Kill Process (47 page)

He sets down the glass. “Okay to hug?”

“Yes, gently.”

He wraps me very softly in his arms, and I rest my head on his shoulder. He’s warm and his shirt has the familiar smell of his dry cleaner. I could stay there forever, but I give him a kiss on the cheek and push him away so I can take the painkiller from him.

“What was that for?” he asks.

“For being you,” I say.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Emily brings some of my things to Thomas’s house, then helps me dress and do my makeup. I’m waiting in the living room when the reporter arrives.

Two show up instead of one: Brian introduces himself as a technology reporter, and Kristine works on the crime beat. I did my research last night, and recognize the names as two of the most senior staff reporters.

Brian asks easy questions, background about me and Tapestry. Based on what they’re asking, they already know the answers. Either they’re looking for a new angle, or they’re trying to soften me up before we move into the tough stuff.

Then Brian nods to Kristine, a silent handshake between the two.

“Tell us about the events of two days ago,” Kristine says.

“I went home,” I begin, and “I don’t know exactly what happened, if he hit me or drugged me.”

Kristine lets me talk about the events of that evening, and then she asks me to start with the beginning of the day. “When you woke up that morning, did you have any idea Daly might come after you that day?”

*     *     *

1997
—
New York City

“In these situations,” Repard says, “you’re tempted to say as little as possible. The fewer details you provide, the less there is to remember. You can see why that’s a problem?”

“They’ll keep asking for more information,” I say.

“Exactly, and they end up digging deeper in unwanted directions than you’re prepared to go. The alternative is to provide a richly detailed story. This is just as wrong because you’ve got to remember all the details. If you prepare real hard, you can memorize all the details right, and tell them in the same order every time.”

“Five minutes!” the guard yells.

“Fuck you,” Repard says, and tries to give him the finger, but hits the limits of the handcuffs before he can raise his arm. He shakes it off and turns back to me.

“If the story is too complicated, too rich, you have no choice except to memorize it verbatim. Then what will everyone remember? That you tell the same story the same way every time. It will feel like a fabrication, regardless of whether it is true or not.”

“You’re saying leave out details even if they’re true?”

“Jesus, yes. Even if everything is 100 percent true, you can’t tell it like it is, because you have no control over how they interpret the story. The objective is to establish a narrative, not tell exactly what happened. You leave certain holes in the narrative, and that makes them ask questions to fill in those gaps. Questions you’re prepared to answer, but, more important, questions to focus their attention where you want it, instead of where you don’t. They can only spot those gaps if there’s a structure to what you’re saying. Only then are you controlling the message.”

“I don’t know,” I say, and gesture at the visiting room with its bars and plexiglass dividers. “Isn’t the
message
of your lesson somewhat diminished by the side of the table you’re sitting on?”

Repard shakes his head and his lips spread in a small smile. “Open your mind, Angie. This is part of the narrative.”

I try to force a smile to my face and fail. He planned to be arrested and spend the rest of his life in jail? Ridiculous. He’s trying to fit his circumstances to the story he’s telling himself.

He appears saddened by my reaction. “At least remember this: you need a manageable number of details, not too many, not too few. Enough that it feels like you’re telling a true story, not so many that you have to memorize your recital. You parse them out economically, and make sure the story remains consistent with or without any individual detail.”

I shake my head, unwilling to listen to any more of his advice.

“Your luck has run out, Repard.”

“Luck is for fools,” he says.
“I—”

“Yeah, yeah. You make your own destiny. I’ve heard it a thousand times.”

I stand, fed up with the whole situation, and leave even before the guard returns for Repard. He’s losing touch with reality. Why do I continue to meet him? He wants to keep mentoring me, but what kind of mentor is someone in jail? I can’t trust anything he says. I’m mostly doing it for him, to give him some motivation to keep going.

Half the White Knights are here too, rounded up in the biggest computer crime case the government put together since the new FBI chief committed to cracking down on cybercriminals. Now he has to make this case stick or he’ll lose political face.

