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Chapter Four
We were alone in a massive conference room. The whole wall behind Rob Michaels was glass; a perfectly clean glass window as if was nothing there, but a ledge.
He walked over to a small counter next to the window. He smiled at me, and my stomach dropped. He had one of those half-smiles, like a Hollywood actor.
“You want a drink?” he pointed at several bottles on the counter, then a coffee pot, then a pitcher of water with slices of fruit calmly floating in it. I declined with a curt shake of the head.
“No thanks, I hear if you drink the water in hell, you have to stay all winter,” I said.
He laughed. It was an easy, lazy laugh. As if laughing came simply to him, all the time.
“It's only if you eat the pomegranates,” he said, pouring himself an ample amount of something amber-colored, “I'll have a little something. I always have to drink after being around the lawyers. It's my way of feeling like a person again.”
“Nobody told you to bring them,” I said, “Especially all ten of them.”
“Sorry if they scared your little brother. He might need a new pair of suit pants.” He sat on the corner of the meeting table, still on the other side, away from me, which I was happy about. I felt nailed to my chair.
“He's my big brother,” I said, “How did you know that?”
“I know everything,” he said with a shrug, in the way someone might talk about their favorite book, if they weren't very proud about it being their favorite.
He swished the ice in his glass. I became even more impatient. I was already squirming in my chair. I felt overheated in my blazer.
“You look warm,” he said, “Why not take your jacket off?”
“It's part of the look,” I said quickly, “I'm trying to maintain an air of professionalism. Unlike some people, who are trying to maintain an air of homelessness.” I gestured at him.
He laughed. Threw his head back and roared, really.
“I like you,” he said, “You're mean to me. I know it's a cliché, but I like women who bite. I bet you'd draw blood.”
“Now I'm suing you for harassment as well as intellectual property theft. Let's not get off-topic. You stole my toy. I want it back.”
He slugged back the rest of his drink and went to pour another. He waited a very long time to respond to me.
I was starting to sweat. I decided I wouldn’t shake his hand on the way out, lest he see how sweaty I was.
“Your ball fell in my yard. It's mine now. At least, according to the US government,” he walked all the way down the long table until he was sitting on the corner closest to me, “I got there first. I've claimed it. My pole is deep in the ground.”
“Except my signature is on your pole,” I said, then regretted my wording. But, the metaphor was apt.
He smiled. “What an excellent thought,” he said, “What do you mean?”
He asked as if he didn't care very much, but I knew he was listening intently, from the casual way he looked into his glass instead of at me, as he asked.
“It's millions of lines of code. Even if your engineers went over most of it, they couldn't have gone through it all. I left a calling card in one of those millions of lines; something that only I know, and only I know how to find. If I activate that part of the program, your game is up. Everyone will know that I wrote it and you stole it by pirating it off the server.”
His face went blank. Like serial-murderer blank. A mask you'd wear on Halloween to scare people with its indifference and its total absence of human feeling.
Then he laughed, again. This time it felt forced.
He sipped his drink, his lips gently touching the rim of the cold glass, his tongue flicking a drop of the drink into his mouth, then cleaning off his shiny lips.
“You're a clever bitch; you know that? Usually you scientist types can't wipe your own ass. Hats off,” he raised his glass and downed the rest, and then he gestured at me with the empty glass, “Sure you don't want a drink? This stuff's from 1830. It's not even my best stuff. I've got a scotch from the 1700s in my office.”
“I don't care about any of that. What I want is for you to put my name on the research as the primary researcher, give me royalties for any of the profits, and help me publish my dissertation,” I laid it out clearly for him. I was worried he was getting drunk.
“I do that and it's admitting to the public we stole your research. I can't. The credibility I'll lose in the public eye will cost me much more than those royalties you're asking for. Not to mention it sets a bad precedent,” he shrugged, shaking his head, dismissing everything.
