by Sadie Hayes
“Pretty, huh?” Chad smiled at her, seeming genuinely happy to introduce Amelia to this new world.
Amelia was panting from the exercise and the cold, but smiled openmouthed and nodded.
“Let’s go,” Chad said, pushing into his poles and whizzing off down the hill. Amelia took a deep breath and followed, carefully gliding her skis right and left through the powder.
When they got to the bottom of the mountain, Chad gestured to a cabin. “Want to grab a drink? This place is the whole reason to do that run.”
She nodded. Everything else Chad had suggested had been great; why stop now?
They unclipped their skis and entered a large room with low ceilings and wooden walls. Two fireplaces blazed on the side wall and a long wooden table stretched through the center of the room, which was filling up with exhausted but exhilarated skiers like them.
“Find a table. I’ll get us some drinks,” Chad said, moving toward the bar.
Amelia unbuckled her boots so it was easier to walk and plodded close to the fireplace, where a couple was leaving a small two-top table.
Chad returned with a beer and a mug of mulled wine. “Try this. I think you’ll like it.” He handed her the mug.
She sipped the hot sugared wine and felt the liquid heat spread through her blood. It was delicious.
They made small talk for a while and ordered another round. Amelia liked Chad, but she didn’t feel the same desire for him that she had felt for Sundeep or—she’d admit it now that she’d had two glasses of wine—for T.J.
“So I have to make a confession,” Chad said. “I decided last night I needed to be nice to you for two reasons: The first was that I think you’re going to be a big deal, and I want to be a venture capitalist, and I’m hoping if you like me, you’ll pick me as your next investor. And, secondly, I really, really, really need to make sure you’ll never say anything about me and Patty.”
Amelia’s heart dropped. Why did attractive men always have an ulterior motive for paying attention to her?
“And I’m telling you this because I realize I sound like a scumbag, as if I was only nice to you because I needed something. But I’ve had a really amazing time today and I think you’re a really good person and I feel like I owe you that honesty. And that really is honest. I mean, I’m not just saying it.”
Amelia swallowed. “It’s okay. People like you only ever talk to me if they need something.”
“No!” Chad exclaimed. “I mean, yes, I did that, but it was a mistake.”
Amelia shook her head, looking down at her lap.
“I mean, if people do that, that’s their problem, not yours. You are so much more than a good programmer. Or a good skier. You’re really, really cool and fun to be around. Don’t let people pigeonhole you.”
Amelia looked into his eyes and somehow she knew he wasn’t lying. “Do you mean that?”
“Yes! Really!” He nodded rapidly to make the point.
She laughed at his enthusiasm. “I know you’re not a bad guy.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” She smiled in agreement.
“Because ever since the wedding, I’ve really wondered.”
She grimaced. “You don’t seem like the guy who questions your actions.”
“I fundamentally reject regrets,” he said, “but looking back on it, part of me wishes I’d tried to do something. I wish I hadn’t just stood there, paralyzed, and let Shandi leave. She may not have been what I ultimately wanted, but I didn’t try to figure out what had happened.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But I think—well, when it happened, there was this real fight-or-flight instinct. And I realized that people, when they’re confronted with that kind of shock, they either fight to get to the bottom of it or they just run away. And maybe I didn’t fight because I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted, but maybe I didn’t fight because I’m just…”—he shrugged—“the kind of guy who flees.”
Amelia felt a pinch in her stomach. Did he know about Doreye? Was he talking about her?
Amelia spun her empty mug in a circle on the table. “Do you think I should fight for my company? Should I fight for Doreye?” she said softly.
“That depends on what kind of a person you are,” Chad answered unhesitatingly, and Amelia got the sense telling her this had been the point all along.
“What if I fight and lose it anyway?”
“What if you flee but could have gotten it back?”
Amelia nodded without looking up. “I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?” he challenged.
“I mean, I can’t stay here. I have to leave, Chad. Can you take me to the bus station tonight?”
Chad nodded, his lips curling into a smile. “There’s one in Reno. It will take us an hour.”
“Great.” She nodded, piecing everything together in her brain.
“Where are you going to go?”
“Home,” she said. “To Indiana.”
45
99 Problems but a Glitch Ain’t One
“It’s been a while since we met, and I wanted to check in to update you on our progress this quarter,” Adam said, smiling coyly at Ross and the hyenas. His heart sank realizing Lucy wasn’t coming—her internship had ended last week—but just as well: better to focus on the good news he had about Doreye.
Ross frowned; he wasn’t deaf to the rumors that had been flying about Doreye.
Adam stood at the head of the room, a clicker for the slide show in one hand and the other jammed in the pocket of a new pair of designer jeans he’d purchased for this occasion.
“I won’t try to hide from you that we were slowed down by Amelia’s departure. But it was short-term pain for a good long-term decision: We’re on a better track now than we’ve ever been.”
He clicked to the next slide.
