Chapter 9:
Clout and authority are potent things; if you have them and don't know what you're doing, it spells disaster. If you have them and are skilled at using them, miracles can happen.
The Little Teenaged Geek (not that he would know anything)
As the jeep carried her away in the dusky twilight, Kari looked back at the scene of the refugee camp. It broke her heart to see thousands of homeless people and digimon. And it wasn't going to get any prettier for them, considering that whatever terrorist group had done this to the Digiworld was still out there.
At least it was going to be warm that night---but it was going to rain the following day, and that would be a problem: the camp was only meant to hold several thousand, but it was overcrowded tenfold, and people were oozing out the gates of the camp because it was so packed. Kari wondered if she could do anything...watching the news that night, she found out that the government was accepting volunteers at a certain phone number, so she wondered…and the camp was so close to the city…she called the principal of the school.
"Miss Kamiya! Are you ready to come back to work tomorrow?"
"Yes, but---I was thinking about an educational experience for my class, maybe even the entire school."
"Oh? What would that be?"
"…Did you hear about what happened on the news?"
"News? What are you talking about?"
"The Digiworld---it's gone."
"What do you mean, 'gone'?"
"Kaput. Dead. It has ceased to exist. If you don't believe me, turn on the news and see for yourself."
After turning on his holoprojection television set, it was clear from the headmaster's expression that he was stunned. "I have family living there; my son and his wife, and my two grandchildren---"
Kari was gradually being driven to tears. "This is what the army was doing, taking me away from work. I was a Digidestined, and I had the ability to open up digi-ports through some of the older, electric-circuit computers. The military had six computers set up...one for each Digidestined...and they had us living in that tight space with only one port-o-john and one shower between the six of us. And then the sirens went off...and we opened the digi-ports to evacuate the cities---"
"What sort of emergency could annihilate the entire Digiworld?"
"It was a group of Doommon."
"Never heard of it."
"Neither did I. It's an artificial digimon; its only attack is Curtains Down. It reaches up and pulls the barrier that the Digiworld is in down to the ground and destroys everything---I'm sorry…" Kari paused a moment to sob.
Barely avoiding tears himself, the principal said, "How---how many got out in time?"
"A few hundred thousand---out of seventy million."
"And..."
There was a pause, as if to revere the people who had died in the Digiworld's collapse. But Kari, after drying the tears from her eyes, continued, "The educational experience I was talking about was this: we could have a field trip to the refugee camp. There, the students could help out as volunteers and take part in history. Because this will be a historic event."
"Not unlike September Eleven(1)," the principal admitted. "We will---have to get the parent's permission first."
"Of course."
Kari switched off the line and, after a moment's consideration, dialed Gatomon. She was a model for Sora Takenouchi's clothing company, and Kari hoped she would be willing to help.
After explaining her idea and the situation, Kari added, "We'll need adults to watch the children. We don't want them getting into trouble there. I hope that you'll be able to help us with this."
"I'd be happy to do something about this. I can't sit still, either. It's...I don't need to tell you how I feel. That used to be my home, but---" Gatomon paused a moment to shake the urge to cry off her six. Masking a sob with a cough, she continued, "Actually, Sora is planning something with the company for the refugees. I'm not sure what, exactly. But I'd be happy to help and start the volunteer work tomorrow."
"You'd better dress dryly; it's supposed to rain tomorrow."
This made Gatomon begin to reconsider: she hated water in general and rain in specific. But there were more reasons to go than not to, so Gatomon said, "I'll take that poncho I modeled last week. If the static electricity from that thing doesn't kill me, I'll be there."
Kari was barely relieved. "Thanks." Kari switched off the line, changed into her nightclothes, and climbed into bed, saying prayers for the work tomorrow and the camp until then. As she tried to get to sleep, it dawned on her that, last she'd heard, Tai was in the Digiworld. She tried to comfort herself by pointing out that Tai's whereabouts are very often subject to change, but the question of where he was still hung over her head. Her final thought before falling asleep was this: "What's Sora doing with her company, anyway?"
Sora had been looking for a way to get rid of that money for a long time: she had known about Mr. Okatoui's(2) plan to oust her from her position as CEO, and then to use the money that he'd been storing up to work predatory maneuvers and make Takenouchi Textile Corporation into a monopoly. Well, Sora wasn't about to let him do something unethical and illegal: she was going to use that money to do something for this crisis situation. She knew she would probably catch flak for this, but she hoped that the other shareholders would see things her way---or, more to the point: she hoped that the shareholders would see things the way she wanted them to think she saw things. And this action would be legal for her to do: her evil VP had stored the money in the company's name, for some reason, and so she had full access to the money.
"You've all heard the news: the Digiworld is gone. Only seven hundred thousand refugees successfully escaped alive. There is worse news: those seven hundred thousand cannot be accommodated for with the government's present facilities. There are not nearly enough tents or blankets for them, and there is bad weather predicted for the camp's area tomorrow.
