Take Two, a serialized story (Part II)

Work on Pandemonium scuffles until an unexpected hero emerges; Java Jive closes; Lou finds a distraction.

Penn was furious. She was in the parking lot as I walked into the building. We decided to take a few laps around the building.

Jonathan had gotten under her skin as only Jonathan could. She proceeded to tell me what happened. Repeating the story just made her angrier and angrier. I gave her my most sympathetic nod and waited for her to cool down.

One thing I learned about Jonathan was that he didn’t vary. Jonathan yesterday, today, and tomorrow. What could change was how you reacted to him; and with that you could denude him of his powers. But time and place, so I postponed that talk for later. When Penn finally eased up on the pedal and looked over to me, I said instead “If it’s any consolation, I believe Jonathan dies this weekend.” I knew his Civil War re-enactors were doing the battle of Fredericksburg and he was part of the forlorn hope, the Michigan Seventh.

“Not nearly soon enough,” Penn said. Then she looked over at me, thought awhile and said, “And why are you coming in so late?”

Last night Roger was there when I got home from Charlie’s. He told me Java Jive was closing, sold to a new owner who was going to keep it as a coffee shop and reopen it as Just a Cuppa’ Joes. He didn’t think that portended any great changes and didn’t seem all that worried. Of course, he didn’t have a paycheck riding on it either. We spent much of the night just catching up.

Instead, I thought it might cheer Penn up if I told her about Ichabod and Winston. I may have started in the middle because Penn started looking at me like I was crazy. Gratefully, she didn’t offer an opinion when I got to the end, but I suspect she may have cataloged it for later use. We did one more lap around the building and headed towards the entrance. As we walked in Penn whispered, “You distract him, and I’ll slip the poison into his coffee.”

When we got to Dogface Patch, the incident was half-forgotten. Jonathan’s half. He was oblivious. Not just lacking in the social graces — but unaware of them completely. 

As it got closer to lunch, I stopped at Maet’s desk and told her about Java Jive, explained that I was going to walk over at lunch, and asked if she’d be interested in tagging along. She was and, probably because she noticed how agitated Penn was, asked Penn to come along as well.

Now I couldn’t help thinking the Java Jive irregulars had much more on their minds but the thought of me walking in with two attractive women gave me joy. I could see my reputation climbing all the way up to not quite so pathetic! Those thoughts were quickly dashed though, for as soon as we walked in it was clear everyone already knew Maet. Lydia and Roger greeted her like a long lost friend and the morning baristas Ally and Lita gave her hugs. Apparently, Tyr had the occasional party at his house and that caused the two universes to collide. Left in the wake was any change to my social status.

We all sat down at a table and Maet introduced Penn around. No one seemed particularly concerned about the death of Java Jive; Ally just saw it as an opportunity for a new coat of paint; Lita was hoping for a week off. When I raised the question of one coffeehouse replacing another, what strategy would cause the latter to succeed where the former had failed. The table answered in unison, and with way too much alacrity, “Better bakery!”

Roger and Lydia departed and Maet took the opportunity to mention to Ally that Penn played pickleball. Apparently, Ally was all-state in tennis in High School and had just taken up pickleball herself. Penn had been playing since college. This led to instant bonding, sharing of phone numbers and promises to hook up for some open rec night. Lita changed the subject when she looked over at me and asked why I looked a little green.

“On Thursdays we go to Charlie’s,” I explained.

“Charlie’s the dive bar on seventh?” Ally asked.

“It’s not a dive bar, it’s a cabaret. And it has karaoke on Thursdays. Even Maet sings,” I answered. Her go-to song was Prince’s Raspberry Beret, and she often out-Princed Prince. Ally asked what I sang.

“I don’t,” I replied. I was still keeping a low profile since I was under the drinking age, but that excuse wouldn’t hold water for long; the next week I would turn 21. I would need to come up with a new excuse.

“Rumor has it Lou did dance yesterday though,” Maet said, as she looked at Penn. All eyes turned to Penn. “What’s the verdict?” Maet asked.

“Dorky. But Lovable,” Penn said, patting me on the back.

“That’s what I was shooting for,” I said.

Penn picked up all the empty coffee cups and bussed them over to the bin.

“What?” I asked, as all eyes then turned towards me. “What?” Maet reached over and gently tweaked one of my ears.

***

Things were hitting a critical stage at work. While our focus was gradually transitioning to what to do with a deliverable Pandemonium, we were still hitting snags trying to get to that point. And, while I admit this is petty, I was grateful the problems weren’t with my code. They were with Cam’s. This led to a worst-case scenario – maximum attention from both Dan and Jonathan. Cam preferred anonymity.

Pandemonium was stagnant. As Dan explained, the last ten percent of any project always slowed to a crawl. Like doing the trim after painting a whole room; no enthusiasm. Unfortunately, software is binary, and until it’s something, it’s nothing. Believe me, the greatest danger to computer projects isn’t lack of money or lack of ideas. It’s boredom.

Into the breech came an unexpected hero. Freed from his relentless money raising, Tyr stepped in to complete the project. And for the first time, I got to see him in his preferred medium. I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a specific example, but somehow Tyr carried Pandemonium over the goal line. Sheer willpower. Cam being the most grateful recipient.

Wayland and Penn were also proving themselves invaluable. It wasn’t long before they knew Pandemonium better than anyone. Even Jonathan would defer to them on questions of usability, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Penn. Penn would often call me late at night just to talk. I didn’t mind, I could only assume how hard it would be to be the only woman in the Dogface Patch, since Maet was only occasionally there. And, just in general, I didn’t mind. Maybe I even looked forward to it.

About this same time Tyr approached me with a peculiar request. He asked me to consider stepping up to be a public face of Pandemonium. He could do a lot of that work, but people tend to dwell on his past when he was involved. Neither Dan nor Jonathan, for obvious reasons, were equipped for this role. Priam would be a natural, but Tyr was reluctant to ask him to spend even more time away from the family. Me, I thought Wayland would be perfect – he had a very low bass voice that was just pleasant to listen to, but I think Tyr liked the cachet of having an actual developer as a public spokesperson. I told him I’d think about it. Truth was, he caught me at a weak moment; I had other things on my mind.

***

The first person I broached my idea with was Cam. During one of our lunches. He was my lodestone for Eeyore-type reactions, and he didn’t disappoint. He had a natural affinity for Penn, especially given their similar relationships with Jonathan, but just pictured the chaos in such a small company should things not work out. He didn’t consider what if it did work out.

Roger was a lot more Roger about it. “If you want to go out, ask her out,” was his approach. He had firsthand experience and little tolerance with my tendencies to overthink.

Then I turned to my ace in the hole. The one person unequivocally in my corner. Hasu. The next time I ate at Priam’s I pulled her over and made my pitch. She was all for it; if she had Penn’s number, I think she may have called her and arranged it right then and there. Sharan was equally enthusiastic, although her emphasis was keeping Penn to my right when we sat down, for luck.

I let Monday pass because, well, Monday. Monday night I wrestled with the tactical problems inherent to the Dogface Patch. I knew I’d have to tread very carefully—if this information fell into enemy hands, I’d be teased unmercifully. Another issue was just overall coolness. I didn’t have any. But I compensated with preparation. I practiced my lines all night until I had them memorized. Then on Tuesday morning, D-Day, I wrote a couple of little sticky note reminders that I intended to scatter innocently around my cube, just in case. You can’t be too prepared for spontaneity.

Tuesday morning started poorly. It was made worse by the sudden disappearance of Ichabod and Winston. It was raining slightly, and I was in a panic that maybe they had decided to skip their morning constitutional. It took me a good twenty minutes of walking up and down the blocks by my house to track them down. And I was all but past them without any acknowledgement when I heard a rheumatic wheeze. Given their ages, it could’ve come from either of them. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I was grateful for small mercies. I reached them just as Winston was finishing his business. And as he scuffed up the grass with his hind legs, I swear that he looked up at me and gave me a wink. The dog had thrown me a bone! I arrived at work invigorated.

Secondly, I had to time things just right or risk wasting my prepared repartee. Thirdly I had to somehow get the rest of the denizens out of the Patch. Wow, weary lies the head that wears the crown!

People filtered in and out of the Patch, but the moment never presented itself. I didn’t get much done that Tuesday morning, unless you count fretting.

Finally, at about three o’clock, the skies lifted, and it was only me, Penn, and Cam. I focused my entire mental energy to telepathically force Cam up and out of the room, but no luck. Then Cam got up and headed toward my desk. I scrunched my nose as if concentrating on the world’s worst problem. Cam continued past me and out of the room. Thanks Winston!

“Well, Penn, how goes it? Am I to take it that no laps around the building is a good sign?”

“Jonathan who?” She laughed. “No calamities to report. I believe I have moved onto Jonathan’s to-be-ignored list, which is okay by me.”

Here goes. “I was thinking…” Wait for it—don’t let out too much line.

“Huh,” she said without looking up. I felt that prickliness on my forehead, the precursor to some heavy sweating.

“We should go out sometime.” There it was, right there on the table. Moments passed, then hours, then days. Entire species in Madagascar went extinct.

“I’m definitely up for the Cabaret on Thursday.” Okay, that was a miss.

“I was thinking more like Saturday, you and me.” When all else fails, smooth talk.

That got her attention. I could tell by the awkward pause. She looked up from her laptop. I got the green-eyed stare. I thought I could hear the wheels churning through her possible answers. Finally, she said “Sure, what the hell.”

Yes! The four words every young man yearns to hear. “Sure, what the hell.” She explained that Saturday she was going out with her roommates, and she’d love to have me join. I gave her a “Sounds good.” You know, cool and sophisticated. On cue, Cam walked back into the Dogface Patch. I got up and made good my escape.

I spent the rest of that day feeling satisfied with myself. Sure, I was my usual nervous, bumbling self, but satisfied.

Late Wednesday Penn came up to my desk. “Change of plans,” she said. “My roommates backed out. So, it’s just you and me.” Woohoo! (I thought that part; I didn’t actually say it).

I had a plan. The Seattle Outdoor Cinema was showing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Any activity that might associate me with Paul Newman and Robert Redford could only be a good thing.

There were some logistical issues as well. I was sure Roger would loan me his car, but since I did all my living on foot, my world was pretty provincial. I knew Penn lived in some far-off northern suburb, Mill Creek, but I had no idea how to get there. So, I downloaded a GPS app.

