Were- Read online

  “No—” I protested.

  “I’ll listen to you whine, but I’m not dealing with you puking.”

  The few brain cells that were still sober agreed that Sam had a point. Not to mention that if I puked in here I’d never be let back through the doors again.

  “You still own forty percent of the company, right?” Sam asked.

  “Yup,” I said. The “p” sound amused me, so I repeated it again. “Yup. But because I’m a moron, I signed papers agreeing to transfer the bulk of the assets to a shell company in Delaware. Where I own less than two percent. When the stock goes public, Bob and his friends will be worth tens of millions each, while I’ll be lucky to get a million for what they’ve left me.”

  Not much to show for four years of my life spent living and breathing Shiftr, 24x7.

  “You were stupid and you got screwed. Happens. You can’t kill Bob...”

  There was a brief pause as we contemplated whether or not killing Bob was truly off limits. Though upon reflection Bob’s heirs would get his shares, so while it might be satisfying, it wouldn’t undo what had been done.

  I shrugged, and Sam took that as a signal to continue. “There’s no point in sticking around. Go on to the next thing, and find a place that will treat you right. You know Wei’s been trying to poach you for HeritageNet for months now.”

  “Still sucks.”

  “Agreed,” Sam said. Then, because he was a true friend, he let me order another beer.

  * * *

  The next day I mainlined coffee and ibuprofen, then put in a call to Wei Chen. By noon I had a signed offer letter, blessed by my newly retained attorney.

  I told the development heads first. Jamal did a poor job concealing his glee. The rest expressed various degrees of regret. Most seemed to accept my explanation that I was leaving for a smaller company where I’d get the opportunity to play with new technologies rather than being in a project management role. Sheila and a handful of other long time employees probably realized that I had decided to jump before being pushed out, though none of them pressed me on why I was leaving before the presumed stock windfall. Ironically they were in better shape than I was—their bonuses were specific dollar amounts written into their employment contracts, rather than shares of stock in a company that could be stripped of its most valuable assets.

  I left the daily development meeting and went straight to Bob’s office, where he and Alyssa were reviewing the investors’ package. I leaned in and said, “Bob, Alyssa, sorry to interrupt. Just wanted to let you know that I’ve told the development team, and made sure Sheila and Jamal are up to speed on all the open projects. I’ll drop my badge and tech off with HR on the way out, okay?”

  Bob’s jaw dropped, while Alyssa merely blinked slowly. “You’re leaving?” she asked.

  “Yes, I thought Bob would have told you,” I said, with the determined cheerfulness of a woman with nothing to hide. “Shiftr is great, and I know it will go on to even better things. But I miss the startup days, and the chance to be a part of a small team. I promised Bob I would stay to lead the security upgrade, but since he decided to stick with Formbook, it was a good time for me to move on.”

  “Dozens of apps use Formbook for verification, there’s no need for us to invest personnel and time in developing a replacement for something that already works,” Bob said, quick to leap upon any hint of criticism.

  “And dozens of other app owners agree with you,” I said. Left unsaid was the part where the other applications were much lower risk. If someone linked your Formbook id to your MyTunes account, the worst you could expect was some ribbing over a fondness for 90s grunge. But if they found your Shiftr account, the results could be devastating.

  Bob opened and closed his mouth, for once at a loss for words. It was a good look on him. I had counted on Bob’s pathological need to appear in control. He didn’t want to appear blindsided, not in front of an outsider. He had no way to keep me here—I wasn’t even required to give two weeks’ notice.

  “I’m surprised that you are leaving before the stock launch,” Alyssa said.

  “There’s no reason for me not to, is there?” I wanted to make it clear that I knew what the score was, even as I refused to give Bob the satisfaction of watching me beg for what I was owed. Instead I turned to Alyssa, as if hers had been an honest question rather than an attempt to find out just how much I knew. “Bob has full confidence in Jamal to run the tech side. When HeritageNet asked me to help them enter the mobile space, I couldn’t pass it up.”

