Chapter 1
For the first few miles, the asphalt bike path appeared deceivingly flat. Skirting the riverside picnic areas, now snow covered and closed for the winter, there was no single point where a runner could say to himself, Now I am really starting to climb. But if the increasing ache in his legs wasn't enough to convince Travis that he was running steadily uphill, all he had to do was turn his head and watch the white water next to him rushing madly down the canyon.
Not that he needed convincing. As a college freshman on a full-ride track scholarship, he had raced along this trail beneath the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains more times than he could count. There had been plenty of other places to train, of course. He had definitely spent more hours than he cared to remember sweating through laps around the BYU track, with Coach Westman shouting out split times. But something about the sound of the stiff mountain wind rushing through the leaves of the cottonwoods and elms, playing an understated counterpoint to the roar of the fast-moving water, had allowed him the tranquility to work things out in his head when things got tough.
In the past two years, since his graduation, this trail had become less of a companion though, and more of a demon, reminding him how out of shape he was getting. He had thought that graduating from college would give him more free time. But between the long hours at work, his church responsibilities, and the seemingly infinite number of relatives that had adopted him the day he married, he had found it increasingly difficult to make it up here. And at over 4500 feet in elevation, the thin air was unforgiving to anyone who tried to fit a week's worth of workouts into a single Saturday morning. Then almost two months ago, Jim Hammond, the president of Exasoft, had called him into his office and informed him that, effective immediately, the company would no longer require his programming skills. Even before telling his wife Lisa, he had pulled on his shorts and running shoes and headed up here to mull over his options. The severance package had been more than generous. With their savings, they could easily last five or six months before things got tight. And, although it was disappointing, it hadn't exactly come as a big surprise to him.
Three months earlier, Exasoft had been purchased by a medical-technologies firm out of Minnesota. It had probably been a good move for the company, but for everyone except the most senior employees, it had been a financial bust. Exasoft had issued so many shares that employees' stock was almost worthless—less than a thousand dollars in Travis's case. And it had quickly become obvious that the new ownership was only interested in the customer base of the small Utah software company. His group, which had been doing some interesting work with Intelligent Assistants, hadn't been the first to be laid off and he was sure they wouldn't be the last. At least, he thought with a smile, it had given him a chance to get back into shape again.
Passing the concrete drinking fountains that would be surrounded by cyclists, runners, and rollerbladers in another few months, he peeled back his glove and checked his pace. The icy winter air met the heat from his body and condensed on the face of the black sports watch strapped to his wrist. But not before he read the elapsed time of nineteen minutes, thirty-three seconds. He needed to push it if he was going to keep his pace under six and half minutes per mile.
Halfway up the canyon, the trail crossed over the river and began to get noticeably steeper. Shortening his stride a little to compensate, Travis reminded himself to relax his arms and hands. On the other side of the bridge he passed by two women bundled from head to foot in heavy winter clothes. He heard one of them mutter something about "skimpy shorts" and the other woman said something that sounded like "indecent exposure."
Turning, Travis backpedaled up the trail and waved. "You should come out here in the evenings. I run in the nude then." He could see their faces turning red and one of them placed her hand on her chest as though the very idea made her grow faint. Laughing, he turned and continued up the trail before they could reply. He could imagine them going home and telling their families about the pervert stalking innocent women in the canyon.
Of course, with my luck, he thought, they'll end up being Lisa's visiting teachers. They'll come to the door with a plate of cookies and a refrigerator magnet that says something like "Modesty Fills our Hearts with Gladness." He would have to apologize on the way back. Besides, he would hate to see them leave this beautiful trail to slog endless loops around one of the local tracks just because of him.
Following the twisting trail into the darkness where it passed beneath Highway 189, he listened to the hum of cars and trucks heading toward Robert Redford's Sundance ski resort and the Heber Valley. Emerging from the frigid concrete tunnel, he increased his pace as he passed by a small gravel parking lot and up the last steep rise of his run. Now, above the sound of his shoes slapping against the asphalt-paved trail, he could hear the deeper sound of a waterfall ahead.
Just over three miles from the west entrance of the Provo Canyon, located about forty miles south of Salt Lake City, Bridal Veil Falls cascades over 600 vertical feet before crashing to the rocks below, where it joins the Provo river and eventually flows into Utah Lake. In the winter, the waterfall freezes, drawing hundreds of ice climbers, who use ropes and picks to scale the treacherous frozen water. And, until an avalanche destroyed the popular tourist attraction, it was also the site of the world's steepest aerial tramway.
To Travis though, it was just the turnaround point of his run. After sweating through five miles of almost continual uphill terrain, it was the point where he could open up his stride and let gravity carry him back down to his car. Sucking the icy air in huge gulps, he picked up his pace over the last two hundred yards and prepared to press the lap timer button on his watch as he came into view of the pool at the bottom of the falls.
"Yes! Thirty-two minutes exactly." He doubled over, resting his hands on his upper thighs, and relished the feeling of the cold mountain breeze against his sweaty face as he caught his breath. Although sunrise had been hours earlier, the rays were just beginning to peek over the steep cliffs on the east side of the canyon. Straightening, he left the trail and wandered closer to the river. The warming weather over the last few days had melted much of the snow on the side of the trail, and the subfreezing night had formed a thick crust of ice that crunched under his weight as he walked across it.
Shading his eyes with one hand, Travis studied the slower-moving water at the edge of the river for signs of the rainbow, german, and cutthroat trout that lurked just below the surface of the water, waiting for a meal to float past them. His father-in-law was an avid flyfisherman, stalking the local streams and rivers every chance he got. By tagging along, Travis had learned the art of choosing just the right fly and finding the most likely spots to hook the wily river veterans that could easily exceed twenty inches. But fishing was another thing that he seemed to have lost time for over the past couple of years.
Watching the rays of sunlight glitter off the sparkling water, he thought back to the first time he had come here for something other than a good, quick workout. Only two months after he left his home in Michigan to start his freshman year of college, his father had called to tell him that his mother was dead. Although she had left the two of them when he was only eight years old, and he had seen little of her since then, the news that she was dead had stunned him. Not even bothering to change out of his jeans and sweatshirt, he had come here to run through his confused emotions.
Then, less than six months later, came another call from Michigan. Only this time, it was his Dad's older bother, Alan. "Travis, I'm sorry, it's your Dad." The rest of the conversation had seemed to make no sense, something about a blown tire, and no one's fault, and then arrangements to fly home. He had found himself agreeing mechanically, desperate to get off the phone.
He couldn't remember driving to the parking lot a few miles from the mouth of the canyon. But somehow he had found himself here, pounding out mile after mile, mentally counting the strike of each of his steps, until he had finally lost track and started over—knowing only that the counting would keep his mind occupied, keeping at bay the pain that threatened to swallow him. He had run until his normally even breathing had turned ragged and his legs had grown wobbly with fatigue. Every time his steps had slowed, he had felt something black and cold bearing down on him, and he had somehow managed to pick up the pace again, until finally, he found himself facedown next to the river, pounding his fists against the rocky bank, and cursing God for leaving him alone.
The next twelve months had gone by in a blur. Word had quickly spread across campus of the double tragedy. But he didn't want sympathy, and he wouldn't stand for talk of greater meanings, or life after death. If he had ever believed in a God before, he didn't then. He simply couldn't credit a being that had the power to create something as majestic as the Wasatch Mountains and yet still allowed innocent people to suffer horrible deaths every day. Mentally burying his head in the advanced math classes he was taking, and running himself to exhaustion at the track every evening, Travis erected an impenetrable shell around himself. He had tried returning to the trail once, but even before he could begin running, his stomach had cramped into a tight hot ball of pain, and he had to stumble back to his car, doubled over and gagging.
***
Travis's thoughts shifted. It had been late April, but as the sun disappeared into the clouds to the west, the mountain air had quickly developed a bite to it. Tucking his head low against the cold, Travis was running the last lap of ladders, a torturous drill that included three quarter miles, three half miles, three miles, and then back down again. The other runners had all left over an hour before, but he continued, even though the track lights hadn't kicked on yet, and he had to concentrate just to see the lanes in front of him. Sprinting into the final turn, he suddenly realized there was someone else on the track with him, and he'd barely had time to veer over to the next lane as he gasped out the traditional runner's warning that he was passing,
“On the right.”