The other obstacle was Roger’s car itself. It was an old Chevy Impala and worked a lot like everything Roger owned – only occasionally and with great reluctance. He assured me “Betsy” would never let me down.

Just to make sure I didn’t use up all my karma, I avoided Penn for the rest of the week. I even begged off Thursday at the Cabaret, saying Roger needed my help.

Saturday arrived. Armed with my GPS app, I set out on the world’s greatest adventure. As a peace offering, I even gassed up the Impala. I also gave myself plenty of time. For one thing, it was in my nature, and for another, I didn’t mind just finding a local park and killing time. Maybe I’d practice some of my ad libs.

Penn lived with four roommates in a town too far north to even qualify as an outer-ring suburb. They rented a dilapidated old Victorian home, probably impressive back in the day, but time and tide had taken its toll. It kind of had that seedy-with-character look one ordinarily associates with fraternities. I steeled myself and made my way up the shaky wooden stairs. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

The door opened before I even had the chance to use the big lion-head knocker. I had to peer around the door to see who was letting me in. It was a roommate, small, waifish with very long, very curly hair. Without a sound, she motioned me in and, turned her back, and led me to the kitchen. She gestured for me to sit down at the table and without asking, went to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, opened it, poured it into a glass, and put it in front of me. Then she went to the counter, took out a bag of pretzels, opened it, poured some in a bowl, and put the bowl on the kitchen table. She then sat down across from me and smiled like the cat that ate the canary, clearly delighted on how well she had handled the social niceties.

I was sufficiently flummoxed, but dead set against being the first to speak. When I didn’t immediately drink the beer, I saw her look downgrade from delighted to discouraged to doleful. Just when the silence was getting suitably awkward, she leaned over to me, and whispered something. What she said is lost forever.

I had no idea what to do with that. I was relieved of providing any response when a second roommate came down the steps, followed by what I assumed was her boyfriend.

“Hi, Lou, I’m Gwen. I see you’ve already met Sheri.” She reached out and shook my hand. I got the distinct feeling I had just met the drill sergeant. She was aerobics instructor fit. Later I would learn she was an amateur bodybuilder. Gwen took one of the pretzels, and Sheri relaxed noticeably. The guy I took to be Gwen’s boyfriend walked up and introduced himself. Unfortunately, I did that thing where you concentrate on your name and miss the other person’s name altogether. Possibly Carl or Kyle. I was confident this would be the least of my worries that evening.

Gwen proceeded to give me a ten-minute grilling. Like any good lawyer, she didn’t ask any questions where she didn’t know the answer. And with that, my story was laid bare—college dropout, last job was part time at a coffee shop, lived with a seventy-year-old roommate. It was quite the resume. But then Penn came down the steps, and everything was right with the world again. The magic of a breezy summer dress.

Penn walked into the kitchen and gave me a gentle peck on the cheek. That ended the inquisition. The fourth roommate came down the steps soon after. Her name was Courtney, and she clearly represented the middle—not as intimidating as Gwen or as ethereal as Sheri. Apparently, her significant other was a nurse and was working nights, and that was what nixed the previously planned Saturday. With that the room was adjourned, and we split up into Gwen’s and Roger’s cars, off to our separate evenings.

Penn must have sensed some of my anxiety. She was always nice, but I could tell she was going out of her way to be even nicer on the ride over. She was curious about the car. The sight of me driving looked strange, like a dog playing poker. I glanced over when she was talking and noticed that she was wearing just the slightest of makeup. That killed me. She never wore makeup at work. That, my friend, was totally for my benefit. It’s funny there isn’t a word for that, when someone goes out of their way to look nice on your behalf. It’s a wonderful thing.

I got a little lost on the way to South Lake Union, Damn GPS apps are better if you kinda already know where to go. We got there, parked, and got our tickets just as the movie started. Penn brought a blanket and we made ourselves comfortable. There’s a reason a movie is the universally accepted first date, minimum conversation.

We stopped at Northlake for pizza after the movie. Penn was curious what I thought of her roommates. “A touch of ‘one for all and all for one’,” I said.

She laughed.

“But that will ease off once I pass the test, right?”

Penn thought awhile. “Probably not, no,” she said.

We didn’t get back to Mill Creek until well after one. We sat in the car. Penn didn’t suggest coming in. “Text me when you get home,” she said.

“I’ll be fine. It’s a straight shot,” I replied.

“Just text me.” And we that she looked me in the eye. Nothing is quite as addictive as having one hundred percent of someone’s attention, even momentarily, especially when it comes with those green eyes. She leaned over and gave me a slow kiss. “Text me.” And with that she was out of the car.

Tyr mentions the missing employee; Penn reveals a story from her past; Lou prepares for his new assignment as Tyr declares Pandemonium done; Penn and Lou get serious.

Tyr and I continued to spend a lot of time on my presentation skills. It was a fine line between picking up worthwhile habits from Tyr and turning into a Tyr impersonator. He emphasized  benefits and presenting from the customer’s perspective. All the while, stopping me when I snuck in a blatant Tyr-ism. He had a pretty good handle on how I learned (having, effectively, taught me both chess and programming) so we were making good progress. He was looking a little haggard though. I asked him how he was doing.

“Pretty good. I’m sneaking in some extra hours to keep up with Penn and Liu. Right now, I’m working on getting Pandemonium installed on my server.”

“I meant your health,” I said. “You know Maet worries.”

“I know, Lou.” He turned away from his computer to face me. “I appreciate you being such a good friend to Maet. I know she does too. I tried retirement, but it didn’t take. Sometimes you just have to do what you were meant to do. Speaking of which, I looked over your code. You did a fine job. I’m proud of you,” he said.

Wow, that meant the world to me. Even if Priam had done quite a bit of the heavy lifting. I asked Tyr a question that had been in the back of my head since I started. “Thanks, Tyr. A question. I’m employee nine but I only count seven in front of me.”

Tyr looked me directly in the eye. “Ah yes, the prodigal son. We did have one employee who drifted away. Despite what Priam says, I’m not always right about people.” He shook his head, as if trying to shake off the lingering regret.

***

Penn and I were seeing quite a bit of each other by this point. Almost exclusively in groups with her roommates. I had gotten to like Courtney and her boyfriend Brook. Brook was almost non-stop funny; I wondered how Courtney put-up with-it day after day. Sheri was still a mystery to me; I just shook my head yes whenever she said something that I didn’t quite hear. Seemed to be working so far. Gwen was my kryptonite. Not rude to the point of actually being rude but with a perpetual look of disappointment. I asked Kyle about it, and he just gave me a “don’t go there” shrug. More importantly, Penn was still a mystery. Nothing but fun on the group outings and introspective when, as had become our custom, we texted after I got home at night. But I felt like I was in deep, fathoms deep, as she was still treading water at the surface. But I wasn’t quite sure enough of myself to probe deeper – afraid of the answer, I guess.

That next Monday Tyr called a company meeting. He officially declared Pandemonium done! He also gave rest of the week off company wide – no one allowed in the office and he asked that no one log in. He knew we were headed for some high intensity weeks post release and wanted everyone to build up a reservoir beforehand. He also asked all of us to consider a public name for Pandemonium. The “marketing team” had come up with three ideas:

• Incircino, which was, very roughly, Latin for encompass. Encompass would have a great choice, but it was already taken.Compendia, “a collection of concise but detailed information about a particular subject” andInfo Maximus, kind of a play on Circus Maximus.

Finally, he declared cake and champagne available at Charlies. Everyone, absolutely everyone, made their way to Charlies.

I was standing with Alice (who was having way too much fun) and noticed Maet off the side, having way too little fun. So, I excused myself and walked over.

“Is it okay with the marketing team if I sit down?

“I’m sorry—who may I ask is calling?” Maet said as she swung the barstool next to her in my direction. I sat down.

“Everyone seems pretty stoked, with the possible exception of your dad.” I pointed over to Tyr who was sitting by himself, just taking it all in.

“Dad lives for the journey, not the destination,” Maet said. “And right now, he knows we’ve entered a dangerous time. He says getting smart people together and creating something smart—that’s the easy part. This part we’re embarking on now, this is the make-or-break part. Little things outside of our control can reach up and destroy us.”

“Well, since you put it that way—mark me down as scared shitless. Especially by my assignment—what was your dad thinking?” I asked.

Maet just smiled. “He was thinking you’re ready for it. Besides, he wouldn’t be a mentor if he didn’t push you out of your comfort zone.”

Mentor. Ha! I decided this was a good time to change the subject. “Maet, are you happy? Sometimes it seems you spread happiness but don’t keep any for yourself. Like, where’s your dude?”

She just smiled. “I’m on sabbatical. Actually, Lou, I lived with a guy until just before you started at Heimdall”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Have you heard that Maya Angelou quote ‘when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time?’” she asked. I shook my head yes. “”Well unfortunately, I hadn’t.”

Maet tapped me on the shoulder and gestured towards Penn. “Okay, soldier, on to your primary mission. I’m off to cheer up Dad.” She got up and left. Every light in Charlie’s gently followed her as she made her way to her dad’s table.

I got up and headed towards Penn when I was suddenly waylaid by a short Indian woman who wrapped her arms around me. “Hasu! Does your husband know you frequent bars in the afternoon?”

She just laughed. “Of all the gin joints! Now, quick, tell me before Priam notices me—which one is the reason you no longer come to eat my cooking and play with my child?”

I pointed over to Jonathan. She thought awhile and then just shrugged. “Well, I have to give you credit. Those are most childbearing hips!”

“And what brings you to our little celebration?” I asked.

She spoke in a stage whisper. “Well, speaking of childbearing hips. You are going to be an uncle! Again!”

“Excellent! And may I suggest Lleu as an excellent name? Boy or girl?”

“We will keep that in mind. We have reason to believe it will be another girl.”

“Wow.” I kissed her on the forehead. With that we sat down, and I introduced Hasu to Penn. Soon they were knee deep into conspiracy, ignoring me altogether—other than to occasionally accentuate a point by poking me in the arm. There should be a word for the moment when you find yourself between your two most favorite people in the whole world. I guess right now happy will just have to do. Maybe right there right then—that was my place in the world.

