The Beam: Season One (58 page)

“How did they sort through all of them?”
 

The girl giggled again. Noah thought it was distinctly possible that
she
liked
him
, but having never been a ladykiller, he had a hard time believing he wasn’t imagining things.
 

“What?” he said, not understanding her lack of response.

She shrugged. “I don’t know if I should say.”
 

“Trade secret?”
 

“Maybe.”
 

Knowing he was being manipulative but curious to proceed, Noah said, “No offense, but if it were a trade secret, do you think the receptionist would know about it?”
 

She could have gotten offended at that, but she didn’t. Instead, she seemed to agree and then answered the question. “I guess not. Okay, they shredded them.”
 

“Ouch.”
 

“You know how they call Mr. Stone ‘Buddha’s Brain’? Well, it’s not just because of the shaved head. He’s really into Eastern thinking.” She looked around as if keenly aware of her lips loosening. She became louder after noting that every door into the offices was closed. Electronic soundproofing would be standard in a building so new, which meant that whatever she said, no one else would hear. “Anyway, he got an idea from… I don’t know, a monk test or something. They kept rejecting people, tossing their resumes. Then they would wait to see who came back in spite of being turned away.”
 

“And those people got interviews.”
 

“Well, I think they’re scheduled,” she said, looking upward as if in realization that no actual interviews had been conducted.

The phone rang again and the receptionist took the call, but Noah had already decided not to press her further. He drained his coffee and chewed his apple to a core, mentally stringing the pieces together. If the girl knew more about the hiring process, she really
shouldn’t
tell him, and he already knew what he needed to anyway. Even the die-hard applicants for the EverCrunch opening, who’d kept coming back after being rebuked, hadn’t landed face time with the boss. And yet here Noah was, ready to meet Stone in person. And what was more, he hadn’t called them; it was EverCrunch that had made first contact. Why?
 

But Noah had a guess about that, too.

The job posting had come with an attachment — a form EverCrunch wanted applicants to fill out in consideration for the job. It looked like a personality assessment, which made sense given EverCrunch’s secretive and paranoid reputation. (Whispers said employees had to sign a contract — something between the world’s strictest non-disclosure agreement and a loyalty oath, and secrecy surrounding EverCrunch’s code was CIA strong.) Asking applicants to fill out a screening form wasn’t at all surprising. But Noah had been as curious about the form as he’d been about the receptionist’s corded phone, because it wasn’t fillable. Applicants would have to print the form out and fill it in by hand. At first, Noah was almost insulted; how could such a simple detail be overlooked by a tech company? But as he’d begun to pull at the question’s frayed edges, he’d discovered a few hundred K of code that comprised a background image on the document. Only on further inspection, that block of extra code proved to be not just an image, but also a puzzle.
 

Intrigued, Noah had examined and then cracked the puzzle like a Rubik’s cube. When he was finished, those few hundred K of code had bloomed into something larger (EverCrunch compression in action), unfolded into a virus, force-executed on his machine, then died. As best as Noah could tell, the virus did nothing other than send a single email. Noah saw that email again when [email protected] sent a reply to it, asking him when he could come in for a meeting.
 

Something dinged unseen on the receptionist’s computer. She lifted her head and said, “Mr. West?”

Noah looked up.

“Mr. Stone will see you now.”
 

Noah stood, smiled at the receptionist… and then, feeling guilty for having objectified her as “Tinkerbell,” noted her nameplate.

“Thank you, Denise,” he said.
 

“Do you want me to take that for you?” she said, indicating the empty coffee cup in Noah’s hand that contained his spent apple core.
 

“Are you asking if you can walk around your desk, take this cup from my hand, and drop it in that can that’s five feet in front of me?”
 

She laughed. “You’d be surprised.”
 

He tossed the cup into the garbage, gave her a serious look, and followed a hallway to a door that had just opened at its end. Behind him, Denise the receptionist laughed again. Yes, she seemed to like Noah West just fine.
 