She paused for a moment to make herself look like she was touched by these events. (It wasn't a difficult emotion to feign; she actually was very hurt by what had happened.) After drying a few tears from her eyes, she continued, "I know that all of you are thinking that somebody should do something. But we are somebody. It has recently come to my attention that we have seven billion dollars in reserve---seven billion dollars that, in the near past, we did not know that we had, but that our accountants assure me were obtained by legitimate means. What I plan to do with the seven billion is this: we will temporarily convert our factories so that they will produce jackets, tents, blankets, raingear, and footwear for the refugees. I intend for this to last only four days. All the production will go to the refugees for those four days, and none of it will go to retailers or to our outlets. The seven billion we have in reserve will keep us going for that long. Are there any questions?" There wasn't one hand raised, and not one person spoke up. She was only met with surprised faces, not the least of with was Mr. Okatoui's. She waited for him to blurt out some kind of objection, be he seemed to be rendered speechless. Before he recovered (but not so soon as would seem conspicuous), she said, "Meeting adjourned, then."
Sora exited the front of the meeting room. Biyomon was behind the stage door. She didn't look as cheerful as a company mascot is supposed to look; she had half-dried tears running down her face. Just as Sora was walking through the door, she said, "Sora, I have an idea about how---"
"Hang on a sec, Biyomon." Sora pulled aside her loyal vice president and said, "Mr. Mankern, I had more than the refugees' welfare driving me to do this with that seven billion."
"M'am?"
"Mr. Okatoui had that money saved up for something special: I know about his plans to take my job as CEO. He also has big plans for TTC, once he's president: he was saving that money so that he could run predatory maneuvers on our competitors and make the company into a monopoly. That's illegal, and if I spend that $7 billion, he won't be able to try that for a while even if he does take my job. I'm killing two birds with one stone, here."
"I get the picture. What's the plan?"
"The plan is this: he's going to lobby for me to change the duration of our charity program to two or three days. What I'm going to do is volunteer myself to work there so that he won't be able to whine to me. I can do that; the US government is requesting volunteers. I'm going to get my visa rushed through so that I can go to America and volunteer to do work along with an old friend of mine who's living in America now. While I'm gone, you're in charge, here. If Okatoui comes around your office, you tell him that you're not authorized to cut the project short."
"Will that be a lie?"
"No, it will not. And, if he persists, point out that he should've said something in the shareholder meeting. Get it?"
"Got it."
"Good."
"But what about the long run: if he's trying to take your job, then---"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Sora answered.
Biyomon was a little shocked at this display of sheer political astuteness. "Sora---I didn't know you could be so…so…"
"Scheming?" she asked. She sighed and shook her head. "A job like this does that to you."
"…'Shrewd' was the word I was looking for. But Sora, I have another idea: we should also set up donation centers for the refugees in our outlets while we're at it."
"Good idea." She pulled aside a manager and related Biyomon's idea to him.
Biyomon asked, "Should I get to work on a commercial that explains the donation centers thing?"
"The sooner you start, the better."
(1) Whatever you do, don't take this stuff out of context! This isn't intended to have that much to do with September Eleventh...although, you have to admit that, if Earth and the Digiworld had their economies intertwined like I said they did, the destruction of the Digiworld would kill the economy of Earth. So this is a huge disaster, even if you didn't lose a family member in the calamity. ...What am I doing starting with the economy? The death toll is even worse than the economy going bad! So, considering the deaths and economic consequences, it's worse than September Eleven, and it's a wake-up call: it's like saying, "Hello, world. I am evil, and I am quite present in you, and you seem to have forgotten that. Here's your reminder…"
This wasn't meant to be an allegory for September Eleven, or stating a way that we should respond to it. (September Eleven means more to me since I'm an American.) This is just a disaster story about hope triumphing over despair, and, while it is comparable to September Eleven in many ways, this is as far as my comparisons ever come.
(2) I hope "Okatoui" doesn't mean anything special in Japanese. For all I know, it might be a complete prepositional phrase, but it might also be profanity. Worst-case scenario: it's an actual person's name, and, if it is, it's not my intention to offend; I made that name up without hearing it from anyone or anything else.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
I don't know how moviemakers do things in the rest of the world, but, if there's a CEO in one of Hollywood's products, that CEO is usually the bad guy. I don't know why Hollywood demonizes CEOs; they just do. The Hollywood villain-CEO is always in it to make money, any way he can. It's either by cutting down the rain forest, doing a hostile takeover, cheating the tax department, or something else like that, and it's always in the name of the almighty dollar---well, almost always. (This was true even before the Enron scandals; Hollywood doesn't always need something as brusque as a real scandal to get inspiration for a movie.) But here, Sora's a CEO and a good guy. And she's not in it to make money; she's in it to get rid of money. Talk about a stark difference! But, being raised on Hollywood's products, I couldn't focus on a corporate executive situation without demonizing someone, so Sora's evil VP got the affront of being evil.
You remember in Chapter 3, where I had that funny scene with Biyomon and the elevators? I got that idea while I was on vacation in South Carolina: we were on the top floor of our hotel, so we had our share of elevator worries. Considering that Biyomon can fly, she might feel a little angry about having to use an elevator.
That reminds me: on the Digimon television show, the artists made the digimon kind of like us. Their body language looked very human to me, and they didn't make animal-like noises, e.g. tweets, barks, or grunts. I change that in MON: 2028. I wanted to make them a little different from us, so I changed the digimon's body language and actions a little to look and seem more animal.