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Combined Financial Service Providers Third Annual Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility, Workplace

Leadership and Ethical Business Practices

Braxton shot down the motorway in his Mercedes E-Class convertible thinking of himself as a silver bullet, hell-bent on

embedding itself in the Hilton London Metropole. He bore down on the cars in front until they moved over, or undercut

them to the protest of blaring horns. He was looking good, good like a Hollister pin-up minus the surfboard. No, like one of

those guys from a magazine ad for expensive watches. Either way he was looking good. If only someone was watching.

Braxton imagined that every satellite in the northern hemisphere was trained on him and he felt untouchable.
He cut onto the North Circular and headed towards Edgware Road. The London traffic reduced him to a crawling pace,

the V8 engine idling in the dusty, polluted morning. He pulled down the sun visor and ran his hand through his hair,

inspecting his good looks in the mirror, then glancing around at the static cars nearby to see if anyone else had noticed.
Maybe he would take that girl from Audit out to dinner after all. Shed earned it. She had made him look good in front

of the director and had worn that low-cut blouse she knew he liked. The director had gawped down her top in a way nobody

could fail to notice, and hed had to agree to Braxtons terms in order to cover up his lapse in attention. Braxton eagerly

anticipated stripping her, dismantling an asset the director would never have.
He was about to flip the visor back up when he noticed a tiny stray hair had escaped his razor. He fumbled in the glove

compartment for a pair of tweezers and, with a satisfied grunt, plucked the hair. A horn sounded from behind him and

Braxton returned the tweezers to the glove compartment before flicking a V at the car behind.

The traffic was moving now, stop and start, stop and start. Braxton revved the V8 heavily, accelerating and braking hard

into the short gaps. Before long he was past St Johns Wood and onto the Edgware Road, pulling into the ants nest of the

underground parking. Braxton threw his key to the concierge as he headed through the sliding door.

The conference room was filling up. Braxton sat at the back lazily thumbing a copy of GQ. The conference had not

started and he was already eager to leave. For an hour with the girl from Audit to himself, corporate social responsibility

could go to hell. Better still, it could take these arseholes with it. At the front, a squat bald man appeared behind a lectern

and a corporate logo flashed onto the screen behind him. The familiar logo was loathsome to Braxton, a partially eclipsed

globe with an elliptical orbit that reminded him of a pair of strangled testicles. The bald man smiled and began.
It is my pleasure to welcome you to Combined Financial Service Providers Third Annual Conference on Corporate

Social Responsibility, Workplace Leadership and Ethical Business Practices. Good business has always been about

responsible leadership practices, about doing the right thing, the right way. The corporate social responsibility lens provides

a powerful tool for assessing and evaluating the opportunities and challenges of ....
The voice faded to a drone and Braxton sunk into a kaleidoscope of naked flesh, money and machines.

When Braxtons eyes refocused, the melee of breasts and cars receding before his eyes like a close-up of a candle in fast

forward, he found himself bathed in a soft blue glow. The PowerPoint presentation glaring at him from the front of the room

showed a flow diagram of corporate social responsibility supply chain implementation before cross-fading into a staged

photo of grinning Afro-Caribbean banana growers by a truck emblazoned with that same testicular CFSP logo. Below stood

an Indian production line manager next to some women sitting behind sewing machines. The bile rose in the back of

Braxtons throat. He wanted to punch CFSP and their grinning banana growers in the mouth, to see if theyd smile so

sweetly with their teeth out.


It was a moment before Braxton realised that the PowerPoint was the only source of light in the room. He started and

looked around sharply. The blue glow revealed nothing but rows of empty seats, the periphery of the room hidden in

darkness. He slid his hand into his pocket searching for his iPhone, but his pockets were empty except for crumpled receipts

and business cards that seemed to multiply as they fell from his hand. A search of his jacket revealed only a packet of gum

and a dog-eared condom packet. Angrily he reached around on the floor below his seat, noisily banging chairs about, but it

was not there.

Braxton cursed and kicked the chair in front. He fumbled along the row of seats impatiently. The chairs appeared to

extend infinitely into the darkness. Braxton quickened his pace, pushing chairs out of the way. He still couldnt see the side

aisle. The rows were narrow and Braxton grew frustrated. He pressed on faster through the darkness, knocking over chairs in

anger, until his head banged against the wall.


Braxton doubled back on himself, kicking aside the fallen chairs. The darkness seemed to thicken. He stretched his arm

out in front to feel for the end of the row, but seat after seat met his hand, until finally his hand knocked against the far wall.

The blue light seemed to be receding into the distance, and Braxton moved towards it like a moth.
His breath short, he pushed forward, even when his trouser leg snagged and tore on an upturned chair. There was space

at the front open space. If only he could reach it, he could collect his thoughts, breathe, bathe in the protective light of the

screen. But the light appeared no closer than when he had begun.
In the dim light something loomed in front of him and he staggered towards it. It was the lectern. He was almost there.

But where was the stage? By now he should be standing in front of the screen. But the light was dim. The chairs extended

beyond the lectern. Surrounded it. Continued into the darkness.


Braxton thrashed about, tossing chairs aside to make space, though he felt his strength waning. The light would revive

him, he knew. He was a plant, rooted to the spot. He needed the light and the light was going. Braxton watched the light dim

unable to move.
Faces swam before him in the faint glow inhuman faces, bug-eyed and pointed, smooth and hard. He knew them all

but they were not as he knew them. He uttered their names, their ranks, and their departments. The girl from audit was

among them: he knew it, he could feel her presence. She was hidden in the darkness just out of reach of the light but shed

come to him, he was certain. She would save him. If anyone would it would be her.
He called out to her an empty, hollow cry. His voice caught, he could not remember her name. Her face was

somewhere close to his now. The smooth shell had lost none of its former beauty but it horrified Braxton to look at her. No

frown could wrinkle that face but the nattering mandibles and twitching antenna spoke perfectly clear to Braxton. She had

turned on him. She was lost to him and he was lost to all.

The faces crowded round him, familiar but alien. Above them the corporate logo floated unseen in the darkness, now

fully eclipsed. They were on him, hymenoptera crawling over him, a super-organism. Sterile and hungry, they searched him

with twitching antennae. He swiped at them, but his hands were green and papery and he could not stem the flow of them up

his body. They crawled over him, emptying his pockets and dismantling him. He was being broken up, facet by facet.

Braxton was no longer an aggregate being. He was being processed, carried away piece by piece.
How many were there? If only he could account for them all. They were multiplying surely, accumulating beyond

control. He shut his eyes and tried to shake off the thousand gnawing mandibles. A hand touched his shoulder. Braxton

opened his eyes. A watch glinted as the hand withdrew. They all sat arrayed before him; shirts, collars, cuffs, cufflinks,

jackets, pinstripes. Heads twitched towards him on spindly necks, their faces expressionless. A thousand protruding

compound eyes fixed on him like satellites.

Will Watts 2014

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