OmniVore Tech’s main offices are not where you’d expect to find them. Offices are where your father worked. Tech companies are supposed to be on campuses like Facebook and Google, little pockets of the future plunked down in the present.
But those companies don’t have the CIA as their primary backer, which does not want its secrets splashing out all over the place, burdening the public with too much knowledge. A single location is easier to secure than a group of buildings spread out over several acres.
So OmniVore is stuck in an office tower in downtown San Jose.
I watch the exterior of the building from a safe distance for several days. Never too close, and always wearing a ball cap and sunglasses against the surveillance cameras mounted above the doors, or in case anyone remembers me from the corporate retreat.
I don’t have to get closer than a hundred yards to see that there is serious security protecting the place. We’re talking state-of-the-art everything: alarms, cameras, keypad locks, doors with palm-print ID and retinal recognition, pressure-sensitive floor panels, motion detectors, thermal scanners, and, of course, big guys with guns.
Ordinarily, this is what you’d need to get past all that:
You would have to hire at least four subcontractors, experienced people who’d done hard and soft entry before. They would approach the offices in a variety of disguises: FedEx courier, temp secretary, bicycle messenger, homeless man. They’d spend a couple of weeks taking discreet pictures on their phones, exploring fire stairs and exits, measuring security’s response time. Then you’d get the building’s blueprints from the city or county and check the design against any remodeling that had been done since the building went up. Once you’d made and memorized a detailed map of the premises, you’d have your whole team take positions on the day of the actual breach. You’d have your homeless guy start a fire or something outside the lobby, create a nice distracting layer of chaos, the kind that brings firefighters and EMTs running in response. You’d have your FedEx guy and your bike messenger and your secretary waiting inside with their gear. They’d hit the fire alarms, and everyone in OmniVore’s offices would run like hell to avoid being gassed to death by the Halon fire-suppressant system that automatically triggers to protect the computers. Then they would switch into helmets and fire coats and oxygen masks, and race up the fire stairs and smash-and-grab as many computers they could find before the real firefighters and the cops showed up.
Even if you did all this perfectly, with the best operators you could find, it would take two months, minimum, and maybe a hundred grand in up-front costs. And you’d still have only a fifty-fifty chance of actually pulling it off.
Fortunately, I’m not a mere mortal like you. For me, it starts with finding just one guy.
A FEW DECADES ago, Max Renfrow would have led a very lonely life. He would have been a math geek and the president of the chess club, and nobody would have understood his references to Monty Python and Doctor Who.
But that’s all changed, thanks to the Internet. It’s created a world where his talents are valued and people can Google his jokes if necessary. Tonight, Max is filled with the confidence of a high school quarterback as he enters the trendy little craft-cocktail bar in downtown San Jose. He knows the secret language of machines and he’s got a six-figure salary with stock options. He views every woman in the bar as his property; they just haven’t realized it yet.
So when he sees the insanely hot woman sitting alone, he immediately heads over to her.
He smiles and takes the seat next to her. He orders a drink for himself—“and another one of whatever she’s having,” he tells the bartender. <Women like that> <shows them you’re in charge> he tells himself.
Kelsey smiles at him and says thanks. I’m a few seats away, but to Max, I might as well be invisible.
He doesn’t know it, but he’s exactly the guy we’ve been waiting for.
I PLUCKED MAX from the mess of OmniVore programmers, purple IDs on lanyards around their necks, dribbling out of the building in irregular spurts for lunch and dinner. Most of them went right back to the office with a Subway bag in hand, ready for another twelve hours of work. It’s still considered bad form to put in anything less than a sixteen-hour day in Silicon Valley. Even stepping out for a sandwich is a tiny form of rebellion, a way of saying they value fresh air and sunlight more than the free snacks in the break room.
A brief, surface read of their thoughts showed that most of them didn’t have room in their lives for anything but data analysis or network access. And those who did were usually new hires, lacking the kind of seniority I needed.
But there were a few who were secure enough to risk going out after work. They put on fresh T-shirts and jeans and headed out to the bars, ready to prove their alpha-male status and bring home a mate.
Out of those few, I chose Max.
Max is a senior programmer, positioned just right in the org chart to have access to what I need to know, but not so high that he belongs to Preston’s inner circles. Looking into his head, I saw his identity, his self-image, wrapped protectively around his job, that purple ID card like a badge of honor on his chest.