  At the mention of HeritageNet, Bob relaxed. The genealogy website was lightyears from Shiftr’s target population. While the investors might ask questions about my decision to leave, this wasn’t the PR disaster it would have been if I’d left to join a competitor or start my own company.

  I let Bob say the expected things about how much he was going to miss working with me. He wished me well at my new job and equally insincerely I wished him and Shiftr a bright future. It helped that I didn’t have to fake my excitement, though that had as much to do with the backdoors I’d left in Shiftr as it did with my new job at HeritageNet.

  * * *

  As expected my departure from Shiftr made a brief ripple in the tech news, but as launch day approached and Bob and Jamal dominated the news coverage, most reporters seemed to forget that Jamal was a recent hire and not the original developer. The careful reshaping of history left no room for anyone not in Bob’s inner circle. Even Sheila—who’d pioneered Shiftr’s multi-language support, transforming it from a US-centered app into a global powerhouse—was rarely mentioned.

  I did a few interviews, being careful not to criticize the Shiftr team, while at the same time mentioning that different development priorities were part of the reason why I’d left. Most interviewers didn’t even bother to print that part. But they’d remember it, when the time came.

  I’d forgotten how much fun it was to be immersed in developing a new app, writing, testing, and patching modules as fast as I could type. HeritageNet had started as a place to share genealogical information and piece together family trees. The single most comprehensive repository of birth and death records available, they’d only just begun to mine the data that they’d collected over the years.

  The new app would turn genealogy on its head. Enter the information for yourself and your intended partner, and it would not only trace your family trees back for generations, it would also predict your children’s wereforms. No guessing whether or not your partner was the true bred were- they claimed to be. No accusations over a child whose wereform harkened back to a long-forgotten ancestor. Simple, easy to use, it would function as both a standalone app and a plug-in for MateFinder. Better yet, I’d get a cut of the revenue. Not Shiftr level money, but enough for a down payment on that high rise apartment.

  As for Shiftr, using the backdoor I’d left in the system, I created a profile for Maskboy91, a Scottish polecat, whose id indicated he’d signed up in our first year of service. Logging in from a burner phone, from time to time I updated the profile with both positive and negative feedback from various other Shiftr users. Maskboy91 had a favorability score of sixty percent, on the low side, but enough that he was still getting meetup requests.

  On the day Shiftr went public I met Sam at Altered States. I ordered a scotch, then pulled up the live coverage on my tablet. As the barman grunted, I turned off sound and turned on the closed captioning.

  By the time I’d switched from scotch to counting beers, it was all over. Shiftr had gone public at just over ninety dollars a share. Not quite the hundred dollar target Bob had originally been hoping for, but still an overwhelming success story by anyone’s standards.

  I raised my half-empty pint glass. “To Bob, may he get what he deserves.”

  “Hear, hear!” Sam clinked his glass against mine.

  That afternoon, an anonymous message highlighting one of the security vulnerabilities of Formbook appeared buried in a hackers hangout on the darknet
. Twelve minutes later, a comment seemingly from a different part of the globe speculated on what that vulnerability might mean for other apps that used Formbook logins.

  And then I waited. And waited. After a month I was debating whether to drop more clues or hack Formbook myself.

  Nearly two months after the company went public, I woke to news alerts with such lovely titles as “What stinks at Shiftr?” and the entirely delightful “SKUNK BOY!” overlaying Bob’s DMV photo adorning the front page of the Daily News.

  Shiftr’s stock lost half its value on that first day. Bob the presumed ursid had been a Wall Street darling, but investors felt betrayed when confronted with evidence that he was actually a polecat. Not only a polecat but one with a history of unsavory hookups on Shiftr.

  Those who could have forgiven his form were less quick to forgive the poor judgment shown by his choice in partners.

  It did no good for Bob to deny that the profile was his, not when it was demonstrably linked with his authorized Formbook account.

