Negotiations Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
Kim had no soul; she had traded it once for a meal and again later
for a place to sleep. She had plans to trade it again when the time was right. She
didn’t know if she believed in her soul or not, but she did believe in places
to sleep and food to eat. She didn’t worry too much about making multiple
trades with her soul. It didn’t bother it, it wouldn’t be her problem. It would
be someone else’s mess to clean up, if and when the time came. But right now,
sleeping and eating was a much higher priority.
It was a sprawling and sinister metropolis. In the middle of a
busy and bright skyline was one particular building, more a jagged spear than a
skyscraper. It ripped out of the ground like it was challenging the earth to
pull it back down, and it stood tall and triumphant, taunting the Earth’s best
efforts. It pierced the night sky, creating a pinnacle point in the skyline,
impossible to miss from ground or air. On the thirty-seventh floor, in a boardroom,
they gathered. They sat in chairs and they debated. They hadn’t always gathered
nor debated, and they certainly hadn’t always been cordial. Now they were
cordial. They made deals. They traded. They laughed at what they were doing.
The boardroom looked out over the city. The table was handcrafted,
made from someone’s sweat and strength and skill. The men that sat had no idea
about the man that made it. They didn’t care. They knew that when other people
saw the table, they would know it was a fancy table, and that was good. They
knew it was one of a kind and carried a touch of its maker’s soul in it, and
therefore it was expensive and that was all that mattered.
The boardroom meeting spoke of sinister dealings and depraved
trades of fate and futures. They cut deals in order to profit off the misery of
others. They were good deals. They were living in glorious times and there was
no reason to believe it would ever end.
Below on the streets the people suffered. The people lost. The
people paid the price and slowly died. Above in the boardroom, they had no
interest in knowing the pains below. What they wanted to know was that they
were gaining. If they gained, what did they care if someone else had to lose?
Kim traded her soul. She only had the one commodity, and it was a losing
one at that. But a losing commodity still had value. Sometimes more value than
a winning one. It could be bought and traded and borrowed against and bundled
with other exhausted and drained commodities and resold all over again.
Kim didn’t know the value of her soul. She didn’t care. She traded
it as often as she could, for as much as she could. She didn’t understand the
trades that took place in the building above. She didn’t know that the
boardroom meetings needed her soul to still have some value of some sort. But
she was bankrupt. She had been whored and bought and sold so many times, there
was less than nothing left.
It was a bad trade. A dangerous trade. The foundation was rotten.
The system required some value of some sort. But when it came time to collect,
when she died and final tabulations were done, the balance would be empty. They
needed her to have value. She needed to survive in any way she could. They thought
they were taking advantage, but they were the ones taking the risk. The
foundation was already rotten through; they just didn’t know it yet. Soon it
would crumble and fancy table or not, they would fall. Kim wouldn’t be there to
see it or to know her part, but she didn’t care about things like that. She was
just trying to find a place to sleep and a meal to eat.
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