***

Penn agreed to a hike on that Tuesday off. Just the two of us. We chose the Crystal Mountain loop at Mount Rainier. And, as we got deeper and deeper into the hike, Penn started to tell me her story.

When she was six years old, she went missing. Not lost in the grocery store missing but missing for a week. Her parents and siblings were frantic, and the entire town turned out to search for her. Eventually, four days later, she was found at a park about five miles from her house. She had no memory of how she got there. There were no signs of abuse or kidnapping, but people were hard pressed to figure out how she would have gotten so far afield by herself.

Things slowly reverted back to normal, as they always do. But Penn was convinced something was lost that week. She was still happy-go-lucky but now with a layer of mistrust. And she admitted that same mistrust seeped into all her relationships, even today. Except for Gwen, who was her best friend both before and after the episode.

I reached for her hand, and we hiked to the gondola side by side the rest of the way.

When we got back to her house, I came clean with my feelings. She wasn’t exactly surprised but I had a feeling she was happier when they remained unexpressed; you can’t get that toothpaste back into that tube. “We’re kind of in uncharted territory,” she said.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m totally, completely in control,” I assured her.

She laughed. “Good, keep it that way.” Then she thought awhile. “I think for the time being we should both just sleep on it.”

I shrugged. “I can live with that for now.”

I started to make my way to the door, but instead she took hold of my hand and led me upstairs to her bedroom.

We didn’t leave that room much for the rest of the week. We’d wait until her roommates left for work, go downstairs for breakfast, and maybe go out to get a coffee and then go back to her bedroom. And Tuesday slowly became Friday. When I finally left the house on Friday, I felt lighter, untethered by the loneliness I had been carrying for years. I felt like I could’ve floated home. I had Roger’s car though, so I decided to drive.

On that next Monday, Tyr and I had one last training for my public speaking. I still felt like I hemmed and hawed too much, but Tyr was happy with where we were at. It was getting close to lunch, so we decided to walk over to Cuppa Joe’s and treat ourselves to bakery for lunch. Then an idea came to me. “Spot me black and a knight, and I’ll beat you in chess for old times’ sake.”

Tyr smiled, reached back, and shut down his computer. “Make that white and two pawns.”

15. Maukston

Priam and Lou hit the circuit to push Compendia; Hasu has trouble with her pregnancy; Lou learns more about Penn; A new player emerges; Dan yields the skinny.

On my walk home I stopped at the grocery store. I had taken to cooking Lydia and Roger dinner on Mondays. It was my nutritional responsibility: Roger didn’t count anything as a meal unless it involved bacon, and Lydia was just as likely to miss a meal as she was to eat one. Besides, it was fun to cook for people.   

They were an appreciative audience. The process of producing a meal amazed them both. That day I picked up couple of trout, some asparagus, and apples. I liked to bake the trout and the apples together – two tastes complemented each other. I’d boil up some rice and then toss in some pine nuts at the last moment, using the same reasoning. The coup de grâce was when I deboned the trout. Something Mom had taught me. Just slightly separate the trout at the backbone with a sharp knife as the fish was cooling. Then, starting from the tail, grab the backbone and slowly lift it off with a pair of tongs. No matter how slowly you do it, even slower would have been better. And, assuming the trout was cooked to completion and the step was done slowly enough, you would be treated to an entire skeleton on the tongs with two beautiful fillets left on the cutting board. And appreciative oohs and aahs at the dinner table.

Turned out that would be my last meal at home for a while. Heimdall Research hit the ground running: Tyr was off to visit the top twenty or so likely collaboration companies – other software companies that could incorporate Compendia (as Pandemonium was now called) into their software as a value add. I would start in on trade shows and larger companies that were potentially a direct sell. We also decided that, until I got my pins under me, Priam would accompany me. That left the rest of the team to work on release 2, basically the features that fell off the Release One wagon due to time.

Priam and I headed to San Francisco, first to meet some companies and then attend the QCon trade show at the Moscone.

Our success was modest, so much so I wondered if spinning a placard on a busy street might be a better strategy. Tyr’s reputation could get us in the door (and lead to the inevitable first question “What is Tyr Heimdall like?”). Nine out of ten then either didn’t understand Compendia or couldn’t see how it would help them. The “flat no’s”. One out of ten, the “maybes”, often didn’t have the money in the budget or a spot in their current project plan. Occasionally, a company might still filter through to “the possibles”, and for them we’d schedule a second meeting. What we needed desperately was referrals, a third party to vouch for Compendia.

Penn was helping with her cousin’s wedding, so I’d send rambling texts and, after a long delay, get emojis or a terse text back. Luckily, Priam could not have been a more pleasant travel companion. If I brought the youthful enthusiasm, he provided the gravitas. Plus, he certainly had the persistence of Ganesh—I couldn’t believe how he could take all this rejection and still remain upbeat. But he was having a rough go of it as well. Not only did he miss Hasu and Sharan terribly, but Hasu was having a difficult pregnancy. She was just too tiny. Sometimes we’d be in a meeting, and I’d see Priam get that faraway look in his eyes, and I’d know he was worrying about Hasu. It was at the QCon trade show in San Francisco when Priam came down to our booth looking pale (well, relatively pale). “Lou, Hasu is most miserable. I think I need to be home now. Can I take my leave and let you do this show solo?” he asked.

I was fairly confident I could maintain our abysmal success rate without Priam’s help. He looked visibly relieved as he went back to his room to pack and check out.

Trade shows are peculiar animals. The first day the attendees are on a mission to grab the tchotchkes, the little freebies each booth gives out to attract traffic. After the first wave of the tchotchke obsessed, the whole objective of conventioneers is to avoid eye contact with the people manning the booths.

So it surprised me when he looked me in the eye as he confidently strode to our booth. I recognized him from one of the other booths, so his arrival wasn’t a complete anomaly—there is a certain misery-loves-company camaraderie at these shows. Even given that he was decidedly out of place. For one thing, he was impeccably dressed in a blue suit with a dark-blue shirt and a power-red tie. Way beyond the de rigueur khakis and polo shirt. And his hair was groomed to perfection. Frankly, he was beautiful.

He gestured at the company logo behind me. “I assume this is a Tyr Heimdall production?” He held out his hand. “Maukston. Rues.”

Whether that was Mr. Maukston, or Mr. Rues I couldn’t tell you. “It certainly is. Are you familiar with his work?”

“Fairly familiar. Give him my regards.” He picked up one of our brochures. “Tell me about Compendia.”

I gave him the abridged explanation of Compendia. It turned out he was the CEO of a network performance company. From my biased point of view, this felt like a good match. My spine tingled as it did whenever we didn’t pass directly to no.

He gave me the lowdown on his company. It was called NetLocii and specialized in an algorithmic approach to improving network performance. He apparently thought we weren’t entirely mismatched either. “Well, that is intriguing. Lou, isn’t it?” he said, glancing over at my “Hello, my name is” tag. “How about dinner tonight? We’ll talk it over.”

Ordinarily on these road trips, I cherished my alone time. But since my dinner companion had just left me for his pregnant wife and my girlfriend was ignoring me, I told Maukston (first name; I checked his name tag as well) that it sounded like a plan.

At dinner Maukston was curious about my background. “You look awfully young for this much responsibility.”

Not that I thought holding up the booth at a trade show constituted much in the way of responsibility, but my age was a discussion I avoided if possible. It was noticeable that I was five or so years younger than the average person at the conference. But I always thought it was to my advantage if people assumed I had accelerated my way through school. That story certainly had more sizzle than the truth. But this was the first time I had ever been asked directly, and it hardly seemed something to lie about. I explained my roundabout path to Tyr and Heimdall.

“Fascinating,” Maukston said as he worked his way through his escargot appetizer. “Classic Tyr. And if I might…enjoy the moment…in a blink of an eye, you’ll be the same age as everyone else, and in the next blink, you’ll be older. And of the three, where you are now is the place to be. Besides, it speaks well of your self-confidence. Am I correct in assuming you’re an only child?”

“Uh, no. I have a brother.” What a peculiar question to start a conversation.

“And what does he do?”

Geez, this guy was slowly peeling my onion. “He passed away when we were in high school.”

He put down his fork. “Lou, I’m sorry. How did it happen?”

I was starting to get that squirmy feeling again, my old premonition indicator but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was regarding. “He found out he had a heart condition when we were in high school. Soon after that he contracted a flu and couldn’t fight it off.” Wow, if ever there was a paragraph that didn’t do a story justice, it was that one.

I wasn’t convinced Maukston was listening anyway. He gestured to the waiter. “This wine isn’t right. Are you sure it’s the 1998 burgundy? Bring another glass and the bottle, please.” Having dismissed the wine steward, he once again gave me his undivided attention. “It’s probably just that the tannins are still closed up, but it never hurts to complain.” He paused as if to restart the conversation. “Fascinating. I’ve always been intrigued about how viruses always seem to somehow find the weakest.”

I just sat there.

I think he finally realized how that must have come across. “Ooh, that was a touch clinical. It’s just that I studied it in college. I’ve always been fascinated by viruses—after a while you start to wonder whether maybe we don’t exist solely for their benefit; they’re the ultimate insiders. But to lose someone in your family at such an early age to such a disease, it must have been very hard.”

After that it turned into an enjoyable evening. When programmers get together, particularly when alcohol is involved, the stories that emerge aren’t of successes; instead, it’s the dumb mistakes, the unintended consequences, the what-was-I-thinking stories that predominate. Of these I had plenty, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear Maukston had his share as well.  By the time we were through with the foie gras, we had bonded. We were kindred spirits. The second bottle of wine didn’t hurt either.

It wasn’t until the crème brûlée that he even brought up the reason for dinner. “Lou, my company’s flagship product is not only designed to measure network performance but also to take steps to improve it. It serves as a type of automatic self-healing mechanism that steps in whenever a company is experiencing poor response time. Our developers spend an inordinate amount of time just keeping up with technology. We tend to give the performance-enhancing portion of our software short shrift in deference to the performance-measuring portion. We’re always on the lookout for approaches that will allow us to boost performance with a minimum of coding effort on our part. I see Pandemonium as packing the ideal punch in combination with our product.” With that, he laid out a surprisingly comprehensive ad-hoc strategy for integrating the two products. We parted ways, and he promised to call me later that next week.

