Shimmer (31 page)

And as I walked I came to the unoccupied territories, those freshly painted, freshly set-up oases of pristine office landscape, now looking less like the promised and inevitably grand future of Core Communications. Instead they now showed a very different future. An empty one.

The future unfulfilled.

The people who would have sat in these chairs, these people who would have worked for this company, they could have done so much here.

In the morning, I laid off two hundred people in Europe.

And really it seemed like I did not know myself anymore. This boss of five thousand employees. This head of a company with a nameless, ceaseless aura. This liar partnered with an obsessive cousin. This sleepless thirty-five-year-old hooked on silent, scheduled sex.

And even those things were changing. People laid off, the aura wounded, the cousin seeming to want survival more than anyone, the sex now complicated by a face and a name and a person I called a friend.

I saw all this and I didn't know how my life had come to this place. Somehow here, on the twentieth floor. Somehow here, expanding the company to its impossible size. Somehow here, alone, looking at the end.

Because I didn't know what I would do if it collapsed.

Whitley, here in my office. The two of us so quiet, barely breathing, in the dimmest white light from the buildings around us.

It was nice to touch her.

In the morning, I laid off three hundred people in U.S. field offices.

And we watched the stock fall.

The new Regence Green Box was the lead story in all the business papers, on the financial news networks, on Web sites worldwide. It was the story the press hadn't ever predicted. It was the moment our customers hadn't ever thought possible.

It was the threat Wall Street had never considered.

For the brokers and analysts and shareholders who tracked and invested in Core Communications, this was a disaster. In just these few hours, Regence's Green Box had cast Core in an unknown light. All the benchmarks by which Core had been valued, all the metrics long used to forecast our growth and success, all of it had been destroyed.

“Clearly,” one analyst said, “an adjustment is due.”

We watched the stock fall.

And I felt slightly breathless and erratic and completely exhausted.

Morning, and I was in a meeting of the company's top staff, the New York managers all sitting in front of me, the managers from the regional and international offices hooked in via speakerphone. I was talking. Talking quickly. Confidently. Telling them we would weather this. Telling them we would fight off Regence's new threat.

“Our customer base,” I said to the group. “Our lead over Regence,” I said. “Our existing sales,” I said. “Our expertise,” I said. “Our people,” I said.

Our people.

I talked clearly, the managers nodded fast, the voices from the field offices were marked by purely positive tones. Cliff even stayed seated in a chair near me, an almost healthy color across his face and hands. But, like the press, like the shareholders and the analysts, these managers also saw that Core was in an unknown place. Weakness revealed. Damage done. The company had been wounded. A wound now measured by the falling stock. A wound no spin and no talk could completely heal.

A wound that, they feared, would only grow.

Phones had been ringing and beeping and vibrating throughout the meeting. All were ignored—these the calls and notices to the top managers in the company,
Core is falling, the employees are scared, your own finances are already in descent.

I talked. Still, talking.

Competition. Stock. Technical edge. Traditional strength.

Continued fall.

And in my mind I was calculating numbers, running through lists, thinking back on the results Shimmer had given me that morning. The shadow network continuing to reel. Shimmer dimming at the edges, the shapes all turning so fast now, wild lines along the bottom of the company. We'd lost another two months off the life of the shadow network. Two months. In just one week. And even if the stock somehow did rebound soon, Core would still be in competition with Regence. Sales were slowing. Together, the falling stock and falling sales would kill us.

“What about our bonuses?” a voice on the speakerphone asked.

I took a breath, I paused.

“What about grace?” someone whispered from the back of the room.

“Your bonuses are threatened,” I said, and paused again. “Grace is moving back.”

The looks on the faces, a grayness that crossed over each of them
in just one second. But I looked back at each of them, the CEO who had to look them in the eye, who had to show he understood their fear.

Except that I didn't have the same fear. In truth, Regence's Green Boxes were the best possible protection I could have wanted. With Regence attacking us, no real effort could be given to rogue sections or the shadow threads Shimmer might find. Because with Regence attacking us, there was now a reason we could fail.

Once more I was on a path toward my millions. My assets, my cash, ever-increasing amounts tied up in the shadow network. Owned entirely by me.

I was back at my beginning. Once more caught in the perfectly protected trap I had created myself.

Cliff's phone rang and I paused, inadvertently, leaning toward him to see the text message on the screen. I felt somehow proud that Cliff did not stand, or leave. He only put his hand on the seat of his chair, staring now at a message we would all receive over the next few minutes.

The stock had fallen another $15.

Cliff nodded confidently. I nodded too. I made the motions of a man scanning the faces of the people in the room. I bore the expression of a CEO remaining confident despite the storm around us all.

“Make no mistake,” I said to the group. “This will be hard. It will be ugly and awful. But we will survive this.”

Yesterday, I'd had sex with Whitley.

She was sitting five feet away.

And for a second, no more, I let myself feel that she was beautiful.

And for a second, no more, I let myself wonder what this meant, this sex and touching and time with her.

The phones rang. The heads nodded. The news from outside invaded our world, taking another step with each second that passed.

And for a second, I glanced at her.

COO. Head of SWAT. The only person who ever told me
no.

And for a second, no more, I let myself feel how I was not afraid of her anymore.

In the morning I laid off two hundred people from the New York office.

I cut programs.

I cut expenses.

I cut people.

Wall Street applauded.

The board sent me notes of thanks and encouragement.

I read each word. Each note. Each positive article in the paper.

I read them, sitting in my office, and, every few moments, I turned to my computer, looking at the security cameras throughout the building, watching as the people left the office. Carrying their boxes, their briefcases, their thick, thick piles of paper.

And by night I'd finish reading each positive article. Each positive note.

By night I'd see that I'd added a few weeks to the shadow network.

By night I turned to a list of who I would fire next.

