Chapter 3

Chapter 3

This is just a quick message for all of you out there who are reading this. I am just having fun with this. I'm not doing a lot of research or anything. If you have ideas on what you would like to see made or what the MC does just for the hell of it, leave a review. There is a good chance I will add it for fun at some point.

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"Mr. Smith, did you know or have any clue that Ezekiel Inc. would be as big as it has become?" An unassuming interviewer asks.

"Did I think it would be big? No, not at all. I mean, Isabel had presented me with all the relevant information, so I was well-informed about how powerful Buzzsaw 1.0 was. But Isabel was, and in many ways still is, just a big kid who loves to play with computers and technology. That is how I met her. Just a young girl playing on a computer her grandfather bought her." Dong answered with a smile on his face.

"So why did you do it? Why join her?"

"Well, I was friends with her grandfather. Both of us were war vets, so I just felt like it was my responsibility to look after her after he passed away," Dong answered honestly.

"A responsibility that has paid off, right?"

Nodding his head, the CEO of Ezekiel Inc. says, "Oh, big time."

"How do you feel when people call you two the 2nd coming of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak?"

"Well, I know both of them, and I have to say I am very flattered to be compared to either of them," Dong answered humblely.

"What about Isabel?"

"She would say she is better looking than both of them." Doug jests, and the interviewer laughs at this.

"You said a moment ago that Isabel is just a big kid at heart. Care to elaborate?"

Thinking briefly before answering, Doug says, "I meant exactly what I said. If you have ever met Isabel or seen her work, you would know she loves what she does. She loves pushing the boundaries of what people think is possible. Often to the doubts and worries of many around her."

"Some people have called her reckless, that she goes too far without thinking about the consequences of her actions. What do you say to that?"

"I say what she would say: If you are against the progress of the human race, then you are obsolete. And there forward no longer needed." Dong answers bluntly.

"Harsh words, don't you think?" The interview asks.

"It's a harsh word. No matter how much has changed from then to now. It still remains a harsh world, and we won't stop pushing towards a brighter tomorrow. Just because some are worried about what it is, we will do next." Dong answers.

-1997-

Shit running a business was really dull, wasn't it? I mean, I swear I have had more fun at a dentist's office when they pulled out my wisdom teeth. I don't know why I thought running a business would be more fun than it actually was. Most likely, it was due to all those erotic novels and TV shows about workplace romance and sex. The reality of it was that real life was not nearly as much fun as fantasy. No, it, in fact, sucked so hard. Where was the hot secretary who would secretly fall in love with me till one day we ended up fucking on my desk? Was that too much to ask for?

Oh, right. According to Doug, it was and had said no to me getting my own personal secretary. Something about not having the money to hire one and potential lawsuits for harassment. How annoying. I mean, come on, how stupid did he think I was? I was a woman, too. Granted, a perverted one, if I was being honest, but I knew full well where to draw the line. Just like I knew perfectly well the state of our finances, we could afford one. He was just being stingy with the purse strings.

Overall, the company was doing far better than Dong's best estimates had projected. While we fell way short of the 20 percent market share we were hoping for. In the first quarter, we sold more than 50 thousand copies of Buzzsaw. At 20 dollars a pop, that was 1 million dollars in the first quarter. Just the first fucking quarter. Everyone in our small company knew we were a big success that would only get bigger with the internet boom that was going on.

More and more people in the US were jumping onto the internet, and by the end of the second quarter, we had more than tripled our sales, earning the company a total of 3 million dollars. I was so happy with this number that I had given everyone a significant raise, much to Dong's ire. It wasn't that he was cheap or anything like that or that he was overly greedy. He was just a worry wart.

After some quick research, we discovered that most of our users were college kids who had heard about Buzzsaw from friends in the IT field. With no marking and no way to get our name out there more, we were quickly reaching our cap, or so he felt. I knew better, however, because I had some information he didn't have. I was not sharing information just yet because I didn't know for sure how he would take it.

Four months ago, the US government, along with several major companies, got ahold of some of the disks I had sent out to colleges around the US. And were currently in the process of doing one of two things. The first is trying to suppress it and steal Buzzsaw for their own use. This was what the major companies were trying to do. Competition in the IT field was always intense, and seeing someone new enter the ring was not something they liked to see, especially if that person had a clear advantage over them. The second thing is what the US government was trying to do, which was just plain stealing it. They didn't care about suppression. They just wanted it for themselves, and seeing as I wasn't the owner of a major company, they didn't care at all or have any problem with stealing from me. I didn't have the power to do anything about it, so why worry? Lucky enough, as I had predicted, while at this point, everyone and their grandmother had gotten past the 2nd firewall, they all got stoned wall at the 3rd.

It's too bad for them. I had already patented my work. Well, I had patented that which they could understand. Not the rest, as I was so stupid as to believe that the US Patent Office would protect my work when the US government came knocking. No, they would most likely hand it over on a silver plate with a big smile on their face. My grandfather, while a US vet, didn't trust the government after Agent Orange and instilled in me a healthy distrust of the government.