It was one in the morning when I finally got back to my hotel room. I sent one terse text to Priam before calling it an evening. “Fish on the line; details to follow.” After all those meetings of pure frustration and disappointment, we finally had a promising opportunity. I sent Penn a text too and got one right back. There was some drama with her cousin, and she asked if I could drive up to Blaine myself on Saturday. It wasn’t until I had almost drifted to sleep that it occurred to me that Maukston had referred to our product by its internal name, Pandemonium, rather than its external name, Compendia.

My triumphant return home on Friday arrived remarkably triumph free. Priam was still at home with Hasu; Tyr was off on another one of his funding expeditions. Penn was already in Blaine. I called it a day early and grabbed some extra sleep. On Saturday I again borrowed Roger’s car and drove up to Blaine for the wedding.

I like weddings. It’s a room packed with emotion and a near-universal feeling of good will. This wedding went off smoothly. It wasn’t hard putting Penn’s family tree together. The bride’s side was a sea of slight variations on the same theme—green eyes, reddish hair, and freckles. I sat on the groom’s side—it looked as if he needed the support. The Catholics had apparently fiddled with the service since my altar boy days, but I did everything a step slow, and it all seemed to work out. It was warm enough in the church that I thought we might lose an usher or bridesmaid or two, but they all toughed it out. The early afternoon light through the stained-glass windows provided a nice touch.

Penn and the gang went off for wedding pictures, so I took a drive around town. Blaine looked pretty sleepy, and I couldn’t find a park to kill time, so I ended up at the town’s cemetery. I looked up Penn’s dad’s grave. But if he had anything to share, he didn’t share it with me.

I know it sounds a little Edgar Allan Poe to spend time at a cemetery, but they get kind of a bad rap. They’re almost always tree lined, well-manicured, and idyllic. This one was no exception—there was a little river meandering on the outskirts of the plots. I lay down next to a tree and snuck in a little nap in the company of two loitering wood ducks and three turtles sunning themselves on a log. I guess they had places to go because when I woke up, I was alone. And just in time to make it over to the reception.

After the dinner while the band played, I slowly drifted to the last bastion of the stranger at a wedding—the bar. From there I could see Penn laughing and dancing with her high school friends. Gwen was in the mix as well. I figured I could go over there, but, boy, that felt like an awful lot of socializing. I knew from experience they were reliving anecdotes from the past. Those stories are meant to be retold over and over by the people involved but hold absolutely no interest for people who weren’t there. Something gets lost in the translation. Besides I was happy overseeing the festivities at my perch, out of harm’s way.

“That’s my sister you’re staring at.”

I turned to look at the guy sitting at the end of the bar. In his mid-thirties, he had that slightly swollen look of someone who knew his way around a drink—210 pounds squished into a 180-pound body. The fun of drinking had left town, but the drinking remained. “Actually, that’s my date I’m staring at.”

He didn’t look up. “I just assumed she brought Will.” He pointed at the guy Penn was currently dancing with.

“Seems like a nice enough fella,” I said.

“They dated all through high school.”

“Little too sure of himself though,” I added.

“Dated in college too.”

“Maybe even a little too cocky,” I concluded.

“Spot me a drink,” he said.

“You’re Justin, aren’t you?” I asked. Penn had given me strict instructions not to buy any drinks for her older brother.

“Think of me as the font of information,” he said.

I chewed on that for a while. “Whaddya drinking?” I asked.

Penn had ridden up with Gwen, but on Sunday she rode back with me. Penn recapped the wedding. Everyone was mortified at how drunk Justin had gotten. Heck, I just figured every wedding had one, and at this wedding, it was Justin.

Just before she dozed off, she remembered. “And were you the one plying Justin all evening?”

“No. We took turns paying for drinks.”

“Justin bought a round?” she asked.

“Well, no. It was all my money. We just took turns spending it.”

She tweaked my ear. “Doofus.” And as we may our way slowly back into town, Penn fell asleep with her left hand draped at the nape of my neck. Not that I noticed.

That Monday I was eager to share my NetLocii lead but neither Priam nor Tyr were at work. I spent the morning filling out my expenses and googling NetLocii to acquire as much background as I could find.

Toward the end of the day, Jonathan stepped out to go kick some dogs or whatever, and I was in the Patch alone with Dan. Maukston calling Compendia by its project code name was still eating at me. “Dan, the Heimdall employee who left?”

“Mmm, mmm,” he said. He was busy meditating on some work (doing work this late in the afternoon was not a likely Dan scenario).

“Was his name Maukston Rues?”

That caught his attention. Dan put down the manual he had been paging through. “Indeed, it was. Why do you ask?”

I explained to Dan how we had crossed paths and that he had expressed some interest in Compendia.

“Ooh rah.” Dan laughed. “Oh, to be a fly on the wall when you tell Tyr.”

“Why? What happened?” I asked.

“That, mi amigo, calls for a meeting in Conference Room C.”

Ten minutes later I was drinking beer and shooting pool in the early afternoon with Dan at Charlie’s Cabaret. We were several beers into our second game, and Dan had yet to bring up the subject at hand. But when he accidentally sank the eight ball, came back to the table, and filled both glasses, I knew I was about to hear the story of Maukston Rues.

“Maukston likes to tell that he was named for a Chechen uncle who was later executed by the KGB. Other times he’s a direct descendant from Genghis Khan.”

“And which was it?” I asked.

“I have no idea; probably neither. If I remember, he had some expat British background, but it’s all pretty fuzzy to me these days. But that’s why we hit it off almost immediately—can’t bullshit a bullshitter!”

“You were friends?” I asked.

“Friends? Heck, we were college roommates. Are you going to let me tell the story or not? The guy’s brilliant but mighty damn quirky. Take his degrees: he was summa cum laude in a dual major—math and immunology. Or the fact that in college on a dare, he once got an A in linear algebra without ever showing up for a class or opening the book—just by sitting in for the exams.”

Having never made it to linear algebra, I was suitably impressed. “And did you get him the job at Trident Software?” Trident was Tyr’s first company.

“Funny story that. He got the job without even realizing it was the same company where I worked. And man, Maukston was one prolific programmer. I would say he even outworked Jonathan. High quality work, critical to Trident’s success. And he really hit it off with Tyr—they are the two most driven-to-succeed people I have ever met.

But then Tyr got sick and took the company public and sold off his shares. Me, I’ll be eternally grateful since the money I made with that offering is why I’m living in a nice house today. But Maukston felt betrayed. Felt Tyr had left money on the table and that he should have offered the company to the employees before going public. And just as everyone was starting to move to greener pastures, Maukston patented some of the code. Without informing Tyr. Well, as you might expect, Tyr fumed. Achievement is high on Tyr’s list; credit is way, way down. But Maukston spun the story on the application so it read like all his idea and got two patents. That, along with some mitigating factors, ended their friendship.”

Dan gave me a look. “What did you think of Maukston?”

“Seems like a nice enough fella,” I said.

“He lied on the patent applications. Made up a design that never existed.”

“Little too sure of himself though,” I added.

“Dated Maet for a couple of years too.”

“Maybe even a little too cocky,” I concluded.

Suddenly my triumphant news fell a little less triumphant. “What should I do?” I asked Dan.

“Fortify, son, fortify,” Dan said, slapping me on the back. “And to help, order us up another round. I’m going to step outside and medicate. You hold the fort.”

I had one more beer with Dan and then hit the road for home. It was my night for dinner with Roger and Lydia. I stopped at the store and picked up some pork chops, green peppers, spring onions, and chicken broth.

This was one of my quick meals, but those afternoon beers had drained me of any motivation. First, I seared the pork chops and then browned some rice and the vegetables. Then I poured the broth on the whole bit and baked it for about forty minutes. Delicious. Almost where you could ditch the pork chops and just eat the rice. But today I had other things on my mind besides feeding the masses. I was anxious to get Roger’s take on this matter.

After dinner I gave Roger the lowdown. He was doing the dishes, but as usual, he went straight to the heart of the matter. “Lou, there’s a special word for someone who lies on a patent application” he said, looking over his shoulder to me sitting at the kitchen table.

“What’s that, Roger?”

“Liar.”

16. Changes

Maukston and Tyr come to an agreement; for Lou, things get … complicated.

I got to work at the usual time and, for some reason, Jonathan—the same Jonathan that never came in before ten—was hunched over his PC. Ordinarily I’d pass on spending time with Jonathan, but I took a deep breath and decided to ask him about Maukston.

“Oh, he’s on my list,” Jonathan said without looking up. This wasn’t completely unexpected; I was pretty sure everyone was on Jonathan’s list. I suspected I was on his list, for example.

“What’s your opinion of him?” I asked.

“Goofy. You know the whole time he worked at Trident he lived out of hotels?”

“Huh”

“Dan always thought he was just being anonymous and untraceable. Maukston was sure he had found a better way. Me, I just thought he was fucking goofy.”

“And where did you sit on the patent controversy?”

“The rooster taking credit for the dawn. That technology was as much me as Maukston. And more Tyr than either of us.”

Now that was quite an admission coming from Jonathan. He had given Tyr more credit than himself! “So, you weren’t sorry to see him go?” I asked.

“Of course, I was. Talent is hard to come by. Just look at what we’ve had to make do with since he left.” He gave me a classic Jonathan glare. I searched for a whiff of irony, but there wasn’t a trace to be found.

I knew that was the end of anything worthwhile coming from Jonathan. While I waited for Tyr to show up, I reviewed what I knew about Maukston. His LinkedIn page listed him as CTO for Trident, certainly a notch above both Dan and Jonathan. The NetLocii about page had him as co-CEO with the three original founders. It seemed peculiar to me, but I knew that titles were very important to some people.

I walked over to Maet and gave her my Maukston saga. I opted not to mention that I was aware of her involvement. Then I asked her how she thought her dad would react.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Lou” she replied. “My dad is incapable of holding a grudge.” She pointed at his office, now with the light on. “I guess you can go in and ask him yourself!”

“And what about the daughter?” I asked.

Maet laughed. “Oh, she most definitely holds a grudge.” We fist bumped as I made my way to Tyr’s office.

