Lost in Geeklandia

by E. J. Russell

  Shanna settled into her high-backed throne with far more grace than Charlie, although that wasn’t a hard thing to do, especially this morning.

  “Now. You were saying?”

  Was she? Shanna was the one who’d said…who’d said… “Do you think Audrey’s trust in me is misplaced? My projects are always completed on spec and on schedule. She hired me herself to upgrade your contract management software.”

  “Your off-the-charts client feedback surveys are the only reason I haven’t terminated your agreement outright. On each of your placements, the client wanted to convert your contract and hire you into a staff position. You refused every one of them. Do you have any idea how that makes the firm look?”

  Charlie crossed her arms over her stomach. “This isn’t an employment agency. The clients know the projects are short-term.”

  “Technically, yes. However, the promise implicit in our agreement with every company is that any associate we place will match their needs absolutely. We have a 99.1 percent temp-to-hire conversion success rate. That .9 failure percentage?” Shanna shrugged. “That’s all you.”

  “But none of them were the right job for me.”

  “Don’t be naive, Dr. Forrester. We work for our contracting companies. Our allegiance is to them. Our associates, on the other hand, work for us.”

  Charlie bunched her fists in her T-shirt. “I can show you the statistics. I’ve tracked AGS for years. Matched my education to their requirements. If you’ll let me —”

  “No. I’m sure you could justify anything with high-tech smoke and mirrors. You’re still a flight risk.”

  “But this position is different. It’s the one I’ve been waiting for.” For 69.2 percent of her life. “I’m the perfect match.”

  Meredith walked past Charlie’s chair and handed Shanna her latte. “Charlie knows all about perfect matches. She makes them all the time.”

  Shanna barely spared Meredith a glance. “Don’t you have filing to do?”

  “No-oooo.” She giggled. “I converted all our contracts to paperless months ago. Go on, Charlie. Tell her about the Love Program.”

  Lord, not this. Not now. She let go of her shirt and gripped the chair’s cool metal armrests. “It’s nothing.”

  “Oh, Charlie. Don’t be shy.” Meredith perched on the arm of the other visitor’s chair, despite Shanna’s disapproving frown. “Cousin Audrey would never have met Nathan if it weren’t for you.”

  “Is that so.” Shanna’s drawl didn’t hold a question.

  “True story. All on account of the Love Program.”

  Stop helping me, Meredith. Please. “It’s not a program, it’s a statistical model.”

  “And we call Charlie the Love Programmer.”

  “‘We’?”

  “All us girls in the group.”

  Shanna sat forward, her hands flat against the desk. “Let me get this straight. You developed a proprietary product while under contract with us?”

  “It’s not a product. It’s a limited field study based on my doctoral dissertation. It doesn’t even have a UI.”

  Her ice blue eyes narrowed. “Hair-splitting. You’re skating on the edge of breaching your non-compete clause.”

  Ordinarily, Charlie would have retreated in the face of Shanna’s confidence and not-so-subtle insults. There was a reason she’d dodged the woman at every opportunity for the last six months, after all. But something—whether it was her disregard for Audrey’s instructions or her barely concealed impatience with Meredith—activated Charlie’s combat circuits, channeling Bertha the Berserker, her Cluster Realms half-giant warrior avatar.

  She forced some steel into her tone. “I have never violated a single clause in any contract I’ve ever signed, including this one. My algorithm is not commercially viable and it never will be. Furthermore, all the development occurred while I was still a student.”

  “Hmmmm. I’ll let it pass. For now.” Shanna turned to Meredith, who still roosted on the chair arm, swinging one sandaled foot. “How did you get involved? Did you fill out a questionnaire? Submit to an interview?”

  “No, silly.” Meredith laughed again. “The Love Program does it all. It’s totally awesome.”

  “You don’t do anything at all?”

  “Well…” Meredith’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “We have to date the men. There’s no getting around that, but that’s the whole point, right?”

  “How long was your last relationship?”

  Meredith pursed her lips, her gaze flicking to the ceiling. “Um…two…no, three months.”

