approved. I want to see the prototype as soon as possible.”

“No problem boss.”

Matt skimmed the last two documents.

“Sam, you seem pretty well set do you need anything else.”

“Yeah, we need to discuss company colors and logos for the van’s and uniforms.”

“Okay, That brings us back to Louise, and why she is here. Louise, like me is a Spark...”

Matt described Louise’s power as she had described it to him.

“ ... And one thing she knew was requirements for a certain set of very interesting sketches. Louise, hand Tony your sketch book. Tony, you and Matilda can look at the sketches together. Then pass them over to Sam and Ted. Hold your comments until everyone has seen them.”

Louise handed the sketch book to Tony who opened the sketch book and held it so Matilda could see as well. There eyes went wide, Tony’s jaw dropped. They paged through the sketch book. After a minute or so he closed the sketch book to and passed it to Sam.

Sam and Ted looked through the sketch book it and had the same reaction as Tony and Matilda.

“Your thoughts Tony?”

“That’s page layouts and artwork for the dating site and slave store. How?”

“I know what it is and I already explained how. What do you think of it?”

“They are gray scale drafts, and we will need full color renderings for the site, but beyond that the sketches are amazing. This saves us at least a calendar week. How soon can we get full color digital renderings?”

“A couple of weeks.” Louise replied.

“Good,” Matt said. “ Matilda, Tony I want you to work with Louise to set up a contract for any graphics arts work we need done, and any fine tuning that the artwork needs.”

“I can handle the contracts.” Matilda replied.

“Any other comments on the graphic art?” Matt asked.

Ted, Sam and Matilda all voiced agreement with Tony’s assessment.

“Louise, you’re the artist, any ideas for our company logo?” Matt asked.

“A black disk, the void of eternal time. A gold ring, the zodiac wheel, surrounds the the black disk, The symbols of the zodiac on the ring in silver. ‘Chronos Ent.’ in silver letters below the disk”

Matt raised his left eyebrow. “That was awful fast.”

“There’s a thumbnail version of the logo in the lower left corner of each of the web page sketches.”

Matt picked up the sketch book and looked. Sure enough, the logo was there.

“Well, that takes care of the logo and company colors. Sam, Ted, why don’t you make the uniform base color blue?”

“Sounds good.” Ted and Sam both said almost at the same time.

“Sam, what about the base color for the vans? Should we go with black, blue or something else?”

“I’d recommend sticking with white for the vans. So many companies use white vans that they’ll be less noticeable.”

“Okay. Does anyone have any other issues they want to raise?”

No one did, so they adjourned the meeting.

When the meeting ended Matt decided to check out his office. He headed down the hall with Hercules trotting along side. He heard Matilda, Louise and William come up behind him talking.

“Louise, would you mind sticking around for a couple of hours. I need to talk to William first, but I would like to at least talk to you about contract terms though we probably won’t be able to sign anything today.”

“Okay, I’m not sure what I’ll do while I am waiting, but I’ll stick around.”

“Thanks. William, lets head to my office. Why don’t you start telling what you thought of everyone in the meeting while we walk.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure Ted Dellinger and Sam Tyson are both ex Marines...”

Matt tuned out what William was saying.

Louise ran and caught up with Matt. “Hey, Matt. Do you mind if I hang out with you for a while?”

“Not at all.”

When they got to Matt’s office. He was surprised to see what looked a large and apparently solid hard wood desk with a leather chair. In addition to the main desk and chair, there was a small round table with 4 chairs and a leather sofa.

Matt went behind the desk and sat down. “Pull up a chair and have a seat. We can talk while I get my new laptop set up.”

While Matt unpacked the laptop and put it on the docking station and logged in for the first time, he and Louise engaged in small talk.

At first the conversation was mostly about school. Then Louise started asking about Matt’s and Molly’s relationship. At first, Matt answered her questions. But the questions got more intimate and more specific about the mechanics of their relationship.

“Hold on,” Matt interrupted. “Let me ask you a question. Which end of the whip do you imagine yourself on?”

“Huh? What? Why? I’m not sure...”

“You’re asking way too many questions about the detailed mechanics how my relationship with Molly works for just casual interest. When you are fantasizing about it, are you wielding the whip or are you being whipped? Are you the master or the slave? Are you dominant or submissive?”