Tyr was just settling in as I walked into his office. “Hi, Lou. What can I do for you?” So I proceeded to tell him about my interaction with Maukston, and how he was working at a network performance company, and how he was intrigued by our product, and that it looked like a pretty good fit, and it was really our first nibble, and it would be a shame to let it slide, and that it all seemed pretty promising, and finally, I took a breath. Tyr responded with one arched eyebrow.

He hung up his coat, sat down, and smiled. “Wow, Lou! Great news!” He stopped and mulled it over. “You may have put more thought into it than you needed to.”

Amen to that, brother. I thought.

“I assume you’re aware of Maukston’s history with Trident?” Tyr asked.

“Well, I understand he might have burned some bridges.”

Tyr thought awhile. “Mistakes were made. He was young and impetuous, but I would have been better served to remove my rose-colored glasses. It was my biggest failure.”

I waited, thinking Tyr might elaborate. Instead, he seemed to be looking past me. When he refocused, he seemed surprised that I was still there. “There was one thing I never did with Maukston. Now maybe you’ve given us a second chance.”

I waited to see whether he was going to tell me what that was. He didn’t. Instead, he added “Good work, Lou—and let’s see where it all leads.”

And with that, I left Tyr’s office. That had gone better than I ever could have hoped, but my years of childhood spats with Dylan nagged at me. Forgive and forget seems a noble premise, but things are rarely forgiven or forgotten.

I spent the rest of that day waiting for Maukston to call me back. He finally did at about four in the afternoon. “Lou, I congratulate you on not being at work on Friday. A good psychological ploy: it showed me that I wasn’t in complete control.”

I explained that I had been sick.

“Don’t ever relinquish an advantage. And what was the verdict at Heimdall Research?”

“Your money’s good here.” I said.

“Excellent,” he said. I got the feeling that he was expecting, maybe even relishing, more of a fight. I detected a touch of disappointment. “I’m back in Seattle next Friday. Let’s schedule a meeting with you, me, and Tyr. And send me a link to get the manuals.”

I explained that we could just as easily send a trial link, including the product. He said the manuals would be sufficient.

As I sat down and logged in, I came to the conclusion there is no such creature as an anticipated crisis. Once anticipated, it dries up and blows away like leaves on a late-fall day. I hadn’t yet formed an opinion on unanticipated crises.

And I wouldn’t say I was feeling smug, but I felt it was mighty lucky that Jesus himself hadn’t come in and applied for work that day. The savior position was filled!

Walking home that night, I heard a familiar rheumy cough. Usually I spotted them in the morning; this was late for their afternoon walk. When I turned the corner I was taken by surprise, it was just the old man out walking alone. We made eye contact as we crossed paths and, with red rimmed eyes, he just gave me a head shake.

I borrowed Roger’s car and made my way to Penn’s house. I wanted to share the big news. She was pretty excited too – it’d be hard not to be as this was a great chance for Compendia to hit it big. We were still buzzing about it as we laid down for the night, until Penn changed the subject unexpectedly.

“Lou, did you meet Will at the wedding?”

“No, but your brother pointed him out,” I said.

“We dated in high school and then lived together throughout college.” Penn said. I didn’t remember asking. “We both had offers from IBM and our future was laid out in front of us. But he came home one night and told me that he didn’t love me anymore. That next week my dad died. Will went on to IBM and I stayed home.”

“You know I love you Penn, right?” I asked.

“Mm hmm.”

“I love you Penn” I repeated.

“I know,” she said.

And with that she drifted off to sleep with her head on my shoulder. I could feel her tears as they slid down my chest.

 We held the meetings with Maukston off-site. Tyr also insisted I attend, although I would’ve rather have been absolutely anywhere else. I went in bound and determined to be seen but not heard.

It had the feel of a championship chess match. They sat directly across from each other and started with a handshake that seemed cordial but with an undeniable tinge of tension in the air.

Maukston started on the offensive. Certain Tyr thought the discussion would be on leasing Compendia and integrating it into NetLocii; instead Maukston wanted to buy Compendia outright. His argument seemed valid to me—NetLocii was a service company (in their case performance as a service) and, as such, they needed hooks to justify charging on a timed basis rather than one fixed sum. He wanted to own Compendia so they could hook it in with their service approach.

I knew this was exactly opposite Tyr’s view of Compendia. He viewed it as self-healing software, continuously improving its algorithms without any necessary human interaction. Still, I could tell Tyr was intrigued by Maukston’s proposal. His counter proposal was similarly aggressive: he proposed selling the Compendia software to NetLocii and then having dual ownership moving forward. NetLocii could take their version where they desired and Heimdall Research could take our version where we desired, knowing full well at some point they may very well end up competing with each other.

Maukston blinked but quickly recovered. He was amenable to the idea. Tyr floated a price. A big number. Probably three times what I would have suggested, had I been in that position. Certainly big enough to ensure Heimdall Research would be profitable well into the near future. Maukston countered with another addition — he wanted special consideration to allow NetLocii to quickly integrate Compendia. That’s where things got prickly.

“I’m suggesting we take one of your employees on a temporary basis to assist with the installation and integration,” Maukston said.

Tyr asked “Who?” I’m sure he was expecting to have to sacrifice Jonathan to the cause.

Maukston just pointed at me with his thumb. I didn’t say a word, but I suspect the ends of my ears were on fire. Tyr thought a while and then suggested another meeting the next day.

Tyr and I walked back to the office. I was simultaneously flattered and convinced I was the wrong person. Tyr suggested that gamesmanship was in play but that he also was confident I could complete Maukston’s assignment. He left it entirely up to me to decide the next step.

Things were moving fast. Ordinarily that night I would have talked it over with Penn. But we had left things in an awkward state. Roger was over at Lydia’s so I couldn’t bounce it off him either.

 NetLocii was San Francisco based so it would mean quite a bit of time away from home. I knew my biggest concern was imposter syndrome, getting exposed as a complete fraud. I couldn’t come up with a convincing “no” argument so the next morning at breakfast I told Tyr I was willing, and my major concern was time away from Seattle.

The meeting with Maukston was brief. He accepted the terms, conceded to 50% remote work, and agreed to the dollar amount. Tyr and Maukston shook hands. It was done.

I had nowhere to go so I made my way back to Heimdall. I bumped into Priam as I turned the corner, he seemed to be waiting for Tyr. “How did it go?” he asked.

“Well, I’m not sure who won, but I’m pretty sure who lost. And no, I’m thinking it’s nowhere near over.”

I was about to drop my bombshell when Priam started walking away. “I was hoping to speak with Tyr, but it seems he might not be returning.” He was about to close the door in his office when something seemed to occur to him. “How about dinner on Sunday? Bring Penn.”

“Sounds good.” I could tell him then. Besides, I wasn’t quite done processing the last 48 hours anyway.

It starts with a subtle glitch in one of the seams. You pick at it, sometimes on purpose, sometimes unconsciously. Then, slowly, the entire sweater starts to unravel. So slowly you don’t realize until it until it’s too late.

17. Decisions

Lou gets two jolts, back to back, and reaches a decision about Maukston.

Penn loves bad movies. If she’s going to waste her time, she wants it to be a complete waste of time. She wants no part of any movie that contains any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Luckily, that still leaves her with a lot of choices.  

We were just having a beer after finishing a Thai meal after yet another bad movie when she took to reflecting about the Maukston sale. “Tyr took me totally by surprise. I know I don’t know him as well as you do, but. It just reminds me that things never stay the same. They either progress or regress,” she said.

I just shrugged.

Penn was off and running. “Sometimes I feel so rootless.” She played with her empty beer glass. “You know when I was with Will, the path seemed so clear. I knew who I was and where I was going. Now it all seems so cloudy.”

I still wasn’t following. “I think I’m happier now than I have any right to be.”

“I love you, Lou, but it’s just not that simple. If anything, you add an extra burden. For you, it’s all so straightforward. For me, I’m not sure I can give you what you deserve.”

That’s when it hit me. Right upside the head. “Did we just break up?” At that moment, I virtually stood up and walked around behind my chair. I was simultaneously sitting there as a participant and standing there as an observer. It was senior year in high school all over. I had to ask again. “Did you just dump me?”

Penn just reached out and held my hand. “What do you propose we should do about this?” I asked. But Penn was silent, she had already done what she proposed to do about this.

I guess it was inevitable that something that started with “Sure, what the hell,” was likely to end with “It’s not you, it’s me.”

From behind my chair the observer looked around the restaurant. No one noticed the wind change; no one heard the last click as the roller coaster reached its apex; no one felt the plunge. Just me.  

We paid the bill and walked out of the restaurant; Penn hooked her arm around mine. Can’t say I noticed though; I was still walking a few steps behind myself, watching. I think all three of us were still processing what had just happened.

When I got home I called and cancelled Sunday dinner with Priam. I wasn’t ready to face Hasu with my failures.

At this point, reader, some valuable life lessons. First, there is no amount of feeling bad that can’t be made worse by going home and drinking what’s left of a bottle of Baileys Irish Crème. Second, although crying in the women’s bathroom at work is accepted, maybe even somewhat expected, crying in a stall of the men’s bathroom will immediately clear the room. Every time.

And so went my downward spiral. I wish I could offer some explanation that would somehow defend my behavior. But I can’t. All I can say is one moment I felt I had all the answers, and then a moment later I didn’t have a clue. The funny thing is at both points I had the same number of answers. Regardless, I was suddenly living my life against a strong head wind. Everything happened in slow motion. It was all I could do to keep my head up. Every decision left me winded, too weary to act. And I wasn’t sleeping well—I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in my bed and had taken to sleeping on the floor in my sleeping bag.

For a few days no one even noticed. Everyone else was caught up in the euphoria of the NetLocii deal— at this point only Tyr and I knew it involved loaning me out. Dan and Jonathan were knee deep in trying to extract the performance improvements promised for release two. Even I had nothing but time on my hands—the deal with NetLocii was consuming all our corporate energy, and there was a respite to my travels. And with practice, I got good at feeling bad. Moping, sullen silence, hours spent kicking myself. Bathing irregularly, shaving less, wearing the same clothes for days at a crack, breaking out the Morrissey playlist.  

Feeling sorry for yourself is peculiar. Like any hobby, it can take up as much or as little of your time as you want. It’s always there waiting for you; let your guard down, leave the door open a crack, and it’s back. And if you’re not careful, if you’re not diligent, feeling bad becomes the best part of the day. It’s more than a little intoxicating and more than a little addictive. And it’s always the easiest solution.

