Wicked Smaht Thoughts

Hollywood.bomb, Chapter 7

2011-12-29T21:09:00.000-07:00

Table of Contents

Chapter 7

The next several days, Stephen, Ricky, and David tried to make sense of an ongoing stream of ideas from Brad and Robert while Kelvin worked with the engineering team to design an infrastructure that could support a large web site with a little bit of extra capacity left over.

"We don’t need much," noted Craig one afternoon, "just enough to put up a proof-of-concept demo. If we get some customers, we’ll buy our own servers and build the full-scale application on them. Just leave us a corner of the room, so to speak, and we’ll make do."

"How big of a corner do you need?" asked Kelvin.

"Only about 20% of the capacity. We don’t want to be greedy. And whatever you do, make sure that no one can find it unless we tell them where to look! We don’t want Brad stumbling across this thing and stealing it again."

As the week went on, they settled into a rhythm of sorts: breakfast at the hotel, coffee at Starbucks, and then an hour or two of reading email, planning for their meetings, and chatting while they waited for Brad to drag in. Then Stephen and the designers would enter their own private Wonderland, where a never-ending stream of garbled references and conflicting suggestions washed over them continuously from Brad and the big screen on the wall.

"It has to be sexy and hip, like Studio 54 meets Boogie Nights, only without any obvious schlong references," said Brad. He paused, chewing meditatively on an Alka-Seltzer tablet. "We could always work those into the background design if we wanted to, though, right?"

"It has to say, ‘I’ve arrived,’ like Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, or Bette Davis in that one with the close-ups," countered Robert, "Sunset Strip! That one!"

"Do you mean Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard?" asked Stephen.

"Don’t get lost in the details, son! Think big picture here, big picture!" said the big picture that was Robert.

Some times, David tried to gain some control over the meetings.

"OK, I think I have enough sense of the feel you are going for," he said tiredly about two hours into one meeting, "let’s talk about the look. What colors do you want to use?"

"Bright colors! It has to be bright and lively! We don’t want people to get depressed thinking about how slim their chances are of winning anything," said Brad.

"On the other hand, we want to be taken seriously. If the site looks like someone threw up Life Savers all over the screen, we’re not going to get the funding we need from the studios," said Robert.

"So bright, but not like candy vomit," sighed David, rubbing his temples. "Well, that gives me a range in which to work. Do you have any more thoughts on the color palette?"

"No green," said Robert. "I hate green. Makes me look jaundiced."

David gave a small whimper and laid his head down on his folded arms. "No green," was his muffled reply.

Dan "facilitated" every design session, which meant that he counted to make sure that everyone was in the room, handed out copies of a meeting agenda -- which looked suspiciously like the same document with the date changed every time -- called the meeting to order, and sat down opposite Stephen. In their second meeting, he had tried calling on each person in the room when it was their turn to speak, but he had quickly fallen behind the rapid-fire exchange between Brad and Robert to the point that he was simply yelling out names at random. After his request for people to raise their hands before speaking was ignored, he sat down and pouted throughout the rest of the meeting. From then on, he just fell asleep five minutes after the meeting started and woke with a "Good meeting, everyone!" when everyone rose to leave. Stephen tried to get him to go and help the technical team instead, but he declined the offer.

"They told me that you needed me more, since they’re just getting all geeky with their system architecture diagrams. I want to be here to help you flush out the details, find the synergies, and create an actionable top-down plan!” Dan flushed slightly. “Besides, they locked the door."

Timothy attended every one of these sessions as well, though he never spoke. He sat in his corner, as far away from everyone as he could get, sketching on his pad and humming to himself. Since agreeing to compose the company theme song, Timothy had music on his mind. What had started with occasional snatches of potential tunes had evolved into a constant state of mind, a seeking after the perfect musical accompaniment to every activity. Now he traveled with his own personal soundtrack, which he hummed or whistled continuously at a barely audible level so that, like Timothy himself, it impinged on one’s awareness slightly but couldn’t be ignored once you were aware of it. After long periods of exposure, Stephen often found himself unconsciously nodding or tapping his pen in time.

Timothy claimed that he was working on the site theme song during each design session, but every once in a while he would look up at Brad as though sighting him for a rendering, and then begin scribbling furiously on his pad. At those times, Stephen would have sworn that the tune Timothy hummed was "Ding-Dong, the Witch is Dead."

***

After the third design session, Stephen stayed behind in the conference room and asked Robert to call him so that they could talk.

"No, this is fine, kid. We’re already online, and it takes me about twenty minutes to switch all this stuff over so I can use the headset for the phone. Plus, I like being able to see if anyone comes in. Take no prisoners, take no chances, you know what I mean?" He gave Stephen a monolithic wink from the screen.

"Um, I suppose so," replied Stephen. "Hopefully, this won’t take too long, anyway. I just need to get a sense of the business drivers for this project. What’s the potential market size, what’s our budget, when do we need to go live, things like that. Do you have a copy of the business plan somewhere that you could send me?"

"Business plan?" Robert asked. At least, Stephen thought that was what he said. It was difficult to hear clearly over the alarm bells ringing in his head.

"Yes, the plan that you showed to investors to get them to give you their money. It would say why this was a good idea and how you planned to make a profit. Ideally, it would also tell me how much we have to spend. Do you have something like that?"

"A business plan," Robert repeated slowly. "What an interesting idea! No, we don’t have anything like that. That’s not how things are done out here in LA, kid. Out here, we live on ideas. You can sell a movie in ten minutes with nothing more than a cocktail napkin. And if the pitch is hot enough, the napkin doesn’t even have to have anything on it! Those numbers and schedules are fine for the bean-counters, but the movers, the shakers, the idea men, they look for that diamond in the rough and they grab it before someone else trips over it. Let the accountants figure out the details; our job is to make this chicken fly!"

Stephen tried to recalibrate his approach. "OK, so we can leave the schedule for now and figure it out later. Should I talk to your accountant to find out what the budget is, then?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"We haven’t hired one yet. It’s on the list, though."

"You have a list of things to do? Could I see that? It would be a start, at least."

"Well, it’s not really a physical list. More of a metaphysical one, really."

"A metaphysical to-do list?"

"Sure! Find enlightenment, lose 30 pounds, hire an accountant. It’s all up here." Robert tapped his temple, sending a booming through the speakers that rattled the pens on the conference table.

"I’ll need to find some way to get it out of there if I’m going to help you launch this site, and this company, to the world," said Stephen, catching his pen as it bounced off the table.

"All in good time, my boy, all in good time. I’ll try to send you something next week. Meanwhile, don’t forget what I said about Brad. Keep him happy."

***

Kelvin was having a grand time working with the CouldBU engineers. The challenge of building a hidden business application right next to a public entertainment web site was greater than building the entertainment site alone, and the ethical issues were far less interesting than the technical ones. They all convened in Craig’s office as soon as the ADD team arrived each morning and didn’t come out except for meal and bathroom breaks. Soon, all four of Craig’s walls, which were floor-to-ceiling whiteboards, were covered with network diagrams, mock data structures, and scribbled notations. Stephen had rarely seen Kelvin happier.

David and Ricky were another story. Every afternoon, they attempted to interpret what they had heard into drawings, storyboards, and prototypes. Shut into an office together, they brainstormed, sketched, discarded, argued, and started all over again. No convention of scriptural scholars could have matched these discussions for passion or obscurity of material. While the debate was not unusual, the volume and intensity of it was. Whenever their discussions finally reached a Talmudic impasse, they called Stephen in as the tiebreaker.

"When Robert said that the home page had to be as smooth and charming as Cary Grant in Charade, I assumed he meant that blue should dominate," David began.

"I agree with Brad, though," countered Ricky, "Marky-Mark was much better in that role in the remake, The Trouble with Charlie. So clearly, we want to have a strong geometric design to the page. I’m thinking diamonds." Here, he held up a sketch showing a sample home page with an argyle pattern in the background. The page was dominated by a large sketch of a man who appeared to be leaning against the edge of the screen, hands in his pockets, shirt untucked. Squiggles representing text were scattered about the page around the man’s outline, including between his legs and in the crooks of his elbows.

"Who’s the guy?" asked Stephen.

"Whoever they get to be their spokesperson. I’m thinking Matt Damon, to bring out that whole overnight success factor. It doesn’t really matter right now, though: look at the diamonds!"

"Can’t you compromise and use blue diamonds?"

David and Ricky stared at Stephen incredulously, then burst into laughter. "And that is why you are a project manager and not a designer," laughed David, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. "Blue diamonds! Why not green clovers and purple horseshoes as well? Hee hee hee!"

Chagrined, Stephen turned to leave. "I don’t know why you keep asking me in here if you’re just going to laugh at all of my suggestions. I’ll leave it at this for now: if it comes down to Brad’s suggestion or Robert’s, take Robert’s; but be prepared to explain to Brad how you worked his suggestion in at the subliminal level. He seems to think that works. Heck, on him it probably would."

David sobered and said, "Thank you for your help, Stephen. You are right, and I am sorry we laughed. Your suggestion for handling conflicting direction makes good sense. We will have something ready to present to the client before the end of the week."

Mollified slightly, Stephen left, closing the door as he went so that the debates would not bother anyone else. As he walked down the hall, sounds of laughter broke out anew behind him.

***

Outside of his referee/comic relief duties, Stephen had little to do in the afternoons. He had tried attending some of the technical design sessions, but felt the atmosphere cool noticeably when he walked into the room. Whether this was because his presence was a constant reminder of what they were supposed to be working on or whether engineers just naturally distrusted anyone who couldn’t code, he decided to occupy himself elsewhere. Kelvin seemed to be building a rapport with the other engineers, and Stephen didn’t want to jeopardize that relationship by hanging around. He tried to find other things to do, but it was too early to start working on schedules and he wasn’t ready to risk another meeting with Brad and Robert to try to extract more details on the business plan just yet. So he spent the afternoons just trying to dodge Dan.

It all started at lunch on Tuesday. After a grueling session of mixed metaphors and mangled movie references, Stephen wanted nothing more than to sit quietly and eat his tofu. Timothy had even made a concession to the non-Kabbalah eaters by ordering some bread to go with the rest of the lunch, so Stephen was looking forward to seeing if peanut tofu tasted any better inside a sandwich (it didn’t). As he worked his way down the table filling up his plate, Dan sidled in beside him.

"Hey, Stefferoo, how’s tricks?" His chipper voice intruded upon Stephen’s contemplation of the steamed eggplant tray.

"It’s Stephen, Dan, remember? Just Stephen, with a ‘vuh’ sound." Stephen finally selected one slab of eggplant that looked less slimy than the others and moved on to the salad. Chipotle ranch dressing today, yum.

"Right, sorry, Stever. Listen, I thought maybe we could talk, consultant to consultant, and figure out how to divvy up this assignment. I mean, I don’t want to go around pissing on desks to mark my territory or anything, but since I was here first I might be able to give you the lay of the land. I want to partner with you, not be a threat to you."

Stephen dropped a clump of mixed field greens on his plate and looked coolly at Dan. "I don’t see you as a threat, Dan."

Dan was almost comically relieved. "Good, that’s good! I mean, there’s enough here for everybody, right? And we’re professionals, you and I. We know how these gigs work. We’ll just bucket the work, get the blocking and tackling out of the way, and knock this baby out of the park! The important thing is that everyone’s playing off the same sheet of music. Net-net, everyone wins."

I wonder if he even understands himself, Stephen thought, trying hard not to roll his eyes. "That’s fine, Dan. You just keep working on… whatever you do, and we’ll keep plugging away on our end. Sound like a plan?"

"That’s a great thumbnail sketch, but I think we need to put some more meat on it, you know what I mean?"

Hardly. "Well, we’re pretty booked with the design and technical meetings while we’re out here. What did you have in mind?"

"Believe me, I know! I’m in all of them, too. I think we just need a couple of high-level project strategy meetings, where you and I can hammer out the details of how we plan to co-manage this engagement. I’ll be glad to scribe and give you a break after all of those other meetings. We just need an action plan before you guys take off again."

Stephen could tell there was no escape, so he surrendered. "OK, fine. Let’s play it by ear as the week goes on, OK? I’m sure I’ll have some free time."

Since that day, he had desperately tried not to have any free time. Unfortunately, Dan seemed to have a sixth sense for idling, appearing at Stephen’s office door the moment he sat down. Stephen tried locking the door, but that just seemed to encourage Dan all the more. He kept tapping quietly, saying "Stevie, it’s me!" over and over again, as though they had planned a secret rendezvous but Stephen had forgotten to let him in before locking the door. When Stephen finally relented and let him in, he insisted on speaking in hushed tones for as long as they stayed in the office. Stephen had finally taken to wandering the halls when he had free time, checking carefully around each corner before he walked into the open. He was a hunted man.

The most annoying thing about these "confabs," as Dan liked to call them, was not their frequency. Rather, it was the fact that they never actually talked about the work at hand. Dan usually opened their time with some jokes that he had just found on the Internet or some wild urban legend that someone had forwarded to him ("Did you know that a man in New Orleans went home with a strange woman and woke up in a bathtub full of ice with one kidney missing? I tell you, people are crazy."). He then spent the next hour or more relating pieces of his life story, which was frighteningly complicated yet exquisitely uninteresting. Stephen tried hard to look like he was paying attention while he sat there wondering whether he could bludgeon Dan unconscious with his stapler without doing too much damage to the stapler.

As Stephen unwillingly learned, Dan had not been a consultant long. In fact, he was more of an itinerant actor/motivational speaker/entrepreneur who had washed up on the shores of Los Angeles, like so many other Angelinos, when drawn there for a bit part in a movie. Finding that all acting jobs were not as easy to get as the first one, he had started a new career as an e-insurance salesman. His site, CouldBU.com, had sold disaster insurance to a primarily elderly population, with the slogan, "Next Time, It Could Be You." The number of retirees combined with the number of natural disasters in the Los Angeles area had presented a numbers game that he could not lose.

When presented with the opportunity to sell his web domain name to a fledgling entertainment company Dan had reinvented himself again. Rather than just taking a lump sum for his electronic property, he finagled himself a permanent income. After a few days of studying the web sites and other promotional material of the top global consultancies, he put his acting and motivational talents to work and launched on his third (or fifth, depending upon how you counted) career: management consultant.

"So, what exactly do you do for your salary?" Stephen asked late Thursday afternoon, when curiosity finally overcame boredom.

Dan shrugged. "Run meetings, mostly. No one else really likes them, so I just filled the gap."

***

On Friday, the ADD team came in a little earlier than usual. They were leaving that evening to fly back to Boston, but first they needed to present their first visual and technical designs for Brad and Robert’s approval. Greeting the receptionist in her oaken redoubt on the way in the door, they continued through the hallway maze to the set of offices that had been assigned to them for the duration of the project. Stephen sipped his double mocha latte and paused to enjoy the molten chocolate energy pouring into his system, then worried aloud, "I don’t know if we have anything they’re going to like. What if they hate it all and we have to come back next week for more creative meetings?" He shuddered at that thought.

"You sound like my prom dates," said David, and mimicked Stephen in a high falsetto, "‘What if they don’t like what I have to show them?’ I will tell you what I told them: when I am done with you, everyone will love you and want to be just like you, at least to the extent of wanting to be with me. These designs are works of art that will call to the artists that are buried deep, deep within Bradley and Robert. Never fear."

Notwithstanding the comparisons to a nervous girl, Stephen was mildly comforted by this statement. David, for all his eccentricities -- for the presentation today, he was in full artistic regalia: black pants, turtleneck, and beret, with a long white silk scarf and gold-rimmed glasses with no lenses perched on his forehead -- was a skilled designer, and had a knack for penetrating to the heart of what clients wanted to portray to the world. He would come through once again, and then they could all go home to start working on the actual prototypes.

He turned to Kelvin, "How about you? Are your protégés ready to start building whatever it is they’re going to build?"

"They’re already building it, as far as I can tell," said Kelvin. "They’re so nervous about security now that they won’t let me look at any more than snippets of the code, but they’re certainly working at a furious pace. We worked out the basic storage and server capacity requirements for both our site and their demo site, and I have all I need to start the architectural design when we return to Boston. The good news is that I have convinced them to put forth enough effort on our project that we shouldn’t need to add any more engineers to the team. They’ll give us two days a week, and given how quickly they’re picking up the technology, that should result in more production than we planned for before we met them. Of course, that may change if they get anyone interested in their studio portal. If that takes off, we’ll be hard pressed to get anything out of them ourselves."

"It’s better than nothing. I’ll talk to Jack and see if we can have one or two of our own people in the wings, just in case. As far as the presentation today, just keep it at a high level. The engineers already know what you’re doing, and you’ll lose Brad and Robert within about two minutes of talking tech. Just make it clear that it’s under control and give them a sense of what the hardware costs are going to be."

Kelvin was mildly offended. "I have done this before, you know. But point taken: I’ll do my best not to drone on about servers and bandwidth, scintillating though I find it."

At that moment, Connie knocked on the door frame and stuck her head into the office. "Brad’s ready for you."

"Really? It’s barely 8:30. Are you sure it wasn’t someone who just looked like him?"

Connie looked at him oddly, then said, "To be honest, I wondered about the possibility of a body double myself. But I checked his aura, and it’s Brad, if a slightly cleaner version. Come on, they’re all waiting in the small conference room."

Stephen looked at the others, shrugged, and followed Connie down the hallway. David and Ricky gathered their sketches and followed, with Kelvin taking up the rear.

The CBU contingent was already in the room when they arrived, though the video screen was blank. Brad sat at the head of the table as usual, dressed in what, for him, was sober business attire: a cream-colored silk suit over a shiny maroon shirt, with an obviously expensive tie knotted at his throat. As he uncrossed his legs to rise and greet them, Stephen noted that he still wore no socks.

"All right, we’re all here," Brad said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together, "Show us what you’ve got."

"Um, aren’t we going to wait for Robert?" asked Stephen, nodding his head at the video screen.

"He had something come up and won’t be able to join us today. I’ll review the designs and tell him what I think when we catch up. You can leave copies with us to look at later, right?"

"We certainly can, but should we consider rescheduling this for when you both can attend? Is Robert busy all day? Our flight doesn’t leave until late this afternoon." Stephen paused, thinking furiously. He wasn’t entirely comfortable without someone around who could keep a leash on Brad, and he didn’t think any of the CBU engineers was up to the task. "I just want to make sure that both of you get to see what we have done with your suggestions, since this has been such a… collaborative effort."

Brad flushed. "I can handle this myself, without Robert looking over my shoulder." He turned and glared at the screen briefly before turning back to Stephen, "Go."

David rose and, after looking for and receiving permission from Brad, who moved over to one side, carried an easel to the head of the table. Most visual designers did even their earliest sketches electronically now, presenting them to clients either over the web or with a laptop and projector, but David preferred to work with paper when he was first creating a design. He claimed that the tactile sensations of the pens on the paper, the smell of the ink, and the cleansing sensation of crumpling a failed drawing and hurling it across the room all stimulated him more than the sterile pointing and clicking of electronic drawing. So now, just like the pitch-masters of old, he set a stack of drawings on his easel and began to walk his audience through the story of their product.

"We have discussed many ideas and, er, visual concepts in our meetings over the past week, but the one recurring theme has been a sense of excitement, the willingness to dream big. You are selling dreams to people, dreams of fame, of money, of artistic achievement beyond what they could achieve on their own. We want them -- we need them -- to believe that CouldBU.com is their ticket to realizing those dreams, enough so that they will be willing to spend money to buy a raffle ticket for stardom. We wove these two concepts, excitement and dreams, throughout the visual and informational design of the site, as you can see here…."

This was David in his element, commingling artistry and business reality into an alloy of practical beauty. Now that he had begun, any doubts he may have had about the quality of the creative input or his ability to distill it into a workable design evaporated in the heat of his enthusiasm for the vision. He moved smoothly from page to page, pointing out where he had incorporated a specific piece of advice or explaining why they had made certain design choices, occasionally turning to Ricky for comments on how this design also enhanced the usability of the site. He was fully in command of the room, so Stephen sat back and let the words roll over him as he turned his attention to gauging the reactions of the others.

Timothy was actually paying attention for once, staring raptly and, truth be told, a little enviously at David’s designs as each new drawing was revealed. He had stopped humming, too, which was a welcome break now that Stephen noticed it. Thomas had noticed it too, which was probably easier since he was sitting right next to Timothy, and the tightening around his eyes had eased somewhat. Clearly, the subliminal soundtrack was manifesting itself at home as well.

Craig was listening closely, making notes while David spoke. Stephen couldn’t read the notepad from where he sat, but he assumed that the notes had more to do with how one could apply these design concepts to a business application than with a talent search tool. Craig had been tactful enough not to try to press David into service on his shadow project yet, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to reuse whatever had been done for the official job. He’s a quick study, thought Stephen, too bad he’s not working for us. Greg, sitting next to Craig, just looked bored, waiting for the technical conversation to begin. Across from him, Dan was already snoozing next to Connie, who sat, pen in hand, ready to take notes if anyone decided anything.

Stephen gaze slid around to Brad, who appeared decidedly less impressed than his colleagues. In fact, he looked ready to explode. He sat, red-faced, his hands clenching and relaxing spasmodically, as though he were torn between making a fist and throwing something, but was ready to do either as soon as he made up his mind. He shifted irritably in his chair, tugging at his jacket as David made a point about site structure, and then rolled his eyes at David’s choice of colors for the menu.

Finally, he could take it no more and sprang to his feet. He pounded the table with a fist, shouting, "No, no, no! You have it all wrong! This isn’t anything like what I asked for! Have you even been listening to me for the past four days? I mean, where do you come up with this crap? This might fly in French Canada, but it just sucks here in the US of A." He grabbed a handful of sketches and flung them across the room, nearly inflicting a lethal collection of paper cuts on Thomas and Timothy, who ducked beneath the table to dodge the onslaught.

"What are we paying you for? Do you even know how to design anything? This is awful, just awful! I thought you guys were the best, but my retarded kid sister could have come up with something better than this! I have never been insulted with such a collection of stupid drawings in all my life, and you expect me to trust you with my vision, my dream of an open casting call to the world? This is a waste of time. I’m leaving." He stormed out of the room, slamming the door so hard that the bolts holding a picture on the wall next to it pulled out half an inch.

Dan awoke with a start and called out, "Good meeting, everyone!”

The remaining occupants of the conference room sat in stunned silence for several moments. Then the silence was broken by a small hissing sound from the front of the room. David stood ramrod straight, a look if intense pain on his face, his eyes shining strangely. He drew in another hissing breath through clenched teeth and let it out, and then another. At last, he spoke.

"No one has ever spoken to me that way before, or maligned my creations in that manner." He sucked in another breath. "I will not weep. I will not give him the satisfaction."

"You go, gir -- big fella," Greg cheered, changing his supportive statement mid-cheer when he was met by a glare from David. "He’s not worth it."

Timothy had gone back to drawing again. "I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” he put in quietly. “He throws tantrums like this all the time. He probably didn’t mean most of that. Except the part about Canada. He really hates Canada."

David worked to regain his composure. "Oddly, that part bothered me the least, since I am not Canadian. I am Quebecois. I do not appreciate him calling us French Canada, though. That was just rude." He glared at the door.

"You should have seen him last week when then caterer brought the wrong sauce for the tofu," Thomas agreed, "‘I said peanut sauce, not sweet and sour! You don’t deserve to live!’ We took the sauce away from him before he could throw it, because I wanted it for my lunch. He stomped off, but he came back later and ate the sauce anyway."

"So what do we do now," asked Stephen, "wait for him to get hungry?"

Thomas thought about it. "Well, give him time to cool down, anyway. Chasing him down now will just make it worse. You might want to see if you can find Robert, too. He’s usually pretty good at calming Brad down."

Everyone returned to their offices, checking quickly around corners as they walked to make sure they didn’t run into Brad as they went. Stephen led his team back to his office, where everyone slumped dejectedly in chairs or on the floor against the walls.

"Does this mean we have to come back next week?" asked Ricky from the floor. "Because I don’t think I can do it again."

"Not if I can help it," Stephen replied grimly. "Your designs were good, especially when you consider the tripe that they’ve been spewing for the past week. You had me believing that this project could actually be successful for a while there. I’m not ready to let that feeling go yet." He punched the speaker on his phone and dialed Robert’s mobile number. From down the hall, he heard a ringing begin. Moments later, Robert’s voice answered from the hallway, echoing weirdly through the phone with a slight delay.

