ten

You can learn a lot about companies from the way they present themselves at a trade show. Bronte was no exception. Its blue booth was dominated by a large, cylindrical saltwater aquarium filled with sharks. The sharks were three to four feet long and swam in lazy counterclockwise circles. The slogan emblazoned across the tank was “Move or Die.” Bronte was not a subtle company.

When I arrived at the booth, two engineers were standing in front of the tank debating shark species. I could tell they were engineers because neither one knew what he was talking about, but both were certain they were right.

“It’s a leopard shark,” said the first, who wore sandals and carried a man-purse.

“No, it’s a nurse shark,” said the second in a Red Sox cap, a green logo shirt, and jeans.

“No. It’s a leopard shark. You can tell by the spots.”

“What spots?”

“The spots behind the gills,” said man-purse.

“Those aren’t leopard shark spots,” countered Sox cap.

“OK, Mr. Spot.” He snorted at his own pun. “What kind of spots are they?”

“They’re just spots. It’s a nurse shark. Look at the teeth.”

“Why would a nurse shark have teeth like that? Those belong to a leopard shark.”

“I had all the Jacques Cousteau books growing up, and that is not a leopard shark.”

“It’s not my fault you didn’t read them …”

A fat geek stuffed into a Bronte T-shirt saved me before I threw myself into the tank. The T-shirt was white, with a bloody shark-shaped bite taken out of the side. The guy would have lost his kidney. The slogan “Move or D …” was stenciled across the shirt, cut off by the shark bite. The kid in the shirt said, “Holy crap! Aren’t you Tucker? The Tucker?”

I said, “I’m a Tucker.”

“You wrote the Nappy Time virus!”

Ah yes, the virus. Some things you never live down. Bill Buckner had the ’86 World Series, and I had the Nappy Time virus. The virus came from an experiment I had done in college. I had been messing around with making a computer go to sleep based on how rapidly the user typed the keys. The childish and cruel (but very funny) idea was that the machine would most likely go to sleep just before a deadline.

I was curious to see if the program could spread itself to other machines through the Internet, so I wrote a little bit of code that used the computer’s network connection to copy the program to other machines. The rudimentary security of that age was no match for my programming, and the Nappy Time virus was born.

Once I had the virus, I wrote a program for Kevin that cataloged all the pictures on his computer by the percentage of skin tone in them. It was a porn filter turned on its head. Instead of blocking the porn, it found it. I hid the virus in the porn-finder and emailed the program to him. I never expected him to forward it to his friends.

Nobody could prove that I wrote the Nappy Time virus, but I did get credit for it in the hacker community. It had made me famous among the kind of people who would argue over leopard sharks and nurse sharks.

“I was never convicted of writing that virus.”

The kid in the shirt smirked. “Yeah. Right. Convicted.”

“OK. You got me. I’m Tucker. What’s your name?”

“I’m Kurt Monroe.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m the Director for Product Engineering.”

Bingo.

“Think you could give me a demo? I’d love to see what you guys do.”

“A demo? Sure I’d lo—” The kid’s eyes got wide as he looked over my shoulder. He said, “Oh. Hello, Ms. Bronte. Do you know Aloysius Tucker?”

A familiar, but tight, voice said, “Oh yes. I know Tucker very well.”

I spun and there, resplendent in a business suit that identified her as a Captain of Industry, was Ms. Bronte. Also known as Maggie.