“As you can see from this timeline, over one month ago the app kept crashing. The CPU required to control multiple devices or find multiple objects was too large. This made the app dead in the water.”
Next slide.
“At first we tried to simply increase the memory usage, but as you can see, this led to a significant increase in the size of the app, which would make it impossible to download and would never be approved by Apple.”
Next slide.
“So instead we took a hiatus to study the iPhone and learn how competitors keep memory usage low for complicated tasks.”
Next slide.
“We discovered most of them don’t. It turns out Doreye is the most advanced software out there, but unfortunately, software as advanced as ours simply can’t run on the current generation of smartphones. Rather than dumb down our product, we used this huge problem as an inspiration for our next big innovation.”
Next slide.
“It got us thinking outside the box and collaborating as a team.” Adam beamed because it was true. Over the last few weeks, the full team had had seven all-nighters, not because Adam had demanded it but because they had all wanted to stay to work out the problem. They’d ordered stacks of pizza and consumed gallons of Red Bull, but every moment had been filled with the adrenaline-laden excitement of being on to something.
“And we discovered that we can be the forefront of a movement. We can be a leader in a whole new field. We can innovate the next big thing.”
Next slide.
“The cloud,” Adam said, looking at the screen, where he’d inserted a picture of a fluffy white cloud with the text “DOREYE” in the middle. “It’s not just for uploading pictures and sharing files. We can use the cloud for much, much more.”
He looked at the hyenas, who were looking at Ross glaring at him, unsure whether to applaud or kick him out for being delusional.
“We’ve discovered a way to outsource our processing, our algorithm, and our database to the cloud. Now, the app will not only do everything we promise without crashing the phone, the Doreye software will actually run faster than it ever did before. We
use our own servers and our own supercomputers to do the heavy lifting.”
Ross Brown cleared his throat. “All due respect, Adam, but why hasn’t Apple thought of this?”
“No demand,” Adam explained. “If they had our level of technology, they would build a new iPhone to support it. They’ll have a hard time catching up, too: We’re too advanced for the next several generations of the iPhone.”
“Don’t you have to have some kind of contract with a cloud provider to pull this off?” Ross began his inquisition. “And won’t that provider charge a precious fee when they discover they’re integral to your system?”
“We’ve actually got a contractor lined up, a British company who’s eager to partner.”
Adam grinned. The Hewlett-Packard innovation his drunken cellmate Jeremy had been working on was the patented code required to outsource all the data and processes to the cloud. The PHOENIX drive gave him the code he needed, but Ross was right: It was worthless without a supplier with supercomputers.
Adam had thought he was finished, but then he struck gold again.
When he had complained to Violet about his latest dilemma, she laughed: Didn’t Adam know that the holding company she worked for in London had a cloud-computing company, and that the whole reason she was in Silicon Valley was to find California partners? It was almost too good to be true.
“Moreover,” Adam went on, “the British partnership will be a great way to get us an entry point into the UK market, which we expect will be the next after our U.S. launch.”
“Which will be when?” Ross Brown asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“We are submitting to Apple next week. We should be good to go live two weeks from today.” Adam grinned. It was a full two months ahead of schedule.
“You’re sure you’re ready?” Ross asked.
“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
46
Run://Program
A city bus dirty with the grimy gray muck of salt-treated snowy roads stopped at a run-down street corner and deposited Amelia Dory, weighed down by her canvas duffel, onto the sidewalk.
It was early morning and the streets were quiet. She took a deep breath, her exhale blowing white in the cold winter air, and took in the formerly familiar surroundings before adjusting her bag on her shoulder and beginning her walk.
When she arrived at the front door, she let her bag fall to the ground and closed her eyes before she reached out for the doorbell.
There was no answer, and Amelia felt part of her try to convince the other part of her that this was a sign: Going back to Indiana was a mistake.
She heard footsteps inside and braced herself for the opening door.
Michael Dawson’s face was plastered with surprise at the sight of his visitor, his mouth trying but failing to find words. Amelia stood patiently, not saying anything until the color returned to his face and he let out a laugh. “The famous Amelia Dory. Well, well, well.”
“Hello, Mr. Dawson,” she said shortly. “May I come in?”
He turned his broad, fatherly frame to allow her to pass into the home where she and Adam had spent the years before she went to prison. Amelia walked in, pulling her bag behind her, immediately taken with the familiar smell of the house, a mix of bacon and carpet cleaner and cinnamon-scented candles that flooded her brain with memories.
She tried to ignore the old images and feelings flashing through her brain. She hadn’t made the trip from California back to Indiana to rehash old problems; she’d made it to solve new ones.
For the very same reasons she hated her con-artist foster father, Amelia needed him now. He was the partner she required to defeat whoever or whatever was controlling Doreye and take the company back.
Amelia knew she couldn’t do it alone. She was too good to see the truth; she needed someone more ethically … flexible.
She paused in the foyer and looked around. Nothing had changed: The same woven afghan was thrown over the same brown couch; the same beige carpet lined the stairs; the same mirror hung above the same side table where Dawson’s car keys were familiarly thrown.
