Chapter 1

  I sat in a high-backed chair in my conference room and listened to a pitch from two indie code jocks. After the first ten seconds, my chief financial officer, Amy, leaned back from the table with a growing look of horror on her face. Jeff, head of my legal department, fellow retired soldier, and friend of twenty-five years, reached over from my right and put a hand on my shoulder. I only felt numb.

  I gave them a small wave and shake of my head; they knew me well enough to understand. I let the two continue their pitch and listened closely. Six months ago, a deranged man in a delivery truck violently took my wife, daughter, and grandson from me. He smashed through a crowded sidewalk café, going almost a hundred miles per hour. He died at the scene along with twenty-seven of his victims.

  I closed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose, and took a few slow, centering breaths. The presenters took note and paused.

  “Everything okay, sir?” The young man in front of me asked.

  I opened my eyes. “It’s Mitchel, right?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Kuroi. Mitchel Wint and my partner is Candice Jones. Surefire Mobile Games.”

  “My apologies, Mitchel, Candice. Please continue,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” James said and looked back at the wall screen behind him. “The game mechanics are a simple play on a very popular and common anime trope, with a twist. The player takes on the role of Truck-Kun and they are on a mission to recruit soldiers and resources for a different world.”

  I held up a hand. “I’m familiar with the concept.” I flipped a page in the prepared material they’d sent us prior. “Page three, you have a suit of tools aimed at leveraging micro-transactions, a custom generative algorithm that will let players create unique content as they play. Graphics, character mods, short videos, and a way for them to share their creations with other players.”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Candice said.

  “This algorithm is entirely your work? No code borrowed from other proprietary sources?”

  “It’s a combination of our own work and some open source, open license code,” James said, “and all our training sets are one hundred percent public domain. We have full documentation of everything.”

  “It can write code and run it in real time, per page three second paragraph.”

  “That’s correct, sir, and it can do it with the processing power available to most mobile devices. Minimal server infrastructure to support it.”

  This small tool set they’d come up with was the prize here, the reason I’d subjected myself to this meeting. My mind spun through a thousand ways to leverage these tools not just in our own mobile products, but licensing them to the big players. The numbers my mind settled on were significant. My eyes glassed over for several seconds, and I followed the logic train through several more steps. With just their game, with full social media integration, the numbers kept going up.

  I saw the end game clearly, knew they had stumbled onto something original and special, and I knew I would make them an offer.

  This skill, or talent, set me apart from my peers often enough that some thought I had a superpower, some mystic insight, favored by the universe, or that I’d made a pact with dark powers.

  For as long as I could remember, I’d been able to see the best path to take for any task, any problem. Optimal problem solving. The skill served me well in the military. Jeff would tell you I have some sort of extra-sensory perception when in the field. I could spot an ambush from kilometers away, I could see the soft spots in defensive fortifications, and I knew where and when to apply pressure for optimal results. We’d served together for a decade, ten combat deployments and in that time my command had the lowest casualty rate in the entire operational theater, including rear echelon and support units.

  The skill worked for anything. I just knew the exact angle and amount of force to apply when opening a jar or calling in an air strike. I could see what things around me would help or hinder, and I had an intuitive grasp of how to get things done. I could pick out a path through a minefield, or through a difficult negotiation, with equal ease and accuracy.

  Right now, my mind raced, I’d caught a hint of the potential here from their initial submitted proposal, and as they explained I traced the monetization chain from in-app micro transactions through social media integration and into using their generative algorithm to place ads inside not just their game but every game app and every content creation app in our lineup. Users would create, the algorithm would add ads, subtle product placement ads, and my mind kept seeing ten-digit numbers for potential ad revenue in the first year, eleven-digit numbers after it proved itself.

  I glanced over to Jeff and smiled. He finally leaned back in his chair and let out a quiet sigh. The presenters drew their pitch to a close and silence fell over the room.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Ms. Jones, Mr. Wint, thank you,” Jeff said. “We’re interested. What are you looking for, best case? What’s your app worth?”

  Candice answered, “Our earning projections, based on average user numbers for games like this, are ten to fifteen million a year, with a peak user lifespan of five years. We’d like to get ten million for it.”

  Jeff looked over at Amy. She nodded, and Candice started to speak again. I interrupted him before he could get a syllable out.

  “No,” I said. The two of them visibly deflated. “Your numbers are wrong.”

  Mitchel sat and looked like he would give up. Candice stepped up closer to the table, made eye contact, and continued.

  “We would consider a smaller initial amount but with a revenue share based on the success of the app,” she said. “Five million now, ten percent for the life of the app.”

  I stood. “You’ve misunderstood me, Ms. Jones. I want to purchase your entire company and all your current IP. I’ll give you one hundred million cash today, and two percent of any future revenue your code produces.”

  Candice stood mute. I thought she might pass out. Amy walked over to her and handed her a glass of water. After ten seconds James stood abruptly, stepped next to Candice, and whispered something to her.