The man in the open doorway looked like a poorly outfitted assistant — barefoot, dressed in a loose-fitting blue T-shirt and gray yoga pants — but Noah recognized him from photos on multiple covers on many of his favorite magazines. Ben Stone
never
seemed to dress up… or, for that matter, act remotely businesslike enough to justify his spot at the helm of one of the richest, most desired companies in the world. Stone shaved his head to a shine and had a warm, welcoming smile. Noah felt an instant kinship with him. Based on what he’d read about Stone, he knew that the icon had also grown up as a gamer, and had fought with his parents to turn a fierce love of gaming into something that looked less dope-smoking-on-the-couch unproductive. Stone was barely thirty, just five years older than Noah. He’d started EverCrunch as a school project and, as the billions rolled in, never seemed to treat it any more seriously than that. His office had a yoga mat on the floor and a few cartoon figurines lined up along the front edge of his unassuming desk. The figurines were arranged in chronological order like a 3-D timeline: a 1940s era Mickey Mouse, a Bugs Bunny, an Opus, a Phineas beside a Ferb, a Finn and Jake from
Adventure Time
, a Molly Destructo, and a Bill the Borg from
Dumb Space Opera
.
 

Stone closed the door behind Noah, crossed the room, and sat on his yoga mat. The move could easily have seemed pretentious, but somehow it worked. Noah knew if he sat on the mat near Stone, it
would
seem pretentious, so he sat on an overturned crate instead. Whether the crate was supposed to be there or whether it was a holdover from a delivery of some sort, Noah had no idea. But he had to sit on it if he wanted to sit at all, given that there appeared to be no chairs in the room.
 

“You solved Buddha’s Box,” said Stone without introducing himself or shaking Noah’s hand. He’d sat on the mat, then stated the truth.
 

“Sorry?”
 

“The puzzle. Did you catch the allusion?”
 

Noah felt like he’d walked into a funhouse. “Sorry?” he repeated.
 

“I’m a bit of a pop culture nerd,” said Stone, gesturing at the figurines on his desk. “My dad was one, and so I became one too. I learned to love his favorites, so I’m not just a pop culture nerd; I’m an
oldies
pop culture nerd. But that’s how you get cred as a nerd. You make references that no one understands because they’re too obscure. Like being into punk rock, actually.” He waved a hand. “Anyway. The box? It came from an old horror movie called
Hellraiser
. That’s what the background image was: the puzzle box from that movie.”
 

Noah shook his head.
 

Stone seemed disappointed. “I figured someone would see the image, recognize it, and get the idea that it might hold a puzzle.”
 

Noah shrugged, wishing he could participate.
 

“Bah,” said Stone. “Just as well. The box in
Hellraiser
opened doors and creatures came out. Who wants to crack
that
puzzle? So. Without catching the reference, how did you even know there was anything there to solve?”
 

Noah realized he wasn’t sure himself. He answered the best he could, wondering if he was telling the truth: “I just like to take things apart.”
 

“Interesting. Anyway, you were the only one,” said Stone. “Well, you and the NSA. But they keep bugging me, and I’m
not
hiring an NSA agent. I haven’t trusted them since the WOPR in
Wargames
.”

After a silent moment, Stone made an
I give up gesture
. If his applicant didn’t even know what a WOPR was, there seemed to be no way they could speak on common ground.
 

Noah felt lost. He’d been so cocksure when he’d seen what Stone was calling the Buddha’s Box puzzle. In the two weeks since, he’d rehearsed his enumeration of EverCrunch’s glaring business oversight in the mirror. He’d spent so much time deciding that EverCrunch’s CEO had simply gotten lucky and didn’t know what he was doing that he now felt totally disarmed. Sure, Stone was outdoing him on obscure trivia, but he was outdoing him nonetheless.
 

“Fine,” said Stone. “I’ll stop. But you’re really missing out. It’s not like I’m that much older than you. If you’re going to work here, I’m at least going to need you to see
Star Wars
episodes
four through six and the
Matrix
movies. There
will
be a quiz. Anyway. This is your time, so let’s hear from you, not me. I need new blood. Someone very, very, very smart. The pay for the position I have in mind will make your brain explode, but you’ll have to promise me your soul. I’m only kidding. But also not really. And I
will
need you to convince me.”
 

