The Accidental Honeymoon
Page 10
The President of Emperor sends the message. She knows that she doesn’t have to worry about her department heads or their staff. In fact, she has only had to let go of less than ten people, for media leaks, in her 13 years as President of the company. However, she knows that all it takes it for one leak, or one aggressive reporter, to cause irreparable damage to the company. Michelle looks out the window and stares at the clouds. She looks at her watch and realizes that she has about three hours left on the plane. She decides to take a nice long nap. Michelle has a feeling that easy naps will be harder to come by in the next few months.
CHAPTER NINE
The most feared man in Silicon Valley is not a billionaire. He is not the CEO of one of the large tech companies. In fact, he is a blogger. But to call Tor Janz just another blogger is to say a T-Rex is simply another lizard. At six feet, five inches in height and a weight somewhere north of 350 pounds, Tor Janz is a bloated giant of a man, with long blonde hair, an unkempt beard and a collection of Skull rings designed to make him look more like an Oakland biker than a Silicon Valley blogger.
For the past 15 years, Tor has owned and operated The Silicon Valley Barbarian Blog. A tech gossip and news site that is known for breaking tech stories before the larger news outlets. However, breaking news is not the only reason why the blog is able to generate so much traffic. Tor’s controversial opinions and exposes on the private sex lives of Silicon Valley execs have also made his blog famous. With over 4 million pageviews a day, the Barbarian Blog is the most visited tech blog in the world, generating several million dollars a year, in ad revenue, for the bully blogger.
Tor has successfully parlayed his blog into a semi-annual Silicon Valley conference where the biggest names in tech as well as hungry new start-ups come to essentially look for the bully blogger’s approval. A positive mention on Tor’s blog can turn an unknown company into a hit. And a bad review can destroy new products or even entire careers. Today is day two of the Spring Barbarian Tech Conference. The biggest CEOs in tech have already shown up to be interviewed, interrogated and sometimes berated by the bully blogger who roasts his interview subjects before a crowd of two thousand attendees who paid $300 for the privilege of seeing Tor Janz expound his opinions.
Right now is the infamous question and answer session of the conference. This is the moment when anyone can ask Tor a question or solicit his opinion on any tech company or product. The massive blogger sits on a high back leather chair, looking out at the crowd as though they are his lowly subjects. Everyone in the room would love to ask Tor a question. Not all will. For Tor enjoys insulting just about anyone who addresses him.
Tor looks over at the line of six people brave enough to stand behind a microphone waiting to ask the bully blogger a question. A tall, skinny Indian programmer nervously grabs the microphone creating a bit of feedback.
“Hey, it’s a microphone. Not your boyfriend’s cock. You don’t have to grab the whole damn thing,” Tor yells out as some in the crowd giggle.
“Sorry, Mr. Janz.”
Tor looks at the nervous Indian programmer and asks him, “You didn’t come to my country to bomb it did you?”
“No, sir.”
“Alright, Osama Junior. Ask your question.”
“What do you think of the impending Emperor-IBS merger which has been announced this morning?”
There is a long pause. The silence is deafening. The dead air is broken by Tor’s heavy exhale into his microphone. “The merger will be a disaster. Ryan Wilde is unfit to run his own company. He is immature, reckless and an ego-manic. The shareholders will be committing suicide if they approve this merger,” Tor rants. Everyone in the room leans forward to hear more of Tor’s broadside on one of the richest men in Silicon Valley. Some of the other bloggers in attendance capture each word coming out of Tor’s mouth.
The blogger’s round face begins to turn red with anger. For the first time during the Q & A session, Tor stands up and stalks the stage. “Let me tell you something about Ryan Wilde. The man is nothing more than an immature child. His own board of directors should be replaced for not removing him from his CEO spot. I will personally make it my mission to ensure that this merger doesn’t go through for the sake of the shareholders!” the big blogger proclaims. He then looks around the room, gritting his teeth. “The Q & A is over. Thank you for giving me all your money. The conference is over. Beat it!” Tor tosses the microphone across the stage and heads for the exit. Tor storms his way to his black Mercedes CL65. He speeds back to his office. The entire time, he is thinking about Ryan. He resents the fact that Ryan is the only CEO who refuses to come to his conferences and offer his company’s products for review. For 15 years, Ryan has refused to kiss Tor’s ring and seek his approval. The bully blogger considers Ryan to be his number one enemy. He vows to destroy him.
****
Ryan’s personal jet lands at Palo Alto municipal airport. The CEO and Karin are driven back to the Ryan’s estate. The bride-to-be scans the various wedding planning sites, playfully imagining her fairytale wedding. Karin looks out of the window of the chauffeured Bentley and notices that it is nighttime. She is not tired. She remembers what her fiancee told her on the plane. “People don’t get tired. They just get tired of doing certain things.” Well, Karin is certainly not tired of mentally painting her Paris wedding in her head.
The couple arrives at Ryan’s estate at a little after 9 p.m. The each work long into the night. Ryan continues to correspond with various members of his engineering team. Karin continues to make plans for the wedding. At 2 a.m., they both fall asleep on the living room sofa. Their bodies close to each other, illuminated softly by the glows of their tablet computers.
