The executive elevator to the nineteenth floor of Meridian Accident Logistics headquarters felt slower than usual, though the man who knew suspected that was just his perception warping under stress. Six days of systematic failure had worn grooves into his routine—the same private elevator, the same marble lobby of his subsidiary that had once gleamed with understated professionalism, the same sense that he was walking through the ruins of something that had never quite existed.
His executive assistant was waiting for him when the elevator doors opened, his usually impeccable appearance slightly disheveled. His notebook was clutched under his arm as he looked up from his text messages. The dark circles under his eyes suggested he'd been coordinating damage control since dawn. He looked at his bosses focus and realized that he was neither in the mood, nor the mental space, to listen to what he had to say, so he didn’t say anything and waited for his moment to arise.
The man who knew moved through the office, followed by his assistant. The two of them passed through the cubicles, some filled with boxy computers and large databases and muffled stuffy air. He'd built this subsidiary to handle precisely these kinds of cascading failures—the ones that required intervention before they became headlines. He pushed through until he came to the executive conference room, where the heads of the three departments were seated around the mahogany table he'd personally selected when he'd established MAL five years ago.
The conference room's floor-to-ceiling windows offered a commanding view of Tokyo's snow dusted sprawling infrastructure—the arteries of rail lines, power grids, and data networks that kept ten million people moving through their daily routines. From up here, from his position at the apex of a corporate empire built on predicting and preventing disasters, it had always looked manageable.
Three senior department heads were seated around the polished table, their laptops open but their faces grim. As subsidiaries within his larger corporate structure went, MAL had always been his most reliable. The lead systems analyst looked up as they entered.
"Sir, we've got a problem with the emergency maintenance contracts."
The man who knew walked to the windows and looked out amongst the Tokyo skyline. "Define 'problem.'"
"All of them." His assistant opened his laptop, scrolling through what looked like dozens of cancellation emails. "Every single contractor we had lined up for alternative intervention strategies. Forty-seven companies across six categories—brake system specialists, software engineers, even basic mechanical maintenance teams."
"Cancellations?"
"Worse." The senior risk analyst turned her laptop screen toward him. "They're claiming they never received our requests. No record of initial contact, no signed preliminary agreements, no acknowledgment of our technical specifications."
The man who knew stared at the skyline, at the empire he'd built through careful acquisition and strategic positioning. Companies that should have been answering MAL's calls with immediate deference—many of them contractors his other subsidiaries had worked with for years. His assistant was pulling up what should have been a comprehensive list of contracted emergency responders, all firms that knew the weight his signature carried in this industry. Instead, every status field showed the same message: "No active engagement on file."
"That's impossible," the systems analyst said quietly. "I personally reviewed the contracts for the brake specialists yesterday. You were in the room, Marcus. We went through the timing protocols line by line."
The risk analyst frowned, his fingers hovering over his keyboard. "I remember being in meetings about contractor outreach, but..." He paused, looking genuinely confused. "I can't seem to recall the specific details. Which is strange, because I have excellent notes on everything else."
"Pull up your meeting notes from yesterday afternoon," the systems analyst said desperately.
The systems analyst's fingers moved across the keyboard, then stopped. He stared at his screen with growing bewilderment. "There's a gap. From 2:15 to 4:30 PM yesterday, my calendar shows a blocked meeting, but there are no notes. No agenda items. It's like I forgot to document anything."
"Your files on the brake system contractors?" the risk analyst said, rubbing his forehead.
The risk analyst was already scrolling through her directory, her frown deepening with each click. "I have folders set up for risk assessment coordination, and there are subdirectories labeled for various contractor categories, but..." She looked up, clearly disturbed. "They're all empty. Not deleted—just empty, as if I created the organizational structure but never actually put any content in it."
The man who knew felt a familiar chill. One that came with watching reality reshape itself in real time—the same sensation he'd felt when his carefully orchestrated plans had somehow failed to prevent the very scenarios he'd positioned himself to control. His assistant waited calmly by the door while the situation presented itself fully, he debated what could be done, but a simple glance at his boss told him that there was nothing that could be done in this sort of situation.
"I... I know I forwarded you confirmation emails. I remember doing it. But when I check my sent messages..." The system analyst said scrolling through his contacts. "I didn’t think it was that bad…what…what’s going on…There's nothing. No outgoing messages to contractors, no forwarded confirmations, no follow-up correspondence."
"But you remember sending them?" the man who knew said as he turned slightly back to face them.
