Laura stormed into P-12 early the next morning. As expected, she looked ready to combust with questions. “Where were you last night? Why didn’t you answer your phone? What the hell is that?”
“I didn’t go home. I had the phone off because I was working—”
“And you slept on this,” Laura finished, bouncing her butt on the sofa bed. “Herein lies the path to madness. Where’d you pick it up? Feels expensive.”
“Harry.”
“Wow.” Laura eased back further on the white leather and kicked off her shoes. “Maybe I should ask for one too.”
“Harry only gives them out to desperate, single girls with no lives outside of work. Max left, Laura.”
“Left?” Laura’s eyes were huge.
“Left, as in, left Zycorp. Left … me.”
Her friend rushed to her desk. “Want to talk?”
Zoe sank her head into her hands. “Of course I do, Laura, but look at this. I’m swamped, I’m panicking, I’m dying inside. It’s only been one night, but I just don’t know what to even think anymore. I mean, normally, I’d have talked it over with Darcy and figured some stuff out, but the thought of doing that now sickens me. How does that bode for the future of the project?”
“I don’t know what’s going on here, and I trust you’re going to explain it all to me, but I really don’t think it’s healthy to sleep in the office.”
“I can’t go home. It’s dark and lonely, and it’s a mess. I miss Tyler; yes, I actually do. At least he was uncomplicated and predictable in his way and didn’t expect more from me than I could actually give.”
“Oh, Zoe.” Laura hugged her. “I’ll come over tonight and stay with you. We’ll talk this through. And we can do a spring clean. José will survive a night on his own. Okay?”
“But there’s so much to—”
“Shhh. No arguing. I know you’re booked up with Evan later, but I’ll come help out there, too, and make sure you actually leave the office tonight.”
Zoe looked squarely at her friend. “I’ve permission to get someone new on this project. Would you consider it? Don’t worry, you’d be reporting to Harry, not Bob, because something happened overnight that I don’t quite understand, but I’m not going to question it. What do you say?”
“Nope. But I’m here for you in any case. Get an additional head. If Max really has left, then you’ll need it.”
This was a massive sacrifice on Laura’s part because there was nothing more her friend would have liked than an official place on the project. The gesture was hugely touching. “Yes, yes, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks so much, Laura. You’re a true friend.”
“Course I am. Just wait there.”
Laura disappeared but returned half an hour later. “Look, I brought a bunch of profiles for us to go through to select your new assistant. I even printed them out on paper for you.”
“Teammate, not assistant.”
“No, assistant. Look what happened last time you tried to share power. I say you should establish the hierarchy this time from the get-go.”
Zoe grabbed the sheaf of papers. “Too damn right I will.”
Laura chuckled. “I think you’re recovering already. Heard anything from Max?”
“No. And I don’t expect to. Neither do I care.”
“Strange how he just disappeared.”
“Nothing strange about it. Obviously he’s feeling very guilty and just can’t face up to what he did.”
Laura pulled a doubtful face. “Or he can’t face up to something else.”
Zoe busied herself, shuffling through the first pages of job candidates. “What about this one? Kayla Svensson. She sounds perfect.”
“Honey, there are at least twenty other profiles. Do you have to make a split-second decision?”
“These days, yeah, I do.”
• • •
Seven days into this management thing, Zoe’s eyes were open like never before. Responsibility was all very well, but you had to keep in mind how important everyone was in an organization and why every little boring detail could be crucial. Her brain pounded with the effort of keeping on top of it, each subtask, each dependency.
She hovered at the door of P-12, reports stuffed under her arm for her 3:45 p.m. meeting. “Kayla, could you please check server HGA-1088 Something’s stalling the output. We ruled out memory leaks, so it must be a corrupt disk. Sector 7. That server’s four years old. Get that diagnosed. Frankie in IT will help you if you get stuck, and if he’s not there, get Julie on it. They won’t say no; they know the story.”
Kayla leapt up from her chair. “Yes, Zoe.”
“And then check back with Evan. Ask him if he’s accounted for those cock-ups in the wedding scenario.”
“Sure thing.”
Kayla was a chirpy twenty-something Swede from Dalarna and, as another rampant Austen fan, only too eager to help with Darcy 2.0. What she lacked in initiative she made up for in enthusiasm and speed. They had an amiable working relationship.
Zoe’s relationship with Darcy 2.0 was less amiable. Any chance she could, she got Kayla to participate in the VR with him instead of doing it herself. The mere thought of pretend-dancing with him made her impatient, as did almost any other mode of interaction. She didn’t talk to him when she felt lonely at night or ask his advice on anything personal. The customers who bought him at Christmas would have that luxury. She didn’t encourage Kayla to get super intimate with him either. Their job was to get him out on the market in one piece, fully tested, feature complete, and bug-free. And yes, she was turning into Max.
