The Cobra Commander Dialogues: III.III.2

Originally posted on Atlas Shrugged: A Most Mundane Resurrection.

Cobra Commander: Yes that’s right, Dagny Taggart. Yes she’s here with me now. So… is this going to be by check or gold deposit or what?
Dagny Taggart: What are you doing on that phone?
Cobra Commander: I’m calling to collect the reward for locating you. Well, technically I suppose the wreckage of your plane but I think that dolt Rearden is going to pay up all the same.
Dagny Taggart: We don’t have time for this!
Cobra Commander: I’m pretty sure we have nothing but time for this. I am going to need some operating capital after that big fiasco, and it’s not like we’re going anywhere in a hurry.
Dagny Taggart: Of course we are, we’re heading all the way back to Taggart Transcontinental headquarters, post haste!
Cobra Commander: Right, but you know the country’s infrastructure is trashed so I’m pretty sure we’re going to have some delays. And even if we didn’t have delays related to, again, the complete collapse of civilization your little cabal of friends helped orchestrate, it’s not as though there’s no such thing as layovers or stopovers. I mean we have plenty of time to make phone calls, especially with a hundred thousand dollars on the line.
Dagny Taggart: Now you listen here! Galt said I should bring you along so we could keep an eye on you, but I’m not having you slow me down for personal things like contacting my family or my lover about my continued existence when there’s trains to catch!
Cobra Commander: Well what about your place of work then, calling ahead to at least let them get prepared for your triumphant return to their likely crumbling decay?
Dagny Taggart: NO TIME!
Cobra Commander: Fine… one second. Yes Hank, can I call you Hank? No? Alright, Hank. Just have the money wired to Dagny’s business, apparently everything still works fine so it shouldn’t be a problem, thanks.
*One travelogue across country set to Pat Methany Grou’s ‘Last Train Home’ later*
Dagny Taggart: Finally I’m back at the office, back where I belong, looking at all these people that I apparently on some level despise and loathe and rather believe to be deserving of their grisly fates to come. I am definitely better fit here than among the group of people I share every ideological agreement with who could have convinced me to stay using perfect argumentation but didn’t, for reasons.
Cobra Commander: Look I just want my money and then I’m out of here.
Eddie Willers: Oh Dagny! It’s awful! I’m so glad you’re finally back!
Dagny Taggart: Eddie, as always I have no actual emotional reaction to seeing you despite the fact that you are definitely my closest ally in my company, if not what some people would call a friend, and also somehow you keep doing an actually capable job of every improbable situation you’re put in.
Eddie Willers: Yes it’s good to see you too.
Cobra Commander: Man…Eddie… I have to just say… How did you get out of the death trap I threw you in!?
Eddie Willers: Ah yes, Mr. Commander sir. With hard work and determination I managed to…
Dagny Taggart: Eddie shut up I need you to do something for me.
Cobra Commander: Hang on, I actually want to hear this. This guy is like, the most grounded person around here if he actually escaped my troopers clutches he probably did it in a believable and entertaining way, unlike your friends’ garbage explanations for everything.
Eddie Willers: Sorry but if I have to be doing something for Dagny I won’t have the time to get into the full details sir. I barely have time to steer this still profitable company forward.
Cobra Commander: What!? Still profitable!?
Eddie Willers: Yes, actually, thanks to some market manipulation and beneficial implantation of new regulations that we were able to…
Dagny Taggart: Shut up Eddie! Can’t you see profit is meaningless if it isn’t achieved through inventing a new thing!? Capitalism is built on constantly inventing new super technologies, not providing needs to demands and certainly not taking advantage of favorable business conditions created by a company’s leverageable assets!
Eddie Willers: Yes ma’am, sorry ma’am!
Cobra Commander: No now hold on here…
Dagny Taggart: THERE’S NO TIME! Despite the fact that I literally just sat around reading the newspaper as we traveled cross country and then took the time to actually go back and stop by my apartment to hang around and make phone calls instead of doing that while waiting on stopovers as I changed transit methods which doesn’t even make sense considering all the poor state of travel in general now, I’m now under the gun to come up with an explanation for my disappearance that I need to feed to the media and press which is somehow shockingly not already involved in reporting on my return to life despite the fact that I have already contacted plenty of people and let the news of my return be made when my disappearance was front page news!
Cobra Commander: You’re not making any sense!
Dagny Taggart: Eddie! Hillbillies in the woods saved me! No I don’t know their names! No, no one will ever be able to get in touch with them so don’t even try and definitely don’t go looking for them! I walked 50 miles on a bum leg that is now magically healed! Nothing shady about my disappearance at all, right around the time that LITERALLY EVERY INDUSTRIALIST IN THE WORLD OF NOTE IS DISAPPEARING. There! Feed that to the media fast so I can get back to hating all of you for making my company profitable!
Eddie Willers: Right away Ma’am!
Cobra Commander: Oh I really hope my money gets here soon.