Heiterland

Part I




from HeiterLand Industries Plutocratic Republic Code of Conduct:

PLEASE BE ADVISED: TO VIOLATE ANY RULE OR REGULATION OF ANY SECTION, SUBSECTION, OR CLAUSE OF THIS DOCUMENT NOT ONLY REPRESENTS A BREACH OF COMPANY POLICY AND RESULT IN IMMEDIATE DISMISSAL, BUT WILL ALSO BE CONSIDERED A BREACH OF HEITERLAND INDUSTRIES PLUTOCRATIC REPUBLIC’S LAW. VOILATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

• HeiterLand Industries is a happy place to work. All employees must
smile whenever possible and/or practical.

• HeiterLand Industries is a clean place to work. All employees will deposit trash in the appropriate receptacles.

• HeiterLand Industries respects your privacy. Please respect HeiterLand
Industry’s privacy as well. You are not to discuss HeiterLand Industries
non-disclosable business practice and/or past or future procedural process.

• HeiterLand Industries employees are to be punctual. Always.

• HeiterLand Industries Lunch Hour is not referred to as a “Lunch 2-Hour” or
“Lunch 3-Hour” or even a “Lunch Hour & 10 Minutes” for a reason.

• HeiterLand Industries requires all its employees to arrive and depart from work properly attired in their appropriate hat. Said hats are to be hung on your hat racks next to each of your desks and not to be worn again indoors until your scheduled end of the work day.

FURTHERMORE, PLEASE BE ADVISED: HEITERLAND INDUSTRIES PLUTOCRATIC REPUBLIC WILL NOT ALLOW COMPANY LEGAL STAFF TO PARTICIPATE IN THE TRIAL DEFENSE OF AN ACCUSED EX-EMPLOYEE AS IT REPRESENTS A CONFLICT OF…


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Quincy Barton owned precisely forty-seven hats, all of a similar Fedora style indicative of his social station in society. Quincy’s hat room resembled a tri-hued rainbow of black, browns, blues and grays, all earthen tones common to men of good taste and high breeding. Any other color would appear ostentatious, and therefore, abnormal. Such thoughts horrified Quincy. And although it had been a mere four weeks since he had burned his somewhat meager collection of Newsboys, Quincy found himself brimming with a condescending air of superiority each and every time he passed another man on the street sporting the Newsboy caps of the middle class. Newsboy caps Quincy had spent his entire life, up until a month ago, wearing out into the streets of HeiterLand.

While the sight of the blue-collar headwear caused a slight tilt of the nose north, the site of a man with no hat at all now caused a shutter of nothing less than revulsion in the soul of Quincy Barton. “Luftmensch” inevitably danced across his lips in a silent curse aimed at the luckless few men, women and children sparsely searching the streets for anything from a spare bit of change to sandwich fragments not quite rotten enough to induce the involuntary purging of their stomach’s contents (little as that may be) to a slim glimmer of hope that opening a vein with a rusty nail wasn’t the next logical step in the progression of their lives. HeiterLand offered no solace for the citizenry who found themselves upon hard times. Convicts were the only class of citizen not ostracized for their lack of headgear, and that only because the average citizen never laid eyes upon a prison inmate. The lowest of the low were tucked safely away in the HeiterLand Industries Penitentiary & Reform Facility miles outside of the city, safely independent of the HeiterLand social structure altogether.

Crystal Barton, Quincy’s wife of 15 years, encouraged his newfound classist mentality in ways that Quincy himself was not even aware of. She would let small inferences drop during their conversations, then let Quincy turn them over in his mind while she went out shopping.

“The other day I stopped by Peggy’s to see about her remodeled kitchen and do you know what happened?” Crystal would begin. “I saw that no good husband of hers drive by in a beat up old car, had to be 15, 20 years old.” - building steam. “And do you know what else, Quincy?”

“No. What, dear?”

“He wasn’t wearing a hat!” And with that, she’d scoop up purse and keys and storm out of the house, her destination a mystery to him, and leave Quincy to ponder the various implied social indelicacies Crystal’s husband Max had, apparently, defiled. Quincy, once good friends with Max Baxter, knew that Max had been laid off several weeks ago. He also knew that Max and Crystal’s marriage passed the ‘rough’ stage months ago, bypassed ‘rocky’ altogether, and leapt full force into ‘a shambles.’ It didn’t take long for Quincy’s ruminations to come to the obvious conclusion that Max Baxter, once a good friend and confidant, was now a Luftmensch. It depressed Quincy to think of an old friend that way, but in many ways it bolstered his already burgeoning confidence in the direction his own life was now heading. Finally.

Chief Assistant Financial Officer for the Truth & Logic Bureau of the HeiterLand Industries Plutocratic Republic. Quincy Barton extinguished seven seconds of his life each time he verbalized his entire professional title.

He said it out loud as often as he could, whenever possible.

Quincy found particular joy in allowing a colleague to introduce him in a social situation, rattle off his name nonchalantly, and then slowly begin the grand oration of his newfound professional title. At which point, gleefully, Quincy broke in and finished the full title himself. Young children feel no more euphoria over the mountain of gifts beneath the tree Christmas morning than Quincy Barton cultivated from these rare occasions whereas he could proudly pronounce to the world at large that he had finally earned the right to don his black Fedora.