"Hello? This is Robert."

"Robert? What are you doing -- " Stephen punched the phone off and walked to the doorway. "Robert? What are you doing here? I thought you had something else to do today."

"Hello? Hello? Hmm, must have lost them." Robert flipped his phone closed as he walked into the room. "Something else to do, are you crazy? Why would I miss the culmination of all of our good work together? I decided to make the drive today so I could see your designs in person. Those things don’t read well over video. Didn’t Brad tell you?"

"No, he didn’t. He said that you were busy and that he would talk to you about it later."

"That kid…" Robert leaned out the doorway to the office to see if anyone was in the hallway, and then tapped his skull with a finger. "The kid is a little slow in the head. I think he forgot to wear a hard hat a few too many times when he was playing around Daddy’s construction sites, you know what I mean? So what happened?"

Stephen related the entire morning’s events to Robert, who was mortified but not particularly surprised. When Stephen was done, he apologized, "I’m sorry that you had to go through that, guys. He snaps every once in a while, especially when something’s important to him. He’ll calm down. Just wait: I’ll find him in a little while, he’ll apologize, and everything will be fine. It’s just his artistic temperament."

David snorted. "No, I am an artist. He is a pain in the ass."

Robert shrugged. "Fair enough. Now, how about you show me your designs and then I’ll go find our chief visionary and straighten him out."

Stephen yielded his chair to Robert and David ran through his presentation again there in the office. He began tentatively, but gained confidence as he continued with no signs of another temperamental outburst. When he finished, Robert had a few questions, but otherwise seemed very pleased.

"This is great stuff, great stuff!" he enthused. "I can tell that you really understood what I was going for, but were also able to filter out the" he tilted his head toward the hallway and, presumably, Brad, "useless dreck."

Robert left them then to search for Brad, promising to check in again before he left. He turned right out of the office to make a stop in the restroom on the way, and Stephen and the others went left, heading for Thomas’ office and lunch. They had gone no more than a hundred yards when they saw Brad coming the other way. He had loosened his tie and pushed the sleeves of his suit up to his elbows so that he looked like a Humphrey Bogart stand-in, minus the charm. Too late to go the other way, thought Stephen, and gritted his teeth and kept going. Brad accelerated when he saw them, and for a moment Stephen was afraid that he was going to attempt a flying tackle there in the hallway. He braced himself for the collision, but Brad pulled up short and stuck out his hand.

"Hey, I’m glad I found you. I just wanted to apologize for losing my cool in there earlier. I can be a little over-dramatic sometimes. I thought about it while I was walking around the parking lot cooling off, and I think you guys are on the right track. Keep up the good work, and send me the next round of design sketches when you have them. I look forward to developing this with you; I don’t think anyone could have captured my vision better than you did." He shook Stephen’s hand and then David’s, nodded to Ricky and Kelvin, and continued down the hallway behind them.

Stephen turned to watch him until he disappeared around a corner, not really expecting a sneak attack from behind, but not ready to take the chance either. "I miss Boston," he said. The others nodded their agreement. It was time to go home.

Please Stop Speaking for Me

2011-12-29T18:39:00.004-07:00

I don't generally talk about politics, for the same reasons that I don't put my hand on a hot skillet, but I have had enough. Rick Perry opens his "Strong" campaign spot by saying, “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian,” then spends the next 28 seconds making me ashamed to be called one. I have a simple request for the Republican presidential candidates, Fox News, Pat Robertson, and anyone with an ax to grind with everyone who doesn't agree with them: please stop calling yourself "Christians." You're entitled to your opinions and your beliefs, and you're just as welcome to list the people you hate and who you think are attacking you and your way of life as the separatist holed up in his Montana bunker, but to cover your intolerance, bigotry, and racism with the label of "Christianity" is simply grotesque.

I'd also like to say something to my non-Christian friends out there: please don't be fooled. These opinions don't represent the mainstream of Christianity any more than when a Congressman tells the news what "The American People" want. For every intolerant bigot shooting his mouth off on television, there are thousands of Christians quietly serving the poor, caring for the sick, and generally showing the love of Christ to their fellow man, simply because they actually read their Bible and that's what it told them to do. You don't hear about them because they don't make a big deal about it: they just do it. They aren't seeking power or recognition, and the only change they want to make in people's lives is to make them better. They want people to know that they are loved, regardless of what they've done. That's what being a Christian means to them, and to me.

When I see these talking heads on TV, I cringe every time they open their mouths to talk about their "Christian values," since none of them seem to actually have much value at all. When they self-righteously point at some other group and say, "They're morally decrepit because they don't do what I want them to do," I have to join my friend Handy the Hand-Puppet, and say, "You're making us look like jerks!"

For just a moment, let's go to the source, shall we? Since "Christians" originally meant "Little Christs," let's see what Jesus has to say about what he wants his followers to do:

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these.”

“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

What, only two commandments? That seems too simple. At least Moses got 10.

"Love God with all your heart?" What about "Cynically use God's name to cover your intolerance and fear-mongering to trick people into doing what you want?" That must be what he meant.

"Love your neighbor as yourself?" That sounds hard. I'm sure that what he really meant was, "Set up standards of moral living for your neighbors and make sure that they live up to them at all costs. If they don't, point it out with regularity and let them know that God hates them. Make stuff up if you have to. Oh, and don't worry about living up to these standards yourselves. Since you tell people that you're my followers, that's enough. You're exempt."

Interestingly, during Jesus' ministry -- a ministry marked by kindness for the poor and partying with the people that the established authorities deemed "morally decrepit," by the way -- he consistently targeted only one group for criticism. These were the people who had established themselves as the arbiters of who was good and who was bad, and who used religious authority as a means to gain wealth and power. I suspect he'd say something similar to our conservative figureheads today:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.

“Everything they do is for show... they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi.’

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you cross land and sea to make one convert, and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell you yourselves are!

“...What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith....

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too.

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.

"Whitewashed tombs." Couldn't have said it better myself.

Hollywood.bomb, Chapter 6

2011-12-01T22:29:00.001-07:00

So, it turns out that the family homestead in Oregon is not the writing haven that I hoped it would be over Thanksgiving week. Go figure. Anyway, here's the next installment in our thrilling saga; I hope you enjoy it. And if you're new here, try Chapter One on for size.

Chapter 6

Thirty minutes later, everyone had gathered in the "small" conference room, an echoing space that easily seated the ten people who were there with room for another twenty besides. A giant video screen, currently showing an image of a huge Robert Miller seated behind a desk, dominated one wall. There was a camera pointed at the conference room as well, but it wasn’t currently in use because Robert had no interest in seeing them. The microphone was live, though, presumably so that he could confirm that he had their rapt attention.

Brad sat beneath the screen, still wearing his sunglasses and looking like any sudden movement would cause his head to roll right off. He dropped two Alka-Seltzer tablets in a Styrofoam cup of water, stared at it thoughtfully for a moment, then dropped in two more. The cup foamed angrily, a miniature Vesuvius threatening the Pompeii of legal pads and plastic pens scattered around it. The hissing of the tablets was the final straw for Brad’s poor head: he laid it down on the table to await relief.

Thomas had taken advantage of the break while everyone moved to the new room to find Timothy, who had apparently been in his office the whole time but had left the lights out so that no one could tell he was there. Now, Timothy sat in the corner of the conference room, as far from the screen -- or Brad, Stephen wasn’t sure which -- as he could get, drawing on a sketch pad with a charcoal pencil. Thin and pale with a narrow beard, he was a mirror image of Thomas. A fun-house mirror perhaps, with very bright lighting. He had smiled briefly when David and Ricky introduced themselves and then withdrawn to his sketches as soon as the others filed into the room.

Greg had begged off from the meeting, citing network administration duties, but had given Craig a warning look as he moved off down the hall, clearly urging him to behave himself in front of the guests. Connie sat beside Craig now, pen poised, ready to take notes. If she’s really psychic, maybe she should take the notes before the meeting and save us the trouble of having it, Stephen thought uncharitably. She looked up at him quickly and fingered a crystal hanging from a chain around her neck. Her knowing smile made Stephen nervous until he saw her turn it on Ricky as well, who clearly was not thinking anything at the moment. Kelvin sat beside Stephen, still chuckling to himself.

Dan had disappeared as soon as the impromptu meeting in Thomas’ office broke up, then abruptly reappeared at the conference room door, agendas in hand, just as everyone was gathering. He winked conspiratorially at Stephen as he handed him his copy, saying, "Let’s talk later about how we can kick this engagement in the butt." Stephen wasn’t sure what that meant, but he dreaded the conversation just the same. The fact that Dan thought they were on the same side made him a little queasy.

"OK, is everyone there?" Robert’s voice boomed through the room. Various unenthusiastic murmurs of assent assured him that they were. "Fantastic! Brad baby, you still with us? From the hissing coming through the mike, it sounds like it was a four-tab night. Were the girls pretty, at least?"

"I have no idea," mumbled Brad, squeezing the words past the oaken tabletop. "I’m pretty sure they were women this time, though."

"Good enough, buddy, good enough," Robert chuckled titanically and Brad moaned and squeezed his head between his hands. Thomas began fiddling with a gigantic remote control. After brightening and dimming the lights in the conference room, raising the screen halfway and lowering it again, and setting off some sort of alarm, he finally managed to lower the volume on the sound system. Meanwhile, Robert continued his soliloquy.

"Thanks for flying out here to be with us, gentlemen. I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you in person, but traffic between there and Malibu is murder and I have some other matters to attend to out here. That’s why we set up this great video conferencing system, so that I could be there for you whenever you need me. I think it’s worked out well so far. Right, boys?"

Craig rolled his eyes. Timothy winced and slouched lower in his seat, trying to hide behind his sketch pad. Thomas nodded, caught himself, and shouted, "Works for us, Robert!" He pressed a large red button, clearly labeled "MUTE" on the remote, and Robert’s voice faded into silence. He turned to Stephen and grinned, "That was the first button I figured out how to use on this thing. Now he can blather on all he wants and we don’t have to listen. We can’t hear him, and he can’t hear us!"

"Are you sure that’s -- " Stephen began.

"Wait, he’s almost done!" Thomas punched the mute button again.

" -- why I believe that you’ll be the team to hit this one out of the park for us!" Robert concluded.

Brad’s brew had nearly ceased its fizzing. He pounced on it and downed it in one gulp. "Right," he gasped, "let’s get this over with, so I can get to bed. What do you have for us? Sketches, storyboards, some sort of demo?"

David gaped. "We… do not have anything yet. We need to hear from you what it is you want to create."

"Didn’t we tell you this already? We want the world’s first completely online talent search! How hard can that be? Hell, I could probably do it myself after taking a class or two. What have we been paying you guys for?"

Stephen was prepared to step in at that point, but David had dealt with this before. "You cannot simply slap some paint on a digital signboard that says, ‘Talent show tonight in the high school gym.’ If you want to be taken seriously, you must have a serious design. You must have a strategy." Here he paused, seeking an analogy that would resonate. "Would you film a movie without first hiring a cinematographer to present your story in the best way possible?" Brad shook his head, as did the giant Robert behind him. David concluded, "I am your cinematographer. Give me your pitch."

This they understood, and both Robert and Brad were silent for several minutes as they mustered their creative ammunition. Robert was wearing a wireless earpiece for the conference, which was good because thinking apparently required pacing. He began doing so furiously now, so that the conference room denizens only saw fleeting images of his legs whisking across the screen. He was wearing shorts, which failed to improve the view. "OK, Brad, we talked about this, didn’t we? We need this site to have the wow factor of a summer blockbuster, but the subtle touch of a late fall costume drama. We want to attract both men and women, so we’ll need to have lots of babes, but have them doing smart stuff. Reading, working, doing sports. Softball! That’ll bring in those girls who like other girls. Ooh, could we use that, too? No, that’ll scare off the stage moms. We’ll save that for the porn spinoff. Is someone writing this down?"

"Porn spinoff. Got it," repeated Connie.

"Don’t put that part in the official minutes. Last thing I need is another lawsuit. Just send me a note about it."

"Unofficial porn spin-off. Got it."

"But what does softball have to do with a talent search?" asked Ricky.

"Nothing directly," replied Brad, visibly improving as the medication took hold. "Like you guys said, we need to create the feel, set the mood. This is good clean fun. Minus the, uh, girl-on-girl stuff, of course. We need to let people know this is a fun place to be, that we’ll take care of them. We have to make them want to trust us with their dreams. That’s when they’ll give us their money."

"Right," shouted Robert from somewhere off screen, "get ‘em in the door with the teaser and it’s easier for them to stay put than to get their money back and go home to their miserable lives!"

"We need just the right feel," Brad mused, "a sort of Mickey Mouse meets Marilyn Monroe. Fun, but sexy."

"Clint Eastwood tough, but Matt Damon sensitive!" said Robert.

"Angelina Jolie sexy!"

"Tom Hanks funny!"

Thinking he had caught on to the game, Ricky jumped in with, "Ben Affleck smooth!"

Brad glared at him, and Robert stopped pacing to put his face directly before the camera. "Let’s try to be serious, OK?" Robert said witheringly. "We’re trying to work here."

"Sorry." Abashed, Ricky sat back down.

Brad continued. "The music should be powerful like Celine Dion, but just screechy enough to make them feel that they could do better. Like that glee club show!"

"And with a good beat. All those pop singer wannabes on TV had a hip-hop beat behind them."

"We’re having music?" asked David.

"Of course!" shouted Brad. "Every good story needs a soundtrack!"

"I don’t compose. I am strictly a visual artist. Though I suppose I could try."

"Don’t worry about that. We’ll have Timmy do it, right Timmy?" Brad rounded on Timothy, frozen like a chipmunk before an oncoming truck. "You’re not doing anything else, are you Timmy? You can compose our theme song."

Thomas quickly intervened. "Leave him alone, Brad."

"Well, what else is he doing? All he does is sit there and draw those comic books, and I get gorily killed in every one! You have serious issues, Timmy."

"And stop calling him Timmy! You know he hates that. His name’s Timothy, and he’s not going to write a theme song for you!"

Timothy slowly unfroze. "No, I can do it," he said quietly, looking at Thomas, not Brad. "I took composition in college. I’ll do it."

"There we go, all set," said Robert, pausing to adjust his camera, which had been knocked askew by his pacing. "I think we’ve given you enough to work with for now. Why don’t we take a break, have a nosh, and give you boys some time to absorb everything. If you have any questions we can set up another meeting later this week. OK?" Without waiting for anyone to object, he reached out and cut the connection. The screen went blank.

As the others rose to leave, Stephen turned to his team. "Let’s stay in here for a few minutes and debrief before we head out for lunch." Dazed, the other three simply nodded and stayed in their seats as the room quickly emptied.

Thomas shook his head. "No one goes out to lunch here unless they have a deal to make; the restaurants are too crowded for casual dining. We’re catered. Just come on down to the room across from my office when you’re ready. It should be here in a few minutes."

Craig stopped at the door, turned back, and smiled. "Having fun yet?" He darted out before they could respond or, possibly, throw anything.

"So," Stephen began after closing the door, "How are we doing? Could you make heads or tails of all that?"

David shook his head. "I do not even know who all those people were that they mentioned, or what I am supposed to do with them. Except for Madame Dion, of course. Are the others musicians as well?"

"Not really, but I don’t think that’s the point. They were using them as references, a sort of sign pointing toward how they want the site to feel -- " he broke off as the screen suddenly flared to life again. Robert’s face appeared, taking up the whole wall as he peered into the camera.

"Are they all gone?" he asked. "I thought I heard everyone leave, but turn on your camera so I can double-check."

Stephen obliged, panning it across the room so that Robert could see the remaining occupants. Following Robert’s instructions, he also took it off its tripod and waved it under the table to show that no one was hiding there.

"Thanks, kid. You can’t be too careful in my business. Listen, now that it’s just us, let me try to make things a little easier for you. Ignore everything Brad says. The guy’s as dumb as the proverbial bag of hammers, and what few brain cells he once had have been pretty much destroyed by now. I need to keep him happy so that he keeps spending Mommy and Daddy’s money, but we’re never going to make this thing a success if he actually has a say in its creation. Let Brad talk all he wants, but when it comes to actual creative decisions, just listen to me and we’ll be all right. I’ll do my best to keep him out of your hair when it comes time to do the real work.

Robert leaned in conspiratorially, providing a ten-foot-high close-up of his extremely hairy chest. "Whatever you do, though, don’t make him angry! We need him to keep writing those checks, at least for now. Gotta run. We’ll talk soon." He clicked off again, and the screen went dark. This time, Stephen unplugged the microphone and camera before anyone spoke again.

David still looked puzzled. "So, which part was I supposed to ignore?"

***

That evening, the CouldBU team took the ADD team out to dinner. "After all," said Thomas, "we’ll be paying for the meal, so we might as well come along and enjoy it too. I hope you like seafood."

They went to an exclusive bistro near the beach that was familiar to all of the CBUers. The van came in handy this time, enabling everyone to get there using only two cars. And the look on the valet’s face as they piled out of the side doors was worth the tip, Stephen thought. Brad had declined the invitation to dinner, claiming other appointments, while Connie said she wasn’t comfortable eating in front of her employers. That left Craig, Greg, Thomas, and Timothy, who were clearly used to eating out together. In fact, the host at the restaurant seemed to be expecting them: as soon as they entered the restaurant he ushered them to a large table on the covered veranda.

Stephen was famished. The catered lunch had consisted of steamed vegetables, slabs of something that David assured him was tofu, various sauces, and several bowls of sticky goop that were either side dishes or construction materials. After staring at the choices for several minutes, he had attempted to make a sandwich out of the goop and two tofu slabs, with unpleasant results.

"What exactly was that stuff we had for lunch?" he asked as they sat. He looked hopefully along their table for a basket of bread, but there was none. The waiter was on the other side of the room, looking the wrong way. I’ll give him fifteen seconds, Stephen thought, and then I’m going into the kitchen myself.

"Good, wasn’t it?" enthused Thomas. "I’m on that new Kabbalah Zone diet that all the stars are on now. Schwarzenegger used it to slim down for his first gubernatorial campaign! You can eat all the organic vegetables and whey products you want, but no meats until after sundown. Processed foods and carbohydrates are only allowed on Saturday. This catering company specializes in unique dietary needs, and they have a whole Kabbalah Zone menu. I’ve lost five pounds already!"

"I can imagine you would lose weight pretty quickly, since ‘all the organic vegetables and whey products I want’ is a pretty small amount," Stephen commented. "Any chance we could get some sandwiches or something on the side tomorrow?"

Thomas shrugged, "I don’t know if they do sandwiches anymore, but I’ll see what I can do. You really should try it, though. You stop craving breads after a week or two, though the intestinal, er, complications can be a little disconcerting."

"Thanks, I’d appreciate it. Bread to start, please! Preferably before the water. Or the specials." The waiter had arrived and begun his greeting. At the look on Stephen’s face, he closed his mouth and scurried away in search of several baskets of bread. In moments, he returned with not only bread, but various dipping oils as well.

"Would you all like water, as well?" he asked.

Ricky glanced up from his bread basket in surprise. "Since when is that optional? Is there a shortage?"

"No sir, but not all customers prefer it. Would you like fizzy or regular?"

"Um, regular, I suppose. Do I need to specify ice or no ice, too?"

Thomas came to Ricky’s rescue. "Two bottles of each, please." The waiter waited as Thomas scanned his guests. "On ice and with ice for the table." The waiter nodded and left again.

"Ordering food is very complicated here," opined Ricky.

"Not like getting a latte, huh?" needled Stephen.

"That’s very different. Every piece of that order is a component of the whole drink experience."

"Well, once you get a handle on this experience, then I’m sure your coffee expertise will come in quite handy. Meanwhile, I need some bread." Stephen reached into the basket that the waiter had placed directly in front of him and tore a huge steaming hunk off of the loaf. "Ah, much better."

Once they had ordered the rest of the meal and everyone had settled in with the drinks and waters of their choosing, Craig spoke up. "We should probably get this out of the way now, to save you another couple of days trying to figure it out." He gestured to himself, Greg, Thomas and Timothy. "We’re married."

"All four of you?" Ricky asked. "And I though Massachusetts’ marriage laws were liberal!"

"No, not all four of us! Well, yes, all four of us, but not all together. Greg and I are married and Tom and Tim are married." Craig held up a hand. "Spare me the comments on how cute our names are together. We’re aware, and no, we didn’t do it on purpose." He looked at the other three. "Well, not entirely, anyway.

"I just wanted to get this out in the open now. Some people are uncomfortable with it, but it seems to be easier to deal with if we just discuss it instead of trying to pretend that we don’t have relationships. Plus, it makes some of our conversations at the office a little more understandable. If you have a problem with us, well, that’s your right, but I hope that we can all be professional and work together regardless." He paused and looked around the table. No one else spoke. "Thoughts?"

Ricky responded first. "Given my ancestry, I can hardly judge anyone else’s sexual practices. As long as you don’t bring any family spats into the office, I don’t mind."

David said, "Please! I am an artist! Most of my friends are gay and on their third marriage. You have nothing that can surprise me." He cast a sidelong glance at Greg, who was smiling mischievously, and added, "but please do not try."

Kelvin was predictably unfazed. "According to some studies, ten percent of the population has homosexual tendencies. While those studies are somewhat in dispute, I don’t really care as long as you do your jobs well."

Everyone looked at Stephen now. He shrugged uncomfortably. "Well, it’s fine with me, too. After all, you’re not the first gay engineers I’ve met, and I don’t expect that you’ll start making out in the office or anything." He thought for a moment. "Is Brad gay, too?"

"Well, he certainly compensates like someone with a few skeletons in his closet," replied Greg. "But no, we’re fairly certain that he’s straight. Some might say flamboyantly so. Whatever he’s compensating for, it’s not that. No, we’re the only fags in the office," he concluded airily.

Stephen winced at the term, and Craig elbowed Greg. "Stop it. You get way too much pleasure out of making other people uncomfortable, and you think you can get away with it just because you’re cute. That doesn’t work on everyone, you know, and it’s hardly fair."

Greg, attempting to look contrite, apologized in a singsong voice, "Sorry, Stephen."

"It’s OK. I just spent a long time in Southie learning not to call people that. When you say it, I can taste the soap that my Mom used to teach me that lesson."

"Eww. Well, it’s better than what my Dad used to try to teach me not to kiss boys." The food arrived at that moment, and everyone gladly accepted the distraction. It was some time before anyone spoke again, other than to compliment the meal.

While they waited for dessert to arrive, Craig returned the conversation to business. "So, what did you think of the creative meeting today? Was it all you expected and more?"

"Well, it was definitely more," replied Stephen carefully, still unsure of the relationship between Brad, Robert, and those at the table. "They gave us a lot of ideas to work with, though I’m not exactly sure what we’ll do with them yet." He looked to David for help.

"The… images they conjured gave me a strong sense of… theme," he struggled gamely for a moment, but finally gave up. "Feh! I can make neither heads nor tails of their suggestions. They are either idiots or savants, but I cannot tell which! You tell me: which are they?"

Stephen’s fears that this outburst would put them on the next plane home were quickly allayed as the other four men burst out in laughter. "Possibly one of each," Craig laughed, "or some combination of both. Brad clearly leans toward the idiot end of the spectrum."

"That seemed to be Robert’s assessment as well," Stephen offered cautiously. "He blinked back on after you all left and basically told us that his suggestions were the only ones we should take seriously. Brad’s money covers a multitude of idiocies, though, doesn’t it?"

"And has for years," Greg agreed. "It’s not his money, though, if we want to be precise. It’s his parents’. Daddy’s a big developer in Arizona, and as far as we can tell, it’s cheaper to pay for Brad’s projects out here than to keep him around home. He apparently tried his hand at the family business, but for some reason the concept of an all-sand desert-themed golf course didn’t catch on. He had a point, though: it was much less expensive to build and maintain."

"And what about Robert? Is he the brains of this operation, then?" Kelvin asked. Then, faced with four affronted looks, he quickly added, "Present company excepted, of course."

