by Sadie Hayes
“Is there any way to put off Node One?”
“No. It’s inevitable. And it has to be addressed within two weeks.”
“Well, it sounds like you need a path C.”
“But there isn’t a third option. It’s binary.”
Sundeep nodded thoughtfully.
“Well, I don’t believe in dead ends, and I certainly don’t believe in going against what is right. It sounds like you need some new software. Maybe you solved this problem before? Isn’t there something you can reuse that might override Node One, and therefore avoid the malfunction caused by path B?”
“You mean, like, create a Node Zero that bypasses Node One?”
“Sure, I guess. Look into some other programs you’ve written recently. Something that renders the threat of the malfunction moot.”
Amelia’s eyes darted back and forth as she thought this through in her head. Sundeep watched her with a curious smile. What was it like to be in this girl’s brain?
Suddenly Amelia looked up. “Yes! Yes! I’ve got it. You’re absolutely right! Sundeep, you’re a genius.”
She darted out of the room. Sundeep grinned and shook his head. He hoped she would remember him after she made it big.
* * *
Back in her dorm room, Amelia opened two windows in her browser. Through one, she hacked into Gibly. Through the other, she hacked into The Family’s personal bank account.
With Gibly’s eyes on The Family’s information, she hacked into Indiana Central Bank and transferred fifty cents from their reserve funds into The Family’s account.
Smiling at her work, she took a screenshot of the Gibly report, showing that The Family had just been on Indiana’s Central Bank Web site, where they had transferred fifty cents into their personal savings account.
She logged out of all the browsers and attached the screenshot to an e-mail from an anonymous user, which she addressed to The Family.
Dear Family,
Not sure if you’ve heard of Gibly—it’s been in the news a lot lately. Anyway, they’ve got this smart technology that follows users’ Web activity. I wanted to let you know, because it looks like Gibly caught you embezzling some money from the Indiana Central Bank. Looks like they only caught you taking $0.50, so they probably won’t notice, but it sure would be annoying if someone caught you stealing more and alerted the authorities.…
Don’t you just hate these advances in technology?
“Send!” Amelia smiled as she tapped the button.
35
Skintight
Amelia was at University Café, tapping away at her laptop. She and Roger had spent the morning talking to engineers interested in joining the team, and she was full of energy from the interviews.
She’d sent an e-mail to the computer science e-mail list at Stanford and within five hours had received over one hundred responses. She’d had to send another e-mail saying they were no longer taking applications just to stop the deluge.
In the end, they’d interviewed ten engineers. A junior, Ben, had put it best: “Amelia’s reputation around the Gates Building is that she’s the next Bill Gates. Roger Fenway’s name is legendary. And Doreye is already being followed by TechCrunch. You’d have to be crazy not to want to join this team.”
Amelia couldn’t keep from grinning. She’d had no idea that her peers in the Gates Building even knew who she was, much less admired her.
Roger and Amelia had narrowed the pool down to four candidates: two seniors, a junior, and a sophomore. Roger sent them an e-mail requesting they come to the incubator the following morning to present their “best work.”
Amelia couldn’t wait. She’d never thought she’d like working on a team, but thinking about how much more they could get done with three people was exhilarating, and she was feeling as confident as she’d ever felt.
“Amelia, you are absolutely glowing today. You must have figured out the problem with Node One.”
Amelia looked up at Sundeep, who was standing next to her table. He was dressed in workout clothes, his white iPod earbuds hanging around his neck.
“Sundeep!” She smiled. Could this day get any better? “I did! I figured it out, and I just spent the morning talking to engineer candidates—we’re going to hire two new people.”
“That’s great! It will be awesome to have more people in the incubator.”
“Are you getting lunch?” she asked.
“Oh, no. I just finished working out and stopped by to grab a smoothie. Nothing like a peanut butter–banana protein shake to completely undo all the calories I just burned.”
She giggled. She couldn’t help staring at the definition in his shoulders and biceps, which showed through his skintight Under Armour shirt. He always wore loose button-downs to the incubator, and she’d never realized he was so fit.
They stood for a moment staring at each other. Amelia wasn’t sure what to say; all she knew was that she didn’t want it to end. She loved the way he looked at her, like he could see right into her soul.
“Well.” Sundeep finally broke the silence. “I guess I’d better go order.”
“Wait—”
What was she doing? Was she really going to?
Yes, just do it, she told herself.
“Would you … I mean, would you ever want to go out sometime? Grab dinner one day after work or something?”
It was the single bravest thing Amelia had ever done, and she could not believe it as the words came out of her mouth. But he was so kind, and so attractive, and she just felt so comfortable with him. And besides, nothing could go wrong today.
Sundeep’s mouth opened but no words came out. “Oh, I—” he sputtered. “Amelia, I hope I didn’t … haven’t led you on. I have a girlfriend.”
Amelia’s heart sank in her chest. She could feel her pulse beating against her temple, and the light in the room suddenly felt painfully bright and harsh.
“Oh,” she said. It was all she could muster.
