"In a moment." The instructor stood, and Bill saw that behind the huge man was a freestanding black rectangle with several handles poking out from a hole in its top. Even from here, he could see the shimmering air of heat waves radiating from the object.
The guards pushed Bill forward. They tied him naked to the bench, bending him over, buttocks up.
"You will now receive The Store brand," the instructor told him.
Behind him, he heard sizzling. He craned his neck, twisting to see the instructor holding a red-hot branding iron that he'd taken from the black rectangle.
"No!" Bill screamed.
"This is going to hurt," the instructor said.
The hot metal seared the flesh of his buttocks, and he passed out.
When he came to, he was strapped to a chair in a darkened cell, facing a gigantic television on which Newman King paced back and forth in a featureless white room, talking to himself. The pain was tremendous, unbearable, and he passed out again almost instantly, but he awoke sometime later in the same position, and Newman King was still on the TV screen, talking.
"Greed. It's the impulse that drives us. Not sex, not love, not the desire to help others, but the desire to acquire, the need to own. It is from this impulse that love and sex spring. Relationships are a form of ownership . . ."
He passed in and out of consciousness, in and out of sleep, and always, whether his eyes were open or closed, he heard the melodious voice of Newman King. ". . . If people don't want it, we make them want it. We make sure that everyone around them has it and they feel left out if they don't. We use peer pressure to our advantage. We exploit their . . ."
Hours went by.
Days.
Sometime during the week -- he'd lost track of time -- the television was turned off. He was released from his bonds by a man dressed in a doctor's white smock, was given an injection in his arm and was allowed to stand and walk around the room.
The pain in his buttocks had completely disappeared.
He was fed a sumptuous meal of deliriously unhealthy junk food brought in on a cart by a gorgeous, bikini-clad young woman. As he ate the meal, the instructor returned with a portable chalkboard, and using lectures and drawings he explained the duties of a manager, went through the organization of The Store. He read extensively from both _The Employee's Bible_ and _The Manager's Concordance_, and Bill was allowed to stop him at any time and ask questions.
The lecture continued after he had finished his food and the woman had taken the table away. Bill was so grateful to be able to talk to someone, to be able to again communicate, so thankful for any sort of human response, that he paid close attention to what the instructor said and asked as many questions as possible.
That evening, he was brought by elevator to what appeared to be a huge, expensive hotel suite, complete with a walk-in closet filled with fine clothes, a king-sized bed, and a whirlpool bath. It was, without a doubt, the most luxurious place in which he had ever stayed, and after the deprivation of the past several days, it seemed to him like paradise.
There was a phone, but he could not dial out, could only call for room service, and there was a television, but he could watch no network or news stations, could only watch cable movie channels or view videotapes of recent blockbusters. He was still in the Black Tower, he knew, but aside from those small reminders, the illusion was perfect, and through the huge windows in the bedroom he watched the sunset dying over the desert.
After the orange ball of the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, he looked through the leather-bound menu, called room service, and ordered lobster and filet mignon, with wine. The meal was again delivered by a gorgeous woman, this one in an evening gown. She offered to remain with him, to bathe him and give him a massage after dinner, but he told her that he wanted to be alone, and she left.
She returned a half hour later to take away the empty plates, and he locked the door to the suite and went into the bathroom where he soaked for a long time in the whirlpool, letting hot jets of water massage his muscles. His head resting on an inflatable pillow, he watched a Tom Hanks movie on the bathroom television set.
This was nice, he thought. He could get used to this.
He put on the robe that had been provided, walked out into the bedroom. He fell asleep almost immediately after crawling into the soft bed, but his sleep bound imagination was not at all influenced by his surroundings.
He had nightmares.
There were several, but in the only one he could remember, Newman King showed up in class with the instructor. The CEO seemed even stranger and more frightening than before, and Bill could not look at him at first, was forced to focus his attention on the instructor, the chalkboard, the bare walls of the room.
"This will be a short test," King said. "I just want to see how you're progressing." He smiled. "As a Store manager, you may be called upon to do things that are personally repugnant to you. But it is your duty and your obligation to put the welfare of The Store before any of your own personal concerns. As an example, I will let you watch the termination of one of our employees who has not performed to expectations."
A black-raincoated man brought out Samantha.
Bill's heart lurched in his chest. "No!"
"Yes."
His daughter was squirming and crying, her eyes filled with terror. The man held her firmly while another Store employee in an identical black raincoat carried in a stunned-looking middle-aged man, walked up to the front of the room, and stood on the opposite side of the CEO.
King smiled. "Now, here's the test. One of these two must be terminated.
Which one should it be?"
Bill shook his head. "No. I'm not falling for that. I'm not playing this game."
"Come on. It's your decision."
"No."
"Choose."
"I can't do it."
King nodded to the other manager, held out a knife. "Kill her."
"No!" Bill screamed, jumping up. Hands grabbed him from behind, forced him back down into the chair.
King's smile broadened. "Very good, Mr. Davis. You've made your first decision. You'll make a manager yet." He turned toward Sam, handing her the knife. "Kill him."
The man in the raincoat let her go; she grabbed the knife and moved past the CEO. She pushed back the other manager's forehead and drew the blade across his throat.
Blood spurted onto her face, onto her clothes, splashed onto the raincoats of the other Store employees. She fell to the floor, dropping the knife, laughing or crying, Bill could not tell which. He wanted to rush to her and hug her, wanted to scream at her and hit her, but he could do nothing, could only sit there, with the strong hands on his shoulders holding him down, and watch as Sam was led out of the room.
King patted Bill on the head on his way out. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"
He was provided with a wake-up call the next morning, and after he finished his breakfast, he was brought back to yesterday's classroom, where his lessons continued.
The real training was nothing like his dream. Despite his prejudice against The Store, despite his animosity toward Newman King, he had to admit that a lot of what he was being taught made sense. There seemed to be a lot of merit in The Store's approach to everything from retail strategies to labor relations, and he found himself understanding and agreeing with a lot of what he was being taught. The knowledge seemed useful to him, the ideas effective. Power might have been misused in the past, but it was not intrinsically bad, and even King could not have total control over everything that went on beneath him. On the surface, at least, King's methods seemed far less extreme than those of his proteges, and while he had absolute power in regard to his empire, he delegated authority and gave each manager complete autonomy over The Store to which he or she was assigned. The CEO wasn't necessarily aware of and didn't necessarily approve of everything that was perpetrated in his name.