Chapter 1: Death of a Salesman

Tuesdays. Somehow even worse than Mondays. On Monday you expect the worse and it's never truly as bad as you would expect. Tuesday... worse. Your guard is down and all of the crap for the week piles on in massive heaps. As you know, Monday is the same for everyone. No one wants to work but Tuesday has no excuse.

          Wade. No middle name. No last name. Just Wade, sat in his office alone. Always alone. Secluded from his own secretary, he turned his ergonomic leather chair toward the window and watched the impossibly small people shuffle around his building. His stature is not what it once was. His hips, bothering him now for three years, aching with every step. His hands wrinkled and spotted. The thought of the face he grew up to changing before his very eyes frightened him. Not the fear of death. Not fear of an end but something else. As if his eyes had never adjusted to the changes his body has made over the years.

          What am I leaving behind? Wade asked himself.

          A common question to all of those in a place to leave something behind. His empire was built for him by his father. He simply stepped in the shoes and carried on the legacy as best as he could. Steel, paper, factories, mills, sand, minerals, and even communications have been his only life. His father built up a steel company and through the great war, made more money than anyone ever thought possible. Since the forties, his father began expanding to every elemental commodity that he could get his hands on. Dying at a respectable age, Wade picked up the torch and carried the company through to the next century. Billions of dollars later, Wade was left alone with the exception of his nurse, with no family or anyone to leave this great empire to.

          Studying the people below, going to something. Coming from something. All with lives, regardless how petty. From the ninety-seventh floor the people didn't even look like people. Not even ants. Just a blackish blur of corporate attire blending together as a film of algae would blend on stale water. Watching the taxis come and go. Limousines arriving with his overpaid vice presidents. As though someone had opened a valve to the building, the black sea of algae flowed through the front doors, leaving the white pavement behind empty. 

          Almost empty. A single red dot. Contrasted more so by the pavement and greenery planted intermittently. The red dot stood in the center of the courtyard alone. Still. Wade reached to his monitor and zoomed the camera in on the dot's location.

          Who do we have here? Wade pondered.

          An image of a lone woman in an ornate Spanish red gown stood staring directly at the camera. Her flaming red hair draped elegantly over her flawless porcelain skin. Mouthing some words, seemingly to the camera, she closed her penetrating green eyes and walked toward the building with a gait that would turn any head near her.

          Now out of sight, Wade closed the monitor and sighed with satisfaction for his brief view of beauty. Standing from his ridiculously expensive desk, Wade walked to the stocked bar and poured himself a single shot of Jameson Whiskey. Regardless of his fine taste in food, wine, and living accommodations, Wade continued to drink well below his station. It was a simple reminder that even the great billionaire came from somewhere simple, once upon a time. As the whiskey burned down his throat, alarms sounded that startled fluid back up. Wiping his mouth, Wade rushed to his desk to view the situation.

          Nitrate detection? Wade read.

          With a sudden rush of realization, Wade replied to the emergency message a simple command: EVACUATE!!!

          Grabbing his coat, Wade rushed out the door and up the stairs to his helicopter. Manned and prepped, the helicopter was already spinning up. In any alarm event, the pilot is under standing orders to prepare for takeoff as soon as possible and await for the CEO. Wade jumps in his seat and secured his seat harness. As the helicopter took off, Wade looked below at his sea of human algae. Swarming from out of the building toward the river of asphalt. Streets were collided with traffic stopping for the mass crossing the roads.

And then it happened.

          A shocking flash of light erupted from halfway up the high-rise sending ripples of glass hurdling upward. Then the sound. The belting roar of the explosion through the helicopter off it's axis. Spinning out of control, the pilot calmly declared a mayday. Wade, looking upward, focused his mind of something else.

          Mayday derive from the word... ah hell... it was French.

          The spinning helicopter began to tilt, revealing the view to the ground from Wade's center seat in the back. Closing his eyes, he focused once more.

          M'aider! That's right, 1923. Venez M'aider means 'you come help me'. Fredrick Stanley Mockford in 1923!

          Opening his eyes, Wade had just enough time to watch his own impact into the road below. With a nearly guttural shriek, the rotors shattered on the asphalt sending high speed shrapnel in all directions. Flames engulfed the cabin and quickly spread to the exposed fuel lines leading from the fuel tanks below the cabin floor. With a sudden explosion, Wade met the same fate as hundreds of his employees just seconds before.