by Heleen Kist
Claire stayed standing, not knowing whether he’d really meant this would be a ‘one-minute’ exchange.
Darren gave the mouse another shoogle on its mat. ‘Ah. There it is.’ He gestured for Claire to sit down.
‘What’s up?’ she asked as nonchalantly as she could.
He pulled at the sleeve of his dark grey Armani polo shirt, the cuff lining up with a red-speckled ring around his sinewy bicep. Claire had seen him heading for the gym before with an iPhone strapped to his arm. Could this be some sort of reaction to trapped sweat?
He caught her staring and let go of his sleeve. ‘I’m letting everybody know... Because I don’t want any rumours kicking about. Jacob’s going to London.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘I’ve put him on immediate gardening leave. I can’t risk him working out his notice when he’s going to a competitor.’
A fanfare of excitement rose in her chest. Jacob owned the Culture portfolio. She’d have to play the part of sad colleague but sensed the opportunity within her grasp.
‘That’s a shame,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect that. Where’s he going?’
‘He’s going to Embers. I tried to keep him.’ He hit his fist into his other hand. ‘Always hard to compete with the lure of the big city. I’d be grateful if you could keep this to yourself, while I tell the others.’
‘Sure thing.’ Claire made a mental list of who she’d seen exit this office already that day and whom he had left to see. She wasn’t going to blow her shot.
When she didn’t leave, he raised his chin. ‘What is it?’
From the wall, a black-and-white weightlifter instructed her to ‘Push yourself —because no one else is going to do it for you.’
She sat up straight. ‘With Jacob gone, I want to pitch for his job. I’ve always made it clear that Culture is where I want to be.’ She stopped, remembering her interview training from years ago: it’s not about you, it’s about what you bring to them. She rephrased. ‘It’s also where I could best use my skills to the benefit of the agency. And I know everything there is to know about what’s going on in the arts world. Got some connections—’
‘I’m going to stop you there, Claire. I’m giving the job to Otto.’
Her shoulders dropped. So much for ‘Be a leader, not a boss.’ Claire tried hard not to let her voice turn into the shriek she was hearing inside her head. ‘But I’m more senior than he is.’
‘I’m well aware of that. But with the profiles of staff we have now with both Jacob and Emily gone, this makes the most sense. I can’t have him working on fashion and charity gigs as a bloke. Most clients are women, and they like the feminine touch. You’ve always handled them well.’ Darren lowered his head to catch her downturned eyes. ‘Even though you’re not getting your dream job, I was thinking about making you responsible for Technology permanently.’
He put on a smiling face and nodded. She should smile, too, but she didn’t. He started scratching his arm. The rash reddened.
‘Here’s another way forward,’ Claire suggested. ‘Otto gets Technology and I get Culture. Why is that not an option? I’m not interested in technology.’
Darren’s scratching became more insistent. ‘Yes, well, it’s your level of interest in popular culture I’m worried about. The thing is, I don’t want you running Culture because frankly, the last thing I need is another one of my people with a girlie infatuation throwing herself at a movie star.’
‘I wouldn’t... That’s not fair. Don’t tar us all with the same brush.’
‘I don’t see what you’re complaining about, Claire. I’m giving you Technology. That’s a bigger brief. If you don’t like it, stay where you are. It’s straightforward enough to find someone eager to do this job. We’ve got the hottest technology client list in town. I could easily poach someone from Rebel Agency who would love to work on the juicy stuff.’
Should she complain? Was this enough to claim sexual discrimination? Darren was shrewd. He’d probably thought it all through. What would she have to complain about? He’d given her a promotion, hadn’t he? That would be his defence. And in all her time at Pure Brilliant, she was still to see Human Resources do anything other than side with the boss.
‘Does it come with a pay rise?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Technology. The promotion.’ She made sure to place an accent on the word promotion. Two could play this game — although she wouldn’t be able to push too hard. On paper, Technology was a great job and she knew it. And it was doubtful she’d get anything better elsewhere given her limited experience.
