4 - Trivial Matters

"Work work work." That was my father's well-worn saying. It was his own motto, and also his advice to anyone who asked him how to become successful.

That was not my idea of how to go about attaining my goals. To my young adult self, it seemed anyone could work their heart out, and in fact, many, many people did. Yes, those kinds of people tended to be successful, but they never attained "greatness". Great, greatest, unsurpassed, unsurpassable, unrivaled, revered. Epithets I aspired to. I wanted to be great. I wanted to be the greatest human being alive. Some might argue I've already attained that status. Now, though, I don't feel so pompous as to claim that goal anymore. I merely want the challenge. Whether it's in academic discovery, business, Pokémon battles, or running the League, I want to take on the greatest obstacles and surpass them, for no other reason than the self-satisfaction of having done so.

Towards that end, I've always done things my way. And mostly, I've succeeded. A perfect 2047-0-0 record in official Pokémon battles. Propelled Devon Corp to the 10th most valuable company in the world and earned hundreds of billions in the process. Earned the top academic prize in the fields of Geology (1987, 1991) and Paleontology (1985). Now, CEO of the Pokémon League. The secret to my success could be boiled down to this: "Multi-task, multi-task, multi-task."

Every human is given an equal amount of time: 60 seconds per minute for 60 minutes per hour for 24 hours per day for 365 days per year- and then variable lifespans provide for some discrimination. Great people are those who take their allotted time and use it as efficiently as possible. That is what I gathered from reading about previous Presidents, CEO's, and Champions. I ignored my father's advice and created my own method: sharpen my mind to the molecular edge, and apply it with precision towards every goal, interest, and fancy that crossed my path. Very often, that meant organizing my sub-goals into mental constructs and applying a blueprint to achieving them while wasting as little time as possible. My days became compact, tasks were stacked on top of each other, smaller matters were delegated to the most capable subordinates, and so on. Trivial matters fouled this complex multi-tasking mental system of mine up- they were to be avoided at all costs.

Which is why, when I scanned the case brief that had landed on my desk, I was not happy at all. Not. One. Bit.

I looked up to Ned, across my desk, with imposing eyes.

"Can you explain why this is on my desk?" I asked in as measured a tone as I was capable of.

"It's a taxonomy issue. They want you to name a Pokémon."

"Ned," I began, "We have entire branches dedicated to taxonomy. Why is this on my desk?"

"I don't know, it was just in the work queue..."

Carol interposed herself between me and the unfortunate secretary.

"It's not a mistake, sir. This actually came from the judicial agency."

"Judicial?!" What in the hell had judiciary proceedings to do with naming a new Pokémon?! Had the scientists, I don't know, named it after a censored curse word? Has the dictionary run dry of non-copyrighted pseudonyms?! This is ridiculous! A complete waste of my valuable time!

"Please let me explain, sir!" Carol begged. She's just realized she's taken Ned's place as the unfair focal point of my anger, and now she's looking fairly skewered- like a Magikarp on a shish-kabob. "Um. Um… So, explorers confirmed the existence of a new Pokémon deep inside Mt. Pyre-"

"Which one?" I asked testily, for clarification.

"Pardon me?"

"There are three Mt. Pyre's, which region's mountain are we talking about?"

"Castor Region's Pyre."

"Castor? There shouldn't be any new Pokémon to discover in Castor," I stated, puzzled and annoyed. I double-checked the file to make sure my secretary wasn't making a mistake. Yet she was right, even though it didn't make any sense. Castor's native Pokémon population was completely wiped out by a cataclysmic volcanic eruption some three hundred years ago. That blast had made the world's collective nuclear arsenal look like a backyard, amateur firecracker show in comparison. Basalt sediments thirty feet deep deposited over thousands of square miles. The only Pokémon endemic to the region in the modern age were brought there by settlers, primarily from Hoenn and Johto.

"Sir, you should have read more carefully. The new Pokémon species is a Fire/Dragon, and has all the traits of an Alpha-2 Tier."

Alpha-2 Tier, huh. The general public calls these kinds of Pokémon "pseudo-legendaries". Very powerful Pokémon once fully evolved.