By early the next week the entire Dogface Patch knew. And that’s when my troubles began. Maet was first, I assume Penn told her. Maet was constricted because she was good friends with both of us. Eventually, though, she couldn’t fight her nature and gave me a steady dose of big brown cow eyes. Sympathy is water on a gas fire. It just spreads the grief around.

The boys in the pen handled it the way they handled most social situations. With silence. Awkward silence that would follow me into the room and then leave with me as well. Truthfully, I was grateful.

Only Roger threw me any lifeline. He provided some empathy—he and Lydia were currently on the outs. Plus, the man had complete loyalty to me. Even to the point of remembering Penn with warts and all—warts that weren’t there a mere week ago.

But the worst part was not more than twenty feet away from my cube. Penn continued to be nice to me; she’s a nice person. What killed me was the undercurrent of relief. She was relieved. I could see relief in her face. And when I looked, her eyes were still that agate green. But the flames were gone. Maybe I had only imagined them anyway.

I must’ve been plenty pathetic. At some point, sulking stops being a mood and starts being a way of life. Late one evening Maet plopped down at my cube. We were the only two left at work.

“Lou, can we talk?” she asked, but it didn’t look like no was one of the possible answers.
“I know what you’re going through, but you need to snap out of it.”

Maet could be an irresistible force, but she had yet to meet the unmovable object. “I think you’re mistaken. Besides, you don’t know what I’m going through.”

She just looked at me again. “You might be surprised, Lou. Everyone has felt heartache. Just remember, we are all here for you. Here for Penn and here for you. That’s how it works.” She must’ve been good and agitated—she immediately got up and walked away.

This was one situation where I knew I was right. Even a broken heart is right twice a day.

Eventually I had to quit wallowing. Heartache is a powerful emotion, but it can’t stand up to the inexorable drip, drip, drip of pure boredom. At some point you just get sick of the stink. Instead, I came up with a solution. When I walked into Tyr’s office and told him my strategy, he counseled against it. Of course, he was oblivious to any of the current office intrigue, so I had to backfill all the details.

He was still resolute. “Lou, my experience is that it’s altogether too easy to let unhappiness in one part of your life bleed over into decisions about other aspects. In my case, these have almost always become decisions I later came to regret. This decision is totally yours to make. I just hope you’re not making a mountain of a decision to address a molehill of a problem.” And with that, he got me to agree to take Friday and Monday off to think it over. I told him I’d let him know by Tuesday at the latest.

On Sunday I went over to Priam’s for dinner. My knock on the door was met by a beautiful three-year-old resplendent in a deep-golden shalwar kameez, the combination tunic and pajama bottoms that fit tightly around the ankles. When I asked who this vision in gold was, Sharan just giggled and took my hand. She led me to the living room and then ran toward her father. Priam caught her and sat her down on his lap. “Where’s Penn?” he asked.

“She had to beg off. Said she had some work and that if she could do it on Sunday, it would make her whole week go better.” Lies sure roll easily off the tongue.

He let his daughter down to the ground and gave her a tap toward the kitchen. “You could learn a lot from that girl.”

I followed them into the kitchen to greet Hasu. There are no two ways around it—a five-foot woman eight-months pregnant is as wide as she is tall. But Hasu carried it well. I told her she was looking healthy as I peered over to check what was for dinner.

“Ha! Healthy! Most sagacious, Lou. Tonight—murg sagwala with aloo naan. I’m afraid my stomach can’t take anything too tasty these days. And my energy was not sufficient for more than one entrée. I am disappointed Penn couldn’t make it.” This last part may have been a bit perfunctory; I wasn’t exactly sure that Penn and Hasu particularly hit it off. I suspected it was more of a situation of them liking the same people rather than liking each other.

It turned out Priam had stayed late at work on Friday to talk with Tyr. And in the process Priam had been let in on the money details of the negotiations. It sounded like Tyr had gotten the best of the deal. He was able to negotiate both a flat purchase rate of $500,000 and a kicker of $15,000 for every customer with 20 percent maintenance fee. Maukston had let on that NetLocii felt their top one thousand customers would be willing to pay for a premium version of their product that included Compendia. I did some quick math in my head. Even allowing for some rounding errors, it sounded like $15 million. Suddenly struggling Heimdall Research wasn’t quite as struggling as we had been two days ago!

They had also settled the code ownership in a conventional way. We would put the code in escrow and sign it off to NetLocii in case Heimdall should either go under or fail to meet any of the provisions of the contract. Tyr agreed to provide one more yearly enhancement release with the understanding NetLocii would merge the code. From then on Compendia and NetLocii would go their separate ways.  Hearing this, I could only assume Dan and Jonathan had made some significant progress on the design for the enhancement release. For our sake, I hoped so.

I asked Priam whether Tyr had told him about me being included in the deal. Priam said Tyr had dismissed that as a typical Maukstonian maneuver—an outlandish point that he could then concede when the moment was appropriate to acquire some other negotiation point.

Hasu’s simple meal of lamb in spinach sauce was delicious. I couldn’t help but notice that, once again, Priam seemed distracted. But this time it couldn’t be related to the NetLocii deal. I just assumed he would tell me why when he was ready.

As we sipped tea after dinner, Priam must have decided that the time was right. “Lou, you know how rough this pregnancy has been on Hasu and myself. I had a long discussion with Tyr, and we both agreed that it’s just not appropriate for me to be traveling so much at this point. Actually, I felt so guilty that I wasn’t putting the required effort into work lately. I also told Tyr that Corsse Bank has made me another offer. One that would not require any travel.”

I raised an eyebrow and waited patiently for the other shoe to drop.

“After some consultation, Tyr and I reached what I believe to be the best solution. On Friday, with Tyr’s blessing, I resigned from Heimdall and accepted a position as the vice president in charge of network performance at Corsse Bank. It is a nine-to-five job with no travel.”

My mind raced. “Wow” was all I could think of to say. When I recovered some equilibrium, I gave him and Hasu hugs. “This sounds like a wonderful opportunity. You’re perfect for network performance! But what will we do without you? What will I do without you?”

“I keep forgetting that you are new to the industry. You watch, Lou; the first week, you will be missing me, but the second week, you will be blaming me for everything that goes wrong. By the third week, no one will be remembering my name! And as for you, the time is right.”

“Not likely. It just seems as if you’ve done all the heavy lifting, and just as we’re reaping the rewards, you’re leaving,” I said.

“Maybe the success was in the creation, not the realization. Don’t worry, Lou; I can still enjoy it. And Hasu and I will be so much happier with the working arrangements at the bank.”

I realized then that I was being selfish. “Of course, this is great news for you. But first we’ll have to plan a big blowout. When is your last day?”

“I’m afraid it was last Friday. Corsse has regularly scheduled new employee training sessions, and one starts this Monday.”

My mind raced. “Wow” was all I could think of to say.

When I got home, I talked it over with Roger. This decision was partially his too—I didn’t want to leave him in the lurch. “Funny you should bring this up right now, Lou. Lydia and I just this afternoon decided to give it a go,” Roger said.

“You dog. I though you two were on the outs?”

He blushed. “I guess that was the storm before the calm. What can I say? Women find me irresistible!”

“And when were you planning on telling me?”

“Well, I was all for just changing the locks on the doors. But Lydia had me convinced to bring it up once you had finally came to your senses. Which, by the way, you show no sign of yet.”

“I know, Roger, I know.” I had to admit that he was right. “Even I’m not particularly enchanted with me these days. Turning the corner is a tricky endeavor when you’re falling. But maybe it’s not up to me. Maybe I just have to wait until these feelings dry up and evaporate. Or maybe I need to take a drastic step to speed up the process.”

Roger sat down on the couch alongside me. “You know, Lou, I’m in your corner and always will be. And having been down that road myself once or twice, I certainly agree that life is too short to feel too bad for too long. But no matter how you resolve this one, there will come a time when you eventually just have to.”

“Have to what?” I asked.

“Pick your fights. And let the other stuff slide.”

Well, I hated it when Roger was right. And he was, more often than not. That Sunday night as I laid myself down in the sleeping bag on the floor of my room (I still couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the bed), I had a lot to think about.

I woke before the alarm rang on Monday morning. It wasn’t hard since I wasn’t sure I ever actually  fell asleep. I called on my cell phone on the way to work.

“Good morning,” I said as soon as he answered.

“Well, Lou, it’s a joy to hear your voice so early this morning. What’s your pleasure?”

“I won’t take up much of your time. Just calling to find out when you would like me to start.” I swore I could hear Maukston smiling over the phone.

Somewhere a rooster crowed.

18. NetLocii

Lou starts his new job and has a peculiar meeting with Maukston; NetLocii works in mysterious ways; Priam and Hasu have the baby; Lou meets a coworker

That Sunday night found me at my new home, a hotel in San Francisco’s Union Square. My walking to work days were over though, it was too far. I had bus routes all picked out for the morning. Maukston agreed to meet me at NetLocii at nine.

I was still parsing my feelings. In some ways Heimdall was my comfort zone but, with Priam gone and the whole Penn thing, the Heimdall I remembered even two weeks ago was no longer. This rent-a-body arrangement with NetLocii seemed to have come at a good time. I showered and shaved that evening to give me more time in the morning. Once more unto the breach.

Waiting for my first bus on Monday I happened to glance over and see a lady and her dog waiting for the walk light. They had obviously been playing fetch at some park. The lady was now in charge of the dog, holding him in the crook of her elbow. But the little terrier was still clearly in charge of the stick—he had it firmly in his mouth while he looked up at the lady and wagged his tail furiously—pure contentment. Not exactly Ichabod the man and Winston the dog, but not a bad substitute either. I thought it portended well.

The NetLocii office took me by surprise. The atrium level was one giant glassed-in conference room and the second floor seemed full of generic office space. Luckily Maukston was waiting by the conference room door. He greeted me but apologized that today was a busy day for him. He led me up the stairs to the generic offices and told me to pick any one, that there wasn’t assigned seating at NetLocii. Then he handed me my introduction packet, my laptop, again made apologies, and was gone.

Using the introduction packet, I logged in, completed the paperwork, and was informed a key card would be forthcoming. After viewing a thirty-minute video called Me, You, and NetLocii, I was accepted into the fold. The packet also included a work assignment that felt suspiciously like an interview test.