"Vividly. I remember thinking how efficient everyone was being, how quickly they responded to our urgent requests—companies that usually bend over backwards for anything bearing your corporate seal. But there's no digital record of any of it."
The man who knew looked around the table at his three most competent department heads—people he'd handpicked and installed in these positions, who had built their careers on meticulous record-keeping and systematic analysis under his oversight. For six days, he'd watched this same scene play out with different contractors, different officials, different attempts at intervention. He'd built an entire corporate infrastructure designed to prevent exactly these kinds of cascading failures, had spent millions positioning himself at the intersection of multiple industries precisely so he could intervene when systems began to collapse. He watched as his refined and perfected network cracked and shattered under the unrelenting weight of something beyond corporate influence, beyond the reach of his carefully cultivated power. The emotion he felt had no name—something so deep and horrifying that all he could do was understand it and feel it, and hate it all the same. He turned back to the window and tried to hide his gritting teeth.
The systems analyst was staring at his empty meeting notes, his analytical mind clearly struggling with the inconsistency. "This is really strange. I don't usually forget to document contractor meetings, especially ones involving emergency protocols..."
The risk analyst nodded slowly, her own confusion evident. "And it's odd that all forty-seven contractors would have the same type of clerical error. What are the odds of complete communication breakdown across that many companies simultaneously?"
"It is strange," the systems analyst agreed, his voice taking on the tone of someone working through a puzzle. "Almost like there's some kind of systematic pattern to—"
His voice trailed off. The analytical spark in his eyes—the same spark the man who knew had seen in commissioners and foremen, the same intellectual intensity that had made him worth recruiting—flickered and went out.
The systems analyst blinked several times, his expression becoming oddly neutral. "Well, anyway, these things happen in business. Miscommunications, scheduling conflicts. We'll need to start the contractor outreach process from the beginning."
The risk analyst was nodding, though her earlier analytical intensity had completely evaporated. "Right. Fresh start. New vendor research. We'll put together a more comprehensive request for proposals."
The man who knew listened to his handpicked team, the minds he had carefully cultivated for years, casually dismissed the impossible. They settle back into their seats as if discussing routine administrative delays rather than the systematic erasure of weeks of emergency coordination. He had built this company, this entire subsidiary network, precisely because he'd understood that some problems required resources beyond what any single corporation could marshal. It seemed impossible. But then again, even being here was impossible, he thought—even having the foresight to position himself for this moment, even having built the infrastructure that should have been able to intervene.
After a long silence, he turned back around and sat down in his chair at the head of the table, the same chair from which he'd directed the acquisition of seventeen companies and the establishment of four subsidiaries. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but carried the authority of someone accustomed to being listened to.
"Let me tell you about entropy," he said, facing them all with a tone of sadness and resignation. "There's a concept in complexity theory—spontaneous organization arising from chaos. Sometimes, when a system is far from equilibrium, random events can suddenly align in ways that seem impossible. Synchronicities cluster. Separate, unrelated failures cascade into each other with perfect timing."
The three department heads exchanged glances, unsure where this was heading. The assistant gave a small sigh, knowing the general direction this tone of voice implied. The years working under his leadership he knew what this meant, but these specific department heads had never heard him speak in theoretical terms about corporate strategy.
"The interesting thing," he continued, "is that these spontaneous alignments almost always accelerate the production of entropy. They create more disorder, more breakdown, more chaos. It's as if the universe has a preference for falling apart, and sometimes it needs to get... creative about how to make that happen." He looked each of his department heads in the eye and glowered. "I built this entire structure—MAL, your limited partners, the whole network of the Asian accident prevention subsideraries—specifically to prevent cascading failures. The sun created life, and then that life stored energy in vast reservoirs of oil under the earth's surface, and so the universe needed a system to exploit that energy and increase entropy production. It's why we came along and why the discovery of oil was inevitable." He put his head into his hands and sighed. "Forty-seven contractors forgetting the same conversations. Fifteen transportation officials having identical memory failures at identical moments. Empty file folders that should contain critical data. Missing emails that were definitely sent. Glitches in the sequence of causality."
His assistant was watching him carefully, his face lit in a sickly blue by the laptop of one of the analysts.
"What are the odds?" he asked quietly. "What are the odds that every single intervention attempt would fail in exactly the same way, with exactly the same type of memory erasure, at exactly the moment when success becomes possible?" He laughed as he looked at them all again. "The same odds that an intelligent primate could invent technology that could burn out the sun."
