Jonathan came to view the fall as opportunity. “Buy now,” he told anyone who asked, and he began to buy back shares himself, convinced of his company’s resilience.
In April when ISIS sank to four, Jonathan called a meeting. Dave, Aldwin, Oskar, and Jake gathered in Oskar’s office.
“Where’s Orion?” Jonathan asked.
“I’m not sure he came in today,” said Jake.
“No, I saw him,” said Aldwin, just as Orion walked through the door and took his seat in the corner.
“Okay,” said Jonathan, and then paused as Orion opened his cream soda. “Let me tell you what’s happening.”
“Cisco bought us,” Orion said, and for a second everybody froze in shock. “Just kidding.”
No one laughed.
“Anyone else want to take a guess?” Jonathan asked icily. Nobody spoke, so he continued. “It’s time for a paradigm shift. We are going to develop a new security product for electronic fingerprinting of every view and touch on a piece of data. We’re going to call this service Fast-Tracking, and we’ll sell it to every security client.”
“How would this work?” Dave asked.
“Look, with ChainLinx we encrypt transactions to safeguard the purchaser. Fast-Tracking is really a data- protection and surveillance tool for the vendor.” He stepped up to the board and began to draw the new scheme in green ink.
What did Eli Whitney feel when he arrived in America with plans for the cotton gin? What were Francis Cabot Lowell’s emotions when, from memory alone, he built a scale model of the Cartwright weaving machine? Elation? Mastery mixed with trepidation? Jonathan felt entirely himself as he played his card, the secret Emily had revealed to him eighteen months before. He was not copying detailed plans, but developing his own. Nor was he attempting to replicate an existing project at Veritech—for Emily had told him in no uncertain terms that electronic fingerprinting was a project that she would not pursue. Ever since that conversation, Jonathan had plotted his own course—a new product for ISIS, a new initiative for programmers, and, most important, a breakthrough to present to analysts and shareholders.
During the Industrial Revolution, memorizing machine parts might have been essential. In this Computational Era, the concept alone, the whispered idea, launched a thousand chips. Jonathan’s mind was quick and infinitely flexible, his timing uncanny, his presentation transformative as he made over electronic fingerprinting into new market share. He was not mathematically creative like Jake or Oskar, but he had an acquisitive intelligence, and when he appropriated an idea, he improved it, until his own version not only surpassed, but obliterated its source. Indeed, he no longer recalled electronic fingerprinting except with nostalgia, as he remembered other conversations with Emily, her head on his chest, her bare back under his hand, her thigh against his thigh. Her puzzling confidence became a gift. Her revelation shifted in his mind to inspiration. And Emily herself—he worshipped her. She was his muse. If he did not tell her about this meeting, if he neglected to mention his new plan for ISIS—Well, soon he planned to tell her this and everything.
Emily had promised to leave Veritech in June. She and Jonathan talked endlessly about finding an apartment in Cambridge, or simply buying a house. They had a real estate agent, and no price limit. Therefore Jonathan felt just right as he diagrammed his new Fast-Tracking system on the whiteboard. At last he was getting to the crux of the matter—the new technology that ISIS needed. He loved Emily, and he thanked her silently, although he did not mention her name in his visionary presentation. There was no need. There was no time. Oh, life was sweet.
Dazzled, the others watched Jonathan unveil his new plans. Always a little slow, Dave asked about the legal and ethical implications of the idea, while Jake and Oskar leapfrogged ahead with technical questions.
“Now this is interesting,” Oskar said, bestowing his highest praise.
As for Orion, he felt hopeful for the first time in months. Instead of lecturing about release dates, and talking up ISIS products, Jonathan was presenting new ideas. Instead of trying to shut down criticism, he was encouraging debate. In the past he’d sacrificed quality for speed and talked incessantly about market share. Now he proposed building a new system from scratch. Orion saw the plan opening, blossoming like fireworks trailing sparks and smoke in the night sky. They would tag and trace every touch on every piece of data, capture and collect what had been ephemeral. What possibilities for research! What challenges for new analysis! He understood the idea immediately, and the scribbles on the whiteboard were not scribbles to him, but poetry. The design Jonathan unveiled was that elegant.
Aldwin asked, “How will we staff this? Start a new group?”
“Yeah,” said Jonathan. “But we’ll keep the project confidential. No analyst or investor input! And we need somebody to spearhead it.”
“I will!” Orion surprised himself with his alacrity. “I’d like to,” he amended.
Jonathan smiled. It was not his fault that his smile looked so mischievous, that his blue eyes sparkled and the corners of his mouth curled as though anticipating some particularly delicious meal. He had always known his old friend would come around. Turn away long enough, and people think you have forgotten them entirely. Show your displeasure, and first they hate you, and then they despair, and finally, scarcely acknowledging it to themselves, they miss you. Change the game again, to see if they follow. The best ones can. The smart ones always do.
“You would have to leave what’s left of the Lockbox group,” Jonathan told Orion. “Would you be willing to do that?”
God, yes, Orion thought. “Definitely,” he said aloud.
“Maybe we could work something out,” Jonathan said. “I think that you’d be great.”
Such faith in him! For long months Orion’s efforts had been ad hoc, troubleshooting substandard code. But to start up this new Fast-Tracking venture, to head his own group, design and build a system to his own standards—to work with autonomy! The idea thrilled him. Orion was moved by Jonathan’s trust, and his gesture to restore their friendship. Jonathan had not given up on him; Jonathan still saw him as one of the founders.
“You would report directly to me,” Jonathan told Orion, “so I can keep an eye on you.”
Orion chose to take this as a compliment. He took this, as intended, as a formal job offer, and he nodded in agreement. He accepted.
Perhaps in the old days, men built their reputations, and then their fortunes. Orion had made his fortune first. He had not designed algorithms like Oskar and Jake, or established administrative systems like Dave and Aldwin, or sold Lockbox and ChainLinx to the first clients as Jonathan had, flying all night to charm his way into Disney and CNN when he was still a graduate student with one suit. Too diffident, too dreamy, too cautious, too much a programmer, Orion was worth over twenty million dollars even in this depressed market, but he had not been well employed. He did not sit on the executive board. He was not vice president of anything. Heading a new group, he would step up. He had a chance to justify his wealth, to prove that his success was more than accidental, to become a self-made man.
Meet me downstairs, Orion e-mailed Sorel as soon as he returned to his desk.
“I’m right here.” She was standing behind him, watching him type.
“What happened?” she asked him as they waited for the elevator.
“Shh!”
She looked at him questioningly.
“You won’t believe this …,” he told her in the elevator, but just then someone else joined them. Somebody from Marketing, ALOK on his badge. Orion could not keep track of the new hires anymore, nor did these recruits know him. Could they have any idea, for example, that Orion had named their company over beers in Somerville so many months ago? Jonathan said then that he wanted some kind of acronym for “Internet Security System,” and Orion had remembered his fourth-grade unit on Egyptians and his report on Isis—baker, spinner, weaver, daughter of the Earth and sky. This new guy, Alok, had no idea. There were no historical inscriptions at ISIS, no steles recording early triumphs. No hieroglyphs with bird-headed vulture capitalists and the four founders arrayed like boy kings on the elevator’s smooth gray walls.
The doors parted, and Orion ushered Sorel through the lobby with its mobile of oblong mirrors, and its revolving doors of thick, rubber-edged glass.
Into the fresh spring air they hurried, away from ISIS. Sorel thought he wanted to buy lunch at the deli at One Kendall Square, but Orion saw too many ISIS worshippers there. He ushered her into the furniture store