As he began to pass, the other runner, who was bundled up in heavy sweatpants and a dark windbreaker, glanced over the wrong shoulder and sidestepped directly into his path. Suddenly, his legs were cut out from under him and he was spinning desperately to the trying to keep from falling on top of the other, much smaller person. He had always been naturally athletic, and miraculously he found himself somehow regaining his balance. Then just as he thought he had caught himself, delicately balancing on the tips of his toes, arms windmilling out to his sides, the other runner had crashed down against the backs of his knees, and he collapsed chin-first against the inside rail of the track.
His teeth had snapped violently together, and he was oddly reminded of the sound his cleats made as he clapped them against each other to clear out rocks and dirt after a long workout. As he pushed himself groggily to his knees, the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He spit onto the grass and turned angrily to confront the person who could easily have injured them both.
"What did you think . . ." His growl cut off abruptly as he got his first good look at the woman, now sitting cross-legged in the middle of the track. The hood of her windbreaker had fallen back, and long black hair covered her right shoulder and fell across her face, hiding one of her eyes behind its satiny curtain. Her other eye, though, was opened impossibly wide and her mouth formed a perfect "0" that instantly reminded him of the Far Side cartoons drawn by Gary Larson. She was holding her right foot in her left hand. To Travis she looked like a yogi who had just seen a ghost. Unable to help himself, he burst into his first real laughter since the death of his father.
His laughter seemed to break her trance. Her eye narrowed and her mouth finally finished the word it had started to form. "Ow!" she hollered, with surprising volume for someone her size.
Over the following months, Travis and Lisa Whitcomb had become almost inseparable. Like Jack Spratt and his wife, they were complete opposites who were thoroughly compatible. As an only child, he was introverted and uncomfortable in large groups. She made up for this by sharing her nine brothers and sisters with him, and carrying the conversation when he stumbled over his words. Where she was always picked last for the kickball team as a child and was apt to stumble and fall at the worst times, he was almost unnaturally graceful, and always caught her before she could hit the ground.
But they had one difference that threatened to become a major problem. It first came up on their way back from the track that night.
"What ward do you attend?" she had asked as he walked her back to her dorm.
Only a year earlier, he would have been dumbfounded by such a question, but after two years of attending BYU , he felt like he had taken a crash course in Mormon jargon. Ward, he knew, was the term Mormons used for their congregations.
"I'm not a Latter Day Saint." He used the formal name for her religion, trying to make a good impression. Even though he had only just met her, he found that he really did want to make a good impression on her.
"Oh." Her dark eyes were impenetrable, but he had been through this many times before. Here it comes, he thought. Now she will either find a quick excuse to leave, or she'll try to convert me.
But her next words caught him completely off guard. "Do you like steak?"
She had invited him home for the weekend, and her family had welcomed him like one of their own. Her father, a Heber cattle rancher with hands the size of T-bones, immediately put him to work tossing bales of hay down from the loft of the barn.
Although the closest he had ever been to a cattle ranch was a brief stint flipping hamburgers at McDonalds, he enjoyed working up a sweat, and soon he felt like he fit right in. Her brothers showed him the ropes, and Chris, six years old and the youngest of the children, latched on to him, following him around all evening like a lost calf. But later that night, after a dinner that could have fed a small a large calloused hand had dropped onto his shoulder, and Mr.
Whitcomb suggested that the two of them walk out and have a look at the stars. From the look on Lisa's face, this might have been a euphemism for the firing squad.
After pointing out several constellations, the conversation had settled into a long pause that made Travis feel both comfortable and yet nervous at the same time. Larry Whitcomb was a man who seemed completely at one with his surroundings. With one toe of his worn boot he pushed down on the barbed wire strung between wooden posts that stretched out as far as the eye could see. He seemed to be considering his words carefully before speaking.
"Lisa tells me you are not of our faith." His words carried neither accusation nor acceptance but rather the same open-faced honesty of the man who spoke them. And yet Travis instantly felt defensive. How dare he judge him or what he believed?
"Not only am I not of your faith, I'm not of any faith." Travis knew he should stop there, but he couldn't. "I could never believe in a God that would let people suffer the kind of pain that I can read about in the paper any day of the week."
He steeled himself for the rebuke that he was sure he had earned. But the big man merely nodded as though Travis had just commented on the weather. "What do you believe in son?"
That question had stopped him. At first he had started to answer something glib like Death and taxes, but he somehow knew that the man before him would see through that. He rubbed the ball of his thumb lightly over one of the sharp barbs on the fence wire, trying to collect his thoughts. "When I was little, my Dad used to come to all of my competitions. It didn't matter whether it was a baseball game or a track meet; before the event started he would pull me aside and say 'Travis, remember, I believe in you."' The sound of his own voice saying those words sounded so much like his father's voice that he had to swallow several times before he could continue. "I could always believe in him. And knowing that he was there, I always believed in myself. But, since he died, I'm not sure that I believe in anything anymore."
In the silence of the evening, he could hear the crickets chirping, and the sharp, distant cry of some large bird of prey looking for its dinner. For a moment he had almost forgotten that he was not alone, and the sound of the other man's voice startled him into pricking his thumb.
“A person who doesn't believe in anything is no good to himself, or anyone else. One way or another, you need to find something to believe in."
* * *
The next few months had been difficult for him. The more time he spent with Lisa and her family, the more he had come to respect and admire them. He was around the house so often that Lisa's mother, Annette, had added his name to the chore chart. A sure sign of acceptance, Lisa assured him. He even took part in their family home evenings, making refreshments, leading the music, refereeing the crazy games that her twin ten-year-old brother and sister came up with, and joining the kneeling family as they prayed. But the one thing that he refused to do, felt completely unable to do, was pray himself.
"I just don't understand why you won't even try," Lisa said. They were standing in the field behind the barn. It had been cold enough over the last few weeks to turn the leaves beautiful shades of gold and crimson, but today the warm sun directly overhead made it feel almost like summer.
Travis picked up a rock and threw it at the side of the barn, the noise echoing in the still air. "It would be like . . ." He paused, trying to think of the right words. "Like you taking the Lord's name in vain."
Lisa shook her head. "I don't understand that at all." "Lisa, how can I pray to someone I don't believe even exists? I might as well set up a pile of stones and pray to that, or worship that barn over there."
"You don't need to be sacrilegious." Travis could tell from the set of her jaw that he was upsetting her, but he didn't know what else he could do.
"That's just it. If I prayed now it would be a sacrilege. I hate the idea that an all-powerful, all-knowing God would let His children suffer like they do. I could no more accept a God like that than I could accept a parent that would knowingly let their child step out in front of a moving car."
"But that's what free agency is all about." "I know, I know. I've listened to the missionary discussions so many times I could teach them myself, and you made sure that I read the Book of Mormon. But until I can honestly say that I have the least bit of faith that someone is really listening to me, I won't pray. I can't."
"But how will you ever know if God exists if you won't ask Him?"
And so, once again he had returned to the canyon. Watching the multicolored leaves skittering across the gravel and asphalt trail in the crisp autumn air, he had felt like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof "On the one hand, I love her and her family. But on the other hand . . ." Until he was sure there couldn't be any hands left.
Then one afternoon, while hiking along the cliffs far above the canyon, he stopped to watch a pair of red-tailed hawks circling the valley floor in search of a meal. One of them dropped rapidly through the trees, then reappeared with some small rodent clutched in its talons. The creature struggled for a minute, seeming almost to break free and then, as the hawk clamped down its claws, stopped moving.
As he watched the hawks head back up the valley with their meal, Travis felt as though something clicked into place inside his head. Silently he stared into the canyon below, trying to understand what had just happened. Afraid to even breathe for fear it would break his concentration, he replayed the picture in his mind over and over, looking for some meaning. He wasn't sure he could articulate it and didn't think he would ever want to try. But somehow looking down on a life-and-death struggle from this height had given him a different perspective. It was as though for a brief moment he had been able to view everything below him as pieces in a much larger puzzle. Just as the water flowing below was a necessary part of the land that it divided, maybe pain and suffering were necessary parts of happiness.
He sat down heavily on the ground, unmindful of the sharp rocks that cut against his palms. Could it be that he had been so wrapped up in his own needs that he couldn't see the rest of the world clearly? Tossing pebbles down the slope below, he played with the idea in his mind.
Losing his father had been the hardest thing he had ever gone through. But was it possible that it had somehow helped him too? If it hadn't been for the pain he was going through he might never have met Lisa.
Had that been random, a simple toss of the dice that brought her to him when he was sure that he just wanted to be alone? He didn't think that it had. But if it wasn't chance that brought them together then what was it? Like the tiniest break in a bank of thick gray clouds, a crack that allowed a single golden ray of sunlight to slip through, he felt something in his heart soften and the words that he thought he could never utter filled his mouth.
