Roe spent the rest of the morning with the heads of the Personnel and Security departments, who ran her through a brief guest orientation. She signed the usual nondisclosure forms relating to proprietary materials she might come into contact with during her visit. Security finished processing her just before noon, allowing Roe to start her research in the employee cafeteria.
To her surprise, the food both looked and smelled fantastic, and, looking around the dining area, she noticed very few people brought lunches from home. She selected a chef ‘s salad and a cup of clam chowder and, at the register, discovered that the meal was heavily subsidized.
She found a seat near the window and began to browse through the new employee packet she’d been given. She knew Moy paid competitive wages, but she finally realized why their employee turnover was so low.Employees ofMoy Electronics received fully paid health benefits, a retirement plan with generous employer contributions, favorable stock options, excellent vacation and medical time, an on-site fitness center, and an on-site child-care facility—all that and an inexpensive lunch.No wonder these people worked so hard to keep this place in business; working anywhere else might be considered a punishment.
When she was halfway through a folder on the current generation of Moy products, a small group of people approached her table.
‘Mind if we join you?’ an attractive, well-dressed woman with dark ebony skin asked politely. ‘It’s too beautiful a day not to enjoy the view.’
‘Not at all, Miss Kearney,’ Roe replied, reading the woman’s name off her picture ID. ‘I’m Alex Roe.’
‘Are you new?’ Kearney inquired, glancing at Roe’s orientation materials.
‘No, I’m a freelance writer doing an article on the people who built Moy Electronics.’
‘Then you’ve come to the right place, but please call me Maria. I’m an industrial designer.’
‘She designs the pretty boxes that hide my beautiful chips,’ a heavyset blond-haired man commented as he cut into his burrito.
‘That’s Tim Otto,’ Kearney said, pointing at the man who’d just spoken, ‘a chip designer who simply hates to see his electronics covered up.’
Otto nodded at Roe and continued eating his lunch.
‘Next to him,’ Kearney continued, ‘is Josh Radwick, who also designs hardware, and Bill Iverson.’
‘Software god,’ Iverson added, offering his hand to Roe.
If there was a model of what corporate America looked like, the gangly Bill Iverson was the antithesis. Iverson’s jeans were frayed and his athletic shoes were now stained a mottled shade of brown. He wore an unbuttoned red-checked flannel shirt over a black T-shirt promoting a heavy-metal band that had broken up over three years ago. Two days of stubble marred his otherwise smooth-featured face and a tangled eruption of frazzled brown hair crowned his head like a halo.
‘Bill’s a modest man who can program circles around most of the people here. The other two people on our team are coming.’ Kearney waited until a petite redhead and a tall man with a slight paunch and stringy blond hair arrived.’Natalie Geiss,Michael Cole, I’d like to introduce you to Alex Roe.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Alex,’ Geiss said with a smile. ‘Are you joining our project team?’
‘Afraid not.’
‘Too bad, I could use another hand in working out the production sequence, but I’ll get by.’
‘How about you, Michael?’ Roe asked. ‘How do you fit into this merry bunch?’
Cole’s sullen disposition was in contrast to the others. ‘Actually, I work for the government.’
‘Rumor has it that Michael’s with the IRS,’ Iverson said with a laugh.
Cole glowered at Iverson as he bit into his club sandwich. Less than a minute after he’d sat down, his pager went off.
‘Damn, I hate these things,’ Cole said, and he turned the alarm off and read the number. ‘Don’t they know Chicago is an hour behind Washington? Well, I guess I’ll see you all back in the lab.’
Cole left with his tray, hoping to finish his lunch after he returned the call. The mood improved almost immediately after he left, though Roe found it hard to believe anyone could get this group down. It must be difficult for a wet-blanket bureaucrat like Cole to work with such enthusiastic people, she thought.
‘So, you’re working on some mysterious government project with Mr Cole. Perhaps,’ Roe asked in a sinister mock-Russian accent, ‘you vould like to tell me your secrets, da?’
Everyone laughed as Roe arched an eyebrow and studied each of them suspiciously.
‘Seriously,’ Maria said, ‘we shouldn’t be talking about our project outside the lab. That’s one offense this company does not forgive easily.’
‘I understand,’ Roe replied sympathetically. ‘If I went public with your secret projects, your competitors might catch up.’
‘Even if you did write about what we’re doing, I doubt anyone could catch up with us,’ Iverson bragged, obviously proud of his work. ‘Only a handful of universities and specialty firms are even looking at neural-network processors.’
‘Bill’—Otto’s voice was low and direct—‘I think you’re speaking out of class.’
‘It’s okay,’ Geiss replied, coming to Iverson’s defense. ‘He’s just talking in generalities.’
Roe dismissed thier minor dispute over Iverson’s off-hand remark, focusing instead on the revelation that they had made some kind of technological advance. ‘Since you’ve whetted my appetite, could you tell me generally what you’re doing with neural-network systems? Most of the work I’ve seen is years away from any kind of marketable product. I assume, since you have industrial designers and product engineers on this team, that you are fairly close to something useful.’
Everyone grew silent, unsure of what to say or not to say. Roe’s speculation had struck too close to the mark about how far they’d come with their project.
The group’s apparent leader, Maria Kearney, found her voice and spoke up. ‘Alex, you are correct on several points. Our project is based upon several major advances in neural-network computing that these three gentlemen made a year and a half ago.’
Otto, Radwick, and Iverson beamed with pride at Kearney’s praise.
‘Now,’ Kearney continued, ‘without being rude, that is all that I am willing to say and more than I should.’
Roe didn’t press the issue any further. ‘I respect your candor, Maria, and don’t worry about what you’ve said. I can’t substantiate anything I’ve heard other than your names and job titles. For all I know, you may be pulling my leg and you’re really working on a new mouse. Heck, Cole might just be a cranky government-standards hack here to verify that your new mouse is OSHA compliant.’
‘Cole’s cranky all right, but don’t be too hard on the guy. He recently went through a nasty divorce, and his ex-wife’s lawyer wiped the floor with him.’ Iverson didn’t particularly like Cole, but he did respect him.’On another note, you raised an interesting point. What would an OSHA-approved mouse look like?’
The remainder of the lunchtime conversation revolved around a series of napkin sketches that Kearney rapidly produced as the team designed their OSHA-compliant mouse. The humorous exercise taught Roe a lot about how Moy engineers used brainstorming as a creative tool. The final result was a hideous desk beast, covered with safety straps and carpal-tunnel