The shadow network spun in dense, growing circles near his head.

Leonard had called me to the DMZ. He was walking along the raised path at the foot of the main status board, Shimmer's hundred shapes spinning, turning, nearly violent in their motion above and behind him.

And a section of the shadow network spinning—unidentified and undefined—in the corner of the screen.

“We will figure out what they're doing,” he said. He was talking about the Budapest thread. And the rogue section that he thought was responsible for it.

I sat down in a chair. “Leonard,” I said, “we can't afford to spend time on this.”

He was nodding, back turned to me, looking up at the board as he moved left to right. He didn't speak.

It was a full minute before I said to him, “Leonard, do you understand me? I know these rogue sections are a huge danger. But they aren't as important now.”

He nodded. Moving slowly. His body, full and wide and spread across the screen, now cast as a near silhouette against Shimmer.

Another minute passed. Only eight other people were in the DMZ, Leonard having cleared out all nonessential personnel before projecting Shimmer on the main status board. The lack of people, the quiet in the room, it was as if somehow our network had begun to shut down, not dying the quick death of the shadow network collapse, instead lost to the slow demise of losing clients to Regence.

“It disappeared, you know,” Leonard said now.

“What did?”

“The Budapest thread,” he said. “I can't make sense of it. I can't even find it.”

“Leonard, please. Look at me. Wait on this rogue section. It doesn't matter.”

“They're very smart,” he said. “Whoever they are.”

“Leonard,” I said, but couldn't think of what else I should say. What else I could tell him.

The screen blinked, then changed completely, only a few dense shapes now filling the display. I realized Leonard had a remote control in his hand, able to change the view of Shimmer that appeared on the screen.

“Do you see?” Leonard asked now. “See these lines pulling in on themselves? See these circles collapsing? The company is changing.”

And of course I saw it. Saw it in the dense, collapsing shapes. Shimmer was showing a company falling in on itself. People in every group were withdrawing, their communication and interaction with other groups, with each other, all of it disappearing.

The screen blinked again, another view, more of the very slow but steady collapse.

“They turn inward,” I heard Leonard say, almost whispering as he spoke.

“And these,” I heard Leonard say, pointing absently toward two small, dense squares on the board. “These are new.”

He was pointing at the shadow network. Still he didn't know what he was looking at. He pointed them out only because of that very fact—they were mysteries in the system, unidentified anomalies caused, he was worried, by the changes in the company. Or by his suspected rogue section.

The screen blinked and now Leonard was showing Regence, there in the cameras and facilities database.

“Regence just watches,” Leonard said.

“How are we doing on toilet-paper updates?” I asked, trying to smile, wishing Leonard would turn to me.

He shrugged.

“Maybe I'll get Perry to agree to those naked pictures Julie suggested,” I said.

He spoke very quietly. “It's all lost so much of its joy,” he said, and I felt my eyes try to close.

The main board blinked, then returned to its normal view, a map of the world, the positions of our satellites. Leonard put the remote control in his front pocket, carefully, slowly, with an almost exaggerated motion. Like a boy putting his pet mouse into his jeans.

As I left the DMZ, walking now across the eleventh floor, I noticed the concentrations of people dressed in green. Programmers and admins, clustered near workstations, moving toward conference rooms. Weeks ago I'd seen these people in their all-green ensembles, and it had made me happy. The unspoken celebration of the people in this company. A joke maybe even they hadn't understood. Now, though, I couldn't help but see these people as a landmark in the increasingly rapid passage of time. An indecipherable symbol walking freely among the people who most needed to know what they represented.

It's the first of the month. The people are in green. We are thirty days closer to the end.

And I thought about what Leonard had just said.

Joy,
he had said. Leonard had called it joy.

I tried to find Perry. But he was not in his office. I sent him an e-mail from my phone.

You've been spending too much time away from your desk.

It was only a minute later that he responded.

Missed you in your office,
he wrote.

Leonard isn't doing well,
I responded.

I know.

What can I do?

It was another five minutes before Perry responded. I'd thought maybe he wouldn't answer till later that night, maybe the next day. I entered a conference room for another meeting, another talk to another group. My phone clicked as I went to the front of the room, the assembled Core staffers waiting anxiously for what I had to say.

I glanced at the phone. Perry's answer was short.

Nothing.

I could barely keep up with the changes to the model. The falling stock. The drop in sales. I sat at my computer updating the spreadsheet, checking the results of the changes I made. Staring at the projected date of our collapse. A date that moved closer—by hours or days—every time I entered a new number, a new change, a new piece of bad information.

Shimmer so dark, so fast, filled with the motion of so many frantic changes.

Day and night I'd been in meetings with staff from all areas and levels of the company, trying to keep them focused, keep them positive in the face of the fall.

Day and night I'd been holding interviews with any reporter who would speak to me, talking about every positive in the company, every customer we'd held on to, every success I could spell out to them.

Day and night I'd been working with Cliff to juggle the finances of the company, cutting spending, slicing programs, as Cliff, sitting beside me, shook in place, his hands, his head, sometimes his feet.

Day and night I'd been lobbying government officials on the history of abusive actions by Regence, its attempts to monopolize whole market segments, the evidence of price fixing, product dumping, the violation of basic labor laws.

Day and night I'd been stroking, coddling and arguing with every analyst and broker who would listen.

Sex with her again. Every night. Whitley, appearing at my office door at ten. Walking in, sitting down on the windowsill near my desk. Something she'd done a thousand other times in the past three years, looking just the same, so still and focused and calm. But now she talked in a voice slightly different, slightly more quiet than ever before. Saying only a few words. Saying,
Hello.
Saying,
Hi.
Moving with a speed slowed even more. Moving, and she leaned toward me. Now kissing me. Now touching my arm and neck and face.