Stopwatch Page 2

...

  "Well?" Garvens looked up from his computer.

  "I'd like to call a meeting with your project leads."

  He grumbled. "Taking valuable time away from the problem. Do you really think it'll help?"

  "Bound to."

  "I am paying you enough," he grimaced. "I guess I'd better listen."

  "Let's say fifteen minutes."

  "Just who's running this show?"

  "You're paying me by the hour, remember."

  ...

  They filed into the conference room, their faces showing surprise, confusion, and, with the G-man at the head of the table, they also looked scared. That was all fine for me; unsettled, they would be easier to shift. As long as I knew where to push.

  "First of all, I've found it good to begin meetings like these with a brain game, to stimulate mental freedom,?Garvens looked comfortable, and the rest of the crowd looked ready to follow his lead. "Now you're already a successful software company," Garvens smiled, "and your success has been built on your power to adapt to the needs of the business world. As those needs have changed, so you have changed. And what if you were to change even further, and break new ground in, say, the arena of entertainment software?"

  Garvens looked startled. "Games?"

  "Games within this game," I said.

  One of the coders had grown some courage. "What kind of games?"

  I passed around the paper. "Let's brainstorm."

  ...

  After the meeting, Garvens told me he'd had fun, a welcome break from the pressure of the deadline, but, "I don't see how playing a game, even a good one, can move us closer to stomping this bug."

  I said some commonplace about the benefits of relaxation and calm thinking. He wasn't swayed. "Yes yes, I know all that, but when you've got a vice around your ankle, you don't want to think calm thoughts, you want to get out. I don't see how we're closer to getting out."

  "When you look down from a mountain, all you see are valleys."

  "Great. Thanks. I'll remember to ask you when I need help changing my tires."

  ...

  I passed a couple of days in one of the cubicles, staring at a screen. Garvens had offered me a private office, but I wanted to be near Rendall. He was working as I'd asked, but he wasn't ready to show me anything. Until he was, I couldn't go back to Garvens. His fantasies of an immediate solution would have vanished by then, and he'd be thinking of the money he was pouring away. If I went to him and just passed the time, he'd be likely to repent of his choice, and send me packing. No matter that I was going to solve his problem; if he didn't want my solution, I couldn't force it on him.

  So I waited, and my thoughts wavered between the deadline and the threat of getting kicked off the project. Either case would make waste of my efforts, and if Garvens lost his market share, he might try to make waste of me, too.

  ...

  Finally, it was ready. But before I could collect my reward, there was one problem left, and the biggest. Garvens was proud. The only way to get him to accept my idea was to make him believe it was all his own. So that morning, I'd come to the office while the rooster was snoring, with an article from the business news. I left it on Garvens' desk.

  It was crumpled in his wastebasket when I came in to see him.

  "We've got a workaround for that bug," I said.

  "A workaround? Jeez, Jatthew, you look like you slept in hell's motel."

  "I'm cutting down on the coffee. Yeah, a workaround. It's not a complete fix, but we can make your system run past fifteen minutes."

  "By how much?"

  "It's a little soon to tell. Why don't you come down and look? Rendall's got the patchwork up on his machine."

  "I'll come right away. And Jatthew, have some coffee. You look like a goddamn zombie."

  ...

  My body was quivering. This meeting was the peak; it was all downhill from this point, but would we be sliding downhill forwards, or tumbling backwards, bruised and broken? I wanted a massage.

  "What's this?" Garvens snatched the printout from beside Rendall's computer. "Did you leave this on my desk?"

  "No, we all got one," Rendall said. "I think the mail boy got mixed-up or something. Forget it." From behind Garvens, I winked at him.

  "Oh. I'll have to talk to that kid. Well, I can't waste time on this," he leaned in close to the monitor. "Show me what you've got."

  "You're looking at it; I'm running a dummy account here," Rendall clicked. "I'm writing a user guide outline here, and I'll open some more programs to show you the rest."

  After a minute, Garvens rubbed his back, and asked Rendall to move over so he could try it for himself. We watched for half an hour. Garvens took deep satisfaction from playing with his own program.

  After forty minutes, he stood up, stretched, and sighed. "Excellent. Most excellent...but where's the loose button?"

  "Hmm?"

  "You said it was a workaround. What have we worked around, and where has this taken us?" He looked back and forth between Rendall and me.

  "All of the principal code is intact," I said. "All we've done is add something."

  "A new feature," said Rendall.

  "What new feature?"

  "An optimizer."

  "But the system already has an optimizer," he said. "A new one would be redundant."

  "It's not so much a new one, as a new use for an old one," I said.

  "We've found that the system optimizer from the first edition of G1 is an excellent tool for updating old games," said Rendall. "Although this use is only effective when we disconnect it from the primary system."

  "Games? We don't make games here," Garvens said. "We make serious software for serious businessmen. Our reputation is built on it. Games distract, games scatter effort, games detract from real work."

  "You hired me to solve a software problem," I said. "Not to study your market. Are you pleased with the way the system runs?"

  "Well, yes, but-"

  "If it remains stable, as it is now, will it meet the requirements of your production deadline?"

  "The G3 system will," he said. "But will it still be G3? My customers..."

  "Will object to the new feature?"

  "I don't know that they'd object, but it doesn't really meet their needs. Does anyone really need this?"

  "Does anyone?" I echoed. It threw the question back, and I watched his eyes drift down as he looked for an answer.

  "This article," he said. "It's about the games industry..."

  "That's a big industry," Rendall said.

  I nodded. "My kids love to play games."

  "Yes. So do mine," Garvens said, nodding too. "So do all my friends' kids. And a lot of people our age, too..."

  "Our age? Are you sure about that?"

