Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2)

by Wallace, Pendelton

  “Come on in. That’s step one.” Alison pulled the door open.

  They stepped into a glassed-in foyer. On the other side of the heavy glass wall, a security guard sat behind a desk. There was a pass through and a small, round, metal grill in the glass like at the box office of a movie theater, to allow communication.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Clarke. What’s the weather like outside?”

  “You’re missing a sunny day, Paul.” Alison turned to Ted and Catrina. “We have a running joke about Paul spending his life in a cave down here.” She turned back to the guard. “We need access to conference room five and when are you going to start calling me Alison?”

  “Whatever you like, Mrs. Clarke. Please sign in.” Paul pushed a clip board through the opening above his desk with a smirk on his face.

  Alison signed Ted and Catrina in, then walked to a glass door and swiped her ID badge.

  “Isn’t that a little over-kill?” Catrina asked.

  “You can’t be too careful.” Alison held the door for Ted and Catrina. “We build our competitive advantage down here. We’ve already had one leak. There’s not going to be another. You’ll need to swipe your cards as you pass through the door too.”

  Ted felt a little silly as he held his hand over the bio-metric scanner. Why did they need his hand print?

  As if she read Ted’s thoughts, Alison said, “We hand print everyone who goes through a class-one security checkpoint.”

  Alison led them down a long white hallway with a blue stripe at waist-level. The hallway had a faint scent of antiseptic. At every door, there was at least a card reader. On some of the doors, there were bio-metric scanners. “We record every person who goes through a door down here.” Alison stopped in front of a heavy looking door. “We have RFID chips in our ID badges. Our system knows where you are every second you’re in the building.”

  She scanned her palm again, swiped her card and entered a password on a keypad. “This is our highest level of security. No one goes in here that doesn’t have a reason. Including the CEO. Our CSO will receive a report in the morning of everyone who has passed through a class-one security checkpoint.”

  Except for a stainless steel legged table, the room was bare. Standing next to the table, a small Indian man in a lab coat smiled as they entered.

  “Ms. Clarke, right on schedule as usual.” He glanced at a high-tech looking wristwatch.

  “When am I ever going to get you to start calling me Alison?” Alison turned to Ted and Catrina. “Catrina Flaherty, Ted Higuera, this is Gopi Singnapoora, our technical lead on the Delphi project.”

  “Gopi?” Ted asked.

  “My full name is much too long for you to pronounce, Mr. Higuera.” Gopi spoke with a slight accent. He shook their hands, then motioned towards the table. “Ms. Clarke wanted me to give you a demo.”

  Sitting in the middle of the table were a pair of sun glasses and a small plastic box about the size of a book of matches.

  “Ms. Flaherty, Mr. Higuera, I give you the future.” He swept his hand towards the table with a flourish. “Delphi will replace every computing device you own today.”

  Chapter 16

  Chris stopped and gulped in a deep breath of air as he approached Kathy Nguyen’s office. As her text messages over the weekend had grown increasingly terse, his anxiety level ratcheted up. What did she want from him and why did he care so much? Normally, he’d just say “What the hell,” and go about his business.

  “Where have you been?” Kathy looked up from the pile of papers on her desk.

  “I was in LA this weekend with my friend, Ted.”

  Her icy stare cut him to the bone. “Look, Hardwick, I don’t care about your name. Let’s forget you’re the boss’s son, okay? When I need something from you, I need it now. Got it?’

  Chris felt the heat rising in his cheeks. What the fuck? Weekends are supposed to be my time.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me. I’m going to be the youngest partner in the history of HB&J. Even if it kills you. I own you. You’re mine. Call me silly, but I think you might just be the paralegal to put me over the top. Don’t screw it up.”

  Chris couldn’t stand her fiery glare, so he looked down at his shoes.

  “So, what have you got for me?” Kathy’s voice lost some of its hostility.

