Or course, he considered, Colavec needed to follow every farmer in the state, not just those involved in the conspiracy. It certainly explained all the Oldsmobiles around here!
Yet the Oldsmobile didn't just peer from a distant parking spot, but pulled all the way into the drive way like he owned the place and, when the door opened, no shadowy figures emerged, no employee, but a second man, from the passenger side, Soriano himself, standing there in his Stetson, hand on his hip and lighting a cigarette. McElroy tried not to believe the worst.
Over the course of the next week, McElroy tailed Soriano, too. He found that Soriano loved bowling, yard work, fast food and scratch off tickets, but most importantly – delivering messages to Colavec’s south station.
After that, he tailed everyone, the whole orchestra, day and night. Stevens almost lived in the western Covalic complex, working late hours every night. Richter ferried packages between branches. Emsweiler's regular rendezvous with Colavec workers was interrupted only by trips to the central agency. Jacobs stashed unmarked products in his basement, a liquid he received from Calovc trucks every Saturday. It was the same story for each of the twenty-three others.
They'd all gone over.
For a moment, McElroy had to wonder, given the odds, have I gone over too? He chalked it up to all the Philip K. Dick stories he'd read in pulp magazines as a kid, stories in which, somehow, things always ended with protagonists realizing they'd been hunting themselves all along, a pounding paranoia that culminated in the sense of "It was me" almost every time.
The strangest thing? The other farmers showed up for Sunday rehearsals, played their hearts out, and continued to plan an uprising as if they wouldn't be rising against themselves at this point. Might this all be a show just for McElroy, the only one who hadn't gone over? Unlikely -- what would be the point? Rather than all of them conspiring to keep a conspiracy from McElroy, it made more sense that all of them were plotting to keep their own plots from each other -- that they were unaware the others had gone over, too, that they all think they're the only ones.
That's when McElroy came up with his noble plan to fix everything.
He was going to give Colavec, Cronus and Ops some dihescence-induced labyrinthitis.
He was going to make them too dizzy to interfere with the revolution.
"I'm going over," McElroy announced to the others, resisting the urge to spitefully add the word "too." He was joining Colavec's ranks, he told them, ostensibly as a spy and to feed them false information, but under the outward pretense of getting part time work. Incidentally, or so McElroy suggested at least, he needed the extra money anyway. Scratching away at that $15,000 could be a nice bonus.
He did not tell the other famers, though, that once gainfully employed, he planned to tell the company nothing but the truth, to spill all the beans about the whole uprising.
The truth was the key to dizziness, he said. Since he'd announced his intentions as a mole, the other farmers would no doubt tell their own individual contacts at Colavec that McElroy should not be trusted, that everything he said was intended to confuse them. So, when McElroy told the real story, they'd assume it all lies, such that once Colavec compiled all thier data, the honest picture would be terribly obscured by too many truths. That this might ultimately confuse, dizzy and unbalance the company enough to slow them down and bring forward the harvest's only chance at success represented the only legitimate, if last ditch and desperate, course of action, McElroy said.
Obviously, this made almost no sense at all, and was bound to fail.
And fail it did -- like so many other things, at a company office party.
The evening started off peacably enough -- the usually mundane walls bedecked with all the trimmings of an adolescent's birthday party, streamers and balloons and even a pinata. With grand gestures and bad posture, McElroy skulked around making overtures to uninterested guests about the details of an elaborate socialist conspiracy cobbled together by octagenarian farmers. A non-alcoholic punch suffered itself in a large plastic bowl with orange rinds and ice, like a forgotten pond waiting for tadpoles and fish to replace algae and reed. Secretaries and mail clerks smoked hurried cigarettes in corners and alcoves, a sexuality lingering around them like a fart, while technicians and higher-ups loosened ties and buttons, laughing over almost nothing at all. Most audiences were too disinterested even with their own lives to bother considering the mumbling of a wobbly and cross-eyes temp worker two or three times their age, but McElroy persisted anyway. Until now, he'd been so busy with his part-time work that he'd been given only random and sparse opportunities to spread his monkey-wrench rumors, and then only via his direct supervisor, a flunky in charge of filing systems.
Errol Croche, CEO, was bound to arrive eventually, and McElroy intended to ambush the man with his revelations. Going straight to the top could solidify his plan in an instant.While being brushed aside by one more accountant, McElroy spotted something more surprising than a CEO, however: Francis. Lumbering his way across the party, drink in hand, he wore that same ill-fitting white suit and crumpled fedora. The fat man was going to blow his cover.
Would it all come crashing down here in front of everyone?
Swooshing through the crowd, Francis descended upon McElroy like a vast cloud. He lifted his mammoth arm and thrust a leather bound book into McElroy's chest.
"Look at it," he said, eyes jumping from corner to corner, from co-conspirator to traitor. As McElroy fumbled with the binding, the weight of failure falling over him like heavy blankets, he watched Francis and everyone else's feet start to climb slowly upward and to the left, as if the wake of a distant boat had finally reached them over unseen waters. Errol Croche, CEO, made his late entrance to the sound of applause as the book opened, revealing photos. Crisp, clear photos, showing everything about his farm, all of their farms, he realized, rustling quickly through the pages. But what was it evidence of? Was this Francis's documentation of it all? What did it prove? At the very back of the book was an enscription:
"To my new friends. Thanks for everything. I love you."
"I barely know how to use a camera really, but what do you think?" Francis asked. "I'm planning to give each one of us copies tonight. I don't know. You've all really...helped me through a pretty tough time." He laughed then choked up and then smiled. A simple and secret fun as endearing as it was stupid. "You -- and a lot of ice cream, that is."
McElroy grabbed a nearby chair for support. "What do you mean give one to each of us tonight? Who? The orchestra? Why would any of the others be here at Colavec? What are you even doing here?"
Francis pursed his lips and laughed hesitantly. "The same reason as you -- it's the office party? And we all work here? I mean, we're part-time, sure, and we hate this place, yeah, but we can still party, right? Why else would I wear my best interview suit? For the ladies I suppose, but -- hey, Nate, do you want to sit down? Do you need some water?"
McElroy didn't need to sit down. He went straight for the floor. It didn't feel much like falling so much as watching all those feet and the whole office float upward into the night sky. He spotted a television left on in another room: a weatherman was introduced, the very same man he'd seen smoking across the street from his house, newly promoted. He waved his hands majestically over the state.
In the rush of gasps and give-him-rooms and helping hands, McElroy heard nothing but silence and realized finally: no one has gone over.
Except one, of course.
He had told them everything, every last detail, the whole operation, again and again and again. $15,000? Philip K. Dick's stupid face flashed in his head and he thought begrudgingly, "It was me, ha ha ha. Shutup."