After getting mad at Max for killing that version of Darcy, she could barely work up the enthusiasm to feign civility to this one. Was she shamelessly fickle with cyber men? Getting to know a real flesh-and-blood man seemed to have knocked all ability to fantasize out of her. Her mind, when unguarded, went spinning back to her brief and turbulent weeks with Max, punctuated by those precious few days of bliss. She got stuck reliving moments that had seemed insignificant at the time because they’d held the promise of more to come. Now those moments were frozen in her memory, poignantly unfulfilled. Nothing she could experience in the virtual realm could fill that emptiness. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe Darcy’s true role was to help women avoid heartbreak in real life.
One good thing had come of Max leaving. Bob had left her alone. But she’d bitten the bullet and initiated a meeting with him this morning out of sheer necessity because he was refusing to give her the time she needed on the servers and the last run of completeness checks were in jeopardy. Crucial as it was to get the resources, her pride didn’t let her go running and screaming to Harry.
Of course, Bob had contrived it so that the meeting would take place in his office. She was no longer scared of him, although being confined in a space with him might so disgust her that she may not be able to rein in her temper. She couldn’t give him that advantage over her.
“Come in, come in,” he called from the other side of his door when she knocked, his voice dripping with fake kindness. She already wanted to bash his shiny face in. The ugly memories of their first meeting here surfaced.
“Hi, Bob.”
“Ah, Zoe. So, big day on Friday?”
“We’re all excited,” she said. The office looked the same, except she couldn’t see that gold-framed photo of his wife anywhere. The glass trophy had also been dispensed with.
“That’s good. Now down to business. I know you’re a busy woman.”
“Indeed.”
“All right then. Seeing as we’ve simultaneous demands on our multiprocessor servers, I thought we’d come to a sharing arrangement. Fifty-fifty sound good? I’ve run it by Harry.”
She kept her face hard as stone. “What did Harry say?”
Bob waved a hand. “He agreed.”
“I see. And which 50 percent did you plan on taking?”
“You geniuses work nights, so why don’t I go ahead and take my 50 percent in the daylight hours? Better for banking applications. Don’t want sleepy engineers chucking extra zeros into people’s accounts or, worse, taking them away, do we?” He chuckled at his own joke. “Don’t worry, I’ll get someone to enter it up in the timesheets and save you the bother.” He slapped the table and rolled back in his chair as if to suggest this concluded their business for today.
“I appreciate that, Bob. We certainly want our banking software to be accurate under every kind of load stress. On the other hand, you don’t have a final release until the end of January. Therefore, the priority would naturally fall onto my project, which releases mid-December, with, as you say, beta on Friday.”
Bob didn’t hesitate. “Our banking software is on a larger scale. This is enterprise-grade software, not consumer electronics.”
She stared him down. It was easier now. She just had to think of all the crap he’d caused, culminating in Max leaving.
He continued yapping. “The board is pushing this side of the business. I’m sure you’re well versed in our strategic directions.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “In the last quarterly investors’ report, we stress the importance of AI as a strategic pillar for success this year, going forward into the next. Quoting Harry verbatim, ‘This is the most exciting thing we’re going to release this year.’” She shrugged. “Sounds to me like a strategic direction.” Lucky how Max had left that document printed out for her.
Bob’s mouth went slack. “That’s babble for the journalists.”
“Or an official statement of intent in an investors’ report?” She fixed him with an arch look. “Look, I know you didn’t talk to Harry about this, Bob. I need those resources. The company needs them.”
As he grappled for an answer, she pushed on. “I don’t want to bother Harry with the minutiae of resource planning. How about I take 80 percent for the next two weeks, and you get 100 percent throughout January.”
He gobbled like a goldfish. “Eighty? Are you mad?”
“Probably. I should ask for a hundred.”
“I’ll give you fifty, no more,” he thundered.
“Eighty. Final offer before I present the problem to Harry. And I need most of it during normal working hours.”
“Sixty,” he growled. “You get all the nighttime hours.”
“Forget it.”
“All right, all right, seventy. You get half the daylight hours.”
“Eighty. And half of them daylight hours.”
He grunted. “All right. Just to shut you up, you little cow.”
“Careful there, Bob. Zycorp’s code of behavior extends to verbal abuse.”
“Get out.”
“Come over to my office next time.” She sauntered out. She hadn’t bargained on eighty. Not even fifty. This stuff was actually doable when you put your mind to it and knew how to see through the BS—and when you knew the CEO had your back.
How had Max had been able to keep cool under this pressure? She came into work with palpitations, whereas he used to come in with coffee, chocolate, and general good humor, even though he had to justify every tiny decision with her and endure her constant provocation. And all the while he’d been battling against Bob’s obstructionist tactics and trying to protect her from him. Every single day.
No wonder he’d run away.