  “This offer,” I said, “is good for ninety more seconds. I’ll add that, if you take it, I will also hire you both to help run a new division here at Neurava?. Sixty seconds left.”

  Mitchel, almost frantic, waited for Candice to speak. She gulped down half the glass of water, then took another slow sip. She whispered something back to Mitchel. His head moved in a frantic yes nod.

  With ten seconds left on my timer, she looked back to me and said, “We have a deal.”

  “Good,” I said. I walked down to the end of the table, and we all shook hands. “Jeff had most of the paperwork drawn up last night. Mrs Jones, your parents, as investors in your company, will need to sign some documents. I’ve sent a car to collect them. No other investors, no stocks issued, so any other regulatory hurdles will be routine. We’ll get this done and get you paid before the banks close today. Take two weeks. We’ll have your new offices ready.”

  Amy knocked on my office door six hours later and walked in. She sat in the unoccupied chair in front of my desk. Jeff already claimed the other.

  She set a stack of papers on my desk. “That’s eighty percent of our operational reserve gone in a day. I hope you’re sure about this one.”

  “I’m sure, Amy,” I said. “That algorithm they wrote is unique, and it’s going to turn us into a hundred-billion-dollar company in three years. They built a task specific expert system and trained it only on public domain material. We’ll fold it into our ad targeting system and seamlessly integrate ads, product placement, and whatever else we want directly into the end user experience. It can write new code on the fly, and it can change itself according to user needs. Ads that users won’t even recognize as ads, on demand, infinitely adaptive, omnipresent when they have an app open, and the average smart-phone user on the planet stares at their screen for four hours and thirty-seven minutes every day on non-work-related activity.

  “All smart devices listen to everything around them, you talk about something, and you already get ads for it the next time you open a social media or search app. Annoying ads that interrupt you, take up screen space, and we know exactly how effective those ads are. These will be orders of magnitude better.”

  Jeff stood and walked over to the liquor cabinet on the far wall, “Like how you never seen a TV ad for an Austin Martin. James Bond drives one. They never need to buy another advertising campaign.”

  “Yes,” I said, “just like that except specifically targeted micro ads that anyone can buy, and we’ll deliver. A mom-and-pop pizza shop with a three-mile delivery radius. We’ll put pizzas and their logo into every mobile game being played in their delivery zone. We’ll have the CongoBox? logo on every truck in any app that has a picture of a truck, hypothetically. We’ll own significant ad space on every mobile device on the planet.”

  “It’s evil, and genius, I love it,” Amy said.

  “I want it in all our products with the next weekly update. I’ve already notified project leads.”

  Jeff set a glass of some expensive scotch on the desk in front of me, handed one to Amy, and took a sip of his own.

  “Here’s to making our first billion.”

  Our glasses clinked together, and we all drank. Images of speeding trucks still drove around the back of my mind.

  My routine over the last six months changed drastically. Losing my family still cut deep, still pulled my mind to dark places. My wife had been my high-school sweetheart before we married. I’d known her since we were five years old. We grew up on the same street in the same small town. We brought a beautiful baby girl into the world, watched her grow into a beautiful, smart young woman. Stood by her when she brought her own child into the world. My wife and daughter stood by me for a twenty-year career in the U.S. Army, through ten years of combat deployments. They held me up for years of grad school, through two failed startups, and into the third iteration of my company.

  I lost them in an instant. The joy I should have felt after closing today’s deal with the discovery my two new employees made, and the plan I’d put into place, evaded my grasp. The only thing I felt was emptiness. I couldn’t even summon anger for the deranged terrorist who shattered my world. My ability to find a path, to see clearly, to win, refused to work. My insight failed.

  For fifty of my fifty-five years of life, I’d been a dedicated practitioner of the combat arts. Judo, wrestling, and Jujitsu, Kali and Wudang Jain, Kenpo and Kendo, old school Karate and new school MMA. Expert qualifications with several firearms when I served, and some competition marksmanship as a hobby later. I thought of myself as a skilled generalist, competent across multiple disciplines, but a true master of none.

  For the last six months, the only way I slept was through exhaustion. Three hours of practice and workouts after my fourteen-hour workday usually let me get four hours of sleep.

  I finished my last set in my private gym just after midnight, showered, and departed my company offices through a side entrance. I walked down the alley and turned left on Mission Street, pulled my hoodie up over my ears, and headed for the bus stop. The Muni Owl would have me home in twenty minutes. I sat alone at the bus stop and closed my eyes to wait. I focused on slow breathing, centering breaths, and searched my thoughts and emotions looking for anything, hoping to find something other than the terrible void inside.

  A few minutes later, I heard the growl of an engine. I opened my eyes to the bright, blinding lights of high beams ten feet away. They closed the distance between us before I could react. A bumper covered in Truck-Kun stickers came into focus and then I knew only darkness.