“Hey, I think you’re absolutely brilliant. Seriously, you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And I’m so glad our paths have crossed in the incubator.”
“Yeah, glad, sure.” Amelia wasn’t even conscious of her mouth forming the words. She just needed to get out of there. Now.
“This definitely won’t make things weird for me, so don’t, you know, don’t worry about it at all, okay? I’ll see you back on Sand Hill, then?” Sundeep smiled and gave a little wave as he moved to the counter.
“Yep.” Amelia shut her computer and threw her water bottle into her backpack. She was out the door before Sundeep had finished his order.
36
The Negotiator
Amelia raced down Palm Drive on her bicycle, ignoring the beautiful view. What had she been thinking? Of course Sundeep had a girlfriend. How could a guy like that not have a girlfriend? He was just being nice. God, was she so socially incompetent that a normal guy showing any sign of normal niceness made her think he was interested?
Boys were such a waste of time. Like she could just go off to a dinner anyway: Everything was blowing up at Doreye, and she needed to invest herself in that 110 percent. She couldn’t let herself get distracted by stupid … crushes.
Oh, God, but she had such a crush on him! The way he looked at her, the way he checked in on her every morning, the way she hoped he’d be in the kitchen when she went out to get tea (she was drinking a lot more tea these days in the hope of those encounters). How could he look at her like that when he had a girlfriend? He did look at her in a special way, Amelia knew it. That wasn’t fair to her or to his girlfriend. Maybe she should tell his girlfriend.
Like that would help. That would just make things more awkward at the incubator. Oh, God! The incubator. She would have to see him there, all the time. Maybe she could start working from campus. Now that school was starting, she could say she needed to be at Gates to … get advice from more engineers. Yes, that’s what she’d do.
She pulled her bike up
to her dorm and locked it. Ugh! How could he!
When she got to her dorm room there were six notes push-pinned to the small bulletin board she’d affixed to the door. She’d signed up to be the Residential Computer Coordinator for Alondra, a freshman dorm, because it guaranteed her a single room with her own bathroom and no roommate. But it also meant she had to deal with notes like these, panicked requests from clueless freshmen who didn’t know how to set up their e-mail accounts.
Could this day get any worse? she thought as she pushed open the door.
Yes, it could.
Adam was seated on her bed. “Where have you been?”
“Working,” she said tersely, throwing down her bag.
“But today’s the deadline. They’re going to call any minute.” As he said it, his iPhone rang. Amelia and Adam stared at the ringing phone with the Indiana area code as if it were an ancient artifact.
“It’s them, Amelia. They’re going to send the letter to Stanford today if we don’t do what they say.”
Amelia glanced disgustedly at the phone. “Put it on speaker,” she said. He did, fumbling with the buttons in his haste and panic.
“Hello?” Amelia said into the phone, the annoyance resonant in her voice.
“Amelia. Long time.” It was Jacob Dawson, the eldest son in The Family.
“Yeah. There’s a reason for that,” she snapped back. “Listen, I’m assuming you got the e-mail, so there’s nothing more for us to talk about.”
“What e-mail?”
Adam glanced at his sister. What e-mail?
“The one about Gibly.”
“That was from you?”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Of course it was from me. I sent it from a disguised address.”
“But how could you—”
“It’s not important, Jake. The point is that I’m not going to embezzle money for you. But I do know how to make it look like you’re embezzling money, and use Gibly to get you caught.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would,” Amelia said sourly into the phone. Adam was watching her, speechless. “Now let’s talk about your dad. He gets out of jail when? In a few months? I’m pretty sure the state doesn’t look lightly on repeat offenders.”
“But that’s … that’s creating false evidence!” the voice on the other end protested.
“And you are blackmailing me to commit a crime!” Amelia retorted. “Who’s the worse offender?”
She took a deep breath. “Listen, Jake. If you’re going to make me play this stupid game, you’d better believe I’ll play it better than you. Leave my brother and me alone. Or I will make sure your father stays in jail for the rest of his life.”
With that, she ended the call. It was moments like this when she wished there were still landlines. Throwing down a receiver was far more satisfying than tapping a touch-screen button on an iPhone.
She looked up at Adam, who was staring at her, his mouth agape.
“What?” she snapped.
He guffawed. “That was awesome.”
Her irritated scowl melted into a laugh. “I guess it kind of was, huh?” She pushed her bangs out of her face and took off her glasses, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “He caught me on a bad day.”
“You should have more bad days. They make you a ferocious negotiator.”
She smiled and sighed. “You know that’s not what I want to be.”
“But it’s still good to have in your back pocket,” he said, punching her on the arm playfully.
“Listen, I’m going to go over to Gates and bury myself in some code. See you at the incubator tomorrow?”
“Sure thing. I’ll be there in the afternoon.”
“Great. Let me know if you hear anything more from The Family, but I think they’ll be leaving us alone from now on.”
37
Cat’s Cradle
The Bristols were on the terrace of the Atherton Country Club having drinks with the Morgans, another Atherton family with whom they were dining that night, when Ted excused himself to take a phone call.
