Chapter 3

Pita and Phil

"Hi Pita, Hi Phil."

Both looked up from their workspaces, neither suprised but both happy to see me again. Pita was comfortable on her matching and color coordinated couch and coffee table set, replete with steaming cocoa that never got cold or empty. Phil was busy at his drafting table, with a model to hand, tape measures and calipers within arms reach, a tool box by the door next to his ballcap and gloves that he always wore outside.

Pita looked gorgeous as usual, her auburn hair arranged in another tasteful 'do which showed off her perfect, runway model features. Dressed in tight-fitting tunic and tights, her hands held various colored markers and pencils she used to design with. Legs crossed as only an assured woman can, she was relaxed and attentive to my presence. Drawings graced the couch next to her and the side table which was lit by a hidden spot light. While every aspect of her end to the room was soft, curved and comfortable, her hands were as busy as her eyes were attentive to only me. Drawings flipped off her tablet while she constantly changed colors, the markers and pencils held between the varied fingers of her hands, some times two or three at once. While I had seen her use either hand to draw with, I think she's mostly left-handed - which people say are the more creative types.

While Pita was different every time I came to visit, she was always dressed to kill, always enticing, yet professional. Sometimes she looked voluptuous, others thin enough to fit into those runway outfits that models starve to get into. While she'd often show skin in the summer, it was never in such a manner to be depreciative to her sex, nor over-arousing to Phil or me. Dressed skimpily or clothed to endure a midwinter blizzard, she was always a knock-out.

Phil's corner was more angular, dust in the odd crannies and nooks, a drafting light over his table, which was set for him to either stand or "sit", perching one cheek on the edge of a chair which would just as easily roll away out from under foot when he got busy on a drawing. Sometimes, he would sit fully on it and pull his long legs up, one hooked around a leg, enabling him to stay entranced in whatever he was working out, using calculator, circular slide rule, calipers or any other tool (some which weren't recognizable to me, all featured with blinking LEDs and not having any visible power source or surface button, often hoving over a corner of the desk - spooky).

While Phil had three or four monitors, all of which showed different programs running, some several, he only had a single keyboard, but two or three "mice" which were each differently configured. Some were to the left of the keyboard, some to the right. 3D models were rotating in one screen while some sort of wireframe blueprint was displayed in another. A third had various text processing windows open, with lists and specifications. Another had a constantly updating browser showing the latest news from various sources, as well a radio was going in the background with talk-radio hosts rotating through the hours - and it looked like behind these there was a muted TV program showing in a small window behind all these. Below the side desk the monitors sat on were several computer boxes and networking devices blinking away below and lighting up the space by their red, green, yellow, and blue lights. How he ran all of these different boxes via one keyboard and which monitors went to what display was a mystery to me.

Phil always was dressed down, most always in jeans. Polo or T-shirt in the summer, flannels in the winter, always rolled to the elbow. Shoes were sturdy, but these were always in the "mud room" just outside the door, along with his work jackets, slicker and insulated overalls. Always clean indoors, I'd seen him almost covered in grease and dust, smudged on his face and nose where he had scratched an itch with his heavy, greasy work gloves. Today, he was neat, dry and half-perched on his drafting stool, a scale in the leftover fingers of one hand while he punched a calculator with his index. The other hand holding a model up to that strangely blinking mini-UFO that floated on his left.

"What's up, Herbert?" asked Pita, her fingers pausing only to change to a fresh sheet of paper.

Phil: "Yeah, what's to do today?" He paused at measuring the model and turned down the radio to a low murmer.

"Well, I thought you might help me out with the farm," I replied.

Pita: "You want to dress it up, make it look really nice?"

Phil: "Time to fix those gates and add on a workshop to the barn, plus the house roof needs some work - we could put on an extension and wire up your antennas better..."

Me: "No, No, just wanted to bounce some ideas off you two."

Pita almost jumped out of her couch: "Autumn colors are great this time of year - reds, yellows, oranges, all tied in with a dark russet brown and a touch of cool green as an accent..."

Phil frowned,"No, he wants to build something, fix something, make it better somehow..."

"Well, you are both probably right, but I'm not settled on what I wanted to do yet."

The room was still, save only for the ticking clock and murmering radio in Phil's corner, while the Lava lamp shifted color and silently burbled next to the headset quietly singing old classics to itself, waiting for Pita to pick it up again.

"I thought I should change my life around."

More quietude. These two knew how to simply draw my thoughts out by waiting for me to talk.

"Well, I've been getting more and more fed up with some of the stuff I've been having to do and the jobs they're telling me to work at."

Pita: "Well I thought you looked a bit tense after you lost that sweet job doing those color seps."

Phil:"But that seemed to work out when you landed working with the event design--"

Me: "Yeah, but they sent me for training and when that didn't work out, they used me for a glorified custodian - set up, break down, clean it up, mop the floor, sweep up - no real design to that. So I quit it all."

Pita, alarmed: "You didn't!"

Me, resigned: "Yeah, I'd had it. They've just gone too far."