Amelia walked without being invited to the kitchen. Michael Dawson followed and they sat across from each other at the table, his eyebrows scrunched. She didn’t take off her coat. He didn’t offer her anything and she didn’t ask.
“I need you to come to Silicon Valley,” she said bluntly.
He smiled sardonically. “What? No pleasantries?”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at him, her hands folded in front of her on the table.
“Although I would love a little sunshine, I can’t.” His face lost its laugh. “I’m on parole, remember? From when you sent me to jail?”
“How often does your parole officer check in with you?” She ignored the jab.
“Once a month.”
“When was the last time he came?”
“Two days ago.”
“Good. We’ve got twenty-eight days, then. It won’t take longer than that.”
Dawson looked suspiciously at her. He had changed these past three years: His thick hair had begun to gray above the ears and his skin looked worn. But his crisp brown eyes still had the same smoothness of selfish ambition.
“What are we doing?” he asked after a moment, then quickly corrected, “That is, if I decide to join you?”
“We’re getting my company back.”
“From who?”
“That’s what I need you to help me figure out.”
“Why me?”
“You’re chaotic and selfish and don’t follow the rules. You see things I can’t.”
Dawson pursed his lips, and smiled wryly at her deliberate rudeness.
“I’ll give you equity in the company,” she offered.
Dawson studied her. “How much?”
“Two percent.”
“On what condition?”
“That we get the company back.”
He considered for a moment. “That all?”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s it.” Amelia knew her old foster father well enough to understand what pushed his buttons; Dawson didn’t care as much about the cash as he did about the hunt. He wanted a challenge, and her hunt in California was far more interesting than any mischief he could find in Indiana.
He knew this, too. “When do we leave?”
“Tomorrow. There’s an eight A.M. bus. It’ll take two days to get there, but I’ll use the time to explain everything.”
He nodded and let out a laugh. “Who’d ever have thought it, eh? Michael Dawson and Amelia Dory, forming a team.”
Amelia reached her hand out to finalize the transaction, ignoring the statement. “So we have a deal?”
Dawson accepted her hand and shook it firmly. “You’ve got yourself a partner. Let’s go get your company back.”
Part III
Reboot
47
Keg Stand for Principle
“One hundred thousand!” Arjun’s arms were victoriously thrown up in the air and everyone in the room cheered him on. A bottle of champagne popped as the number on the computer monitor climbed to 100,001 … 100,002 … a steady clip of twelve unique downloads every second.
Just over two hours had passed since the Doreye app launched, but it was already a massive success. If this momentum continued, they would average one million downloads per day. The release team at Apple called T.J. and Adam to tell them they were the number one trending app, the fastest to achieve such status in Apple’s history. The downtown Palo Alto office of Doreye Inc. was alive with employees, reporters, investors, and friends who had come for the party that started at 8:03, the minute Doreye went live, chosen in honor of Adam and Amelia’s August 3rd birthday.
The last two weeks had been a flurry of press campaigns to hype up the launch; everyone had expected a massive rush of subscribers this morning, but one hundred thousand users in fewer than three hours was beyond anyone’s expectations. And the new users were
n’t just from Silicon Valley. The engineers used the real-time Doreye data and Google Maps to project a map of the United States onto a flatscreen in the office living room, and a yellow dot appeared for every new log-in: The map was speckled in yellow from California to Florida.
“Kansas loves Doreye!” an engineer’s girlfriend shouted from the monitor, clearly tipsy from too much champagne as she said cheers to no one in particular and took a big gulp.
“We’re up to fourteen downloads a second!” Arjun announced with an enthusiastically hoarse voice.
“Taco truck is here!” T.J. called from the front door, sparking another round of hoorays as revelers left their perches at the craft-beer kegs and headed outside for freshly prepared carnitas from the food truck hired specially for the occasion.
“Get you one?” Bruce, one of the hyenas from PKC, put a hand on Adam’s shoulder.
“No thanks.” Adam forced a close-lipped smile. “But you better go get one before they’re gone.”
Bruce agreed and eagerly moved past. Adam stuffed a hand in his pocket and took a sip of Gatorade from his post in the corner, watching the line of jubilant taco-eaters speaking over one another about the massive success of the company of which he was COO.
This was the day they’d been building toward for a full year, the moment Adam had been imagining and dreaming about since he’d seen the first e-mail Roger Fenway sent his sister; for a year he allowed himself to think the world he’d witnessed at T. J. Bristol’s graduation party could be his.
So why didn’t he feel better about this?
Maybe it was because he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in the past month—he’d been at the office nonstop, occasionally leaving to get a change of clothes or do some laundry on campus, even less frequently leaving to go to his spring quarter classes. The cot in the nap room upstairs had become his permanent bed, and he’d seen the delivery guys from respective pizza, Chinese, and Indian restaurants on University Avenue more than he’d seen anyone outside of Doreye.