  “Three months? Hardly a happily ever after, but about on par with Dr. Forrester’s average job tenure.” The contempt in Shanna’s voice tripped another switch on Charlie’s inner control panel.

  “The relationship longevity was precisely in line with the subjects’ desires.”

  Shanna drummed her fingernails against her desk. “If that’s your idea of clarification—”

  “Oh, Shanna. It’s not that hard.” Meredith clasped her hands under her chin. “I can explain it if you want me to.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Charlie lets you know what stage you’re at and gives you a list of the guys that are swimming in your pool.”

  Shanna raised one eyebrow. “Really.”

  “I’m a Stage Two, see, and it played out just like Charlie said it would. Two to six months, she said, and Harry and I had a great time for two-and-a-half and then split. No hard feelings.”

  “So all of you ride the Love Program merry-go-round forever?”

  “Oh, no. Four of the original group are already married. Three more are engaged. Six others are in those long-term thingies. What kind are those, Charlie?”

  “Stage Three. Exclusive committed relationship. Indefinite time-frame with probable conversion to Stage Four within seventeen months,” Charlie said through gritted teeth.

  “Yeah.” Meredith beamed. “That.”

  “Care to explain?”

  As much as inner-Bertha wanted Charlie to whack Shanna with a chair, she resisted, holding on to her temper by her fingertips. “The database is a probability predictor. It uses Big Data, unstructured social media feeds, and online statistics, exposing patterns of behavior, expectations, and target outcomes.”

  Shanna speared Meredith with her icicle glare. “She ever been wrong?”

  “Nope. Never. Not even once.”

  “This is the same model you use to justify your eligibility for the AGS position? How exactly does it translate to job matching?”

  “It’s the same principle. People have goals and values. Businesses have missions and culture. If you align—”

  Shanna waved her hand and cut Charlie off. “Whatever. I still don’t buy it.” She folded her arms and looked down her perfectly straight nose. “Suppose you prove it to me. Predict a match. Right now.”

  “I…I can’t. My data… It’s linked to my server. At home.”

  “But Charlie,” Meredith chirped, “you’re always telling us it lives in the sky.”

  Shanna’s smile should have been backed by the soundtrack from Jaws. “A cloud-hosted system. How convenient. You can use Meredith’s computer to connect. Then we’ll see whether your model is anything more than wish-fulfillment vaporware.”

  “I’ve shut down the study. The user group is disbanded. I can’t—”

  “Ooooh. Ooooh.” Meredith waved her hand in the air. “Pick me. Use me. Pleeeeeease?”

  “Not an option. Dr. Forrester dares to present herself as the perfect hire for our most prestigious client. If she knows enough about herself to make that claim, she should have no trouble making a match for herself using a program that’s been successful for so many others.”

  “Me? I wasn’t in the field study.”

  “You are now. Consider this the first s
creening for your job candidacy. A two-fold test. Prove you have the technical skills they require, plus the necessary social adeptness to succeed in their corporate environment.” Shana swung back and forth in her chair. “I’m not unreasonable. I don’t expect forever. One of those short-term relationships will do. The kind Meredith described.”

  “But I’m not a Stage Two. I’m more a Stage Less-Than-Zero.”

  “Then I suggest you learn to adapt. You have one month to prove yourself. If you can’t commit to a relationship lasting less than six months, how can I believe you’ll commit to AGS for the long-term?”

  A match for herself? Charlie pressed a fist into her belly, suddenly gone tight. She’d never managed better than 17 percent probability with any man in the matrix, including the Stage Ones, and they weren’t picky. “I’ve never tried to artificially force someone into a specific stage before. I’m not sure circumventing the data this way will—”

  “Look, either it works or it’s garbage. So how about it? Is your program garbage?”

  Nobody, nobody got away with questioning her code. Inner-Bertha roared and swung her two-handed axe. “Absolutely not.” She straightened her back. “If I do it, you’ll put my name back in the queue?”