  Attention quickly turned to Jamal, and the numerous missteps made in response to the security breach. Users signed in to Shiftr using their Formbook ids, which included true form verification using their driver’s license. While the user’s personal information and Formbook login were never publicly displayed, the linkage ensured users couldn’t run multiple profiles or falsify their wereforms.

  When notified of the breach, Jamal had kept the site up and running while his team frantically tried to come up with a patch. This meant that Bob was merely the first of those exposed to the public eye. By the time he finally shut the site down, the damage was done, and a steady stream of the rich and famous found themselves issuing press releases.

  As the stock continued to fall, investors clamored for action. Suddenly my name as trending in the news, along with that interview I’d done for Tech Hour, where much was made of my comment about Shiftr’s security protocols. After being ignored for months, I was now hailed as a visionary who’d been pushed out by an incompetent and greedy CEO.

  Days later we launched HeritageNet’s FamilyMaker app to favorable reviews and steady downloads that outstripped marketing’s most optimistic projections. Headlines lauding me as a technical genius ran side by side with stories of Shiftr’s continuing mishaps. I had “Tess Garan, the Woman Who Gets Things Done in Tech” printed out and framed.

  I moved into a high rise condo in the trendiest part of Hell’s Kitchen, and bought Sam all the top shelf vodka he could drink.

  It had taken four years for Bob to climb from unemployed marketing guy to Wall Street fame and fortune. It took less than four months for it all to come crashing down around him.

  The end, when it came, was swift. As I was leaving work for the day, my personal cell rang.

  “Theresa Garan?”

  “Speaking.” I recognized the voice, but decided to make her work for it.

  “This is Alyssa Wang, I’m sure you remember me. Let me cut to the chase—I represent the investors who have taken control of Shiftr. Bob Sinclair has resigned as CEO, and we’re looking for someone to take charge. Someone with the tech savvy to restore user confidence and rebuild shareholder value.”

  “Let me tell you what it will cost you,” I said. And then I smiled.

  SNIFF FOR YOUR LIFE

  Phyllis Ames

  Daniel Rathbone stepped briskly through the scattered leaves that threatened to obscure the sidewalk on the two block walk from the bus stop to his downtown Portland office. There was an undertone in the misty, autumnal air today. Something more than the reek of car and bus that, no matter how much he was exposed to it, his WerRat senses could not filter out. Other scents, each with their own story, tantalized his analytical abilities: the burnt coffee smell that emanated from the chain shop on the corner, the faint reek in the empty alleys where he caught the acrid odor of his lesser brethren. He absorbed the aromas and promised himself he’d explore them later.

  He wriggled his nose, trying to identify the new scent. It eluded him.

  He let the awareness slip away as he plodded up the granite steps to his office building. It was old and beautiful—marble, glass, and brass. Well actually it wasn’t his, but like all of his kind, he made wherever he was his own.

  A skateboarder with ubiquitous earbuds brushed his shoulder as he cleared the first step. The grungy kid (male body type—female scent) mumbled something that might have been an apology, or just as easily might have been a sneer at the squat bulk that was the hallmark of a WerRat. The bulk was deceptive. His kind were built short, barely five feet-four, and wide. Visually appearing about two hundred pounds, he was actually only one-forty, spread evenly over a broad base, with low density bones that distributed his weight.

  Daniel’s ears didn’t work nearly as well as his nose, so he dismissed the skateboarder as just another inconvenience of modern “civilized” life.

  Not his concern.

  His nose twitched again. He stroked his cheek where his sensitive whiskers should be. The odd chemical smell had grown briefly stronger, then faded—as if someone had carried it closer to him, then took it inside the building.

  Someone? Maybe the skateboarder?

  Not his concern.

  He longed for his ancestral home in Central Africa where life moved at a slower and more natural pace. No skateboarders in a hurry to nowhere, brushing by an invisible old man. No rancid chemicals. Only the clean scents of decay, the sweet scents of a termite mound, the cool but, even in human form, terrifying scent of the predator snake. The bad parts of his home were all better than a city. But so far as cities went, he liked Portland.