Repard and his cohorts are being held out as an example. If you total up all the possible crimes and run their penalties out consecutively, the worst case is three hundred years in prison.

I’ve had nightmares about being arrested. Even my mother knew enough to spot my boss’s name in the paper, and asked me what I’d gotten myself into.

In the meantime, I’ve been leading Repard’s section at the company, even though half the people left are senior to me, some by many years. Everyone knows I’m Repard’s favorite, so I’ve become de facto team lead. They’re all crazy, treating the situation like a temporary inconvenience from which Repard will return shortly.

Three months later, my coworkers turn out to be right. The charges against Repard and the White Knights are dropped, and they walk with a public apology from the prosecutor’s office. The money is never recovered.

A year after that, Repard retires and disappears. I try to track him down, but he’s totally off the grid. I don’t hear from him again, but when I apply for the job at Tomo, a recommendation letter from Repard mysteriously appears before my first job interview.

*     *     *

The news reporters continue their interrogation longer than I expected. I’m wearing out, and worse, I timed my medication for maximum lucidity when they arrived, which means now I’m in pain.

“Why would Lewis Rasmussen go so far as to attack you personally?” Kristine asks. “Tapestry has an interesting but completely unproven vision. Tomo has two billion users, the largest revenue of any Internet company, and they’re sitting on a hundred billion in cash, a war chest they could use to fight you for years, maybe decades.”

“We’re the first truly credible replacement for Tomo,” I say. “Not just an alternative. A successor with a fundamental approach that allows everyone to participate on a fair basis. People don’t want to do business with Tomo. Sure, they may desperately need the traffic funnel Tomo points at them, but at what cost? Nobody can deal with Tomo as an equal.”

“How many partners signed up so far?” Brian asks.

“Hundreds,” I say.

“Really?” Brian raises his eyebrows, and flips through his notes. “Sorry, I don’t mean developers signed up for your API. How many partners at scale that could bring you hundreds of thousands or millions of users?”

“The CompEx deal will bring on a hundred million users in the next twelve months. It doesn’t get much bigger than that.” When I return to work, marketing will kill me for stealing their thunder.

“That’s one. Earlier you said you were worried Lewis Rasmussen influenced CompEx, in essence to buy voting power away from you, ensuring acceptance of his acquisition offer. Is CompEx even a legitimate partner in that case?”

“We’ll see what happens. If they pull back now that Rasmussen is implicated, maybe they were a pawn. If they and the other investors are willing to negotiate an investment in good faith, without wresting away control of the company, then we’ll know they’re legit.”

Brian nods. “Could be.”

“I had a mentor who said you can only learn who your true friends are when you’re in a jam with nothing left to offer anybody. Anyone who still shows up to help is someone you can count on.”

T
HE INTERVIEW
comes out on Friday. It’s both the first piece on Chris Daly with any depth to it and yet still far shorter than I had hoped.

Still, the article is only the first in a series of investigative pieces, and it’s clear they’re working hard on fact-checking, only publishing what they can substantiate. They make the connection between Lewis Rasmussen’s arrest and Daly’s attack, and they’ve verified through “confidential sources” that Tomo did in fact offer to acquire Tapestry on multiple occasions and was turned down.

Daly turns out to be an enigma, a verified employee at the FCC with an electronic history turned up via a credit check that nobody can verify. Phone calls to past employers turn up employee records, but nobody remembers him. No neighbors know him at any of his previous addresses. The article includes a slightly blurry official-looking photo and a request for more information about him.

The article promises more details into Rasmussen, the struggle for control with the board of directors, and role of CompEx next week.

The article’s been live for a little over an hour when Owen Mitchell calls.

“What the hell have you done, Angie?”

“Yes, Owen, I’m fine, thank you so much for asking. You probably want to know how you can help, right?”

“No, I want to talk about you going to the press.”

“Really, Owen. Three days after I was attacked and beaten, and you never ask how I’m doing?”

