by Terry Fallis
Also by Terry Fallis
The Best Laid Plans
The High Road
Up and Down
No Relation
Poles Apart
Copyright © 2017 by Terry Fallis
McClelland & Stewart and colophon are registered trademarks of McClelland & Stewart
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any mean, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication is available upon request
ISBN 9780771050725
Ebook ISBN 9780771050732
Cover image © procurator / Getty Images
McClelland & Stewart,
a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited,
a Penguin Random House Company
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
v4.1
a
For my identical twin brother, Tim.
(Had I known I was going to write this novel next,
I wouldn’t have dedicated No Relation to you!)
Contents
Cover
Also by Terry Fallis
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part Two
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part Three
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Four
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part Five
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Acknowledgements
PART ONE
I was silent throughout. I had no choice.
CHAPTER 1
She died before she could tell me. That’s my theory, anyway. She thought she had more time. I thought she had more time – perhaps not much, but some. Clearly, neither of us really had a handle on it. Then again, even if we’d known, you’re never really ready, are you? No. You think you are. You hope you are. But you never are.
But the timing was out of my hands, and apparently out of hers, too.
I’d left for work that Monday morning as I always did, turning Mom’s care over to the wonderful Malaya, Saint Malaya. Mom wasn’t awake when I left. Hell, I wasn’t awake when I left. But lately, Mom had been sleeping more – deeper and longer – often for a good part of the day. It was somehow easier for her to breathe when she slept. Or perhaps when she slept, she simply was not conscious of how difficult it was to breathe.
Malaya arrived at the apartment, as she did every weekday morning, at eight, and left each night whenever I made it home from the office, usually before six. That’s really all I did, and all I’d done for the preceding two years. Work. Take care of Mom. Shop for groceries. And see my therapist. My sessions with Dr. Weaver were Mondays and Thursdays at noon so I didn’t miss any time in the office. And trust me, I didn’t want to provoke my bellicose beast of a boss with extended lunch hours. On the positive side of the ledger, skipping lunch two days each week helped keep my weight steady at 170 pounds.
I certainly didn’t begrudge my lot in life, though I suppose many might. For my mother, I’d have gladly carried on with this routine for ten years or longer. She had taken care of me for, well, for all of my life. Even at the end, she was still caring for me, even as I cared for her.
I am Alex MacAskill. When this started to play out, I was twenty-four, a software engineer, and I wrote beautiful, pristine code for Facetech, a company developing an advanced facial recognition program. Given my academic credentials, I really shouldn’t have still been writing code, though I can’t deny I was good at it – still am – modesty aside. I should have, at the very least, been leading a team of coders rather than toiling among them. But I wasn’t. I’d not yet become the person I was supposed to be. I was fifteen years old when it happened, nearly ten years earlier, but I was still not yet back on the rails, not yet ready, not yet whole – hence Dr. Weaver, Mondays and Thursdays, at noon. Over the years, Mom had always believed Gabriel was to blame. She was probably right. Who am I kidding? Of course she was right. But maybe, just maybe, there was more to it.
Facetech’s corporate headquarters and much of senior management were in Vancouver. But the software development team was based in Kanata, about a half-hour drive from our Ottawa apartment in Sandy Hill. The company occupied two floors of a garden-variety suburban glass office tower. My own office was on the ninth floor. When I say office, I don’t really mean office. I mean cubicle. When I say cubicle, I don’t really mean cubicle. I mean a desk with one lame fabric partition separating me from my nearest colleague, Abby, whose desk abutted mine. There were sixteen other coders on the floor, and another ten one floor below, all stationed in makeshift two-desk units that masqueraded badly as legitimate cubicles. They weren’t legit at all. Even at 8:35 a.m., there was a sort of low-level buzz running through the space. Whispering voices, clacking keyboards, and the heavy sighing of less than fulfilled employees coming together to provide the white-noise soundtrack for my working days.
When she heard me settle in to my squeaky chair, Abby popped her head up above her side of the partition with slightly more explosive force than a highly strung jack-in-the-box.
“Alex man, welcome to your week!” she said in a voice just loud enough for everyone on the floor to hear.
I dropped back into my chair from an unknown altitude, my hand on my chest quelling what I’m sure qualified as a bona fide “cardiac event.”
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Did I startle you?”
Not at all. What gave you that idea? When you greet me like that, I always launch myself from my chair just by flexing my buttocks.
“A little,” I replied, trying to breathe normally.
“Sorry. Did you have a good weekend?”
Well, if you call shopping for groceries, filling prescriptions, emptying catheter bags, cooking and serving meals, cleaning up the kitchen, changing oxygen tanks, and then doing heaps of laundry, a good weekend, then yes, mine was just awesome, thank you.