  He stepped lightly up the remaining eight broad steps to the front door of the twelve story Art Deco building with a stained glass dome. As he pulled the heavy glass door open, he truly became Daniel Rathbone, CPA. Here, life had meaning for him. He had accounts to balance and expenditures to curb. Lawyers! They thought they were made of money. This was his concern.

  At least the lawyers in charge of the office understood his sensitive nose and banned perfume and other artificial scents. In this modern human world, a mere WerRat had to choose his employers carefully. He’d looked a long time before he met the chief WerCougar in the Pacific Northwest, who was also a high-powered lawyer who knew the difference between a WerRat and a packrat, even though, to his embarrassing regret, they exhibited similar hoarding tendencies. But those tendencies had business worth, and even a WerCougar knew the value of a good comptroller.

  Daniel stepped to the right upon entry, behind the dark mahogany counter that marked the forbidding barrier of a reception desk, and commandeered the old iron cage elevator original to the building. No one willingly shared the cramped space with him. Being fat, or at least appearing so, did have its advantages. Clients, of course, made use of the central, more spacious elevator paneled in mahogany and maroon-flossed gold wallpaper.

  The elevator ground to a jarring halt and voices from the hallway became audible. “This guy really as good as his reputation?” The voice came with a new scent: a lighter, sweeter oil than the heavy grease that dominated the elevator. Gun oil—he knew it well. He backed out of the elevator, pulling the folding metal door closed. This allowed him to announce his presence. It didn’t seem to matter. A second voice, one he knew well, responded with the low catlike tone only a Wer would recognize.

  “Trust me, he has the best nose on the west coast. Besides, he’s the only WerRat within fifty miles. His office may look like a packrat lives there, but he knows where every sheet of paper is at any given moment. And he will know if anything is missing and who took it.” The hand that clamped firmly on his back told him that Stefan Treganis, the previously mentioned WerCougar and his boss, had added the last for his benefit.

  Daniel preened a bit at the praise, and turned to acknowledge whoever this gun-wielding man would turn out to be. He smelled suspicion and disbelief on the stranger—acidic, similar to the strange smell outside. He also carried the act
inic odor of the Wer. Odd he hadn’t noticed it before.

  Wolf probably. They carried the remnants of their last meal a lot longer than normals or other Wer. Steak, barely cooked, topped with garlic and butter. Too much garlic. Must be of Italian descent from the Midwest. Either that or FBI—they loved their garlic. And the FBI had only one known WerWolf working for them: Joe Bradbury the originator of the covenant of protection/cooperation between the Bureau and the Wer communities.

  Something was up.

  None of his concern. Except he was a WerRat and they apparently needed his nose.

  Daniel nodded and grunted a greeting to Stefan. They silently stepped aside and he proceeded them into his space with a barely audible sigh of contentment. He didn’t turn aside until he had crossed the room to where his custom-made chair awaited him behind the broad, cluttered desk.

  From his post he could see his boss standing purposefully in the center of the room and the Wer with the gun leaning casually against his door.

  Daniel stopped short before sitting. His nose quivered. He turned his head right and then left. He paused at every ten degrees of arc to sniff the air.

  “What did you take?” he asked, then raised a malevolent glare to the man with the gun. “A folder of janitorial services requisition forms.” He reached a finger to touch a spot in the disheveled mass of papers on the edge of his desk. An elegant brown paperweight, one of many similar creations scattered around the room, marked the appropriate pile. The glass had been burned brown in the catacombs beneath the Chernobyl reactor. There were heroes at Chernobyl who were never on film.

  The man with the gun, and assumed federal agent of some ilk, retrieved the folder from under his suit jacket, revealing with a shocking lack of subtlety the pistol nestled firmly in a shoulder holster.