Terminated

by Ray Daniel

  Nate said, “You’ve got a consulting job. Congratulations.” He started walking toward the conference rooms in the back of the hotel.

  “What am I doing?”

  “You’re my special assistant.”

  “Do I get paid?” I asked, crafty businessman that I am.

  “Sure.”

  “What do I get paid?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to know why you fired me.”

  Nate stopped walking. He put his hand on my shoulder. “There’s so much water under that bridge,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I stepped out from under his hand so that it fell to his side.

  “It’s just that—well—the reasons are complicated.”

  “Are you dodging the question?” I asked.

  “I just have trouble seeing what you’d gain from the discussion,” Nate said.

  “I think they call it closure.”

  “I doubt it would give you closure,” said Nate. He crossed his arms. “It just doesn’t seem relevant.”

  “Well, that’s what I want. Take it or leave it. Do you want me to work on this Bronte thing or don’t you?” I wasn’t much of a negotiator. My engineering side thought that all that posturing and positioning were bullshit. Nate knew that, and he knew that if he didn’t give me what I wanted, I would walk.

  He took a deep breath. “OK. Meet me at Ciao Bella at six tonight. I’ll buy you dinner and tell you what happened.”

  “Deal.” We shook.

  “Bronte Software is across the street at the convention, setting up their booth. Why don’t you go check it out?”

  “Tell me again why we care about Bronte?”

  “Because Jack wants to buy them for fifty million dollars.”

  “Why does Jack want to buy them?”

  “He says ‘technology.’”

  “They’ve got technology worth fifty million?”

  “How should I know? That’s your job now. Head over to the convention hall and pick up a badge and a show pass. See you tonight at six.”

  Nate left me standing in the large atrium of the Boylston Suites Hotel. A koi fish bobbed to the surface and looked at me. I put out my empty hands and said, “Sorry, pal, I got nuthin’.” I headed out of the hotel and across the street to the convention hall.

  eight

  I had gone to every SecureCon trade show for the past decade, and I had to admit that I enjoyed this orgy of marketing. MantaSoft brought its engineers to the show to make customers feel like technical partners in product development. We would give presentations, answer questions, and glad-hand the IT geeks who bought our software. I felt a familiar jolt of anticipation as I walked into the place.

  “Tucker!” A shrill, happy voice called across the convention lobby. It was Shelly, the receptionist from the local MantaSoft office. I’d known Shelly for years. We’d sort of grown up together. We joined MantaSoft at the same time, went on double dates with our future spouses, and even got married within a few months of each other. Shelly had started having children immediately.

  Today she was round and happy, apparently pregnant again. This would be her fourth.

  I said, “Shelly!” and gave her a big hug around her belly. “When are you due?”

  Shelly looked confused. “Due? What do you mean due?”

  Uh oh.

  I stammered, “Err—ah—due to—”

  “Are you saying I’m fat?”

  “No! No. I would never—”

  Shelly laughed. “Ha! I’m just screwing with you.” She chucked me on the arm. “Don’t you know better than to guess that a woman’s pregnant? I’m seven months along. Nate called and told me to get you some badges. Here’s one for the show, and here’s one for the

  office. Nate said that you were contracting with us. I think that’s great. It’ll be nice to have you around. I felt so bad for you when you left. Is everything OK now? What are you doing?”

  I had let the waves of Shelly’s chatter wash over me and didn’t register the question. After a long silence, I realized it was my turn to talk. “Oh, I’m taking over for Alice Barton for a few days.”

  Shelly’s eyes filled. She said, “Oh. Of course.”

  “So you heard.”

  “Yes. The police were here. They asked everyone about Alice. Of course, it was odd that she died and Carol died, given that they—” Shelly reddened.

  “That they what?” I asked.

  “Um. That they both did the same job on the same project.”

  “Is that all that they did together?”

  Shelly reached up and gave me a peck on the cheek. She said, “I gotta go, hon. It’s time to get the booth ready for the show.”

  She turned and scurried away, leaving me standing in the lobby. I considered chasing her, badgering her, getting her to give me an answer. But I knew that she’d just clam up, and then I’d be some jerk harassing a pregnant lady. I tweeted:

  Why is the husband always the last to know?

  nine

  I walked into the trade show and remembered why the Sunday before the show opened was my favorite day. Workers rolled blue carpet over the bare concrete between the booths. The booths were set up in rows and columns with the carpet acting as streets and avenues.

  By Sunday afternoon all the companies in the show had erected their booths. Colorful walls, bright signs, and flashing computer monitors promised the untold riches that would be saved by each security innovation. Some booths had little theaters where twenty people could sit and watch a pitch. The presenters were practicing in front of empty chairs. Others relied upon videos to attract attention. The technicians in these booths were checking sound levels.

  I decided to check out the MantaSoft booth before moving on to Bronte. As it was every year, the booth was enormous, taking up an entire trade-show block. The black manta logo was suspended from the ceiling with the slogan “Revolutionary Security” underneath. As I got closer, I saw a replica of the Minuteman Statue from Lexington.

