pyramids of dots

[Ayn Rand’s THE FOUNTAINHEAD]

Having finally secured a post

with a title at New York’s foremost

firm, Lance Stark finds his goals at odds

with senior architect Brandon Hurtubese

who has a penchant for panty-pinching some

of the firm’s greatest potential clients

aboard the yacht the elder garnered

for an undeserved annual bonus. When

Hurtubese uncovers Stark’s contempt

the prodigy-cum-protagonist is sent

on humiliating errands to fetch back wax

and test the depth of sand at a suburban

playground or else relinquish his plush

office for a dusty cubicle and a key-clogged

Underwood. Too ambitious to face demotion,

frightened of revealing his inability

to type, and vengeful, Stark spends several

agonizing weeks seducing Hurtubese’s

own secretary with the goal of replacing

a set of secretive blueprints equipped

with strategic faultlines designed to send

Hurtubese’s magnum opus tower tumbling

one short week past its ribbon-cutting.

Should the brazen elder elect to serve

his own name in place of the firm’s,

Hurtubese’s reputation will plummet with

with the victims of malign strategem. As

soon as Shelly, Stark’s victim of seduction

determines she’s been abandoned for the flair

of vengance, she poses a moral ultimatum:

Stark must admit to Hurtubese his sabotage

of the Belfrieze Tower, apologize

for insubordination despite Stark’s

inability to perceive a single

moral wrinkle in his plot or else know

himself culpible for the demolition

of a brave forray in design, the firm’s

reputation, and the lives of innocent

tennants freshly moved in to Stark’s

morbid tower. Aware that Hurtubese had made

his final blueprint-review prior to delivery,

Stark ultimately determines that the worth

of his vengance is nil if he is uncovered

as Belfrieze’s sabateur, and that self-

preservation is often the best shape

that revenge can take.

image:

mathunderwood:

1. stalagtites spillage

steg:

tom howes