“Are You there?" Slowly, a grin spread across his face. It was a huge leap from accepting the possible existence of a God to joining an organized religion, but for now it was enough. Without completely understanding how it had happened, he realized that he did believe in something, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be with Lisa. He raced back down the trail to find her and tell her that somehow he had found the faith that he had thought would always elude him.
Almost a year to the day later, dressed all in white, he had followed Lisa's father into the baptismal font and listened as the man he had come to think of as a second father raised his hand to the square and said the words that would change Travis's life forever. Later as he had been confirmed and given the gift of the Holy Ghost, he thought that it was the happiest he could ever feel.
Six months after that as he sat with Lisa on a granite outcropping, her younger brothers and sisters in the park below filling the night air with the sound of laughter and excited shouts, he had asked her to marry him. When she had instantly accepted his stuttering proposal, he realized her words could make him feel even happier if that were possible.
***
The sound of a group of runners approaching broke his reverie, and he turned to watch two men and a woman continue up past the falls and disappear behind a stand of trees. Crunching his way back to the trail, he looked up the canyon and briefly considered continuing further along the path. He felt like he could easily do twelve or thirteen miles before running out of steam. But Lisa's brother had taken the day off work so he and his wife could move from their apartment into their new house this morning, and he had promised Lisa that he would help. The thought of carrying furniture almost made him change his mind. It seemed, no matter how many other people there were, he always ended up on one end of the piano. But after a few quick stretches he restarted his watch with a sigh and headed back down the hill. If he pushed himself, he thought maybe he could make it back to the car in under twenty-eight minutes.
***
Travis pulled the old Ford Escort that he had driven since starting college into the driveway, gathered his damp gloves and shirt off the passenger seat, and jogged down the steps to the front door of their basement apartment. His watch read 9:55, and he had promised Lisa that they would be to her brother's by 10:00. Opening the front door as stealthily as possible, he tiptoed toward the bedroom, hoping he could get in and out of the shower before she realized he was late.
"Travis?" Lisa called out from the kitchen. She sounded annoyed. "I'll be ready to head out the door in two minutes." He had all ready kicked off his shoes in the general direction of the closet, and was stripping out of his shorts as he headed into the bathroom.
She came through the bedroom door, wearing a pair of jeans with the cuffs rolled up and one of his sweatshirts. In one hand she carried a half-eaten slice of peanut butter toast, and in the other, she held a piece of paper from the to-do list that hung on the refrigerator. "You got a call this morning."
"Your brother saying that he wouldn't need us today after all?" he half joked. He stepped into the shower and turned the water to full. For a moment the cold stream caused him to back away from the showerhead as goose bumps raised on the backs of his arms, then it began to warm up and he stuck his head under the powerful spray.
"No, it wasn't." She deliberately pushed down the handle on the toilet and grinned mischievously as he danced back out of the water that had suddenly turned scalding hot.
"Aaugh! I hate it when you do that." Although he had introduced her to that particular form of bathroom torture, she'd quickly adopted it as her own. He angled the spray to the right and splashed it over the shower door at her, but she had anticipated him and backed into the bedroom doorway.
"It was from a company calling about a job." Although this was good news, she still sounded annoyed. And something about the way she stood with both arms folded above the belly that was now beginning to show signs of the child that was growing inside her, her head cocked to the side, and her lips pursed, told him that she was holding back some important piece of information.
"It wasn't that guy from the ward who's been trying to sign us up on one of those multilevel marketing plans was it?" Travis stepped out of the shower, rubbing a towel over his head and wiping at the steamy mirror with one hand. In the sun, his short clipped hair was nearly red, but when it was damp like it was now it turned so dark it looked black. He debated for a moment on whether or not he needed to shave and decided it was his brawn that would be in demand today, not his good looks.
"No it was a software company . . ." she held the slip stiffly away from her body as though it had some foul substance on it. "From San Jose."
"Oh shoot." This had been a sore subject since he had first begun talking to recruiters during his junior year in college.
"We agreed that we would stay in Utah at least until the baby is older." He recognized the look in her eyes and knew that this was a battle that he stood little chance of winning. “A little girl should be spoiled by her grandmother, and a little boy should play catch with his grandfather."
And when this baby has a little brother or sister? he almost asked, and then thought better of it. The truth was, he liked living in Utah as much as she did. And although he was a little overwhelmed by her large outgoing family at times, he envied her childhood, and he wanted his children to have what he had missed.
"Don't worry. I'll let them know we aren't interested. I only e-mailed my resume to them because I liked their ad anyway. 'Great benefits and all the Pepsi you can drink.' I wrote back 'Does that go for caffeine-free too?"' He laughed, but she still looked dubious. "Give me the number. I'll call them right now."
She handed him the slip, and hugged him. "I love you."
"Yeah, yeah. Now, you love me." He dodged her halfhearted right hook, and was glad to see her smiling again.
As the phone rang on the other end of the line, he checked his watch. He was a little surprised that they had called him this early. It would be a little after nine in California, but programmers tended to keep different hours than most other people. It wasn't unexpected to see someone surrounded by empty soda cans and candy bar wrappers, studying lines of code at two o'clock in the morning. As a result, they often didn't show up at the office until ten or eleven.
"Open Door, come on in!" The voice on the other end of the line sounded perky and energetic.
"I'm not sure I have the right number." For a moment he was confused by her words, and then he remembered it was the company's tag line.
"Who are you looking for?" She seemed unfazed by his initial confusion, as though she was used to the response her greeting elicited.
"Robert . . . Detweiler" he struggled over the pronunciation of the name on the slip of paper, while Lisa shook her head and smiled.
'And may I ask who's calling?" Apparently she had been able to decipher his slaughtered attempt.
"Travis Edwards. I'm returning—"
His words were cut off by a woman's voice "The Nimitz is backed up for miles. And you know what that means don't you?" He started to answer before realizing that he was listening to a radio announcer. "Don't plan on being in to work for at least another hour." She continued to enumerate the stalls, rollovers, and spills that had freeways Travis had never heard of running even slower than usual.
A few seconds later the phone was picked up by an energetic-sounding male voice. "Travis, how are you? Thanks for calling me right back. I was just discussing your resume with one of our team leaders. Some very interesting things you've been working on out there. Exciting technologies. Very exciting."
Travis was overwhelmed by the barrage. "Well, um, thanks. We really thought it had a lot of potential." From across the room Lisa frowned intently at him, and he remembered why he was calling. "Listen Robert, I really appreciate your looking at my resume, but. .."
"Call me Rob. Now listen. What I'd like to know is how quickly we can get you out here to interview. I have several people I'd like you to meet. Oh, and can you bring some examples of your code? We are very interested in enhancing the design of our. ..Hey, we don't have you under NDA yet do we? Gotta be careful what I say until we have that signed." His voice was muffled for a minute as though he had put the phone against his chest. "Sheila, can you fax out a copy of our standard nondisclosure?"
"No really, it's not necessary. That's why I was calling." Travis glanced at Lisa who was nodding her head up and down vigorously.
"I know, I know. But you can't be too careful these days. Everybody's trying to knock the other guy off the top. Listen, I was thinking about
Friday morning. What do you normally fly out of Salt Lake? Delta? United?" Again his voice was muffled. "Sheila can you check on what flights come in from SLC on Friday morning? Try for San Jose but go with SFO if you need to. Oh, and he'll need a rental car too."
Realizing that the only way he could get through to this person was by imitating his style of talking, seemingly without stopping to breathe, Travis tried again. "No really, I don't think you understand. I appreciate your call, and I wish that I could come out." He continued over the other man's protests, "But I can't. My wife and I have decided to stay in Utah, so it really wouldn't make any sense to meet with you."
Moving to the edge of the bed, Lisa sat and visibly relaxed as she listened to Travis explain their position. She unconsciously patted her stomach as though emphasizing the need to stay near their family. But as she listened to the conversation, her brow furrowed again, and her arms folded tightly across her chest. His protests were turning into nods and murmurs of "yes" and "that makes sense."
"That would be nice." Travis tried to smile encouragingly at her, but that only seemed to infuriate her even more, and she shook her head vehemently and mouthed the word No! "Well, as long as you understand that it really won't make any difference." Lisa stood up suddenly and glared at him.
'All right then, I guess I'll see you Friday." As he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone he covered the mouthpiece and whispered, "It's OK." But she still looked furious. "I am sure she will," he continued.
"No we haven't ever been there," he nodded again. "Well thanks, Rob. Bye."