“Hell, I’ve worked with Amber and Igloo every day since you were attacked, helping them run the company, and getting regular updates on you. I didn’t want to bother you at home, not after what the board put you though. I’m very, very sorry about what happened, and also sorry we fell victim to Rasmussen’s manipulations.”

Oh. I didn’t expect that reaction.

Owen keeps going. “However, that doesn’t excuse talking to the press about the investors the way you did. CompEx has a substantial brand. They do not want to be connected to anything contentious. You’ve put them in an awful bind.”

“They consigned themselves to that situation by taking orders from Rasmussen.”

“You forced them to up their stake to appear clean. They feel manipulated.”

“What are you talking about?” I say. “There’s nothing in the article about them upping their stake.”

“No, but the reporters asked them questions yesterday, and made it clear they would be watching to see what CompEx does. Today’s article reinforced all of these issues will be exposed in the next week.”

“What did CompEx decide?” I try to keep the question light.

“Jesus, it’s not about what they decide, it’s that they’re a major player, and you’ve put my relationship with them at stake.”

“It’s not all about you, Owen. The world doesn’t revolve around your relationships. You, CompEx, me, we’re all pawns in this.”

Silence hangs heavy on the line. Finally, Owen breaks the quiet. “We had an emergency meeting with the investors, including CompEx, this morning. Everyone has agreed to jointly honor their financial commitments while maintaining your voting power to provide a show of confidence. We’re increasing the valuation of the company so we don’t dilute your share. You still have control. All this is tentative obviously.”

“That’s great news.” The statement is vague and devoid of meaning. The outcome is what I hoped for, but the victory is hollow. Superior ideas, management skills, and technical expertise should have allowed me to win. I imagined Tapestry competing head-to-head against Tomo, beating them by the superiority of our meritocratic design principles. In the end it came to down hacking the bad guys and exposing their foul behavior. I played a game and won because I cheated better than the other team.

*     *     *

On Monday I return to the office.

Harry, our CFO, is the first to see me, and he apologizes at least three times before he even reaches me. I edge away from him, but he keeps coming, like he’s going to hug me, and all I can hear is a hum in my circuits, like I’m about to blow a fuse.

“I got all the money back from the police,” he says, hands up, trying to placate me.

I have no idea what he’s talking about, until I remember the cash I had begged and borrowed from friends to keep us afloat. I try to walk around him, but he blocks my path, oblivious to my discomfort, or maybe interpreting it as anger about the money.

“We’ll receive the next series of payments from the investors, on an accelerated schedule. By tomorrow we’ll have enough cash in the bank to meet payroll for the next four months.”

I’m still cornered in the entranceway. Amber hears him, grabs me by the arm, and pushes him aside. She escorts me to my office and follows me in, closing the door behind her.

There’s a knock at the door before I can even sit down. Igloo opens the door a crack to sit her head in. “Can I come in?” She’s got puppy dog eyes.

I nod.

She gives me a hug.

“Careful,” I say, afraid she’s going to press on one of my still-sore injuries.

She’s gentle though, and then she takes one of my guest chairs. Amber remains standing by the whiteboard.

“You shouldn’t go out without one of us,” Igloo says.

I nod, feeling foolish now that I’m in my office, even though I was undeniably stuck out there.

“Did you see today’s article?” Amber asks.

“Yes,” I say. It’s the second in the series, and this one focused on Tomo and its effect on mental health, and privacy; it includes blurbs from experts in the field as well as regular Tomo users. Tomorrow, the article promises to unveil a dozen emails purportedly exchanged between Lewis Rasmussen and Chris Daly.

“So far this morning we’ve had five thousand people sign up to be notified when Tapestry goes live.” Igloo passes over a tablet displaying a graph of signups. It looks like a hockey stick. “Tomo users are eager to defect.”

“That’s great,” I say. We usually average a hundred email signups a day. “We’ll see a lot more before the week is out.”

“We should launch right now,” Amber says.