He sighed and stroked his goatee. ‘Maybe there is scope for a raise. I’ll get back to you later today, okay?’
As satisfied as she was ever going to be, Claire grumbled her acceptance and left.
30
ME
Suki and I pored over a stack of documentation. Empty cups littered the table. Our breaths mingled with the aroma of freshly baked cookies Liv had brought in to keep us going.
My initial awkwardness following our after-dinner moment had faded. Over the last few days we’d developed a work routine. I knew to always be available for Suki when needed, recognising increasing nervousness as her speech sped up. I didn’t mind so much. The sooner this deal was done, the sooner I could get on with my life.
Suki for her part, seemed to have learnt that I needed regular breaks and quiet when I’d spent too much time in the company of others. Like everyone else in the company, Suki respected my ‘book time’.
The frosted privacy glass in the boardroom was always turned on when she came. She’d told me that with rumours swirling on the Internet, and the markets responding to that by betting on PeopleForce’s share price, it was imperative to keep the deal under wraps.
I looked over at my companion, reading her papers, a red pen in her mouth to scratch out or circle a whole new vocabulary: legalese and finance speak I’d only ever encountered in Grishams or financial thrillers without understanding what they meant. There, it didn’t matter: it was enough to catch the gist to follow the story. But in real life, it was a matter of millions, of risk and lawsuits, of a carefree future.
A shadow grew on the opaque glazed door. The figure swayed, then knocked.
I switched off the wall monitor with the remote control. ‘Come in,’ I said.
My colleague Grant stepped inside, his wiry frame straight as a pole. He held the side of an open laptop in one hand, the other folded below the machine for balance. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Laura. I know you guys need to be left alone. This can’t really wait.’ He nodded at Suki politely. Everyone in the office had seen her at some point, but nobody but Liv knew who she was.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘We’ve been having some serious performance problems lately, and I’ve been struggling to find the cause until today.’ He chewed his lip. ‘It looks like it may be something you did.’
‘What do you mean?’ I turned to Suki and said, ‘Sorry. I need to deal with this. Grant is our systems man, heads up all the network side. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Grant shuffled one foot over the floor, smoothing the carpet. ‘The guys have been complaining that our email and fileshares have been frequently grinding to a halt. It’s only on and off so it took me a while to find what was happening. I eventually spotted a process consuming a large amount of resources ... and it has your ID on it.’
I chewed my lip. ‘Has it been impacting our clients?’ I asked.
‘No, thankfully only our internal systems,’ he replied.
I waved him over. ‘Let me see. That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve only been working on the Development servers.’
Grant approached the table and set the laptop down. Suki moved to the side to give us space. In the corner of my eye, I could see she was only pretending to continue with her reading, her gaze discreetly on us.
Rows of white letters travelled across a black background on Grant’s display. They represented all the ac
tivity on the company’s systems, each line showing a piece of code running, its technical characteristics and the level of processing power it was using up. It was Grant’s job to monitor this and make sure that the company always had a sufficient level of processing and storage capacity.
I knew what I was looking at since, in the early days, I’d fulfilled all the technology roles, including this one. Of course, it had become significantly more complex as the company acquired new customers and grew into a multi-million-revenue business, but the basics stayed the same.
‘I don’t see anything strange,’ I said.
‘That’s why it’s been hard. Wait for it...’ Grant leaned forward. His aftershave was overpowering.
‘You know what,’ I said, pushing my chair back. ‘Put all this up on the screen. I want Suki to see too.’
Suki looked up from her reading, bemused. I pointed secretively to Grant, scrunching my nose. She gave me a subtle nod in reply.
She set her pen down like an eager schoolgirl and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Yes, please,’ she said to Grant.
‘And you’ll need to explain like she’s an idiot. She’s just a banker,’ I teased.