  “I’ve scanned all the documents into LA, copied all the files from the CD and found tons of stuff on the Internet.” Chris took a breath and looked Kathy over. He was so startled by her attack that he completely forgot what a fox she was.

  Chris had gone straight from the airport to the office last night, finishing scanning the last of Metcalf’s documents into Legal Assistant, the document storage and retrieval system HB&J used to data mine hundreds of thousands of documents. Once the documents were digitized, Chris could search through them looking for any kind of connections imaginable.

  Scanning and organizing the paper documents took him a week. Uploading and inputting the electronic files from the CDs was only day's work. His big push last night, to prepare for this meeting, was to sift through the over thirty-two thousand documents he found on the Internet about Terry Metcalf. The man was a legend.

  “So, have you been able to find anything yet?” Kathy sipped at her ever-present mug of tea. In a week of working with the gorgeous woman, the only thing Chris had managed to learn about her personal life was her father had given her the mug when she graduated from college. There were some sort of Asian characters on the mug that said good luck or something.

  “I haven’t found anything that would substantiate Metcalf’s claim that Clarke did anything illegal in taking over the company.” Chris settled into the chair across the desk from Kathy. He didn’t think he had ever seen such beautiful hair. It was so dark, it almost seemed blue. “Millennium Systems was headed down the drain when Clarke took over. Metcalf had invested in several big dot coms, companies that would deliver groceries to your home or arrange walking your dog. MS sold products to some other dot coms and took stock as payment. They carried the stock on their balance sheets at par.”

  He saw Kathy raise an eyebrow. "That’s all you’ve got?”

  She didn’t know about his superpower yet. This would be a chance to show off a little, maybe impress her.

  “For several years, the dot coms went wild and MS was one of the top moneymaking companies in the world. But it was all on paper. Metcalf looked like a genius. I read his book. He was more impressed with his power and success than he was with running the company.”

  “I got the same feel from his book.” Kathy turned to the credenza behind her and took Terry Metcalf’s The New World Order from the shelf. “When I take on a new client, I learn everything I can about them. Haven’t you got anything new for me?”

  When she takes on a new client? Chris had been around his dad’s office all of his life. He knew Kathy was one of the most junior attorneys in the firm. She made it sound like she went out and found clients, not that she was assigned as a gopher to some partner’s or associate’s case. If one of her cases ever went to trial, she’d sit in a dark suit next to the lead attorney and work her laptop. It would be years before she was allowed to say a word in open court.

  “When the dot com crash hit, Metcalf’s investments were virtually worthless.” Chris never referred to the leather-bound notebook in his lap. “MS wrote nearly two billion dollars off of their books in 2001.”

  “Were the investments legit? Did the write off cover everything?”

  “This stuff is way too complicated for me, Kathy.” Chris took a sip of his Starbucks. “It'll take an army of forensic accountants to crawl through all of MS’ balance sheets and operating statements to see if there was anything out of the ordinary. And, even if they did find evidence of misdeeds, that would be against Metcalf. Clarke wasn’t at MS yet.”

  Kathy sat motionless, glaring at him for a moment. Her iron gaze unnerved him. Had he done something wrong? Had he misinte
rpreted her instructions?

  She finally sighed. “What did you find since Ms. Clarke took over?”

  “As a stockholder or an employee, I wouldn’t find anything to object to. Her first year was rough, but it wasn’t her fault. She was cleaning up Metcalf’s mess.”

  “Give me specifics.”

  Chris switched on the computer monitor in his head. All of his life he had been able to pull up images in his mind and go back and search them as if they were in front of his eyes.

  “MS had the single worst performing year of any Fortune 500 company in history.” He saw the cover of the November 2001 issue of The Economy magazine floating in his brain. “Most industry analysts thought that MS wouldn’t survive. The Economy, The Wall Street Journal and a bunch of other periodicals all predicted that MS would either declare bankruptcy or be swallowed up by some other large corporation.”

  “But Ms. Clarke saved them. . .”

