The Mother Of Invention

Chapter 2

“It was about this time that the telephone rang in the secret briefcase // Belonging to the one mortal man // Who might be able to stop all of this senseless destruction and save ‘America Herself’!”

Billy the Mountain, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention 

The elevator in their concrete office building played bossa nova music. On any given day, there was one of six tracks playing. Riding it down, Gerald liked to imagine in his mind that his role in the government was that of a secret agent and that, descending in the elevator, he was actually going down into some secret government records hall, or a volcano base. 

He would emerge from the doors as they opened and walk into a groovy, minimalist lounge with angular leather armchairs and polished wood floors. Everyone would be wearing sunglasses and black business wear. He’d walk into a sleek kitchenette featuring a state-of-the-art microwave oven and black linoleum countertops. Nodding poignantly to another agent, he’d grab a mug of black coffee made on the electric drip coffeemaker

Scanning the room, he’d spot a man wearing a trench coat in the back corner who looked like Leon Redbone, smoking a cigarette. The man would say a code phrase, like, “I wonder if the store will run out of toys this Christmas,” and Gerald would reply, “I hope they’ve learned their lesson from last year.” And pseudo-Leon would lead him to the hangar with the fully chrome starship, to whisk them away to a beautiful, but secretly dangerous, asteroid island paradise. There, they would stop turncoat spies in the Far Pacific with their skills of spy-craft and razor sharp wit.

The door opened and, as usual, it was just the regular bureau lobby, with the pea-green armchairs and the coffee table with a stack of magazines. 

“Good morning, Linda,” he said to the young receptionist, as he walked into the room. Linda was in school for a degree in English literature, but hoped to go into advertising. She had sandy blonde hair and bright eyes and was wearing a grey sweater. She looked a bit like his daughter Sally.

“Morning, Gerald,” she said, “how is Emmitt doing?”

Gerald had once brought Emmitt into the office. The people he worked with had been generally laid back about it, and liked the little animal companion roaming the halls for a day. 

“He’s doing just fine.” Gerald said, “He’s been napping a bit more lately — I think it keeps him a bit warmer in the winter.”

“Is it cold out there in the gorge?” Linda asked.

It was pretty cold out there. He shrugged, leaning on the reception desk.

“I think as much as anywhere, but I keep the heat pretty low. We’ve got lots of blankets, so he bundles up.”

“That’s right,” Linda said, smiling, “I forgot you’re cutting energy costs. Oh, speaking of which, there’s a man from the Keyston District here today. A young guy, black, I think his name was Mr. Wheeler? I believe he’ll be in the meeting with Mr. Hanson. Something to do with some new kind of energy.”

“Interesting,” Gerald said, thinking, “I’m a little surprised I’m being included on that meeting — it seems a bit out of my department.”

“Maybe you’re being promoted!” Linda said cheerfully.

Gerald chuckled.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, “Don’t you have to do something remarkable to get a promotion? Lateral migratory is more of my style.”

Linda waved at him admonishingly.

“Oh, don’t be so down on yourself, Gerald,” she said, “who knows what will happen? Anyways,” she looked at the clock, “I shouldn’t keep you, they’re starting in a couple of minutes. Hope the meeting goes well!”

“Thank you, Linda,” he said, walking towards the conference room.

“Don’t mention it!” she said.

Gerald walked down the hallway. There were framed photographs on the walls of various landscapes from all across their jurisdiction. The Great Crater Lakes of Umpqua, the peak of Mount Saint Helens on Evergreen, and the Bruneau Dunes on Threebear, a sandy expanse in a world mostly covered in lakes and forests. Few of the pictured landscapes were actually managed by the Bureau, but it was the thought that counted.

The conference room was down the hall on the left. Gerald rapped on the doorframe and went in. At the table was Tim Hanson, a wire-thin, scrappy guy with graying blonde hair and glasses. He was wearing a pale green buttoned shirt with the Bureau logo emblazoned on the breast. Tim had started his career as a wildlife biologist, but transferred out of field work after he tore a tendon behind his knee ten years ago.