  "Well of course; we were born about the same time as the first games were being made. We've grown up surrounded by software, and so much of that has been wasted on..."

  "Pointless play? I guess it is only good for wasting time."

  "Hmm..." He gave me an odd look.

  "It's amazing what people will throw their money away on," and I took the report from his hand. "So much waste, so much garbage."

  "It's not really such a waste," said Rendall.

  Garvens listened to us praise the gaming industry for a few minutes more, and I started to think we had him. I thought I could relax. Then I saw that odd look come back on his face, and it got worse whenever Rendall spoke. We ran out of good things to say, and still Garvens was silent, and I felt that chill you sometimes get in your belly, when you know you're about to take a fall.

  Garvens gave me a big, a very big, fake-looking smile. He took my phony article and waved it in my face, making sure I couldn't ignore it. Then he ripped away at it until he was left holding a little paper man. Letting it dangle from his right hand, he made it dance across the flat palm of his left. Then he tucked it into my shirt pocket.

  "Low," he said.

  "Garvens," I said. "You owe this thing a
chance."

  "This thing? Which thing? Don't worry about your fee, Jatthew. That's one thing you and I can count on."

  He made to leave, but Rendall snagged his shoulder. "Boss, just listen to-"

  "Don't side with him!"

  "This isn't about sides."

  "Isn't it?" He shrugged off Rendall's hand, and then he was gone.

  Rendall turned to me. "What now?"

  I shook my head.

  "I knew this was stupid," he said. "I goddamn knew it! I..."

  "Rendall..."

  He held up his hand, and forced a smile. "It's over, Jatthew. I guess I've got a date with my resume."

  I was crushed.

  ...

  I didn't sleep. I ate, but it had no taste. I even resorted to watching TV, but the supreme anaesthetic was useless to ease my mind. I kept repeating the meeting in my mind, and I kept coming back to Rendall's despair, and that odd look on Garvens' face, the face of a man betrayed.

  I'd tried to save from his own stupid problem. He might have given me some appreciation. He could have recognised that we'd all been working hard to help him keep his spot as the world's fourth richest, or whatever it was now. He should have been grateful!

  "Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Corben Jatthew," I said to my shadowy reflection in the dead face of the TV. "You know better than anyone why he got so mad. And...damn you but you know what you have to do." I knew. I knew, and I didn't want to do it.

  I was afraid.

  ...

  I walked into Garvens' office the next morning. I suppose he hadn't thought to tell his secretary not to let me in; I suppose he hadn't expected to see me again. He looked up at me, papa bear in a light grey sweatshirt. The stopwatch was missing, but his anger was still there.

  "Get out of my office, Jatthew, or I'll call security."

  I swallowed. "Don't fire Rendall."

  "What? Get out! To hell with security, I'll throw you out myself." He rose, and I saw the sweatshirt did nothing to conceal his strength.

  "Don't fire Rendall, he was just doing what I told him to."

  "Why are you so worried about Rendall? He acted like a fool, a brainless puppet, but when did I say I'd get rid of him?"

  "You won't fire Rendall? You promise?"

  "Look, I don't think we have anything to talk about, Jatthew. Your contract-"

  "Forget the contract. Burn it. Keep the money."

  He sat down. "Now I really am lost. I don't know what to make of you, Jatthew." He gave me a squinting, searching look. "Is this another one of your tricks?"

  "I just want to make things right. I want to leave things right between us."

  "Worried about your reputation, is that it? You don't want word to spread that you made enemies at my firm." He grinned.

  I shrugged. "Yes, I admit that. I don't want this job to hurt my career."

  "An honest answer? Now I'm ultra worried!" He laughed.

  "Hear this much, Garvens. I didn't lie to you-"

  "As good as."

  "...I did mislead you, and manipulate you, or try to manipulate you, and yes, you know why I did it?"

  "You're a fiendish sociopath and you get immense pleasure from brainfucks."

  "Because everyone who works in this building is shit-scared of you. You're like Frankenstein, a genius in your day and now a relic. Everyone is scared of you, and so was I. And because I was scared, I avoided doing what I had to do at the start, as soon as I saw your problem. I should have walked into this office and looked you right in your millisecond mind and said 'this problem is your fault, and your young hi-res programmers would have it fixed in a second if they weren't afraid of being squashed by your ego'."

  He glared at me.

  I went on. "In spite of whatever you might think, this was all for your benefit. But it didn't come the way you wanted it, and it didn't go the way I wanted it, and now you're unhappy, and you don't trust me anymore. So yes, I'm afraid you'll fuck up my rep, and I won't work in the industry again. I was trying to protect you from yourself, but I see that was stupid of me. So I'll leave you with your solution, and it's a real solution, and you can keep your money, and just remember that I was always, always trying to do what you asked."

  Well he just looked at me some more, and then he gave me one hell of a serious look, and he spoke. "You can't buy trust, Jatthew."

  ...

  The letter came a week later. It was short, but the words were hefty. "You never saw this one, Jatthew. Time obsessed Garvens wasting his microseconds-"

  "Milliseconds," I said.

  "-on something so archaic. Maybe people can change? You made a change here, and I'm going to admit it in writing. Frame this letter, and show it to people. How's that for a referral, you fiendish sociopath? You told me to keep your fee, but some idiot in payroll already sent it, along with a large bonus that you obviously didn't earn by any kind of outstanding effort. Frankly I found you unnaturally annoying, so I append a list of wealthy and important competitors you might want to go and pester if you wish to go on pretending to be a consultant.

  "Hugo Garvens."

  ***

  About the Author

  Jacob Magnus lives in South Korea with his girlfriend’s dog. He enjoys travel, and practises the Korean sword art of Gumdo. His favourite game is Deus Ex.