Inital Public Offerings Ch. 01

We had just started our business and I was running into a lot more code then I could cut effectively myself, so I offered him a deal: I'd send him some work and he'd do it for free on his time off.

I know what you're thinking: I'm a dick. But my business was cash strapped and I couldn't afford to pay him a thing. We were a real company, however, and he could at least show some work on his resume when he was job hunting. And not to put too fine a point on it, his skills might not be up to the task and working for me would give him time to polish them for a real world environment. If he worked out and we became successful, I'd be able to pay him. So there was a lot of upside for both of us.

Long story short, he accepted, improved enough to get on the books and I had been outsourcing code to him and paying him standard wages for the last three years. The only thing was, he worked back home in Ohio, not in Silicone Valley. He had never met any of the other workers and I was the only person he dealt with personally.

Who had gotten in touch with him? The computer software industry has a broad friends feeling to it at times, but there was still a good bit of poaching of talent and software designs. Just look at the Steve Job/Bill Gates affair as an example. Someone had found and looked up Karl. But how did they know that Karl, in Bum Fuck Ohio, was doing software design for a California IPO and furthermore doing it well?

I turned this over in my head for a while. On the one hand, I felt good for him. He had come a long way from Pizza Guy to someone worth poaching. On the other, I didn't like the implication about someone knowing about him. As far as I knew, only our company knew of his existence, and I was his only direct point of contact. That didn't mean that there weren't a half dozen people at our job who knew a 'KarlWTF@google.com' cut code for them. He didn't only communicate directly with me. But only HR and I had his personal information. Either someone had leaked something or some other company had made a lot of effort to look up a Karl Gretzler in the entire nation.

I sighed and tabled it for now. I could ask some pretty pointed questions with the HR department later. I felt good for him. It would be a confidence boost for him to actually be courted. I didn't for a moment think he would go for it. He liked what he had right now: a girl, a well paying job and being near his mom. And if he did go to another company?

I mulled that question. It would hurt but it would be good for him. Since he found Sheila, I wasn't his only friend. He needed to look out for himself and I would feel good for him.

I looked at the screen and thought a moment. Then I typed:

Have you been sending out resumes? How did they find you? I have no idea what is happening. How do they know about Ryleh? And you are sure about the Beta number?

Hackers talked shop all the time. Still, there was a big difference between discussing what version you were up to and actually trying to steal code. I was sure that Karl wouldn't do that, particularly since he had warned me. Something else for me to check on, to see if anyone was trying to steal code. That wasn't the troubling bit. Knowing where Karl used to live...that set a small alarm flag in my head. Could it be as simple as someone just checking the alumni rolls at our school and cross checking me with other people in our corporate board? Something to consider.

The rest of the weekend was pretty boring. I stayed at home and put on Lord of the Rings as some background noise as I cut code. Ryleh (So I love Lovecraft. Sue me. Andrew made me promise that I could name our work projects, not the market names. Spoilsport) was our latest version which provided router security and pretty high networking speeds. It wasn't totally innovative. It wasn't a Windows, or a new operating system. But it was able to improve speeds and also had a side effect of allowing older systems to get enough of a boost on performance so one could put off buying a new computer system, which the marketing guys seemed to think was a gold mine. Better to spend a few tens of thousands of dollars on new software then hundreds of thousands on new systems. It was a temporary measure, but weren't most of them in business?

Allie came in and looked at the television and sighed. "How many times have you watched that thing?" she said.

"Lost count. I like noise in the background when I'm working." I said, still engrossed in my computer.

"You should put on some new movies. Stay current. Not just this fantasy crap."

I looked up at her. This had been a recurrent theme recently. "If I recall, when I took you to them a few years ago, you said they were outstanding."

She pouted slightly. 'Well, yes. But they were new and they were hot and people weren't making fun of them back then. Now, it's like a nerd obsession."

I sighed "Honey...these are classic movies. They will go down as one of the great sets of movies made in our time. And I like other kinds of movies too. I just prefer to watch these sometimes."

"Oh yeah! Like 'Hunt for Red October', 'Metropolis' and 'Wrath of Khan'. See?"

