The Assistant: Chapter II -- Offensive Gameplan

Chapter I
Chapter II

The whiteboard stared back at me, mocking in its silent tone. Mortinsen has been riding me for days to come up with some new offensive gameplans and today -- the day that I was supposed to be going around to local grocery stores and chastising local managers for the lack of SunnyD in their cold boxes -- is the day that I'm going to swallow deep, the swallow of sins and, like, spit, and crack the offensive code that we've been missing all these years. Plus, there's a little refrigerator in the office with the whiteboard that is stocked with my personal cache of SunnyD. A small victory for Lex Whistleblower, that's for sure.

I sit back in the leather chair facing the whiteboard. I stare intently, trying to burn through the wall with my eyes hotter than the tip of a flaming cigarette. I've done this before with mixed results. Once, while staring directly into the soul of a grocery store manager that had the gall to only stock a dozen bottles of SunnyD, I was summarily hauled away by the local coppers, letting them put their cold steel into my back and lacing together my hands in shackles. Sure, getting arrested for having laser focus about SunnyD made me miss a day at the office -- which steamed Mortinsen like a teapot sounding its alarm -- but it did solve the problem I had about not having an excuse to explain my absence from the office when I was supposed to be calling recruits and listening to the same sob story of why we send our scholarship offers on little pieces of paper that say, "Do you like me? Check 'Yes' or 'No.'"

Nothing is coming to me. The whiteboard just sits there, as I sit here, refusing to cooperate. Then it hits me like a ton of bricks from a broad hauling bricks and throwing bricks at me: The answer lies from within. I start scribbling madly at the board and letting out little animal sounds. Mortisen walks in, the gruff bandsaw in a baseball cap, and lets out in a low roar, "What's with all this racket? Did you sneak a sea otter in here again, Lex? I told you then and I'll tell you now: If you drag wild animals in here I'm going to pluck your eyeballs out with an ice cream scooper and ask you to solve a magic eye poster with your paycheck on the line."

"No wild animals in here today, Mortinsen. And I think I solved all of our offensive problems."

"Good. Show me," Mortinsen growled.

"Well, the beauty is in the simplicity. As you can see here, the whole idea is built around singularity and synergy. We start here in the alley, a prime point for exploitation. I borrowed this idea from Stevenson over at State. We dodge here from the alley, and with a little pick action on the weak side, we set loose an alligator on the field that hasn't eaten in about a month. We let that gator run free out there, strategically setting him on the opposing goalie. It's what we call 'Bamboozling' in the business. In all this chaos -- and beautiful, strategic carnage -- we just throw the ball in the net and celebrate!"

"Did you used to poop in the tub as a kid and play with it in a game you called 'Submarine'?"

And that's when I realized that Mortinsen had been spying on me, trying to assume my identity, for a solid 30 years. I take a slug of SunnyD and drink in the difficulty of trying to get my hands on an alligator on short notice.