The Big Disruption Read online

  “Pretty ballsy to suggest all of our code is a mess,” Roni said. “I would respectfully disagree, but I applaud your moxie. You must be good at debugging.”

  Arsyen’s face pruned. “Bugs,” he spit. “I kill them every day.”

  “Awesome. Me too, me too. Obviously, there’s no coding in a P.M. job, but people here will respect you a lot more if you have an engineering background.”

  Arsyen didn’t know what Roni meant by “P.M. job.” Was it a powerful mopper? A plumbing manager?

  Roni dipped his hand into the brown paper bag and slowly pulled out an enormous sandwich. Arsyen watched as he slowly removed the plastic and unfolded a paper napkin, square by square, until finally smoothing it before him. Roni paused and bent his head toward his sandwich, lifting his hands just slightly in prayer. And then, suddenly, the hands disappeared, the plastic wrap was on the other side of the table, and the sandwich was half hanging out of Roni’s mouth. Turds of tuna fell onto the napkin below.

  “Let’s get going, shall we? I only ask one big question in my interviews. I’m kinda known for that. It’s all about the process, about how you go after it. It’s not what you say, it’s what you say, okay?”

  Arsyen nodded.

  “So,” began Roni. “You’re a pirate and — ”

  “No, a prince.”

  “Huh? Oh right, haha. Well, for the purpose of this question, you’re a pirate. If you want, you can be the captain of the pirate ship. Does that work?”

  “A captain is king of the pirate ship?”

  “Exactly. Now you and your crew discover a treasure chest with one hundred gold coins, and you have to find a way to split it up.”

  “I give no gold. Gold is mine,” Arsyen said.

  “Well, now wait, that’s the catch. If you don’t give the other pirates anything, they will throw you off the ship. In order not to be killed, you have to come up with a way to distribute the coins so that at least half of the pirates agree with your proposal.”

  “I kill them and take gold,” said Arsyen, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand.

  “Not so fast,” Roni said. “You’re the captain, but you’re outnumbered. So you can’t kill them — though I like your aggressiveness.

  “Now, if you get killed, another pirate will have to come up with a proposal, but then he could be killed, too, so it goes to the next pirate. And so on and so on. So it’s in everyone’s interest to agree on a proposal right from the start — but also maximize their profit. It’s basically a distribution problem. Actually, you know, I was given the same problem when I came to interview at Anahata. Except my interviewer used the Easter Bunny and a bunch of eggs, and the pirates were actually little kids and…”

  But Arsyen had already stopped listening. His family had plundered plenty of ancient treasure over the centuries, swindling mercenaries, gangsters, and, yes, occasionally pirates — stealing from the very worst of mankind to give to the good people of Pyrrhia.

  “You can use this whiteboard here to work through the problem,” said Roni, pointing to one of the walls. “Take your time.”

  “One gold coin,” answered Arsyen. “You give pirates one coin each.”

  Roni’s eyes bulged.

  “Wow, uh, okay, that was quick. I mean, how did you…I mean, the whiteboard…Like, if there’s two pirates and then you figure out…Wait, how did you do this so fast? Talk me through the math.”

  “In time to do math, other pirates kill captain,” Arsyen answered. “Capitan use brain.” He tapped the side of his head, just in case Roni wasn’t sure where the brain was located. Roni seemed a bit dim; he clearly had never been a pirate or even known one.

  “Oh yeah, like, totally,” said Roni, regaining his composure. “I mean, yeah, it’s not difficult. But, um, we still have some time left, so…”

  Roni looked around the room, then jumped up from the table and scribbled something on the whiteboard.

  How do you use data to make your decisions?

  He stood back, shook his head, then erased it.

  Describe how you would improve your favorite Anahata product.

  He erased that one just as quickly.

  Then he tried something else.

  Automation.

  He grinned and returned to the table.

  “Okay, pick something in the modern home and tell me what technologies you would use to automate it.

  “No automation. Hire more servants,” Arsyen said.

  “Huh? Uh, no, you can’t have more servants,” said Roni, shaking his head.

  “Why? Because someone killed them?”