"All classics! These things have lasted the test of time. Like those muscle cars...whatchacall them? The ones with the horse logo..." I twitted. She loved those cars.

"A Mustang!" she said emphatically. "I wish you were cool enough to buy a Mustang." she groused. "Why don't you?"

"Because I have a perfectly good car. Maybe when I replace it." I equivocated.

I mulled. I was getting rich enough to buy a nice car like a 'stang. And it would make Allie happy. She always cooed over some of the 'hawt' toys owned by our friends. The problem was, I wanted to carry more then two people in comfort. Like if we had kids one day, thought that seemed more and more unlikely.

*

The next day was hectic. We just went public and a lot of our people just wanted to stare at the stock ticker. The mood in the room was mixed. Those who went with salary and a normal retirement were morose or vainly trying to be happy for their comrades, who were alternatively giddy or morose. I could tell where our stock was just by the sounds of groans or jubilation coming from the work room. Generally, the cheers were beating out the groans two to one.

I was tried hard not to let myself get obsessed with that. We still had code to write and customers to maintain. It was easy to get bogged down in the 'quick' money but the quick money came from making the hard money first. Without a product or good service, we'd be another pets.com.

I did some quick mental calculations. I'd just seen another $5,000 added to my net worth. Okay...I said tried. I'm no saint.

I was about to get back into Ryleh, but my email dinged at me. I used the same tone for all my email announcers, so that brought Saturday back to mind. I spent some time looking for mass downloads of code and checked into the security of the VPN we had set up for Karl and me. Nothing showed.

I checked my email finally. Still no reply from Karl. I sent him another note asking him about the progress on his module of code and re-requested he tell me about this person.

I got home late that night, and Allie had already gone to bed in a sulk. I know this because normally, no matter how late I got in, she'd snuggle next to me and throw her arm over my chest. Not so tonight. I noted that she'd been sulking a lot lately. I felt guilty about my late nights.

Work proceeded as normal. People were still watching the stock ticker. I grumbled good naturedly about putting a block on financial sites. Jared, one of our programmers just grinned at me. "And how long do you think it would take a room full of computer programmers to get around your firewall?" The rest of them just laughed and William waved his iPhone at me and stuck out his tongue impudently.

"That's great," I smirked. "Now all you so called internet millionaires have twice the reason to buckle down with unpaid overtime just like I do." This was met with groans from the stock holders and wicked laughs from those without stock options.

When I got into my office, Hector, my second in command in programming, was sitting in the chair in front of the desk, studying the room. "Hey. I wanted to talk to you about something." He stood up as soon as I entered. Mindy had given me a heads up before I entered.

"Hector." I greeted him, looking at him quizzically. "What's up?"

"Could you look at the multiplex 5.05 subroutines? I'm not sure that those guys are doing the job." he asked a bit nervously.

I considered this. "That's Reg and Ryan's section." I frowned a bit. "They seem competent. What's the problem?"

He started to describe the problem to me. "...and I'd like it if you could check out some of their source code for the errors."

"We didn't have a problem with that module on the last run."

"Well, we have a problem now."

"Okay." I said. "I'll get to it." He stood there, looking at me expectantly. I just looked at him. "I said, I'd get to it. Now was that all?"

He snapped out of the look. "Yeah...I guess so." he said, sounding disappointed.

"Okay. Why don't you see if you can get a sense of where it's falling apart so I don't have to wade through a couple thousands of lines of code. You are their supervisor."

He got this blank look. "Okay boss." he said very mildly and turned and left.

***

Error Messages

The next day was taken up by a bunch of problems. Andrew asked that I give an interview about our company, so I spent the morning that way. I have to say, the pimple faced kid asked some good questions, though he seemed to know less about business then I did. He seemed pretty awed to talk to me and acted...well, like a young college kid. Toward the end of the interview, I asked him 'What publication do you work for?" trying to find out exactly what trade publication hired out of high school.

"Oh...I do a tech blog which is pretty well received. I got 20,000 hits last year." he told me.