"He’s all sizzle, no steak, to quote -- well -- him," said Craig. "He was a great agent in his day, and can talk a good enough game to get a producer to cast Adam Sandler as MacBeth -- "

"That was him?" David interrupted. "It is just as well I do not know where he lives."

"But he doesn’t know a thing about technology, in case you haven’t figured that out already. Eventually, he’ll learn enough buzzwords to convince his Hollywood friends that he really has made the jump to Internet venture capitalist, but I doubt he’ll ever be able to make this site succeed."

"So now you’re telling us that we shouldn’t listen to either one of them?" asked Stephen. "Because given how much talking they do, that’s going to be a challenge."

"Oh no, you should absolutely listen to both of them," said Craig. "And build exactly what they ask you to build."

The looks on the faces of Stephen, Kelvin, Ricky, and David could best be summed up with the sound, "Hunh?"

To ensure that the full import was not lost on their hosts, Stephen vocalized their collective confusion. "Hunh? Why should we listen to them and do exactly what they say if it’s doomed to fail?"

"Come on, did you actually think otherwise?" rejoined Craig. "I mean, really, an online talent show? It’s not the 90s anymore: people expect the Internet to actually do something useful."

"Well, it seems farfetched, I’ll admit, but if it were executed well, and marketed exactly right, and had some celebrity talent to back it up, and there was nothing good on TV, it could… work," Stephen finished lamely.

Greg reached across the table and patted his arm. "You go with that, Hon. In fact, you go out and do just that: execute it well. Execute it spectacularly, in fact. And take your time."

Craig leaned in, now, too, "You see, the more time they spend talking to you, the less attention they’ll pay to us, which will give us the time we need."

"Need for what?" asked Stephen. "You’re going to be working with us on this, aren’t you?" He looked over at Thomas, who was at the other end of the table trying to pretend that he couldn’t hear them over the noise in the restaurant. "Thomas? Tom! Oh come on, you can hear me just fine! What are you going to be doing while we sit in meetings with Brad and Robert?"

"Don’t bring me into this," Thomas said petulantly. "I think that the talent search is a great idea, with a lot of potential! It’s a great improvement! I said as much to Brad when he came back from meeting with Robert."

"Improvement over what?" asked Stephen. "What did he improve?"

"I was getting to that," said Craig, shooting an irritated look at Thomas. "CouldBU wasn’t Brad’s idea; it was ours. At least, the genesis of what became CouldBU was our idea. We wanted to build a secure high-speed portal to link the studios, talent agencies, and production companies, a sort of Hollywood village market where they can share ideas, post casting calls, send bios and head shots, etc. Basically, all the things that they do now by fax and courier could be done a hundred times faster online. And with the security that we would provide, they could control access to their communications, so that it’d be harder to steal their ideas. Just think: no more summers with five disaster movies, all starring Jude Law! It really can’t lose.

"We came up with this idea a year ago, when the three of us -- me, Greg, and Thomas -- were working together on another project in San Francisco. We talked to some friends in the biz and they thought we were on to something. Hollywood runs on contacts, though, and we didn’t have any. Except Thomas. He knew Brad from college, and had kept in touch mainly by going to premieres of movies that Brad had worked on in some way. He called Brad and told him our idea. Brad said he would shop it around and see what people thought. He invited Thomas to come down for some meetings, but Thomas declined." He paused to glare at Thomas again.

"I had a date!" Thomas countered defensively. Timothy, who was busily sketching something on the tablecloth, colored but didn’t look up.

Greg picked up the story while Craig and Thomas continued to glare at each other. "Anyway, we didn’t hear from Brad for about two weeks, and then he shows up in San Francisco and tells us to pack our bags and get our cute butts down to LA. Except he didn’t say butts," he said as an aside to Stephen, "he said -- "

Stephen raised a hand. "I get the picture. Move on."

"Touchy. He told us he had sold the idea to a big venture capitalist who was looking for the next big thing. Except the whole industry portal thing was too boring. It needed more sizzle. So over drinks and, I suspect, a joint or two, they had a huge epiphany together. Except he didn’t say epiphany. He said ‘epissany.’ And so CouldBU was born, out of Brad and Robert’s epissanies."

"I don’t understand," said Ricky. "Why did you move down here and agree to work on this if you were convinced it was going to fail?"

"Two words," said Greg, "stock options. Lots and lots of stock options."

"Aren’t stock options worthless if a company goes belly-up?" asked Kelvin.

Greg frowned, "I hadn’t thought of that." Then he brightened. "Well, we could still go public before we go belly-up. Never overestimate the intelligence of the stock market." Kelvin conceded the point.

"Two more words, then," added Craig, "capital funding. We went to Brad in the first place because we needed money to build our project. After we got over being really, really mad at him, we realized that he could still fund the development. He just couldn’t know he was doing it. That’s where you come in."

"Us?!?" The picture was becoming clearer to Stephen, and while he wasn’t sure he liked it, he also wanted to hear them explain themselves before he flew off the handle. He was right at the edge of the handle, though, and his grip was loosening.

"Right. We had already decided that we needed ADD’s technology for our project, and we suggested to Robert that he bring in the experts to help us do things right the first time. Our plan was that you would work on the CouldBU site while we worked on our portal."

The urge to curse long and loudly rose up in Stephen with a force almost too powerful to contain, but his promise to Jenny was stronger. Barely. He made a few choking noises and a sound that could only be described as spluttering before finally working words past clenched teeth. "You want us to be a…" he checked the word, decided it was acceptable, "bloody diversion?"

"Not a diversion exactly," Craig replied. "Well, yes, actually: diversion is the right word. But the job hasn’t changed: you’ll still be building the site you were hired to build. You’ll just be doing it without having to worry about us holding you back. No dead weight slowing you down. And we’ll be glad to pitch in if you get into real trouble."

Stephen’s teeth had not yet unclenched. "Gee, that’s big of you."

"Oh, and Brad and Robert have no idea how many people it takes to build a software application, and they clearly have more money than sense, so if you need more engineers from your side you can always bring on more. That way, you won’t suffer from not having us working with you full-time. So really, it’s a win-win situation!"

"Excepting the part where we have to build something that’s doomed to spectacular, messy failure. I don’t know that I’d call that a win."

"It all depends upon how you look at it." Craig began ticking off points on his fingers, "You get paid handsomely to work on an exciting project in the entertainment industry. You get to spend the winter in LA instead of Boston. You have clients who will spare no expense because they have no sense of what things should cost. And when it’s all over, you’ll have a great story to tell over drinks back home. What are a few more creative meetings with the Wonder Twins compared to that? It could definitely be worse."

After concentrating for several moments, Stephen finally unlocked his jaw. Working it back and forth, he mused, "’It could be worse,’ huh? You seem to think that I should find that comforting. Right now, it feels more prophetic, and not in the good ‘You will meet a tall, dark stranger’ way. More like ‘And the angel opened the seventh seal, and the earth shook with a great earthquake.’"

Continue to Chapter 7

Hollywod.bomb, Chapter 5

2011-11-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

The story starts here.

I'm not sure about this chapter. It's fun and gives us a chance to meet the rest of the cast, but I feel like we aren't moving the story forward quickly enough. Got to pick up the pace...

Chapter 5

The next morning the team met in the hotel restaurant for breakfast and then trooped out front to wait for the valets to bring their cars. After the valet disdainfully handed Stephen the keys to the van, he pulled out of the driveway and began following the GPS through the streets of Santa Monica. David asked, "Why do you not park your car yourself? It seems like a waste of time to have to wait for the valets every day, and I think he objected to the smell."

"I don’t think you’re allowed to park your own car in LA," Stephen replied, vainly scanning both sides of the road for a Dunkin’ Donuts. The hotel coffee had been so weak that he had been unable to drink it, and he felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. "The entire Los Angeles economy runs on tips. If people started parking their own cars, then thousands of would-be actors would be out of work and the economy would be thrown into chaos. I’ve never seen an open parking space on the street here. In fact, I’m half convinced that all the cars that are parked on the street are just props stored there by the movie studios.

"The last time I was here, I asked about parking the car myself. By the time they got done giving me the directions to the self-park garage and showing me the foot-long waiver I had to sign to park it myself, I gave up. The valet was waiting right behind me, ready to take my keys." He slapped the steering wheel in frustration. "Have you seen a single Dunkin’ Donuts anywhere since we got here? I need some coffee now."

"Non, but there is another Starbucks," said David. "Wait, it is on the wrong side of the street. Keep going: there is one on our side another block up."

"That’ll have to do," grumbled Stephen, remembering to signal so Kelvin would know he was pulling over. "There’s nowhere to park, so I’ll pull into the no parking zone up there and leave you in the car, if you don’t mind."

"That is fine. I have no need of those drugs to get me started in the day." Without a hint of irony, David pulled out his cigarettes. "Plus, this way I can have a quiet smoke without you complaining."

"Just leave the windows open, all right?" Stephen jumped out of the car and ran back to the other car. "Do you guys want coffee? I’m buying."

"I’m fine," replied Kelvin.

"You’re buying?" asked Ricky. "OK, I’ll have a triple Venti skinny no-whip mocha, with a shake of cinnamon and a shake of nutmeg."

Stephen stared at him. "Is that a drink or a gourmet meal?"

"Do you want me to write it down for you?" Ricky offered.

Stephen sighed. At this rate, they were going to be late. "Why don’t you just come inside and order it yourself?" Before Ricky could ask, he added, "I’ll still buy."

"OK," Ricky agreed brightly, and jumped out to follow Stephen inside the café.

They emerged fifteen minutes later, with Ricky still trying to explain gourmet coffee orders to Stephen.

"You can’t just grunt, ‘Medium, regular,’ at the barista and expect her to know what you want. Tastes vary by region, and while ‘regular’ in Boston means with cream and a scoop of sugar, here it means black. And I don’t think that you needed to be that surly when she explained the different sizes to you. She was only trying to help."

"If I wanted to learn Italian I’d have taken it in high school," Stephen grumbled. "All I wanted was a cup of coffee. And what’s this little paper sleeve thingy? It’s getting in my way."

"It’s there to protect your fingers so they don’t get burned."

"Why can’t they just use Styrofoam cups like Dunkin’?"

Ricky just stared quietly at Stephen for a moment, shocked and a little hurt. "Stephen, that’s not very eco-friendly."

"Whatever. Let’s get going or we’ll be late. Did you guys get a GPS, too, in case we get separated in traffic?" Stephen called to Kelvin.

"It’s built into the car. This really is a very nice vehicle. We should hurry, though."

"I know, I know." Late or not, Stephen paused to take a long swig from his coffee cup, gasping with pain as the extremely hot liquid hit his tongue, but then sighing as the bitter warmth flooded his body. Logically, he knew that the caffeine wouldn’t take effect for at least 30 minutes, but he already felt the fatigue losing its grip on his nervous system. He stole one more sip and jumped back into the van. After fruitlessly scanning everywhere around the front seat for a cup holder, he finally handed his coffee cup to David. "Here, make yourself useful."

"Do you get nicer after the caffeine hits your system?" David asked with a sniff, stubbing out his second cigarette.

"Hold that thing steady and you might live to find out." Stephen grunted. Leaning out the window for a better view, he gunned the engine and pulled back into traffic. They needed to make up some time.

Twenty minutes later, they arrived at CouldBU’s office. Like hundreds of other office buildings in that area, it was three stories tall and shaped like a demented starfish, making it nearly impossible to identify a main entrance. There was, Stephen was glad to see, ample parking space in the lot, though all but two rows at the far end were reserved by name and, in many instances, title.

"There’s Brad’s space," David pointed as they drove toward the unreserved spaces. Stephen looked and saw a metallic blue BMW Z-Series convertible parked in a space with an extra-large sign that read: Brad Richards, Chief Visionary Officer, CouldBU.com.

"Somehow, I’m not surprised at his choice of cars," Stephen observed wryly.

"Why?" asked David.

"He just strikes me as a man who needs to impress people, heavily," Stephen explained. "Subtlety is not Brad’s strong suit."

"That is good to know," David replied thoughtfully. "I will take that into account when I start to work on my designs. We will need bold colors and strong statements!"

"Let’s save any statements until we actually hear what they want to do," Stephen suggested. "Maybe Brad will surprise me."

But I doubt it, he didn’t add.

"As always, I will withhold my own opinions until I have heard the client’s wishes," David replied haughtily. "It is my job to bring their vision to life, not to impose my own upon them." They got out of the car and began walking quickly toward the office building. "Will you please hold your own coffee now?"

After walking all the way around the building looking for a front entrance, they finally gave up, entered through the first door that was open, and proceeded to wander through the building for another fifteen minutes in search of the CouldBU offices. Finally, Stephen called the receptionist on his cell phone and asked her to talk him through the halls. There was some brief confusion over which floor they should be on, and Stephen had to go into one of the men’s restrooms to see if it was the one with the green, yellow, and blue urinals ("And how would she know?" Kelvin wondered), but they eventually made it to the large reception area.

"OK, we made it. Thank you for your help. Good-bye," Stephen said, and hung up his cell phone.

"Good-bye!" chirped a young blonde behind a high-walled reception unit that vaguely resembled a medieval castle, in both size and coloring. "Oh, hello!" she continued upon seeing them, "Welcome to CouldBU! May I help you?"

"Um, yes," Stephen said, "We’re the people who couldn’t find the office. We’re here to meet with Brad Richards. I’m afraid we’re a little late, what with getting lost and all. I hope he’s not waiting for us."

"Oh no, Bradley -- um, Mr. Richards hasn’t arrived yet, which isn’t surprising for a Monday. We expect him within the next hour or so."

"But wasn’t that his car in the parking lot? If not, someone’s using his space, which I doubt he’d appreciate. It’s a BMW, if that helps."

She looked puzzled for a moment as she tried to recall what type of car Brad drove -- or possibly what a parking space was -- but then the clouds cleared. "Oh, he probably called a car to drive him on Friday night," she said brightly. "He’s very conscious about driving under the influence, especially after the first two incidents. Now, the rest of the team is here and I know that they are excited to meet you. Would you like to wait here or shall I show you back to their offices?"

Stephen looked at the others and took a quick opinion poll: two shrugs and a nod. The ayes had it. "We might as well meet them now," he replied.

"Wonderful!" she beamed. "Just give me a moment to put the phone system on hold…." She pressed buttons for several minutes -- lifting the telephone handset every couple of seconds to check for a dial tone -- left herself a message to be sure that calls were being forwarded to voicemail, wrote a note to herself to delete the practice message, and finally climbed down the steps from her booth to lead them into the depths of the office.

The long hallway from the reception area was punctuated by offices on each side. Most had doors with small windows and space enough for a large desk, two guest chairs, and some standard-issue office wall art. Everything, including the art, had clearly come with the space, so that setting up the company had been merely a matter of moving the people in and painting a company name and logo on the double glass doors out front. Stephen wondered idly if tenants had a choice of pictures on their walls or if they chose their offices based upon a preference for generic landscapes or abstract color splotches.

After taking enough turns to ensure that none of the team would be able to find their way back to the lobby again, the perky receptionist finally bounced to a halt. "Here we are," she announced, "the CouldBU brain trust! These guys are really smart, so I’m sure you’ll get along well. If you need directions again, just call me!" She turned to go, but then stopped and turned back. "Only, give me a few minutes to make sure the phone system is back off of voicemail, OK? All right, bye!" She flounced off and was soon lost over the dim horizon of the hallway.

Stephen checked the others, snapping several times to get David’s attention. He eventually succeeded in tearing the artist’s eyes away from the now empty corridor. "Later, David. Right now, we need to meet the other half of our team."

"I know," David sighed. "Client faces."

They knocked and were invited into an office that was somewhat larger than the others they had passed and occupied by two desks in opposite corners. In the far corner, facing them, sat a round, tanned man with a small goatee, typing furiously on a laptop. He glanced up briefly as they entered but quickly looked back down, saying nothing. They were greeted instead by the woman at the other desk, which stood directly in front of the doorway.

"Hello, you must be Stephen," she said, sweeping bright pink hair out of her eyes and rising to shake Stephen’s hand. Slightly taller than average, her eyes were just level with Stephen’s chin; her plump curves made Stephen think longingly of home. "I’m Connie. Are you feeling better now that you’ve had your coffee? I know how hard it is to go without sleep."

Taken aback by this rather prescient greeting, Stephen shook her hand and decided to roll with it. "Much better, thanks. I’m sorry we’re late. We had a little trouble finding the place."

"That’s all right, everyone does," she replied, looking past him to the other three. "And you are Kelvin, and you…" she stopped before Ricky, stared hard at a point just to the left of his ear, and then stood on tiptoes to wave her hand from one side of his head to the other, "with so many colors, you must be David, the designer."

Ricky looked behind him to see if there was something else there before saying, "No, I’m Ricky Nilsson-Martinez, the UI developer. I don’t design the site; I just build it. …Um, what colors?"

Ignoring him, Connie swept over to David. "You’re right, how could I have missed the brooding grays and complex patterns of the artist? Forgive me, please." She took both his hands in hers, then jumped as though receiving a shock, "Oh! Well, you are full of surprises, aren’t you? Don’t worry," she added in a theatrical whisper to David, "I won’t tell them."

"What are you talking about?" David asked, trying to extricate his hand from hers. "Since we have clearly never met, what secret of mine could you possibly possess?"

"Again, I apologize," Connie said, swooping back to her desk and sitting on its edge, "The gift can be unnerving to those who are unused to it, but when it is strong upon me I can’t hold it back. Your auras appear especially brilliant to me today." She waited for comprehension to dawn on their faces, giving a small irritated stamp of her foot after a moment when it failed to come. "Hellooo! I’m psychic!"

Before anyone could formulate a suitable response, the other man spoke. "Connie," he called, without looking up from his computer "is that the ADD project team here to see me?"

Connie sighed, "Yes, Tom. Are you going to stop pretending not to see them now, or do I need to announce them?"

"Announce them, please. It makes me happy. And call me Thomas."

Connie sighed again. Then, with exaggerated patience: "Thomas, the team from ADD is here to see you. Do you want to meet them here, or should I take them to the conference room?"

Thomas considered for a moment. "I suppose that here will do, and could you call the others and ask them to join us, please? We might as well get the meet-and-greet over with now, before Brad comes in. And ask if they want coffee or a drink. We have both soda and juice."

Connie rose to leave. "Come in and make yourselves at home. I’ll bring in some more chairs, or you can use the beanbags if you prefer." She made to leave, but Thomas cleared his throat, loudly. "Oh, and would you like anything to drink? Coffee, soda, or juice?"

"I’ll take a cranberry juice, please," replied Ricky, still nettled at her greeting. "With ice. Crushed. And a wedge of lime if you can find it."

"Anyone else?" she asked, staring levelly at Ricky. The others quickly declined.

After Connie left, Thomas stood up and came around the desk toward Stephen with his hand extended. "A pleasure to meet you. I’m Thomas Antorelli, Director of Technology. The rest of my team should be here soon and we’re eager to get started. We’ve already been playing with your technology for some time, so I think you’ll find that the ramp-up period is fairly short. I’ve been working with these guys for years, and they’re quick studies. We won’t slow you down, I promise."

"I’m sure you won’t," said Stephen. "We’ve done this before, so I’ll make sure that your engineers have enough to keep them busy. I expect that my team will do most of the heavy lifting, though, at least in the beginning."

"Yes… well, we’ll see," replied Thomas noncommittally. "As I said, we’re quick learners. By the way, did Brad mention our role in the genesis of CouldBU?"

"Of course he didn’t," called a voice from the doorway. "That would require giving someone else credit, and we all know that little Bradley doesn’t share well."

Thomas leaned around Stephen to see who had come in. "Be nice, Craig. We don’t need to start the morning with a catfight, and the last thing I want to do is to have to separate you and Brad again. Everyone, this is Craig, the Senior Director of Engineering. Behind him is Greg, our chief of IT and the best sys admin in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Timothy, our Creative Director, should be coming along in a moment." He looked around. "Has anyone seen Dan?"

A tall, thin man with thinning brown hair poked his head around the doorway. "Meeting time?" he asked.

"Dan, come on in. This is Dan Sullivan, our management consultant. He’s helping us to -- what was it again, Dan?"

"Harness your synergies to create a stronger go-to-market strategy. That, and make the coffee," Dan replied with a blindingly white grin. He laughed loudly at what had apparently been a joke and set to passing out agendas to everyone. "I also run most of the meetings around here, since that’s what I’m trained to do. I typed up some agendas for this one and will have another set ready for the creative meeting once Brad arrives."

Stephen looked at the agenda Dan handed him. Below the list of attendees, it had four items:

Introductions
Meet and Greet
Project Overview
Next Steps

Kelvin leaned over to whisper, "Aren’t introductions the same thing as ‘Meet and Greet?’"

David leaned in from the other side, "That is what I was going to ask. And what are synergies and how do you harness them?"

Out of the side of his mouth, Stephen replied, "Don’t worry about it: it’s the language barrier. You don’t speak Consultantese. Trust me, this can only get worse. Just follow my lead and nod whenever he stops talking."

Connie had followed everyone else in, loaded down with two chairs in each hand. She dropped them off in the middle of the room and hurried out, returning with several more. Ricky stood by his chair and looked at her, waiting for his drink to arrive. Connie, seemingly unaware of his stare, sat down at her desk and began to brush her hair, checking the brush occasionally to see if any hairs had broken off. The hairs she pulled out of the brush were a rainbow of various hues, which gave Ricky a shudder. After several moments, he gave up and took his seat.

Dan was ready to convene the meeting. Looking to Thomas and Craig for permission, he began:

"I’m glad everyone could make it. We’re all very excited about this project, and I think, just from looking around the room here, that we have a solid team assembled. I won’t take up a lot of time." He smiled ingratiatingly at the team from ADD. "I don’t want to get in the way of the real talent. I do want to make sure that we’re all strategically aligned, though, with a shared vision that can guide us to the big win. Once the bullet’s left the gun, it’s kind of hard to aim, you know?" He paused, waiting for acknowledgment. Thomas, Craig, and Greg, apparently used to these opening remarks, nodded and waved for him to continue. Kelvin and David, after glancing at Stephen, nodded also. Ricky just looked thirsty.

Dan continued. "Let’s go around and put some names to faces, shall we? I heard Tommy-boy introduce Craig-man and the Gregster, so we just need to meet the ADD folks. Let’s see," he looked down at the agenda to read through the names, then turned to Stephen, "you must be Stefan. Steff, since you’re the project manager, it probably makes sense for you to introduce the rest of your team. Wanna go for it?"

Stephen sat up straight in his chair and tried to contain his annoyance. "Sure, Dan. It’s Stephen, though, with a ‘V’ sound, not Stefan, with an ‘F.’ I definitely would prefer to be called Stephen rather than Stef, thanks. I have part of the team with me here today, and you’ll meet the rest in a couple of weeks…." He trailed off, distracting by a choking sound on his right. Turning, he saw Kelvin doubled over in his chair, emitting great wheezing and gasping sounds.

Alarmed, he leaned over and slapped him on the back. "Kelvin, are you all right?"

"I’m fine," Kelvin gasped, "Stef." The wheezing began again, accompanied by some snorting and the occasional squeak. Stephen realized what he was hearing: Kelvin was laughing!

"All these years, and this is what finally breaks the drought?" he asked quietly. "Frank will be mortified that he missed it."

Kelvin just wheezed, “OK, Steffy!”

"Is he all right?" Craig asked. "He looks ill."

"He’ll be fine," Stephen responded, glancing at Kelvin in annoyance. "He has these spells sometimes. They usually pass within a few moments and he hasn’t hurt anyone for at least a year. Could someone maybe get me a glass of water, preferably with a lot of ice? That might help."

"I’ll get it," called Connie, and ran out.

"Could you get my juice while you’re up?" called Ricky.

While they waited for Connie to return, Kelvin’s wheezing slowly subsided. Then he looked up at Stephen and burst into a new bout, doubling back over until his head was between his knees. In between gasps, they could hear him muttering, "Stef! Steffy!"

"Is he calling for you to help him?" Thomas looked as though he might call for an ambulance, but Connie came running back with a glass of water. She handed it to Stephen.

