After her miserable Spirit Life Day, Miss Planner didn't do much of anything but rest until she was sure she was healthy enough to get back to work. She had pizza delivered straight to her apartment for every meal, slept a lot, and spent plenty of time cuddling with her pet Feeder. Her apartment was a lot less lonely with him around, even if he wasn't capable of much beyond lying on the sofa, staring blankly into space, or falling onto the floor in the middle of the night waking her up.
By Monday Miss Planner had returned to normal, or at least as close as she was going to get for a while. She modified her mind to make herself a little calmer and more patient than usual to make up for her reduced ability to concentrate and slightly weakened a few of her psychically enhanced body parts to minimize her consumption of aura. She still had a little trouble making precise movements with her left hand, but that didn't really bother her much because she could always compensate with psychokinesis. Her body still felt a bit stiff, a bit unnatural, maybe... but it wasn't unbearable. She could make this work.
"Okay... here we go..."
It felt good wearing something professional again. Miss Planner was dressed head to toe in her usual black. And although her makeup wasn't applied quite as perfectly as usual (or quite as quickly, for that matter), she had her force of character to fall back on when it came to getting through the day. She was sure she had a lot of work waiting for her, as well as a new set of business cards she'd been looking forward to getting her hands on for quite some time.
But she couldn't just walk in like nothing happened and go right to her office on the top floor. That wouldn't cut it. It wouldn't inspire the type of trust and loyalty needed in a manager to earn people's respect and cooperation. She needed to give her employees a glimpse of the boss and make sure they all got a big dose of positive energy to start their week off right.
"Good morning, Tori! I'm back! How was your Spirit Life Day?"
The psychic material scientist and former Pit King, Tori, was frantically typing away at something in her messy research station in the Tower's basement lab when the question reached her ears. She turned around in her office chair to face Miss Planner, who stood in her doorway, arms crossed over her chest as if to show her authority.
"Hey, good morning Miss Planner. Something family-related came up on Friday so I missed all the fun. What's going on?"
"Just checking in on all my favorite people in the world and saying hi, as always. Is anyone else here early today?"
"I think the techs are here, but the doctors are running late. Hey, you want to see somethin' cool? Come here, look at this!"
"Yeah! What have you got?"
Tori turned her monitor around and opened the presentation to display the progress she was making on her Psy-Emitter project, an improved version of a device capable of generating various configurations of a psychic field that affected nearby objects or living creatures, including human beings. Miss Planner stared intently at it for about five seconds, and suddenly her face broke into a smile and she clapped both her hands excitedly.
"This is fantastic, Tori! You're almost done! The executives are going to love this!"
"There's something else I wanted to show you before you go. This is Dr. Tuske's project, the reformulated Controller androgens he's working on. It was pretty rough at first but we made a lot of great progress since the first round of trials, and... uh... the results speak for themselves!"
Tori opened up the eChart program on a different monitor and pulled up a few of the research subject's psychic test scores, graphs of their blood chemistry, psychological profiles and medical imaging results. Miss Planner couldn't help feeling impressed as she read the detailed reports from the doctor. It had taken some serious legwork to get these results, and she could definitely appreciate the amount of effort Dr. Tuske had put in. This was a real labor of love. And even if the new drug wasn't exactly ready for prime time yet...
"...wow."
Miss Planner couldn't believe how effective the new formula was. One of the test subjects with a low body weight, for instance... his test numbers were almost at the level of a real Controller! With some refinement, this stuff could be even better than Nuke in a couple of years. Maybe less.
"I've got to swing by later to congratulate the doctor for a job well done. Thanks for the update. Keep me posted if anything else exciting happens!"
"You've got it, ma'am!"
Miss Planner left, smiling as usual, feeling more confident and motivated than ever despite her lingering aches and pains. She was back in the saddle again, and it felt good. Her next stop would have to be the analysts' offices, then the Farha-Smith executives, then the security division, then she'd have to give Milly a call and make sure the notary office was all set for her new round of interviews, and finally she'd swing by the sales floor to see what was happening there.
It was going to be a busy day, as it always was.
The analyst's offices were almost empty. Gordon was nowhere to be found and she still hadn't gotten around to finding a replacement for Erica, who was apparently off hiding somewhere not answering her phone or e-mails. Tracy and Alex, were working together on something and seemed to be having a blast. They were sitting at in the conference room with their laptops, talking and laughing and taking notes.
"Hey, um, good morning, Miss Planner."
"Good morning, Tracy, Alex! How was your Spirit Life Day?"
Tracy stood up with a cheerful grin on her face.
"Oh, it was really nice! The party this year was amazing! I came in first place at the scavenger hunt and won a TV! That was awesome! And the food was great too!"
"Congratulations, Tracy! Now, let's talk business!"
"Yes, yes! Let's get down to it!"
Alex sat up straight. He was looking a little glum. Miss Planner noticed that he'd been frowning and rubbing his temples since she walked in.
"Okay, Alex, what's wrong?"
"Nothing! I just... uh... I'm fine."
He looked like he wanted to say something, but he couldn't find the words. He glanced over at Tracy and then quickly away.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But I can tell something's bothering you. You know you can always come to me if you need someone to talk to, right?"
"Ummm... yeah, thanks. It's nothing. Do you want to see what we've been working on? It's pretty interesting."
"Sure, I'll take a look!"
Alex pushed a few buttons on his laptop and pulled up an image of a rectangle filled with tiny stick figures. It was a miniature model of the Tower in its various sections with the all the different classes of employees in their specific positions and divisions represented.
"We were thinking of ways to improve our work culture and morale. This might be a good place to start."
"What am I looking at here?"
"Um, basically, this shows the results of a happiness survey, and each division's performance relative to their overall satisfaction levels. The idea is, we can look for systemic issues that impact multiple divisions at once and focus on fixing them first before focusing inwards to the specifics."
The stick figures had a variety of expressions: excited grins, apathetic stares, angry snarls, and a few sadder, tearful types. Alex zoomed in on Central Command, where the security division scored a dismal 24/100.
"So as you can see, the security division is one of the least satisfied, meaning it should be a target for change, and one of the complaints they brought up a lot in the survey was that they didn't feel safe doing their jobs, which the distribution division also mentioned. Central Command has the second-lowest scores in the entire Tower, actually, just above the headhunters in the recruitment division."
Miss Planner was impressed. She had to hand it to Tracy and Alex; their creativity really paid off. The stick figures made a great visual. Maybe this could even become the new employee evaluation tool? It would probably need a bit of polishing, maybe some better art to go with it and a better way to quantify results. But as it was, the visuals were already pretty convincing. It wouldn't be hard to convince the executives to make some changes with a presentation like this.
"Very impressive, you two. I'm going to put this on the agenda for the Wednesday meeting, okay? I'm going to assign you an artist to help with the visuals, and I want you two to keep looking at the data and find some more problems affecting multiple departments. I want to give the higher-ups a nice, long list of action items by the end of the week."
Tracy nodded and grinned. Alex looked a little more uncomfortable than before. Miss Planner gave the analysts a friendly smile and a wave to make sure they got a big dose of positive energy before leaving. She was making good time. Only four more things to do before breakfast!