As Travis hung up the phone, Lisa turned and stormed out of the room.
"It's not what you think," he called, following her as she marched stonily out the front door.
"We're late!" As she yanked open the car door and got into the driver's seat, he could see that she was beginning to cry.
He grabbed the edge of the door and held it open. "They want to fly us both out to spend a three-day weekend in San Francisco. I told them that we wouldn't even consider moving there."
She stared at him as though he were speaking a foreign language.
"You promised!" she shouted and tugged on the door so suddenly that he had to pull his hand back quickly to keep from getting his fingers smashed.
He barely had time to run around to the other side of the car and get in before she accelerated back out of the driveway with the tires squealing against the concrete. And from the look she gave him as he got in, he thought that maybe she wished she had remembered to lock the doors first.
In their two years of marriage they had seldom fought, and the fights they'd had were usually heated but short. But after two hours of helping her brother and his wife move, she was still seething and refused to talk to him. Finally, he found her alone for a moment, sitting on a box in the shade of the garage, and he sat wearily beside her on the floor.
"Lisa, I just thought that it would be nice to take a little vacation before the baby comes. San Francisco should be really nice this time of year. They want to pay for the hotel, meals—everything, even though I told them we wouldn't consider taking a job there. All I have to do is spend a few hours at their offices in San Jose on Friday morning, and then the rest of the weekend we are free to go sightseeing. But if I had known how much this would upset you, I never would have agreed. I'll call them back and cancel as soon as we get home."
Leaning down to wrap her arms around his shoulders, she shook her head. "No, you're right. I'm being a big baby about this. I've never been to San Francisco and I'm sure we'll have a great time. It's just that I thought we had both decided that we were only going to look at jobs around here. I guess this pregnancy just makes me overreact to everything." She struggled to keep from sniffling again.
“Are you sure? Because I will call them and cancel if you want." Even as he said the words though, a part of him was already envisioning what they would do on the trip. As a developer with Exasoft, he had never traveled on business, and the idea of a company thinking so highly of him that they would pay for him and his wife to come to San Francisco was exhilarating.
"No, I'm OK." She wiped the back of one dusty hand over her eyes leaving a raccoon-like smudge across her face, and smiled. “And who knows, maybe I'll like it there so much I'll decide to move there. "
"Really?" He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "No, not really," she said pulling him tightly toward herwith a grin, "but I will go." And then she smiled at someone over his shoulder. Just as he started to turn, he heard her brother's voice. "Hey Travis, I think they need someone to help with that piano."
Shaking his head ruefully, he heaved himself to his feet. "And don't worry," he said. "There's not a chance that we would move there”
Chapter 2
From the outside, the building looked like little more than a two story warehouse. Silver-tinted windows were spaced sporadically along the smooth concrete walls. Only an inconspicuous vinyl sign stuck to a window near the entrance identified this as the home of one of the hottest Internet companies in Silicon Valley.
The only other hint of the technology hidden inside was the card scanner mounted on the wall to the left of the double glass doors Outside of regular business hours, employees would have to place a magnetically encoded card against the reader to enter the building. Now, however, as he approached the doors, they swung open automatically, and a female voice announced his entrance. "Open door, come on in!" Travis searched for the hidden speakers before deciding that they must be built into the doorframe itself.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, as he stepped from the bright glare of the sunlight outside to the darker interior, and as they did he stopped and stared, dumbfounded by what he saw.
Inside, the building looked like a strange, high-tech nursery school. Brightly colored inflatable chairs and couches were placed randomly around Internet kiosks the height of coffee tables Miniature palms and giant ferns growing from the in-ground planter to the right and left of the entrance were adorned with red, gold, and silver cards that said things like "Mike Sweeny's team: 120% growth, and "Kwan Lu's team: 128 straight days up time." Through a doorway to the right, he could see five people sitting on the floor of a hallway. A woman with fiery red hair was standing in front of them performing what looked like a puppet show, while the others laughed and took notes. From another doorway came the unmistakable sound of video games.
The obvious exception to the festive atmosphere was a huge Asian security guard sitting behind a semicircular reception desk just inside the doorway. Biceps the size of softballs bulged beneath the sleeves of his khaki uniform. He sat half reclined in a high-backed chair, arms folded across his expansive stomach, and stared intently forward as Travis approached him.
Walking up to the front desk, he waited for the guard to acknowledge him, but the man remained frozen in place, his eyes now staring directly at Travis's chest. For a moment he wondered whether the guard might be a mannequin of some kind, like the giant cowboy with the speaker in his hat that took orders in front of the Burger Barn where he and Lisa regularly picked up dinner. He imagined himself shouting into the man's belly, "I'd like a bacon cheeseburger, orange soda, onion rings, and extra fry sauce," and had to struggle to keep from laughing. Instead he said, "I have an appointment with Robert Detweiler."
Without changing his solemn expression, the man leaned forward and slid a pen across the desk. "Sign the book."
As he added his name to the bottom of the guest book, Travis scanned the company names printed on the lines above. A few of the hardware and software companies looked familiar, but most of the names meant nothing to him. His eyes dropped back down to one name that seemed to ring a bell—Cochran Edmonds. Where had he heard about that company before? It sounded like an industry analyst, or maybe a venture capital firm, but he couldn't quite place it.
"Take a seat, please." The guard's voice boomed out at him like a cannon, and Travis quickly dropped the pen back onto the desk and took the guest sticker the man was holding out to him.
"Oh, sure." Peeling the back off the sticker and placing it on the front of his shirt, he wandered over to one of the inflatable chairs. As he lowered himself cautiously into it, he wondered absently if the security guard had ever sat on one of these, and then decided that it would be easier to balance an anvil on a water balloon.
The chair was as uncomfortable as it looked, but he soon found himself caught up in the images on the screen of the kiosk in front of him. Open Door had started out as one of the dozens of web search engines, cataloguing the ever-increasing data published on the Internet and providing a tool for users to find the information they were looking for. But as the competition increased, they had quickly added more features. From what he could see, users could sign up for free e-mail, create personal home pages, chat with other web surfers on a variety of subjects, shop for just about anything, download free software, and do dozens of other things.
He wondered why they were so interested in him. They had a very impressive user interface, but they didn't seem to be using Assistants anywhere. Reaching out to the touch screen, he selected the '~bout Us" link. According to the company profile, Open Door was a little over three years old—young by most industry standards, but long in the tooth for an Internet company. It was surprising that they hadn't gone public already. Scanning the company press releases, he saw that they had received their third round of venture capital funding, a little more than $100 million, nine months earlier. They had received good reviews from the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Red Herring, and several other publications.
He was playing with a nifty Java application that let shoppers compare different products based on their own preferences, when a man about his age plopped down onto the bright orange sofa across from him.
"Travis?" He cradled a worn leather basketball in his left hand while he pumped Travis's hand with his right. "Rob Detweiler." Rob looked every bit as manic as he had sounded on the phone. Wispy light brown hair shot out from his head in every direction and a thick pair of glasses that looked as though they had been stepped on several times, hung precariously from the end of his nose. Baggy blue shorts hung loosely on his long pale legs and he wore a gray sweatshirt that had apparently gone several weeks too long without a washing.
"Just got done whupping up on some UI guys." He smiled noticing Travis' surprise at how he was dressed. "Not that there's a real strict dress code here. In fact I don't know if there is a dress code here. Anyway, thanks for coming out. How was your flight? No problem finding us? Is your wife here? Come on, let me show you around.”
Travis barely had time to nod yes, and shake his head no. Before he was halfway through explaining that Lisa had taken a cab into the city, Rob was pulling him energetically to his feet.
Rob led him through the hallway to the right, past the group sitting on the floor. "Guys, this is Travis Edwards. He's a real whiz at creating Intelligent Assistants. Travis, this is Mary Kowalski. She is the team leader for our Net Greeter project." The puppet on her hand, he could now see it was a bumblebee, nodded hello, but before he could blurt out a quick "Hi," Rob was leading him out of the hallway and past a row of cubicles.
"Sorry for the crowd. We've been growing so fast lately that conference rooms are a little tough to come by," Rob said. Stopping in front of a huge whiteboard, he pointed to a large red grid. Columns were labeled with headings like time line, objectives, team leader, coach, and status. “As you can see, all of our projects are done on a team basis. Team leaders recruit members for their projects from within the company, and based on the success of the project, they all share in the cash bonuses."