"This dragon-type may have been the cause of the volcanic activity in the region. At least, they are just the kind of Pokémon you would expect to survive an eruption, even of that magnitude."

"Still-"

"Let me continue… please?" she implored. I shut up and waved her to get on with it. "The new species was confirmed virtually simultaneously by two expeditions, and each expedition had three collective sponsors. All six sponsors now have conflicting claims on discovery and naming rights. The matter was sent to Taxonomy and was expected to be settled there… until it was discovered that the head of Taxonomy had a conflict of interest in the case, due to a personal connection to one of the sponsor research groups. In addition, three sponsors recently filed lawsuits to uphold their claims, and two others have surfaced contract claims. Legally, the case couldn't be decided by arbitration and was kicked to judiciary."

"Good god."

Carol continued.

"It was then kicked up the chain of command, due to most bureaucrats not wanting to get involved, since the sponsors were bringing in larger business and law firm allies to help them. The issue fell to Director Chappalan, but he removed himself from the case for unknown reasons."

I batted an eyebrow at this. Chappalan voluntarily removing himself? He shouldn't be able to do that… unless he had an undisclosed interest in the case and was trying to protect his relationship with someone. Which meant I now had an agency head to investigate.

"Why so much squabble over a name?" I grimaced at the lunacy of it. "Money. I bet you someone has money staked on this. Only explanation."

"Don't attribute everything to money. Ego is just as powerful."

I waved her off.

"So the matter should have been left to his immediate subordinate."

"True, but in this case, there was a conflict of succession and primacy between Chappalan's two senior lieutenants."

"Kkk!" My veins must be visible. I have a suspicious judiciary head, squabbling agency lieutenants, one agency tied by red tape and another too afraid to play with big business, Arceus knows how much money invested by trademark companies, and six sponsor research groups with super-inflated egos, all at each other's throats-

-over a Pokémon's name.

"So I'm supposed to untangle all the legal obligations and contract laws to figure out who has the rightful claim?"

Carol curtsied.

"Bring lunch into my office. Tempura's, #10," I shouted as she scurried off. My fist met the table, as if smashing the papers into pulp would solve the problem. Alas, brute force was neither my style, nor effective in this situation.

When I couldn't banish a task away with sheer intellect, I tended to fall back on the more traditional meaning of multi-tasking: give up much needed free time. Guess I'll have to work through my lunch hour.

….1 hour later.

"This is bullshit."

I chomped on the upscale Sino dish, while scratching lines from one page and across to the next. There was no easy way to decipher this. The one useful field I never mastered and had no intention of mastering was Law. My range of experience was not enough, forcing me to deduct basic relationships, painstakingly scrounging dense language and applying basic logic, sometimes guessing at terminology. A full hour in and I had made enough headway to determine these contracts were full of contradictions and incompatible with each other. Which means I could waste my whole evening untangling this mess. Or I could shuffle it down to a lawyer. But, considering the only lawyers we have are either in accounting (no good for contract law) or judiciary (where all the hussies hadn't touched the job the first time through), I was left holding the buck.

"This is a waste of time."

Hmm. What to do.

I plucked out one of the last pages in the brief, buried under a pile of legal documents. It was just a summary of the competing claims, including a naming scheme for the new Pokémon. Or, as I discovered, trio of Pokémon- one base Pokémon and its two evolutions.

"Magamoor. Bullrain. Karchow." Yeah. Sometimes, scientists need less imagination. Do they think, if they won, that the public would honestly call this Fire/Dragon a "Magamoor"? Hell no.

I skimmed the rest of the list.

"Volva, Volvor, Volcane." That's simple. I lifted up a blurry, indistinct photo showing a quadruped creature in the distance: physical description commencing as such: dim-red scaled skin, narrow, whip-like wings, a hooked tail, sharp snout leading to flanged skull ridge, and a body curled in smoke and cinders. The most prominent feature were a pair of ominous glowing eyes, staring directly at the photographer. A fearsome creature to be sure, especially given its position wading through a flow of liquid magma. There was a moment's contemplation, before deciding the "Volcane" name was acceptable.