****
Karin wakes to the strange sound of a heart beating against her ear. She looks up and notices that the side of her head is resting on the chest of her future husband. A man she admires and has grown to care about. A man whom she shares possibly the world’s most complicated relationship. She looks up at Ryan’s face. His eyes open slowly. He looks down and sees his future fiancee. It takes about a second for Ryan to realize that he has fallen asleep next to Karin. The CEO slowly strokes Karin’s hair. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Ryan.”
The CEO looks at the clock on his tablet computer. “9 a.m. It looks like we slept in.”
“Are we going to get in trouble?” Karin blurts out before she realizes that she is talking to the CEO of the company where she interns.
“Oh, maybe a little bit,” Ryan jokes. The CEO gets up and stretches his arms.
The couple goes to their respective bedrooms to change and get ready for work. It isn’t until Karin meets her future husband downstairs does she realize that her workday may be a little tenuous.
“Ryan?”
“Yes.”
“Is everyone going to hate me now that I am officially going to marry you?”
“What do you mean? At the company?”
“Yes.”
Ryan grabs his tablet computer and picks up his messenger bag. “Emperor is not like other workplaces. People don’t have time for gossip and nonsense. If you begin to feel self-conscious or uncomfortable, just focus on doing something productive. It has helped me.”
Ryan’s wise words instantly put the intern at ease. The couple gets into Ryan’s Audi R8 and head to the office.
They arrive at 9:30. As soon as Karin gets out of the car, she notices employees looking at her. For a moment, Karin turns away. The couple walks into the front doors open the building and now about a hundred Emperor employees are staring at the both of them. Karin’s face is so red that she can feel the heat emanating from her forehead. When the couple reach the fourth floor, Karin’s eyes are pretty much focused on the floor. She doesn’t dare look back up until she reaches Ryan’s office.
“Wow. Your face is red as a beet. Here, let me get you some water,” Ryan tells his future wife.
“I can feel everyone staring at me.”
“What’s that?”
“Go for a walk.”
“What?”
“Just go for a walk around the building. You will never feel comfortable until you are able to get over this,” Ryan tells her. “Here, take these pieces of paper and pretend to be taking them somewhere.” Karin is hesitant. “The best way to confront any fear is to simply confront the fear,” Ryan tells her.
Karin takes the papers and grabs the water. She slowly walks out of the office and begins to stroll down the hall. The first person she encounters is the President of the company, Michelle Ackerman. The second-in-command is too immersed in a phone conversation to acknowledge Karin’s presence. The young intern continues down the hall and encounters some other members of the executive staff.
After circulation one entire time around the more friendly confines of the fourth level, Karin decides to make her way down to the other floors of the building. She enters the elevator and presses the button for the ground level. The elevator stops at the third floor. Two engineers walk inside the elevator and freeze. They look at Karin. Karin looks at them. But to the engineers this isn’t just some intern. This is the boss’ fiancee. All of a sudden, the two employees are the ones feeling self-conscious.
“Hi,” Karin says softly.
“Hello,” the emasculated men respond. The two engineers stare at the elevator doors for the entire journey down to the first floor. When the doors open the engineers scatter away. Karin walks out, hoping to make her first non-awkward connection with anyone from the building.
Karin walks down the hallway. Everyone either looks at her or looks directly away from her. Karin decides to make her way to the cafeteria and grab something to drink. At least this would give her a purposeful mission in her walk around the company headquarters. Karin walks to the in-house Starbucks where a line of people is waiting to give their order to the barista. The employee directly in front of Karin turns around and realizes that the CEO’s fiancee is looking over his shoulder. “Oh, you can go ahead of me,” he tells Karin.
“Oh no. That’s okay. I’m in no rush.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Karin waits in line as she slowly becomes the center of attention. Now, the intern almost regrets waiting in line. When it is her turn, she orders a Vanilla Latte. The barista works in record time to get Karin’s order before anyone else’s drink. Karin smiles and takes the cup. As she grabs her order the barista notices Karin’s giant engagement ring. Karin self-consciously grabs the cup of latte with her other hand.
Now, the intern doesn’t know what to do next. She doesn’t want to walk around at the moment. She grabs a seat near the tall windows and stares out into the tree line while enjoying her drink. Karin takes her right hand and places it under the table.
As Karin continues drinking her latte, she notices several people at a nearby table are staring right at her. She turns her head and sees the other interns looking directly at her. Since these are one of the few other people - at the company - she actually knows, Karin decides to get up and say, “hello.”
“Hi, guys.”
All of the interns politely offer a “hello” in return. Though some are clearly uncomfortable since Karin is now engaged to the CEO of the company. One of the female interns offers a congratulations on the engagement. Karin is relieved that the ice has been broken. She sits down at the table and begins talk with the other interns. After a couple of minutes, some of the more brave interns begin to ask some probing questions about Ryan.
“What is his house like?”
“Have you been on his plane?”
“When are you getting married?’
