Back up north in New York, J.B. Tweep started work at GGG on the first floor in the personnel file cabinets. In less than a week, he emptied twenty cabinets, shredded old confidential materials—unflattering memos, reams of transcribed interviews with internal informants, extensive tables on employee absenteeism and personal habits, moldy employee evaluations, ex-employee personnel folders—and sent into storage countless miscellaneous studies done by outside consultants on subjects such as “Viability of Enlarging Company Commissary,” “Coffee, Smoking, and the Work Place” and “Natural VS. Plastic Plants and Employee Morale.” The efficiency and speed with which J.B. conducted this massive project was indeed remarkable, but after all, he could carry the boxes out and examine the material within, all at the same time. J.B. cut ruthlessly through the thick blanket of dust with one hand, drew out the precious heart of the personnel files with another and reduced it to a single floppy disk with his third. Awarded, finally, with a large pile of rusty paper clips, J.B. knew instinctively that he had surpassed the requirements of his job and that, after one busy week, he was once again a free man in search of a job.
A big company like GGG, however, was not so easily dismissed, even by three hands. Recycling productive personnel was part of GGG’s interpretation of the old courses in Japanese corporate business sense. The human resources department immediately sent J.B. on loan to marketing development on the second floor as a secretary-receptionist. J.B. could be seen typing memos, answering phones, ordering office supplies (mostly paper clips), and filing all at the same time. The other two administrative secretaries, who shared the same office, felt an unsettling sense of their sudden inefficiency before this whiz of the office. When there was some talk of eliminating their positions, which could be easily handled by one three-handed employee, namely J.B., there was a furor of weeping and backbiting behind closed doors.
J.B. shrugged, took the entire marketing development supply of paper clips and was transferred to the third floor of that understaffed department called development resources research and viability. He was given the title of Assistant to Assistant Manager, which was odd because there was no assistant manager. In fact, the department did not even have a manager. Everyone told him his title was just a formality for billing his salary, and J.B. sighed with relief at the absence of both managers and assistant managers.
J.B. followed the poor, overworked clerk around the cramped office and in and out of the walk-in vault. So this is where the twenty file cabinets from human resources had ended up! The clerk squeezed between them and sneezed, leaning against the file cabinets, which rattled emptily. J.B. examined them. The clerk had carefully typed titles, A to Z, and even dated the cards on all the drawers, but these cabinets were completely empty. J.B. was puzzled, but the clerk replied, “Things are developing, always developing, you know, but the question is, ‘Are they viable?’” The clerk sighed heavily as if in answer to his own question.
In one corner of the room, there was an “in” box with stacks of paper in and around it. The clerk pointed hopelessly to the mountain of paper. “That’s the latest development. We got that ‘in’ about 11:15 this morning. The interoffice mail people had to wheel it here in a wheelbarrow. We’ve got to get that mess cleaned up before the next mail run.”
J.B. rolled up each of his three sleeves while the clerk glanced at the top of one pile muttering, “9.99 . . . it’s all 9.99.” To J.B.’s surprise, the clerk opened one very overstuffed cabinet marked 9.99 and began cramming all the papers in.
Indeed, as J.B. soon discovered, it was all 9.99. There were memos about acrylic tape holders; waterproof LCD clocks with suction cups for use in the shower; bookmarks that play music when the proper page is turned to; artificial nonpolluting snow to spread on Southern California and Florida lawns at Christmas; earrings with exchangeable velcro butterflies; creams that had collagen, keratin, turtle oil, aloe vera, PABA, sunscreen 15, vitamin E and a money-back guarantee for complete rejuvenation if used as instructed. (J.B. himself was partial to the large musical clips for closing potato chip bags called “potato clips.”) Neither J.B. nor the clerk knew quite where to begin nor how to categorize so much varied material. It was not enough to alphabetize. At one time, 9.99 had been a simple category, a file cabinet unto itself, but now it was the entire department. J.B. and the clerk ran around stuffing folders haphazardly to meet the afternoon mail room deadline. As the clerk had warned, another wheelbarrow arrived at 4:00 PM, and the end was still not in sight. At 5:00 PM, J.B. fumbled for three mittens, stuffed his third arm under his overcoat, and went home to think about his first day at his new position and what exactly it all meant.
Early the next morning, J.B. made it known to the human resources department that the backlog of filing in the development resources research and viability department was so immense that at least two more employees like himself would be required to make heads or tails of any of it. Human resources sent over three two-armed temps to satisfy his request. J.B. orchestrated the filing with superb technique, conducting all eleven arms of his newly expanded office into an efficient concerto. As the opening and closing of file drawers reached a steady staccato, J.B. slipped away from the office and whistled down the hall to the office of the viability commission.
The secretary to the director of the viability commission was pounding away madly at the typewriter. A flurry of paper was piled on her desk, and five buttons on her telephone display were on hold. She looked up at J.B. in exasperation and said, “He’s in a meeting. He’s in meetings all day.”
J.B. smiled and leaned over her desk with two of his arms. “How about an appointment tomorrow?” he asked, observing several envelopes clipped together with an unusually large, and what J.B. considered attractive, stainless-steel clip, the top envelope stamped all over with the word “CONFIDENTIAL.”
