Up in the Air Read Free Page B

the middle of a food court fragrant with soft pretzels and cookie dough. There’s no time for my usual breakfast of frozen yogurt topped with sliced cling peaches, so I head down the moving walkway toward my gate, aggressively clearing lanes between the laggards. People who let the conveyor carry them when they can double their speed by moving their feet mystify me, but to each his own. Clearly, the whole purpose of the technology is to optimize the flow of traffic, not to let kids and slowpokes take a load off. The worst are two departing Mormon missionaries thronged by camera-toting friends and relatives. The boys look tired and pale and terrified; they’re bound for Asia, I’d guess, or South America, their heads full of tales about passport thieves and drug lords. It’s the word’s fastest-growing religion, I’ve been told, all thanks to this door-knocking army of western teens tramping
the globe in J. C. Penney suits.
    I’m impressed, but I still don’t wish them luck. The church is a force in Denver. It’s oppressive. Half the battle of working for ISM, whose board includes a sitting Mormon apostle, is fending off advances from the saved. Every month I’m invited to yet another potluck, another dance for “inquiring unmarrieds.” Even if ISM bowed to my request to quit CTC and just do EEC, I’d probably be looking for a new firm.
    MythTech wants me. I hope so; I want them. They haven’t revealed their interest in me openly, but I have my sources, and I can read the signs. Last month an anonymous caller to my assistant requested a manuscript of the book I’m finishing and gave him a FedEx number that I checked out through a national detective agency. The number belonged to a Lincoln, Nebraska, law firm whose surviving name partner is MythTech’s founder’s father.
    My dream is to land a position in brand analysis, a benevolent field that involves less travel and can be done from home, over the wires. Exhorting the unemployed to “surf the changes” and “massively network” their way to new positions while gazing across at their panicky, moist eyes from the head of an acrylic conference table spread with cheese sandwiches and canned fruit spritzers will still be someone’s job, and I can’t change that, but MythTech doesn’t work such feel-good shams. From what I gather, they’re forward thinkers. Optimists. Minimizing lawsuits from the outplaced is too rearguard for them. They’re not a large firm, just a small boutique, but they have grand plans, rumor has it, and they have spirit.
    Sadly, they can’t be courted, they can’t be pushed. They watch you. They rate you. If they make an offer, you sign on the spot, you don’t hold out for dental. They’re ex-Foreign Service agents, ex-LA cops, ex-ski bums, ex-seminarians, ex-junkies. They’re the establishment and its overthrow, too. They don’t use letterhead, just plain white bond with a faint embossed omega at the top. No logo, no web site—just a street address. In Omaha, of all places, blandest Omaha, whose location suits my schedule perfectly. On Thursday I have a conference in Las Vegas and on Saturday a wedding in Minnesota—my little sister’s third and biggest yet.
    I’ll see MythTech on Friday and ISM will pay for it. No appointment yet, but if I’m right that they’ve been sniffing around and checking references, a brief, get-acquainted, happened-to-be-in-town, hear-great-things-about-you, flying drop-in at 1860 Sioux Street might flip the switch. I’ll ask for old Lucius Spack, the number two, formerly of Andersen Consulting by way of the Chicago Board of Trade. Spack is the man, though the news outlets suppressed it and the government will never confirm it, who basically got NASA off its crutches, internally and public-image-wise, after the
Challenger
flameout. He’s a hero. I sat in on a five-person dinner with him once at an industry confab in Santa Cruz. I hear he has issues with prescription pain pills, but I have