Shimmer (21 page)

Whitley glanced at me, smiling slightly. Struck not only by the concerns Leonard was now raising but by the matter-of-fact way in which he could discuss these issues.

“In summary,” Leonard said to us, thick hand brushing against his ear, “we could damage the network even more by trying to restart it.”

I saw Whitley's mouth open, not sure what to say, her eyes wide as we continued to wend our way through the people all looking at us. “That's important for me to know, Leonard,” she said. “Can you maybe fill in some details?”

“Rather than take up a lot of our time with the particulars of the various negative scenarios,” he said flatly, hands raised as if holding a large ball, or maybe the world, “it's probably best if you picture all those bad movies you've seen where the mad professor is desperate to give power to the broken machine.” He turned his head full around, walking backward, and it was amazing to see so much girth turn a circle. “He flips a switch. The lights dim. Sparks fly. There is smoke. Tears. Failure.”

“Except that instead of smoke,” Whitley offered warily, “we'll just see the system go dead?”

“Actually,” Leonard said, still walking backward, in some ways seeming to tumble easily toward the DMZ behind him, “there could be smoke. And however this turns out, sparks are pretty much a given.”

“This is a terrible time for you to develop a sense of irony,” Whitley said to him.

Leonard squinted. “I hadn't noticed.”

“Maybe we should wait a little longer before doing this,” Whitley finally said. “Run some more tests. Explore some more of those precautions you would normally take.”

Leonard shook his head. “I don't think so,” he said, his wide face pinched and serious. “If it doesn't work now, we'll still have a few hours to try some more drastic measures. Assuming, of course, that we don't destroy every working computer in the building.”

Whitley could only pull hard on my sleeve, the scared child clutching for safety and protection.

“And besides,” Leonard added, turning to us again, another slow and fluid motion as his face opened into a smile, “we're all pretty eager to see what's going to happen.”

Leonard opened the door to the DMZ.

The seats in the DMZ were filled with techs, some terminals doubled up with wide-eyed administrators waiting now for the restart. Along the back wall stood just a few people, Perry and Cliff and Julie, now joined by Whitley as I followed Leonard to the middle of the room. He took his seat very slowly, gently fitting himself behind the narrow desk, now carefully checking the height of his chair, the position of his keyboard, the brightness and contrast of the three screens in front of him.

At many companies, Leonard would have been blamed completely for this. But everyone knew it was only because of Leonard's abilities that we had even a chance of restarting the system. Leonard couldn't access Shimmer, the most critical element of our system. And so this was not Leonard's fault.

Yet suddenly, for the first time that day, I wondered if Leonard understood this. Because now, standing behind him, seeing the faintest reflection of his face in each of the three bright screens, now I did see Leonard blink his heavy lids an extra second, saw him tap extra hard on the keyboard, and I knew that of course Leonard was not calm, knew he saw no humor in any of this. Leonard was simply scared. Hiding it better than anyone else. But scared. Because this job, this system, the people all taking direction from him, the thousands more dependent on his next move, together it all formed the very center of the life of this twenty-six-year-old boy. This was his existence, summed up, in total.

For Leonard, there was nothing more.

I leaned toward him. I said quietly, “Let's give it a go.”

Leonard looked at me and said, “Yes,” as he turned from me to the computer, reaching to the keyboard to send off the drone that would attempt to restore the system. But before he touched the keyboard, he turned back to me briefly, and I said a few words to him, and in a moment I was already quietly laughing, laughing before Leonard touched his keyboard again, before the drone was released, laughing and smiling, both of us smiling, and the lore that would surround that moment became a story repeated companywide, a Core fable no two people remembered quite the same way but that every person knew, all of them saying I'd laughed simply because I knew the network would be restored. Knew it as if I knew everything, knew it because I was the founding CEO, the top visionary who whispered some blessing in the ear of one of his most important prophets before our miracle was sent out into our world.

I never told anyone this wasn't true. Never told anyone that I hadn't laughed because I'd known Leonard would make this work. Never told anyone that I'd laughed simply because of the way Leonard had turned to me, blank-faced, wanting something, wanting simply some warmth and support, and I'd said only, “I know, I know,” and he'd smiled then, quickly, child-like in his satisfaction, almost giggling as he nodded toward me, taking a moment to raise his hand to me, delaying the salvation of the company by just a second or two as he touched me, firmly, on the arm.

I do not like to be touched.

But now even Leonard had decided to get in on the joke.

And so I had laughed. Laughing that spread to the crowd of fifty around us, then the crowd outside the DMZ, then the people on other floors, all laughing as the board lit up white, then green, the terminals flickering, shining, glowing back at us all, the network responding, all processes, all steps, unfolding as planned.

It had worked.

There was drinking then, even music, even dancing and most of all
a steady, sometimes frenzied, only barely exaggerated repetition of the story of the crash and the effort to restore the network, people who'd worked side by side for twenty-four hours now retelling each step they'd taken, nodding rapidly at one another, reliving each moment, retelling it again, nodding and smiling and lost to the pleasure of the work they had done.

And I was laughing. Telling stories too. Celebrating with each person I could.

Cliff almost bouncing, bouncing in place, from room to room, a few times lightly bouncing off a wall or desk.

Whitley and Julie seeming to teach Leonard his first dance, pulling him into the center of the happiest of groups, all of them now reaching to touch Leonard's mass, patting his shoulders, pulling at his arms, and he danced and spun and smiled.

Perry staying with the group, this rolling late-night party, staying with it till the end, off to the side, sitting alone, but staying even when all eyes had turned away.

And everyone laughing.

And me, I was laughing too.

