The Anti Social Network Part 4

They look really good."

T. J. blushed. "I've been doing some outside research. I wanted to get a handle on the total market size. I've also been researching potential vendor partners.h.i.+ps. If Amelia feels ready, we can start reaching out to vendors to get contracts on board for when the product launches." Tom looked up from the deck. "Excellent, T. J." He turned to Amelia.

"Amelia, do you feel ready to start talking to vendors? And would it be helpful to bring on a developer or two to help you with code?" Amelia was taken aback: this was really happening. Vendors were going to start seeing her product. She was going to have a programming team.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I think that sounds great. I'll put up a bulletin at Gates to see if I can find any engineers who could work part time with me.""Great," Tom said. "Let's meet again on Friday for a progress report.

Sound good?"

Everyone nodded in agreement. "Okay, then, how about some lunch?

My treat."

As they were exiting the conference room, Tom patted T. J. on the back. "Great work, T. J. And good instincts. I'm afraid I underestimated you."

Chapter 12.

Dos Cervezas, Por Favor At the end of the day, Adam and Amelia biked back to campus, following each other in silence down Sand Hill Road and onto Campus Drive.

When they got to Amelia's dorm, Adam stopped and turned to face her.

"We need to talk," he said.

Amelia took a deep breath. "I know."

Ever since they had left the conference room she had been dreading this moment. She knew she owed it to him, but the thought of having to defend herself against turning down all that money made her want to cry.

"Dinner at the Treehouse?"

"Sounds good."

They biked to Stanford's Student Union and ordered burritos at the Treehouse. Adam ordered two beers. Amelia tried to hide her surprise as he showed his ID and the cas.h.i.+er handed him two Coronas.

As they walked outside with their food, Amelia whispered, "Since when do you have a fake ID?"

"T. J. got it for me. Pretty sweet, right?" They sat at a picnic bench, one of a dozen lined up in the outside courtyard of the student union. The courtyard was bustling with other students laughing and drinking pitchers of beer. Amelia took a sip out of the bottle, trying to be casual about it. At this point, she didn't want to do anything to upset Adam even more. If that meant drinking a beer, so be it.

Adam unfolded his burrito on the table. "Look," he said. "There's a lot that I have to say and-"

Amelia interrupted him, blurting out, "Adam, I'm sorry, but I just can't take it. I know how much money it is and I know you think the money will solve all of our problems, but it's just not going to work out if-"

Adam touched her hand. "No, no, this doesn't have anything to do with today. I mean, with selling or not selling."

"It doesn't?" Amelia looked up, holding her breath and looking for confirmation before letting herself feel relieved.

"No. Not that I don't want eight and a half million dollars right now, but . . . Well, at the end of the day, I guess I trust your instincts, and Tom's and T. J.'s as well. It's not what I would have done, true. But I'm not the only one in this thing, right?"

Amelia took a sip of her beer, which she surprised herself by actually enjoying. "Oh, that is such good news. Because you know you're more important than any of it. I mean, we're more important than any of it."

"I know. That's why I have to tell you what I'm about to tell you," he said. "I haven't been honest with you lately and, well, here goes . . . " He took a deep breath.

"Remember the first day in the incubator when we got that call from The Family?"

Amelia nodded.

"Well, they've been calling ever since. And e-mailing. They want you to start embezzling money for them again."

"Tough luck," Amelia said. "We're done with them." Adam swallowed. "That's what we thought, but the thing is . . . they've got something against me. And they're using it as blackmail." Amelia put down her burrito. "What have they got against you?"

"After you got caught and went to juvie . . . You know how we had just taken our SATs the week before?"

Amelia nodded, not sure where this was going.

"Well, I didn't do so well." He looked down. "I did okay-I got an 1880-but you got a 2310. And when you left, I sort of freaked out.

Because it was awful being away from you and I started worrying. I knew that with a score like that you'd get into an amazing college and probably get a scholars.h.i.+p and I wouldn't. And I started freaking out that we'd be separated again. So I . . . " He couldn't look at her. "I used the Dawsons'

computer and traced your steps to hack into the SAT website and change my score."

He was picking at the corner of his burrito wrapper. "I only increased it to a 2150 and honestly, Amelia, if I'd had all the SAT prep courses most of the kids here had, you know I would easily have gotten that on my own.

But . . . somehow the Dawsons found out. And now they're threatening to tell Stanford I cheated if I don't get you to start embezzling money." He sat looking down for what felt like an eternity, waiting for Amelia to say something.

Amelia took a sip of her beer. She chewed a bite of her burrito. Then she took another sip of her beer. Adam stared at her anxiously.

"So, how long before they tell?" she finally said.

"Two weeks."

"Tell them I'll do it," she said.

"But Amelia, you can't! You can't start embezzling again!"

"I didn't say I was going to embezzle money. I said to tell them I would." She took another sip of her beer. The alcohol was making her feel confident.

Adam couldn't believe how calm she seemed. "You're not mad?" Amelia smiled. "No, I'm not mad. We'll figure it out. I'm glad you told me. I don't want us to have secrets."

He grinned and picked up his burrito again. "Me either."

"So is there anything else?"

