“Brothers! Sisters!” says Chad joyfully as he rises from his seat. “It’s so good to see you!”
To Chad: What the hell, Chad! You’re sleeping with your staff!
“Hey, Chad,” says Evan, rushing around the table and giving him a huge hug. The rest of the sibs move in for one too. Chad doesn’t seem to care what I just sent him through the bot-to-bot message system.
To Chad: You better not be trying to get them pregnant. We talked about this! We voted on this!
I give him a look that he returns with a big smile.
Message timed out, user Chad not found.
Shit! He’s not getting the messages. He doesn’t have the update with the new software yet. We’re supposed to do that tomorrow. I hate not remembering things. I also hate not being able to have a private conversation with him now. I don’t think it’ll be productive to make it a group discussion right now in front of everyone.
“Noah,” Chad says, still smiling, “bring it in here.”
I go and give him a hug. I’m furious with him, but he is my brother after all. Even if he is a dirty, slutty brother trying to undo all the financial work I’ve been doing all year.
“You OK, man? You seem tense,” he says, releasing me.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I say quietly.
He nods. I think he has a good idea of what I need to say.
“Now, why don’t you introduce your employees to everyone?" I say more loudly, turning to his staffers. "Hey there. I'm Noah, the one who's always thanking you for your thorough reports every week. It's nice to finally meet you in person."
They both smile and we shake hands.
“Of course, of course," Chad says. "Everyone, this is Lucie and Keeya.” He indicates the white woman with long brown hair at his left and the dark-skinned woman with curly hair cropped close to her head on his right. Both are extremely attractive and somewhere in their early twenties.
A chorus of greetings comes from my siblings as Chad lists off their names.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” says Keeya. Her accent puts her from somewhere in Africa. A glance at her index entry tells me she’s from Botswana.
“Hello, everyone,” Lucie says. “Chad has told us so much about you. It’s so nice to finally see you.” Her accent is funny. I check her entry. Born French, but educated in South Africa from her teenage years on up. I can hear the mix of French, British English, and Afrikaans now that I know to listen for it.
I take a seat near the end of the long table, about as far from Chad as I can. I need to cool down before I talk to him or I’m going to end up cursing him out in front of everyone. With weeks in close proximity ahead of us, that’s not the way I want to start things. I guess it’s just as well that my initial outburst didn’t go through to him.
We put ourselves in our guides’ hands for ordering our meal. Dinner starts with a small bowl of rice noodles in a flavorful broth. Everyone is doing well with the chopsticks, which is good since it’s bad manners to mishandle them. I guess the mandatory chopsticks training in the cafeteria back home worked. For me, it’s easy. Mom and I used to get Chinese delivery once a week and she made me learn to use them a long time ago. Ooh, another memory. Into the index it goes.
Dishes with rice and some kind of thinly sliced grilled meat and sliced vegetables come next. There’s some kind of clear salty-sweet sauce on the meat and vegetables that I’m really liking. Chad is the center of the conversation. Everyone has questions for him and things to say about the work he’s been doing.
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“So there’s this goat, right? A big mean old thing,” I hear Chad’s loud voice across the din. Everyone quiets a little to hear the story because this already sounds funny. “And it won’t leave me alone while I’m trying to get a well put in. I keep trying to get someone to take this goat away, but they just keep laughing every time it starts chewing on my pants. And I don’t want to just push away the goat, because the chief was on the fence about letting me in to do the work anyway and it’s his goat, and I can’t afford to offend anyone, much less him. But I can’t concentrate to line up the well shaft with the goat there. So I end up just flying up on top of this thatch hut, the one closest to the well, and it’s super shaky and I keep thinking it’s going to fall down under me, but it’s better balancing up there than dealing with the goat.”
Marc laughs so hard that the water he was drinking snorts out of his nose and he knocks over Andrea’s glass. A small army of bots from me and several of my sibs rush over to contain and clean up the mess as the servers bring in the next set of dishes.
“So, everything is going fine until I finish building the well and everyone rushes out to see it working,” Chad continues. “And of course since they’re all pressing in, someone bumps against the hut, which was obviously terribly built because the whole thing collapses with me on top. I’m fine, of course, the flight suit is practically instinct for me at that point, and all the people are OK because the hut fell the opposite direction, but that stupid goat was right in the path of it. The hut lands on the goat! And it turns out it was the chief’s house! So I’m floating there above his wrecked house, with his dead goat, and I don’t speak a word of the language. I thought he was going to try to kill me. But I get Keeya on speaker on my sat phone and she finally smooths it all out, but I have to build him a big new house, and send him, what was it? Three?”
“Five,” says Keeya, laughing. “We had to send him five new goats.”
I want to stay pissed at Chad, but I just can’t when I’m laughing this hard. The waiters announce the last course and bring in clay pots with fish filets in a thick sauce. I’m not usually big on fish, but it’s delicious.
Chad's staffers—or are they his girlfriends? Lovers? I'm not at all sure what to call them even here in my head. Anyway, I can’t help but like them. They’re both just way too nice to not get along with. They seem to be making the same impression on my siblings, especially the guys. The meal winds down as we talk and laugh. Dessert is somewhere between a pudding and a soup in consistency, with rice and some fruits I don't recognize in a sweet sauce. A little weird, but very good. My bots see Chad’s hand on Keeya’s thigh under the table again.
To Evan: You picking up on what’s going on with Chad?
From Evan: With the girls?
To Evan: What else? Of course with the girls.
From Evan: Yeah, they seem really friendly with Chad. Like, really friendly.
To Evan: I’ve got their contracts in my head, but I never noticed it until now. They have the standard ten million dollar baby deal, but with Chad’s name in there instead of Father.
Evan pauses for a moment mid-chew.
From Evan: Their contracts got set up before Father died?
To Evan: Yeah. And they were never updated after we voted to make the change. Smith probably left them out on purpose. Maybe out of spite.
From Evan: Shit.
To Evan: Yeah.
From Evan: Shit, shit, shit. That the same for all of his female staff?
I search through my index.
To Evan: He’s got these two and four other women working for him. All with the NDA’s and baby contract.
He shakes his head.
From Evan: Anything we can do about it?
To Evan: We can offer them cancellations, but if they don’t want it, we’re on the hook. I can’t imagine Chad didn’t already preempt that though. This could crash the whole plan. We could run through all of the remaining liquid funds this year if Chad’s got good swimmers, even with the new licensing money. We’d have to sell the SynTech stock. Total disaster.
“You OK, Evan?” Valerie asks him, noticing the look on his face.
“Yeah, sorry, just thinking about something,” he says.
Me too.
Everyone is about done with their food, conversations are winding down, and it’s getting late. I’m the first one to stand, but as soon as I do, everyone else follows suit.
“All right everyone, don’t forget that we’ve got to meet the reporters in the morning,” I remind everyone as we file out of the room. “Be up and presentable by 8:00 local time. 5th floor ballroom. Come a little early if you are up for extra interviews, and memorize those scripts Sheryl gave us!”
We start the short walk to the hotel. My broken mind races through all the ways I could tell Chad that he’s wrecking everything. I hope I can talk him out of it.