Next to him was a man who Gerald inferred to be Mr. Wheeler. He was tall and athletic, in his mid to late twenties, and wore a slimming three-piece suit with a houndstooth jacket. Gerald had not met this man before — the normal group he remembered seeing from Keyston were a lot of rough and ready rangeland managers, ecologists, and wildlife experts. It had admittedly been a while since he’d visited, though.

“Morning fellas,” Gerald said.

“Good morning, Gerald,” Tim said, waving him into the room, “Happy Monday. Antonia is just grabbing a few things from her office, she’ll be right with us.” Antonia Keyserling was the deputy director of management resources. Mr. Wheeler stood up, shortly followed by Tim Hanson. “Gerald,” Tim said, “I’d like to introduce you to Stan Wheeler.”

Gerald and Stan shook hands. He had a solid handshake.

Tim went on as they all sat back down.

“Stan is a project coordinator for the Keyston District. He’s been working on the groundwork for a new project out there to look into some alternative methods of power generation. The proposed action would be constructing a solar power array in the sagebrush east of a town called Pilot’s End.”

“Very cool,” Gerald said. “That’s one of the big timber towns on the other side of the mountains, right?”

Stan Wheeler nodded, tenting his fingers.

“That’s right,” he said, “Pretty much anybody who lives out there, their life revolves around the mill — Blitzen-Dunlap Lumber Company is the biggest employer, and their mill in Pilot’s End is still the biggest in the Federation. Engineers, electricians, carpenters, accountants. Salespeople. Everybody’s kept afloat by the mill.”

Gerald got the impression he was supposed to know this information, but the drier parts of their world weren’t much his forté. He’d been trying to keep unnecessary drives to a minimum.

“Interesting,” Gerald said, “I don’t keep up with that part of Umpqua much. The high desert does feel a bit like the middle of nowhere to me.”

Tim Hanson laughed.

“Sure. Not many people are entertaining the thought of moving to Pilot’s End, but it’s an industrial powerhouse that keeps our world afloat. We have a debt of gratitude to pay to those people.”

Stan Wheeler nodded.

“Fair enough,” Gerald said, “That’s the lifeblood of this Bureau, right? Look at the whole ecosystem of a place and see all the different uses. I suppose that applies on a planetary level in addition to regional or local.”

Stan nodded again, smiling.

Just then, Antonia Keyserling came into the room with a stack of binders and paper. Antonia carried herself with the poise of a journalist, someone who knew a bit about everything. Speaking broadly, she was cool. She was a great conversationalist and had worked at the Bureau for over a decade. Antonia had greying black hair pulled back, olive skin and dark eyes framed by a pair of glasses. 

“Hey Gerald,” she said, setting the binders down on the tabletop, “How was your weekend?”

“Oh good,” Gerald said, “Just did a few projects around the house. You?”

“It was pretty good. Mike and I went to a concert at the Schnitz on Saturday. Have you ever heard of Talking Heads?”

Gerald laughed.

“I see ‘em all the time on the tube,” he said. He knew he was being obtuse, but it was a schtick.

Antonia rolled her eyes.

“It’s a band — they’re… hard to describe. I suppose it’s broadly rock music, but more avant-garde, maybe like art pop? I’m not sure if you’d like them, Gerald. You seem like a classics guy to me.”

“I listen to Willie Nelson, if that’s what you’re implying.”

Gerald noticed that Stan Wheeler seemed tense, on the edge of his seat. He felt a bit awkward, continuing to talk — it was a blessing and a curse to always notice how everybody was feeling. After a bit more reminiscing on the weekend, Gerald left a gap in the conversation and glanced at Stan.

“Anyway, coming back to your earlier comment, Gerald,” Stan said, grabbing hold of the gap, “that’s an innovative way to look at things; what you were saying about considering a planetary ecosystem, I mean. I’ve increasingly been looking at ways to think like that, in order to decrease our dependence on big hardfuel companies and develop more local solutions.”

“Right, right,” Gerald nodded, “to decrease the dependence on foreign hardfuel and gain energy independence for the Federation,” he said, quoting something he’d heard on the news.

Stan shifted in his seat.

“Yes, that’s one way to look at it, but what I’m primarily looking to do is actually to remove fuel merchants from the equation,” Stan replied. “Remove the middleman, and have customers purchasing their energy directly from renewable power producers generating power in their own backyard. This solar power array is a proof of concept for that new approach.”

