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Nadia knew what she was asking for. They had a deal, she and Taina. Nadia kept Tai accountable for her doctor’s appointments, even when she didn’t want to go. And Tai put Nadia in sort of grown-up time-outs whenever she did something she knew would aggravate her bipolar disorder.
Unzipping the top of her suit, Nadia pulled the chain and the crystal from around her neck. She dropped them into Taina’s waiting hand.
Tai closed her fist and the crystal disappeared. She pursed her lips in that way Tai did when she was stopping herself from saying something rude. “So instead of dropping a task, you just decided to use this thing to make overworking yourself easier.” It was a statement, not a question. She tucked the crystal into one of her pockets.
“No!” Nadia protested. “I mean, yes? She’s helping me stay organized,” Nadia clarified. “But that’s not even the best part.”
“Oh, be still my heart,” Taina deadpanned.
“VERA,” Nadia said over Tai. “Let’s talk about your creator.”
“Gladly!” VERA sprang back to life. Her pixels re-formed into the dark-haired woman with the icy eyes. “What would you like to know about—”
“This is Margaret,” Nadia interrupted VERA, too ramped up to let the AI do the talking for her. “Margaret Hoff. She invented her first app when she was just eleven years old. She founded her current company, HoffTech, at just twenty-two. She’s one of the only women CEOs in machine intelligence. She’s from New Jersey. And she used to be an intern right here, at Pym Labs!”
Nadia paused for dramatic effect.
Taina blinked. “Cool.”
“Cool?!” Nadia responded, incredulous. “It’s incredible! It’s everything a G.I.R.L. scientist aspires to be! Creative, independent, beholden only to herself, certain of her dream…” Nadia sighed, wistfully. When was the last time she’d felt any of those things? Before she’d gotten so busy, maybe? But even then, she was being held against her will by an evil espionage organization. So…maybe never?
“Indeed,” corroborated VERA. “Margaret got her start at Pym Labs. Though it must be said that while here she did not work on anything quite as remarkable as Pym Particles or Nadia’s Wasp suit.”
Taina’s head snapped toward the brick. “Now this thing knows about the Wasp suit?”
“Well, obviously.” Nadia squinted at Tai. “I told you she helps me keep track of time while I’m in in the Crystal Lab. Which you can’t get to without Pym Particles.”
Tai rolled her eyes. “Obviously. So where’s this Margaret at now?”
“HoffTech HQ recently relocated,” VERA piped in. “They’re currently located in Queens, New York.”
“Wow!” Taina said with more enthusiasm than Nadia had heard from her in…ever? That made Nadia decidedly suspicious of what was coming next. “VERA, can you tell me how Margaret was able to become so successful at such a young age?”
If VERA detected her sarcasm, she pushed on undeterred. It sounded like she had come with this speech prepared. “Margaret began coding as a girl when she wanted to improve her Neopets storefront. She fell in love with the art and developed her first app to help students track their grades and their future school prospects at age eleven. After graduating early from a prestigious STEM-focused high school in the Bronx, she attended both MIT and Stanford. She interned at Pym Laboratories under one of the founding Avengers before Margaret founded HoffTech at twenty-two to execute on her vision of creating me.”
“Wow,” Taina repeated. “So, was that Bronx High School of Science?”
“No,” replied VERA. “It was the Frost School for Science and Technology.”
“Tuition?” Taina asked, keeping her voice casual.
“Fifty-two thousand dollars per year.”
“And Stanford and MIT. Was she there on scholarship?”
“No,” started VERA, “Margaret turned down prestigious scholarships in order to better provide for students with need of financial aid.”
“And she didn’t graduate, just to be clear.” Taina had taken a sudden close interest in her own fingernails. From the bed, Nadia watched Taina and VERA bounce back and forth like she was in the stands at a tennis match.
“She left traditional education behind to pursue founding HoffTech,” VERA said, still smiling.
“And her start-up money came from…?”
“Until this summer, Margaret has never accepted funding from investors or venture capitalists,” VERA said with what sounded like pride. “She built her company from the ground up, on her own.”
“And what’s her father’s name?”
VERA didn’t so much as pause. “Theodore Hoff the Third.”
