The Social Code

by Sadie Hayes

  Throughout the summer, Roger had encouraged Adam, Amelia, and T.J. to keep quiet about Doreye. The Valley was full of replicators, he’d told them, and if you started talking about your idea too soon, there were leeches who would try to mimic it. Not well enough to replace you, but just well enough to sue you after you got big, claiming it was their idea. Or they’d buy up URLs or patents they anticipated you’d need down the road and then charge you excessively for them. You had to watch out, all the time, especially at places like University Café.

  But now, Roger had explained to Amelia in the car on the way over, it was time to start talking. Not too much. Too much hype created unreasonable expectations, or so much demand that you couldn’t fulfill all the orders and customers got upset. It was a tricky balance, he explained, but this is where he could be useful.

  Amelia took a deep breath. She started slowly. “Well, the basic idea is that Doreye can see other products. It’s an application that detects other devices, and then accesses their frequencies so that you can control them through Doreye.”

  “So, for instance, I could…?” the male reporter, a dark-haired guy in his twenties who looked like the guy from the old “I’m a Mac” commercials, prompted.

  “You could turn off the radio with your iPhone. Or open your garage. Or turn on the oven in your kitchen on the drive home from work.”

  “That’s the first phase,” Roger interjected. “Tell them about phase two.”

  “So, that’s the basic platform. And it’s nice because Doreye is programmed to pick up everything automatically—you don’t have to enter any information for each of your appliances, it just detects them and works seamlessly. Phase two, though, takes the core idea of Doreye to a new level. Whereas before we used the phone’s antenna to see frequencies of other electronic radio-emitting devices, now we use the phone to see … everything. Like how radar works, but with your phone. Doreye will be able to see and remember things like your keys, your wallet, and your car. By activating Doreye you can use your phone to see and find everything.”

  “And phase three?” the other journalist, who clearly got her style guidance from the Twilight series, dressed in skinny jeans and a Bella-esque plaid shirt, asked. “Is phase three seeing through walls?”

  Roger met her smile. “Might be! We’re keeping phases three and four quiet for now, but I assure you, they’re big.”

  The reporters smiled at each other. “This is great stuff,” the guy said. “I mean, this brings a whole new level of control to your iPhone. The elimination of three remotes in your living room would be useful enough, but with all the other applications, it feels so … futuristic. I love it.”

  Amelia smiled. Roger beamed.

  “And how about you, Amelia? What is your story?”

  Amelia blushed; she didn’t like talking about herself. “Oh, I’m not that interesting. I mean, I’m just a computer science major at Stanford. I just finished my freshman year.”

  “And where are you from?”

  “Indiana.”

  “Have you worked on a lot of other stuff before?”

  “I’ve dabbled a lot on my own, but no, nothing public or anything. Roger’s the one who convinced me to do something for the public.”

  Over the summer, her resentment of Roger for dragging her into a business had started to melt. He was so kind and supportive of her that it was hard not to fall under his spell.

  “Your parents must be thrilled. Have they been out to see the incubator?”

  “Oh, I don’t have parents. I never knew them.”

  “Who’d you grow up with, then?” the girl pressed. It was a leading question to which the journalist already knew the answer. Doreye’s technology was fine, but a pretty girl engineer with a pathetic foster kid background was the real thing, a front-page story.

  Amelia was taken aback by this question. She wanted to get back to Doreye. “I grew up in foster homes.”

  The girl scribbled something in her pad. “Great, great.” Amelia wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “Just one more question: Where’d you come up with the name?” the guy asked.

  “It’s kind of a play on our last name and the ‘eye’ of the product,” Amelia said, a little sheepishly.

  “Our?”

  “My brother, Adam, and I. Adam’s the head of business development. I’m just the engineer,” she said.

  “So I think that gives you a sense of what Doreye is all about…” Roger said.

  “Yes, Mr. Fenway. This has been really helpful. We’ll definitely get a blurb out about the company over the next week.”