I wanted to storm out of there, but I tried to be gracious and leave as quickly as politely possible. After all, this young schmuck hadn't scheduled my appointment. I went to lunch, which included a couple of stiff drinks. Andrew was pulling another one of his fucking jokes, or was taking this business thing WAY too far! I'd been giving interviews to seemingly everyone and his brother and now this! No more. That was what he was hired to do.

Mellowed by the booze, I went back to work and started to look into that code that Reg and Ryan dropped the ball on. I spent about two hours checking the details, but then decided I needed to pull back. I pulled up the email trail. Two weeks ago, the module had already been signed off as working by itself. I looked for a verification email and couldn't find one. That was funny because I was sure that it had been.

That afternoon, when I arrived home early for a change, things got worse.

I got an email from Karl.

It said:

Wvz. Fbeel gb or fb yngr trggvat onpx gb lbh. Furvyn naq V qvq n jrrxraq guvat. Lbh tbg n ceboyrz. Fbzr shpxre vf nfxvat zr ubj sne V'ir tbggra jvgu Elyru naq vs V jnf nyzbfg svavfurq. Ur xarj qrgnvyf gung jr qvfphffrq ynfg jrrx. JGS? Ubj qvq ur svaq zr?

It took me a moment to understand what he did and I went to find a translation site. The message was in the rot13 code. Essentially, you took the number of a letter: A = 1, and added 13 to it, so that A translates to N. It was a simple code but enough to confound a lot of people, at least for a while.

Translated, it said:

Jim. Sorry to be so late getting back to you. Sheila and I did a weekend thing. You got a problem. Some fucker is asking me how far I've gotten with Ryleh and if I was almost finished. He knew details that we discussed last week. WTF? How did he find me?

I sat back with a sick sense of dread in my stomach. You see, six months ago, when I had visited my mother, I had run into a zaftig young lady named Sheila on my flight to Columbus. She was reading a book on the neurological problems of Tourette's and I talked to her about it. Her younger brother had Tourette's and she was studying medicine. I mentioned my friend Karl, who was one of the rare cases whose symptoms hadn't diminished with age. She wanted to meet him as a case study. It turns out she wanted to study him even more closely and he moved into her place two months ago. He was as happy as I had ever heard him. His work was suffering some, but I cut him some slack. I'm no saint myself and I understood.

The problem was, Human Resources only had his old address with his mom's place on file. The only place that had his new address was my planner at home.

I started to type a response, but stopped. Karl was a smart cookie. He wrote in code. He thought there was a chance that our message might be read by someone else. We used a VPN for him to transfer his code with very high level of encryption to keep it safe from prying eyes. The problem was, it would only keep these emails safe from people outside the company. If it was true that these people knew what we discussed last week, something was rotten in Denmark. I had cancelled last week's design meeting because of all the additional IPO and PR work. So where was all this information coming from?

I opened my day planner. There, big as life, was Karl's name with his address crossed out and Sheila's written under it. I had done it weeks ago and never thought to pass it along to HR. One of life's many chores which got pushed off due to shifting priorities.

My queasy sense of dread intensified. Had someone been in my house?!? I thought of all the people who came and went. Allie, of course. Swati, our housekeeper. All of Allie's friends who came over. The occasional workman. Had we had any work done recently? I tried to keep current on social engineering techniques and of course we had a good security system but so many people came into the house. Heck, we had a pool boy, a lawn service, and a Terminex man, and that was just off the top of my head! And what else had been left or examined?

So far, I thought I could deal with this myself. The problem was expanding and while I was good with managing my staff, writing code, could balance a check book and even pick out a stock or two, I wasn't good at this political stuff. And in my view, security and reading people was definitely political. And for political, I had to go see Andrew.

I looked in the kitchen for Allie. She wasn't around, but there were some rapidly cooling cartons of Chinese food waiting for me next to the microwave with a note telling me she was hitting a spinning class. It seems there was some cycling phenomena where one prepped for a simulated ride up Mt. Everest and she had been doing extra workouts to give it a try when it came into town.

Well, this saved me the awkward conversation of asking her which of her friends was nosing around my den, at least until Andy had given me some suggestions. And I really didn't want to believe it was Swati. She had been with us for two years and was a saint, in my opinion, though Allie had her issues. I think it was a woman territorial thing.