I scooped his weekly routine from his brain and stationed Kelsey at his favorite after-work spot.
“Get him to talk about his work,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes. “Ask me for something hard.”
“I’m serious. I mean specifics. Get him to drill down into his job as much as possible.”
“I got it.”
“Are you sure?”
Lens flare of irritation, which I’m starting to see whenever she thinks I underestimate her. “I talk to people like this for a living,” she reminded me. “All they do is talk about their work. Believe me. I got it.”
FOR A MOMENT, I’m worried.
Max has read a lot of advice about women on the Internet, none of it good. He’s filled with strategies and methods, all of which are supposed to guarantee that women will melt into puddles of submissive goo at his feet.
Case in point: his opening line. “Your boyfriend teach you to drink that stuff?” he asks, pointing to Kelsey’s whiskey. This is supposed to put her on the defensive, make her crave his approval, and get the conversation started.
She stares at him for a long moment. He waits for her reply. And waits. And waits.
He loses his nerve after about ten seconds of silence. “Uh, I mean, you know, women usually, like. Drink white wine. Or something fruity.”
“Maybe you need to meet more women,” Kelsey says.
There’s a feeling that ripples through him. It’s hard to put into words. It sort of sounds like a sad trombone.
I’m afraid this means we’re going to get nothing but bad pickup lines from him. Kelsey, however, reads him as well as I do, and she doesn’t even have any superpowers. She finds just the right key to wind him up.
“So what do you do?” she asks, and he lights up. (Literally. His brain suddenly switches into high gear, all kinds of neural activity waking up, and I can see all of it.)
“I’m in development at OmniVore Tech,” he says, with the right combination of humility and pride.
Most people around here have heard of the company. Even if a woman is interested in him only because he might be rich, she’ll know the name. Most people also automatically assume he’s doing something incredibly cool and cutting edge from the seat of his Aeron chair. This is where he usually shines, where he gets to tell people how he’s making the future right in front of them.
Kelsey restrains a yawn. “Oh yeah. I know those guys.”
He’s stunned. It’s like a small car wreck happened in his brain. He can see she’s not some ditz who doesn’t realize there are companies behind Twitter and Google. But she’s not impressed. He doesn’t know what to say next. He charges ahead with his usual next line, even though she didn’t ask.
“Uh, yeah, I’m in charge of interfacing over different network architectures,” he says. (This is a small lie. He’s not in charge—there are five people in his section alone who tell him what to do—but he’s high enough, which is why I picked him.) “See, what we do is—”
Kelsey scans the crowd over his shoulder. “Oh, I know what you do. I’m in finance. I sat through your CEO’s presentation when he was looking for his last round of funding.”
He smiles. “How much did you end up giving him?”
Kelsey smiles back, her teeth much sharper than his. “Nothing. We passed.”
“Oh,” he says. That stops him short. His company is supposed to be the Next Big Thing. It was on Re/code and everything. He’s got stock options. Everything he knows about the company says that it will make him rich when OmniVore’s IPO finally hits. But Kelsey doesn’t seem impressed. This worries him. “Did you say you passed?”
Kelsey nods. “No offense, but we decided OmniVore isn’t really equipped to be the market leader.”
Now I’m sure she’s gone too far. <whaaaaaaaat?> <you have to be shitting me>
“Oh come on,” he says, his pride rearing up and thumping its chest. “Who else out there even comes close to us?”
Kelsey starts reciting a list: “Axciom, UpDog, Palantir—”
“We are so far ahead of those guys—”
“And of course, eventually Google is just going to start grabbing everything that comes through its search portal, analyze it in real time, and stomp the market flat for the rest of you.”
“Google? Let me tell you why we laugh at Google. Are you ready for this?”
And he’s off. Max’s eyes are bright, he’s slurping his drink instead of sipping it, and the facts of his job are rolling through his head like bowling balls down the lane. When Kelsey casually mentions the words “passwords” and “security” and “access,” those sections of his mind open up and I’m free to root around in his best-kept secrets.
An hour later, Kelsey glances over Max’s shoulder again, and I nod. I’ve got everything I need.
She thanks Max for the drinks and stands up. She’s even kind to him when she turns him down. He’s a much more interesting guy when he’s geeking out than when he’s playing Buddy Love. He’s given me everything we need, and more.
I’m sorry I ever doubted her.