Laughing even when I'd gone back to my office, checking the shadow network, seeing each part of it working, seeing each part of it unscathed, untouched by the crash.

Laughing as I watched Shimmer shine so bright, numbers spinning, lines spread evenly, multiplying once, twice and again.

Laughing, although silently, as Eugene called me on my phone, telling me he had accepted the offer. Saying he had signed and returned the documents to us.

Laughing because of course we'd won that battle too.

Laughing because, although Regence was still a threat of unknown scope, it seemed right now that there was no way we wouldn't conquer it too.

Laughing and thinking about Trevor, my sometime cousin and would-be brother, still lying awake in one more hotel out there, and
once more I wanted him to have been here, to have seen this, to have been a part of something he had never experienced in his life.

Laughing with the group again, the programmers and the vice presidents and the admins and everyone, all gathered around the DMZ, in the offices and hallways and conference rooms they'd commandeered, drinking beer with the cables still running under their feet, strung over the desks, taped to the ceilings and chairs.

Laughing and talking and drinking with the hundreds of people still there, all night, till one o'clock, then two. Laughing till I went up to my apartment. Alone and staring out toward the skyline of Manhattan around me. Laughing till I was quiet. Till it had passed. Till all that was left was the picture of Leonard's child-like grin as he'd touched me. And the smile of every person celebrating our success. And the laugh of every person who knew we could never be stopped.

And only now did I cry.

It had worked. It had worked.

My God, it worked.

And soon I would destroy them all.

It's his stomach, really. He was born with a weak stomach. As a child he got carsick, seasick, airsick, all of it.

It's Cliff's stomach more than anything.

He sits on his back porch, kids all playing. Ten kids, more, his kids and their friends and some parents from the neighborhood. It is sunny and warm and the kids roam in laughing, screaming packs across his yard, in and out of his house.

He is trying to eat, but he can't.

And he is trying to forget work, but he can't.

Network collapse, Eugene and his journal, Regence a threat they can't fully see or understand.

There is someone talking to him on the porch. Cliff responds, says words, but he is not really there.

And he doesn't want to think about work. Doesn't want to talk about work.

But he can't put it away.

Usually it's a game to him. Accounting and finance, some funny game he came upon. He liked history, and English. But math was easy. A funny, easy distraction from the things he liked to read.

And then he needed a job. And it all got even funnier. These people grinding numbers on spreadsheets on their screens. Talking gibberish, their accounting lingo. Rollover, cash flow, receivables, net. He liked it. And she was pregnant. And so he took a job, and fifteen years later, he was CFO of Core Communications.

Even through the first few years at Core, it all made him smile. He could see everything, this company and the ones they acquired. The turning of the money, the flow of cash among so many divisions, the lines of credit and stock transfers. He saw it all. Consolidations of the income statements, and depreciation of the assets, and amortization of the interest.

For those first years, Cliff could see each part, each function, each activity in the finances.

But now he can't see it all. He can't pull each piece together anymore. It all balances. It is all checked and audited, and it conforms to the highest standards he can impose. But there is something underneath it, some untouchable movement that even he can't see.

An auditor in the UK asked him a question he could not answer. About money paid to a vendor. About the timing and source. He knew the answer, the source of funds, the bank account and purpose. But. He couldn't answer. Because the payment was slightly off. The timing was wrong. The money hit the account, then moved. Moved sooner than it should have.

He could have answered that auditor, put the question away. But he didn't. Because he didn't understand.

He takes a bite of food, chewing slowly, carefully. It is just bread.

He's already quietly started an internal audit in the UK. So that he can understand.

He calculated grace this morning. Less than three months away.

He knows he is talking now, responding to what this person is saying.

He smiles as he talks, still chewing, still looking around at these children, all of them, roaming so happily in the light around him, movements for a second slowed in his eyes, and he has to blink, needs to finish this food, needs to sleep. At grace he will sleep.

Why would the money move that way?

Now there was the spin. Spin for the press, the clients, the market and investors. Because, by Monday morning after the network had been restored, the rumors were spreading. There were questions from our clients. There were rumors among reporters. There were half stories being passed between brokers and analysts. Although everyone in the company knew the network failure had to be kept a secret, still it was impossible to keep something like this completely quiet. Some VP speaking to his family, some security guard talking to a friend, some rogue section playing a joke. There were thousands of ways whispers about the network crash could spread.

By ten that morning, there was a growing number of e-mails to our PR department. Stories in the chat rooms devoted to rumors about stocks. Questions from our contacts at supplier companies. Phone calls from stock analysts hearing and spreading these same rumors themselves.

And by eleven, our stock had dipped $6. The first decline in eight months. The first substantial decline ever.

By noon, the stock had fallen another $4. The calls and messages mounted. Hits to our Web site were doubling every five minutes—the press, the brokers, day traders all looking to our site for information.

Our response companywide was that, at this time, we had no response.

Because this was what I had said to do. I said to wait.

“The uninhibited nature of the favors offered to me today in exchange for information about the stock,” said Julie, staring into her computer, clearly skimming through e-mails, deleting them as she moved on, “borders on the scandalous. The profane. Even for me.”

The stock fell another $2.

By one o'clock, the senior staff had all brought their laptops to my office, ostensibly to discuss the ramifications of the stock drop but really seeming only to want to be together, in my presence maybe, at the very moment I gave the nod. The moment I told them it was time to respond.

By one-thirty, the stock had fallen another $4.

All five of us—Cliff, Leonard, Julie, Whitley and I—tried to go about our work as usual. But none of us strayed from my office for long. All of us clinging to the security of our combined presence.