"No, he’ll be fine. Just give me one more moment. This usually does the trick." Stephen took a large sip of the water, looked at Kelvin thoughtfully for a moment, and dumped the rest of the glass on his head. Kelvin shrieked and bolted out of his chair, shaking his head and giving little hoots as the ice cubes slid down his shirt. Then he abruptly stopped, gathered himself, and turned to Stephen.

"Thank you, Steff. I feel much better now."

"My pleasure. Maybe later we can talk about adjustments to your medication." Stephen turned to Dan. "As I was saying, this is Kelvin, our technical lead. He’ll be designing the architecture and leading the engineering team. Occasional episodes aside, I assure you that he is a very talented engineer who will build you the best application that money can buy."

Nonplussed by the sudden reversion to sanity, Dan could only nod mutely. Stephen filed that tactic away for future reference, since it appeared to be a rare event. Continuing the introductions, he turned to David and Ricky. "This is David…"

"Pronounced ‘Dah-VEED," interjected David with a stern look at Dan.

"…yes, and Ricky. They are our design team, and will work with Brad and you to create both the visuals -- graphics, color palettes, etc. – and the overall user experience, so that it has the look and feel that you want while being easy to use."

"We’ll want them to work with Timothy as well," added Thomas. "He’s our creative director and chief designer, and I know that he already has some interesting ideas for how the site could look."

"Oh, good," muttered David under his breath, "another chief. Are there no Indians in this place?"

Speaking over him, Stephen responded to Thomas, "We’ll do our best to work with all of you, but of course we’re going to need to determine who has the final say. You know, in case any conflicts should arise."

"Oh, I’m sure we won’t have any of those, Thomas, will we?" Greg asked innocently. "We all get along like one big, loving family. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of you fight before. Why, we’re like the Jackson Five before the nose jobs."

Somehow, Stephen was not comforted by that comment. "We can talk about that later. I expect that everything will go smoothly, but it never hurts to be prepared. Right, Dan?"

"Absolutely, Steve-o! We’ll make sure to document all of the escalation procedures and then put them in a safety deposit box for that rainy day that we hope never comes. After all, we’re in LA, right? It never rains here! OK, moving on…"

Mercifully, he was interrupted by a loud crash in the hallway, followed by a string of loud profanities. Brad had arrived.

"Who put that water cooler right in the middle of the hallway where anyone could trip over it?" he demanded as he stomped into the room, dabbing ineffectually at the water on his linen pants. Today, he looked as though he were headed for his island resort as soon as the work day ended, wearing a floral print Hawaiian shirt that brought a gleam to Ricky’s eyes. The dark sunglasses that he still wore had probably contributed to the watery collision.

Craig sighed. "It’s been there since we moved in, Brad," he explained with exaggerated slowness, as though addressing a recalcitrant three-year-old. "The rest of us only walk up to it when we need a drink. Other times, we walk around it."

"Right," said Thomas, standing up, "It’s getting a little crowded in here. Shall we let everyone get settled and then move this to the small conference room?"

Continue to Chapter 6

Hollywood.bomb, Chapter 4

2011-11-02T21:25:00.000-06:00

Hey you, the one jumping into the middle of the story! Try reading from Chapter 1!Chapter 4

Not long after their plane touched down at LAX, Stephen, David, Ricky, and Kelvin waited in bright sunlight for the rental car shuttle, Stephen already regretting his choice of clothing. Wool slacks and long sleeves had been a good idea in Boston, but he was already craving air conditioning here. David had shed his bomber jacket as soon as they walked outside, but he had kept the white scarf and weather-beaten fedora despite the fact that he was clearly overheating. Ricky, with his panama hat, linen pants, and massive floral print shirt, was by far the most appropriately dressed of the group. Kelvin wore the same combination of gray shirt and gray slacks that he always wore, but he seemed unperturbed by the temperature.

Two nuns walked by, soliciting donations. David turned to Kelvin. "That reminds me: I am supposed to tell you a joke about a rabbi, a priest, and two penguins. Frank suspects that my accent will make it funnier. Can we spare ourselves the embarrassment and just tell him that it did not work?"

Kelvin nodded. "Yes, though I would like to hear it anyway. I have a guest lecture coming up at Boston College, and the Jesuits love a good joke. It doesn’t involve an egg beater, does it?"

"No," now David was intrigued, "though you might have to tell me that one later, as well."

As they boarded the shuttle, Stephen and Kelvin handed their preferred membership cards to the driver, who swiped them through a handheld computer. Two receipts quickly slid out of the top with the stall numbers for their cars. Rather than having all four of them navigating the highways of Los Angeles separately, they had decided to rent just two cars on this trip so that each driver had his own navigator. Stephen had won the coin toss and chosen David, more for space considerations than anything else. Kelvin, who had already spent the flight squeezed in next to a sleeping Ricky and fending off his somnolent advances, looked less than happy about sharing a rental cat with him as well.

The shuttle dropped them off at the lot and they compared stall numbers and separated into pairs to find their rides. Stephen and David followed the signs to the far end of the row, where they saw a subcompact waiting in their slot.

"This will not do!" said David, "I cannot ride all cramped up like a sardine!"

"No kidding," agreed Stephen, "I’m not sure I can even get into one of those. I’ll have to go talk to someone at the counter." He looked across what seemed miles of shimmering asphalt and waved vaguely at a smudge on the horizon. "I think it’s over in that direction."

Just then, a loud honk from behind them made both men jump. They spun around to see Kelvin and Ricky riding in a large black SUV. "I always appreciate the free upgrade," said Kelvin. "Couldn’t you find your car?"

"This is it," replied Stephen, waving a hand at the miniature vehicle.

"Where?" asked Kelvin, unable to see it over the hood of his machine.

"Down there," pointed Ricky.

Kelvin backed the SUV up to get a better angle. "Oh. It’s somewhat small, isn’t it?"

"Yes, I know it’s small," Stephen replied testily. "Obviously, they made a mistake. Can you just give us a ride back to the customer service counter, please?"

"Sure. It’s nice and cool in here now that the air conditioning has had a few moments to work. You can throw your bags in the back, too. There’s plenty of room." They climbed in and rode off across the parking lot.

"I’m sorry, sir," replied the teenager behind the express counter after Stephen explained the problem, "we don’t have any other cars available. There’s a large technology convention in town, so all of our other vehicles have been rented. The car you have now is the biggest that we have. Oh, wait," she tapped for a few minutes on her keyboard, paused, then tapped some more, "we just had a van come in. Hmm, it was supposed to be back two days ago. It hasn’t been cleaned or refueled yet, but I can give you a discount for the fuel if you’d like."

Stephen sighed and looked at David, who shrugged. A van was better than a clown car, if barely. "I’ll take it."

Fifteen minutes later, he and David stood before a faded blue Volkswagen Vanagon. "They can’t be serious," Stephen said in dismay. "I mean, is this even street-legal?" He kicked a fender experimentally. Somewhat to his surprise, it didn’t fall off.

"Would you like to return and ask her for another vehicle?" David asked.

Stephen looked around the nearly empty lot and sighed. "No, it’s not worth it." Gingerly, he opened the door. "Let’s see if it starts up."

"Phew, what is that smell?" asked David, wrinkling his nose. "It smells like burning rubber."

"I think that’s pot. I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it."

"Pot?"

"Marijuana, Mary Jane, dope." Stephen adjusted his seat and began searching for his seatbelt. "Don’t even try to tell me that you spent eight years at your artsy schools and never came across it, because I’ll know you’re lying."

"Ah, cannabis," said David. "Yes, I have heard of it, though I never tried it. I prefer to let my art open my senses rather than any drugs.” He paused. “Do you mind if I smoke?"

"It couldn’t smell any worse," Stephen replied. "Just let me open the windows and get moving first, OK? I prefer to get my lung cancer the old-fashioned way, by breathing smog." He stuck the key in the ignition and started the car. Reggae music blared from the speakers. He turned down the volume and began scanning the frequencies, looking for a jazz station. David, black cigarette in his mouth, lighter in hand, stared at Stephen, waiting impatiently for him to start moving. Stephen noticed his glare. "One more moment, OK? I need to get some proper music playing in here. Believe me, a little jazz will improve my mood immensely."

"I will make you a deal," David said. "I will find the music for you, if you will simply start the car moving and allow me to light this cigarette!"

"Fix the presets, too," Stephen instructed, putting the car in gear and pulling out as quickly as he could. "I need jazz on one, classical on two, rock on three, and classic rock on four. You can surprise me with five, as long as it’s not rap, hip hop, techno, or anything else that doesn’t use real instruments."

"You give me so much room to play," David muttered around his cigarette. He got to work, though, scanning the channels and occasionally locking one in. Kelvin and Ricky were waiting by the exit, so Stephen followed them out of the rental lot and onto the main airport road toward Interstate 405. Soon they were cruising north toward Santa Monica and the hotel. David, making up for lost time, followed his first cigarette immediately with a second, so Stephen opted to keep the windows down as they raced along the highway. As they neared the heart of Los Angeles, though, traffic slowed to a crawl and eventually they had to put up the windows and switch to air conditioning.

"The traffic is lighter than I was told to expect," David commented, blowing out a last cloud of clove-scented smoke before raising his window. "This is nowhere near as bad as Boston’s rush hour."

"It’s only 2 o’clock," Stephen reminded him. "I don’t know how anyone ever goes anywhere around here. What do they do at rush hour, pull barbecues out of their trunks and tailgate?"

They eventually reached the hotel, checked in, and went to their respective rooms, agreeing to meet in a couple of hours for dinner. Stephen threw his bag on the bed and immediately unpacked his clothes, unrolling them and hanging them in the closet to start unwrinkling. After this many trips, this was mindless habit, just as rolling the clothes into tight tubes to minimize the wrinkles in the first place had been. He was a busy man and he had no time for ironing. Another side benefit of working in software: as long as his clothes were relatively clean and had few holes, he would be the most dapper man in the room.

Once the clothes were unpacked, he flopped down sideways on the bed with his arm over his eyes. It was all he could do after a few minutes to lift the arm and reach for his cell phone on the bedside table, but he needed to check in before he could even consider a nap. He thumbed the speed-dial and lowered the phone to his ear, still lying half on the bed and half off.

After three rings, his mother-in-law’s voice whispered, "Hello?"

Stephen sat up so quickly he fell off the bed, then scrambled back up and sat on the edge, his back straight. Despite her respectable Protestant bloodline, there was still something about Janice that reminded Stephen of the nuns in his Catholic high school. Whenever he spoke to her directly, he reverted to the schoolboy manners that had been driven into him over 16 years of parochial schooling. It wasn’t that he was scared of her, precisely, just… respectful. "Hello ma’am, er, Mom. This is Stephen. Is Jenny home?" He smacked himself on the forehead. Man, I sound just like I’m back in high school again. She’s been my mother-in-law for six years, for Ch-- Heaven’s sake!

"Hello, Stephen. Jenny and the baby are sleeping right now. That’s why I had the ringer turned off. How was your flight?"

"Uneventful, thank you, just the way I like them." Stephen found he was whispering, as well. He continued at a normal volume. "Wait, you had the ringer off? Then how did you know I was calling?"

"Oh, I didn’t. I knew you would be calling, though, so I’ve just been answering it every minute since the time you were scheduled to land. I figured that would be the correct interval to catch you before you went to voicemail."

"Since I was scheduled to land? That was three hours ago! You’ve answered the phone 180 times to see if I was calling?" Stephen suddenly felt irrationally guilty for not calling as soon as he got off the plane.

"195, actually. I wanted to play it safe in case you arrived early."

"Well, um, I’m sorry to have put you through that. I would have called sooner if I’d known."

"That’s all right, Stephen. It was a pleasant break from cleaning." Janice replied. Her whisper took on a slightly echoing quality. "I wouldn’t go to such lengths normally of course, but little Sarah seems to have supernaturally sensitive hearing. I am certain that she heard me come in from the store this morning, even though we had one floor and two closed doors between us. By the way, would you mind speaking more quietly? She’s upstairs and I’m out in the garage now, but I don’t want to wake her."

Stephen rolled his eyes, but lowered his voice again. "Sorry. I’ll let you go back to what you were doing. Well, not exactly: you can probably put the phone down now. Just ask Jenny to call me when she has a chance, OK?" He gave her the hotel number and his room number and hung up, shaking his head. He had never seen this side of her before. "Uptight" doesn’t begin to describe it.

He set the alarm, lay back down on the bed, and was asleep before he could even kick his shoes off.

***

It was a longstanding tradition for Stephen and his team to gather the night before they started an engagement and make sure everyone was mentally prepared for what was to come. While some of the more cynical engineers he had worked with referred to these meetings as "pep rallies," Stephen preferred to think of them as war councils. He, the general, made sure that every member of his elite squad knew his or her role in the battle to come and that no one had any doubt that they would emerge victorious. They formed a battle plan against the forces of chaos, discussed ways that the plan could go awry, and then everyone got a good night’s sleep. Tonight, though, he found himself wishing that he could just skip to the sleep part.

Their hotel was near the Santa Monica Pier, so there were plenty of restaurants to choose from. They decided on a small Mexican place near the beach and settled in with margaritas, chips, and salsa while they waited for their food. Everyone had changed into more comfortable clothes, and Stephen was bemused as always by the sight of Kelvin in a t-shirt. David, of course, wore linen pants, a flowing white silk shirt, and a red sash, as though he expected a tango to break out at any moment. Ricky had opted for a tank top, looking more at home in this climate than he ever had in Boston.

"Ahhhh," Stephen let out a long sigh as he slumped in his chair, margarita in hand. For the first time in a week, he felt calm and relaxed, and even though there was a good chance that was mostly due to the tequila hitting his empty stomach, it was a pleasant feeling.

"I could definitely get used to this weather," Ricky agreed. "I usually have to crank my heater up to eighty degrees in my apartment if I want to wear shorts and a tank top in October, and I can’t afford to do that very often. How many times will we get to come out here?"

"Probably two or three times for you, but the length of the trip could vary. If we need to work more closely with the client, then you could stay here for a couple of weeks at a stretch if you’re willing," Stephen replied.

Ricky reached for the chips and took a huge scoop of salsa. "I want to work very closely with this client."

"Do you have any more thoughts on what we can expect tomorrow?" Kelvin asked Stephen.

"It will probably be the usual meet-and-greet, followed by more than the usual amount of tail-sniffing," replied Stephen around his own mouthful of chip. "Their technical guys won’t just be testing to see if we know our stuff; they’ll also want to start determining the pecking order on the team. I hope we can avoid any actual chest-beating."

"I see now why you didn’t bring Frank this time," Kelvin observed.

"Yeah, we’ll save that battle for another time. For now, we need to play nice with the new kids and let them know that we aren’t here to rule their world. We are, however, the experts, so let’s make sure they know that as well."

"Sounds reasonable."

"Good." Stephen turned to Ricky and David. "You’ve already met Robert and Brad, so you have some idea of what you’re getting yourselves into. I don’t know whether this designer of theirs will be a help or a hindrance, but he at least knows them so maybe he can help translate. Be nice. I don’t want to have to break up any artistic slapfights."

"Why do you look at me when you say that?" asked David, offended. "And I resent the implication that I cannot throw a punch."

Ricky smirked, "Down here in the Lower 48, that’s what we call missing the point."

Stephen just stared at David, waiting.

Finally, David gave a small sigh of exasperation and conceded, "There will be room for all in my vision." But after a moment he added, "as long as it is my vision."

"Exactly," Stephen said. "Though let’s focus on their vision this week and make it ours once we get back to Boston, OK?" David nodded reluctantly. Ricky merely shrugged. He didn’t really care whose vision it was, as long as he could code it.

Stephen took a deep breath and another sip of margarita. This one was almost gone, he noted. He’d need another when the food arrived. "This may just be the tequila talking, but I’m getting a good feeling about this project. I think we’re going to have fun."

The rest of the meal passed in small talk as everyone discussed the things they wanted to do while they were in LA. Over the years, Stephen had found that there were two types of business travelers, which he roughly categorized into "sales guys" and "everyone else." To sales guys, every trip was a road trip of the sort that they used to take with their fraternity brothers in college: a chance to drink like Vikings in a different city and try to have sex with women who lived too far away to expect a commitment. Although -- unlike college -- they had to work during the day, they were well-compensated for that by the fact that work paid for the trip and most of the drinks, if not the women.

Sales guys were pathologically afraid that there was a better party going on somewhere else and spent enormous effort in each new city to find it. They then returned to the office with stories that convinced the other sales guys that they had missed the best party ever, which gave them the incentive to find a better one on their next trip, thus completing the cycle. Stephen theorized that this was why sales guys always seemed to know at least one other sales guy in every city: so that they could party together and expense the drinks.

Everyone else, which included Stephen and most of the people he worked with, tended to spend their rare off hours sightseeing, trying new restaurants, and sleeping. Some, like Kelvin, preferred reading over playing tourist. And while they might still wake up with hangovers occasionally, they were in more danger from food poisoning than sexually transmitted diseases, which seemed to Stephen to be playing the odds correctly.

On this trip there would be no Nordic drinking songs. Ricky planned to visit Grauman’s Chinese Theater one night and see if he could find the handprints of Woody Allen, whom he had recently discovered was a distant cousin. He talked David into going with him, but Kelvin was determined to finish his book before he did anything else. As for Stephen, he only wanted to sleep.

After dinner, as they walked back to the hotel, Stephen asked Ricky, "So, you’re cousins with Woody Allen now, huh? How exactly did that happen?"

Ricky nodded beatifically, "He’s something like my sixth cousin twice removed, but still family. Back in the 17th century, a galley full of Jewish slaves from Spain mutinied on a trip back from Mexico. They rowed the ship to our island and scuttled it so the Spaniards wouldn’t be able to find them. The few who still had any genitalia left, including two brothers, converted some island women and married them. My family came from one of the brothers, and Woody’s came from the other. I wrote to tell him about it, but he never wrote back."

Stephen nodded sympathetically, "Well, he probably gets that a lot."

"Yeah," Ricky agreed. "Oh! That reminds me: I’m going to need to take Hanukkah off."

Continue to Chapter 5

Hollywood.bomb, Chapter 3

2011-10-30T20:21:00.001-06:00

New here? Try starting at the beginning.

Chapter 3

The next morning was no quieter in the Connelly house, though the noise came from a different source. Sarah startled herself and everyone else awake at 4:55 AM with a wailing that pierced Stephen’s skull like an auger. Jennifer’s mother, Janice, zoomed into the room seconds later, so quickly that she couldn’t possibly have come all the way down the hall from the guest room. Stephen, his head throbbing with lack of sleep, blearily wondered when she had arrived.

"Oh listen, she’s getting her full voice!" Janice exclaimed, "The little dear is going to be a singer like her grandma, I can tell!" She rushed back out again with the baby, moving so swiftly that Stephen was sure he heard a Doppler effect on Sarah’s fading cries.

"Is she coming back?" he asked his wife dubiously.

Jennifer yawned mightily, "I assume she’s going to change her and bring her back to feed, but if Mom’s managed to start lactating I wouldn’t mind the extra rest. Should I go into the baby’s room so you can get some more sleep?"

He glanced at the clock. "No, don’t bother. It’ll just be more painful to wake up again in an hour or so. I’ll go ahead and get in the shower."

Sarah’s muffled cries had faded, and Stephen could faintly hear his mother-in-law singing nursery rhymes from the baby’s room. It’s good to have some help, he thought, though it will be good to be alone for a while, too.

He showered quickly and spent a few minutes watching his daughter eat before feeding himself and running out the door to catch an early train. He was in the city by 7:15, feeling strangely awake. His body seemed to be adjusting to the lack of sleep, rebalancing its resources to stay functional, albeit at reduced capacity. He was alert, but his reflexes seemed to be slower than normal, his responses not quite as sharp. It was as though he had traded 20 IQ points and a second or two of reaction time for the missing hours of sleep. He hoped that the transaction wasn’t irreversible.

It was warm this morning, almost balmy. Welcome to fall in New England, he thought, looking up at the cloudless blue sky and shucking his coat. It’ll probably snow tomorrow. He took the outdoor route to the office this time, savoring the sunlight while he had it. As he walked, he heard a strange chiming behind him, like a child’s bike bell. It grew louder and more insistent, until he finally turned around to find its source. Correction: an adult’s bike bell.

Stu was riding down the street toward him on a low-slung contraption that looked like the bastard spawn of a lawn chair, a rocket, and a touring bicycle. It was painted red and white, with a large wheel in the back and a smaller one in front. A plastic fairing covered the top of the rear wheel and was covered in turn by two large saddlebags, and an orange flag on a long stick flapped gaily from the back. Stu sat in a reclining position in the black webbed seat, his feet sticking straight out in front of him and pedaling furiously. Stephen couldn’t see how he steered, but assumed that the two levers that he was gripping down by the sides of his seat had something to do with it. The chiming sound came from somewhere else on the machine, though he couldn’t immediately see its source either.

"Good morning, Stephen!" Stu called as he approached. He signaled carefully with his left hand, then his right for good measure, before pulling alongside, unclipping one shoe from the pedals, and creaking to a halt. Stephen could only stare.

"Interesting… um, bike?" Stephen guessed, unwilling to offend Stu but unable to definitively classify the apparition before him.

"Thank you. I gather you’ve never seen a recumbent bicycle before. There are a lot of us around, but I have to admit that my bike is a little more unique than many you’ll see," Stu spoke with pride. "I built it myself."

"I can’t see any other way that it could have come into existence. Is this better than a normal bike in some way, or is building interesting bikes a hobby of yours?"

The light of the true believer sparked in Stu’s eyes. "Oh, ‘bents are so much better than normal bikes. The riding position is much healthier for your back, the aerodynamics are vastly improved, and you wouldn’t believe the handling. I can take a corner twice as fast as a wedgie. That’s what we call the upright bike riders because their seats feel like -- well, never mind why. Do you ride?"

"I own a mountain bike, but I’m more of a runner. The gear travels better."

"I hadn’t thought of that," Stu said, suddenly concerned. "Say, do you think that will be an issue if I have to travel for this project? This is my primary means of transportation. I don’t even have a driver’s license, so I couldn’t rent a car if I had to."

Stephen thought about it. "I’m sure we can work around it if we need to. You can always take a cab or carpool with one of us when we’re all out there. I wouldn’t worry about it. You’re not the first engineer I’ve worked with who didn’t have a license." Though you may be the oldest, he didn’t add.

"All right," Stu replied, "I don’t want to be a burden on the team, but it sounds like we’ll work it out. I’ll see you inside. I need to park my bike and shower."

Sipping his coffee pensively, Stephen watched Stu until he disappeared around the corner before he continued walking. I get all the weird ones, he thought. At least they’ve been harmless so far.

***

As soon as he got to his desk, Stephen began making travel arrangements. He, David, Ricky, and Kelvin would make the first trip, while Frank and Mark stayed in Boston to wrap up the final documentation from the DoD project. While Stu had no project work to speak of yet, they had decided that he would do better to stay behind and complete his training on the ADD product suite rather than traveling to LA. Stephen had just started to enter a travel request with the company’s agency when Frank walked up.

"Hey, have you seen Kelvin? I have a new joke for him." Frank had made it his personal mission to be the one to make Kelvin laugh, though after several months he was clearly becoming desperate. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and showed it to Stephen, "See? It's in Mandarin. I've decided that Kelvin's humor deficiency is due to a fundamental neural blockage. His brain is hardwired to the tones of his native language, so English doesn't sound funny to him. I found a language tutorial online and learned enough Mandarin to tell the joke. This time I have him for sure!"

Stephen shook his head. "Kelvin's parents are third-generation Chinese-American, and he grew up in Cambridge. I know from personal experience that he doesn't even speak enough Chinese to order dim sum. Chicken foot soup tastes just like it sounds, by the way. You'd have a better chance if you told him a joke in Gaelic."

Frank was undeterred. "It doesn't matter. The genetic memory is what I'm trying to reach. Never underestimate the power of the genome." He glanced at Stephen's monitor and began hopping from one foot to the other. "Hey, wait! Let me do it for you."

Stephen looked up curiously. "Do what, submit the booking request? It’s almost done." He turned back to his computer to complete the transaction, but Frank grabbed his hands.