  “She was ruthless.” Chris finished off his coffee and tossed the cup in the garbage.

  “You can recycle that, you know.” Kathy reached over and removed the cup, took the plastic lid off and tossed it back into the garbage can, then handed the cup back to Chris. “Don’t forget that HB&J is a green company. We’re on track to be carbon neutral by 2009.”

  Chris felt heat rise in his face as he set the cup on Kathy’s desk. He would never forget to recycle around her again. “Clarke laid off tens of thousands of employees, sold off any division that wasn’t part of MS’ core business, even if it was profitable, closed down the remaining ones that were unprofitable.” Chris wanted to get Kathy’s attention back on the case. “She took a salary of one dollar the first year she worked there. She cut her executives’ pay, eliminated executive bonuses, ordered an across the board pay cut for the staff.”

  “I bet she wasn’t exactly Miss Popularity.”

  “That’s the amazing thing.” Chris flipped though the magazine article in his head until he came to a blue-shaded sidebar. “Several of her execs quit, but the staff loves her. The first thing she did was to give up her parking space and order all of her execs to do the same thing. She said that if they wanted to park close to the door, they’d have to get to work before anyone else. She closed the executive dining room and made it an employee lounge. She eats lunch every day in the cafeteria with her staff. They have unprecedented access to their CEO’s ear.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Kathy furiously took notes on a yellow legal pad.

  “She set a new spirit of leadership at MS. Everyone, from the CEO down to the lowest janitor has to have a development plan. She meets once a quarter with her direct reports to review their progress and requires all of her managers do the same. She’s built a corporate culture of innovation and personal performance. She gives bonuses for outstanding performance. An employee can make more in a year earning bonuses than they do in salary. Her staff loves her. They have the lowest turnover rate in the industry, even though they pay the lowest base salaries.”

  “Okay.” Kathy looked up from her notepad. “What’s not to like? What is she doing that has Metcalf after her?”

  “You mean besides pushing him out of the seat of power?” Chris was enjoying this. Flaunting his newly-won knowledge without notes, a PowerPoint presentation or a handout for Kathy clearly impressed her. “She’s pumped nearly a billion dollars into a research project called ‘Delphi.’ I haven’t found out what Delphi is yet, but she’s staked the company’s future on that one product. If it fails, MS will go broke.”

  “No wonder Mr. Metcalf thinks that she has been reckless.” Kathy sat back in her chair, closed her eyes and ran her hands through her long, dark hair. “Okay, good work so far, but now I need for you to get off of your butt. Find out what Delphi’s all about. What kind of product could be that important?”

  ****

  “Gopi likes to be a little melodramatic,” Alison waved away Gopi’s claim that Ted and Catrina were about to be introduced to the future.

  “Would you like to see it first?” Gopi handed the glasses and box to Catrina.

  “No,” Catrina said. “Let Ted check it out. He’s the geek.”

  Ted looked at the sunglasses. Nothing unusual here. A little heavy. Stylish, maybe a bit feminine for his taste. He preferred aviator glasses to these classy plastic shades.

  The box was an enigma. It had a belt clip on the back and an on/off button marked with an I/O in the middle of the front side.

  “Go ahead, clip it to your belt and turn it on.” Gopi grinned so hard Ted thought his face would crack open. “Put the glasses on.”

  Ted did as instructed. “Okay, so what now?”

  “You have to learn how to communicate with her and she needs to learn your speech patterns.”

  “Her?” What the hell was he talking about? Communicate with who?

  “There’s a full tutorial available online, but I’ll walk you through it.”

  Ted took a long, hard look at the slight Indian man. He was about Ted’s age, but his ID badge said “Gopi Singnapoora, PhD.” How did someone so young get a PhD already? He looked sane enough, but was clearly off of his rocker.

  “There are certain key words that the computer recognizes.”

  “What computer?”

  Ted felt a whirring sound inside his head. He saw the Microsoft Windows logo floating in front of his eyes.

