Bijlhoff, who’d been brought in by the original cofounders of the company to head the Alterra initiative, was now the only Tri-Tech employee who’d been working there longer than Ada, and the only Tri-Tech employee to have an office door. Doors, in general, were not part of Tri-Tech’s culture. While other tech companies were going remote, Tri-Tech had hung on tenaciously to its physical space. It occupied the top two floors of a building that now, nearly a third vacant in the wake of the closure of several start-ups in a row, felt something like post–Gold Rush California. The main level was set up like an atrium or a piazza, with six Dorian columns stretching from glossy floor to vaulted ceiling, and two walls of windows. A dome at the top of the building sported an oculus in its center that let in a dramatic, slowly rotating shaft of light. The VPs, including Ada, had their own offices around the perimeter of the main floor; but they were doorless, open to the rest of the space. The other employees spent their days out in the open, at temporary workstations or on couches. They were given breakfast, lunch, and dinner, hot meals rolled out on carts that locked into place at one end of the main floor. They were given healthy snacks throughout the day. Sometimes it felt, to Ada, a little like what preschool must have felt like, though she couldn’t be sure; there were even two small dark offices with cots inside them, in case a midday nap was required by an employee who had recently pulled an all-nighter.
She walked across the floor to Bijlhoff’s office and found the door closed. She wanted to let him know about what she and Tom had done the night before, in the two hours before the meeting began. She rehearsed it in her head: she would assure him that the reps seemed, now, to be behaving; she would run through the backup plan they’d enact in case they didn’t.
She rapped lightly at the door, and Bill Bijlhoff opened it after a beat.
“Ada,” he said, “I’m glad to see you. Come in.”
He was a good-looking man, tall, light-haired, straight-up-and-down. He was slightly older than Ada. Rumors placed him at forty-four, but his actual age was a closely kept secret. Five years ago, when Alterra was booming, he’d been a Silicon Valley celebrity. He had been profiled in every major magazine in the country. He’d appeared, in cartoon form, on The Simpsons. He’d given a TED talk. Now, even with the company in decline, he had not lost the persona he had acquired in those years: that of mischievous boy genius, pioneer, freethinker. Despite the firm’s troubles, Bijlhoff’s estimation of himself remained unshaken. Ada had as little interaction with him as she could manage; he liked her, she thought, because she had never given him a reason not to. Other employees, ones who were closer to him, cycled in and out of his favor rapidly and randomly; she watched them sometimes, shaken, walking out of his office with their heads low.
“Have a seat,” said Bijlhoff, and she did, and so did he.
“Everything looking good?” he asked her. She nodded.
“I think so,” she said, and he said, “Great.”
“The demo was glitching a little bit last night, but I think we’ve got it under control,” she began. Bijlhoff didn’t look interested.
“Listen, Ada,” he said. He took a breath.
“Yes?” said Ada.
“I’ve been talking with some board members. We’re letting Meredith run the meeting today.”
Ada paused.
“Meredith Kranz?” she asked dumbly.
“Yeah.
“As in,” said Ada.
“We’re turning it over to her. We think she’s got it. We think she’ll be good.”
Ada opened and closed her mouth. “But,” she said.
“I know you and Tom have been working on the pitch for a while,” said Bijlhoff, “and that’s great. But the fact is that none of the investors we have coming to sit in today knows anything about programming. And we think Meredith will do a good job of packaging it for them.”
“What if they have questions?”
“I have faith that Meredith can answer them,” said Bijlhoff. “Or else I’ll be there, too.”
Bill had been a programmer, once upon a time; but he hadn’t worked on the tech side of the firm in years. It wouldn’t have surprised Ada if he’d forgotten most of what he once knew. Certainly he knew none of what had gone into the beginnings of the new project.
“You don’t even want us to sit in?” Ada said. “Just to be safe?”
Bijlhoff stuck out his bottom lip, blew upward. A small lock of hair shifted slightly on his forehead. She pictured him suddenly as a rep: How might one animate that particular motion, that particular expression?
“I think you might make Meredith nervous,” he said, in a tone of voice that told her he was trying to be kind.
Ada lifted a hand and dropped it onto the arm of the chair she was sitting in. She put her hands on her knees. She leaned forward, stood up.
“I guess that’s that,” she said.
She wondered—briefly, perhaps unfairly—whether Meredith was sleeping with him. It wouldn’t be the first time that Bijlhoff had dated an employee.
“You’re appreciated, Ada,” said Bijlhoff. “I hope you know that.”
Ada nodded, once. She walked toward the door. She looked down at the shoes she had chosen for the day: heels. She never wore heels.
A thought occurred to her then, and she turned to face Bijlhoff before she left.
“The name,” she said. “Does Meredith know where the name comes from?”
“Of course,” said Bijlhoff. But he had already lifted his phone to make a call, and he looked at Ada as if waiting for her to leave.
The name of the program was the Unseen World. The UW for short. And the truth was that no one, except for Ada, knew how it had come to be called that. She had suggested it; the others had approved. She had never shared the story of its provenance.
She walked, dumbfounded, toward her doorless office. Around her, heads popped over workstation walls. Did the rest of the company know already? Meredith Kranz was friends with some of them. Halfway across the floor, she ran into Tom Tsien, who looked at her grimly.
“You, too?” said Ada. He nodded. Lifted his shoulders once, dropped them.
Ada sat at her desk for a while, uncertain of what to do next. She felt almost as if she should go home for the day: it was too much, she thought, to watch a series of investors walk past her office on their way to the meeting room. To watch Meredith walk toward her fate. What would she do, Ada wondered, if the reps didn’t cooperate? What would Bill do? He was both impulsive and stubborn: ten years ago, when fate had been working in his favor, these were the traits that had propelled him into glory. Now these were the traits that threatened to tank the entire company.
She didn’t notice she was holding her phone until it vibrated in her hand.
She glanced at it. It was the same 617 number that had called earlier that morning. This time, she answered it.
The person on the other end hesitated long enough that she nearly hung up.
“Ada?” he said, at last.
It was a voice she hadn’t heard in half a decade.
1980s
Boston
“I need help,” said Ada, breathless. She was pink from the cold. Her nose was running. She was standing in front of Miss Holmes at the Fields Corner Public Library branch. She was panting audibly; she had run too fast from the bus stop.
“Are you all right, Ada?” said Miss Holmes, looking concerned.
“Can you help me find something?”
“Of course,” she said, but she looked down at her watch. “But it’s 1:55, dear.”
On Saturdays, the library closed at 2:00 p.m.
“I,” said Ada, and then wondered how she could possibly convey to Miss Holmes the urgency of the situation. She stood silently for a moment, mustering her courage.
“Tell you what,” said Miss Holmes kindly. “Just sit right here a moment. I’ll be right back.” She gestured to a low table. Gratefully, Ada sat; and she watched as Miss Holmes made her rounds, leaning over to encourage the patrons to finish what they were doing, in her low librarian voice. Then she returned to her post to check out their books.
Ada looked at the picture she was still clutching in her hands. Olathe, Kansas. Harold Canady. Or Canadee? Susan Canady. The words knocked around inside her, bitter in their foreignness, somehow unsavory. She didn’t know how to pronounce the word Olathe. She didn’t know how Canady was spelled.