Stan Wheeler seemed like a pretty smart guy, leaving Gerald feeling a bit out of his depth. He was tracking with what Stan was saying, but it seemed like the man’s mind moved a hundred miles per hour. He nodded.

“Gotcha.”

Tim Hansen nodded and leaned across the conference room table to grab a binder from Antonia.

“Yeah, Stan, you’re right to notice that — Gerald is quite the innovator in his personal life. Always looking for a way to create more efficiency on a personal level, which has been inspiring to me.”

Gerald felt his neck turning red. Tim Hansen had never said anything one way or the other about all the work he’d been doing at his house.

“Thanks Tim,” he said.

Tim smiled.

“Of course, Gerald. One of the reasons we’re all here meeting together today is that Antonia and I would love for you to consider taking on this new project with Stan.”

Gerald felt his eyebrows go up in spite of himself. Antonia and Stan were nodding. He felt a bit out of the loop.

“Oh,” he said, “I wasn’t expecting this.”

Tim shifted his approach.

“Now, of course, there’s no need to make a decision right this second — our intention wasn’t to put you on the spot, but just to bring you in on this conversation and start to collaborate a bit.”

Gerald nodded, furrowing his brows.

“What would be the role on the project?” he asked, looking to Stan, “are you needing somebody to manage records and documentation, or…” He left it open ended. Things like this weren’t exactly in his wheelhouse.

Antonia Keyserling replied.

“Not records keeping, Gerald, you would be coming on as the new district manager for the Keyston District.”

His mind started to wander a bit. Linda had said something about a promotion. Had she known about this? Had everybody known about this? Shoot, he thought. Gerald had been a manager of all sorts of things — records rooms, a government financial accountability team, even a burger and shake shack — but a district? He realized he hadn’t said anything.

“Oh,” he said. “Wow. District manager? Um. Isn’t there already a district manager? I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes.”

“Well,” said Antonia, “that’s actually the fortuitous thing — Ken Barnhill, the district guy out there for over twenty five years, is looking to finally retire. They’re on the hunt for his successor, so to speak.”

Stan chimed in.

“I was hired on five months ago to start developing this new approach. We’re using this transition as something of a reinvention of the Keyston District, to diversify our use of all that sagebrush and turn the high desert into a powerhouse for alternative energy production.”

“How’s that going over with the ranchers?” Gerald asked. He knew there’d been some conflict out there about public land ownership.

Tim shrugged, almost ambivalently.

“There’s challenges, like there always are with a new thing, but in the long run we feel like it’s a good play. Like Stan was saying, we need to take the planetary ecosystem into consideration.”

Gerald looked to Stan, but he seemed to be thinking.

“Alright,” Gerald said. “Well, whatever you think is the best course of action, sounds good to me.”

Antonia pressed him.

“While I appreciate that, I’d love to hear what you think about this opportunity, whether or not it sounds like something you’d want to do.”

Gerald considered. It seemed like everybody else was already in the loop on this. Stan Wheeler had been working for the Keyston District for five months, which meant five months of work had already been done on the solar array project. And it seemed like everybody had given a great deal of thought to all of this. 

Whether or not he agreed that he was the right man for the job, if Antonia Keyserling and Tim Hansen were here asking him to take on this role, he didn’t want to call their judgment into question. After all, he was sure they knew much more about the project than he did. He didn’t want to get in the way of a good thing that would make a big difference, especially because of his own ignorance.

So he did his best to be decisive. 

“No, it’s good. I’m definitely on board with the Bureau on this. This solar array sounds like a great option for the high desert communities, and I suppose for Umpqua as a whole. I’m grateful for your thinking of me, and I’ll do my best to make sure this project goes well.”

Tim Hansen nodded slowly. Gerald hoped he’d reassured them.

“Alright, well, that sounds good,” Tim said. “The change isn’t going to take place overnight,” he said, looking at Antonia, “but we have done a bit of the groundwork to free you up in your current role and enable you to seamlessly transition into this new position. 

“I don’t want to put more pressure on you,” he went on, leaning on the armrest of his chair, “but, if you’re comfortable with it, we’d love to see you moving to half time in your current role as early as next week, and devoting half your time to some of the early stages of this new project. And keeping that arrangement for as long as you need to fully transition. What do you think?”