Grant took the cable and plugged it into his computer. The screen jumped to life with the new content. ‘I didn’t see anything strange at first, either. Yet we were having some hard spikes that were locking resources and causing everything else to queue. Eventually, I started to see a pattern. Just wait. It will come in a few seconds.’
We sat in silence while the jumble of letters and numbers on the screen darted about.
‘There.’ Grant jumped out of his seat and ran to the screen. He pointed at a line that hadn’t been there before, which seemed to be consuming eighty-five percent. ‘This model called TwtrNetImp pops up like that every so often wreaking havoc.’
My stomach churned. It was mine, yet it had no business being there. ‘And it’s running on our live server?’
‘Yes, which is why I needed to see you urgently. It’s crawling over all our data. At first, I thought it was some sort of attack I needed to shut down, but once I figured out it was yours, I didn’t want to kill it off. Because it may have been, you know, important?’ He alternated his gaze between Suki and me, no doubt searching for some insight into our secret activities. Suki maintained a neutral face.
‘You did the right thing, bringing it to me, Grant,’ I said. ‘Don’t kill it just yet, though. I’ll have a look and take care of it. I promise.’
‘Okay... If you’re sure.’ Grant pulled the cord from his device. ‘Let me know when you’re done, will you?’
I nodded.
The minute he left the room my hands shot up to up head. ‘Oh my God.’
‘What is it?’ Suki asked.
‘It’s my new tool. The Network Impact. I was testing it on some... never mind. I was running it on some data. Only on my R&D part of our systems. I don’t understand why it would...’
I typed furiously and jumped across multiple screens. Suki left me to it. I stopped. ‘Crap.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘I made a mistake in the security settings. Instead of constraining it to the development server, it had the freedom to run everywhere.’
‘Wait, you mean while you were playing with Network Impact on test data it went and started using your live data?’
I grimaced. ‘Yes. It ran on all the emails and messaging from my colleagues. What I can’t work out is—’
‘This is great,’ exclaimed Suki, paying more attention to the screen. ‘What’s it showing?’
‘No, you don’t get it. The security implications of this—’
‘I know, I know. You’ll need to fix what happened.’ She slapped the table. ‘It’s you who doesn’t understand,’ she said. ‘It’s working! And not only have you run it on some test data you still need to tell me about, but you’ve run your new product on a live company test case.’ She whooped and clapped her hands. ‘You said you couldn’t run it on a live company, a client, because you’d need consent and all that. We never thought about doing it on Empisoft itself.’ Excitement lit up her face. ‘If it’s showing you what are expecting to see, we can take it to PeopleForce and secure the full value of it before we sell the company.’
‘Okay, okay. Fine. Let me stop it, contain it, and we can look at the data.’
Suki got up. ‘I’ll get us some drinks while you sort this out.’
I quickly skipped through a series of programmes and settings. How did this happen? I’d directed it to run on the stuff I’d scraped from Twitter, but it seemed that when it ran out of data, it just ventured onto a new source.
By the time Suki returned, I’d managed to disable the tool and retrieve what it had produced so far.
‘What have you got?’ she asked, balancing two cups in her hands.
I scrolled through the screen in a flash. Having spent hours and days analysing the Twitter results, I had grown more adept at handling the giant 3D web of connections to find what mattered.
‘I’ve got the preliminary results,’ I said. ‘It was nearly done, in fact.’
Suki joined my side. ‘Could you not let it finish?’
‘No. It’s jumped one wall already. I don’t know what damage it could cause.’ I felt a twinge of guilt seeing Suki’s shoulders slump. ‘Once we contain it, and plan for it in terms of our systems, we should be able to run it again. We would need to get the lawyers to check and Justin to consent...’
‘Ha! I’m sure he’ll be jumping up and down as much as I am to parade this in front of PeopleForce. Plus, this is all about showing who is the most influential in a group, isn’t it? He’ll be super eager to show them how important he is.’ Suki chuckled. She’d regained the colour in her cheeks after the dreariness of the last few days’ documentation work.