"I know, but I can do it faster. Watch this." Frank reached into his pocket, pulled out a device that looked like a cross between a Bluetooth headset and a miniature welder’s mask, and slid it over his head. He lowered the shortened mask over his eyes and adjusted the stubby microphone so that it was close to his jaw. For the first time, Stephen noticed that, instead of his usual jeans and cowboy boots, Frank was wearing a baggy pair of khaki pants covered with pockets of various sizes, with shiny black material running down the inside of each leg. Frank reached into one of the rear pockets and pulled out a small receiver that appeared to be wired directly into the pants. He switched it on, waited for a small green LED on the top to light, and placed it back in the pants pocket.

"Still working on the pants computer, huh?" asked Stephen. "I thought you were having trouble with the power source."

"It runs on kinetic energy now," Frank replied, indicating the material on the legs, "All I have to do is walk around to power it. I tried putting a battery in the front pocket, but I forgot how hot those things get. I nearly burned off my -- " he shuddered, "let’s just say it didn’t work." He flipped his belt buckle over and folded it out to reveal a small keyboard that looked like it had been cannibalized from a Blackberry. That explains why he never replied to my texts last month, thought Stephen.

"And it works now?" Stephen was always entertained by Frank’s ongoing obsession with gadgetry, especially the homemade kind. The pants computer was actually a step up from his last attempt at wearable computing, a wrap-around heads-up display that had made it impossible to see anything else. It had worked fine while he was seated at his desk, but had caused several major pile-ups in the halls when he tried to take it to meetings.

"There are still a few bugs to work out, of course," Frank replied, jumping up and down and rubbing his legs together like a deranged cricket. "For example, it doesn’t hold a charge for more than a few seconds. I have to keep moving in order to keep it powered. On the bright side, though, I’ve already lost three pounds since I started using it."

"At last, some commercial application for one of your inventions," Stephen commented dryly. "Hook it up to an Xbox and sell it to fat kids’ parents."

"Don’t think I haven’t considered that," Frank panted. Despite his weight loss claim, the pants had clearly not improved his stamina. "I’d need to improve the display resolution significantly first. The wireless connectivity is strong, though. There’s an antenna running up my back that increases the range to several hundred yards. I can walk around the mall while I check my email using the Starbucks hot spot."

"And who wouldn’t want to do that?"

"Mock if you will, but wearable computing is -- "

"I know, I know, ‘the wave of the future.’” Stephen fluttered his hands dramatically. “Have you submitted the travel request yet?"

"Just about. What days did you want to fly?" Frank had stopped jumping and was resorting to dancing in place, like a young child who needed to use the bathroom.

Stephen knew from experience that there was no point trying to get Frank to stop. He would keep trying until he had either completed the task or his thighs were too chafed to keep moving. "Fly out early Monday and back on Friday. We want to get in one or two conceptual design sessions while we’re out there."

"OK," Frank gasped. "Wait… oops! I almost requested Louisiana instead of Los Angeles. I’ll tell you what: I’ll go for a walk and copy you on the request when I’m done." Without waiting for a reply, Frank spun around and walked off through the desks, muttering to himself and making little dancing hops when he needed more power. Stephen watched him go, making a mental note to follow up with the travel agency in half an hour. Otherwise, we could end up in New Orleans wondering where our connection went. Wouldn’t that be a great way to start this project?

He sighed, longingly considering jazz along the Mississippi versus hours spent listening to Brad waxing his stunted version of eloquent, and decided not to double-check the reservation. On second thought, I’ll take my chances.

Continue to Chapter 4

Hollywood.bomb, Chapter 2

2011-10-26T21:33:00.003-06:00

I had so much fun with this last night that I decided to post another chapter tonight. Wondering what's going on? Start at the beginning.

Chapter 2

As everyone stood for the obligatory handshake ritual, Stephen took the opportunity to size up his new clients.

The younger of the two men introduced himself to each person as "Brad Richards, Chief Visionary Officer of CouldBU.com," relishing the sound of his title more each time he said it. He appeared to be in his late 30s and was of medium height and build, with sun-bleached brown hair and the kind of sculpted muscles that came from hours spent in a gym developing each one for its maximum cosmetic impact. He wore a light-colored linen suit over a lime-green silk shirt, his sockless feet tucked into boat shoes that implied that he had just stepped off of his yacht to attend the meeting. Stephen looked at his bloodshot eyes and recognized from painful familiarity the after-effects of a late night of drinking.

Robert Miller, the other man, simply shook hands and sat back down, muttering, "I didn’t know there would be technical people here." He was an older, shinier version of Brad, the glow from his rings, watch, necklace, and balding head creating a halo effect in the morning sunlight that streamed through the conference room windows. The lack of hair on top of his head was balanced by an impressive fringe around the sides, pulled back in a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. His taste in clothing was somewhat more muted than Brad’s, with a deep red shirt and dark trousers covering his ample frame. Noting his apparent technophobia, Stephen swiftly redirected Frank and Mark to the other side of the table, replacing them with David and Ricky in the hopes that the artistic vibrations from David would prove more soothing to Robert’s jangled senses.

After everyone was settled, James stood and opened the meeting with the usual pleasantries and introductions, concluding by turning to Robert and saying, "You and I have already talked at length, but the rest of the team doesn’t know why you chose us. Would you mind explaining your selection process to them? I think that it would be," and here he shot a sidelong glance at Stephen, "helpful for them to hear how you decided to work with ADD."

Robert leaned forward and pressed his hands flat on the table as though about to stand, but changed his mind at the last moment and merely sat there, his palms pressed into the table and his elbows in the air as he leaned toward his listeners. "In my business, there’s a big difference between the A-list and the B-list. I’m getting too old to screw around with the B-list, so when Brad and I decided to do this, we agreed that we wanted the best. My assistant saw you," he waved a meaty hand at James, "and your partner on the cover of Wired magazine and I knew the minute that she showed it to me that you were my guys. Anyone who’s willing to put on a toga to promote his company is the kind of man I want on my team, because a great vision requires great visionaries. And when I skimmed the article and saw that you were involved with this Internet thing, that sealed it! I had Joyce set up a call right away. The rest, as my people say, is Kismet." He leaned back, basking in his own brilliance, and grinned around the room until he came to Frank, who was still baring his teeth in his customer-eating smile. Robert’s grin faltered and there was a brief moment of uncomfortable silence before James stood again.

"Well, we’re thrilled that you found us, Robert, and we look forward to fulfilling your vision. I’ll leave you now in the able hands of my team to talk about the details of the project." James sketched a quick bow, locked eyes with Jack for a moment, and glided out of the room. This sale was complete, but others beckoned.

While Stephen had heard of stranger selection processes, he was still mildly surprised to hear that ADD had taken a job like this. He looked over at Jack, who had clearly heard the tale already. Either I’m missing part of the story, or there’s a lot of money behind this, he thought. Bemused, he listened as Robert and Brad began to present their vision.

"CouldBU is my baby," Brad began. "I even came up with the name. C-O-U-L-D," he paused to emphasize the last two letters, "B-U. Dot com. Catchy, huh? The idea came to me one night while I was watching some reality show rerun on cable with my girlfriend. We were playing a game, where every time someone did something stupid we'd do a shot of Stoli. It occurred to me after about the seventh shot: people are hungry for stardom. They’ll do anything to be famous, including humiliating themselves in front of millions of strangers! This reality television craze shows that, right? These guys are making all kinds of money feeding people’s addiction to celebrity. They make new stars out of these normal people, and other normal people watch it religiously." He paused for a moment, frowning with a tremendous effort at thought. "I still don’t get all of it, because some of those singers really sucked." He shrugged. "But people watch anyway.

"Here’s the thing, though: there’s all these reality shows out there, but no one’s ever done it online. So I thought: what if we did a celebrity project on the Web? We could let people put up pictures and video of themselves singing and let other people vote on them, maybe get some former celebrities to judge them. We could even make fun of the ugly ones like that British guy does and vote people off the site.

"But then I had an even better idea: why stop at singers? I mean, there are plenty of other ways that people try to be famous. Hell, I’ve tried most of them myself: acting, writing, directing, modeling. Not everyone has my money -- or my looks -- so I realized that I could help them out by allowing them to try it all without moving to LA. Which is just as well, because we have all the waiters we need already!" He laughed heartily at his own joke, giving Robert the opportunity to jump in.

"Brad’s father and I go way back," he said, darting a look sideways at Kelvin as though afraid he would interrupt. Kelvin, who had barely moved for the past ten minutes, merely blinked slowly at him. "So Brad came to me with this idea looking for funding. I spent 30 years in the biz, and I know a golden opportunity when I see one. This one had gold mine written all over it, once we worked out how to get people to pay for it. I mean, this is perfect! In all my years as an agent, I always wondered if there was some way that we could make money off of these people before they were famous, because, let’s face it, there are a lot more unfamous people in the world than there are famous people, right? And then Genius-Boy over here just comes up with it, out of the blue! It’s brilliant!"

"So, how do you expect to make money?" Frank asked. He looked as though he would say more until he caught the look Jack shot across the table.

Robert, clearly nonplussed at being addressed directly by an engineer, paused to consider whether he had been insulted before answering, and Brad cut in, "Well, entry fees of course! That’s for the contestants. We’ll charge subscription fees for people who want to vote, too, so that we get the money coming in on both sides."

"So you expect that this site will fill the gaping hole left in normal people’s lives by the absence of another reality television program?" Frank asked.

"Exactly!" said Brad. "Only it’s better, because it’s online! It’s…" he paused dramatically, "interactive!"

Stephen cut in quickly before Frank offered a list of things with which Brad could interact. "Hey, I promised Keith that I wouldn’t keep you all in here too long, since I know you have important technical work on your other project to wrap up. If you need to get going, we’ll understand."

Frank, however, was enjoying himself. "No, it can wait. It’s much more important that we hear directly from our new clients, so that we can better realize their vision." He smiled disingenuously at Stephen, stopping just short of innocently batting his eyelids.

"Don’t some of the reality shows have web sites, too?" asked Mark, "For voting and learning about the contestants?"

"Yes, but then you have to watch TV and use your computer at the same time," Brad snorted. "That’s twice the work. Who wants to do that?"

"I do," said Mark.

"Me, too," said Kelvin.

"I do it all the time," said Ricky.

"I don’t own a TV," said Frank. "I think it rots your mind."

"See, you’re our target audience!" exclaimed Brad. "With a couple of million guys just like you, we’ll be rich!"

"Will you have model competitions, too?" asked Frank, "Because women are about the only thing I look at online."

"I hadn’t thought of that," Brad said slowly, "but you know what? It’s brilliant! Models, definitely!"

"All right," said Frank, mollified, "maybe this idea isn’t completely hamster-brained, after all." He turned and smiled at Stephen as though to say, See? I can be nice to the clients when I want to! Stephen rolled his eyes.

"Well, um, thank you," Brad replied. "I’m glad you like it."

Robert, finally recovered from his interaction with Frank, rejoined the conversation. "You should know, too, that we have the verbal support of several major record labels and studios. They’re all silent partners at this point, of course, because they don’t want to get burned again. I’ll tell you the same thing that I told them, though: this may sound like one of those crazy dot-com stories from the turn of the century, but this is different." He slapped a bejeweled hand on the conference table. "We’re not selling dog food by mail here. We’re selling dreams, and there are no shipping and handling charges on those! Hey, Brad, write that down. We need to use that in our next investor presentation."

The meeting continued for some time as they discussed the details of the project: schedule, travel requirements, and lodging arrangements. Brad would be their primary creative contact, with Robert checking in occasionally from his house in Malibu to ensure the purity of the vision. To Stephen’s relief, they agreed that the entire ADD project team did not need to stay in LA for the duration of the project. "But," added Brad, "I'm sure that you'll want to start talking to our boys as soon as possible. They'll need you to tell them what you want them to do, since they've never done anything like this before."

"I'm sorry," said Stephen, "your boys? I thought that we were building this for you."

"Oh, you are! We just want you to let our team tag along and help out so they can learn how your product works and take over after you're gone." Brad beamed as though this, too, had been his brilliant idea. "That way, you can finish faster!"

Stephen glanced toward Jack, who was suddenly engrossed in following the flight path of an invisible fly on the other side of the room. "Are you saying that, on top of managing my own team, I'll also be responsible for a group of people on the other side of the country who have no accountability to me, no experience with our software, and have never built something like this before? And you expect that this will make things easier?"

"Exactly."

As Jack nervously fingered his ear, Stephen wondered if he could get across the table in one leap. Turning back to Brad and Robert, he bared his teeth in a grimace that would have done Frank proud and said in a choked voice, "What a great idea."

***

As he boarded the train to ride home that night, Stephen considered pinning a note to his jacket that said, "Wake me when we get to Natick," just to be safe. Thinking about this new project and how he was going to tell Jenny about it kept him wide awake, though. He had sworn to cut down on the travel now that they had Sarah, and he wasn’t sure how excited she would be about a project on the opposite side of the country, full-time or otherwise.

He needn’t have worried. In fact, when he arrived home he wasn’t even sure that he would have been missed if he had left that day. He opened the door to a clanging symphony of pots and pans, evidence that his mother was busy making dinner. Slipping past the kitchen, he went directly into the living room where he found Jenny feeding Sarah. He leaned down to kiss her on the head. "Evening, beautiful."

Jennifer lifted her head and offered him a tired smile. "That’s nice of you to say, considering I’m as big as a barn and smell like a dairy."

Nine months had taught Stephen not to rise to the bait, and three weeks of living in tight quarters had finally shown him the best escape: misdirection. "Mmm. How’s Sarah?"

Jennifer looked down at their feasting daughter and her eyes lost focus. "Perfect, of course. Who’d have thought that something so small could have taken up so much space?"

Again, Stephen refused to fall into the trap. Pregnancy had taken its toll on both of them, and he had learned through painful experience that there were simply no right responses to these comments. Jennifer had been a dancer when they met at Boston College ten years ago, and while even then she had known that her future lay behind the stage rather than on it, she had taken great pride in her dancer’s figure. And while she longed for children, she was horrified by what carrying one did to her once-lithe form. The swelling, the puffiness, the sudden disappearance of her ankles, all had felt like a betrayal by her body, a point she had made quite clear for the past eight months.

Stephen knew now that all she really wanted was silent commiseration. Key word: silent. He winced inwardly as he catalogued his early mistakes and her reactions:

"It’s OK, honey, you’ll get your figure back." One day of crying, followed by two days of silence.

"I don’t think you look fat." Accusations of being a liar, followed by speculation over what else he might be lying about, followed by crying.

"I think pregnant women are beautiful." Open scoffing, followed by a thoughtful silence, followed in turn by the suggestion that he had impregnated other women and was hiding families all over the country, and what was he really doing on all those "business trips?" Then more crying and a long phone call to her mother.

"I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the dishwasher." This had seemed like the perfect evasion, based upon the theory that she wouldn’t repeat the entire diatribe again, but had proved to be another near-fatal miscalculation. Not only did she loudly repeat everything verbatim, she followed it with a suggestion that someone who really loved her would be a better listener. Then she cried.

Eventually, he had settled on a strategy of nodding sympathetically, giving a little sigh of shared pain, and offering to rub her feet. This usually worked, except on the days when she didn’t want him to touch her, explained by a muttered comment about "look where it got us the last time." At these times he pretended to hear his cell phone vibrating and fled the room.

Now, though, the pain seemed to have been worth the reward for Jennifer. She exuded contentment and joy, and even her complaints about the stretch marks that only she could see seemed to come more from habit than anything else. Motherhood suited her.

Another eruption of racket from the kitchen startled the baby, who jumped and flung out her tiny hands. She let out a tiny whimper before settling down to business again. "Can you please ask your mother to keep the noise down?" Jennifer hissed. "I’m trying to get Sarah to sleep."

"I’ll see what I can do," Stephen replied, shedding his coat and bag on a nearby chair as he retreated to the kitchen. Already, bedtime was taking on a sacred aura, the entrance to that magical time when baby slept and parents could be grownups again. It was not to be threatened.

In the kitchen, Stephen's mother Margaret was happily humming to herself as she made enough steak, sausage, potatoes, and peas for ten people. He snaked out an arm and gave her a quick hug and a peck on the cheek as he passed on the way to the refrigerator for a glass of milk.

"Hi, Mom. Any chance you could keep dinner somewhere below 100 decibels? Jenny’s trying to get the baby to sleep."

Margaret’s accent, a blend of Irish brogue and Boston drawl, was indescribable to those who hadn’t heard it and indecipherable to those who hadn’t grown up with it. "A happy house is a noisy house, son. Little Sarah is going to have to get used to it sooner or later."

"Fine, Mom, but can we give her a week or two longer before we start the training?" Stephen pleaded.

"I’m doing my best, but it’s hard. How am I supposed to cook a proper meal without knocking around a bit? And I can’t keep using the same skillet over and over again." She began to heap food onto his plate, and Stephen was surprised to discover how hungry he was.

"You could bring some of the rest of the pots back down from the attic," he suggested as he snatched a piece of meat from the plate. "I think we have some time before Sarah can injure herself with them."

Margaret had arrived a day before Jennifer and Sarah came home from the hospital to "baby-proof the house." As far as Stephen could tell, this consisted primarily of taking everything that he used on a daily basis, placing it in a Ziploc bag, and hiding it on a high shelf. It took him three days to find his razor, which, since it had been in the medicine cabinet before Margaret arrived, posed little threat to a newborn in Stephen’s mind.

"You can never be too safe where babies are concerned. Did I ever tell you about my friend Donna’s baby? Took a plastic fork and stuck it right through her ear, the poor dear. They had to put four earrings in there to cover up the holes."

Stephen paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "Wait. Wasn’t she thirteen when she did that, and wasn’t it at camp? And I’m pretty sure that her girlfriend did it with a sewing needle."

"Which just goes to show that you can never stop watching over your babies." As usual, Margaret’s point was untarnished by the facts of the matter. "Now, is there anything else I can do before I leave today? Do you have enough to eat?"

"We have enough food now to last for the next couple of weeks, thanks to you. Give us a chance to eat through that before you make any more, and maybe by then we’ll be ready for some more noise."

"You’re a good husband, Stephen, and you’ll be a good father. The Lord knows your father, the Heaven-condemned spawn of a she-dog," -- Margaret had found her own way to deal with the language moratorium -- "was never around to help with you boys, but I managed." The strain of not adding more color to that statement showed in her eyes.

"Thank you for holding back, Mom, I know it’s difficult."

"I’d do anything for Jenny, Stephen, but you and I both know that this wasn’t her idea. It was hers." Stephen had never understood why his mother refused to refer to his mother-in-law by name, though he suspected it had to do with the old country tradition of not naming the devil, lest he appear.

"It’s OK, Mom, she’s coming tomorrow anyway. You can say her name."

"I’d rather not, dear. Sit down and eat. You’re too skinny."

Later that evening, after Stephen’s mother had returned to her house in South Boston, he and Jennifer sat in the living room and talked. She was feeding Sarah again, and while she made the appropriate noises at the right intervals, he got the feeling she wasn’t really listening to him as he told her about the new project, how Jack had promised only one week of travel per month, and his own thoughts on how it would play out. Finally, he broke the news that he would need to fly to LA the next week for the kickoff meeting.

"That’s fine, honey," she said dreamily when he finally ran out of words, "Mom can stay with us for another week and help out. Sarah and I will be fine. By the way, do you think that three weeks old is too early to start talking? I’m sure that she tried to say ‘Mommy’ today while she was nursing.

Continue to Chapter 3

Hollywood.bomb, Chapter 1

2011-10-25T22:39:00.001-06:00

A few years ago, I wrote this thing that we used to call a "book." Nowadays I think that the kids call them "long-form e-zines" or something. I went through the normal avenues, submitting it to agents and trying to find a publisher, but at a certain point I ran out of energy and set it aside. The characters and the story have stayed in my mind, however, and now I've decided to share it, in the hopes that others will enjoy it and I will find the inspiration to revisit the story.

So here you go, friends: the first chapter of Hollywood.bomb. Enjoy, and feel free to offer constructive comments. I'll post at least a chapter a week.

Chapter 1

The sharp jab in his arm came again, insistently prodding Stephen out of a deep sleep.

"Huh? Honey, can't you get her this time?" he mumbled groggily, trying in vain to open his crusty eyes before settling into a slightly more comfortable position.

"Time to go to work, sleepyhead," a voice near his ear said. Not the voice of his wife, he noted. Not, in fact, the voice of anyone’s wife, unless she had serious hormone problems. This voice was definitely male. Time to try that eye-opening thing again.

This time he succeeded, though the view didn’t exactly improve. The soothing darkness behind his eyelids -- which he already missed desperately -- was replaced by a close-up view of a grimy window, cracked upholstery, and a rolled-up copy of yesterday’s Boston Herald, which he surmised to be the source of the jabbing. He followed it blearily with his eyes as it drew back and stopped next to a grizzled face under a black peaked cap: the source of the voice.

"Unless you’re planning to go back to Worcester with us, Rip van Winkle, you need to get off. We’re leaving in five minutes."

Stephen sat up, wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, and grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, thanks. I didn’t sleep much last night. Or the night before that. Or, come to think of it, the week before that. We have a new baby. It's our first."

"I don’t really care; just get off of my train." The conductor's smile took the sting from his words as he added, "Congratulations." He touched the Herald to the brim of his hat and wandered down the aisle, whacking the seat backs with the paper as he walked.

See, this is why I don’t like talking to people, Stephen thought as he hurriedly exited the train, one of us always sounds like an idiot. This new parent thing would take some getting used to, and not just because of the lack of sleep. He climbed slowly up to street level for the short walk to his office, stopping as usual for a large coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts in the station. Coffee had never tasted so good, nor been so necessary.

There were benefits to working in the Hub, he reasoned as he took his first sip, one of them being that he could sleep through his commute without dying in a fiery car crash. Of course, the train schedule was a two-edged sword: he had lost count of the number of times he had sprinted from the office only to watch in frustration as the dirty purple butt-end of the commuter train pulled away from him. At least his company paid for the cab rides home on the nights he really worked late, though he doubted he’d be doing quite as much of that now if he wanted to have a home to return to.

Maybe that was why the coffee tasted so good today: because it was seasoned with freedom. He loved his wife, and he dearly loved the little bundle of limbs and hair that she had birthed, but after three weeks of paternity leave, going back to work seemed like the real vacation.

A month ago, he and his coworkers had joked about the "sabbatical" he would take when his baby was born. In the software world, no one ever missed more than a week of work unless they had just undergone a life-changing event -- getting married, having a baby, having their stock options vest -- and even then they were usually back before two weeks had passed. In his colleagues’ eyes, Stephen’s decision to take full advantage of his company’s paternity leave policy was simultaneously revolutionary and old-fashioned, and it had people wondering if he was going to come back at all.

It was bitterly cold this morning, the Boston wind cutting through his thin jacket as he exited the station. After a moment's thought, he decided to walk along the street rather than cutting through Copley Place, hoping that the cold would clear his head. Stephen had never been out of the loop for this long, and he suspected that the re-entry into office life would be quick and painful. The development project he had been running -- a public relations portal for the Department of Defense -- was nearly complete and safe in the hands of another project manager, but another project was already waiting for him. The email from his boss, Jack, had said little, but Jack seemed to be excited about this one, which was both unusual and unnerving. Stephen was intrigued.

Maybe, for once, I’ll get a project before it turns into a cluster--.

Stephen stumbled and nearly spilled his precious coffee, catching himself before he could even think the curse. Jenny’s voice came back to him, full of righteous, pregnant indignation. "No more bad language. Do you want your child born thinking that her Daddy is a drunken sailor on leave?" Even in utero, she claimed -- citing several reliable sources available on Amazon.com in both hardcover and paperback -- the baby could hear him and was beginning to make emotional associations based upon what it heard. The time to start setting a good example was now.

The fact that his father had, in fact, been a drunken sailor on leave made this task much more difficult for Stephen. Creative cursing had always been a family trademark, whether in times of stress or celebration. The family still spoke of his uncle's five-minute, profanity-laced tirade after the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004. Just thinking about it brought a proud tear to Stephen's eye. He could see his wife's point, but there was something deeply satisfying about letting it rip with an ear-blistering expletive. Trying not to curse at all was like giving up English in favor of speaking French with a Chinese accent: it felt both foreign and wrong. Exhaustion only made it more likely for the words to slip out, so now he was trying to head them off at the pass by not even thinking them.