Karin answers each question and tries her best to act as “normal” as possible. While most of the interns are able to converse normally with their former comrade, a couple of the interns appear clearly jealous at Karin’s good fortune. The engaged intern can sense the “death stares” from the two jealous interns. Though she tries her best to deflect their negative energy with the other eight interns who appear friendly to Karin.
“I have to get back to work,” Karin mentions. “I hope everyone gets an offer to stay here. It would be nice if we could all hang out.” Karin gets up and leaves. She is hoping that by building good will with the interns that her life around the office will be more comfortable. The engaged intern makes her way back to the fourth floor. Most of her anxiety is gone. She is still bothered by the fact that a couple of people simply don’t like her because she is engaged to marry the CEO. Perhaps they will be happy when the marriage is dissolved a year after the wedding, Karin thinks to herself.
Karin walks back into Ryan’s office. The CEO is gone. For a moment, she is uncomfortable about being in the office alone. She pops her head out of the office and asks Ryan’s personal secretary, “Is it okay if I stay in the office?”
“Um, sure,” the secretary responds somewhat nervously, knowing that she is responding to her boss’ future wife.
“Okay, thanks.”
Karin sits down at one of Ryan’s chairs and grabs her tablet computer. She begins to respond to some e-mails when Ryan walks through the office with Michelle.
“Sat-Phone production for the Asia market are all on schedule. We have 200 million units ready to go,” Michelle tells Ryan.
“Great. The China market could end up being bigger than the U.S.”
“I hear that people are already lining up for the phone.”
“Really? The phone is not coming out for another three weeks.”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Well, tell the store owners to check up on the people in line. Bring them blankets or lunch or something,” Ryan tells his second-in-command.
“Will do.”
Michelle leaves the office. Ryan turns his attention to his future wife who appears calmer than just an hour before. “How was the walk?” Ryan asks.
“Uncomfortable at first. People treated me so oddly. Either, they were really, really nice or scared of me.”
Ryan sits down next to her and offers his advice. “Just remember. It’s everyone around you that has changed. You are still the same. When I started to find success at my company, I encountered the same thing. And I have to admit, sometimes things got to my head. When people praised me, I became full of myself. When people criticized me, I wanted to fight them. For a while, I became dominated by other’s perception of me. But there is only one perception that matters - your own. Only you have the right to make you feel uncomfortable.”
Karin leans on her future husband’s shoulders. “You always seem to know just what to say.”
“Well, I’ve been there. I know what all this sudden attention is like.”
“I hope I can become as even-headed as you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself completely even headed. There are still people who can get to me.”
****
Tor Janz sits at the head of the conference room table eating his lunch. The seven members of his editorial staff at Barbarian Media are used to watching their 350-pound boss eat through their daily status meetings. The sight of the pony-tailed, round face, pale blogging King of Silicon Valley doesn’t bother the underpaid writers. The smell is another story. The windowless room reeks of deli meat and mayonnaise. Add to that the body odor, emanating from the overworked staff, and you have what is perhaps the least glamorous sweatshop in town.
Barbarian Media boasts seven tech oriented websites. Covering everything from new gadgets to tech industry news, the blogging network rules over the valley from a rather modest office warehouse in Palo Alto. The offices themselves are rather bare bones, with the exception of Tor’s opulent executive suite clad in leather sofas, vintage toys, a personal bathroom and about $200,000 worth of electronics.
As Tor licks the mayonnaise from his fingers, he stares out over his staff. “For the next s
ix months, all seven websites have one mission - we are going after Ryan Wilde. I want to see this Emperor-IBS merger blow up in his face. That piece of shit thinks he’s too good to come to my conferences and give me advanced looks at his products, then fuck him!” Tor yells as bits of ham and bread fly from his mouth.
“How do we proceed?” one of the editors asks.
“The first thing we need to do is dig up every old scandal we’ve got on Ryan. The stories about the sex parties, the fight he got into at Sun Valley four years ago. That arrest in that San Fran hotel for disorderly conduct. I want the shareholders of IBS to get scared of him.”
All the editors dutifully jot down their boss’ orders, Tor sips on his 64 ounce fountain soda while digging his fingers into the large brown grocery bag containing the blogger’s lunch. He pulls out a second giant deli sandwich and begins to dig into it. “And I want you to look into the execs at IBS. Let them know if they are going to do business with Ryan Wilde, that they are not safe from my scrutiny. I want no less than five stories a day on the Emperor-IBS merger and Ryan Wilde. Is that understood?!”
“Yes,” all the editors respond.
“I want you to delve deep into his private life. Find stuff that we can embarrass him with. Go talk to any of his ex-employees or ex-girlfriends.”
“You heard that Ryan is getting married, right?” one of the editors asks Tor.
“Yeah, who the fuck is this chick?”
“Her name is Karin Davis.”
“Who?! Show me a picture of her!”
The editors frantically try to find a photo. One of them raises his hand. “I’m putting her photo up on the main screen,” the editor responds. Tor looks up at the sixty-inch flat screen on the west wall of the office. A photo of Karin appears. The hefty blogger furrows his brow as he stares at the intern. “She doesn’t look like a model. Is she an actress or something?”