“Next week,” she answered, “and that’s if he isn’t traveling.”
J.B. nodded, folding his two arms with a mixture of understanding and worry.
The secretary looked up and apologized, “I’m sorry.”
J.B. smiled sympathetically. With his third hand, he pocketed the clipped envelopes stamped “CONFIDENTIAL.”
That was how J.B. made the amazing discovery that the development resources research and viability department and that understaffed mess of 9.99 files was, at this moment, the most important department in the company. J.B. returned to the staccato of filing in his own office. Somewhere in all that paperwork was an answer, the discarded card from Geoff Gamble’s pocket, the missing microchip, the very pea of the matter. J.B. thought, excitedly, that it might be paper clips, so he decided to take action.
In the following days, J.B. wrote a series of memos of his own:
“To: B. Carp, Computer Services Department Manager. From: J. B. Tweep, Asst. to Asst. Manager, DRRVD (Development Resources Research and Viability Department). Please make three computer terminals available to our filing department ASAP.”
“To: R. Gold, Communications Department. Effective immediately, the DRRVD requires worldwide satellite feeds on 24-hour basis for research and viability scan. Please make necessary arrangements by moving three color-television monitors into room 311 with VHS VCRs and 12-channel memory capacity. Hookup to satellites and decoding devices required.”
“To: S. Perkins, Human Resources Director. Request the status of three temps changed to permanent, plus request hiring of three more temporary clerical personnel. See attached memo for approved budgetary changes for critical additional personnel for DRRVD.”
J.B. simply attached another memo and marked everything “URGENT.”
It was a simple but auspicious beginning, and for some reason probably only known to the ex-presidents Georgia and Geoff Gamble, things actually began to roll. In less than two days, monitors and computer terminals were rolling down the corridors to the development resources research and viability department. Maintenance men were crawling over and under the floors and attaching wires to everything. Computer and electronics experts were interfacing office personnel to software programs, software programs to terminals, terminals to VCRs, and VCRs to satellite computer systems, which J.B. imagined were probably interfaced with God.
With these enlarged capabilities and the extended interfacing of several more hands, J.B. could now orchestrate a symphony. Sifting with extreme ease and confidence through the 9.99 files, J.B. began to categorize and narrow the options. That the end result might not be clips of any kind occurred to him, but he had become, in the process, involved in a new method of thought that he referred to as “trialectics,” sorting problems into three options and always opting for the solution in the middle. His application of trialectics to his job was, he realized, experimental, but J.B. was willing to assume responsibility (something that, heretofore, no one at GGG had been willing to do). He was beginning to think that trialectics would eventually revolutionize modern thought and philosophy, and he envisioned, when the time came, backing up his decision by a firm hand-hold in the Theory of Trialectics.
J.B.’s gamble (Georgia and Geoff would have been pleased) paid off. In a short period of time, the development resources research and viability department was the booming center of the GGG operations, and J.B.’s position became increasingly powerful, in the manner of a crescendo. Office space and computer terminals—not to mention secretaries, receptionists, clerks, runners, supervisors, and assistant managers—were added to the growing personnel of the department. J.B. revolutionized the office routine by setting everyone up in groups of three. The personnel from J.B.’s department were easily recognized because they all went to lunch, coffee breaks, and the copy machine in groups of three. J.B. even went so far as to hire a team of triplets for special projects.
But, contrary to the original Gamble plan for a sort of creation in perpetual motion, J.B. was essentially goal-oriented, and he supposed that plans were made for a purpose. Trialectics was simply a way to reach an answer. That is why, one day, J.B. found the very thing in the 9.99 files that was at once the triumph of months of hard work by this now-bustling office, and, at the same time, the discovery that meant the annihilation of that same office. And it was not a paper clip.
J.B. sat at one of the many three-terminal settings and punched in the standard input. He could hardly believe the line-up across the monitors. This 9.99 item actually met all the requirements for shape, packaging size, clothing, and accessory development; matched the psychological and philosophical makeup of a wide range of prospective buyers; collaborated sympathetically with a high percentile of patented and patent-pending inventions; and met all short-term and long-term planning projections for investment, loan, and taxes. The computer terminals blinked and beeped joyously. While the computer spilled its contents onto the printer, zipping back and forth across the pages of tractor-fed paper, J.B. quickly had an assistant pull the stored video material on this item.
To J.B.’s surprise, the video material was in a foreign language. His assistants all gathered around the screen to watch what looked like a documentary report of some sort.
A woman with a diamond earring was saying something while a man held a green feather near her ear.
“What’s that language they’re speaking?” asked someone.
“Sounds like French, but it’s not,” someone speculated.
“A Romance language. Cross between French and Spanish, I’d say.”
“Where’s the transcription on this tape?” asked J.B. excitedly. “We need to know what they’re saying. We need an interpreter. Maybe we can get someone from the un. This is of utmost importance!”
J.B. rewound the tape and viewed the entire piece again. It was Mané Pena on national television demonstrating the medicinal attributes of his wonderful feather on reporter Silvia Lopes.
“Where are they?” puzzled J.B., looking past Mané and Silvia Lopes and trying to get a clue from the background. There wasn’t a tree or a shrub, but it wasn’t really a desert; nor could it be a parking lot. The ground around them looked strangely shiny.