  “Excellent! Just let us know what else you need.” Roger stood up to shake the journalists’ hands and Amelia followed suit.

  Amelia shot a quick text to Adam: “Just had our first interview with TechCrunch! Doreye’s going to be in it this week…”

  Roger ushered Amelia toward the door and whispered, “Hold on to your seat, Amelia. Things are about to get big.”

  27

  Songs to Fill the Air

  Amelia felt surprisingly light and happy as she rode back to the incubator with Roger.

  “See, Amelia?” said Roger. “I told you starting a business with your idea wasn’t such a bad thing.”

  “Maybe you were right,” Amelia said.

  Roger turned up the radio. “Do you like the Grateful Dead?”

  Amelia cocked her head. “Um … I don’t think I’ve ever heard them.”

  Roger almost stopped the car. “You’ve never heard the Dead?! Oh, Amelia. We’ve got to get you educated. Let’s start with ‘Ripple.’”

  He flipped through tracks on the dashboard console and started singing along to a song. The sound of the guitar was pretty and mellow; it made Amelia think of floating along a river in a canoe.

  Sundeep was outside the office talking on his cell phone when Roger and Amelia pulled into the lot. When he saw them, he hung up and shouted, “How’d it go?”

  Roger glowed. “Amelia was perfect. Completely nailed it.”

  Sundeep held the door for her. “I want to hear all about it.”

  “So long as you both get some work done today. Remember, I’m paying you kids…” Roger joked as he headed in the opposite direction, toward his office.

  Sundeep smiled broadly as he walked with Amelia back to her office. “So, it went well?”

  “Yeah, I think so. They really seemed to like the idea, and, you know, I’m starting to think this business thing might not be so bad after all. If we get a lot of users on this, it’ll actually give me more bandwidth to do more interesting coding. I’d never really thought about how much more complex and exciting the engineering gets when you have a lot of users.”

  “Totally! That’s how I feel about these lasers. If I can get them to market and get a lot of people using them, that gives me a channel to get people other things they need, like food and dental care and access to information. Business gets a bad rap, but really there’s a lot of good and exciting stuff that can come out of it.”

  Amelia bit her lip as she looked at his smiling eyes. Sundeep blushed. They stood like that for a moment, not knowing what to say, when Amelia’s phone rang. Startled, she looked down.

  “It’s Adam, I’d better take this,” she said to Sundeep.

  “Of course, I’ll … see you later then.”

  “Hey, Adam!” Amelia answered cheerfully as she watched Sundeep walk through the playroom to his office.

  “You had an interview with TechCrunch?” Adam asked sternly.

  “Yeah! Roger and I just got back from University Café.”

  “You went without me?” His voice was shaking.

  Amelia tried to backpedal. “Well, it was super last-minute. Roger gave me fifteen minutes to get ready.”

  “Why didn’t you call me, or text? I could have met you there.”

  “I didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”

  “Not a big deal? This is our first interview with TechCrunch. How coul
d you not think it was a big deal?”

  She was silent.

  Adam’s hurt started to morph into anger. “Amelia, I’m the head of business development for this company. This is my domain. The press is part of the business side, not the engineering side. This should have been my interview.”

  “Your interview? And here I thought this was our company. I didn’t realize you were so interested in splitting things up. Especially since you haven’t been to the office in … what, three days? Is that what you call contributing?”

  Adam was fuming. He hadn’t been in the office because he’d been trying to sort out the blackmail. If she only knew how much stress he’d been under for her sake.

  “Things are complicated right now, Amelia. Trust me, you’re going to feel sorry for saying that.”

  “You know what I’m sorry for, Adam? I’m sorry I just did something I didn’t even want to do to help a company I didn’t even want to start so that you could get a little closer to your start-up dream. And you have the nerve to get mad at me. You should be thanking me.”

  Amelia was surprised by her anger.

  “I’m going back to coding. I’ll see you later.”

  She hung up the phone.