  “I’ll do better than that. We’re screening candidates for the AGS job for the next month. If you succeed, I’ll send you. Hype you as the greatest thing since the silicon chip.”

  Inner-Bertha shifted uneasily, fingering her axe, waiting for the other stiletto to drop.

  “However. Fail, and not only will I block you from AGS in perpetuity, but I’ll terminate our agreement with you and post the results of our little wager on our website.” She leaned back, eyes glinting like a Siamese cat with a mouse under its paw. “What a golden PR opportunity for the ITS West brand. A smackdown between impersonal data and the proven, hands-on approach we’ve based our reputation on.”

  What choice did she have? If she failed, she’d lose AGS, but if she did nothing, she’d lose it anyway. “Well…okay.”

  Shanna leaned her elbows on the desk, lacing her fingers together. “Then by all means, have at it.”

  “Come on, Charlie. You can sit in my chair.” Meredith took Charlie’s unresisting hand and led her out of Shanna’s office. She tilted her head, as if looking sideways at Charlie’s faded brown shirt could make it look anything other than drab. “You want a chocolate milk or something?”

  “Just water, thanks.” Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll drown me.

  She sat on the edge of the chair, her hands damp on the keyboard. As confident as she was in her code, she had serious doubts that hacking her data to make her a temporary Stage Two would yield any reasonable results. If she couldn’t get a hit, would Shanna claim victory by default?

  Charlie set up her query, hit execute, and sent up a prayer to the data gods that “execute” wasn’t descriptive in more ways than one. The query churned for less than five seconds and returned a single name.

  Daniel Shawn. Probability index: 76%

  No. No, no, no. Impossible. Daniel wasn’t in the data pool. Oh lord. Yes he is. She’d added him to the matrix on Saturday night and never took him out again.

  Never take a data shortcut. Ever. It’ll always come back to bite you on the butt.

  Charlie whimpered, barely louder than the hum of the CPU fan, but Shanna must have had ears like a Ferengi under her perfect hair because she appeared at Charlie’s shoulder as if she’d teleported.

  “Done already? Perhaps you’re as efficient as all your evaluations claim. Let’s see what your famous statistical model tells us.”

  “No. I need to—” She tried to wipe the results, but Shanna nudged the chair aside and Charlie lost her grip on the mouse.

  Bracing her fingers on the desk, Shanna peered at the monitor. “Daniel Shawn. The Daniel Shawn?” She barked out a laugh. “This isn’t a serious predictive model. It’s no better than fantasy football for the lovelorn.” She pushed off the desk and glared down at Charlie. “If you can’t do any better than this, I should terminate you now. Daniel Shawn is way out of your league, Dr. Forrester. No offense.”

  Charlie bared her teeth in inner-Bertha’s melee grimace. “None taken.” This was AGS, damn it, her dream job. She’d do whatever it took. Somehow. “But I’m still not conceding.”

  “In that case, I suggest you get to work.” She strode to her office door, not looking back. “You have exactly thirty days to fall in love.”

  Chapter Five

  Geekronym: RTFM

  Translation: Read the fucking manual

  Definition: Response to a question that could easily have been answered by referring to readily available instructions.

  After he uploaded yet another dry-as-dust story for the latest issue of HTW, Daniel opened his notes on Argonne. He’d gotten enough hits against his list of target search terms to convince him something was brewing in the cyber-dating space.

  Philip’s do-I-or-don’t-I-have-a-date club, for instance. Something was definitely hinky there. Daniel had dug around online, but could find no website, no advertising, no way for anyone to sign up. That alone was enough to send up a dozen red flags. Argonne hadn’t used a website, either. His had been an invitation-only sting, targeting men who had something he wanted. Money. Property. Influence. Or, in Daniel’s case, power over the press.

  He pulled up his old list of informants. Most of them had bailed on him after Argonne and Trisha had made him look like a hack who couldn’t tell fact from fantasy, but it couldn’t hurt to reach out to a couple of the most reliable.