The only pause I had was the slim chance I would be sued for the hasty, extrajudicial decision.

So?

Fuck. No one was going to rat me out to Internal Affairs- especially when Judiciary is so screwed up. Our courts hadn't done their job, and now they left it to my executive decision. If I got the call wrong, who's it going to? The government courts? There's no jurisdiction for them; they don't make Pokémon Law, we do. If someone wants to blame me afterwards, they won't have anyone to complain to.

"Ned?" I called the boy in. "Tell them this company," I circled the group that was pushing for the Volcane name, "-has naming rights. Oh, and, sorry for noosing you like that. Speak up when you're taking unfair blame."

"Yes sir. Then, I want to bring to your-"

"Not right now, sheesh." I resumed dipping the shrimp into the delicious tempura. That's one petty issue solved. I'm sure a dozen more are already lined up for me. That's one of the things with this job. There's just a huge amount of stress associated with the major decisions; but at the same time you get bombarded by an endless stream of little Torchic-shit. It's a distraction, one that's seriously degrading my performance as a CEO. I try dad's advice and work harder, but that ends up biting more and more chunks out of my already-swiss-cheesed personal time.

Well, for now, at this moment, nothing else had better get in the way of me and my shrimp!

…

From trivial business to nature's business. Not even restroom breaks are sacred- I checked my e-mail via smartphone while using the toilet. Luckily it's my own private restroom (complete with shower!) and I don't have to worry about awkward interruptions. Don't you just hate people who chat on their cell phones in public restrooms? I do. It makes it difficult to piss.

Wipe, flush, exit stall, wash hands at sink.

I feel tired. It's only midday. I slumped down onto my two knuckled fists, staring at the ragged image in the mirror.

It's true what the secretaries are saying. I'm getting baggy eyes.

Brach and the rest of the board are expecting me at a meeting in fifteen minutes. Of course, I planned to regale them with the 14% TV contract increase. Chances are, however, they already know and won't stomach an hour's worth of protracted gloating. They'll want me to explain what I intend to do with the extra money. In other words, explain which of their precious pet projects get funded for another year, and which of them get the ax. Then I get to go back to my office and figure out which programs we actually need. I then have to invent spin and white lies as to why I didn't keep my word to the bloated cogboars, when in fact I so dearly wish I could chew them out for diluting our precious resources for such endeavors as "Scrafty Sexual Dimorphism Appreciation Parades". Instead, I must silently curse and outwardly nod for the sake of the fourteen men who held ultimate control over the League. Such is the delicate fiscal hemorrhaging act I perform on a week to week basis.

What a day.

My phone beeped, indicating an incoming text message.

"Don't work too hard! I want you tip-top for tonight! C."

"Yes dear," I texted her back.

Hearing from her usually makes my day. But lately, not so much… Maybe it's all the work-related stress. Maybe it's because I didn't want to think about our marriage during my lunch constitution. I blame work, but I can't deny that I use work as a scapegoat for our relationship issues. Namely, me not being home for the vast majority of the week. It didn't help that we were moving residences every few months, and that I had to take ~15 business trips in between. She could be plum-happy, on the border of a nervous breakdown, or cheating on me, and I wouldn't know the difference. I sighed. It just made this next daily routine of mine all that much heavier on my conscience.

Underneath the sink was a cabinet, usually reserved for cleaning supplies. I opened the door and reached into the back, behind the various plumbing fixtures.

"Nhh." My hand reemerged from the crevice, holding a bottle of medicine.

'Teclazome- male contraceptive. Take one daily. Do not give to children. WARNING! This product will not prevent STD's. Ask your doctor if adverse symptoms appear.'

I popped one of the tiny blue pills into my mouth, swallowed, and that was that. The bottle went back into its hiding place.

I steadied myself, allowing a few moments of guilt to wash through me. The same guilt I forced myself to swallow every day. In these moments of weakness, I reaffirmed my long held belief, also passed down from my dad:

"Steven, you would make a terrible father."