  “Let’s try this again,” said Roni, his face reddening slightly, fingers pressing into his napkin. “I want a technical framework for how you would go about automating something in your house.”

  Arsyen couldn’t resist a smirk. Everyone in the Valley wanted to automate everything, but to what end? All they were really doing was getting rid of people’s jobs, which of course meant the peasants would eventually rise up and slaughter them. Technologists were so naive.

  “Not all innovation so good,” said Arsyen, shaking his head.

  “Wrong! One hundred percent wrong!” Roni screamed, jumping out of his chair and waving a mayo-covered finger in Arsyen’s face.

  Roni stood and stormed to the door. “Recruiter!” he shouted. “Recruiter!”

  He stomped out of the room and began to pace, mostly muttering to himself, occasionally yelling “internet of things!” and then hitting the side of his head with his palm over and over again.

  Arsyen sighed inwardly — another janitor diva. He wondered what sort of extraordinary cleaning product or technique Roni had invented for Anahata to put up with such behavior. Or maybe he was just one of those early hires the company never managed to get rid of.

  A tall man with a crew cut walked by and Roni waved him down.

  “Gregor!” he shouted. The man stopped but did not seem particularly pleased to see him.

  Roni was gesturing rapidly, shaking his head, pointing at Arsyen in the room. Arsyen couldn’t entirely make out what he was saying, but he was sure he heard the word “Galt.” The man turned to look at Arsyen, and the Prince of Pyrrhia sat up straight and puffed out his chest. But the man’s blank expression gave nothing away.

  A moment later, both men were standing before him.

  “What did you work on at Galt?” demanded the tall man with the crew cut.

  “Bathrooms, hallways, computer screens. Much innovation,” Arsyen said.

  Roni and the crew cut exchanged glances.

  “We’re not going to get anything out of him.”

  “But he surely knows things,” Gregor said.

  “Do you know things?” Roni asked.

  Arsyen nodded vigorously. He had enough experience in his father’s court to know that it was always best to agree with an important person — unless they were interrogating you about murder or adultery.

  The crew cut stared at Arsyen for a beat longer, then turned to Roni, whispering a few words Arsyen couldn’t make out. Then, without a goodbye or any acknowledgement of Arsyen’s presence, he turned on his heel and marched out the door.

  A second later, Roni was grinning, his hand extending again to Arsyen.

  “Congrats — the job is yours!”

  A rsyen was sure he had seen her before — though certainly not here, in the Anahata reception area, seated at a long white desk, her figure backlit by a neon “welcome!” sign.

  He studied her face — the brown hair moving in slow waves past her shoulders, the slightly raised cheekbones. Her lips moved silently, murmuring secrets and chants — things Arsyen wanted to know. His gaze moved again across her face, settling on her blue, almond-shaped eyes. And then he knew.

  The woman was Xeri. His Xeri. But she was a Xeri scrubbed clean, stripped of her crossbow and pointy elfin ears, her dirty wolf cape and leather skirt that hid a dagger in the belt loop. With her lo
ng, gauzy dress and random assortment of beaded necklaces, this Xeri was more flower child than assassin. And while that was less of a turn-on, this Xeri had one big thing going for her. She was much better than his World of Warcraft girlfriend. She was real.

  It wouldn’t have been such a shock had Arsyen not already resigned himself to the idea that this breed of woman didn’t exist in his corner of America. In his four years of working in Silicon Valley, Arsyen had run into plenty of her gender: ogre women, mustachioed women, circus women. But none like this: an attractive woman. It was like she was from another part of California entirely.

  Minutes passed as the woman typed on her computer, pale-pink fingernails knocking against the keyboard like little woodpeckers. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.

  He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass wall behind her — a strong Pyrrhian man, with muscles as ropey as the hair on his arms, and a powerful chin whose virile charms were enhanced by the large and uniquely crooked Aimo nose. He was white like the glossy coat of the rare Pyrrhian ram.

  His reflection frowned back at him. Would she find him a bit short?

  Of course not. Back in Pyrrhia, the women always complimented him on his height.