  Before he could craft a suitable email, the telltale aroma of stale Red Vines warned him of Nelson’s presence. He activated his screen saver as his boss moved into sight, the pink skin under his comb-over gleaming under the fluorescent lights.

  “You filed your story already, Shawn?”

  “Half hour ago. It wasn’t that tough.”

  Nelson grunted, chomping on his candy crack.

  Leaning his elbows on his desk, Daniel regarded his boss over interlaced fingers. “Have you ever considered that if we published stories aimed at readers who are interested in technology, but aren’t actual cyborgs, we might increase our circulation?”

  “I ask for your advice?”

  “No.”

  “Damn straight. My journal, Shawn. Not yours. You got a story to pitch to me that won’t frost the backers’ balls?”

  Since the backers opposed anything that smacked of opinion, even the most benign… “No.”

  “Then write your assigned stories and keep your ass out of my business. But in the meantime, you’re on archive duty. Here’s the instructions.” Nelson tossed the packet of stained, dog-eared papers onto Daniel’s desk. “Update the readership statistics. Shift everything but the last two months’ worth of articles onto the secondary server.”

  Daniel flipped through the document, noting all the scribbled marginal notes. Damn. And he’d thought his reporting assignments were mind-numbing. “Right. What’s the deadline?”

  Nelson shrugged. “ASAP. Should have no trouble with that since your story’s done.” He ambled out the door.

  Christ. At least he’d have plenty of time around the edges to chase down Argonne, and once he found the bastard, he could shake this shit job off his shoes and get on with his life.

  …

  When Gideon flung open the apartment door for his usual grand entrance, Charlie was still curled up on the sofa with Lindsay hovering nearby, plying her with iced tea and Milano cookies.

  “Lin, if you love me, scotch, and lots of it.” He stalked over to the sofa, sat on the arm opposite Charlie, and fell backward onto the cushions, flinging one arm to the side and the other one over his eyes.

  Lindsay handed him two fingers of scotch in his favorite cow tumbler. “Did you have a bad meeting?”

  “The
worst. Charles,” Gideon tilted his chin and looked at Charlie upside down, “how long do I—” He sat up, the scotch sloshing over the rim of the glass and onto his hand. “What happened? Why do you look like Joss Whedon just quit show biz for the pro bowler’s tour?”

  She heaved a sigh and struggled upright. “I have to get a date.”

  “This is news?” He sucked the spilled scotch off his fingers. “I’ve been telling you that forever.”

  “No. You don’t understand. I have to get a date. I’m required to get a date. I must get a date…” Charlie covered her face with Lindsay’s pillow, “or die.”

  “Charles, as much as I appreciate hyperbole—”

  “With Daniel Shawn,” she said, voice muffled by needlepoint hydrangeas.

  She heard the clink of Gideon’s glass on the coffee table. “No. Fucking. Way.”

  “Way. Stage Two commitment within thirty days.”

  He pulled the pillow off her face, and she blinked in the sudden light. “You ran yourself through the program? For pity’s sake, Charles, why subject yourself to a process guaranteed to make you miserable?”

  “I couldn’t help it. Bertha made me do it.”

  “Bertha? Your Cluster Realms avatar?”

  She nodded. “She may be strong, but her intelligence stat sucks.”

  “Charles.” Gideon’s voice swooped in warning and Charlie toppled over sideways, resuming the fetal position.

  “Shanna dissed my kung fu and I fell for it like a fool. Lord. I’m such a…a geektastrophe,” she wailed.

  “Stop that. The role of resident drama queen in this apartment is permanently occupied by moi.” Gideon tapped his lower lip. “You realize what this means?”

  She nodded. “I’m doomed.”

  “Maybe he’s your match. Ever think of that?”

  “Are you nuts?” She snatched the pillow back and tucked it under her chin. “Me and Daniel? It has to be a bug, or an artifact of faking my profile.”

  “I don’t know, Charlie.” Lindsay perched on the edge of the coffee table. “I think you should give Daniel a chance.” She took Charlie’s hand. “If you believe you’ll fail before you even start, you’ll…what do you call it?”