After On

by Rob Reid

  With Yahoo’s BizDev gangstas hauling in all that plunder, it was only natural for the infant Google to form its own BizDev group. But the Yahoo approach proved awkward, as Google took its famous “Don’t Be Evil” motto rather seriously back then. The company’s revenue model was meanwhile evolving into an algorithmic system with no place for Yahoo-style “portal deals.” And then the bubble burst, the music stopped, and portal deals joined the Marxists and brontosauri in history’s dustbin anyway.

  By 2002, a few Google BizDev positions (Pugwash’s, anyway) verged on being make-work jobs. Thus, Pugwash’s visits to brackish backwaters like Internet World. And by the time Seat 34E taxied to a full stop in Oakland, he was in a seething, vindictive state. Not fun—but the perfect mindset for his postflight meeting. It would be with Tony Jepson. The guy wanted to buy back Pugwash’s ePetStore stock at a price that would make him whole on his original investment. As this would be an astoundingly good outcome for that company in this market, the whole thing stank of rat.

  In “Next Pope,” acclaimed papal handicapper Peter Hebblethwaite provides an insider’s guide to contesting—and winning—the ultimate ecclesiastic showdown. If your sights are set on the prelacy, where should you study (surprise: not the Ivy League)? Where should you socialize, and what interests should you cultivate? Hebblethwaite lays out the full path—from first mass to white smoke. The final chapter (“Life in the Key of See”) is written for those who make the grade. It includes a tear-out map of Vatican City, a handy list of common Latin greetings and phrases, as well as a trove of hat-balancing tricks that you’ll wish you’d mastered before even becoming a Cardinal.

  Bonam fortunam!

  Jepson was psyching himself up with breathing exercises and ersatz tai chi moves when his phone rang again. “He’s taking a leak,” Britney whispered from reception. “And pardon the pun, but he’s really getting pissed!”

  Jepson glanced at the clock in the upper-right corner of his Cinema Display screen. Pugwash had been waiting for forty minutes and should probably steep for another ten or so. But Britney was getting distressed. This normally wouldn’t bother Jepson even slightly—but he actually kind of liked the girl! There were also those remarkable blowjobs a few months back; and she was about to have a spectacularly bad day. So feeling like a proper mensch, he sighed theatrically, and said, “I guess you can send him up.”

  Awaiting his guest, Jepson congratulated himself for saving this showdown for last. He was flush with confidence from smoking his landlord’s migrant ass yesterday. And while the sheer magnitude of cash at stake made that his most important duel, today’s would be far more challenging. It was also financially significant in its own right. Pugwash was now the sole remaining ePetStore.com shareholder not named Tony Jepson—and while he held only a smidgen of the company, just one small outside owner can radically complicate things in terms of scrutiny, liability, fiduciary duty, and much more. So, Jepson just had to get rid of the fucker!

  “Harold! Harry! Mister Pugwaaaaash!” he thundered jovially, as Pugwash puffed up the steps to the deserted floor. “Off trotting the globe to the greater glory of Google et famille, I hear?” he added, sucking in his already trim-ish gullet to highlight his rival’s dumpy frame.

  “Nah,” was the nasal reply, in that improbable New England accent. “Just Down East a few dayss. Catching up with old schoolmatess. Haaa-vud guyss.”

  Jepson bristled but hid it. Though born and raised in California like Jepson himself, Pugwash always acted like he was above their state. Yes, he had some New England cousins. And yes, he attended college somewhere back there-ish. But to hear him talk, you’d think he was half-Kennedy, and raised on Nantucket! And what was with all those Harvard shout-outs? Jepson had personally failed to get into Harvard twice. Which still offended him, as those were the only real setbacks in his life’s otherwise pleasantly ascending arc. And somehow Pugwash knew this! But how? And by the way, where did Pugwash go to school himself? Though he never flat-out said he attended Harvard, he constantly implied that he might have. Like, how do you parse “catching up with some old schoolmates. Harvard guys”? Was he talking about people he’d spent a top-hatted and monocled year with on Harvard Yard? Or high school classmates who, unlike Pugwash, later went on to Harvard? In a pre-LinkedIn world, there was no obvious way to find out. So…Dammit! Despite Jepson’s huge home-field advantage, Pugwash was already at first and goal, just one play into the game.

