Regression

“These are just the preliminary figures, a few haven't reported in yet, but... what the hell?”

“What the hell.”

“What the hell!”

“This is not good.”

“This is crazy!”

“All right, listen. I think it's time. I'm calling an emergency meeting.”

“Really?”

“I've been watching this escalate... Not good. Don't like it at all.”

“Thank you.”

“We're getting out of this phase.”

“Can you do that?”

“I'd like to see them try to stop me. All right, listen up everybody! The cut-off point is now. Now! I want the final tallies at the top of the hour. You've all done excellent work so far, but we...”

“Sir? It's the board, line two.”

“Great. Perfect. Hello? Yes. No. Yes. No. Thank you.”

“Well? What?”

“Oh, nothing. Completely unrelated. Where was I? Right, meeting. Thirty minutes. In the... room. We'll figure out where. Does anybody know how to run a meeting?”