  “Arsyen?”

  The woman was looking up at him, her smile the product of America’s strong belief in orthodontics. Good humor was cheap currency in this country, but the woman’s smile was different, it was angelic, it was —

  Arsyen decided then he would make her his queen. Her big white teeth would be admired by all his people.

  “Uh…Arsyen?”

  Arsyen snapped back into focus. He had a girlfriend back in Pyrrhia who was dreaming of him and only him every night. He was at Anahata for his job — the job that would free his people from the starvation and terrors of the current regime. He didn’t have time for beautiful women — at least not the ones who didn’t accept cash.

  “You’re all set up as a new Anahata employee, or Anahatis, as we call ourselves.”

  The woman walked out from behind the desk and extended her hand. She smelled vaguely of vanilla.

  “I’m Jennie,” she said cheerfully, seemingly unaware of the mild earthquake that shook Arsyen as their palms touched. “Here’s your badge. Don’t lose it — it’s what gives you access to everything here.”

  Jennie badged them into the main part of the building, a different one than Arsyen had visited for his job interview. An enormous skylight stretched the building’s length; Arsyen could even see clouds moving across the blue sky above. Suspended from the ceiling by wires and blocking the sun’s glare, an old NASA rocket and a fiberglass T. rex charged at each other from opposite ends of the building.

  To Arsyen’s left, running along the outside wall of one cubicle, a ticker tape documented connections made through the company’s latest product, Moodify, a social network designed to connect people based on their moods, heart rates, and favorite video games. Although he didn’t know much about technology, Arsyen had recently bought a Moodify bracelet. It pained him that his video game and gadget expenditures had to come out of his throne reclamation fund, but it was very important that the future leader of Pyrrhia be up to date on the latest technology and first-person-shooter attack and defense techniques.

  Arsyen’s Moodify bracelet glowed red — the same color, he was certain, as Jennie’s. He waited to see their names cross the ticker tape in a flashing red arrow, suggesting a love connection, but the Moodify technology seemed to be broken. He turned to speak, but Jennie was already on the other side of the hall, standing before an enormous aquarium that stretched the length of the wall. Her bracelet pulsed with blue light. Arsyen shook his head and double-checked to see if his bracelet had changed colors. Maybe he just needed to stand closer. He ran to catch up with his future queen.

  J ennie spotted the squid from across the floor, its peach mass hovering above a cluster of neon corals and sea plants. The squid was no longer part of the company tour — nowadays animals were included only if they were robotic — but Jennie liked to stop by at least once a week to say hello.

  “Hi friend,” said Jennie, tapping the glass.

  The squid wove its tentacles around a cluster of kelp, ripping the plant from its seabed and pressing it against the glass as if in offering.

  “So sweet,” Jennie giggled.

  “What this?” said a man’s voice behind her.

  Oh…him. Jennie had almost forgotten about him. Who was he — Arse…Arsi…Ass? She glanced down at her HR form. Arsyen.

  “This is our squid,” said Jennie, stretching her receptionist’s smile toothy and wide as she turned to face him.

  As far as product managers went, he seemed particularly underwhelming — they’d already been walking for ten minutes and he hadn’t even tried to lecture her about anything. How was it that Anahata could overlook people like Jennie in favor of dopey guys like Arsyen? Jennie had applied to ten internal jobs this quarter alone, ranging from online sales assistant to VP of infrastructure engineering, and hadn’t gotten a single bite. Most of the time they told her she wasn’t the right “culture fit.” Sometimes they claimed she wasn’t qualified — Jennie, who had an almost-PhD in Russian literature and fifteen online entrepreneurship degrees and had watched every single TED Talk ever recorded.

  “Big fish,” said Arsyen, clearly demonstrating his superior intellect. “Other fish here too?”

  “Not anymore. We used to have other fish, but they just kept disappearing while the squid here kept getting bigger and bigger. So it’s just him now. Some people think he ate the smaller fish, but I think he’s just a misunderstood giant.”

  Jennie wanted to point out to Arsyen that she had just created a metaphor. She was obviously the squid, but prettier.

