Mr. Schrub added, “And we’ll give you a team of programmers to direct. Any resource you want, you’ll get. We’re going to groom you for a leadership position.”
I considered my options:
1. This was of course what I wanted most of all when I arrived here in October;
A. and in some ways it was what I still wanted;
B. and as a leader at Schrub I could make some enhancements in business practices;
2. but Kapitoil would still operate and exploit problems elsewhere;
A. and as Mr. Schrub said about himself, I would change slightly daily in ways I wouldn’t notice;
B. and one day I would be a different person and no longer Karim-esque;
i. and possibly being Karim-esque, although it is not confident or experienced or a strong negotiator or many other factors that make a skilled businessman, is still a positive class of being;
ii. and is in fact superior to being Schrub-esque;
1. and I knew that if I signed the contract and told my father what I had done, he would be disappointed.
I folded the contract in half.
“I cannot sign this,” I said.
“Is it a money issue?” he asked. “We can get more.”
I shook my head. “I will be publishing my paper.”
“What if we confidentially provided the code to a few select partners in the sectors you’re interested in, and continued running Kapitoil?”
I had already evaluated this idea. “The code must be on the open market for the best people to utilize it. And there may be applications we have not thought of. The only way to know is if it is available to everyone,” I said. “I have made my decision.”
He exhaled with force through his nostrils. His muteness made me nervous, as it always did.
Then he said, “Kapitoil was fully funded by the company and written on company time. We could take you to court and easily block you from disclosing it to others, and my programmers could get access to the code or write a version of it on their own. You wouldn’t come away with a cent. We’re offering you a lot of money to avoid that.”
Although the horse accelerated on an empty path and the wind sliced my cheeks, my body heated up under the blanket. I couldn’t believe I was so foolish that I hadn’t asked Cynthia about this. I hadn’t 100 % created the program on company time as he stated, but they had funded me. He had the best lawyers in the country, and the solitary one I knew was Cynthia.
Mr. Schrub was correct: Possibly I wasn’t man enough to be in business.
And I could make my family secure for years, not months, if I merely signed the contract.
He was the more skilled player. He knew how to leverage the rules of the game.
The horse slowed down and stopped as a large cluster of Asian tourists crossed the path in front of us. I looked down the side of the carriage as we waited. A small piece of bread sat on top of the snow like a topping on a cake with icing, and dozens of ants were aggregating around it. It again wasn’t the correct subject to be thinking about at the time, but it made me happy that such a small piece of food was sufficient for so many ants.
The other incorrect subject to be thinking about was Mr. Schrub’s comment that his programmers could innovate their own version of Kapitoil. It was a complex and beautiful program, and although Schrub has the cream of the cream programmers, I don’t believe anyone else could write a parallel program, even launching from the proposal I presented to Mr. Ray, and it angered me that he thought other people could.
But maybe he didn’t truly think his employees could rewrite Kapitoil. Schrub had continued to offer me more and more money to have access to the code. They had probably attempted to create their own version and failed, and they knew that their only opportunity was to buy the program from me.
Then I thought of Rebecca’s advice from our poker game and had an idea. And it was as if I were observing the entire galaxy of stars while I was simultaneously struck by lightning.
I retrieved my voice recorder and accessed the saved recordings folder and selected a short file and pressed play.
Mr. Schrub’s voice came on: “Well, in better news, I have a proposal for you. My business people emailed it over this morning…I don’t fully understand it, but apparently they want you to de-encrypt Kapitoil and allow our programmers access to the code, so they can make modifications to the algorithms, too. You’ll still be the point man on all this, and you’ll get a corresponding bump in salary…As far as I can tell, it’s a win-win for everyone.”
I pressed the stop button. The skin around Mr. Schrub’s eyes trisected.
I said, “That is proof you tried to mislead me about the original contract.” Then I bluffed. “I can sue you for that. My lawyer has a copy of this recording, and because I did not in fact create Kapitoil on company time but on my own time, and it is copyrighted in my name, she says that the rights are mine. You will have a few more months to use the program until the paper is published and before the algorithmic signal loses its power.” I added something that I didn’t believe, but maybe Mr. Schrub would: “And if you take us to court, the concept of the program will be revealed to the public immediately and someone else will gain enough information to create a similar program and Kapitoil will be valueless for the futures market, and you will not come away with a cent.”
Then I was mute, and for once I could tell he was the nervous negotiator. He rotated his head and observed the snowy trees that looked like cauliflowers. “I’d like you to turn off the recorder for a moment,” he said.
I powered it off and showed him.
He watched the Asian tourists, who were stopping to take photographs and still blocking our progress. He quietly said, “Do you know what a cipher is?”
I said, “It is a jargon term for an algorithm that encrypts or decrypts.”
“No,” he said, even though my statement was true. “A cipher is a zero. A nothing. It doesn’t exist.” Finally he turned his head to me, and his face was slightly red from the wind, although his voice still remained quiet. “You, Karim — you are a cipher. You are a nothing. A nobody. You don’t exist. You don’t make a difference.”
And for a few seconds, his words truly made me feel like I didn’t exist, which is possibly the worst feeling to have about yourself.
“People from your area of the world can encounter visa problems very easily,” he said. “Sometimes they can’t reenter the U.S. after they leave. Forever.”
His face returned to normal color and he looked relaxed again, as if he had hit a strong racquetball shot and knew I had little chance of returning it. My legs lost strength, and it felt like knives were stabbing my back. I also knew he had the power to do this to me. But Mr. Schrub’s warning didn’t target precisely what he thought he was targeting: that I could never work at a company in the U.S. again. That wasn’t what I was most invested in anymore.
He was forcing me to make a zero-sum decision, as the lion’s share of business transactions are.
A pigeon rapidly descended by my side to the ground. It stabbed the piece of bread with its beak and in a second it was deleted, and just as quickly the pigeon vibrated its wings and left behind the ants.
I rotated my eyes toward Mr. Schrub’s hands on top of the blanket. Although he had no cuts or scars on them, his skin had spots and looked as fragile and wrinkled as a used banknote. It seemed like the only thing he could do with them was type on a computer or use a pen. Most of his nails were trimmed, but the one on the second finger of his right hand was slightly longer than the others and slightly yellow and acutely angled.