Gerald’s brain was drawing a bit of a blank.

“That sounds fine,” Gerald said, “I’m sure I can hand things off to the others on my current team; they’re definitely a capable crew and I know they’ll do a great job.”

“See, Gerald,” Antonia said, nodding her head, “that team-building, empowering kind of mentality is what we’re hoping for in this new solar project. As you and Stan start recruiting specialists for the environmental assessment, my hope is that you’ll bring that kind of attitude to this new team. And I hope you see the confidence we have in your abilities — we trust that the team the two of you develop will be the right people for the job, and you’ll have considerable autonomy in that process.”

Tim Hanson nodded.

“That’s right. We have a short list of people who may be promising leads, both old colleagues and some promising new applicants that have come through the pipe in recent weeks, but we’ll leave it to your discretion to make the final call. With that said, any questions or comments from you gentlemen?”

Both men shook their heads and said it was all clear. Stan Wheeler thanked Tim and Antonia for their time with a winsome smile, and they wrapped their meeting up.

Stan caught Gerald in the hallway outside as Tim and Antonia side-barred in the conference room. 

“I’m looking forward to working with you, Gerald,” he said politely. “It sounds like you’re really qualified.”

“That’s what they say,” Gerald said, shrugging.

“You’re humble,” Stan said, matter-of-factly, nodding his head.

“Huh,” Gerald said, “haven’t much thought of it, but thanks, I suppose.”

“Well, isn’t that what they say about humility? That the humble person isn’t necessarily thinking about themselves enough to notice that they’re humble?”

Gerald smiled.

“Well, Mr. Wheeler, maybe it’s the end of an era — what’s going to happen to me now that you’ve made me aware of it?”

Stan Wheeler laughed like the joke was funnier than Gerald felt it was.

“That’s smart,” Stan said, “I appreciate that. Like I said, I’m definitely looking forward to working with you. Speaking of which, I’ll be in Roseport for a couple more weeks to get things squared away here, and one of the recent applicants Tim Hansen mentioned earlier is actually a Roseport local. Would you be able to join me in meeting with him sometime next week?”

“Sure, that sounds good to me,” Gerald said. “I’m usually in Roseport Monday through Friday, so I’m pretty flexible. Maybe more so, now, with this transition.”

“Great,” Stan said, “I’ll be working from the office here, so I’ll let you know. Anyway, I have a lunch meeting I need to prepare for, so I’m going to my office. Good to meet you Gerald, I’ll see you around.” 

Stan smiled and waved curtly, walking around the corner to his office. Gerald said goodbye and wandered back up to the front.

“How’d things go?” Linda asked, looking up from her textbook. The lobby was empty.

“You appear to be a bit of a soothsayer, Linda,” Gerald said.

Linda balked.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. But oh!” she said, “They offered you a promotion?”

“That’s right — to district manager of the Keyston District.”

“Keyston District,” she repeated, folding a dog-ear in her page and closing her textbook. “Isn’t that out east of the mountains?”

“Sure is,” Gerald said, sitting on the pea-green sofa. He sifted through the magazines there and found one with a photograph of rangeland on the cover. He flipped it open and quickly found an article about Keyston, with a photo of the town. It was an old frontier town sitting in the shadow of a large bluff, with a river or a creek running through it. He held up the photo. “Keyston,” he said.

“Interesting,” Linda said. “Are you gonna move to Keyston, then?”

“Oh,” Gerald said. “I hadn’t considered it.”

“I mean, I suppose you commute here to Roseport even though you don’t live here. Maybe you could do the same?”

“It’s a bit longer of a trip,” he said. He’d not even considered relocation during the meeting. He was kicking himself internally. He never thought things through.

“Well,” Linda said softly, “I’m sure Tim and Antonia will be able to help you figure out something that works for everybody.” 

“Yeah,” Gerald said, “of course.”

Gerald settled into the couch and started to read the magazine article, which was all about cattle grazing, all the while imagining fictional conversations with real estate agents. He was showing them his little bungalow in Waucoma Gorge, leading them stoically through the carpeted rooms lined with firewood, in each conversation finding himself having nothing good to say.