“Yes,” I replied as I watched my MacBook Pro boot up. “Thanks.”
“Hello? Eyes up here, please.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually listen with my eyes. I’m hearing you loud and clear, as is everyone else on the floor.
I sighed, looked up at her, and managed the formative stages of a smile.
“Better,” Abby conceded. “Now, again, did you have a good weekend?”
“Yes. Fine,” I said, holding her eyes before turning back to my computer.
“Okay, just calm down, Alex. I mean it. I just can’t handle your incessant chatter this early on a Monday morning. It tires me out. So please, lay off the caffeine and try to contain yourself,” she said. “And by the way, yes, my weekend was just fine, thanks for asking.”
I was almost going to ask, really, but you sucked all the air out of the room and it left me a little light-headed. Besides, my heart rate is only now returning to normal.
She sighed, too, and disappeared back behind the partition.
Abby Potts. Another hot-shot coder. She’s a pistol, usually with a bullet in the chamber and the safety off. A curly mop of brown hair, dressed more like a student than a nine-to-fiver, she’s smart, cute
, and cool. But she scares me. Most people scare me, but she does, in particular, in her own special way. Then again, she does make an effort. I’ve suspected for a while now that I might be her office project.
Above me, Abby hove into view once more.
“Hey, how is your mother doing?” she asked with a note of concern.
Not good. Not good at all. I think we’re in the final stages. Weeks now. Maybe a month. But it means a lot that you asked.
“About the same, thanks,” I replied, making sure I was looking at her when I said it, my fingers hovering over my keyboard.
She gave me a long look of pure, unadulterated sympathy, before slowly lowering herself behind the partition like she was riding an elevator.
There was one real office, with walls, albeit glass ones, in the sun-soaked southeastern corner of the floor. Relative to the real estate the rest of us enjoyed, it seemed the size of a small principality, though squash court is likely a better comparison. The palatial enclave belonged to Genghis Khan. Sorry, force of habit. The palatial enclave belonged to, as she frequently put it, the boss of all of you, Simone Ashe. And no, I’m not sure what I’d done to deserve a desk in her line of sight. With better luck, I might have been isolated in a distant desk-pod one floor below. Just my good fortune. Perhaps I was paying for habitually pulling wings off flies in an earlier life.
Simone knew nothing about software or the strings of code that align to make it work. She was a lawyer and had started in Vancouver as Facetech’s in-house counsel. I figured she got bored pushing paper and asked – more likely demanded – to be given a bit more range. Then, through the power of a loud voice, a fierce countenance, a wicked temper, too much confidence, and not enough competence, she cut a swath through upper management and wound up coming east to lead what is arguably the most important unit in the company. (I can easily see why her senior colleagues happily promoted her right out of the Vancouver office.) You see, we were the team creating what just might propel Facetech to the promised land of the initial public offering, or, better still, an acquisition by some Silicon Valley Goliath. We were building the next generation of facial recognition software – a significant leap beyond current platforms. The commercial applications were virtually limitless (read, the potential profits were virtually limitless). And my precious code was right at the heart of it all. No pressure.
I swivelled in my chair to find Abby standing right beside me. After jerking my arms in surprise and embedding my pencil in our partition, I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing.
“Again? I startled you again? Sorry man, but you really need to work on your fooking peripheral vision,” she said, iPad in hand.
Fooking?
“Sorry, what kind of peripheral vision?”
“Fooking,” she replied. “It’s a word that looms large in my personal profanity reduction program.”
Ah, I see. Your PPRP. Got it.
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s time,” she said with a heavy, anxiety-freighted sigh. “You ready?”
Abby, whether or not I’m ready is a moot point. Until Simone Ashe actually arrives in the boardroom, often like a grizzly with an inflamed hemorrhoid, only angrier, we have no fooking idea what’s coming our way.
I took two deep breaths and nodded. Then I stood, grabbed my notebook, and followed her through the maze of two-desk stations. Our Monday morning staff meetings were like a big old box of bon-bombs. Something was going to explode. We just never knew what or when.
It was a big boardroom. Windows along the outside edge, glass along the inside, and pressed up against the transparent end wall of Simone’s office as if it were her personal boardroom – and in her mind, it was. The usual protocol played out. Two floors of coders arrived on time and sat in silence for the 9:00 a.m. meeting. We, of course, could see Simone through the glass at her desk next door, apparently deeply engaged in something critical on her laptop screen – my money was on Minesweeper, but there was also some action on Scrabble. She was sneaking glances at all of us waiting for her. She wore yet another Chanel suit. This one was red. Sorry, Simone once referred to the colour as Pomegranate Spritz. And no, I wouldn’t know a Chanel suit from a safari suit, but Abby provided weekly F-bomb-laced reports on our boss’s wardrobe.
