Julian can’t hear Matthew’s half of the conversation, but he must be getting enough from Clarke’s to connect the dots. He pulls the screen out of his cuff, expression going somber. The adults and Kuari are, thankfully, busy ribbing a just-returned Ndira for exercising on what’s supposed to be a vacation day, and haven’t picked up that something’s going on yet.
“I did an interview,” Matthew says into his palms. “About Elemental, and how I—left. And they took everything I said out of context, I swear, they made it look like I’m blaming you, and that’snotwhat I was trying to do.”
“Hang up, Clarke,” Julian says.
Clarke looks to him. Matthew’s words aren’t making sense, and she’s not sure she wants them to. “What?”
Julian holds his screen where she can see it. It’s open to the headline of an article.
A Toxic Element: Matthew Agresta on his abrupt departure from Elemental Machines, what he’ll do next, and why Madeline Clarke is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him
“Matthew, I have to go,” Clarke says, hanging up. The Popsicle is dripping, running down the side of her wrist.
“It’s bad,” Julian says. He’s scrolling further down the article, furrow in his brow deepening with each swipe of his thumb. “This is really going to be a problem.”
The dread in her stomach curdles. Clarke gives herself five seconds to mourn the loss of this day in the sun surrounded by people who love her, and starts preparing to deal with all the people who don’t.
—
“We’re trying toget them to publish a retraction,” Naomi says.
“If they don’t, we have a strong case to sue for defamation,” says someone from Legal whose name Clarke can’t remember. There are three of them, the women from Legal, and they didn’t bother introducing themselves when this meeting convened.
“I don’t want to sue Matthew,” Clarke says.
“It wouldn’t be you suing Matthew, it would be Elemental suing the outlet,” says one of the women. She has blonde hair in a bob so sharp that Clarke’s surprised it doesn’t slice her jaw open on contact.
“But you should consider suing Matthew,” adds another one, whom Clarke’s been calling Pink Suit in her head for obvious reasons. The suit is fabulous. If this wasn’t a shitty situation all around, Clarke’d be asking where she got it.
Julian was right. It’s bad. The outlet took everything Matthew said, chopped it up, and pieced it back together to paint a damning picture. Matthew’s quoted as sayingShe didn’t even have the design meeting for next year’s ship on her calendar, and while real-time Matthew (present at this meeting as one of many faces in the holoscreen array on Yves’s office wall) explains that he went on to say that no one told Clarke about the meeting until the last minute and she rearranged her schedule to be there as soon as she got looped in, none of that’s in the article. Matthew’s quoted as sayingShe accepted one set of terms for her initial contract, and she’s hoping for a big change with the renewal, but nothing else now-Matthew claims he added (that it’sgoodthat Clarke wants better terms this time around, that her initial contract is exploitative and controlling) made the final cut.
Clarke comes across as demanding. Self-absorbed. Interested only in being a star, uncaring of how many people she has to step on to get there. Elemental, somehow, comes across as a supportive, team-oriented place to work.Yves did me a favor, buying me out, Matthew says in the article, making it sound like he couldn’t wait to get away from Clarke (now-Matthew: “I meant because if he hadn’t boughtmeout, he’d have boughtClarkeout, and then I’d have been stuck partnered with Rafferty St. fucking Sebastian. That’s what Isaidbut that’s not what theyprinted!”).
“How does Elemental have a case for defamation?” Rhynn asks, from a neighboring screen to Matthew’s. “The article doesn’t cast Elemental in a bad light. My client is the one being libeled.”
“Your client’s image is tied to Elemental’s brand,” says the original woman from Legal, who has a shiny piercing in her nose. “We could lose sponsors.”
It devolves into side conversations for the tenth time. Rhynn does not like Nose Stud or Blonde Bob, and bickers with them in legalese. Pink Suit and Matthew’s manager review the statement Matthew’s going to release. Yves calls someone, stepping away from the table to keep it private. Matthew’s husband comes into frame on his screen, and Matthew pauses the video feed to talk to him.
Clarke looks at messages on her cuff with gritty eyes, exhausted and quickly growing numb. It’s midday Tuesday, not even a full day since the article came out, and it seems like everyone Clarke’s ever given her personal Link ID to has read it and can’t help sharing their opinion. Everyone Clarke hasn’t given her Link to is tagging her public profile in comments. She can’t keep up with the deluge. It’s what she thinks swimming in the ocean must feel like, when you go out too far and a riptide catches you.
“Draft is ready,” Naomi says loudly after a few minutes, and everyone tunes back in. Naomi’s team has been working on Elemental’s statement, a sort of companion to the one Matthew’s going to put out. Naomi puts the draft up on a holoscreen that covers most of the EM-64 design spec on the wall. There’s silence as everyone reads it.
Clarke has to go back and reread sentences several times because they can’t—they don’t—
“You have got to be kidding me,” Rhynn says. “You can’t release that.”
“It’s already been approved by everyone who needs to sign off on it except Yves,” Naomi says, calm.
“It doesn’t refute anything in the article! It doesn’t—”
Blonde Bob takes over. “Nothing in the article is factuallyinaccurate, and Matthew did say all of those things. He wasn’t misquoted.”
“That’s not thepoint,” Rhynn practically growls. Matthew and Matthew’s manager are protesting, too, but Clarke can barely hear them over the rushing in her ears.
Elemental is hanging her out to dry.
Every line of the short statement is couched in vague language about corporate dynamics. There’s emphasis on how Matthew leaving Elemental wasn’t his choice, and Elemental understands that he’s unhappy with the decision, but the team wishes him all the best despite this unfortunate airing of dirty laundry. The dirty laundry itself (Clarke apparently being a tyrannical narcissist) isn’t addressed until the very last line.