As he turned the corner toward the gleaming new building that housed his office, Stephen idly wondered if it counted as cursing if you spelled the word differently. He tried it out silently: clusterphuck. That was easier, but somehow he didn’t think Jenny would appreciate the subtlety. Oh well, he thought with a quiet sigh, I’ll get used to it.

Not that I really have a choice.

Stephen’s pocket buzzed. It took him a moment to realize that it was his cell phone. He had set it to vibrate mode immediately after the first time it rang and woke the baby, in a preemptive move designed to keep his wife from smashing the thing underfoot. He supposed that he would have to get used to that joy-buzzer feeling in his pocket now, since the next several years seemed destined to revolve around his daughter’s sleep patterns. He pulled out the phone and read:

Whre RU? Git yur as in here. -J.

"Oh good, Jack's discovered texting," Stephen muttered, shifting his coffee to the other hand so that he could type with his right thumb, the fast one. He thought for a moment and then sent:

Fatherhood’s nice. Think I’ll stay home for another week.

"That ought to throw him off the trail for a few minutes." Slurping the last of his coffee gratefully and tossing the cup into a nearby garbage can, he pushed through the doors to his building and pressed button for the elevator. While he tried to take the stairs as frequently as he could -- a poor excuse for the long runs that he had been used to before pregnancy, but better than nothing -- the prospect of a 12-floor climb was singularly unappetizing this morning. Maybe at lunch, he thought, if I haven’t decided to book a room for a nap instead.

The elevator doors were nearly closed when Stephen heard feet running at top speed and a voice calling for him to hold the elevator. He stuck out a hand and stopped the doors, watching in amusement as Anthony Compton, CTO of Accelerated Dynamic Development, Inc., hurtled to a sliding stop just inches short of the back wall. As usual, Anthony looked like a graduate student who had woken up late to realize that he was missing his dissertation defense. He carried an overstuffed messenger bag over his shoulder and was dressed in jeans, a button-down shirt, and a sweater, the tails of the shirt already beginning to peek out after his sprint for the elevator. Within twenty minutes, the shirt would be completely untucked, though Anthony wouldn’t notice it unless he tried to tidy up for a client. Despite the frigid weather, he wore no coat.

Unable to stand still as the elevator slowly climbed to their floor, Anthony paced back and forth, checking the floor number on each turn. Stephen stepped back to give him room, grateful that they were the only ones in the elevator. Anthony was clearly having an "up" day, and Stephen knew from experience that nothing short of pinning him in the corner would stop him. Better to be still and hope that he forgets I’m here, Stephen thought.

During his second year of working on dual masters degrees in Computer Science and Business at MIT, Anthony had realized that he had a distinctly different work style than his classmates. Other students signed up for four or five classes every term, took their finals, and moved on to the next courses. Anthony, on the other hand, took a double load every fall term, finished all of the coursework early, and then pestered his professors for extra work to tide him over until finals. By January, though, he could barely find the energy to register for the spring term, much less attend the classes. He disappeared from every class after the first week or two and lay on his bed in the dark to wait for spring. Since he was an engineer, most of the other students just assumed that he switched to a nocturnal schedule in the winter to honor the solstice. His professors appreciated the break too much to investigate its cause.

That spring, it occurred to Anthony that this might not be normal. However, as he was too busy just then to do anything about it, he decided not to think about it until summer. Halfway through the summer, as he sat up for the fourth night in a row rereading Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and cross-referencing it against Stephen Hawking’s Theory of Everything, the idea struck him again. Since Sagan’s simplistic approach was beginning to bore him anyway, he entered his symptoms into an online database and discovered that he was bipolar; more precisely, a bipolar savant, if Wikipedia could be believed.

Drugs and psychotherapy could have smoothed the waves of his mood cycles, but Anthony enjoyed the productivity too much to let it go. Besides, he decided, he was at least as smart as that John Nash fellow down at Princeton, so he would find a way to make his condition work for him, too. He finished graduate school in one more year by doubling his workload again in the fall and spring and taking extra night classes when they were offered. He also bought a more comfortable bed for the winter months.

As he grew older, Anthony’s moods stabilized to a cycle of approximately six weeks up and four weeks down. Over time, his friends and coworkers learned to pinpoint the next cycle to within a week, which significantly impacted vacation requests at ADD.

Around the seventh floor, Anthony realized that someone else was in the elevator with him. He abruptly stopped pacing directly in front of Stephen, leaned in, and peered owlishly up at him through his glasses. "Oh, hullo Stephen. Just back from DC again? How’s that Department of Defense project going?"

As he often did when talking to Anthony, Stephen had to fight the urge to lean back. "Actually, I wrapped up my part of that project last month. Keith’s closing it. This is my first day back from paternity leave."

Anthony blinked, redirecting another two percent of his brain capacity away from whatever ideas were swirling around in there and toward this conversation. "Oh, right, right. You'll be going on that new project. Should be… interesting." The elevator lurched to a halt on their floor and he spun around to lean against the door, tapping it impatiently as he waited for it to open. "I'm sure we'll talk later. Say hello to Joanne for me."

"Jennifer. I will. Watch out for the plant," Stephen called. Anthony dodged, barely missing a miniature palm tree that had been in the exact same place for the past three years, and half ran, half walked toward his office.

Stephen turned the opposite direction, heading toward the bullpen. The room was already half-full, the dimly heard rhythms of indie rock from multiple headphones merging with the quiet clicking of keys to create a pulsating hum of technological hyper-achievement. ADD's open seating plan encouraged collaboration, but at this time of the morning everyone was still waking up and checking their email. The volume level would gradually rise over the course of the day, making noise-reducing headphones standard equipment for all employees. Stephen paused by his desk for a moment to savor the quiet energy of the place. It was good to be back.

"Connelly!" Jack’s voice cracked across the room, causing several recent hires to cringe and slouch down in their seats, trying to look inconspicuous. "Where the hell have you been? I texted you at least five minutes ago!"

Stephen sighed. That was nice while it lasted. "Morning, Jack."

"I’m glad to see that your wife let you come back to work." Jack thought he had a way with words; his three ex-wives tended to disagree. "Come on, everyone's waiting." He grabbed Stephen's arm and steered him back toward the lobby.

"Can it wait a little while? I haven’t even checked my email yet. I probably have a couple thousand messages," Stephen asked, testing Jack's grip on his arm. He was held fast.

"Don’t give me that crap, Steve." Jack angrily jabbed the elevator button as though it had offended him. "You’ve been checking it every day, haven’t you?"

Stephen gave a last longing glance at the unattainable sanctuary of his chair and sighed, "Not every day. Jen made me promise to really take some time off this time, which I interpreted to mean that I couldn’t check email while she was awake. Fortunately, I took the midnight feedings, and Sarah won’t tell on me yet. Where are we going?"

Jack pointed at the glowing elevator button. "Down."

"So helpful. Down where?" Sudden hope gleamed in Stephen's eyes. "You're not taking me out for coffee, are you?"

"Not that far down."

"But what else…." A horrible thought occurred to Stephen. "We're not going to the client area, are we?" He tried tugging his arm free again, but Jack, anticipating the move, had already tightened his grip.

"They've been here since 8:30 and they're very eager to meet you. We told them that you're the only one who can do the job for them."

Stephen stopped struggling, for the moment. He glared at Jack. "This is to get even with me for taking the whole three weeks, isn't it?"

Jack shrugged. "I didn't even know we had a leave policy. Did you know that I could have taken bereavement leave after my last divorce? We really have great benefits." The elevator door slid open and he pulled Stephen into the elevator before pushing the button for the eleventh floor. "But no, it's not payback. I genuinely think that you're the only one who can do it." He turned and smiled, showing gleaming white teeth.

It was the smile that took all of the fight out of Stephen. Like a ticking sound from inside a package, Jack's smile was never a good sign for the recipient. As far as anyone knew, the only thing that made Jack truly happy anymore was conflict, so if he was grinning already, it was going to be one hell -- heck -- of an assignment. Jack saw Stephen's capitulation and released his vice-like grip on Stephen's upper arm.

As they stepped out of the elevator together, another worrying thought occurred to Stephen. "Hey, are you going in there too?"

Jack grunted. "Yeah, it's that big. I have to meet with the clients."

Despite being ADD's head of professional services, Jack rarely spoke to clients in person anymore. No one could say exactly what had happened the last time that Jack led a project himself, but one of the most popular rumors was that after the client changed the entire scope of the project for the seventh time just two days before the product launch, Jack attacked him. Halfway through the list of new features, the stories said, Jack gave a roar of rage, jumped out of his chair, and launched himself six feet across the conference table. It took the entire project team to drag him off the client and pin him to the ground, but not before he had bitten off a chunk of the man’s ear. They said that Jack kept it in a jar on his mantle at home, to show to annoying dinner guests. After that incident, in honor of his service to the company and his still-formidable problem-solving skills, he was promoted to vice president and told not to meet with clients anymore.

There were other stories, of course, each gorier than the last, none of which Jack would either confirm or deny. Nor would any of his old teammates tell what they knew. If asked, they simply shook their heads sadly and walked away. Regardless, Jack was never allowed to be alone with a client. He always had to be accompanied by at least one strong coworker, two if they were small.

In his current weakened state, Stephen wasn't sure if he could handle Jack himself if push came to shove (or bite). Jack noted his hesitation and said, "Don't worry; you'll have help if you need it. Not that you will: they're your clients, after all." He grinned again, sending a little shiver down Stephen's spine. "If anything, I'll be pulling you off of them."

They reached the edge of the client area, a chrome-and-glass wonderland intended to inspire confidence and awe in prospective customers. Stephen had never determined exactly how shiny surfaces translated to quality software -- he was always afraid to touch anything here for fear of leaving smudges -- but apparently it worked. Across the spacious lobby, a group of people waited outside of a richly appointed conference room, and Jack led the way toward them. "You have most of your team from the DoD project back, though I had to replace Rollin. He’s in Tibet. No one knows why, but we suspect he took a sabbatical and forgot to tell us again. The new guy's name is Stuart Troyer. Seems solid, but if he doesn't work out then I'll give you first pick of the playground for a replacement. We don't want to lose this one."

Stephen stopped again, halfway across the lobby. "Jack, you keep saying things like that. When are you going to tell me what this project is? You don't expect me to walk in there blind, do you?"

Jack thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. "I don't want to prejudice you. Don't worry; no one's expecting you to say anything. Just go in and listen." He took Stephen's elbow again and led him toward the door. "Oh, and try to keep an open mind."

"Don't worry, and keep an open mind. Gee, Jack, you make it sound so fun, you should be in sales."

"I was," Jack grunted. He gave Stephen a sideways grin. "It didn't go well."

Stephen returned the grin. "I can only imagine." Squaring his shoulders and resigning himself to his fate, he approached the group waiting with various levels of nervousness and annoyance outside the executive conference room. They turned as one to greet him, offering murmured congratulations and well-wishes that seemed genuine despite being an obvious ploy to delay the inevitable entry into the meeting.

James Chavez, ADD's CEO, stuck his head out of the door and interrupted the reunion. "Are you guys coming in or what? I've got them all warmed up for you."

Stephen exchanged looks with Jack. "Give us one or two minutes to prepare, OK?"

James nodded and gave Stephen a dazzling smile. "Takes a while to get your feet back under you, doesn't it? I feel the same way whenever I get back from the Caribbean. I'll let them talk to Jack for a couple of minutes while you and the team make yourselves presentable. Oh, and welcome back." He jerked his head and Jack and pulled back inside, leaving the door ajar behind him. Jack, with a semi-apologetic grin, slipped in behind him and eased the door shut.

James and Anthony had met ten years ago through a business incubator in Cambridge that specialized in pairing the brilliance of MIT with the hardheaded practicality of Harvard Business School. James had just received his MBA from Harvard, half a year ahead of schedule. This greatly surprised his advisor, who had assumed that James would follow other famous Harvard dropouts by going directly to his first million dollars without detouring for the degree. James’ thesis project was a feasibility study of the economics of an ice franchise in northern Alaska. The results of the paper were inconclusive, but he sold the idea to a venture capital firm for $950,000, thus proving his actual thesis, that there was a buyer for everything. He left Harvard planning to test the limits of that theory.

James was the perfect foil for Anthony's relentless, nerdy energy: suave, smooth, and unruffled, unwilling to let something as simple as emotion get in the way of a sale. Actual understanding of the product was superfluous: for him, the only necessary knowledge was "the hook," that thing that made the product irresistible to a buyer. Once he identified that, he grew bored with the other details. This suited Anthony fine, since there was nothing he hated more than explaining himself more than once. They had quickly worked out a partnership, harnessing Anthony’s energy during his up periods to create new product lines, new services, even new companies as quickly as they could. When Anthony slumped, James used the time to test the ideas in the market. Those that stuck were divided into two groups: the interesting ideas were passed off to competent managers within ADD to maintain and grow, while those with less revenue potential were sold to venture capitalists or competitors. The rest of Anthony’s plans, which were usually years ahead of their time, they patented and hoarded until the time was right.

James made it a point to meet with every prospective client at least once, even if only for a few minutes. It gave him the opportunity to size them up, weighing them on the scale of potential profitability. The fact that his charismatic air accelerated the sale was not lost on him, either. Since this client had already signed a contract, though, his presence added another element of mystery: few clients were unique enough to hold his interest past the close.

As he shook hands and accepted pats on the back, Stephen conducted a mental roll call. His core team was here, plus one: his three programmers, Frank, Mark, and Kelvin; his designers, David and Ricky; and a sturdy-looking bearded fellow whom Stephen had never seen before. He had the faintly bemused expression common to sleepwalkers, folk musicians, and new hires, so Stephen assumed that he was Rollin's replacement.

Frank Lasher and Mark Moore -- or the Brothers Grim, as they were known around the office -- were related neither by blood nor by disposition, but they were a perfect team nonetheless. Frank, tall and rawboned, his shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail, was a smoldering volcano, his volatility matched only by the speed with which he could generate software code. Mark, on the other hand, had a physical presence could best be described as "soft, and a bit blurry around the edges." He was on the short and portly side, with a bushy beard that matched the pelt covering the rest of his body. He was the goat to Frank's racehorse: a calming presence that brought greater performance. For everyone's benefit, the two were rarely separated.

Where Frank was fire, Kelvin Tsong was ice. His imperturbability was unbroken by either laughter or anger, leading more than one project teammate to openly speculate that his ancestry tended more to Vulcan than Chinese. After working with Kelvin for the past six months, Stephen knew him to be both intelligent and helpful, with a dry wit that appeared at the strangest moments. He rarely smiled, though, and had never, as far as anyone knew, laughed at a joke. It was as though he understood humor but just didn’t see the point of it. At the moment, he was bestowing a rare smile on Stephen as he congratulated him on the birth of his daughter.

The scent of clove cigarettes drew Stephen's attention to David Chretienne and Ricky Nilsson-Martinez, Stephen's designers. David -- pronounced "Dahveed," thank you very much -- was one of the best visual designers at ADD, and therefore extremely and self-consciously unique. Born of Quebecois immigrant parents, he pined, sometimes visibly, for a return to the mother country, France. His French accent, usually faint, grew strong when he was agitated, though even in a true rage he more resembled Pepe Le Pew than Cardinal Richelieu. Besides being a wizard with PhotoShop and other graphics programs, David was a fabulous tailor and made all of his own clothing. His skill with needle and thread were surpassed only by his imagination, and he was constantly in pursuit of the perfect look to suit his moods. A fellow designer had once remarked that the real reason David had never quite attained the perfect look was due to the inferiority of Earthling materials, but Stephen suspected she was just being snarky. Today, David’s slight frame was covered head to toe in black, save for a short cape that sported a deep purple lining. He removed his beret and offered Stephen a short bow before nearly being bowled over by the much larger Ricky, who leaned over him to give Stephen a meaty pat on the shoulder.

What Ricky lacked in astuteness, looks, or fashion sense he made up for in genetic variety. In fact, if his genealogical claims could be believed, Ricky met all of the diversity requirements for an entire university all by himself. While he had grown up in New York, his family hailed from a small group of islands in the Caribbean that had apparently been the crossroads of all nautical traffic for the past several centuries. Through trade, intermarriage, slavery, and frequent pillaging, the natives of these islands carried the blood of the world in their veins, and Ricky was determined to identify and catalogue every drop. The fact that every new bit of heritage he discovered came with its own set of holidays was, he claimed, merely a happy coincidence. Today, Ricky wore what looked like the traditional garb of some African nation. Apparently we've discovered a new great-great-grandparent, Stephen thought with an inward sigh. I wonder how many days he'll need off this time.

After everyone had finished offering their congratulations, asking after the health of both baby and mother, and making half-hearted excuses for not having sent a baby gift, an uncomfortable silence fell.

"Well, should we go in?" Mark asked uncertainly.

Stephen leaned around the door and peeked through the window. James and Jack were engaged in small talk with two other men seated on the opposite side of the large oaken conference table. Jack, a constipated smile pasted on his face, caught Stephen's eye and jerked a thumb in a clear get-in-here-now gesture. Stephen replied with a little wave. "I think we have another minute or two. Have you introduced yourselves to the new guy?"

Frank glanced over his shoulder. "Him? You mean he's one of us? I thought we decided that we were just going to wait until Rollin came back from sabbatical rather than replacing him."

"Where did he go this time?" Ricky asked.

"Tibet, I think," Mark answered.

Ricky brightened. "Really? I have family there."

"What a surprise."

"Sure! Apparently, a group of very lost Tibetan monks sailed to our island in about 600 AD, looking for Shambhala. Their leader had decided that the ancient descriptions of mountains actually referred to ocean waves, so…"

"Why don't we save that for later?" Stephen interrupted. As much as he wanted to stall, this story was likely to take more time than they had to spare. He turned to the newcomer. "I'm Stephen, the project manager, and I assume that you're Stuart Troyer."

"Stu, please. I just started today." The older man stuck out a hand. He was short and wiry, with wire-rimmed glasses and a full beard that was starting to go gray. His grip was surprisingly strong, yet Stephen had the unmistakable impression that Stu was holding back so as not to hurt him. As he stood there, feet spread wide, he reminded Stephen of an old apple tree: strong, gnarled, with roots deeply planted in the ground. The kind of solid presence we could use on this team, Stephen thought.

Stu turned to shake hands with the others, spending an extra moment with Frank as the younger man tried to engage him in a hand-squeezing contest and quickly lost. Surreptitiously rubbing his hand, Frank asked testily, "Tell me again why we all have to be here? We’ve never had to attend the client kickoff before. They don’t like engineers to have too much contact with the clients, especially during the contract's escape period."

Stephen shrugged. "Don't ask me; I just got here, remember? Maybe it's part of your anger management therapy." Frank grimaced. That had been several hundred dollars of company money wasted, though he had received a free stress toy at the end and had filched two of the foam bats for personal use. Stephen continued, "I promise that if it gets unbearable I’ll make up a technical emergency and the developers can leave."

"Us, too?" asked Ricky hopefully.

"No, you’re stuck for the duration. Unless you know how they think, you’ll never be able to create a design that they like," Stephen said. Ricky sighed and rolled his eyes.

Stephen put his hand to the door. "OK, team, client faces!" He looked around. David and Ricky were smiling, though David’s fingers kept fidgeting as though they needed a cigarette between them. Mark was probably smiling, though it was hard to tell through the beard. His eyes looked happy, anyway. Frank was baring his teeth and looked as likely to go for someone’s throat as shake their hand. Stephen turned back and moved him to the back of the group. Kelvin was impassive, but in a friendly way. Stu, after looking around at the others confusedly for a moment, smiled tentatively.

Satisfied, Stephen put on his own smile and reached for the door. "Let’s go meet our new friends, shall we?" he suggested through gritted teeth. Truth be told, he wasn't especially looking forward to this either. Nonetheless, he girded his proverbial loins and stepped into the lion's den.

Continue to Chapter 2

That's "Exorcise," with an "O"

2011-10-20T00:16:00.000-06:00

September 11, 2011 was a bad day for me. We were living in Boston at the time, and I was working at a startup near MIT and Kendall Square. The planes that crashed into the Twin Towers flew right over our heads just hours before they exploded in a fiery mess over lower Manhattan. My colleagues and I lost friends, acquaintances, and classmates in a moment. On top of that, we lived in the city that the terrorists chose as their launching pad, and that was something that every Bostonian took as a personal affront. What was it about our city that made it so friendly to psychotic maniacs? The only fanatacism we were willing to encourage had to do with a certain cursed baseball team.

Like everyone who was old enough to understand what was going on, I remember that day with painful clarity. I remember where I was when I first heard about what was happening and I remember standing and watching the towers fall on television. I remember the baffled amazement, the thought, "Why would anyone do this to anyone? What makes this OK?" I remember wanting to cry, to scream, to find some way to deal with this hurt and anger, some way to make it all right again. I remember weeping before the TV news weeks later, hurting for those who lost family and friends in a moment of terror.

A few weeks after the attacks, a picture started circulating around the Internet, showing a cloud of smoke escaping from one of the towers that looked like a horned devil. Some people took this as a supernatural sign that the Devil was there, laughing at us as he took a few thousand American lives. I doubt that a photographer captured a supernatural manifestation -- I think the Devil's usually more subtle than that -- but I have no doubt about one thing: the demons won that day, and they've continued to press their victories for the decade since.

America has never really put that day behind us. Even this past month, ten years later, we showed how those wounds are as raw as they were ten days after the event. In many ways, our country has been shaped by that day for the last decade: we have entered into an endless war against the perpetrators and anyone we perceive to be their supporters, we regularly debate which freedoms are best to give up in the name of safety, and we have moved into a fear-based economy, where the best decision is the one that leads me away from danger rather than toward opportunity.

We all have demons, those things that we hate and fear, the moments in our lives that lurk forever in our memories, waiting to pounce on us in an unprotected moment. Whether they're big, global demons, like the specter of another terrorist attack, or personal ones, like the fear that people really don't care for me and they're just waiting for me to fail, these demons sink their claws into our psyche and drive our behavior at a level that we can't even recognize, much less understand. When they rear their heads, they either send us scurrying for the nearest shelter or launch us at other people in an unreasoning attack that is completely out of proportion to the situation at hand. When we are grappling with our demons, we immediately cede all of the territory gained in 10,000 years of civilization and become little more than animals.

Some people realize this, of course, and cynically trigger the fears they see in others to get the reactions they want. Rather than working to exorcise others' demons, they exercise them, parading them around before a cowering throng. The tag line "do that and the terrorists win" was a perfect post-9/11 example of this behavior. The fact that it worked to give George W. Bush a second term only exacerbated the problem. Now, media players like Fox News have honed this exercise to a sinister art, spinning a narrative of fear, insecurity, and hate that was previously reserved for isolationists and armed cults.

Let's be fair, of course: all of the news stations do it, as does any industry that makes money off of gaining attention: politicians, drug companies, health food stores, religions. If they can use fear to get your money, then the temptation is powerful, precisely because it's so easy. Fear may not be our smartest motivator, but it is clearly our strongest. And while everyone doesn't stoop to fear-mongering and demon-marching, the ones who do get all the attention.

The problem with all this exercise, of course, is that it does what exercise does: it makes the demons stronger. The more we focus on what we fear and hate, the more it dominates our thinking to the point that nothing else really exists. It's basic brain design. If I'm afraid of terrorists, then every face that's different from mine starts to hide evil thoughts. If I'm afraid that my boss doesn't like me, then every conversation becomes laden with veiled threats and opportunities for offense. I can't help myself.

Nor can I drive the demons out with anger, posturing, or blustering threats. They feed off of that energy, growing bigger and stronger even as I seek to drive them out. Are we safer, more secure, and happier since we started two wars and locked down our methods of mass transportation? Did hiding or locking all of the garbage cans in public places make us statistically less likely to be attacked, or did it just provide a constant reminder of everything that we're afraid of?

I have a counter-proposal: let's try to love our demons to death. Rather than attacking the things we fear, what if we poured that energy into action in the exact opposite direction? I think that we can exorcise them for real simply by canceling them out.