I could peer into the atrium conference room from my workstation; Maukston was in intense discussion with three other people. I assumed that was the CEO team I had read about on the home page. Clearly, strong opinions all around.

The layout of the office space had kind of an Escher affect to it – like the second floor was an endless loop and you could look over and see yourself, staring back at yourself, from one of the spaces across from yourself. I put that all aside and finished my assignment by the early afternoon.

Just after I pressed post on my assignment, I found myself talking to a friendly voice. A call from Priam.

“Greetings, stranger. I just called to see whether you have already started climbing the ranks. How goes the first day? I had the most trouble locating you. Are you using an alias?”

“Remarkably quiet. Although I am talking to you from my luxurious new office. However, I did find it odd that it’s full of mops and brooms,” I said.

“Ah, yes, I’m familiar with the concept—‘other duties as assigned.’ I also wanted to offer you congratulations—once again you are an uncle!”

I offered congratulations to Priam and Hasu and asked about the new baby.

“I have reason to believe it is a full-blooded Lahd son. Goes by the name of Anshul. It means radiant. Mother and son are doing great. I have my in-laws here for two months to help with Sharan.”

“Two months! You must really get along!” I said.

“Yes, we must,” Priam said diplomatically. “You should be able to meet the entire crowd when you come to install your product. Maukston was just here last week pitching it, and it seemed like everyone at Corsse was most enthused. Turns out Corsse is a NetLocii client.”

“Hmm, well it’s not quite soup yet. This is just my first day.”

“Anytime tomorrow would be fine,” Priam said. But he went on to confess that Corsse Bank had been promised significant enhancements within the next six months.

Just then there was a knock on my office door. There was a woman trying to get my attention. “Priam, I have to run. There is someone at my door. Must be a spill somewhere with my name on it. Give my regards to Sharan and Hasu. And Anshul.”

It turned out to be the office manager. “Hi, Lou, my name is Linda. I’m the floor administrator. I know you’re new here, but I just wanted to let you know that we try to discourage personal calls. We find they interrupt the productive flow of the office.” As she spoke, she dropped my key card onto the desk.

Well, with that I turned sufficiently red faced and mumbled an apology.

She also handed me a note. It was from Maukston. It had yet another key card and directions to get to the roof. He asked for the pleasure of my company on the roof after work.

I made my way up the stairs to the roof. When I used the key card to crack open the roof door, there was Maukston sitting on a lawn chair drinking a beer. “Thanks for indulging me,” he said as he pointed out over the skyline. “When I was young, I spent a lot of time on my uncle’s farm in Kenya. Well, not really an uncle, more of a shirttail relative. But it always felt like my safe space. It left me with a sincere appreciation for sunsets. It’s hard to describe, but the sky was just bigger there. I can close my eyes and still see the sun setting over Lake Naivasha. In many ways, the perfect end to a perfect day. Even days that didn’t go particularly well. Sipping beer at dusk as the city awakes to the night.”

He gestured at the cooler. Heck, I’m easy, I thought and reached down for one. As I cracked it open, I said, “You can even just make out the Big Dipper,” pointing toward where the twin stars Alcor and Mizar blended into one bright glob.

Maukston smiled and remarked that Naivasha was almost exactly on the equator and so the Big Dipper and the Southern Cross were both often out of view. With that he pulled up a lawn chair next to his and changed the subject. “Lou, I brought you up here because I felt I owed you an explanation. Maybe even an apology.”

He had the advantage over me. I prided myself on understanding how people click, but I hadn’t figured him out yet. With every hair in place and his creased shirts, he was the antithesis of a classic techie. Yet he was extremely technical. And he tended to stare at you intently as he spoke. It felt like rapt attention, but when you looked a little deeper, it was almost as if he was looking through you, at something behind you that was slightly more interesting. It injected a need to please into every conversation, like the onus was on you to maintain his interest. Add to that his history of recklessness, and I kind of felt like the moth to a flame. The need to please is a powerful motivation.

“I’d like to start out by apologizing once again for my rudeness regarding your brother. It’s just that my studies in college led me to approach everything as a problem to be solved rather than to consider the human condition. I’m sorry. And I’m glad you’re here.”

“Why am I here, Maukston?” I asked.

“Muddy Waters used to say, ‘If you have something good, keep it in your pocket.’ Instead, Tyr flashed you around like his newest bauble. I knew immediately you were his diamond in the rough. And I jumped. I saw our chance to grab a valuable employee and steal something from Tyr in one move.” Again, he appeared to be looking just over my shoulder. But just for a moment, his upper lip caught on his teeth as he smiled. I wasn’t positive it was a flash of temper, but it was undeniably carnivorous. Just as quickly as it happened, it was gone. “Of course, at the end of the day, the choice was all yours.”

He was right. I was here because I chose to be here.

Maukston continued. “I know our work approach will seem radical to someone used to working with Tyr. We use a technique we call OPMP, one-person microprojects. Every week you’ll get one small unit of work. Complete that work. Then we’ll take all those small projects and merge the components farther down the line.

It really helps fight deadline slip. It may seem counterintuitive from your perspective, but complete your task each week with quality work, and you’ll see that life at NetLocii will be good. And rewarding, I promise you. Each programmer satisfactorily completing their weekly task gets a five-hundred-dollar bonus that week. Including you, even though you aren’t an official employee.” His smile led me to believe you didn’t want to consider what happens if you don’t complete your weekly task. “After all that hard work, the finished product is just a matter of connecting the dots. You’ll be amazed at how quickly we create product here compared to Heimdall.”

He went on to explain his plans for Compendia. He wanted to hook it into the NetLocii networking product and run the corporate data through it, giving a site an unexpected cache of recently accessed information. Since recently accessed data are often about to be accessed again, he felt it could give a significant performance boost.

Long range, he’d like to integrate Compendia into the Internet of Things so that data could be easily shared across disparate devices like vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, TVs, iPads.

Finally, he wanted a call back function to allow Compendia to call into NetLocii to open the possibility of tuning the devices remotely. I found this incongruous; Jonathan had intentionally not provided for this capability. But NetLocii was an “as a service” organization and needed strategies to justify their monthly bills. I could see some head-butting in the future.

As quickly as Maukston finished his vision of the future, he lost interest. He looked over at the sunset and seemed to forget I was there.

“Thanks, Maukston,” I said as I stood up and made my way towards the door.

That seemed to momentarily reach his consciousness once again. “Leave the roof key card please.” I turned around to ask him about all these key cards, but it was too late. His back was turned to me, and he was once again soaking up the sunset. I had been dismissed. I left the key card on the lawn chair and made my way off the roof.

Despite all the weirdness of my first day, I was satisfied. Not sure I was exactly happy, but at least I wasn’t down in the ultraviolet as I had been the last few weeks at Heimdall. I was back in a world with color. I had made a commitment, and I vowed to keep my part of the bargain. Look out, world—I’m about to chew up my OPMPs and spit them out, one week at a time!

It didn’t take long to realize life revolved around the microprojects. You got your assignment on Monday and turned it in before Friday, complete with unit tests that proved your code passed. If it was completed on time and the quality was judged as good, you got a $500 bonus. If your microproject was incomplete or the quality was judged as suspect, you’d get called out on the carpet, you would have your project reassigned to someone else, and you wouldn’t get the bonus. The $500 a week was a powerful incentive; that’s another twenty-five grand over the course of a year.

The judge and jury were the owners (I called them the Gang of Four) that occupied the windowed office in the atrium: Maukston, two Asian men, and one Asian woman. You could see them in all their glory, but they couldn’t be reached. My key card didn’t grant me access to the conference room. They would analyze the projects as they came in—raucous affairs with lots of yelling, hair pulling, and garment rendering. They would then spend the rest of their time incorporating the various microprojects into the end product. As best as I could tell, none of the worker bees had anything to do with the actual finished product. Although the Gang of Four were spectacularly hardworking, they engendered more fear than respect. All their communication came via the internal texting system—sarcastic messages came from Maukston, and short clipped messages came from one of the three Asian owners. (“Your code crap” was my current favorite.)

I had taken to coming into work very early. A remnant from my Java Jive days, it minimized my commuting hassles and freed my afternoons to explore San Francisco. Certainly no one at NetLocii cared or even noticed. Attendance was optional; completing your microproject was mandatory.

As fall yielded to winter, my work hours began in darkness. Often, I would be the one to turn on the lights at NetLocii; often for the first few hours my pod would be the only one illuminated. But then I started to notice another early riser. It was a touch disconcerting since it was the pod directly across the atrium from mine—the very same one where I had once imagined myself looking back at me.

Eventually curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to break the rules and walk around to meet my doppelganger. Once I saw the pod light go on, I walked over and knocked on the door. But when I peered in, the pod was empty. The light was on, but no one was home. I turned off the light, thinking maybe the cleaning crew was somehow doing something. But when I looked across the atrium—my light was off too! I was getting a Schrödinger’s cat vibe as I made my way back to my pod.

When I turned my light on, I was startled by another voice. “Sorry, man—just messing with you!” Sitting in my cube was a short bowling ball of a woman. She reached a hand across my desk. “G’morning. Name’s Dakota She/her.” She picked up a thermos she had apparently brought from her side and poured us both cups of coffee. It was excellent coffee. She raised her cup and said, “Diem perdidi.”

Dakota and I were two of the few that actually came into work on a regular basis. Dakota because she had three unemployed roommates and me because I lived in a hotel room. She started at NetLocii about three months before me.

She was as perplexed about the code promotion process as I was. She was a lot more laissez-faire about it that I was – she took to the philosophy of “He who writes the checks makes the decisions.” Dakota liked my Gang of Four reference; she had been calling them the Caesars.

Dakota and I quickly became work friends. We’d play online poker for a half hour or so in the early morning.  She moved over to the cube next to the one I generally took – we both thought it was a little spooky to be the only two here and sit across the atrium from each other. We kept our poker playing under the radar—we’d still get down to work well before anyone else showed up, and we wouldn’t go out to lunch or talk during the day. Dakota had a lot of Dan about her—affable but in a gently confusing kind of way. A tendency to mumble to herself. It was kind of relaxing once you got used to it, a steady hum like a vacuum cleaner.