"Sir..." the systems analyst began sensing a deep, prevalent pain, unsure what his man who knew was saying and unsure how it was supposed to apply to the current situation. The man who knew looked at him, looked into those eyes which had been such vast wells of curiosity that he'd thought they would have survived the systematic collapse of the complex system he had designed. They were now empty, devoid of questions or purpose. Devoid of life. The man who knew held up a hand.
"Astronomical. Impossible. Unless..." He paused, looking at each of them in turn. "Unless there's something weighing the scales, something without thought, without reason, but something that is making the impossible more likely. Something we live with every day that weighs us down and tries to convince us to do nothing but sloth along the ground and waste our days away enhancing its damnable cause of destruction." He clenched his fist, furious at something only he could even begin to process and understand.
The room was completely silent except for the distant hum of air conditioning.
"I don't think we're dealing with bureaucratic inefficiency or corporate miscommunication," he said, finally releasing his tension and looking back at the blank-eyed department heads.
He stood and went to the window again, looking out at his corporate empire.
"Send everyone home early today."
"Sir?" His assistant looked confused.
He shook his head. "No. We're done."
The systems analyst stood up uncertainly. "Sir, if there's really some kind of systematic interference, shouldn't we be working harder to—"
"To stop a hurricane with a lightning rod?" The man who knew's voice carried a weariness that none of them could fully comprehend. "You've been excellent employees. Your severance packages will be generous. The details will be available by Monday."
"Severance?" The risk analyst's voice was sharp with alarm. "Sir, you're not shutting down MAL?"
He looked around the conference room one last time—at the polished table where they'd planned interventions that were systematically erased, at the windows overlooking infrastructure that was about to fail in ways his entire corporate network couldn't prevent, at his team of brilliant people who kept forgetting the most important conversations of their lives.
"I'm dismantling it," he said quietly. "This structure clearly isn’t the most efficient so we’re going to have to try another method."
His assistant was staring at him. "Sir, what are you…"
"After that," he said, "I’ll have the cash to figure it out as I go, because we’re entering tough times ahead. I’ll just keep my watch. Watch, and remember, and maybe understand a little better...for next time." He closed his eyes, came to a point of acceptance, and then turned to them. "You'll get closing and restructuring documents so we can all make a clean break." He smiled slightly at them. "It's been a pleasure working with you all, so I will tell you—look for other jobs quickly, before July if possible. Things will dry up very rapidly."
"What do you know?" the senior analyst asked, worry tainting his voice.
"The housing bubble is about to burst, the banks are drowning in bad mortgages disguised as safe investments, and when the defaults spike this fall, the entire global financial system will seize up." The man who knew said coldly. "I would suggest divesting as quickly as you possibly can."
The room sagged under the weight of his words. The department heads didn't rise or argue—just sat in a suffocating stillness, their faces pale in the cold wash of laptop screens that now seemed to glow with numbers stripped of meaning. One closed his notebook with deliberate care, as though even the sound might shatter the fragile quiet; another leaned back slowly, her gaze unfocused, seeing nothing in the walls around her. The third rubbed at his temples, not in thought but in resignation, as if the effort of resisting the truth had already drained out of him. And then, as if compelled by the same unspoken command, they each stood, gathering their things without a word, their movements heavy and subdued. Chairs slid back, laptops snapped shut, the sounds stark against the silence, until one by one they filed out. Only his assistant remained by the door, waiting for the moment he was to be called upon.
“Do you have something for me?” The man who knew asked, looking back to his assistant.
“The board is worried about toxic assets” The assistant said, stating things the man who knew clearly already knew. “David wants advice on how to pull out”
The man who knew nodded. “How bad does it look?”
“Armand is getting the numbers, trying to figure out how much of our available investments are in real estate”
“Any preliminaries?”
“They say it might be in the billions” The assistant said sheepishly.
The man who knew nodded, frowned, and then looked around the room. “Tell him I’ll call him tomorrow” The man who knew looked over to his assistant with a mild grin. “Seems like I’m going to liquidate this just at the right time”
“How would that help with the real estate bubble?” The assistant asked, his wavering fear abating for a moment of curiosity.
“It will help us” The man who knew said seriously. “If we pull out of real estate now, everyone will panic, but if we pull out of accident prevention and tech…” He looked back to the window, the frosted glass a mirage of failed promises.
The assistant frowned slightly. “You can’t liquidate the entire accident prevention network without board approval”
“I’m not” The man who knew put his hand on the slightly frosted glass. “I’m simply…restructuring” The man who knew said, sighing, and hoping, beyond hope, that it would be a good enough lie to carry him through.