Phil: "Something adding up to all this - seems to be a string of these in the last few years."

Me: "Well they do seem to be heading in a direction."

Pita: "But you've been happy at working there for so long. It's always seemed to be something you wanted to do..."

Me: "There was that. I've been doing this since I was an old teenager. I don't have any skills to take with me and no retirement, no savings, no Social Security, even."

Pita: "No, you have all these skills you've learned - making magazines, doing artwork, executing design layouts, web design..."

Phil: "...running computers, building walls, plumbing, carpentry, building booths; - you could do a whole building from top to bottom if you wanted, from concrete foundations to roofing - there's nothing you can't do!"

Me: "But there's no certificates to go with these. I've done no union apprenticeships, attended no trade schools - I never even went to college." (Sigh.)

Pita: "Ah, but that's no problem - it's the whole scene with the Wizard of Oz - you know, the Scarecrow realized he knew it all the time when someone handed him a diploma; the Lion got a medal and was courageous, the Tin Man got a heart and knew he was commpassionate."

Phil: "And Dorothy found out that she could go home any time just by clicking her heels - she had the solution to her problem all the time."

Interested,I sat in the director's chair by the door. "That idea of going home has crossed my plate before."

Phil: "Yeah, we know."

Me: "How's that?"

Pita: "Well, we live in your mind you know - when you get going, it's like one of those northwest storms which almost rip the leaves off the trees and find every leak in the roof..."

Phil: "...so we have been following this and have a little presentation worked up." He slid off the drafting stool (which promptly rolled out of his way) and made his way over to a film projector which suddenly was present in another corner of the room. Phil turned it around on its stand, took the cover off and backed it up away from the wall, plugging it into a socket in the floor I hadn't noticed before.

Pita took up a small remote from her side table and pointed it at the wall the projector was trained on. A screen lowered from the ceiling and the lights slowly dimmed.

The projector started whirring and clicking; an image started to form out of the darkness.Dark around the edges, an image slowly came into focus at the center, as orchestral music reminiscent of John Williams swelled and receded as the image sharpened. It was my face on the screen.

"You know," the face spoke,"getting your attention is a bit tricky at times. So I enlisted Pita and Phil here to help me. You've been getting the shaft alot lately and what you've been doing doesn't seem to make sense any more."

I nodded as I sat watching myself talk back to me from the wall.

My wall-face continued, "Look, you've been working at this and there's nothing to it now. It's that scene where Dorothy pulled the curtain back - the Wizard is a fraud! You've seen all there is to almost everything they've got here. All those lectures and books, all that training and drills - you've done all of them and found what -- people don't follow what Rhino said to do. It's a do what I say, not as I do scene. But you'd better follow their orders and get it done or all hell will supposedly break out..."

So far so good. This was starting to make sense of what I had been cranking along on.

"...but in actual fact, they don't. Only the scared people get to work and only they have any repercussions. Rhino says you can make your own attitude, yet your boss acts scared of his bosses and wants you to be. And all that happens is that they transfer you around. Your allowance stays the same, but you have to learn a new job. They can't even enforce their own policies except on those who are scared silly all the time. It's a scene of the blind leading the blind."

I looked across the room. Both Pita and Phil seemed content, glued to the presentation they had made for me. The patterns on the wall shifted, zooming in on a view of people working out doors, digging a trench.

"Here's the different times you were transferred to what you call the Bovine Rehab Program, or BRP. Each time you found out you were assigned against their policy, and proved it. You graduated it once, cancelled or amnestied three times and this last time was a disaster. You learned to work the system.

"When they took you out of event desiging and sent you off for training, you found out that they couldn't train anyone there, that they weren't following their own Rhino Center policies and so were producing graduates who couldn't deliver what was promised.

"And here's where you were sent home, just as you asked, but not back to your old job. In fact, they couldn't find anything for you to do until they finally gave you a job and a senior who wouldn't let you do anything but the jobs she didn't personally like doing. What a set-up."

I grimaced at this. Everything being said was too painfully true.

The voice continued, "Yet when you visited home, everything was peaceful, people weren't afraid of anything in particular, jobs were getting done, kids being raised, typical life problems being solved right and left. You got some respect and people left you alone to your own decisions.

"The kicker seems to be this scene..." An image of summer woods, I was walking alone with the farm dogs as company. I was walking more and more slowly, finally standing still and simply taking it all in. "You found some peace of mind that day. Everything fell away and you achieved some calm for yourself - something you had been looking for constantly since joining the Center over 20 years ago. All those procedures and drills you did wound up with no result compared to this.

"Here's another shot." A cross fade showed a different time of day, another part of the woods. "You did it again here, purposely setting out to do so. And here..." An image of the guest room in my parents' house. "You sat outside the woods and simply got piece of mind by sitting there by yourself. Then, later ..." A picture of the dorm room I occupied and had renovated depite the other two occupants. "...you were able to do this again, despite being in the city again and having noise from the street. You had achieved some basic gains completely outside the Center and brought it back with you."

I nodded. Noting that this was pretty straight to the point, accurate.

