guys are fossils, Pete. Face it. The auties older than them were throwaways, nine out of ten. And don’t recite that woman, whatever her name was, that designed slaughterhouses or something—”
“Grandin,” Aldrin murmured, but Crenshaw ignored him.
“One in a million, and I have the highest respect for someone who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps the way she did. But she was the exception. Most of those poor bastards were hopeless. Not their fault, all right? But still, no good to themselves or anyone else, no matter how much money was spent on them. And if the damned shrinks had kept hold of the category, your guys would be just as bad.
Lucky for them the neurologists and behaviorists got some influence. But still… they’re not normal, whatever you say.”
Aldrin said nothing. Crenshaw in full flow wouldn’t listen anyway. Crenshaw took that silence for consent and went on.
“And then they figured out what it was that went wrong and started fixing it in babies… so your guys are fossils, Pete. Marooned between the bad old days and the bright new ones. Stuck. It’s not fair to them.”
Very little in life was fair, and Aldrin could not believe that Crenshaw had a clue about fairness.
“Now you say they have this unique talent and deserve the expensive extras we shower on them because they produce. That may’ve been true five years ago, Pete—maybe even two years ago—but the machines have caught up, as they always do.” He held out a printout. “I’ll bet you don’t keep up with the literature in artificial intelligence, do you?”
Aldrin took the printout without looking at it. “Machines have never been able to do what they do,” he said.
“Once upon a time, machines couldn’t add two and two,” Crenshaw said. “But you wouldn’t hire someone now to add up columns of figures with pencil and paper, would you?”
Only during a power outage: small businesses found it expedient to be sure the people who worked checkout registers could, in fact, add two and two with paper and pencil. But mentioning that would not work, he knew.
“You’re saying machines could replace them?” he asked.
“Easy as pie,” Crenshaw said. “Well… maybe not that easy. It’d take new computers and some pretty high-powered software… but then all it takes is the electricity. None of that silly stuff they’ve got.”
Electricity that had to be paid for constantly, whereas the supports for his people had been paid off long ago. Another thing Crenshaw wouldn’t listen to.
“Suppose they all took the treatment and it worked: would you still want to replace them with machines?”
“Bottom line, Pete, bottom line. Whatever comes out best for the company is what I want. If they can do the work as well and not cost as much as new machines, I’m not out to put anyone on unemployment.
But we have to cut costs—have to. In this market, the only way to get investment income is to show efficiency. And that plush private lab and those offices—that’s not what any stockholder would call efficiency.”
The executive gym and dining room, Aldrin knew, were considered inefficiency by some stockholders, but this had never resulted in loss of executive privileges. Executives, it had been explained repeatedly, needed these perks to help them maintain peak performance. They had earned the privileges they used, and the privileges boosted their efficiency. It was said, but Aldrin didn’t believe it. He also didn’t say it.
“So, bottom line, Gene—” It was daring to use Crenshaw’s first name, but he was in the mood to be daring. “Either they agree to treatment, in which case you might consider letting them stay on, or you’ll find a way to force them out. Law or no law.”
“The law does not require a company to bankrupt itself,” Crenshaw said. “That notion went overboard early this century. We’d lose the tax break, but that’s such a tiny part of our budget that it’s worthless, really. Now if they’d agree to dispense with their so-called support measures and act like regular employees, I wouldn’t push the treatment—though why they wouldn’t want it I can’t fathom.”
“So you want me to do what?” Aldrin asked.
Crenshaw smiled. “Glad to see you’re coming onboard with this, Pete. I want you to make it clear to your people what the options are. One way or another, they have to quit being a drag on the company: give up their luxuries now, or take the treatment and give them up if it’s really the autism that makes them need that stuff,