More often than not, the person on the receiving end of such a grandiose display smiled uncomfortably, chuckled low, and then secretly harbored a burning jealous streak each time they crossed paths with Quincy Barton after. Everybody knew it was an impressive title and nobody ever wished to be reminded of that fact. Even Quincy’s wife suffered the ill affects of professional envy and she hadn’t worked a day in her life. Added to which, the higher up the corporate ladder Quincy climbed, the more whimsy with which Crystal Barton could flaunt her husband’s ascension into the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie society. A station in life she had always possessed a powerful desire to be a part of. Such inconsistencies were common within the mind of Crystal Barton.

As Crystal well knew and Quincy most certainly did not, their marriage was never one based upon love and respect. Crystal saw a quality in her husband that, although it couldn’t be properly described as a potential for greatness, it could be defined as that of enormous luck. She would take either. Opportunists often do. Quincy himself will admit that at first, his interest in Crystal wavered somewhere between indifference and downright loathing. She worked on him, like a blacksmith forging an iron tool. Crystal kneaded him into a version of himself that would finally accept her as a life long mate. Her strategy consisted of one simple item: proximity. Were Quincy walking to class, Crystal strolled with him. If Quincy ate lunch alone in the quad (which he did every day), she happened upon him and invited herself to join in his meal. She’d coincidentally show up at parties he attended. Sporting events. Shopping malls. Movie theaters. Crystal Hampton evolved into Quincy Barton’s shadow to such a strong degree that before too long, Quincy actually believed that he had fallen hopelessly and irrevocably in love with this woman who’s feelings for him amounted to nothing more than ambition. Crystal Hampton harbored enough of that trait for the both of them.

They married three days after graduation. Quincy took a job with HeiterLand Industries, which is what all University graduates did at the time. They (Quincy) bought a house. They (Quincy) bought a car. And they (Crystal) went to work… turning their house into a home and turning a job into a career. Children remained a fantasy of Quincy’s that Crystal debunked whenever the subject arose. After a while, the babies ceased to be a topic of conversation between the newlyweds and Quincy buried his desires for offspring deep down into the dark recesses of his heart, his warm love of children cooled by a frosty spouse who had never nurtured anything in her life. Not even a plant. And she certainly didn’t want to ever start. It wasn’t long before Quincy’s yearning for children fizzled to a point where Crystal’s cold outlook became his own resignation. He accepted the idea that the Barton name would die with him and on some strange level, came to terms with that fact early on in his marriage. Crystal recognized her husband’s latent need to bring life into the world and set about replacing that part of his personality with something else entirely: the raw desire to provide for her.

Each morning, Quincy scooped his Newsboy over his neatly trimmed hair, kissed Crystal on the cheek, and headed out into the dog eat dog world of HeiterLand Industries. He rose quickly. While Quincy’s social graces and marital wherewithal wouldn’t make a monkey jealous, he did excel at anything relating to numbers. As an accountant for HeiterLand Industries, Quincy’s performance made him a celebrity of sorts. All his coworker’s referred to him by his first name; even the higher ups who sported the far classier Fedora hats around the office. They knew that some day they would have to answer to Quincy Barton. They knew that some day he would be telling them what to do. And they knew that they better kiss his brilliant ass while they could because most men on the way up don’t look down long enough to see who they’re stepping on in the process. Nobody doubted Quincy. How could they doubt an accountant who did all the math his job required in his head? Quincy didn’t use a calculator. He didn’t use an adding machine. Quincy saw numbers the way blind men see color. In Quincy’s own words, he felt them.

On any given day, with any given mathematical challenge, Quincy need only look at the figures that needed computing and the answer, instantly, appeared in his mind. He didn’t have to visualize the process. Quincy didn’t have to mentally follow a course of action. He didn’t have to think at all. The answer materialized. Just like that. Instantly.

As a child, his parents thought Quincy autistic. After several expensive tests, the doctors were able to assure Mr. and Mrs. Barton, that while yes, Quincy displayed unusual alacrity with all things numeric, his silence and social withdrawal merely meant that Quincy was what kids of the day liked to refer to as a “geek.” Nobody found it odd that a medical doctor, a scientist by any other name, would announce a prognosis of “geek,” to the parents of an ailing child, but things had changed after The War.


The effects of The War ran deep and lingered long. As Quincy entered into his sixth year at HeiterLand Industries, the corporation he worked for executed a brilliantly hostile takeover of a rival. That rival, what HeiterLand Industries call a foe, was the HeiterLand Republic. The HeiterLand Republic was what most people referred to as, The Government. Recognizing a weakened nation plagued with inefficiencies and massive debt, HeiterLand Industries did what any other corporation would do when an opportunity presented itself. HeiterLand Industries acquired the Republic as it would any other flagging business that showed potential if only it were run properly. When the dust cleared, the President, Vice-President and entire Cabinet were dismissed (although they were offered low-level Public Relations positions within the newly reorganized system – positions they all accepted save the former President of the HeiterLand Republic – with what little self-respect he could muster, the former President opened a vein in his wrist with a rusty nail and died on his desk before anybody could prevent it from staining).

The CEO, and now President, of HeiterLand Industries Plutocratic Republic, William Jennings Hilden Shaw, took office on a sunny Sunday afternoon and assured the citizenry that things were going to change. Although he didn’t even know it, William Shaw was inarguable correct.