I, too, felt a surge of excitement. Here was my newest creation beautifully doing its job.
‘How does it work?’ Suki asked, half-sitting on the table facing the screen.
‘You need to come sit here with me. I can’t move the structure around and point at the screen at the same time.’
‘Did you still want your tea? I don’t need my coffee anymore — I’m buzzing.’
I pulled a chair up beside me and slid my laptop in place for us to share. She tucked her hair behind her ear. Her skin glowed in the screen’s glare.
‘Now this is obviously only a prototype,’ I began. ‘We’d have to do an awful lot of user interface work to make this something that a non-technical person can work with and get the insight from they need. Here’s what you’re looking at. This jumble of lines and knots is a 3D representation of how a group of people impact each other. These little nodes are people. See? If I hover over a node you will see their user ID come up. Their colour, green to red, you’ve seen before in our core product. That’s their current state of mind. But the colour of the lines between these people shows how they influence each other. And the size of the line shows you by how much.’
Suki pointed at one of the lines. ‘This guy seems to piss off this guy a lot because the line is bright red.’
‘Yes and no. There’s a way of looking at that too. In this mode, it’s showing you that the guy is amplifying the feelings of discontent, not pissing him off directly. It’s an important distinction. And it’s also critical to look at this data over a longer period, not only the one event.’ I pulled at the web of lines with my mouse, zooming out. ‘We’re scanning here for people who are consistently stirring up aggravation in others, without necessarily being the cause of the initial resentment. Maybe they don’t even know they’re doing it because they’re not necessarily annoyed themselves. This could be the one that people go to to complain, who agrees with them and makes it worse.’
‘Frank!’
‘Huh?’ I asked.
She fanned her hand dismissively. ‘Nothing, it’s the example I used for Angus when I explained your tool.’ Bringing her attention to the screen again, she sa
id, ‘It looks like the interactions within Empisoft seem to be quite positive on the whole. I mean, it’s all fairly green or light amber.’
I was reminded of the angry red, thick-lined structure I’d examined before: the clump of nastiness that was Twitter’s reaction to Emily. In comparison, this was an oasis of calm.
‘Yes, and I would expect that to be the case for most clients. At least that’s what I hope. We’ll need to calibrate the colours to get the scale optimised. At this stage what you are looking for are the biggest influencers, with the most and fattest lines.’
‘Like this one.’ Suki pointed at a bright green blob, thick branches growing out of it.
I zoomed in to this seemingly extraordinarily positive connection, the main influencer of happiness at the firm. The name popped up as I swept my mouse over it. I quickly let go and it disappeared.
‘So?’ Suki’s eyes lit up.
I rubbed my forehead. ‘Remember this hasn’t been validated yet at all. I’m not even sure the data was set up in the correct way for the analysis since it wasn’t even supposed to go there. We don’t have anything to compare it to—’
‘Oh, shut up already.’ Suki leapt on the mouse and clicked on the mass of green. ‘Ha! It’s you. Of course, it is. I knew it.’ She clapped her hands and bounced on her chair.
‘We can’t show this,’ I said, turning the image away from her. ‘I need to spend some time looking at it first.’
‘You mean, in case Justin looks bad?’ Suki arched an eyebrow. ‘I actually agree. Let’s do a quick check to make sure he doesn’t come off too badly, but Laura, you need to stop erasing yourself like this. I knew it all along and this confirms it. You, my dear, are what’s valuable in this business. And I think we need to right some wrongs.’
‘What wrongs?’
Suki turned my chair to face her. She grabbed the arm rests so that I could only look her straight in the eyes — eyes that turned serious, above a set of pursed lips.
‘You told me you and Justin had agreed that everything would be split fifty-fifty when you first started out. That you’d always have the same salary and the same number of shares.’