  “Shall we tour Engineering?” Jepson boomed chummily, gesturing toward a deserted corner, and cuing his “undermedicated” shtick.

  Pugwash gave him a cockeyed look and shook his head. “Naah. Looks like ya fired everyone. Nicely done. Now what?”

  This threw Jepson off his game somewhat, but he powered on. “I start my comeback. Next week! I finally got rid of my board.”

  “Yer board or yer broad?” Pugwash said, playing up his East Coast shtick with some jokey old-time Brooklynese, while setting off across the floor toward Jepson’s office. Then, back in his broad Nashua honk, he added, “Speakin-a which, that receptionist’s hot. Did she really suck your cock eight timess?”

  “Did she what?” Jepson rasped, suddenly down fifty–zip, not a minute into the game! “Who said…”

  “People’ll tell ya the damnedest things on Friendster,” Pugwash offered enigmatically. Friendsta.

  “Whatster?”

  Pugwash waved a dismissive hand. “You got a lot ta learn,” he sniffed, then entered the CEO suite. There he took the fancy chair behind the teakwood desk and propped up his heels, leaving the humble visitor’s stool for Jepson. “So what brings us heah, anyway?”

  “I—I wanna buy you out!” Jepson was stammering for only the third time since asking Ashley O’Leary to that tenth grade dance, half a lifetime ago.

  “Why da fuck would I sell?” Pugwash asked, back in his joshing, Dodgers-era Brooklyn voice.

  “Because I…I’m going for it! I’m rebuilding the company. The pet store! A-And if you don’t sell me your stock…well then, who knows? It may become worthless! Right?” Jepson’s voice had jumped an octave, and he knew he sounded as convincing as a time-share salesman on sodium pentothal. But that employee-blowjob reference had knocked him flat on his ass! As he and Pugwash knew—but Britney, oddly, did not (yet)—you could get sued for that shit. Hella sued! He’d have far preferred it if Pugwash had just pulled a loaded Glock on him!

  “Listen,” the pudgetard said, finally in unaccented, Silicon Valley English. “I hear you’ve been buying everyone out. And I might be your last outside shareholder.”

  Jepson nodded warily.

  “Which means you’ve retired most of the company’s shares. So you and I both own way bigger chunks of it than we used to. Although my stake was piddly-shit to start with. So what do I own now? Two percent of the company?”

  “Just under.”

  “Got it. And how much cash does it have in the bank?”

  “Mmm…almost nothing.” This was easily Jepson’s least convincing lie since that summer at Goldman.

  “OK, fine. Then give me half the cash, and I’ll sell.” Pugwash scraped his heels hard across the gorgeous desk. He’d heard that Stalin would use sudden bouts of uncouthness in interrogations and always wanted to try this out as a negotiating tactic. But his shoes failed to leave a mark. So he tried to fart but couldn’t.

  “Half? Come on. That’s twenty-five times your fair share.” Talking numbers was comfortable, familiar turf, and Jepson was now calming rapidly.

  Pugwash shrugged. “Make me a counteroffer.”

  “You can have the same deal I gave to the VC who led your round, Steven Conrad. Do you know him? Brilliant man. Love that guy! Anyway, it’s double your money back. A damn good return in the current environment!” His wits quickly regathering, Jepson was starting to ooze the coaxing vibes that got Ashley O’Leary to drop her panties and buck up her hindquarters so prettily after that long-ago dance.

  “Fine. Give me a third of the
cash.”

  “Oh, come on Pugwash. I’d love to, but I just can’t. Look, you know how highly I think of you. And of Google! So I’ll tell ya what. Let’s make it a fifth of the cash. You know how generous that is.”

  Pugwash just barely stopped himself from bellowing, “You FUCKtard!” This was ten times what his stock should’ve entitled him to—if the company was actually folding and distributing its cash to shareholders! In other words: there was clearly much more to ePetStore than met the eye. And Jepson was hiding it.