I actually know that this works, because I've done it. Here's an example: years ago, I worked with someone who actively sought to undermine me at every step. If I said go right, she demurely nodded, then immediately told everyone that left was really the better option as soon as I left the room. If I asked her about it, she insisted that it was someone else's idea, but that he'd made some very cogent points as to why left might be the better option in this case. If I called her on this behavior, she cried, which as all big men know is the ultimate weapon because it immediately turns us into bullies and mysogynists, even in our own minds. She became my personal Al-Qaeda, striking from the shadows but melting away whenever I turned to face her.

Being the direct person that I am, my first instinct was to confront this behavior head-on with a logical argument, which only escalated the problem. Now I was wrong and mean. I was losing my team and starting to wonder if it wouldn't be easier just to find another job. So one night, while driving home, I decided to try a different approach. Rather than resisting this person, I decided that I would help her. This wasn't altruism, it was desperation. Since nothing else had worked, why not make it Opposite Day and see what happened?

In brief, it worked. This person, who had seen me as a threat to her job and acted to defend her territory, saw that I was only trying to make things better and started to help me. When I realized that we needed to completely change our approach and try something that the organization had never done before, she became my staunchest ally, whipping her own team into line before I could even get to them. We became friends, and when I moved on, she was first in line to wish me well. This time, if there were tears in her eyes it was because she was going to miss me.

My own demons drove me in this situation. I wasn't sure that anyone trusted me to do my job, and I acted aggressively when someone questioned me. I still struggle with that. But when I turned around and counter-balanced those fears with a sort of trusting benevolence, they lost all their strength. Soon, they were gone.

As a country, we've been lashing out at everything that frightens us for a decade now. It's time to try something new. Let's start by recognizing that, while these demons are real, the only power they have is that which we give them. Then, let's start pushing in the opposite direction.

Back to 9/11 for a moment, but this time in 2011. The ten-year anniversary hit me hard. I avoided all of the media retrospectives, but I couldn't avoid the moment in church when they played a brief memorial video. I wept when I saw the towers fall all over again, and I felt the same ache in my gut that I felt ten years ago, as if no time had passed. But when I left the church I decided to do something to fill that darkness with light. I went to IHOP and I bought breakfast for about 100 strangers, then I left and went to Starbucks and bought coffee for another 50 or so. Those 150 people, those 50 or so families, didn't know who bought their meal, but they did know that something special happened on September 11. Hopefully, they went out and did something themselves to spread a little more light on a dark day.

As for me, well.... September 11, 2001, will always be a dark day for me, a day when the darkness blotted out the light in the skies over lower Manhattan. But September 11, 2011, is now a day when the light started to spread again, when I started doing what I could to exorcise my country's demons. I hope that other people will join me.

Ignite Boulder 11 - I'm baaaaaack!

2010-07-07T18:37:00.001-06:00

I had so much fun last time that I had to come back and do it again. This time, I felt a serious need to restore my geek cred after making the egregious error of using sports as a metaphor for life while speaking to a crowd of techies at Ignite 7. So I chose a topic near and dear to every geek's nerdy little heart: movies. Specifically, movie quotes, and the horrible mistreatment that they receive in the workplace. So, without further ado, my speech:

Hey, at least the YouTube preview picture doesn't make me look like a complete dolt this time.

Addicted to MeTH

2010-04-01T22:52:00.004-06:00

When I was but a wee young project manager, I had to order my best developer not to come to work for three days. The fact that this was over a weekend was not lost on either of us.

"Frank" was a rockstar. He only typed with two fingers, but he claimed he could still type 80 lines of code a minute. This claim was never questioned by any of his peers, mainly because they were afraid of what he would do to them if they did. That claim notwithstanding, Frank was one of most talented and prolific coders I ever worked with. We became good friends, so I say this with all love: he was also a royal pain in the ass. He never had a thought he didn't feel like sharing, he got into shouted technical debates with other developers before storming out of the room, and he regularly insulted our clients' intellectual capacity, during sales calls.

Don't get me wrong: I was grateful to have Frank on my team. He saved several projects for me, and the team never ran as well as it did when Frank was in charge. Point him in the right direction and God help whatever problem stood in his way. He worked nights and weekends, he stayed up all night to meet deadlines, he even rewrote the software from the ground up when it was clear it couldn't meet our needs. He was our office hero.

But Frank couldn't stop. Even when work was calm and the project was on track, he looked for problems. He would grab me in the hall and pull me into a conference room to tell me that someone was dead weight and needed to be dropped from the project. He came in on weekends to rewrite perfectly functional code because "it wasn't running fast enough," complaining the whole time about how hard he was working. He was hooked on being the hero and in danger of burning out.

That's why I sent him home. I would have locked him out if I could, but he'd been using the office as his apartment for a month or so, so he had keys squirreled away all over the place. I'm pretty sure I threatened to punch him if he came in over the weekend, though, and since I outweighed him by a good 50 pounds that might have helped. Frank needed someone to tell him to stop, though, and if punching him would help, I was willing to do it.

I thought Frank was an edge case, that kind of crazy developer that you read about in Wired magazine, the genius who rewrote the Internet for fun. Over the years, though, I realized that every workplace, or at least every interesting one, has a Frank, an office hero who's there every weekend saving everyone else's sorry butts. The software industry was built on the burned-out husks of guys like Frank. Heck, we've raised heroic office martyrdom to an art form, complete with stock options.

These people, and the companies they work for, are addicted to MeTH: Me, The Hero. The heroes are hooked on the rush of the last-minute escape, the high of achieving something no one thought possible, the buzz of receiving praise from their saner peers. Their employers are hooked on their output, that sweet, sweet free overtime and the knowledge that, no matter how much they overpromise, the hero will come through or die trying.

I'm convinced that hero addiction, while less likely to provide a plot device for a very special "How I Met Your Mother" than an addiction to that other meth, is just as deadly to a company and its heroes. No one can maintain this pace forever, nor can someone repeatedly save a group of people without coming to despise them for their weakness. Save the day once and you're a hero; save it twenty times and you become a menace.

How do you know if you're addicted to MeTH? Let's look at another hero for clues. Does any of this sound familiar?

There's always time for one more rescue
The hero, by definition, needs to save someone. The addicted hero keeps trying to save everyone, regardless of the size of the need. Interrupt a high-speed chase to pull a kitty from a tree? Mr. Incredible says, "I've got time." Take on the office move and the documentation on top of the high-profile client project? The office hero sighs, rolls his eyes, and says, "OK, I'll do it, since no one else will." In pursuit of the buzz, the addicted hero will forsake family, health, and happiness, even when the payoff isn't worth the effort, or when waiting for someone else to do it really wouldn't hurt.

You're surrounded by morons
To Mr. Incredible, everyone looks like Buddy. The office hero inevitably perceives that everyone around him is a complete nimrod. If they weren't why would he have to keep saving their bacon? So he jumps in the minute someone starts to struggle and does their work for them, because it's easier and faster to do it himself than to try to explain it to someone again. As a result, no one else learns how to do the work, so the hero is needed the next time as well, completing the circle from hero to martyrdom and back again.

Now, it's entirely possible that everyone in your office actually is dumber than a bag of hammers and you're the only person who remembers to wear matching shoes every day. But if that's truly the case, why are you still working there? Take those heroic talents and find a bunch of other brilliant people work with. Or is it possible that you just need more damsels in distress, so you make them wear the dress whether it fits or not?

You work alone
Mr. Incredible's final words to Buddy -- "I work alone." -- come back to haunt him, his family, and his city. Look around. Is anyone else left in the office? Do your weekend plans include a pile of documents that you haven't had time to get to and no one else has bothered to look at? Do all of the takeout places withing a 5-mile radius of your office greet you by name when you call? You might have a hero addiction problem.

Everyone needs heroes occasionally, and it's not only right but commendable to jump in where you're needed and save the day once in a while. But when you do it constantly, when you jump from one crisis to another, doing everyone else's work while they sleep or play with their kids, you're not only harming yourself but the people around you as well. You're creating a cycle of dependency: the company needs you because you're the only one who knows how to get things done, and you need the company and its crises because your whole self-image is based upon saving the day. Meanwhile, you grow more tired and bitter with each new emergency, wondering why you're the only person who sees how everything is falling apart.

Fear not, brave hero, for there is still hope! You don't have to spend the rest of your nights and weekends eating takeout food and cursing the lazy idiots around you. Just follow my simple three-step process and you'll be on the road to recovery before you can say, "Augh! I can't believe I have to come in on the weekend again!"

Step 1: Decide whether you have a problem
Before you can break an addiction, you have to realize that it's harmful. If I'm addicted to eating healthy food and exercising, it's hard to argue that I need to stop. If you're really helping everyone and you're happy with your role, go right ahead and keep doing it. We'll check in with you in a few years and see if you're tired yet.

Step 2: Redraw your boundaries
Heroes have a hard time saying no. In fact, it's their fatal weakness. Like Kryptonite to Superman, a pleading face peering around the cubicle wall set's a hero's heart racing and shatters his defenses. He's powerless to resist the temptation of one more rescue. As Mr. Incredible says, "I've got time." You need to redraw the boundaries that you've demolished over the years. Start with a small step: try going home by 5:30. On a weekday. Now try it for a week. Next week, leave the office for lunch once or twice. Step outside and see that "sun" thing that everyone else has been talking about. Now, repeat after me: "Sorry, I can't do that right now. I need to get home." Very good. You're getting there.

Step 3: Move from hero to mentor
You have valuable knowledge. In fact, it's likely that you're the only person in the company who know where all the bodies are buried and how to get things done quickly. After all, you're the only person who's done it for years, right? That knowledge is valuable, but it's also a trap. Hoard it and you're stuck doing the same rotten jobs over and over again. Share it, and someone else can do the rotten jobs while you go learn how to do something else!

This may be the hardest part. You may feel like you're losing a bit of yourself when you finally give up the secret code that unlocks the copier on weekends. The first time the new guy tries to build a new business rule in the system, yuou'll want to strangle him and then climb over his body and do it yourself in two minutes. But be patient: it's worth it.

Becoming a mentor has all kinds of rewards: people will still come to you when they need help, but you'll be able to go home at the end of the day while they go and do the work. You get the prestige without the pain.

And the best part? When they completely screw it up, you can still jump in and save the day.

Bad Poetry

2010-03-08T21:51:00.001-07:00

Bad poetry

Is like a poke in the brain

With a sharp stick.

Ow!

It still hurts.

Ignite Boulder 7

2010-01-08T18:03:00.001-07:00

Here's my presentation from Ignite Boulder 7:

At some point, I plan to share my thoughts on the experience. For now, I need to get out of here and get home!

Hasn't the world ended yet?

2009-10-23T12:49:00.004-06:00

We Americans have a unique talent for narcissistic hyperbole. Every problem we face, every political statement or person we disagree with, seems to portend the end of the world, or at least the end of the American Way of Life as we know it. Regardless of color, creed, or political persuasion, this one thing unites us: I want to proudly do what I want to do without interference, but if you're allowed to do what you want, well, that's it: the world's gonna end. And I will loudly complain to anyone within earshot about your plans for world domination and/or destruction of my way of life until I run out of breath, in the hopes that they will join my revolution against the forces of darkness.

I'm tempted to say that this is a recent phenomenon brought about by the Clinton administration, but as that would just be another example of this problem, it feels a bit redundant. The fact is, we've been railing at each other since before we were a country, when the Whigs and the Tories were convinced that each was about to lead the other off a precipice and take the new world with them. If anything, we've gotten more polite about it, because no matter how much Rush Limbaugh's words may hurt, I have to think that having hot tar and chicken feathers poured over your naked body has to hurt a little bit more. I can always turn off the radio, after all.

Why do we expect the world to end whenever we don't get what we want? Are we still toddlers at heart, crying because Mommy wouldn't give us another lollipop? A quick look at history -- even recent history, if you're too lazy to scan more than a couple of decades -- shows that everything happens in cycles. Even my short lifetime has been marked by a steady pendulum of conservatism and liberalism, Republican and Democrat, for the past thirty-some years. LBJ gave way to Nixon and Ford, who gave way to Carter, who gave way to Reagan, et cetera, et cetera. Tick, tock; restrict, relax; tax, rebate; segregate, integrate. And life goes on, and the world doesn't end.

I applaud passion. I myself am passionate about many things: my family, my work, my faith. A seashore or a mountainside at sunset can bring tears to my eyes. But passion without reason is the fuel of mobs and the tool of unscrupulous demagogues. We need to look at our passions, our outrage, through the lens of history and realize three things:

Our problems are no bigger than anyone else's have ever been: they're just ours.
No one person or group has the power to irreparably break the world. It's too big and we're too small.
Nothing is permanent, not even [insert your favorite bad-decision-made-by-someone-else here]. All things come to an end.

As the wise man said and the mop-topped singers reiterated: to everything there is a season, and if there is one constant about seasons, it's that they change. To paraphrase Mark Twain: if you don't like the political climate, wait four years and it will change. In the meantime, could you please stop yelling?

Our lives are but a breath, and I for one choose not to waste that breath in an angry shout.

Unemployment, Interrupted

2009-08-29T10:49:00.000-06:00

Well, there go all of my semi-retirement plans: I got a job! Now I have to put on pants and go back to the office, which really throws a wrench in my previous plans to ride my bike, walk around in shorts and sandals, and spend every morning smiling serenely over my newspaper at everyone as they rushed in and out of Starbucks. I even considered taking my laptop down there so I could pretend to be working on another book!

[Sigh], I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. After all, the job came to me before I even got around to looking for one, while other people can do nothing but look. I guess God has his first assignment ready for me already. Exploring Boulder County by bike will have to wait.

My New KPIs

2009-08-28T14:45:00.003-06:00

Working as a financial services consultant for the last six years, I learned to love metrics. We measured everything: the site's performance, response times, down time, up time, wait times, peak times. We measured return on investment, return on capital, expenses, revenues, client satisfaction, and call volumes. If you could assign a number to it, we tracked it, and if you couldn't, we made one up (they call those "composite metrics"). But the most important numbers were the KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. If you wanted to call yourself a project manager, then you had to get yourself a set of those.

KPIs measure the success of a project. They tell you whether the last six months of meetings, late nights, arguments, and design debates were worth it. They also tell your boss (or in my case, your client) whether you're worth the money they're paying to keep you around. You watch those numbers pretty closely.

Now that I'm voluntarily unemployed and living in Greenland -- er, Boulder -- I find that the old metrics no longer apply. I need a new set of numbers to measure my job satisfaction. Allow me to present my new KPIs:

Miles biked: 183
Books read: 2 1/2
Pounds lost: 4 (need to work on this one)
# of days where I walked my kids to/from school: 9
Mornings spent at Starbucks reading the paper while other people rushed in to get their coffee to go: 7
Hours spent writing: 1 (definitely need to work on this one)
Days since I saw a Dilbert cartoon that directly applied to my day: 35 (this one makes me excessively happy)

So far, I'm pleased with my performance, though I can see some room for improvement. We'll see what I can do over the coming weeks.

Into Thin Air

2009-08-01T22:28:00.000-06:00

So this is it. We're really leaving Boston after 12 years to move to Boulder, Colorado, a place we've visited exactly once, for a long weekend. This would seem stupid if it didn't almost exactly mirror the move to Boston 12 years ago. Of course, last time it was just me and my wife, moving from a small rental house in Tacoma to an even smaller hotel room in Harvard Square. That time, we had only visited Boston once, overnight. But it felt right, and other than the bitter cold (-40 wind chill the night we arrived) and a mild case of pneumonia for the first couple of weeks we were here, it all worked out amazingly well. Who needs planning, or lists of pros and cons, or… housing?

Yeah, we're moving to Boulder without a place to live -- though I'll settle that before the family arrives -- without a job, and without really knowing anyone in the area. We're going because it feels right, like our time in Boston has come to an end and God has a new assignment for us in Boulder. We don't know what exactly that is yet, but I suspect that mine has something to do with helping young software companies grow, with making work a fun place to be, and with sharing the experience I've gained in the last 12 years with a bunch of new people who need it. I suspect that my wife's job, as usual, will be to bless the heck out of a new group of friends, to remind them that they are special, unique, and loved, and to organize some parties that make people say, "Wow, you really didn't need to do all of this for us!" Because that's what we do. It also happens to be something that we seem to be uniquely gifted to do, so we'd better do it to the best of our ability, no matter where we are.

I expect this to be an adventure. I expect to see God do amazing things for us. I suspect that it will scare the heck out of me whenever I stop to think about what we're doing over the next few weeks. But it will be the good kind of scared, the kind you feel when you look down from the top of a mountain after climbing up a narrow trail, where you see the whole world laid out before you and a voice in the back of your mind says, "Hoo, boy, if you slipped now, you wouldn't stop falling for days!" But that voice is drowned out by the sound of creation singing before you, the trees waving their arms in joy, the rocks shining with light, and the clouds dancing across the sky. It's thrilling. It's terrifying. It's life, and we're embracing it to the fullest.

Ride to Wingaersheek

2009-07-17T08:51:00.003-06:00

Here's what I'm doing this weekend:

Lexington to Wingaersheek
Find more Bike Rides in Lexington, Massachusetts

Gotta get my beach time in before we head to the mountains for good.

We leave for Boulder in 17 days! Woo-hoo!

Pics from the 2009 Best Buddies Hyannisport Challenge

2009-07-08T14:41:00.002-06:00

Best Buddies just posted a bunch of photos from this year's Hyannisport Challenge. You can view the entire set here.

Highlights:

Our fearless leader (Danny) at the starting line. This was the last time that he was seen near the front.
Bob at the start. He's the worried-looking one on the left (#332).
Some Patriot Pedalers with our favorite celebrity, Maureen McCormick. Bob looks a little happier here.

Clearly, everyone had a fun time. It's nice to look at these pictures and not think, "Ugh, I'm glad I survived that one." Let's hear it for nice weather, and go Best Buddies!

2009 Best Buddies Hyannisport Challenge Ride Report

2009-06-29T20:32:00.008-06:00

At last, here's the promised ride report. It's a few weeks late, but hopefully entertaining for all that. If you haven't seen the previous reports, you can find a full list of links here. Enjoy!

So, here we are: my fifth Best Buddies Hyannisport Challenge! Looking back over the past five years of ride reports, I notice that the content has changed. The first couple of years were all about the pain: riding a long distance was a visceral challenge (much like living in Arlington) full of trials, cramps, and long, painful climbs. Just to finish was a victory, whether I did it alone or with others. The fact that I finished the first couple of rides alone, trailing behind many of my teammates, may have had something to do with that. Then I figured it out: new bike, new training regimen, new ability to maintain a paceline (did I mention new bike?). Suddenly, the tone of the ride logs shifted: it wasn’t about survival anymore, but rather camaraderie. The pleasure of riding with others for long distances replaced the animalistic joy of survival, so the story of the ride changed accordingly. We still had the physical challenges (bad weather, road grit, the occasional stomach cramp), but the personalities of my fellow riders began to dominate the storyline.

This year continues and extends that trend, with a little old-fashioned pain thrown in for good measure. The miles flew by in a blur (most of them, anyway), the people provided the entertainment (until they dropped me), and I expanded the team to include an audience of thousands (at least in theory) via the magic of cellular technology, Twitter, and Facebook. So, let us begin our journey:

5:30 AM:
We gather at Danny’s house before driving to the Kennedy Library together. Morris will meet us here this year, so we don’t have the usual rented pickup to carry everyone’s bikes. This time, I’m driving, with Bob and Tyler’s bikes joining mine on the rack on back of my car. Bob and Tyler join me in the car as well, with Tyler assuring me that he knows how to get there. Holding the ride two weeks later already has one side benefit: the sun is already up. Previous years had the air of a secret meeting held by an incredibly inept group of conspirators, with 10-15 people muttering to each other in the dark, knocking over bicycles, and generally making a racket. Now it just feels like we’re going on a nice day trip. Except for the rain, of course, which tells me that it really is Best Buddies time.

6:45-7:30 AM, Mile 0:
My first status update to my legions of followers (all 95 of them): 6:53 AM: “At registration for the Best Buddies Challenge. Got my jersey, my bagel, & my coffee. Did I mention it’s RAINING?!?”

Yep, it really is Best Buddies time. The Buddies band is performing on the bandstand, the registration tables are humming, and riders are milling around, eating bagels, sipping coffee, and stretching. The line for the bathroom grows longer by the minute. Tyler, always ready with the pro cycling tips, is trying to explain the finer points of Vaseline usage to Bob:

Tyler: This is why I shave my legs.
Bob: Are you sure that you want to be telling me this?
Tyler: It’s for days like this.
Bob: You shave in case it rains?
Tyler: Yeah, because then you can just put Vaseline on your legs and you don’t have to worry about wearing rain pants. If you did that with hair on your legs it would just be gross.
Bob: And that’s the only use for the Vaseline?
Tyler: Very funny. Actually, I know a few other lube tricks. Want to hear them?
Bob: I have to go register now.

Registration over, we linger in the dry lobby until the second call to the start, then troop out into the light drizzle. It’s warm enough that most people have decided to leave the rain gear behind, but there are a few dubious glances at the sky as we line up. This year, our captain Danny, along with a few other top fundraisers, is invited to the honorary “pole position” at the front of the pack. The rest of us are well back from the starting line, so we can’t hear most of what’s said. I snap a picture of the crowd and send a quick update, anticipating an imminent start:

7:09 AM: And we're off!

Whoops! I forgot that, like Danny Time, Event Time bears little relationship to the rest of the world. In Event Time terms, “We’re about to start” means, “Get on your bikes and stand still while we talk for another15 or 20 minutes. If you could try to get your muscles to stiffen up completely by the time we fire the starting gun, that would be most appreciated.”

And so we stand. And stand. And sing the national anthem, and stand. And now it’s time for the traditional Parade of Waving Celebrities. David Spade steps up and Anthony Shriver thanks him for donating $50,000 to Best Buddies. Anthony also thanks him for getting up so early to come out and be with us, but from the look of him, I’m not sure he ever went to bed. Miss Teen USA and her fellow teen, Miss Massachusetts, wave prettily. Finally, Verne Troyer (AKA Mini-Me), trots up to fire the starting gun, and:

7:27 AM: “OK, NOW we're off...”

Finally, the 2009 Best Buddies Hyannisport Challenge has begun. 100 miles to go!

7:30-8:45 AM, Miles 0-17:
The first miles roll by easily, with the pack following our police escort at a leisurely roll. We seem to be moving faster this year, but I fail to catch the foreshadowing and instead enjoy the fact that I don’t have to concentrate to stay upright on my bike. Bob and Tyler and I find each other in the crowd and stick together, keeping a lookout for the rest of the team but not finding anyone. Tyler offers to stay with us this year, saying, “Last year I rode with the guys at the front of the pack, the racers. Those guys were fast! They were flying, going 30 miles an hour or faster on the flats, and everyone has to take a turn in the front. I kept up with them for the first 50 miles or so, but I knew I wouldn’t make it more than 70 miles at that pace.”

“Only 70 miles, huh?” I ask, thinking, that’s about 50 more than I could do at that speed. “We’ll try to take it easy on you, then.”

“Yeah, this should be a fun ride today. We’re just out here to enjoy ourselves, right?”

After about twelve miles, our escort drops off and we are free to set our own speed. The racers quickly pull away, never to be seen again. Bob, Tyler, and I find a comfortable rhythm and the miles fly by. It isn’t long before we reach the first rest stop.

8:45-9:00, 1st Rest Stop:

8:47 AM: “1st rest stop. Miss Mass and Miss Teen USA are here to greet us. I forgot my water bottles, but Tyler hooked me up.”

8:51 AM: “Sign on one rider's back – ‘I'm OK, just slow.’"

The first stop is chaotic, with riders rolling in and out and celebrities and other notables milling around. Maureen McCormack (of Marcia Brady fame) is there, as always, smiling and chatting with riders. Anthony Shriver comes over to say hello to Danny, and we reintroduce ourselves. He rode the first segment, but he’ll be needed at the 50- and 20-mile ride starts, so he’ll continue on by car from here. Verne Troyer is here again, sitting in a lawn chair and shouting encouragement to the riders as they start the second leg, and the Miss Teens are posing for pictures with a lot of men who are old enough to know better.