He ran his finger down the grid until he came to Mary's group, and whistled softly. "They are shooting for keeping new users on our site for an extra seven and a half minutes on average. If they can do it . . ." he seemed to be adding numbers up in his head, "that would probably translate to a bonus of 17k per person."
"Seventeen thousand dollars? Each?" Travis wasn't sure that he had heard correctly. "How can you afford that?"
"Can't afford not to. Eyes, stickiness, and revenue, that's what it's all about in this business. How many people you can get to your site, how long you can keep them there, and how much money you can make from them. Besides, it's an incredibly competitive job market out there. If they weren't making it here, they'd be making it somewhere else."
As they turned away from the board, Travis noticed a bank of three cameras aimed at different points around the room. "Pretty high-tech security huh?"
"What, those?" Rob waved at the camera nearest them and then made a face. "Not even connected. It's bad enough that big brother can track every time you scan your ID card. They lock the doors to everything but the bathrooms and the break room at nine P.M. After that you have to use your key just to get around the building. But when they wanted to have surveillance on us twenty-four hours a day, all the programmers threatened to walk out. I think they leave the cameras around just to remind us of what a magnanimous concession they made."
They were walking again, past a large white-tiled room containing dozens of different types of computers. Cables snaked out of each of the computers and disappeared into the floor. Rows of monitors were hooked to switch boxes that let the user track what was running on more than one computer. Most of the systems seemed to be running tests of one sort or another.
"This is the testing department. We test our site on over one hundred different computers, with more than twenty operating systems, and dozens of different browser versions. And that's just in English." He stopped and called out to a heavyset man wearing cutoff jeans and a polo shirt, who was bent over two terminals, pulling a long line of cabling out of a hole in the floor. "Runt, come on over here and meet Travis."
As the man stood up, hitched at his shorts, and turned toward them, Travis was instantly struck by two thoughts. Geez, he is huge! and He’s going to come over here and snap me like a twig. As the man came closer, he wondered where the second thought had come from. True, he stood at least a good six-feet-five, towering over Travis, but his smile seemed warm and genuine, and he was already reaching out to shake hands. It was just that, for a second, when their eyes first met, it had been like looking into the cold black eyes of a shark. It was probably the fluorescent lighting, or maybe he had just been reading too many Robert Ludlum books, he thought.
His hand was swallowed in the other man's grip as he introduced himself. "I'm Travis, good to meet you. ..Runt?" The word sounded ludicrous when referring to this giant, and Travis spoke it hesitantly, hoping he hadn't misheard.
But apparently he hadn't, because Runt was laughing and nodding his head. "I know what you're thinking, but I really was tiny before the hormone treatments."
"Hormone treatments?" To his left, Rob was moaning and rolling his eyes.
"Yup, I was barely four feet tall when I started high school. But then my folks took me to a doctor who specialized in helping smaller kids to start growing again. He set me up with steroid treatments that I took twice a day. "
“And it worked?" Travis could hardly believe he had ever been four feet tall, even at birth.
"Dang straight. But there was only one problem; I wasn't allowed to have any dairy products while I was on the treatment. And man that was rough, cause I lo-o-oved milk shakes." He rubbed his stomach at the thought.
"So finally one night, I cracked. I was really getting hungry from the growth hormones, and I must have binged on six chocolate shakes at McDonalds. And a week later three of my toes fell off." He looked down and shook his head sadly as though mourning a lost friend.
"What?" Travis was sure he was being strung along now, but he couldn't resist hearing the end of this.
"Um hum. Found 'em in the toe of my left sneaker. My mom was so mad that she rushed me right down to the doctor's office and slammed his door open, gripping three green toes in her fist and threatening to sue him for everything he had." He grinned mischievously down at one huge boot and waggled it back and forth.
"OK, I'll bite. What happened?" "Well the doctor said that he had warned me not to have any milk or cheese, and pulled a big stack of reports out of the file cabinet. And there, right on top, was a headline that laid it all out in black and white." He paused significantly. "The headline read 'Milk Drinkers Lacked Toes in Taller Runts."' He was bursting with laughter before he could even get the words out.
Rob patted Runt on one of his broad shoulders. "We want to hire him, not scare him of£ " Leaning conspiratorially toward Travis he stage whispered, "He tells that Lactose Intolerant joke to everyone he meets. But I saw his Dad once, and I think maybe he really is the runt of that family."
Runt grinned. "But I make up for my lack of size with my incredible wit." Again, Travis was struck by something in his eyes. With his huge size and "aw, shucks" sense of humor, he should have come across as a great, big, lovable teddy bear, but instead he couldn't shake the feeling that just under the surface was a predator marking his prey. Rob chuckled and shook his head. "In testing maybe, but then again testers aren't exactly hired for their repartee." Taking Travis by the elbow he turned him away from the lab. "Come on, let's get out ofhere before he starts in on his Bill Gates jokes."
Rob led him down the hall and up a narrow flight of stairs. As they walked together, he went over the morning's agenda. "To save time, we're going to have you meet with several of the honchos all together. Holly Richards heads up Marketing, David Lee is Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, Peter Makovitch is Product Management, and I am the humble VP of Engineering and Emerging Technologies. It sounds like a mouthful, but I'm really just a glorified coder."
As they reached the second-floor landing and entered another long hallway, he noticed that this level was almost all offices, with only a few scattered groups of cubicles here and there. The carpet was noticeably deeper here, too, and through the occasional open door he could see that the furniture had gone from cheap and functional to expensive and showy. Along the walls, oil paintings that looked to him like fairly expensive originals shared space with framed reviews and awards. If the floor below had been a nursery school, then this was a high-class law firm.
Stopping to stick his head into one of the offices, Rob whispered to a woman who was talking on the phone and typing furiously on her keyboard. "Holly, Travis is here."
Nodding, she held out one hand with three fingers extended, and mouthed, "Just give me three minutes."
Rob nodded, and they continued down the hall. "When this meeting is over, Keith Spencer, the company president, would like to meet with you individually. Martin Graves, our CEO, is in Germany for the week, so he won't be able to see you today. After you meet with Keith, we'll break out for a series of one-on-ones until lunch, and then the rest of the weekend is yours to enjoy."
Stopping in front of a large, glass-walled conference room, Rob pulled open the door. "Here we are," he said, waving Travis in. A dozen comfortable-looking leather chairs surrounded a long mahogany table. In the middle of the table, an ornate silver tray that held a tall coffee urn and a collection of cups sat next to what looked like a high-tech speakerphone. At the far end of the table, a projector showed a series of colorful balls slowly bouncing across a retractable white screen. On the near wall, a white board was covered with bullet points and diagrams that were only partially erased.
"Take a seat, and I'll run and tell everyone you're here." Rob started to leave and then turned back. "You want a cup of coffee or a soda while you wait?"
"No thanks, I'm fine." In truth, he was suddenly not feeling so fine. The rubbery ham and cheese omelet they had served on the plane were still sitting heavily in his stomach, and, even though he knew he couldn't accept whatever job they might offer him, interviews of any kind always started the butterflies flittering around inside him.
Trying to relax, he settled into a chair toward the end of the table and studied the diagrams on the white board. It looked like whoever was in here last had been discussing Natural Language Processing algorithms. Natural Language Processing, or NLP for short, was the means by which computers were able, or unable, in many cases, to understand language the way people spoke it, rather than in preformatted commands. A computer game, for example, might understand the command "Open treasure chest." But a variation like "Lift the lid on the big wooden box," would leave it completely confused. NLP was designed to parse through the text of any sentence and translate it into commands that the program could use.
At Exasoft, he had incorporated NLP into several of the Assistants he had created. By allowing a surgeon to tell his computer, "Get me all of the files relating to this patient," the company's medical software became not only easier to use, but also more thorough in its searches.
Very little of the code on the board looked familiar to him, but that wasn't surprising, considering how little of the NLP programming he had actually done himself. Mostly he had integrated existing NLP modules into his source code. He found, though, that he could follow the general idea of what the developer who wrote it had been doing. One line of code seemed incongruous with the rest, and he tried to puzzle out what it meant. It looked like someone's name had been inserted into the lines of C++ code. "Orville?" he muttered under his breath.
“At your service!" a male voice called to him.
He spun his chair back toward the table, embarrassed that someone had entered the room without him noticing, and then did a double take when he realized that no one was there. Looking under the table, he called out tentatively, "Hello?"
"Hi, how are you?" The voice sounded amused and somewhat familiar but its southern good-old-boy twang sounded out of place in this high-tech office. He wondered if maybe this was supposed to be some kind of a test. It was impossible to locate the source, because the sound echoed in the small, enclosed room, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular at once.
