Pawn of the Billionaire(43)

We’d been working together now for long enough that he wasn’t so nervous of me, and he glanced at the bagel in my hand before taking one himself.

I grinned even wider. “I broke his new app.”

Paul stared at me, his eyes shocked. “What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “He gave me the chess app to play and it cheated and froze when I was about to win. Now he’s all angry with them.”

Paul went white. “Fuck, I hope it wasn’t my coding that went caput.”

I stared at him, horrified. I hadn’t thought of that.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not. He was mad with Tom on the phone.” I took a gulp of coffee.

“Yeah, well he would be. But Tom doesn’t do that much of the coding, he just stitches together what the teams do. It makes it a lot quicker.” He stared at the folder. “I was going to tell you that we’re taking longer than we should, just because you might want to ask for a team yourself. But if the fault’s in my stuff, maybe I shouldn’t be working on your app.”

He looked really worried.

“No. Paul, I don’t want a team. I was worried enough telling just you. I’d be scared it would get leaked. And I trust that you’ll make it work.” I sat at the workstation. “Is it today we’re going to look at the backroom psychologist workload?”

His face cleared a bit. “Yeah. That’s the genius bit of your idea. No other team that I know of would want that commitment, but it’s exactly what’ll make people keep on subscribing.”

I grinned. “That’s what I thought.”

I began leafing through the sheets. “But we don’t want it to throw too much to the back. It’s got to learn to come up with good replies most of the time.”

Finally, his face cleared. “Yeah, I’ve thought of that. Look, on this bit. There’s a feedback loop here where the user has to rate the response. If it’s good, then the app learns, and downloads a new bit of code in the next update.” He paged on through.

“And here, if the user is coming up with too many whacky responses that come back to us, then she gets told to get a health screening before she can use the live psychology function again.”

I carried on reading. “That looks good. So … we’re good with just one member of staff until we’ve got how many subscribers?”

He leaned over me. “Look. There, the estimate’s up to fifty k. I’m thinking to start with, the boss will want to pay agency shrinks by the hour. We’re not promising instant replies, and that on its own will encourage them to go for the easy answers.”

I grinned. “Good thinking, Batman.” I stopped, puzzled. “What does this mean?” And I pointed to the word. “Psycho-ceramica?”

Paul looked a bit embarrassed. “Oh, that’s back-end. Users won’t see it, but I didn’t want a rude name getting out if the code got leaked.” He shrugged. “It’s cryptic for crack-pot, when we get a weirdo.”

I sat back and laughed my head off. “Psycho-ceramica. Crack-pot. I love it!”

He went a bit pink, smiling back.

Then my senses prickled. I turned. James was standing in the doorway. He looked serious, not a glimmer of a smile, his body tense, coiled. He saw me looking at him, and smiled tightly.

Paul leapt to his feet. “Good morning, sir.”

James nodded at him. “Carry on, Paul.” Then he turned to me.

“Perhaps Paul can spare you for the rest of the day, I’d like you to come home for lunch.” I looked over at him. There were lines of tension around his eyes, and he looked more gaunt than usual.

“Of course.” I reached for my purse. “See you, Paul.”

I followed James to the elevators. Once we were inside, he leaned against the wall, as if he was weary. I felt anxious when he didn’t speak to me. “Um, James?”

He shook his head at me. “Not here.”

I was astounded. Didn’t he trust his staff? But I subsided anyway, and kept silent even as the car took us home.



* * *



It was a bit early for lunch, and James headed upstairs immediately. “Come with me, Toni.”

What had I done wrong? Slowly, I followed him. It seemed ominous, no staff were around, though I often didn’t see anyone until we called for them anyway. Perhaps I was just being extra sensitive.

I trailed along after him and he entered his own suite, holding the door open for me. I went in, trying not to bite my lip.

“What happened, James? Can it be fixed in time? Chess? I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have tested it?”

His mouth twisted in a grimace. “No, that’s okay, Toni. In a way, it’s better now than when it’s been released. Someone in the media would have tried everything to break it.” He shrugged. “Because that’s what they do.” He smiled humorlessly. “Perhaps I should’ve given it to you a week or so ago, so the pressure isn’t on so much.”