  As usual, the logic of the marketing dweebs escaped me. The Minutemen were America’s first militias. They were crazy guys with guns who didn’t like the government. It seemed that MantaSoft was supposed to protect companies from people like the Minutemen. On the other hand, it was a cool way to acknowledge the show’s location. Perhaps I was being too logical.

  I was meandering around the empty booth when I saw a guy who was definitely not part of the Revolutionary Software theme. He was Roland Baker, a British asshole in a gray suit.

  There are very few things I hate. I hate the New York Yankees. I hate tripe. I hate warm Coke and flat beer. I hate talk radio. I hate assholes who stand up at baseball games and wave their arms trying get the rest of the crowd to rise. I hate golf. Yet if you took all those things and wrapped them up in a big wad of hatred, I would hate the wad less than I hated Roland Baker.

  The man was a scumbag who came to work at MantaSoft a year ago. I wasn’t even sure who hired him, but somehow he got assigned to my project, Rosetta. He was the kind of guy who knew that he sounded smarter being negative than positive, so he would argue with every decision just for show. He’d ask generic questions like “What is your backup plan in case your current backup plan doesn’t work?” He wore a suit to work in an engineering group. He never wrote code, but he was fantastic at ingratiating himself to Jack. The day Nate fired me, Roland became the lead on Rosetta. It was like seeing your puppy given to Cruella de Vil.

  Roland didn’t see me because he was yelling at a young woman half his size. The small, attractive woman was looking at Roland and nodding as he yelled at her. I decided to see if she needed rescuing and sauntered over. Roland was facing away from me, so I snuck up on him.

  “Well, bloody well fix it!” said Roland in his Monty Python British accent. I despised that accent
. Whenever I heard Roland talk, I expected to see a sixteen-ton weight fall on him.

  She was about to respond when I tapped him on the shoulder. “Displaying the leadership skills that made you what you are today, eh, Roland?”

  Roland whirled as if he’d heard a gunshot. “Tucker? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I was going to take my old job back. But seeing as you’re doing it so well, I’ve decided to stay retired.”

  “You bloody well had better stay retired. Nate fired you for a reason.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Where did you get that badge? Does Jack know about this?”

  The woman had been watching our exchange. She was a petite blonde with a curvy body wrapped in a T-shirt and jeans. Her conference badge said her name was Dana Parker. Dana edged out of my field of vision as I sparred with Roland.

  I said, “Jack knows. I wouldn’t worry if I were you. They haven’t asked me to fix the mess you made of Rosetta.”

  Roland gave me a hard look. He said, “What mess? What have you heard?”

  “Heard? I haven’t heard anything, but you’ve been running this thing for over six months. It’s got to be a mess by now.”

  “Sod off. If Nate didn’t hire you to look after Rosetta, then what are you doing?”

  “I’m doing market research for biteme.com. I’m sure you’ve heard their motto: Bite me.”

  Roland tilted his head, and I could his eyes shifting as he thought. “Market research? You’re just a stupid code jockey. That’s why you lost your job. You wouldn’t recognize a market if you stepped in it.”

  “Ooh. We are a testy little Brit today. What’s the matter, Roland? Code out of control?”

  Instead of answering, Roland looked over my shoulder. The cute blonde was back and had one finger pointed up as she tried to get a word in. Roland looked at her and said, “What?”

  “Are we done?” she asked.

  “Yes. Now go and fix your code.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dana turned to me and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She stuck out her hand and we shook. It was an odd, fishy handshake. When it was over, I was holding a slip of paper. I put the paper into my pocket before Roland could see it.

  “Goodbye,” Roland said to Dana. He turned back to me. “I don’t know what you are bloody well doing here, but I will find out.”

  “You go, Sherlock.”

  I turned and left. I took Dana’s note out of my pocket. It had been hastily scribbled on a MantaSoft business card. The card had the logo shaped like a black manta fish with the wings of a stingray and a whip-like tail. Dana’s full name was next to the logo: Dana Parker. Her title was under the name: Principal Software Engineer.

  That had been Carol’s job.

  I flipped the card over and saw purple ink on the back. She had written the note in a strong feminine hand. The loops and whirls said, “Newbury Street Starbucks at 3. Help!”

  ten

  You can learn a lot about companies from the way they present themselves at a trade show. Bronte was no exception. Its blue booth was dominated by a large, cylindrical saltwater aquarium filled with sharks. The sharks were three to four feet long and swam in lazy counterclockwise circles. The slogan emblazoned across the tank was “Move or Die.” Bronte was not a subtle company.

  When I arrived at the booth, two engineers were standing in front of the tank debating shark species. I could tell they were engineers because neither one knew what he was talking about, but both were certain they were right.

  “It’s a leopard shark,” said the first, who wore sandals and carried a man-purse.

  “No, it’s a nurse shark,” said the second in a Red Sox cap, a green logo shirt, and jeans.

  “No. It’s a leopard shark. You can tell by the spots.”

