Intruder Alert: Part 5

Blake and Fred were in their office. Blake was reclining in the swivel office chair, his legs stretched out with feet on the desk. Fred was slouched on the faux leather couch, also with his legs stretched out and his feet were on a low coffee table. They were in recuperation and recovery mode after three grueling hours with Dirk, the corporate district manager.
Their minds were adrift, trying to find mooring in a sea of company mandates, scenarios, and prognostications. After trying to stay on top of the Dirk’s demanding expectations was like preparing for and actually running a grueling triathlon with the rules changing willy-nilly. Their blood sugar levels had dropped, and the next inspiration was slow in arriving. They had been called upon to summon unreal levels of patience, while working to project agreeable yet intelligent personas to spontaneously meet impossible dreams of a superhuman slave driver. “No, I shouldn’t think that way.” Blake thought. “He’s not really a slave driver. In order to compete these days with other companies, it’s required that we make a super human effort to be better than anyone else. And then to outdo ourselves, before anyone else does.”
Blake sometimes wondered about the direction that the company was going. And then as he thought about it, he couldn’t define it, because it was ever changing. Oh yes, he remembered, it wasn’t a direction, it was like a purpose, but more abstract, a process, and like Dirk said: To go where no one had ever gone before. “But wasn’t that too general?” Blake asked himself, there had to be other qualifiers to channel the effort into forming and shaping a company to fulfill customer needs that changed everyday and do it seamlessly, exponentially and extraordinarily well.
“That’s where Super Sam came into the picture,” Blake chuckled when he remembered Super Sam, the epitome of excellent customer service that was exemplified in the big chested superman-like image on a customer service poster that graced all company staff lounges years ago. But that was abandoned, the women wanted a Super Samantha mascot. Redoing all the company announcements was too expensive. So Super Sam was abandoned. “How did I get on this mental jaunt?” Blake wondered introspectively. As he started to ponder that, Fred said as if crawling out of a reverie of his own, “Hey, I must have gotten the high speed videos from Hank by now.” He pulled himself off the couch and struggled over to his desk, dropped into the chair and started punching keys.
“I’d better get busy too,” Blake thought about the numerous tasks that were left undone, trying to prioritize them in his mind, while the last of the mental and physical fatigue ebbed away.
“We should order pizza or something,” Fred said and then with his head craned forward and squinting his eyes: “Hmmm.. This is strange.”
“What?” said Blake.
Fred was studying something on the screen, “He must have gotten our video mixed up with some kids video. Well, wait, I see the robot, and the cabinet and…that’s definitely the hardware department. I don’t understand what this means. Take a look Blake, pull yourself together, muy pronto.”
Blake got up, struggled to pull another chair over to the computer and sat down. He sat there in silence for a moment, studying the image on the screen. “Looks like an elf. Hmm, now it’s perfectly clear, I should have known. Elves stole the robot. They want to make replicas for Santa Clause and the kids…”
“Stop kidding around,” Fred groaned, “that’s dumb….or maybe you have a point there. I mean…I need not take this too seriously. After all, obviously the tape or video has been corrupted. Elves don’t exist, etc and so on. Case closed. And we might as well laugh about it. Ha, ha, ha. Great! We’re not any closer to finding out what happened to the robot than we were before.

Blake’s phone announced a call coming in, “Nellie in hardware calling.” “Yes Nellie. Any more robots missing,” Blake answered.

“No,” Nellie replied, “but there’s somebody here who thinks she can help you find it.”

“Really,” Blake responded, trying to sound incredulous. “Anyone I know:”
“You know her better than anyone else,” Nellie said matter of factly.
“Yeah, and who might that be?” Blake tried to think, He didn’t know any one here at the store any better than anyone else. He didn’t spend time with any employees except at company events. He lived alone. Could it be a customer. He had struck up sort of a casual relationship with a few of them that came in on a very regular basis, and there were a few complainers that were not his favorite people.
“Fred calls her Ancient Alien Alice,” Nellie replied.

“Oh!” said Blake.

To be continued….