  * * *

  Adam lay on his bed with his iPhone on his chest, staring at the ceiling. How could Amelia have done the interview without him? Adam wondered again. And why hadn’t Roger insisted he be at the interview? He felt a well of anxiety building in his stomach. What if Roger didn’t see his value? What if he just wanted Amelia and had only let him join because Amelia insisted on including him?

  He looked at his iPhone. After getting off the line with Amelia, he had texted Lisa about coming over. Fifteen minutes had passed and there was no response yet. Great. Now he had two things to stress about: the start-up and his girlfriend.

  He typed a brief second text—“Hey u there?”—and then flung his phone out of reach to keep himself from sending any more messages. He didn’t want to come across as desperate. Eyes closed, he listened intently for the bright ping of an arriving text. But the minutes crawled by with no such reassurance. Why wasn’t Lisa texting him back? And whom had she been talking to when she left his room that morning? He loved her so much. They hadn’t had sex yet, hadn’t even gotten close, to be honest, but that was okay with him. He’d wait forever if he had to. Of course, he hadn’t used the “L” word yet, and neither had she, but he knew she felt the same way. She was just cautious because school was about to start and she didn’t want to miss out on the freshman experience because she had a sophomore boyfriend.

  Thirty minutes. Still nothing.

  It was dark outside when he woke up. Lisa had finally texted, almost an hour and a half after his texts: “Sorry. Out with the fam. Tomorrow? Sleeping @ house. Will be here in a.m.”

  “Sure. B there at 10. Sweet dreams. Miss you,” he texted back, feeling his heart sink. Adam had desperately wanted to see her tonight.

  He had decided it was finally time to tell her the truth about his and Amelia’s past.

  28

  Mergers and Acquisitions

  “I’m considering buying this company. What do you think?” Ted asked T.J. as he slid his iPad across the breakfast table and took a sip of his coffee, watching T.J.’s face.

  The iPad was opened to a TechCrunch article on Doreye. T.J. began reading:

  An Eye for Success

  By now we all know about superstar entrepreneur and investor Roger Fenway’s pet-project incubator, and we’ve all been anxiously awaiting news about what’s coming out of the playful tree house on Sand Hill Road. Fear not, dear reader; we’ve got our first glimpse, and it’s looking bright.

  The company is called Doreye, and it’s setting a new standard for syncing all your devices into a central control panel. Everything, from your television to your cable box, DVD player, garage door, and even your stove, could all be controlled by the Doreye app on your iPhone. If that doesn’t make you feel like you’ve traveled into the future, just wait: Doreye will soon use your antenna like a bat uses sonar. What does that mean? It means Doreye can see and find your keys, your shoes, and even your Uncle Frank. All those easy-to-lose items. Whoa.

  Who is behind all this? Amelia Dory, who despite growing up without parents in the Indiana foster care system, got accepted to Stanford on a full scholarship. She’s a hard-core nerd; during our interview, she made three Star Wars references. But behind her smudged glasses her eyes glowed with an innocent, undeniable passion to change how we interact with the world around us.

  Right now Amelia has her twin brother on biz dev (cute, right?), but we figure Fenway will bring in someone legit to run the business soon enough and keep Amelia on the computers cranking out the Next Next Big Thing. Stay tuned.

  T.J. put down the iPad. When had TechCrunch interviewed Amelia, and why hadn’t Roger told him about it? Wasn’t that the sort of thing he was responsible for helping with?

  Over the past three months, T.J. had become increasingly worried that his job didn’t have the responsibilities it ought to. At first he’d done pages of analysis on Doreye’s market potential and constructed a thorough marketing plan that he’d presented to Roger. Roger had barely looked at it before asking if he’d mind sharing it with Adam. Next, he’d tried to get in with Sundeep, the new guy who clearly had no business sense, but Sundeep had politely told T.J. that his customer acquisition strategy model wasn’t exactly applicable in rural Southern India. Lately, out of desperation, T.J. had been hanging out at Facebook and Google headquarters trying to spot engineers who might join the incubator, but he’d had little luck. He was starting to feel like a lackey, not an entrepreneur.