I sighed, got into my car, and went to Andy's.

***

Two hours later, I walked back into the kitchen. I frowned at the cartons of food, now stone cold and absently put them in the fridge for later. Once done, I must have stood there for a couple of minutes, my mind running in circles.

I finally came to a decision and went to the upper shelf of the pantry where we kept the replacement bottles of booze. No doubt we had an open bottle of scotch at my huge globe bar that I just had to have, bought from the Skymall magazine after one of my many business trips, but my mind wasn't thinking straight right now. I broke the seal on a new bottle and splashed some in a tumbler with ice. Then I slumped into the breakfast nook booth.

So that was how she knew where the Shout was.

Idly, I picked up the phone and hit a speed dial number. "Hi. This is Jim, cocksucker. Tell her not to come home. She has no place here." I hung up before I could hear anything else. Five minutes later, the phone rang in a new era to my life.

***

I hadn't bothered to call ahead. Call it a bit of social ineptness which paid long dividends.

I was trying to make sense of everything when I got to Andy's place. The list of suspects was long. Like I said, it was one of those Mission type houses with a lot of glass in the front and in the back where it looked over the valley.

I got out of the car and headed to the front door. Night had fallen and the lights inside were bright. Through a side window next to the double wide, carved oak door, I saw a trail of blonde hair and a cheek of female posterior go around the corner.

I stopped...and got a grin on my face, my original intentions gone. I'd like to rationalize my actions but I can't. I wanted to get a look at the newest conquest that Andrew was nailing. He had a lot of fine tail, as he put it, in the past and from what I could see, this woman was traipsing around his place totally naked. So, I snuck around the back. I'm not perfect; I admit it. I'm a breathing male! I'd get a peek and then decide whether to bother him or not.

I had wandered down the pavers set in white gravel to around the side and I peeked into the large glass wall there. She was standing at the bar, in her naked glory, the light giving a golden sheen to her skin. She looked over her shoulder with a coquettish look and put her hands on the upper shelves while arching her back and standing on tip toes. Her derrière was pertly displayed. And it was Allie. She wasn't climbing Everest today.

There was a motion to the left and Andrew came into view, striding over to her. His hands stroked up her flanks and cupped her breasts as she willingly let him. His fingers pinched at her nipples and I was able to get a glimpse of a quickly masked wince. Her nipples were very delicate.

I felt numb and dumb. What was this? A mistake? A fling? Please God, let it be he's blackmailing her! She leaned her head back and gave him a series of short but passionate kisses while his hands strayed down to her buttocks and caressed them. She still looked beautiful, but I wasn't aroused at the sight of her..

I could see their lips moving as she moved her hands down to the shelf at her waist. He was saying something. His rampant penis poked at her rear. She shook her head but smiled. Then she bit her lip, tilted her head in that so familiar gesture she got when she was considering something, and she replied to him. He loped off upstairs. While he was gone, she went over to her purse, which was next to her pile of clothes and she pulled out a sheaf of papers and looked it over. She read silently and then jerked her head up, shoved them back in, and languidly walked back to the shelves. Asshole showed up, carrying a small white and blue tube. She leaned with her back to the shelves, her breasts jutting toward him. He walked forward, offering the tube to her.

She put a hand to his chest. For a moment, I hoped she was going to call a halt to this charade, but she knelt and took him into her mouth, sucking him in and bobbing her head to get him hard again.

At this point, some small bit of sense trickled back into my head and I pulled out my iPhone and started recording. I needed proof...for something. My head hadn't gotten around to what I needed proof for, but the nerd in me wanted evidence, even as I was filled with a sense of rage and shame.

Finding him hard enough, she took the tube and slathered a liberal dose onto his cock, slowly and evenly rubbing her left hand up and down, her wedding ring winking in the light. Satisfied, she stood and turned, looking over her shoulder. He put his hands on her hips and started pushing at her cheeks again, but she turned and her features got a sharp expression as she said something. Then she reached behind her and laid his penis in the cleft of her ass, nestling it lengthwise along the seam. She then started to rhythmically squeeze her buttocks and roll her hips up and down to jerk him off with her ass, her hands reaching behind her to grab his hips.