He wiped a bit of salsa off the corner of his mouth. "Well, there is one other little thing. Since we're not keeping secrets." Amelia laughed. "What's that?"

"I've been dating T. J.'s sister, Lisa." Amelia choked on the beer she was drinking. "You're what? Are you kidding? Are you crazy?"

"Amelia, I think I'm in love with her."

Chapter 13.

Lights! Camera! Action!

"Chad and I are going to watch a movie. Any interest?" Shandi asked Patty after Sunday dinner.

"What are you watching?"

"Henry and June. It's about Henry Miller, his marriage to June, and his affair with Anais Nin. It's a beautiful film, if you haven't seen it."

"Sure. I'll be right down. I'm just going to throw on some pajamas." She slipped into a pair of Soffe shorts, slipped off her bra, threw on an oversized sweats.h.i.+rt, and padded down the stairs. It had been a week and a half since Chad picked her up from jail, and things had been surprisingly un-weird. He hadn't said anything, or even hinted at it in front of the Hawkins, and she knew she could trust him not to. Plus the fact that they had this little secret now-in addition to their other little secret-made her feel like they were secret pals, separate from the rest of the world.

Chad and Shandi were seated in two reclining theater chairs in the middle of the movie room. Patty grabbed a blanket and took the seat next to Chad as Shandi started the film.

"Mind if I share your blanket?" Chad whispered a few minutes into the film.

"Sure," Patty smiled.

He lifted the armrest between them, and pulled the blanket so that it covered his lap as well as hers.

"Isn't the cinematography beautiful?" Shandi whispered as a shot of Paris panned into Henry Miller's bedroom, where he was lying with a naked French woman. Shandi's eyes were glued to the screen, totally engrossed.

The actors started having loud, bed-shaking s.e.x. "Did Shandi mention that this film was the first one in the world to get an NC-17 rating?" Chad asked Patty, loudly enough for Shandi to hear.

"Shhh . . . they only rated it that way because they were prudish and focusing on copulation rather than the artistry of presenting the affair. It's not about p.o.r.nography, it's about Henry Miller's life, which happened to be filled and defined by a great deal of s.e.x." The film continued, chronicling naive Anais Nin's s.e.xual education by Miller.

Patty was blus.h.i.+ng horribly at what was happening on-screen-two naked women were kissing in front of a casually smoking Henry Miller- when she felt Chad's knee press against hers. Her heart jumped. He just moved in his chair, she thought. It wasn't intentional. It doesn't mean anything.

But a moment later, she felt his hand settle on her knee under the blanket. Her heart raced and she focused her gaze forward. Concentrate, she thought, just concentrate on the movie. Slowly, his elbow pulled back so that his hand was resting on her thigh. His thumb toyed with the edge of her shorts. He let his fingers ever so slightly stroke the skin along her thigh.

She wondered if he could feel her pulse.

"Oh, devastating!" Shandi shouted at the screen as Anais tried to capture Henry's attention from his wife, June. "Oh, poor Anais!"

Chapter 14.

The Puzzle "Hey." Amelia stuck her head into Sundeep's office. "Do you have a minute?"

Sundeep looked up from studying a large medical textbook. "Sure," he said. "Come in."

Amelia sat down on the couch and exhaled.

"What's going on?" asked Sundeep from behind his desk.

Amelia shook her head. "I have a problem. It's a puzzle, kind of, that I'm stuck on. And I was hoping a new set of ears might help me think it through."

"Sure. Let's hear it," Sundeep said, leaning back in his chair.

"Well I have a . . . code . . . that I'm working on that's kind of complex.

So, start with Node A, which has two options to follow. If I choose option one, there's a chance that at Node B a malfunction will happen that has a likelihood of damaging the whole program. But if I choose option two, nothing will happen at Node B. In fact, nothing might happen at all. But if something does happen, it'll likely be catastrophic."

"Is there any way to program around Node A?"

"No. It's inevitable. And it has to be addressed within two weeks."

"Well, it sounds like you need a third option at Node A."

"But there isn't a third option. It's binary." Sundeep nodded thoughtfully.

"What if you program something at Node B that overrides the malfunction caused by option one?"

"You mean, like, create a malfunction through option one?"

"Sure, I guess. Something that renders the threat of the malfunction moot."

Amelia's eyes darted back and forth as she thought this through in her head. Sundeep watched her with a curious smile: what was it like to be in this girl's brain?

Suddenly Amelia looked up. "Yes! Yes! I've got it. You're absolutely right! Sundeep, you're a genius."

She darted out of the room. Sundeep grinned and shook his head. He hoped she would remember him after she made it big.

Back in her dorm room, Amelia opened two windows in her browser.

Through one, she hacked into Gibly. Through the other, she hacked into The Family's personal bank account.

With Gibly's eyes on The Family's information, she hacked into Indiana Central Bank and transferred fifty cents from their reserve funds into The Family's account.

Smiling at her work, she took a screenshot of the Gibly report, showing that The Family had just been on Indiana's Central Bank website, where they had transferred fifty cents into their personal savings account.

She logged out of all the browsers and attached the screenshot to an e-mail from an anonymous address, Bccing Adam, which she addressed to The Family.

Dear Family, Not sure if you've heard of Gibly-it's been on the news a lot lately.