As soon as MacKay heard the doorbell ring, he bolted up the stairs in a panic, stumbling toward the top and falling face-first onto the carpeted landing of the second floor hallway.
“Son of a bitch, McKay was heard to scream,” he yelled.
When last we left Jack McKay, the TV news anchor was struggling to understand why he could only speak as if reading a news story. McKay was on his way home, hoping his wife would have some answers.
McKay drove straight home, scrapping plans to stop at the cleaners and pick up his suits and shirts, for fear someone would say hello, or try to engage him in conversation. He tossed aside the idea of stopping to fill up the tank on the leased Mercedes for the same reason.
Jack McKay knew something was wrong as soon as he opened his mouth to order lunch. It had been a long morning of anchoring the news. There were thirty-seven minutes on air narrating a slow moving police chase, officers were pursuing a man driving a stolen John Deere riding mower through a suburban neighborhood, and there were twenty-one minutes of continuous coverage of a storm that was still two days away. As he knew all too well by now, the storm was expected to bring either drizzle, or rock-sized hail to the area.
McKay was tired, and when he took his usual seat at the table in the little restaurant down the street from the station, he felt as if he would fall asleep on the spot. The feeling of fatigue after a long shift in the anchor chair wasn’t new to him, but what happened next was new.
“Welcome back to the Big News Show. Tonight’s top story, industry heavyweight Gargantua picks Central City as the site for its new corporate headquarters. The company is receiving $4 trillion in incentives, including a 15% ownership stake in the state, as part of the package to relocate to Central. I’m joined by Gargantua’s founder and CEO, Ben Grabalot.”
(Grabalot nods and smiles)
“Ben, explain to our viewers why Gargantua is worth $4 trillion in incentives to relocate here to Central City.”
“Good morning, class, and welcome to the graduate business school at Corrupt University. It’s great to see so many smiling, young faces, eager to learn the tricks to success in the corporate boardroom. Oh look, a question already.”
“Your website says we’ll get a one of a kind MBA.”
“Yes, our degree in Misleading Business Administration is a surefire ticket to a fat-cat corporate position. A full seventy-percent of our grads are busy right now deceiving investors, and earning big money doing so.”