Searching for hidden speakers, or maybe even cameras, his eyes stopped on the speakerphone at the center of the table, and he realized his mistake. "I'm fine. And you?" It would have been nice if Rob had thought to mention that someone had already joined the meeting by phone. He was glad he hadn't said anything embarrassing.
"I'm great! Hey, would you like to playa game?"
Suddenly he realized why the voice sounded so familiar. It was a dead ringer for Bill Clinton. But he wasn't sure he had understood it correctly. “A game?”
"Do you like classical music?" the voice on the phone asked. This was not exactly the way he had expected the interview to go.
"I guess so," Travis said. "See if you can name the composer of this piece." Suddenly the sound of an orchestra filled the room. Either the speakerphone had amazing surround sound or else it was hooked up to an internal speaker system. He listened to the sonata for a minute, wondering if this was a normal part of the hiring process or if he was being singled out for some reason.
"I'm gonna have to say Beethoven." He was glad it hadn't been something harder like Liszt.
"Wow! You're smarter than you look, Pilgrim!" Now the voice on the other end of the phone was a perfect John Wayne. He knew programmers could be weird, but this was just too bizarre. First there was Baby Huey telling bad puns, and now a classical-music-loving, Rich Little wannabe. He was wondering how to respond when the door swung open and Rob walked in with a tall blond man.
"I see you've met Orville." Travis thought the man most resembled a nearsighted St. Bernard. It wasn't so much that he was big, as that everything about him looked slightly rounded and shaggy, except for his eyes, which seemed locked into a perpetual squint.
"I have. He's an interesting guy." Unsure of whether or not they were yanking his chain, he tried to keep his voice noncommittal.
"Yeah, he's not too bad for a lizard." Rob had changed into a pair of khakis and a button-down shirt. Dressy by programmer's standards.
"A what?" Struggling to articulate some appropriate response, Travis realized that they were both looking past the phone to the other end of the room. Following their gaze, he saw that the bouncing balls on the screen had been replaced by a grinning iguana sporting a fancy black and gold cowboy hat with the Open Door insignia on the front.
It took a moment to sink in that he had been conversing with a piece of computer software. The voice quality and intonations were perfect. Not at all like the tinny monotone of digitized speech that he was used to. That it had recognized his speech without any training was equally amazing. He had used several dictation packages with fairly good voice recognition in the past, but they usually required hours of training, and even then, the user had to speak directly into a microphone. Thinking about microphones, he looked more closely at the "speaker- phone" and realized that there was no number pad. What he had mistaken for a telephone was actually a multidirectional microphone.
As he looked up from the microphone and back at the iguana, he saw a door appear on the screen next to it. The door swung slowly open, and a small brown mouse seemed to step out of some kind of storybook landscape and onto the screen. She was wearing a blue flowery dress and a matching bonnet. In a perfect, squeaky mouse voice she said, "That sounds like my good friends Peter and Rob. But there is someone new here. What's your name?"
This was getting more and more amazing by the minute. To his left, Rob and Peter grinned at each other, obviously enjoying his surprise. "My name is Travis." Although he had been speaking in a normal voice when he thought he was talking to a real person, he found himself beginning to talk louder as though speaking to someone hard of hearing and then corrected himself. He had done enough work with voice recognition to know that speaking louder than necessary actually made the voice more difficult to process.
"Well, hello Drabis! I'm glad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad . . ." The voice kept repeating the last syllable like a scratched record, and then the screen turned blue and an error message appeared.
Peter instantly stopped grinning, and Rob quickly slid out a recessed keyboard from the far side of the table. But from the doorway, a woman's voice sounded completely unperturbed. "It's a feature!"
"I'm Holly Richards." The VP of marketing wore a sharply tailored, gray business suit, and took Travis hand in a firm handshake. "Here's a card, which I see these two bastions of civility have failed to give you. Did they even bother to introduce themselves before they turned Orville the Iguana and Maggie Mouse into mincemeat?"
"I'm Peter." The shaggy blond spoke with a strong Russian accent and looked slightly sheepish as he handed his business card to Travis. But Rob was still hammering on the keyboard as he watched strings of computer code fly by the blue background on the screen.
"Cards? We don't neeeed no steenkin cards roun here Senorita," Rob affected a weak bandito accent. But he reached one hand into his shirt pocket and slid a business card across the table, still typing with the other hand.
The door opened again and a young woman carried in a stack of forms and set them on the table. "Was there anything else you needed, Rob?"
Looking up, Rob glanced around the room and let out a frustrated sigh. "Only if you can somehow find a way to get David to meetings on time.
“Sorry, I don't think that's listed in my scope of responsibilities," Sheila called out over her shoulder as she left the room.
"Sheila thought she'd finally managed to get him to meetings on time by telling him the start time was a half hour earlier than everyone else." Rob picked up the stack of papers and began sorting through them.
Peter laughed and rebooted the computer that Rob had been using. "He figured that out weeks ago. He says that the first thirty minutes of all meetings are a waste of time. He even wrote a filter that intercepts all his e-mails and moves the time on his appointments to half an hour later, so he can plan on being late."
"Is that what we pay him to do? Well, we're just going to have to start without him." Rob glanced at his watch. "I've got 9:45, and that means he won't be here for at least another fifteen minutes."
As everyone took their seats, he went around the table handing a stack of papers to Peter and Lisa and dropping another set, apparently for David, on the table in front of an empty chair. "I've included a copy of Travis resume, the two-way NDA signed by Travis and our attorney, and a list of the projects that Travis was working on at his last company."
Each of them glanced briefly at the documents and then at each other, as though no one was sure who should begin. Holly pulled a sleek black pen out of her planner and tapped the back of it on the resume in front of her before finally speaking. "You've done some pretty impressive work for someone only two years out of college. But if you don't mind my asking, why Intelligent Assistants?"
Travis could feel his stomach muscles beginning to relax. This was more like what he had been expecting. "I've always felt that most software is too hard to use. How can you expect the average user to learn an application that's more complex then the problem it's supposed to be solving? For my senior project I created a genealogy helper assistant that's still being used in two commercial genealogy packages."
Shaking her head as though dismissing his words, Holly continued. "I can see that from your resume. But what do intelligent Assistants have to do with a small medical software company in Utah?"
He smiled. "I guess the company that bought us out had the same question. Around the table everyone laughed politely, but it sounded forced, and for the first time Travis noticed an undercurrent of tension that appeared to be affecting everyone in the room. Rob and Peter sat next to each other directly across from Holly. Peter's hands were clenched tightly on the table. Rob, slouched back in his chair, looked the most relaxed Travis had seen him all morning, but the fingers of his right hand drummed over and over on the sheets of paper in front of him. Holly, seeming to find the documents in front of her very interesting, was smiling slightly as she underlined something with several black lines. At the end of the table, Travis alternated his gaze between the two factions.
"Did it ever occur to you that your company could have invested the money they were spending on Assistants for something more practical, like increased product functionality?" Holly was driving at something. But her words didn't jibe with the direction that Open Door seemed to be headed.
"Honestly, I don't know why every software company isn't investing heavily in Assistant technology." Everyone at the table was leaning forward. Even Rob had sat up in his chair, and seemed to be listening more closely.
"And why would that be?" Holly was still looking down at the papers, but she had stopped writing.
"I know most people still associate Assistants with the paperclip in Microsoft's office products. Or some of the miserable failures that effectively killed the phrase 'artificial intelligence."' He paused to see if he had offended any of them. Unable to catch anyone's eye, he continued on. "But in the next three to five years, Assistants are going to be integrated into everything from document management to e-commerce. Five years ago, people thought they had information overload, and now we're exponentially increasing the amount of information available electronically every year. You guys have to be aware that standard search engines aren't going to be able to keep up with all of it."
Without any warning, the room suddenly exploded into a series of accusations and recriminations.
"Where's your data?" Holly was waving her pen around like a light saber.
"Haven't I been telling you? Even he can see it!" Rob was on his feet now, leaning across the table as though he was about vault across it.
Peter was shouting something, but his accent had gotten so thick that Travis couldn't tell whether he was speaking English, Russian, or some combination of the two. Travis could only stare dumbly at the two groups, wondering what he had stepped into.
Just at that moment, the door swung open and a tall, thin Asian man entered the room. One of his arms was loaded down with a stack of spiral-bound notebooks, and the hand of the other clutched the largest computer bag Travis had ever seen. He paused in front of the doorway, obviously taking in the scene before him, and then without a trace of irony asked, "Did I miss something?"