Maukston was certainly right about the money rolling in. Besides the weekly $500 bonus (and believe me, you quickly came to expect them), every employee benefited from every sale. It was a percentage on a sliding scale, and I suspect you’d have had to slide all the way to the bottom to find me. Still, for someone who not that long ago was making do on tips at Java Jive and even less long ago was at a company that struggled to meet payroll, I was now pretty flush. Of course, it didn’t stop me from grousing about money, but it sure did make those memories of Roger and me trying to make ends meet and of Tyr struggling to keep Heimdall open grow fainter and fainter.

The cadence of our weeks took shape. I integrated Compendia into NetLocii and added a call to a callback function to pass it some performance statistics. Then I added some really soft tuning knobs, mostly to turn Compendia off in certain cases. How these would work together was beyond me since it wasn’t included in any of my OMPM assignments.

We had a myopic view into NetLocii. We didn’t even have access to all the source code – just that needed for the weeks microproject. Dakota and I shared our OMPM assignments – she was mostly working on routines to read and write data. And we’d see the Gang of Four arguing every Friday after the assignments were turned in. Then early the next week a new version of NetLocii would be available for customers. Priam would install the new version and measure the results. So we had our small view into the sausage making with Dakota and my projects and then a view into the end result once Priam installed it at Corsse Bank.

Early results were outstanding. Compendia did indeed reduce the network response time at Corsse Bank. And, apparently, at other customers too. NetLocii issued a press announcement with references from two other banks and an insurance company.

Life proceeded smoothly. Until it didn’t. And it all started with a Wednesday call from Priam.

Part two ends; all hell breaks loose at NetLocii

---

Wednesday, 3:00 pm

Priam was lucky to catch me at work. I was usually gone by early afternoon but this week I was trying to get a jump on my OPMP assignment. I asked about the kids.

“Oh, everyone is fine. Anshul is growing by leaps and bounds and Sharan asks about you at dinner.” Then he paused. “This, however, is more of a business call.”

He explained that Corsse had been experiencing some data related failures and at first glance it seemed to tie in timewise with when he promoted the most current NetLocii release into production. He asked if I had heard of any other company having issues.

I had to confess that I don’t hear from customers at all. If it wasn’t for Priam, I wouldn’t even know that anyone had installed the version of NetLocii with Compendia inserted. I did tell him I hadn’t noticed any flurry of activity with the Gang of Four, which you would certainly expect if customers were having issues.

Priam said Corsse was still looking at the issue as an internal bug and that he’d get back to me when he has more information.

 Thursday, 8:00 am

Priam called back. I was waiting for the omnipresent Linda the floor manager to tell me not to take cell calls at work but, gratefully, she didn’t appear to be in.

Priam said Corsse had ruled out any internal issues. As a precaution he rolled NetLocii back to the last version he had that was pre-Compendia and informed Tyr about the issue. We scheduled a zoom call for later that day to strategize.

Thursday, 2:00 pm

I took the zoom call at home. Tyr looked really anxious and said he had Jonathan and Dan reviewing all the tests Penn had built to make sure they weren’t hitting any data issues in-house. He also asked about my integration of Compendia with NetLocii. I explained that it was mostly black box and certainly didn’t involve touching any data. It didn’t occur to me until later to mention the callback logic; for me that was more marketing than technical. He asked if I had some tests I could run on my end – I had to explain to him how OPMP worked and that the only people that see the end product are the four CEOs. He didn’t seem surprised that Maukston ran such a tight ship.

I felt bad for Cam. The code that touched the data the most was all his; I could only imagine the self-flagellation he was doing at this point. He took everything so personal.

We decided a three-pronged strategy. Priam would install the current version of NetLocii in Corsse’s sandbox system. It was nearly a side-by-side implementation of their production system so he was confident that, if the problem exists, it would show up there. Tyr would continue poring through the Compendia code and would tap me on the shoulder for my memory of changes I made during the integration process.

Missing from the strategy was any mention of bringing Maukston into the process. I rationalized that, thinking that if I saw any Gang of Four activity, I would bring him up to speed. At this point I was still hoping it was a Corsse problem. Besides, I hadn’t spoken to Maukston directly since our meeting on the roof over three months ago.

I did text Dakota and told her of the drama. She felt it was a little weird to not tell Maukston, but it had been forever since she had talked with him either. She was ahead on her OPMP project and, God bless her, she agreed to take mine over and finish it as well. Not so much for the bonus money but more so to avoid any unnecessary attention.

Friday, 7:00 pm

It took Priam longer than he thought to set up their sandbox system but once he started cranking transactions through it the problem did indeed resurface. One troubling aspect was that the problem wasn’t reproducible – Priam would roll back the sandbox system and go through the same transactions and the problem may or may not reoccur. Computers do what computers do – if a problem appears non-reproducible that means you don’t yet have a complete picture of what triggers the problem.

Jonathan and Dan had no luck finding any issues with the Compendia tests and Tyr couldn’t see anything walking through the code. I watched over Tyr’s shoulder and tried to fill in my integration changes as best I could remember. Maukston didn’t allow us access to the code so I couldn’t say for certain.

The week was over, but I knew at some point I’d have to contact the Gang of Four. Not a conversation I was looking forward to.

Dakota did finish my mini project and it passed muster with Gang of Four, so that bought us some more under-the-radar time.

Saturday 3:00 am

We had a mini breakthrough.

Tyr and I were walking through the code, and we hit one of the points where I had implemented the callback to NetLocii. I mentioned it just in passing and Tyr’s eyes lit up. Up to this point he was unaware of this change. I told him the call was there but that it was just a stub, not currently in use.

We told Priam and he agreed to roll back his sandbox system to a NetLocii release that included Compendia but was prior to me adding the callback stub. Here the OPMP philosophy was our friend; since we were going production every week there were versions available along the way. This was my main contribution to the whole process, remembering when I did the OPMP that added the call backs.

Saturday 9:00 pm

Priam ran the Corsse battery of tests though the non-callback version of NetLocii and didn’t hit any problems. This was really good news – for Cam! It put the spotlight on me though. I was certain my integration code just black-boxed Compendia and didn’t touch any data.

Tyr was interested in watching the code run and, luckily, Priam had one more trick up his sleeve. He would put the callback version back onto the sandbox and then turn on tracing software so we could see any data that passed through the callback functions.

Working with Tyr and Priam again was invigorating, just like the old days. But the stakes were high. Not only did we need to find the problem as quickly as possible, but we also had to hope the problem was specific to the bank. The first was under our control, but the second was yet to be determined. I did my best not to consider the possible repercussions. I doubt any of us got any sleep that night.

Sunday 9:00 am

The tracing monitor did show information flowing through the callback functions. I immediately texted Dakota; this confirmed her long held belief that the Gang of Four were actually changing our code during the review process and one reason there were so secretive is that they didn’t want the staff to get a clear picture of the whole product.

Unfortunately, the information flowing from the callback functions on Priam’s sandbox system to NetLocii’s server was encrypted. So we could see something was being sent but had no idea what. Another mystery is how this would lead to corrupted data; it was just a one-way flow of information and there wouldn’t be an obvious need to change anything just to relay performance information.

I felt at this point I needed to bring Maukston in. Tyr asked me to give him one more day walking through the code. We compromised and I agreed to wait until dinner time Sunday.

Sunday 5:00 pm

I pulled the plug. I hadn’t talked to Maukston in months, but I still had his contact info on my phone. He was surprised to hear from me.

I rapidly, very rapidly, explained the last week. There was a long pause before he answered. “You handled this most unconventionally Lou. If I’m understanding this Tyr and Priam both know of the situation?”

“Yes. We wanted to rule out any internal Corsse Bank errors and then we were hoping that if it was a Compendia issue, we could come with a solution in hand.” Not a great explanation but it was the only one I had.

Another long pause. “Well, nothing is going to get fixed on a Sunday evening. Meet me at work in the morning and we’ll address everything then.” With that, he disconnected. He sounded calm but I couldn’t help but think of the time I saw a flash of his temper.

I texted Tyr and Priam to let them know I had brought Maukston up to date.

Monday 6:00 am

If asked I would have sworn I didn’t sleep a second that night, but I must’ve dozed off because I missed a kind of cryptic text from Tyr.

Apparently I missed his voicemail too. I was just about to check it when I got a text from Dakota.

So, I grabbed an Uber and made my way to work. I was too amped to listen to Tyr’s voicemail – I figured I’d call him from work instead.

Monday 6:30 am

When I got to NetLocii it was pure commotion. There were fire trucks and police cars blocking the street. I walked to the front door and saw Dakota standing there, waiting.

I peered in. The glass conference room was a mess. “Geez, the cleaning crew?” I asked.

Dakota just shrugged. I looked again and saw the server room open and the servers all trashed. “Wolverines maybe?” I asked.

Dakota was about to answer when a man in a suit interrupted. “Is this the guy you told us about?” Dakota just nodded.

The man took me into what was left of the conference room. He showed me his ID – he was from Interpol. I always thought that was a made-up organization for television purposes. What he was doing here, and how he got here before me, well, that was a mystery.

Apparently when a major software company basically disappears overnight and its customer list is the who’s who of the Fortune 500, well, things happen fast. He gave me a terse summary of their working theory – I don’t think he was convinced I was an innocent bystander quite yet. Then he showed me some CCTV footage from the garage, taken late last night. And there was Maukston, large as life, sneaking out the back door.

From what they could tell the four CEOs met at NetLocii in the dead of night, removed all the hard drives from the servers and then set out to parts unknown. Interpol already had them on a watch list because three of them were Chinese nationals, but they had slipped out from under that noose. The current working theory was that they may have been using NetLocii to hack into the Fortune 500 companies that were their customers.

It was then that I remembered Tyr’s voicemail. The Interpol man was interrupted by one of his cohorts and I was just about to check my voicemail when my phone rang. It was Maet.

“Wow, Maet, you wouldn’t believe it down here! I just got interviewed by someone from Interpol. Apparently that’s a real thing!”

“Lou,”

“It seems Maukston took down NetLocii and then vanished into the night! They think it might be corporate espionage or hacking. I think I may have accidentally warned him about it!”

“Lou,” it was then I noticed the shaky tone in her voice. I quit talking.

“It’s my dad.”

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End of Part 2

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