  “So, what do you think?” asked T.J.’s father. “I bet Roger would sell it to me, don’t you?”

  “Why would you want to buy Amelia Dory’s company?” T.J. asked morosely.

  “Why wouldn’t I? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Or, if you can, own them.”

  T.J. didn’t disagree with that logic. He took another bite of his Fiber One cereal. As much as he hated to admit it, his father did have good ideas.

  “You’ve been working with them, right?”

  “Yeah, sort of,” T.J. said.

  “Maybe we could put you in as CEO.”

  T.J. almost choked on his cereal. He could feel his heart beating faster. “Really?”

  “Why not? I think you’d make a great CEO.”

  T.J. blushed. He wasn’t sure his dad had ever given him such an important compliment.

  “Well, I can definitely find out more for you,” T.J. offered, trying to sound nonchalant. “Just let me know what information you need and I’ll do some analysis. Roger’s pretty tied up with other things, so I’ve got some bandwidth during the day.”

  Ted had flicked to another news article on his iPad, but he looked up at his son for a moment. “Sure, T.J. Think you could put together a pitch deck for me by tomorrow?”

  “Definitely!” T.J. crowed. Then, aware that he’d sounded too eager, he adopted what felt like a more professional tone. “I’ll check my calendar and e-mail you a confirmation this afternoon.”

  “Great, son. Would be fun to work together on this.”

  * * *

  A few hundred feet away, Adam parked his bike behind a tree and crept around the back of the Bristol house. Through the kitchen window, he could see Ted and T.J. eating breakfast. He ducked down and slipped through the back door and up to Lisa’s bedroom.

  Lisa was seated at the vanity in a pink bathrobe, curling her hair. “Hey, you,” she said without taking her eyes off the mirror.

  “Hey,” Adam said. “How are you?” He walked over and kissed her shoulder from behind. “You look beautiful.”

  She smiled and held his eyes in the mirror.

  “So, look,” Adam started, determined not to lose the courage to say what he wanted to say. “I know you think I’ve been acting funny lately, and you’re right: I have. And I want to tell you t
he reason.”

  Lisa put down the curling iron and turned on the stool to face him. Half her hair fell in neat curls down her shoulders, and the other half was tied back, sectioned off and waiting to be curled.

  Adam loved watching her get ready. There was something very sexy about seeing her natural perfection become even more glamorous with lip gloss and hairpins.

  Focus, he told himself. He had her attention now. He had to do it. He grabbed the desk chair and pulled it next to her vanity stool, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

  “Okay, here goes. Amelia and I grew up in these institutions, sometimes called group homes, that are like modern-day orphanages. To be fair, they weren’t terrible places. It’s not like in Dickens, with giant creepy buildings full of hundreds of kids eating cold gruel and all that. There were usually no more than a dozen of us, and we spent most of our time at school. But being bounced around from place to place every year or so took its toll. It was hard to feel like we ever belonged anywhere.”

  Lisa swallowed and nodded her head in sympathy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was adopted so young that I don’t really remember what it was like not to have a family. I can only imagine.”

  “Well, getting a family is actually where the trouble started,” Adam said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “One day, when we were nine, Amelia and I found out that a foster family wanted to take us in. I guess based on our school records—neither of us ever got in trouble—we were an appealing pair. So, three weeks later, we packed up to go live with the Dawsons. They seemed nice enough. They had three kids of their own, two boys and a girl, ages eleven, thirteen, and fifteen. Instead of calling themselves ‘the Dawsons,’ they referred to themselves as ‘The Family,’ and talked constantly about what was expected to be part of ‘The Family.’ We couldn’t even call the father Michael—we had to call him Sir or Mr. Dawson. I guess we should have realized that was weird, but at the time we were so happy to have someone want us, you know, that we didn’t think anything of it.”