  That said! A return this handsome in a market this ugly should not be dismissed lightly. So Pugwash regarded the opportunity through the lens of his own big picture. He started at Google incredibly early, thanks to a fluke interview with a gullible manager before the company’s famous recruiting gauntlet really existed. As a super-early hire, he got a ridiculously outsized option grant. Though Google was in no rush to go public, it eventually had to. Whereupon, Pugwash’s wealth could easily range into the tens of millions. All this meant that getting overpaid for his small investment in ePetStore would be a nice but irrelevant victory. Whereas when a con artist as canny as Tony Jepson offers you ten times the face value of anything, odds are, it’s worth a hundred times.

  After considering all this, Pugwash finally said, “Screw it. I’m not selling. Why not? Because I believe in you. In Tony Jepson. And in your vision. Whateverthefuck it is.” This time, the hoped-for fart landed like a proper punctuation mark. Yes!

  Jepson was briefly devastated. But then he reminded himself that his won/lost record since buying out the VCs was about 150–1. Angel investors, employees with vested stock, creditors—all had agreed to relinquish their ePetStore claims on unconscionable terms. And none of them were stupid! It just took extreme paranoia, shifty ethics, and cunning to imagine it was even possible to claw so much wealth from this fetid carcass of a startup. Simply put: it took Pugwash (well—that, or Jepson himself, obviously). Considering this, Jepson started grinning despite himself. He even shook the guy’s sweaty hand-blob. There were far worse people to ally with. He was stuck with the man, in any event. And so, he showed him The Patent.

  Bohensky leaves no quarter for the squeamish as his inquiring scalpel illuminates the underpinnings of those lovable menaces that we call cats. Each step of our exploration is tied to observations about the traits and habits that characterized the creature before its regrettable arrival at our operating table. I would highly recommend this work to anyone wishing to gain or impart a better understanding of biology. However, I would not advise anyone to repeat our attempt to parlay the untimely death of a beloved pet into an anatomy lesson for under-fives.

  “No!” Pugwash bellowed, flipping through the patent’s nebulous sketches and legalese.

  Jepson just grinned.

  Pugwash ruffled some more pages. Then, “Seriously?” The vagueness and breadth here were Guinness Book material. Which itself was no surprise, as any number of patent lawyers will eagerly disgrace their profession for a nominal fee. The shock was that a patent inspector had been dumb, lazy, or jaded enough to certify this rubbish. Not patent pending, but granted, bitches! “It’s amazing,” he finally said. “But a diamond in the rough.”

  Jepson nodded. “We could use a little help with it.” From a truly demonic patent litigator, say. One who would twist its every ambiguity in the most venomous, cynically deceitful way possible. The sort of person who might run with the likes of Pugwash.

  “But if we pull it off. We could claim total, outright ownership to…to—” Though rarely overcome by emotion, Pugwash needed to catch his breath.

  “To the very act of displaying colors on webpages,” Jepson finished for him. It was the dream that dared not speak its name—but he’d now been living with it long enough to almost sound casual when voicing it.

  By the time Pugwash departed, Jepson had decided it was fine the fucker didn’t sell. The Valley was getting ready to boom again. He could feel it! Fortunes would be made once more. And with the help of an astute, well-connected, charismatic douchebag like Pugwash, who knew what Jepson could become? Maybe…mayor of New York? It was a madly random thought! But why not?

  His reverie was shattered when Britney rang up. “He’s gone,” she said. “Now what?”

  Recalling their many naughty interludes in this very room over the summer, Jepson lit up with a nostalgic grin. Then, “You’re fired.”

  Herein, the steward of the eponymous Inaba Clinic in Tokyo, Japan, holds forth on a sensitive topic with authority and dignity. Inaba is best known for 1987’s seminal “Lipid Composition of Ear Wax in Hircismus,” but true disciples consider this to be his finer work. Etiology and treatment are given roughly equal coverage in this admirably thorough volume. A convenient guide to trauma centers equipped to deal with acute cases is also included. Intriguingly, this book reveals that the clichéd sneer about the French being particularly afflicted has been borne out by decades of carefully documented research. I can attest to this personally, as Mrs. Higgensworth’s longtime beau prior to my becoming her betrothed hailed from that malodorous land, and the few times I met him, I almost fainted from the stench.