  But instead she just smiled. Jennie knew her poetry would be lost on someone with an engineering degree.

  “You can visit him whenever you want,” she said. “And if you make it past the first week, you can even sign up to feed him.”

  “The first week…?”

  Jennie did a double take.

  “Didn’t you read your offer letter?”

  “Um…”

  Jennie rifled through the HR paperwork. “Here,” she said, thrusting a paper at Arsyen and tapping the middle of the page with a pink fingernail.

  “‘Anahata reserves the right to terminate your contract at any point during your first week,’” Jennie quoted. “And by ‘any point,’ they mean even during the first five minutes.”

  Jennie saw the panic that flashed across Arsyen’s face and couldn’t resist pushing things a bit further.

  “I should probably fire you right now,” she said. “In fact — ”

  Jennie ripped Arsyen’s red badge out of his hand and started to walk away.

  “But I — ”

  Jennie stopped and sighed. The truth was she had no power to fire anyone at Anahata. It was fun to mess with Arsyen, but if she wasn’t careful, he could end up firing her. The only power receptionists had was over the refrigerator in the reception area.

  She turned to face him.

  “If you had read your contract, you’d know that I can’t fire you,” Jennie said.

  “Phew!”

  Jennie scribbled a note on Arsyen’s HR form: Employee did not read contract. In another profession, that would have been a ding against Arsyen, but at Anahata, managers seemed to view noncompliance among their technical staff as a sign of genius.

  “What you doing?” said Arsyen, lifting onto his toes to catch a glimpse of what Jennie had written.

  “You’ll be fine,” said Jennie, waving away his concern as she pushed him out of the building and onto the lawn. “The only thing you need to do is keep your manager happy and, well, watch out for other engineers.” She gestured toward a group of men sitting on a picnic table, gathered around a computer. “I can’t fire you, but they can.”

  The largest man in the group turned in their dire
ction, stretching his arms above his head. Jennie recognized him from the previous week, when she had seen him fire a new engineer for choosing a Diet Coke instead of a Red Bull from the micro-kitchen.

  The engineer’s mouth roared in a wide, silent yawn, and his eyes scanned the area around him, moving across the various employees walking across the grass. His gaze fell on Arsyen and a trigger within him seemed to be pulled. He threw his pale, hairy legs over the bench and began to lope toward them.

  “Quick!” hissed Jennie, pushing Arsyen into the nearest building.

  She didn’t care about Arsyen, but she did care about her orientation success rate. To date, she was the only Anahata receptionist who had completed all of her new employee tours without having a single employee fired.

  Jennie found an empty meeting room and closed the door behind them.

  “That was close!” she said. “Sorry, I should have explained earlier. My badge is white, but your badge is red.”

  “Red is for special employees?” asked Arsyen, puffing out his chest.

  “I guess you could say that,” shrugged Jennie. “Most of the employees with red badges are contractors. Those are the employees we like…but not so much as to give them health care — you know, like cafeteria workers and security guards. The other people who get red badges are like you — provisional employees who need to pass their first week. Anyway, the point is you’ll need your badge to get into buildings, but the rest of the time you should hide it in your pocket.”

  Jennie poked her head out the door. The engineer was pacing the hall. She shut the door and turned to face Arsyen.

  “Never show fear. Engineers can smell it a mile away. Half of succeeding here is just acting like you’re right about stuff even when you aren’t.”

  Jennie glanced at Arsyen’s HR sheet. He was assigned to Building 7, which housed some of the company’s coolest projects, like Social Car and Builder. Maybe she could butter up to him and he could get her a job there. Though, on second thought, Arsyen seemed a little creepy and could misinterpret her intentions. The last thing Jennie needed was another work drama. A few weeks earlier she had made the mistake of hooking up with Niels Smeardon, Anahata’s SVP of sales. She had done everything he wanted — told him that his penis and sales strategy presentation were the biggest she had ever seen; she even let him balance his computer on her back so he could send a few urgent emails right after they had sex. And all of that had gotten her nothing but a reassignment by the HR team to the main reception area, far away from the sales buildings.