For a second, his words seemed to hang in the air like a cartoon text balloon, and everyone stopped speaking, as if frozen into silence. Then, just as quickly as they had been at each other's throats, they were all laughing. Like popping the cork on a bottle of champagne, the pressure that had been building in the room was instantly gone. Everyone was smiling, except the newcomer, who shook his head as though dismissing all of them as lunatics while he arranged his notebooks and bag on the table in front of him.
"Obviously, we have a slight internal disagreement on the relative value of Intelligent Assistants." Rob drew his hands from only inches apart out to each side of the table in a gesture that looked to Travis like Moses parting the Red Sea. And from what he could see, it would take an equally great miracle to bring these two sides to agreement. "But that is a decision that has already been made, and it's because of that decision that we have asked you here, Travis."
He paused for a moment as though waiting to see if anyone would disagree with him. When no one did, he turned toward the man who had just entered. He had flipped open one of his many notebooks and appeared to be engrossed in its contents. "David, since you have decided to grace us with your presence, do you have any questions for Travis?"
For several seconds David continued to read, oblivious to everything around him. And then, just when it looked like he either hadn't heard the question or was intentionally ignoring it, he pulled his eyes away from the text with what seemed to be a monumental effort.
"Did you bring any samples of your code to show us?" He ran his fingers through his unruly black hair and raised his eyebrows, as he looked toward the screen rather than at any of the people sitting around the table.
"Yes." Travis pulled a slim, white CD case out of his computer bag and slipped one of the shiny gold disks from its plastic sheath. As he stood, he realized that he hadn't yet seen any computers in this room. Obviously the keyboard and the microphone were connected to a system somewhere nearby, but he hadn't the foggiest idea where it might be hidden. And neither Holly nor David seemed inclined to give him any clues.
Fortunately, Rob came to his rescue. "Here, let me." He took the CD from Travis and motioned for him to take the chair in front of the recessed keyboard. Rob pushed on one of the wall panels to the left of the screen and it swiveled outward to reveal the tall beige case of a PC. After he had inserted the CD, he returned to stand behind Travis and reached over his shoulder to start a virus checker running
“Sorry, but it’s company policy. No software can be run on any company system without first being scanned. Travis wasn't surprised.
Computer viruses could be especially nasty on a company network and the best firewall in the world could only stop infected file~ coming in from outside.
Once the scan had finished, Travis used the keyboard's built-in mouse to open one of the directories and launch the executable file. As the application started up, he explained what its purpose was. "Even in today's world of medical specialists, doctors have to be able to keep up with what's happening in other fields. Most medical research today is available from one Internet source or another, but sifting through it all to find what you need can be very daunting, not to mention time consuming.
On the screen, a two-dimensional picture of what looked sort of like Einstein on one of his better hair days peered inquisitively out from the screen. Above him, a text bubble contained the question "What can I help you find?" Normally, Travis was extremely proud of his Assistants, but after seeing Orville's earlier demonstration, he felt very self-conscious. "Sorry, no speech synthesis here, and the graphics aren't quite up to par with what you guys have."
He hoped the voice recognition would work OK. He had never tested it with this type of microphone. "Wise Guy, get me all of the information you can find on skin cancer in children under five." In the balloon, the text had changed. The question now read "How long would you like me to search?"
"One minute." It seemed like the microphone was going to work
OK after all.
On the screen, a large magnifying glass had appeared in front of one of Wise Guy's eyes, making it seem to take up half of his face. The text balloon had now been replaced by the flashing red text "Thinking."
As Travis waited for the sixty seconds to expire, he tried to come up with something witty to say, but his brain seemed to be stuck m the same thinking loop as the Wise Guy on the screen. It was probably for the best anyway, he thought. He had never been very good at getting up in front of people, and now it felt like his salivary glands had suddenly stopped functioning. If he tried to speak, he was afraid it would come out sounding like a croak.
Fortunately, the wait wasn't long. The word "Thinking" had been replaced by the words "Search complete."
Swallowing dryly, he tried to speak clearly. "Show results." This was the "gee, whiz!" part of his presentation. If they didn't like this, it was going to be a long morning. Or maybe a short one.
On the screen, groups of articles were divided by category, relevance, publication, and date. Behind him he could hear murmurs of approval as he instructed the Assistant to find and summarize various documents. Throughout all of his commands, the application worked flawlessly.
Finally he issued his last command, "Go away, Wise Guy," and turned back to face the group. Peter was whispering something to Rob, who looked like a mother whose son has just won the school spelling bee. And even Holly, who had been scowling skeptically when he started the demonstration, looked impressed.
Of the entire group, only David seemed disinterested. He merely nodded to himself, wrote something in another one of his notebooks, and then looked back up. "Is there any more?"
He had two other Assistants on the CD, and through both of his next two presentations the response was fairly similar. Holly seemed to have lost some of her previous antagonism toward Assistants, and at one point Peter actually stood up and clapped. But if David was impressed, he certainly didn't show it. Occasionally asking a question relating to one piece of code or another, he mostly jotted down notes, or in some cases ignored things completely while he read.
As Travis neared the completion of his last presentation, thankfully sipping one of the sodas that an Assistant had carried in, Rob suddenly jumped to his feet. "Look at the time! I have to get you to Keith's office right away. Thanks, guys I'll recap with you this afternoon. And if any of you are free, we are doing lunch at about 12: 30. "
Travis put the CD back into its case and gathered his things, while Rob fluttered around him looking at his watch like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and muttering to himself something about Travis missing his appointment. As soon as Travis had closed his computer bag, Rob grabbed his arm and rushed him down the hallway to an older woman sitting behind a low desk. "Pam, Travis is here to meet with Keith."
Pam picked up the phone, passed on the message, and after listening a moment, stood and gestured toward the door.
"Mr. Spencer will see you now." As she led Travis away, Rob pantomimed shivering, and, with a wide grin on his face, stage-whispered, "If you're not back in an hour, we'll just assume he ate you."
As Pam escorted Travis into the office, Keith stood up from behind his desk and gripped Travis's hand in a firm dry shake.
Keith Spencer wore business casual the way other men wore a suit and tie. From his gray-flecked, black hair to his solidly square chin, he was the image of professionalism. On the wall behind him hung a family portrait painted in oils. In the portrait, his wife, an elegant-looking woman, who could have been anywhere between her early forties and late fifties, sat in a high-backed chair, flanked by two beautiful blond daughters. Behind the chair, Keith rested one hand on his wife's shoulder, while on the floor, a golden retriever sat at stiff attention.
Motioning Travis to sit, he turned to his Assistant. "Thanks Pam. When's my next appointment?"
"You have about ten minutes." She lingered in the doorway as though waiting to see whether she would need to change his schedule, but he waved her away.
"That should be plenty of time for a couple of hard-working businessmen to come to an agreement, don't you think?" He flashed a smile at Travis that left no room for disagreement.
"Sure." Travis could understand why they had brought this man in to take the company public. He looked like he could woo investors and drive competitors to their knees. And, apparently, all before lunch.
As the door swung closed, Keith returned to the chair behind his desk and silently studied Travis. With so little time, he had assumed that Keith would want to start talking right away. But as the seconds ticked by, the president simply stared intently at him over steepled fingers. Travis shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. What was he waiting for? Was this another test? And if so, what did he need to do to pass it? He opened his mouth, not sure what he was going to say, and then shut it again. What could he say? "Nice company you have here." Or, "Say, those are a couple of mighty cute daughters you have there, not that the dog isn't nice, and well, your wife . . ."
What he really wanted to do was ask, "Why did you bother to fly me here when you know very well that I'm not going to take a job in California?" But he sensed that anything he might say right now could only make him more vulnerable. He remembered a TV documentary on lions. The narrator had pointed out that lions looked for prey that seemed sick or injured. No, he would just sit there silently for the full ten minutes if he had to.
After what felt like an eternity, the man smiled ever so slightly and lowered his hands to the desk in front of him. "Let's get right to the point. I have a company that is going public in sixty-one days, and I have investors that are screaming for a killer application. Now, with barely two months until I hold my throat bare to the public and wait to see whether they slit it or not, my people are telling me we may have a problem."
Suddenly he remembered where he had seen the name on the sign-in book—Cochran Edmonds. One of the business magazines he had been reading on the plane had published a story about the new millionaires being created every day by the Internet stock boom. Cochran Edmonds had been quoted as one of the top investment banks that had acted as lead underwriter in several recent public offerings. If they were underwriting Open Door's IPO, it had to be big. With no idea of how to respond, Travis merely nodded.