About 45 minutes into the ride, I realized that I had left my water bottles packed in my bag, so Tyler loaned me one of his. Now, we are both riding with one bike bottle and one PowerAde bottle. I stuck them both in my bottle cages, but Tyler doesn’t trust an odd-shaped bottle to stay put at the speeds he travels, so he stuck it in his back jersey pocket, along with some fruit and several free samples of nutrition bars. As we prepare to leave, he looks like he just robbed a grocery store.

Big Tom and Little Tom are here, too, but not for long. They stick around long enough to greet the first few Patriot Pedalers and then head out. We’re eager to keep going, too, and we establish what will be our pattern for the rest of the day: Tyler, astride his bike, waits for me to round up the rest of the team. After several minutes of shouting, “Danny! We’re leaving!” I give up and get my bike as well, at which point Danny begins to gather his things. Eventually, we grow tired of waiting and leave with whoever’s ready. This time, however, there’s some confusion: Tyler thinks we’ve left without him, so he sprints ahead while the rest of the team is still gathering. We won’t see him again until the next rest area.

9:00-10:05, Miles 17-37:
Bob, Danny, and I, plus Pete, a new member of the team, ride out together and quickly settle into the best paceline we can manage on the gritty roads. The rain has stopped, but the roads remain sloppy, forcing us to stay out of each other’s spray and take corners carefully. Still, we make good time and I can feel my muscles starting to loosen up as I look forward to a pleasant day of riding. Danny, Bob, and I are used to riding together, so we keep the line tight and chat even as we ride quickly through the rolling hills of the South Shore. Pete is still getting used to riding in groups, so he joins us in spurts, sprinting up beside someone and falling back again.

This is one of my favorite sections of the ride. We breeze past beaches and cranberry bogs, always trending downhill. The pace is quick, our muscles are fresh, and I am optimistic that this will be the easiest ride yet. I miss having Big Tom to draft behind, but Bob is a reasonable substitute, if a bit skinny to present a reasonable slipstream. Danny, as usual, invites other riders to join in behind me, calling, “Come on, there’s room for at least one more person back here, and you barely have to pedal at all!” I’d like to think that he’s complimenting my strength as a rider, but we all know that it’s the barge-like width of my shoulders that he really appreciates, and the vacuum that they create behind me. Oh well, you take your compliments where you can get them.

Last year, we averaged about 20 mph on this section of road, and cruised through some sections at a steady 25 mph. This year may not be quite that fast, but we still set a sizzling pace. We pass group after group, calling out friendly greetings and the occasional request for space on the way by. I take the lead for much of the time, knowing that I need to serve my time while my legs are fresh. If the past is any guide, I’ll need someone else in front of me later.

Towards the end of the segment, I realize that Pete hasn’t led at all yet. Not wanting him to miss out on the experience, I call him up to the front. He sprints up from the back and… keeps sprinting. I pedal furiously to catch him, calling, “You’re supposed to drop back to our pace when you get to the front!” Pete looks over his shoulder, shrugs apologetically, and slows down so that the others can catch up. Within minutes though, he is back to sprinting. Maybe he just has a fast song on his iPod. We do our best to keep up, but the paceline is gone. It’s every man for himself, at least for the moment.

Our disjointed version of the town line sprint ends a few minutes later as we sight the second rest stop. Pete looks back and grins. “That wasn’t too hard!”

10:05-10:20 AM, 2nd Rest Stop:

10:05 AM: 2nd rest stop. Just caught up to Tyler. No sign of Big or Little Tom. Sun's out now and it's getting steamy.

Beautiful Duxbury, how I love to stop and rest in the shade of your trees. I know that we’re only one third of the way through the ride, but this is where it starts to feel like we’re on the Cape, so it feels much closer to the end. The Toms have ridden on, but Tyler is already here and waiting for us so we make a quick turnaround. After a few minutes of wandering in the shade, eating a little, and rehydrating, we start trying to leave. As usual, this involves a few seconds of strapping up and getting on the bikes and several minutes of yelling, “Danny! Let’s go!” Finally, after we threaten to ride on without him, we gather Danny into the fold and start moving: Bob, Tyler, Danny, Pete, and me.

10:20-11:50 AM, Miles 37-64:
Tyler is clearly feeling his oats now. In a burst of cheerful sadism, he leads us out at a 20+ mph pace. Danny and Pete quickly drop off to find their own speed, but Bob and I hang in there. Even drafting behind someone, I can feel myself pushing to keep up. There is none of the usual sense of resting in the back, then working when it’s my turn to pull: it’s work a little, then work a lot. Yet I press on, determined that if Bob can do it, so can I. Given the set of Bob’s shoulders, I’m willing to bet that he’s thinking the same thing.

At this point, we must pause and consider Bob. At age 53, Bob is one of the older riders on our team. Among the “fast” crew, he’s the oldest, something he never lets us forget. With age comes a variety of maladies, or so we frequently hear, so with his back, neck, knee and assorted joint problems, it’s a miracle that Bob even gets on a bike, much less rides 100 miles. At least that’s what he says, right before he takes off and leads the pack for most of a 45 mile ride. Among the sandbaggers on the team, Bob is the baggiest.

This year, Bob wasn’t sure if he was even going to do the ride at all. He injured his foot over the winter, so badly that he could barely walk on it. He saw a variety of specialists and received recommendations ranging from drastic surgery requiring a six-month recovery period to the medical equivalent of “rub some dirt on it and get back in there, kid.” Still, Bob rode when he could, testing the foot to see how much it could take and extending his already legendary pain threshold to new levels. A couple of weeks before the ride, after several 70-mile training sessions to make sure he could take it, Bob finally decided to join us. He wasn’t sure he would make it, of course, and assured all of us that he would need to stop at the 50-mile point to make sure that he was able to continue. We smiled politely because we had been taught to respect our elders, but we all knew that we would be following Bob to the finish line.

So here we are at the 50-mile mark. Specifically, blowing through the new 50-mile rest stop that was added this year to provide a starting point for the new half-century ride. We wave as we fly through the parking lot, but we have no intention of stopping, because four stops were good enough for us last year, so doggone it, they’ll be good enough for us this year too. I look longingly at all the happy people at the refreshment tables, but keep pedaling. Bob makes no mention of stopping to see how he’s doing, as I knew he wouldn’t. He only hunches his shoulders further and speeds up. Halfway there.

This is, in some ways, the hardest part of the ride. Somewhere in this segment, I always reach the point where I leave my training mileage behind and roam into that special territory between training and the Big Event. Here is where I must take stock, reminding my body that we have only begun to suffer together, and there are many more miles to come. I must dig into those reserves that I have built up over all of those training rides and say, “I did it before and I can do it again.” Then I must say it again, because I don’t always believe myself the first time.

This year, that process is a little bit easier because they have changed the route. Now we get to go around some of the worst roads in Miles Standish State Park, trading the joy of riding uphill over frost heaves and potholes for a series of rolling hills on the perimeter of the park. We are still setting a blistering pace though, so I am grateful for the change. As we finally charge into the park, past the two ponds in the middle, and on to the 3rd rest stop, I am amazed by how early it is and by the fact that I am still with both Bob and Tyler. Bob looks like I feel: tired but still able to keep going. Tyler looks like he’s saving himself for the real race later on.

11:50 AM-12:00 PM, 3rd Rest Stop:

11:50 AM: 3rd stop. Between Tyler's blistering pace and Bob's competitive nature, we left everyone else behind. Caught the Toms, too.

Our hard charge through the middle of the ride has a couple of benefits. First, there’s still plenty of food and free swag waiting for us at the rest stop, and we stock up on both. Second, we caught up with the even faster portion of our team: The Toms and another one of Tyler’s Quad Cycle racing teammates. Tyler’s teammate assures me that, no, he doesn’t hate me or Bob. He just always rides like that. I guess that’s good to know.

The Toms have already rested, so they’re raring to go. I quickly refill my water bottle and grab a bite to eat. Since it’s lunch time, this stop has small sandwiches. I grab one that turns out to be turkey and eggplant and, after a moment’s hesitation, wolf it down. I haven’t always had the best results when mixing heavy foods and long rides, but it smells delicious and a man can only eat so many bagels before they lose their appeal. I’m sure I’ll be fine.

A little more wandering reveals a miniature convenience store/trade show set up on some tables near the food tent. One table holds ChapStick, sunscreen, and various sundries (all free), and another holds – oh joy! – free water bottles! I quickly grab two and return Tyler’s loaner to him. He’s grateful for the opportunity to stop carrying a PowerAde bottle in his jersey pocket, since that leaves more room for him to stuff in free samples from the drugstore table. To be polite, I fill one of the bottles with Cytomax, which is the company that’s giving the bottles away. After one drink, I discreetly dump it out, since it tastes like chilled horse urine.

Ten minutes after we arrived, we’re off again. My legs aren’t thrilled with the quick turnaround, but I’m glad to be riding with my team again.

12:00-1:02 PM, Miles 64-80:

12:48 PM: That turkey sandwich at the last rest stop was a bad idea...

Some people learn their lessons the first time. Others require a repeat. And then there are the stubborn ones, the ones who repeatedly think, “That was a fluke, it won’t happen again. The circumstances are completely different now.” These people are often known as knotheads, stubborn old cusses, or just plain fools. Or in this case: me.

I smelled those sandwiches and I thought, “Remember what happened a couple of years ago when you ate one of those?” I reminded myself of last year, when I fought stomach problems for forty miles. I told myself that even a regular breakfast sits like a cannonball in my stomach when I ride. Then I smelled the sandwiches again and thought, “Oh, it will be fine. What harm can a little sandwich do?” The more fool I.

The first few miles are fine, as I settle in behind Big Tom and enjoy both a slightly slower pace and the chance to draft behind a man who rides like a steam engine, steady and unwavering. At the first big hill, though, when I get out of my saddle and stand on the pedals to climb, I feel the first grumblings, that unexpected weight bouncing in my belly, and the pangs of food that requires more attention than my straining system can provide at the moment. I strain to keep up, but soon I must make a choice: drop back and take it slowly or pull over and puke. For the moment, I choose the former. I hate throwing up.

Bob takes pity on me and hangs back while the others chug away into the distance. Whether or not he’s using me as an excuse to rest himself, I’m grateful for the company. I tell him what I’m dealing with and he makes sympathetic noises as he pulls in front of me to let me draft. We ride like this for a while in silence until we get to another section of brutal hills approaching the Sagamore Bridge. I tell Bob to go ahead as I slow to a crawl, maintaining just enough speed to keep my bike from wobbling. It’s gravity vs. digestion, and I must concentrate to find the balance between the two. Once again, I seriously consider pulling over and forcefully ejecting the turkey sandwich from my system, but decide to hang on until I get to the bridge. If necessary, I can always hurl it into the Cape Canal when I get there. I even have a new tweet prepared for my followers on Twitter: “I have thrown up, and I feel better.”

I reach the bridge without tossing anything other than a few epithets and gratefully dismount for the walk across. Bob is waiting for me, but Tyler and the rest have gone ahead. I can just see Tyler’s green Quad Racing jersey halfway across the span. I take it easy as I walk, allowing my tummy to settle. By the time we reach the other side, I have decided to tough it out. The fish in the canal will have to find other food.

A few miles later, Bob and I coast into the final rest stop, where I gratefully park my bike and wobble over to the tents where the rest of the group awaits.

1:02-1:30 PM, 4th Rest Stop:

1:04 PM: 4th and final rest stop. 20 mi to go! I'm ready to be done. Tyler says I just need a soda.

This will not be a quick rest, not if I want to finish this thing. I take Tyler’s advice and have a soda, followed by two Tylenol from the medical tent and a cup of warm coffee. Besides my stomach, my neck and back are really starting to hurt. I gingerly nibble a little bit of bland food, then take the rest of into the shade beneath some trees and sit down. The rest of the team leaves without me after I assure them that I’ll just be a few minutes behind them. Then I lie down in the grass.

1:19 PM: Lying on the grass felt so good. Maybe I'll stay here for another 5 min or so...

Ten minutes later, I feel restored enough to continue. I check my phone one last time for updates from my wife, who is texting me updates from our son’s baseball game, then send out one more update of my own before I hit the road again.

1:29 PM: Stomach cramps are over. Time to man up, saddle up, and finish this thing!

1:30-2:52 PM, Miles 80-100:
This all feels so familiar: riding alone on the rolling hills of the Cape, wondering where everyone went. One of these days, I’m going to have to come down and start a ride down here, so that I can see what it feels like to ride without pain on Cape Cod. I hear it’s nice.

Fortunately, familiarity has bred, not contempt, but comfort. I know these roads, these hills, that access road. I know what they have in store for me, and I know how long it lasts. I also know how to beat them: ride fast, as fast as you can, and let gravity do the rest. You can beat these hills if you attack first. I cruise over the hills, setting the best pace my legs can sustain, and start passing people again. Not many, of course, not like last year or the year before, but still, I’m passing, not being passed. That’s what counts.

After ten miles, I feel the familiar fatigue wash over me. I’m ready to be done, standing in a hot shower and looking forward to a hamburger and a massage, not necessarily in that order. I’m not done, though, so I force my legs to keep churning, over the last few hills and into Hyannis proper. I nod to the well-kept inhabitants, who wave back and cheer me on. As I ride past the Kennedy complex I see a man and some children playing catch. I don’t know which one he is, but that’s definitely a Kennedy. He has the teeth. Soon, I’m pulling through the final loop before Craigsville Beach, expecting to see the rest of my teammates coming the other way. They’re probably already done by now, but a guy can hope.

Finally, the finish line comes into view. I stand on tired legs and race to the finish, where my bike is whisked away to the parking corral almost before I can dismount. Before I relinquish the bike, I check my cycling computer. I did the ride in 5:57, my fastest time ever by about 15 minutes. Even stomach cramps couldn’t completely erase the speed at which we raced through the first 2/3 of the ride.

2:54 PM: DONE!!! 100 miles in just under 6 hours. I'm ready for a shower, a massage, and a beer. Go Patriot Pedalers!

The finish line

2:52-7:15 PM, The Party:

3:57 PM: Happiness is a six-hand massage. By the time those 3 ladies were done w/me I barely felt like I'd ridden.

There is no better feeling than a massage after riding 100 miles, especially when it’s given by three people at once. I shower, and then receive my first ever “six-hand massage.” One woman works on my back while two others work my legs, all three of them pausing occasionally to pull my limbs in three different directions. It feels heavenly, and after fifteen minutes I feel like I can walk again without limping.

I wander into the food tent and find Tyler and Bob, who update me on their own finishes. Tyler, who dragged all of us along with him for the entire ride, cramped up from dehydration in the last couple of miles after deciding that he was tired of the taste of sports drinks. Bob, the guy who wasn’t sure if he’d even ride this year, finished ahead of all of us. The next time he tells me that his leg hurts, I’m going to kick him in it so I can get a head start.

The rest of the team rolls in a while later, and we all join at our team tables for the post-ride party. As I wander through the tent looking for a good beer and some dinner, I spot a few more celebrities walking around and update my friends:

4:21 PM: Verne Troyer is here, and I think I just saw Ryan from The Office. Oh, and a bunch of Patriots players.

The New England Patriots linemen, Nick Kaczur and Stephen Neal, are both friendly and polite. We chat with them for ten minutes or so and they are full of appreciation for what we all have done. “I like to ride, but I don’t think I could do what you guys just did,” says Neal, right before he is tackled by Danny’s son, Aaron, who is a Buddy himself. Aaron knows all of the Patriots players who come to the Best Buddies events, and is always eager to renew his acquaintance with them.

Tom Brady is here, too. As the honorary chairman of the event, he presents the awards for fastest riders, best fundraisers, and top teams before doing some fundraising of his own. This year, he has 40 footballs up on the stage with him, and for $1000 will sign one and throw it to people in the crowd. As the bidding begins and the balls start flying through the air, I seriously consider whether $1000 is worth it to be able to tell my 9-year-old son that I caught a Tom Brady pass. Fortunately, my son is very practical and I know what he’ll say. “Daddy, that’s a lot of money. You could have bought three Xboxes for that.” So I refrain, because no one wants to get an economics lesson from someone who still asks for help tying his shoes.

For the concert this year we get the Bangles, who still rock surprisingly well for ladies who, in their own words, “now qualify for AARP.” I am a little concerned, though, because we’ve now gone through most of the early 80’s pop bands still in existence. Unless Loverboy or Earth, Wind, and Fire get back together, I don’t know who’s going to perform next year. Still, it’s a fun concert, and I do enjoy a good rendition of “Manic Monday.”

5:41 PM: The Bangles can still rock.

With the music still blasting, I slip out the back of the tent to catch my ride home with Tyler and Bob. Tyler’s wife Robin came down to meet him, and they have graciously offered to bring us home so we don’t have to take the bus. As Robin roars down the highway, I realize that we are finishing our day just as it began: with Tyler in the front and me and Bob holding on for dear life behind him.

The afternoon sky slowly darkens as the SUV quickly eats up the miles that took us so long to travel earlier in the day. I watch the signposts bearing the names of the towns that we passed through, flashing by in reverse in the lowering twilight, and I send out one last note to the friends who have shared this journey with me:

7:15 PM: Heading home for a well-deserved rest. Farewell for now Buddies!

It's not too late to support these great kids. Click here to support me and Best Buddies.

Slowest. Ride log. Ever.

2009-06-21T18:05:00.004-06:00

Again, my apologies for how long it's taking to get this thing written. I hope it's worth the wait. If you're wondering why it's taking so blasted long to write a simple ride report, here's a hint.

I told my family that all I wanted for Father's Day was some time to write, so I hope to get this done before the end of the day and posted soon after.

Thank you for your patience, cycling fans!

It's coming, it's coming...

2009-06-08T08:37:00.002-06:00

Several people have asked about this year's Best Buddies ride log. All I can say is: it's coming, don't get your bike shorts in a bunch. I started writing, but it was a busy weekend and I didn't get the couple of hours alone that I need to finish it. So hang in there, faithful readers, and it will be here soon.

In the meantime, here's a tidbit to tide you over:

Tyler, meanwhile, is using the weather as an opportunity to convert others over to his freakish practices and sees a potentially willing convert in Bob:

Tyler: Rainy days like this are why I shave my legs
Bob: What?
Tyler: Yeah, you see, when it's wet like this, you can coat your legs with Vaseline. It works as well as wearing rain pants, but you don't have to worry about taking them off later! If I didn't shave my legs, then that would just be gross.
Bob: Are you sure that's the only thing you're using the Vaseline for, Tyler?

If you need a bigger fix, you can go here for links to previous years' ride logs.

More to come (soon, I promise!).

I still won't grow up!

2009-05-29T19:15:00.006-06:00

I just came back from a visit to Boulder, CO, and I was blown away by a couple of things:

About 53,000 people think that running a 10K (the Bolder-Boulder) at 5400' elevation is a great idea.
A whole community of passionate people has gathered there to build cool software and have fun doing it.

I thought that idealists like this died out in the Great Technology Ice Age of 2001, when it suddenly became uncool (or maybe just unprofitable) to enjoy your work. I guess a few survived, or maybe these folks are just too young to remember those dark days.

Well, thinking about this on the plane ride back reminded me of a piece I wrote a few years ago. Since I'm probably the only person who ever read it, I figured I'd bring it out of cold storage and share it again.

I Won't Grow Up!
I have to say, I am so grateful for the grownups in the business world. They have taught me so much and helped me to mend my foolish, childish ways. You see, I used to actually think that people were supposed to enjoy their work: imagine that! What did I think this was, college? As it turns out, to be a successful, mature company, you must put such silly notions out of your head and realize what business is really all about: obligations, responsibility, and the burden of respectability.

Young companies and entrepreneurs are allowed to play for a while, but the grownups demand their due in the end. Eventually, the press and the other experienced business leaders start saying the things that all grownups say to young adults: "You can't keep playing around like this forever, you know. Eventually, you'll have to start recognizing your responsibilities. You have a duty to the board, to your shareholders, and to the market that must be shouldered. There are bills to pay, reports to deliver, five-year plans to assemble. You've had your fun, but now it's time to start acting like an adult."

Adulthood, according to our wise gray mentors, is a collection of obligations: to family, to country, to employer. There is no room for fun, because that implies that we have some energy left to spend on ourselves. Grownups live a life of dull daily sacrifice, and are glad, in their gray way, to do it. They protect what they have, risk little, and ensure that their obligations will always be met. If they have a little extra time, they pull weeds.

If this is adulthood, then I'm with Peter Pan:

I won't grow up,
I don't want to wear a tie.
And a serious expression
In the middle of July.

And if it means I must prepare
To shoulder burdens with a worried air,

I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me!
Here's my childish manifesto:
I will cling to the belief that work can be fun, fulfilling, and profitable, all at the same time. I will refuse to accept that a happy employee is an inefficient one, or that money spent on quality of work life is wasted. I will continue to expect that, if I challenge people to rise beyond what they have done before, to push their boundaries and to push each other, they will rise to the challenge and smile while doing so.

I will not accept the belief that in order to get the most out of people you must beat them down first. I will never allow the frowning grownups with their clucking about "obligation" to convince me that life is only meant to be survived.
I may have to spend the rest of my life as an adult, but I refuse to spend it as a grownup! And,

If growing up means
It would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree,
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me!

Let's get ready to ride!

2009-05-29T16:06:00.007-06:00

It's that time again: time to roll with my Best Buddies to Hyannisport! This will be my fifth year riding with the Patriot Pedalers (and Senator Kerry, of course). As usual, we plan to have more fun on the ride than we do at the clambake afterwards, but that, as they say, is just how we roll.

We're expecting good weather for once, which makes for great riding but a slightly less entertaining ride log. I'll try to make up for it by getting lost or crashing into someone famous (maybe the senator again, if he doesn't have those Secret Service guys with him: they have no sense of humor!).

I'll also be posting updates to Twitter and Facebook throughout the ride, so click on the box at the right to follow me if you want to feel like you're part of the joy, pain, grease, and grit of a 100-mile bike ride.

For those bike geeks who want to see the route, it's available below:

To quote Hopper in A Bug's Life: Let's ride!

PS - It's not too late to support me and Best Buddies. Just go to http://tinyurl.com/bbhpc-jc to make a donation.

Time to go the distance

2009-04-24T21:50:00.008-06:00

Spring is in the air (finally), and this young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of... mileage.

It's time to dust off the bike shorts, grease up the chain, and start riding. Actually, it's been that time for about a month now, but now is when it gets fun because now it gets real. The Best Buddies Hyannisport Challenge is only five weeks away, and I'm preparing to ride 100 miles on May 30 to raise money for Best Buddies International. This weekend, my weekend training distance will be 45 miles, and I'll be adding another 5 miles every week until the end of the month.

This will be my fifth year riding with the Patriot Pedalers in the Best Buddies Hyannisport Challenge, and I've recorded the experience here on this blog:

Best Buddies is a non-profit organization founded by Anthony Kennedy Shriver in 1989, dedicated to helping people with intellectual disabilities form friendships and find jobs in their community. It has been integral to the lives of our team captain, Danny Watt, and his family for years. Their son Aaron, who is mentally challenged, has been blessed by Best Buddies in his school and in his life, and I am thrilled for the opportunity to help them reach out to other families in the same way.

If you're interested in supporting my own special brand of crazy, please do. This year, I'm hoping to raise $2,500. I am looking for donations of all sizes, either a predetermined amount or a per mile amount. I know that times are tougher this year for many people than they have been in the past, but in tough times the people on the margins of society often suffer the most, so I feel that it is more important than ever to support the great work that Best Buddies is doing.

Ideas:
$0.50 a mile = $50.00
$1.00 a mile = $100.00
$2.00 a mile = $200.00 (This entitles you to a letter from Anthony Shriver, and one raffle ticket for a chance to win two tickets to the Victory Celebration on May 17 in Hyannis Port)

Follow this link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support Best Buddies International

Unlike many fundraisers, 100% of the funds I raise will go directly to Best Buddies. Any contribution you can spare will go a long way to my achieving this goal.

As in previous years, my supporters get an added benefit: everyone who supports me will receive a personal bound* copy of my ride log before it's posted to the blog, allowing you to share the pain, humor, and pathos of 100 miles and 6+ hours spent on a very narrow seat. The worse the weather gets, the more entertaining the read, or so I'm told, so pray for rain if you want to be entertained.

* - if you print out the email, take it to Kinko's, and ask them to bind it for you