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Him:Yeah. We’re working on a project together. I’d hoped to get it done by Christmas but it’s taken longer than I thought.
Me:What’s it about?
Him:Stuff I won’t bore you with.
Okay, he doesn’t want to talk about it. Fair enough. I change the subject.
Me:I saw that you spoke at the International Conference on Supercomputing.
Him:Where did you see that?!
Me:Wikipedia! The font—or fount—of all knowledge :-)
Him:Oh, LOL. Yeah. That was pretty cool. It was virtual, so I was able to do it here in the office.
The mention of his office makes me think about his ‘secret’ suite. He doesn’t know I was in there. How can I ask him about it?
Me:You obviously work long hours. Do you ever look up and realize the sun is coming up?
Him:Many times! I often work till three or four am. I’ve got a bed in the office, so sometimes I crash there if I can’t be bothered to go back to the apartment.
I smile, but it fades slowly. I keep forgetting he’s a billionaire genius who works all hours under the sun.
Time to end it, Sid.
Me:Well I’d better get back to work. Thanks again for the flowers. They really are beautiful.
Him:Beautiful flowers for a beautiful girl. x
I bite my lip, put my phone down, and turn back to my computer.
It was a wonderful thing for him to say. But it’s time to move on.
Chapter Fourteen
Mack
At eleven, I have a meeting with the other three members of my senior management team: Eoin, Cherry, and Kai.
Eoin—confusingly pronounced Owen—is a smart Kiwi guy with ginger hair in his early thirties that I met through Huxley when we were at university. He’s a top-rate computer science engineer, very smart, and fairly high on the spectrum, which means he can struggle a little socially because of his brusque and direct manner. That has proven invaluable to me though, as he’s not afraid to point out any weaknesses in my work, and I need someone like that working with me to keep me on track.
Cherry, who hates her name because she says it makes her sound like a porn star, was born in Australia but has lived here for the last ten years. When I met her, she was working for MediTechNZ, but Elizabeth told me unselfishly that she thought Cherry was wasted there and had the knowledge and skill to flourish at Koru Tech. When I offered her a job, she jumped at the chance, and less than a year later I promoted her to head one of my teams because she impressed me so much. She’s also in her thirties and a great computer engineer, although her main skill lies in the collation and bringing together of information. Where we sometimes get lost in the minutiae, she’s able to get us to step back and look at the big picture.
Kai is Japanese, and I’ve also known him since university. He was the guy who worked with me to develop the computer processor we sold to Intel, and he’s the main one who created Marise with me. Communication is important to me—I like to connect with other smart people and share what I know, especially to the youngsters coming up in the industry. But Kai is much quieter than me and doesn’t enjoy public speaking, so he prefers to work in the background and let me be the face of the company.
The three of them each head a team of computer science engineers, and everyone’s been working super hard to finalize the MediTechNZ project.
“Our teams are analyzing the final results as they come in,” Cherry states at the meeting. “Everyone’s prepared to work through Christmas until it’s done.”
I doodle on my pad, tempted, but eventually lean back with a sigh. “As much as I’d love to do that, we’ve all been working over twelve-hour days for months, and we all have families. Elizabeth is happy for us to take a break, and I think she’s right. Everyone needs it, and they’ll come back refreshed and ready to double and triple check everything before we submit the work.”
“You’re taking time off?” Eoin asks. “I don’t believe you. You’ll send us home and then sneak back in.”
“Nope. I’m off tomorrow to the Bay of Islands with my family. I’ll be back first thing Monday morning.”
“You’re having a whole weekend off?” Cherry grins. “I think we should call the Guinness Book of Records.”
“Yeah, yeah. I plan to eat a whole turkey, drink half a bottle of whiskey, and then pass out in front of the TV for forty-eight hours.”