  That night, Mitchell’s homework lay neglected as he obsessed over the mortifying Ellie situation. His greatest worry was now that she’d actually get her phone back and access “their” full correspondence! Embarrassment was just a minor concern. His true fear was that this would wreck his chances with her. Because this morning’s virulent crush had metastasized, and he was now utterly head over heels. With Ellie! Because of things she did not write. It was lunacy!

  Gazing absently at his inbox, Mitchell was considering all this when an email arrived from Kuba:

  have done some digging regarding the ellie situation

  And??? Mitchell thought. Among his buddy’s quirky hallmarks were emails as brief and choppy as a normal person’s texts, and texts as long as a normal person’s emails. Well, it was good to have him on the case. The silver lining to Ellie’s messages being a hoax was that Mitchell could now discuss them with Kuba without fear of breaking his heart. And so he’d laid everything out over lunch. Of course, Kuba (being Kuba) went straight to the technical aspects. “Do you suppose it’s an artificial intelligence?” he had whispered, eyes aglitter.

  “Texting me? Come on, Kuba. She had a really advanced phone—a Nokia—but, Jesus!”

  Mitchell now anxiously awaited Kuba’s next truncated email. In addition to sweating Ellie’s reaction to their interchange, he’d grown spooked about its legal ramifications. A recent scandal in a nearby town had shown that hanky-panky with a minor could land you in ultra-hot water even if you were a minor yourself. Mitchell hadn’t even thought of this during his textfest with “Ellie”! She had initiated it, for one thing. Also, years before the term “sexting” was coined (and months before Sprint sold America’s first camera phone), texts seemed as ephemeral as spoken words, vanishing tracelessly from handsets right as they were read. Well, Kuba set him straight on that at lunch today.

  “So you’re telling me texts are…stored on a server someplace?” Mitchell had asked, horrified.

  “Of course,” Kuba had said. “Temporarily, anyway. And I’m sure the CIA’s been parsing all of them since the Trade Centers thing.” The Trade Centers thing. The world was still struggling to name the recent attacks. Soon it would give up and simply refer to them by a date. “At least I hope they do. Because enough of this politically correct bullshit, right? Those bastards could’ve walked into the airports wearing T-shirts saying ARMED TERRORIST. No one would’ve stopped them. Too scared of looking racist.” This was partly the Iron Curtain talking. The Soviets seemed to have bred entire generations of Slavic Republicans in their former satellites.

  Eventually, Kuba emailed: have researched relevant obscenity laws and you are indeed fine.

  Thank God!

  This out of the way, Kuba moved on to his own obsession, which remained the Turing project:

  your 1st 2 reviews are
silly but fun.and the bulgarians say all those puns point to an interesting idea.puns may be the easiest natural-language stunt for software to spoof.so maybe make a pun list to mimic a playful human voice? we’re all excited to explore this rich vector.

  I hope you do something great with those six hours this year, Mitchell thought. This was the annual time-saving Kuba reckoned he gained by never using shift keys in emails, nor the space bar after periods.

  Mitchell reread the note. The thought of a distant troupe of pierced and tattooed Slavic h@ck3rs nodding shaven heads in approval of his rich vector gave him a brief jolt of pride. At least something was going right in his life, he thought, as he wearily prepared for bed.

  Some people think being a French soldier involves little more than sipping Bordeaux, waving big white rectangles, and demanding Washington’s assistance. All of which is true. But as this book reveals, France augments its native military by wooing foreign altruists to do the actual fighting—wise, given the 2–17–3 record homegrown soldiers attained over the past centuries of intra-European competition. For the young adventurer with a charitable bent, this presents an intriguing alternative to more traditional do-gooder callings, like whale-saving, community organizing, and the like.