"What you now have to do is work out a solution."

The image dimmed, and the lights came up. Phil rose, put the projector cover back on, unplugged it and rolled it away, wrapping the cord around the base as he went.

Pita softly broke the silence. "Well, boss?"

Me: "Well, well... Guess I have to do something about this scene."

Phil: "But you know we are both right here to work out whatever you need. Like always."

Pita, brightly: "Just like the old days, through thick and thin."

Me: "Thanks, guys. That's why I come here. But I think I should see Roger."

The two nodded in agreement.

Phil: "Yup, that's his specialty - sheer logic. I just help you build the things that you and Pita work up. She's got all the taste and I do the nuts-and-bolts for you. But Roger is the clear-thinking one."

Rising, I thanked them and left. Both were relieved I'd taken it well. But they knew when something wasn't down their line. They knew when to punt the ball and who to. That's why I came their first.

Roger's office was right down the hall. Heavy oak door, the real thing, not veneer.

It smoothly swung open to my touch. Roger was behind his heavy desk as usual, a tall shelf behind him and on every wall of the room from bottom to top. The only spaces not covered were two tall windows, which were covered by curtains and old-fashioned roller shades. The world could be blocked out if you needed, or opened to let in more light on any subject.

Roger somehow was comfortable in a light shirt and tie, his office always the same comfortable temperature. He didn't wear glasses, but looked the studious type. No tan, but a healthy cast on his face - he obviously worked out to both physically and mentally fit.

"Well, Herbert, what's up today?"

"Roger, you probably already know."

"Yes, but you tell me - it always helps to lay out your own argument."

"Well, basic problem seems to be that in the Center you are always supposed to follow what Rhino says, that what he says always works if you follow it exactly. Same for their programs and drills. But the trick is that they don't follow what he laid out. He even wrote out a moral code, but people don't follow this in their daily work.

"The next point is that this isn't just here, but also at their highest training franchise and also in the most senior management positions. I've got points in writing where they contradict their own laid-out policies which were based on Rhino's work.

"So the whole structure, from top to bottom is a fraud, a card house held together with spit and bubble gum - plus a lot of money and fear."

Roger opined, "Well, I don't know why you keep me around, since you've hit the nail on the head. The next thing is to boil it down to basics. What is a single statement which sums it all up and explains everything?"

Pausing, I gave this some thought. "Well, it all depends on Rhino being right and everything rolling down from following what he laid out. But despite people having read what he said and actually being required to study it daily, they won't follow it. Despite the Center being built on returning certainty and definiteness to the individual, these people are working only on fear. Even when you point out the exact policy that applies, they don't follow it, but run on who said what. They won't apply their own Ethics policies, but instead have invented something which supports getting it done inspite of all rules.

"Conclusion is that they are following managment but only giving lip-service to the core policies they hold the Center and its franchises together with. So people don't use what Rhino said unless it meets their immediate purpose, regardless of whether they studied it or not. Below that, they disagree with his moral code, since it doesn't allow them to vacilate like that."

Roger nodded, "That seems to sum it up. Now - what are you going to do about it?"

I paused, "I can't fix the whole scene..."

Roger: "But you have your own life to handle. Think simple, think microcosm."

"Well, the whole scene is contaminated. And LA is really an insane place, which may be compounding any solution..."

"Yes, but..."

"But I have to be true to myself. Looks like if I can't do anything here, can't get any relief because this insanity is so widespread, I need to go somewhere else. The old homestead is quiet enough to get some thoughts sorted out, plus I'm sure I can get some simple job to cover my costs while I sort things out. The trick is to back out and get somewhere to sort it out.

"Means I have to leave here to get anything done. But what about my wife, who's been gone for so long, I just can't leave her..."

"Did you ever open that envelope she sent you?" Roger gestured to the corner of the desk nearest me.

I opened it up and read it for the first time. Divorce papers. No address of the court, so no appeal to wherever they had entered it. Some Center lawyer had written it and her Center chaplain had served it on me. So she was out of the picture. She never wanted kids, so she could work at the upper management level of the Center where kids weren't permitted.

Great. That door was closed. And another opened.

I'd do it.

"So where to now?"

Roger: "Looks like you have to take stock of your resources. What do you have to offer?"

"Well Pita and Phil pointed out something along the line of Baum's work - certificates and medals only recognize what you already know to be true in yourself. They only bring out talents and abilities which you already have. So: get with Pita to help develop a top notch color portfolio and Phil can help me set it up on a website and burn it to a CD. This way I can showcase my talent and get a job once I get back to Missouri. Meanwhile, I have enough with credit cards to cover the travel costs.

"Looks like I've got some work to do. Just plan my work and work my plan.

"Thanks, Roger."

"Any time, Herbert - and don't forget to drop in on me if you need any more help sorting
the ins and outs of your planning. Logic is the only defensible approach to rational thought and action."

I smiled, rose and walked out, closing the door behind me. Roger picked up a sheaf of papers from the right-hand basket, placing a summary of what we talked about in the left. Back at his constant work again.

And I had my work cut out for me.