  “You’ve just learned the first command. Any time you want to talk to her, address her as ‘computer.’ Just like on Star Trek.” Gopi chuckled at his own joke.

  “You’re wearing the cloud computing interface of tomorrow.” Gopi’s voice took on the semi-monotone of a college professor. “The computer responds to voice commands. The monitor is a heads up display projected through the glasses. If you move your eyes, you’ll notice the cursor moving over the screen.”

  Ted couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing. A 3-D computer screen floated in front of his eyes. Transparent, like a hologram, he could see right through it. He reached out his hand and passed it right through the screen.

  “It responds to eye commands and hand commands as well,” Gopi said. “To start with, you need to tell it what you want to do. Say ‘Computer. Open Microsoft Word.’ ‘Computer,’ ‘Open’ and ‘Word’ are key words. You’re telling the computer that you want it to execute a command, ‘Open’ and the subject of the command is ‘Word.’”

  Ted stared at Gopi for an instant. Holy shit. This changes everything. “Computer, Open Microsoft Word.”

  He felt the slight whirring inside his head again. On the monitor in front of his eyes the Microsoft Word logo appeared, then a second later, a blank Word document opened.

  “Holy shit.” Ted jumped back.

  “Mr. Higuera, you have just stepped through the portal to the first great scientific discovery of the Twenty-First Century. Now, tell the computer that you want to enter text and start speaking.”

  Ted flashed back to visiting his great-grandfather as a teenager. He remembered a conversation between his great-grandfather and grandfather. Abuelo had said that the automobile was the single biggest scientific invention of his lifetime. Tata said that it was the atom bomb. Would this be the technological turning point of Ted’s life?

  Ted thought for a minute. How do I tell it I want to enter text? Gopi was letting him discover as he went along. “Computer. Enter text.”

  “Entering text,” a soft female voice sounded inside Ted’s head. The sound must be transmitted from the glasses to his skull, because he wasn’t hearing it with his ears.

  “Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth onto this continent. . .” As he spoke, the words to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address appeared on the screen in front of him. The capitalization and punctuation were perfect.

  “She will get better once she learns your speech patterns.” Gopi’s grin split his face. He pulled a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. “I’m going to follow along with you. We can share an application from any
distance.”

  Ted looked at the tool bar on the top of the floating monitor. The cursor hovered over the tool bar.

  “Let me take control for a minute,” Gopi said.

  Ted watched as the cursor highlighted a portion of the text, then moved to the tool bar and clicked on the “I” icon. The highlighted text turned to italics.

  “You have all the functionality of the desktop application. The application is actually running on a server in Singapore. The data is saved to a SAN in Malaysia. You’re connecting to it via WiFi though the Delphi.”

  Singapore? Malaysia?

  “Our WiFi network bounces off of geosynchronous satellites. You can use Delphi anywhere in the world.

  “You can use voice commands, as you’ve already seen. You can use visual commands. Look at the ‘open file’ icon on the tool bar.”

  Ted glanced up at the icon. The cursor moved to where he was looking.

  “Now, blink hard once.”

  Ted blinked and the open file dialog box appeared.

  “You just single-clicked. If you blink hard twice, you double-click.”

  “But how . . .” Ted’s normally quick mind struggled to keep up.

  “The glasses. We have infra-red sensors in the frames that track your eye movement. Sensors in the temples sense intentional vs. unintentional blinks. Now close the dialog box.”

  Ted looked at the “Cancel” button and blinked once. The box disappeared.

  “Shit. This would be great for a quadriplegic. They could control the computer with their eyes.”

  “That, Mr. Higuera, is just the beginning. To the left of the minimize button on the top right of the screen, you see a hand icon?”

  Ted nodded.

  “That turns on hand control. Click it.”

  Ted looked at the hand and blinked.

  “Now move your hands.”

  Ted reached out towards the screen floating in the air and pointed to the printer icon on the tool bar. The print dialog box appeared.