  “What spots?”

  “The spots behind the gills,” said man-purse.

  “Those aren’t leopard shark spots,” countered Sox cap.

  “OK, Mr. Spot.” He snorted at his own pun. “What kind of spots are they?”

  “They’re just spots. It’s a nurse shark. Look at the teeth.”

  “Why would a nurse shark have teeth like that? Those belong to a leopard shark.”

  “I had all the Jacques Cousteau books growing up, and that is not a leopard shark.”

  “It’s not my fault you didn’t read them …”

  A fat geek stuffed into a Bronte T-shirt saved me before I threw myself into the tank. The T-shirt was white, with a bloody shark-shaped bite taken out of the side. The guy would have lost his kidney. The slogan “Move or D …” was stenciled across the shirt, cut off by the shark bite. The kid in the shirt said, “Holy crap! Aren’t you Tucker? The Tucker?”

  I said, “I’m a Tucker.”

  “You wrote the Nappy Time virus!”

  Ah yes, the virus. Some things you never live down. Bill Buckner had the ’86 World Series, and I had the Nappy Time virus. The virus came from an experiment I had done in college. I had been messing around with making a computer go to sleep based on how rapidly the user typed the keys. The childish and cruel (but very funny) idea was that the machine would most likely go to sleep just before a deadline.

  I was curious to see if the program could spread itself to other machines through the Internet, so I wrote a little bit of code that used the computer’s network connection to copy the program to other machines. The rudimentary security of that age was no match for my programming, and the Nappy Time virus was born.

  Once I had the virus, I wrote a program for Kevin that cataloged all the pictures on his computer by the percentage of skin tone in them. It was a porn filter turned on its head. Instead of blocking the porn, it found it. I hid the virus in the porn-finder and emailed the program to him. I never expected him to forward it to his friends.

  Nobody could prove that I wrote the Nappy Time virus, but I did get credit for it in the hacker community. It had made me famous among the kind of people who would argue over leopard sharks and nurse sharks.

  “I was never convicted of writing that virus.”

  The kid in the shirt smirked. “Yeah. Right. Convicted.”

  “OK. You got me. I’m Tucker. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Kurt Monroe.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m the Director for Product Engineering.”

  Bingo.

  “Think you could give me a demo? I’d love to see what you guys do.”

  “A demo? Sure I’d lo—” The kid’s eyes got wide as he looked over my shoulder. He said, “Oh. Hello, Ms. Bronte. Do you know Aloysius Tucker?”

  A familiar, but tight, voice said, “Oh yes. I know Tucker very well.”

  I spun and there, resplendent in a business suit that identified her as a Captain of Industry, was Ms. Bronte. Also known as Maggie.

  eleven

  My brain locked as I struggled to place the drunk, naked, and passionate Maggie of last night with the sober, fashionable, and cold Maggie who stood before me. Seeing her with her arms crossed and her blue eyes boring into mine, I said the only thing that came to mind.

  “Hi, Maggie!”

  Kurt looked at me as if I had called Darth Vader “Ani.” He stammered out, “I was just talking to Tuck—”

  Maggie ignored Kurt and said, “My name is Margaret.”

  I said, “OK.”

  “Margaret Bronte,” she continued.

  “I was just—” Kurt started again.

  Margaret turned on him. “Kurt, please go check on the servers. I will handle Mr. Tucker.”

  “But the servers are—”

  Margaret’s eyes flashed and Kurt was gone. Perhaps the force was strong in her after all.


  When I saw Maggie, I was happy and surprised. Then I was confused and surprised. Now I was annoyed and surprised, but mostly annoyed. It was obvious that Maggie, now Margaret, had not simply lusted after my trim runner’s body. She wanted something else, and I was going to find out what it was.

  After Kurt had evaporated, I pointed at the “Bronte Software” sign and asked, “Is there a Mr. Bronte?”

  Margaret said, “Absolutely not. This is my company.” She grasped my shoulder and started to guide me toward the curtains at the back of her booth. Like all small companies, Bronte had been relegated to the edge of the show, where a blue curtain hung from a metal frame to make a wall. There was a gap in the curtain. Margaret parted it and urged me through.

  I walked past the curtain, and the show disappeared. We were standing on a bare concrete floor twenty yards wide that ran across the back of the hall. The gray concrete shone, reflecting the overhead lights. We were alone. Now I could get some answers.

  Margaret got in my face. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean stalking me to my booth? Calling me ‘Maggie’? Embarrassing me in front of my employees?”

  “I wasn’t stalking you.”

  “So why are you here?”

  I stammered, “Nate sent me here.”

  Margaret stepped back and said, “Nate? Nate Russo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why in the hell would you have anything to do with that old fossil?”

  “He hired me.”

  Margaret cocked her head. “From what I heard, he fired you. And probably did more.”

  “More than what?”

  “More than fire you from one job. I think he made you unhireable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh come on, Tucker, think! Are you working right now?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t that strike you as strange? You were the author of the Nappy Time virus.”