T.J. was chatting with Mrs. Morgan—or, rather, he was listening to her go on about her latest personal training session and how it was doing wonders to tone her butt. He’d perfected the art of nodding just enough to indicate engagement, occasionally throwing in an “Oh, really?” or “How interesting” while he thought about something else.
Mrs. Morgan was a piece of work, literally. She could hardly blink she’d had so many face-lifts, and the Botox injections had made her forehead so smooth it was impossible to distinguish happy expressions from sad ones. She was hot, to be sure; a classic cougar who worked out two and a half hours a day to achieve arms like Madonna and used plastic surgery to fix whatever the yoga-Pilates-spinning-kickboxing concoction didn’t. Her husband hardly noticed her—everyone knew he had a young model girlfriend in New York, where he took frequent business trips—and, as a result, T.J. knew she sought attention from younger men like him.
T.J. smiled his most flattering smile. “Sounds intense,” he said, and stared past her shoulder at Ted, who was listening intently to whoever was on the other end of the line, instinctively nodding at whatever information he was receiving. T.J. wondered whether he’d gotten the news yet that Doreye had turned down the sale.
Finally, the families sat down to dinner. Ted was his normal jovial, charismatic self. He must have heard by now, T.J. thought, but then how could he be in such a good mood? Why wasn’t he saying anything about it? Either way he should tell T.J., right?
By dessert the suspense was killing him.
After dinner, per the club’s tradition, the men went to the cigar room for an after-dinner drink and the women went to the ladies’ lounge. In the cigar room, Mr. Morgan fell into conversation with another club member, and Ted took T.J. aside, finally addressing him. “So, they turned down the offer. But I guess you already knew that.”
“Yeah,” T.J. said, shaking his head. “I tried to persuade them, but they just wouldn’t budge.”
Ted took a sip of his Scotch. “You’re a bad liar, son. You should work on that.”
T.J. blushed. “What do you mean?”
“I know you advised them not to sell. And I’m very disappointed.”
“I—” T.J. scrambled to think of something to say.
“It was a test, T.J. The call with Jay?”
T.J. felt a lump in his throat.
“Did you even bother to look up who Jay Resnick is? Nobody. I was talking to a dead line. Complete fiction.” He laughed. “Come on, did you actually think I hadn’t planned for you to overhear that conversation? That I would be so careless? I don’t make stupid mistakes like that, son. Jesus, you have a lot to learn.”
T.J. was staring at his father. “I don’t understand. You mean the whole thing was—”
“A test. To figure out where your loyalties lie.” Ted motioned to the waiter for another drink.
T.J. felt his chest rising with every breath. “You mean you never intended to buy Doreye?”
“Oh, I intend to buy Doreye. But not yet. It won’t hurt enough yet.” He grinned as the waiter handed him a new drink. “You see, when you first start a company, it feels like a new baby. You’re enthralled by it, fascinated by what it does and the strange and wonderful little strides it makes. But after a year, it’s not a baby anymore. Your ego has gotten involved. Slowly you’ve grown attached to it. Now it feels like it’s become a part of you.” He sipped his Scotch. “And after another year, it starts to become not just a part of you, but the most important part of you. Your identity. And that’s when it really hurts to have it taken away.”
Ted’s eyes were crisp and angry, his jaw set.
“And that, T.J., is when I’ll take Doreye from Amelia.”
38
Two Thousand Lines of Code and Nothing to Wear
Just opening the doors to the Gates Building made Amelia’s heart rate slow to a more relaxed pace. She climbed the stairs and made her way to h
er favorite cubicle. There weren’t many people there, which suited her fine. The pride she had felt this morning about her peers respecting her for the TechCrunch article now made her self-conscious.
She clicked to the latest Doreye code and began typing, but she quickly found herself two hours in with a pattern that wouldn’t run. There were over two thousand lines of code, and she had no idea where the error was. Why was she being so sloppy?
But she knew exactly why. Her mind kept drifting back to University Café and Sundeep’s words. “I have a girlfriend.” Why had he had to show up just then? Right when she was feeling confident enough to do something so stupid? She’d been having such a great day, and then he’d gone and ruined it all. She tried to take herself back to the time before their conversation, to access the elatedness she’d felt after all the interviews. But Sundeep was like a wall, like this malfunction in her program that blocked everything from working. She hated him.
She took off her glasses and sat back in her chair, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.
“Amelia!”
She slowly opened her eyes. Was that George?
A strange new version of George stood next to her at the cubicle. Since she had last seen him at the end of spring term, he had lost about forty pounds and cut his hair.
“George?” she said, questioningly, putting her glasses back on.
He laughed awkwardly. “I know, I look a little different. I finally took Google up on their free personal training sessions this summer. How was your summer?” Before she could answer, he stepped in. “Of course, I already know how your summer was. I read the TechCrunch article about you. Man, Amelia, that is just so rad.”
Amelia shrugged her narrow shoulders and offered a lifeless “Thanks, George. It is exciting.”
She glanced back at her screen, hoping he would take the hint that she wanted to be alone. But he kept going, his eyes shining above his freckled cheeks.