Simone just sat at her desk. She understood that one very simple demonstration of power was the control over our time. At 9:15, she checked her watch, rose from her desk, and walked, empty-handed, out of her office and into the boardroom. Tension followed her in and draped itself over the assembly. She slid into the very chair you would expect her to assume. It was at the head of the table. It was plusher, bigger, and higher than every other chair in the room. And it swivelled. The rest of us sat in plastic stacking chairs. She looked down on us like the captain of a slave ship about to demand we row faster so she could water-ski.
“Hello, my little pretties,” she started with a smile. “I hope you all had good weekends. No, that’s not really true. I don’t actually care. But I am trying.”
Yes, very trying. But wait, there’s more. You’re also an egomaniacal, megalomaniacal, bombastic, and malevolent tyrant. But thanks for trying.
“Anyway, on to more important matters. You promised me we could have Facetech Gold in beta by October 16. Are we on track to meet that deadline?”
Well, we might make that deadline if you’d stop humiliating and abusing your team. With three coders on stress leave and two with physician-diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder it’s a tad difficult to stay on schedule. Oh yeah, and it’s not that great for morale either. Just sayin’.
Of course, no one responded.
“I distinctly remember asking a question just now. Who’ll provide me with an answer?” she continued, scanning the room.
Twenty-seven coders looked in forty-two different directions, and none of our eyes came anywhere close to the creature on the throne at the head of the board table.
“Answer me!” she shrieked, leaning forward in her chair and banging both hands on the table. Several coders flinched. Okay, I was one of them, but clearly my flinch featured more artistry than the others.
“MacAskill! Are we on schedule or not?”
I forced myself to look at her. I didn’t really have much choice.
“Yes” was all I said.
“Yes what?” she demanded.
Yes, omnipotent nimrod?
“Yes, we’ll make the deadline,” I replied.
“Fuckin’ right we will. Not only that, HQ has just told me we now have to deliver the beta by October 9, or my ass will be detached from my body. And trust me, you don’t want to know what’ll happen around here if my ass is detached from my body.”
Oh I don’t know. It would be something to see. Your Chanel suits wouldn’t fit quite as well, but still, it might be worth it.
I looked up just as Abby stood up. Uh-oh.
“Simone, some of what we’re doing just can’t be compressed any more,” she said. “It’s a process that has to run its course. Not every step can be accelerated. We’re making software here. I don’t think we can make the ninth.”
I thought I knew what true silence was. I’d already experienced it a few times in my life. Remembrance Day, of course. And during the pause I strategically placed in the middle of performing, not reciting, performing, one of Macbeth’s famous soliloquies, in grade nine English class. (Incidentally, it was a tour de force.) And several years ago when my mother told me she’d been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. But I was wrong. The silence that greeted Abby’s pronouncement was so much more, um, silent, than anything I’d ever heard. (Or is it hadn’t heard?) If a pin had dropped on the carpeted floor, it would have sounded like a car accident.
Abby realized what she’d done and looked a little queasy as she lowered herself back into the chair. Simone just stared at her, agape. No sound emerged from her open mouth. We sat there for what seemed like minutes – probably because it actually was minutes. Then she sl
owly reared up on her hind legs. Her next words were issued in what can best be described as a cross between a growl and a snarl.
“It’s Abby, right?”
Abby nodded.
“Well, Abby, I don’t need your insolence and insubordination when I’m trying to keep this ship off the rocks and still get us into port a week early.”
Then she paused, presumably to consider her next salvo. She didn’t consider it for long.
“You’ve been quite the little smartass since you landed here in your too tight jeans that really aren’t office-appropriate, and I’m getting tired of it. But I’m told you write good code and we need all hands on deck, even the mutineers. So just watch yourself, Abby whatever your name is.”
It was quite amazing how well Simone was able to enunciate through gritted teeth.
Abby could not disguise the shock and anger that were plastered all over her face. In fact, I don’t think she was even trying to disguise it. Not a good move.
That’s when Simone detonated. I know. You thought she’d already detonated. Nope. Discretion and decorum prevent me from reporting on the rest of Simone’s vitriolic and venomous invective. It went on for quite a while and got ever more nasty and personal. No, I didn’t think that was possible, either. At the zenith of her tirade, I suddenly stood up. I didn’t mean to, but I seemed unable to control myself. I just couldn’t stay seated any more.
“Please.” My almost whiny, one-word entreaty somehow slipped conveniently into a moment of silence as Simone refilled her lungs to continue her attack.
She snapped her eyes to mine.
“Please, what, MacAskill?” she said, turning towards me.
Again, was I not clear? Obviously I meant please continue tearing strips off Abby until there’s nothing left of her. She’ll be so much better equipped to help us meet this asinine deadline if you just carry on with the flaying.