"I have some of the cutest, cuddliest, and most likable Internet characters you ever met. I assume you have already met some of them yourself." If it was a question, he didn't wait for an answer. "Unfortunately, my VP of Marketing tells me that they don't actually do anything very useful. And people who had better know what they're talking about for the money I pay them, tell me that you can fix that. "
Again Travis had no idea how to respond, so he continued to sit quietly as the president pinned him to the back of his chair with his intense gaze.
"So the only real question for me is, what will it take to get you here?" Travis coughed into his hand, trying to decide how best to respond. This was even more direct than he had expected.
"I'm really honored that you value my skills so highly, and I have to say that I am really impressed with your company. But I think I made it clear to Rob the first time we talked that I can't move to California. I guess I could consider telecommuting, but my wife is pregnant and I don't want to be on the road a lot." He knew that he was starting to babble and stopped himself before it got any worse.
During his response, Keith never changed expression. Not even with so much as a nod, or a shake of his head. Instead he asked a question that left Travis speechless for a moment.
"What if I offered you a million dollars right now to come to work for me?"
Suddenly swallowing had become very hard. "Are you offering me a million dollars?"
"Just yes or no. Would you take the offer?" For a moment Travis pictured Lisa's face if he agreed to move out of Utah. But even here, in the excesses of Silicon Valley, they weren't about to offer him that kind of money unless he could hit Jerry Rice with a sixty-yard touchdown bomb, or slam-dunk over seven-foot centers. Feeling that he was on fairly safe ground, he agreed. "Sure, for a million dollars, I'm here."
"OK then, what if I offered you my position as president of Open Door?"
With this one he felt even safer. "You bet." He wasn't sure where they were going with this discussion, but the rest of the day hadn't gone as he had planned so why should this be any different?
"Good. Then we've established the fact that you can move to California. It's just a question of making you the right offer."
Travis struggled to come up with the right response, but the other man was already on his feet and coming around the desk.
"It's been a pleasure meeting you Travis, a real pleasure." As he walked back out the door, Travis tried to understand what had just happened. They had just been talking generalities. No one had even tried to make him an offer. And he certainly hadn't agreed to anything. Had he?
***
From the journal of Lisa Edwards
Friday, Feb. 25
Wow, I am exhausted from the top of my head to each of my swollen toes. I really haven't felt like a pregnant woman until today. Gee, couldn't be because I spent the entire day on my feet could it? But, oh, it was worth it! I had no idea how good really fresh seafood could taste, and it felt like we tasted all of it today. I thought that at any minute I would grow whiskers and start barking like the sea lions we saw next to Pier 39. (If I keep eating like this, I'll probably start walking like them too!)
While Travis was in San Jose, I was the brave young adventurer, exploring San Francisco on my own. I told the cabbie I wanted to take a cable car to Fisherman's Wharf, so he dropped me off at the end of the line. The hills didn't really affect me on the way up, (What do you expect? I live next to the Wasatch Mountains) but when we crested the top of the hill and started going straight down, I thought I was about to lose my breakfast. I think it was only the idea of spending the rest of the day wandering around the city in vomit-covered Reeboks that stopped me. Once we got past the steepest part, I felt much better. And then, a block or two before we got to Fisherman's Wharf, I smelled the most heavenly scent. Ghirardelli Square, a chocoholic's paradise! The only exploring I did for the next hour was up one candy aisle and down another. If they don't have chocolate in heaven, then I'm looking into the alternatives. (Ha, ha.)
Once the baby was full, (I'm sure I couldn't have eaten that much sugar on my own!) I explored Fisherman's Wharf and spent far too much money on souvenirs. At first it was too foggy to see the Golden Gate Bridge, but by 11:00, the sun burned through the fog, and it actually got so warm I had to take off my sweater. Can you believe it? Here it is, still February, and I am walking around in shirtsleeves. Won't my friends back in Provo be jealous?
I was thinking about taking a boat ride out to Alcatraz, but then I saw a bus go by with a Macy's ad on the side. Hmmm . . . exploring a cold empty prison, or lunch and window-shopping at Macy's? Let's just say that this was NOT a difficult decision. After lunch I headed back to the hotel to take a nap until Travis got in.
Speaking of the hotel, this place is amazing. I thought the hotel in Hawaii where we stayed on our honeymoon was nice but this place makes it look like Motel 6. "Aloha, we'll leave the light on for you." Every room has its own stereo, complete with CD player and CDs. The bathroom has more bottles of lotion, shampoo, conditioner, mouthwash, and you name it, than some drug stores. And the extremely soft, king-size bed is to die for. I opened the sliding door that led to a small balcony so I could enjoy the afternoon breeze, and was just about to start my nap when there was a knock at the door. I thought that Travis was back early, but instead it was a bellboy with a vase of flowers and, guess what? More Ghirardelli chocolate! Pardon the smudges.
On top of the chocolate was a nice note from the company that Travis was interviewing with. Inside the note were two tickets to tomorrow night's showing of Miss Saigon. I still hate the idea that they think they can talk us into moving out of Utah, but it's hard to despise someone who sends you flowers, candy, and orchestra level theater tickets. (Not to mention paying for this whole weekend!)
I'm really too tired to write any more about today, but suffice it to say that "a good time was had by all."
PS The only really weird thing about today was when I asked Travis how his
meetings had gone. He went on and on about their "killer apps" and
"awesome technology." But when I pressed him on whether or not he
was clear with them that we were not leaving Utah, he said that they hadn't
even tried to make him an offer. Then he muttered something about a million-dollar
salary and being company president. When I asked him what he was talking about,
he just laughed and said that everyone in California was strange, even the iguanas.
Oh well, I'll see if I can get more out of him tomorrow.
Saturday, Feb. 26
The show was great.
The food was sublime.
Saw a lot.
Had a wonderful time.
Barely awake.
Tired poet.
Going to sleep?
You know it!
Sunday, Feb. 27
We are on the plane back home and I am so mad I could spit! Travis knows it, too, and he keeps saying things like, "We don't have to take their offer. Really." Like I am going to be the one responsible for turning down all that money! But I'm getting things all out of order here. It's just that I am SO angry! Why couldn't they make a nice normal offer that we could politely refuse?
It all started this morning when Travis was in the shower and there was a knock at the door. I thought it was housekeeping and I kept telling them to come back later. Finally, I realized that the woman outside was saying, "room service," and I thought, "Oh, how sweet, he ordered us breakfast in bed." I pulled on my robe, opened the door, and she wheeled in a cart covered with at least a dozen plates. She just kept pulling off one silver lid after another, and, although I knew we would never be able to eat it all, it looked yummy. Belgian waffles, ham, southwestern omelets, strawberries and cream . . . and then I saw the envelope, and my heart just dropped. It had the Open Door logo in the upper left-hand corner and it was addressed to both of us.
I tried to tell myself that it was just a thank you note, but deep down I knew it wasn't that at all. I even thought about tearing it up and throwing it away before Travis got out of the shower. (I could hear him singing in there at the top of his lungs.) I only thought about it for a second, but was it ever tempting! But instead, I just sat on the bed with the letter and waited for him to turn off the shower and come out of the bathroom. I guess he hadn't heard the door, because he looked as surprised as if I had magically summoned all the food from thin air.
He was actually halfway through a Belgian waffle and was stuffing a fork full of omelet into his mouth before he realized I wasn't eating anything. When he saw the letter, I could see that he was trying to hide the excitement in his eyes, but he pretended not to know what it was. I am trying very hard to believe him when he says he had no idea what was inside, but I just feel like I have been used. It's like Pinocchio having fun and games at Pleasure Island, and then finding out that they plan on turning him into a donkey and sending him to work in the mines.
I am not sure I understand all of the details of the offer, but the relevant points are these: If Travis agrees to work for Open Door for a minimum of one year, starting a week from tomorrow, we get stock options that could be worth anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000 at the end of that time. They are also offering a base salary that is more than twice what we were making at Exasoft, plus performance and signing bonuses. Of course, they will be happy to cover all moving expenses, and their benefits package will cover my pregnancy (like that somehow makes it all better.)
I'm afraid to pray about it, because I just know if I do, Heavenly Father will tell me that it's the right thing for us. The money's great, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Travis. But how can leaving my family and all the friends we've made in Utah be right? It just seems completely unfair that something I know will make Travis so happy is making me so miserable.
I'm going to stop now because Travis is trying to unobtrusively glance over my shoulder. I've been managing to keep up a brave front about this so far, but if I keep writing I am sure that I'll start bawling.