“I solved the puzzle,” said Noah.
 

Stone waved his hand. “Yes, yes. But so did the NSA, and I hate those bastards. You still have to make me believe. Who
is
Noah West? Why do I care? What do you have to give the world? What the hell makes you think the world will care to remember your name when you’re gone?”
 

“Big questions,” said Noah, feeling disarmed.

Stone shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m a Buddhist.” He sat, cross-legged with bare feet, and waited. Noah stared at him for a minute. The CEO stared back, his expression polite but anticipatory. Stone had finished, and now it was Noah’s turn.
 

“I’m good with computers,” said Noah. “With code. I can see a million ways to improve internet connectivity — not just bringing it to more people, but helping it to evolve, and…”
 

“Yawn. Move along.”
 

“I have unmatched scores in the fields of…”
 

“Oh, Jesus. The other shit was better. Don’t start giving me your grades. Next thing, you’ll be sending me a resume.”
 

Noah almost laughed at that, but instead he found himself getting irritated. Stone was too cavalier sitting on his mat, letting Noah do all the work, making him jump through hoops while he sat in judgment.
 

“I think you’re missing vast sections of the marketplace for data archiving,” Noah said, speaking quickly, almost sniping with his words. “Your compression destroys everyone else, and the only reason everyone isn’t using EverCrunch is because they’re too lazy to switch or don’t realize that staying with another provider is…”
 

Stone moved as if to stand. “Okay. Thanks for coming in, but I don’t think this is going to work out.”
 

Jesus Fucking Christ.
The asshole wasn’t even listening. How was he supposed to judge Noah’s ideas when he wouldn’t even hear him out? What did he expect? What the hell else would
anyone
do for his company with its dumb-ass blind spots, its CEO sitting around doing fucking yoga while missing the entire point of data compression… not to store it, but to move it faster.
That
was how EverCrunch would benefit if they hired him, if this asshole would just listen for a second instead of…

 
“Why do you use corded phones?” Noah blurted.

Stone was halfway to standing. He paused, one arm propping him up, his right leg on the mat, his left leg in a squat.
 

“I’m sorry?”
 

Noah reached over and flicked at the cord hanging from Stone’s desk phone. “Cords. Your phones have cords.”
 

Stone sat. “Yes, they do. Why does it matter?”

“Tell me why you have corded phones,” said Noah. He was out of line, but it looked like he’d blown the interview already anyway.
 

“The office just came that way,” said Stone.
 

“But you pay for the phone bill. It’s not bundled in.”
 

“Right…”
 

“Well, you’re the world’s biggest technology company. And you’re not fucking paying attention.”
 

Stone shook his head. “I’m sorry?”
 

“You’re using technology that no one uses anymore ‘because it’s the way things have always been done.’ You want a sign that you’re not innovating and just got lucky with one big hit? That’s it. You aren’t asking
why
or
how.
You got into the lead by luck, and now you’re just coasting. You’re following.”
 

“I don’t see the big deal. It’s nickel-and-diming. What would we save? A few hundred bucks?”
 

“It’s not about money,” Noah snapped, suddenly angry. “It’s about blindness. You discovered you could take data and make it very, very small. Good for you. But that’s not enough. Remember Dropbox? You’re Dropbox 2.0. That’s great until someone else comes up with a 3.0. You’re thinking one-dimensionally. Who gives a shit if you can make data small? Storage is already dirt cheap. What are you going to do when people figure out that small doesn’t mean much in a world where storage is unlimited?”
 

“Now wait a minute. We do more than just compress data for storage…”
 

“Oh, sure. You
sync
it. You make data small, and then you sync it. People everywhere who enjoy things that are small and synchronized rejoice! Just imagine the sponsorship opportunities in midget water ballet!” He made jazz hands. “But all you’ve done is nudge our same old way of thinking a bit further down the line. For a while you’ll be ahead… until someone smarter catches up. You haven’t change the paradigm. Google changed the game. Amazon changed the game. You’ve taken the same game and made it better.”