Kill Decision(14)

Kasheyev leaned into Strickland’s line of view and placed an ice-filled paper towel that smelled of champagne onto his face. “You okay, Josh?”

His lips hurt like hell. One tooth felt loose. Strickland looked down to see blood had run down his white shirtfront. “What the hell, man . . .”

Wang was shaking his head. “Vijay has finally lost it.”

Koepple was still looking pale—not his normal unflappable self. Perhaps he, too, was realizing just how completely fucked they were.

Strickland felt tears rising. What was he, a pussy? But he couldn’t help it. This had been his ticket. These other guys had serious technical talent. Strickland was smart but not as technically brilliant as these other guys. He needed people like this to employ his own talents—people and management skills. If his doctoral thesis was rejected due to plagiarism, of all things . . . Jesus Christ.

Strickland looked up at the others. “Why did Vijay hit me?”

Koepple shrugged. “Why did he hit you, Josh? Is there a reason?”

“Oh, don’t you start.”

Kasheyev motioned for them to be quiet, and then turned to Strickland. “I don’t think it was you, Josh. I think we need to look at the evidence here. This is a vision intelligence system. I have cameras in these rooms. No one can approach the project servers without our knowing about it. Vijay is right about that. And if no outsider physically got to those machines, then—”

“The damned project servers are in the middle of a party right now! There must be forty people in the lab cluster! Why the hell is everyone focusing on me? Because little Lord Fauntleroy popped a gasket and needs to find someone to blame? And why not the least talented coder in the bunch? Why not the guy who’s had the least to do with the code? Do you realize how this fucks me? Do you realize how totally screwed my life is now?”

The whole team looked embarrassed.

Kasheyev patted Strickland’s knee. “Sorry, Josh.” With a last look he walked out, followed by Koepple.

Wang lingered a moment to point to Strickland’s face. “You might want to think about pressing charges, Josh. We were witnesses.”

Strickland shrugged. It was likely that Doctor Lei would already bring Prakash up on disciplinary charges. And besides, what was the point? Now his face looked the way he felt inside.

Wang walked out too, leaving him alone.

Strickland turned in the office chair to face what was actually a rather beautiful day out the window. From his position on the second floor, he could see a tree just outside, and a raven sitting on a branch there—staring at him. After a moment it flew away.





CHAPTER 4

Intrusion Detection



Joshua Strickland slumped in an office chair in the deserted lab cluster. Eyes closed, he listened intently to Rage Against the Machine. It was late. Very late. The place was littered with plastic cups, wine and beer bottles, and pizza boxes. It had cleared out pretty quickly after the intellectual property spill, but that had been hours ago. Hours and hours. Strickland glanced at his watch—then realized he wasn’t wearing one. That he was, in fact, “philosophically opposed to wearing watches.” What a poser he was. Lately he had begun to annoy even himself.

A nearly empty bottle of champagne hung in his hand. No, that wasn’t quite right. He examined the foil label.

Sparkling wine.

The French were sticklers about their intellectual property too. He upended the bottle into his mouth, finishing off the last inch or so, then tossed it against the far wall, where it ricocheted into a trash can.

Not drunk enough by half. He groped among the bottles on the nearest desk until he came away with another half-empty. More of the cheap shit. But then, that’s all he’d be drinking from now on. No first-round-funding-leading-to-an-eventual-IPO for him.

He thought about his student loans. About his other debts. It was nearly a hundred thousand by now. Did he even have a thesis to defend anymore? Did this incident violate the terms of his partial scholarship? Surely, someone could establish that his team really had written the Raconteur code before copies appeared online. Couldn’t they?

He’d started wondering whether they’d actually written the software—and by “they” he meant Prakash. Prakash and Kasheyev. And maybe Koepple.

Strickland had always been the smartest kid in his high school, but when he’d come to Stanford, he was suddenly the slow guy. It was like swimming in white water here—a constant struggle to keep from drowning in knowledge, while for others it was easy. Or at least it seemed easy.

No, scratch that. He knew a lot of people were working hard to keep their place here.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re no idiot.