This precaution left the government with two choices. First, they try to forcefully seize my work or hire me to work for them. Either worked just fine for me. Seeing as if they tried the first, well, there were other governments, some not so friendly to the US, that would be all too happy to take me in if I was forced to flee. My work, while not known worldwide yet, didn't have to be for me to sell it to other countries. It spoke for itself, after all. On the other hand, if the latter happened and they came to me, well, nothing beats government funding. Just ask anyone associated with the Star Wars program under Ragan—two hundred billion dollars with nothing to show for it. The only difference would be that I could make something like that with my knowledge. It would take years of work and more than two hundred billion dollars to make, but I could indeed end MAD if I were so inclined to do so.

I wasn't, by the way. While I agreed with Ragan that MAD was a sick and twisted suicide pack, people seemed to behave themselves more when a loaded gun was pointed at their heads. Say what you want, but all the wars since WW2 were little more than regional conflicts. If I were to end MAD, even if only for one side, who knows what would happen neck? No, it was better to let the children at the top continue their dick-measuring contest. Besides, the USSR had already fallen. What were the chances someone would rise to take their place or that Russia would recover?

All that said, I had a feeling the government would be more inclined to work with me than not. Buzzsaw was advanced, yes, but it wasn't that advanced. I am sure someone by now has realized that while it was ahead of the curve, it wasn't impossible to catch up with given time and money. Well, it was impossible, seeing as I was already working on the update, which would put them even more behind, but they didn't need to know that. Besides the update, it was a few years down the road unless someone got lucky. To fill the time, I moved on to my next project.

So, getting up from my office chair, I head to my lab. Well, I called it a lab, but it was really just a tiny room in the building filled with second-hand computer parts, fans, a handmade server, and a brand-new IBM desktop that I was using to run tests on. What were these tests for? They were for a better and faster way to connect to the Internet, of course. How in their right mind would you ever settle for diel up when they had the type of knowledge I did in my head? No one is who, and while I possessed the knowledge to create my own broadband Internet service, I chose to go another way. Well, not so much choose as so much was forced to go another way. I, after all, didn't have the funds to build and launch my own satellite into space. 

That is where knowing technology from all across the multiverse came in handy. Sure, I couldn't launch my own satellite, but that wasn't my only option. Not by a long shot. All I had to do was find something I could reasonably do with the available technology and at a minimum cost. It was more challenging but possible as the multiverse was total bull shit broken. I already knew that when I was creating Buzzsaw, but when it came to the internet. Well, fuck was it broken.

Some of them didn't just break the rules of physics but pissed, shit, and set the rules on fire. That is how fucking broken the shit was. It went without saying it took me forever just to pick one way to make my own internet. There were so many to choose from, after all, and many of them were doable. So long as I downgraded them as much as I could, as I did with Buzzsaw. After I had chosen one that I thought was the best, I built the prototype and took it to Dong, who approved it. Thank God because that man was so tight-fisted that I didn't think he would. Not without a lot of arm twisting, anyway. But it seemed that he was in agreement that if we could build our own internet service, we should do so now rather than later. After all, someone was going to come out on top when it came to providing the internet service. Why not attempt?

Anyway, the type of internet I planned to build was totally different from what was currently being used or thought of. Forget landlines or fiber optic cables and satellite transmission bull shit. I was going my own way with something I was dubbing Starlight Waves. Why Starlight Waves, some may ask. Well, first of all, it was because its real name has 62 syllables and was impossible for the human tongue to pronounce. Two, because I wanted to fuck with people by giving it such a girly name.

Now, on to what it was. Well, honestly, I wasn't entirely sure what it was, to be honest. I knew it was a wavelength that humankind would never discover. At least humanity in my universe, anyway. I wasn't a fucking physicist after all. All I knew was what it did, and now I could use it. Past that, I knew it was non-harmful to people and could carry information over it like nothing the world currently had, which was good enough for me. Seeing as it would allow me to transmit data far faster than AOL or any dial-up company in the world.

All I had to do was build the server, a tower on the rooftop, and receiver boxes. Then, bam, I had a way to provide the internet without the use of cables and satellites. Well, there were maybe a few minor problems. Chief among them, I wasn't a fucking engineer. I didn't know how to build shit. I fucked with codes for crying out loud. Oh, sure, I was able to create the prototype just fine on my own. If you discount the fact that it only worked for about 10 seconds, it was a huge success. Then it overloaded and fried out. Ya, replicating the wave itself was a big problem. Just like Buzzsaw, the technology to handle the sheer amount of data that could travel via Starlight was too much. I had already burnt out over 20 different motherboards, just trying to downgrade it and get it to work with my Buzzsaw program. It was a Goddamn headache but fun. I loved the challenge of creating something new. Even if it wasn't really new, it was to me and the world, and that is what counted.

Hearing a knock at my lab door, I looked over and spotted a handsome, I guess, young man standing there.

"Hey, Isabel." The young man says.

"Hey, Ted, what's up?" I answer back, turning around in my seat.

This is Ted Bundy, no relation to the serial killer. He was just one of those unfortunate people who shared the same name as a madman. A recent graduate of the University of Miami, where we were located, he had several majors in engineering. Including Aerospace, Automotive, Chemical, and Civil engineering, he was one of my company's latest hires. Along with a few of his friends who, like him, were looking for jobs to help pay off their student loans. They were the ones I was depending on to help me set up my internet service with their technical know-how.

While I may have known how to create things that the world had never even heard about before, that didn't mean I could build them myself. I lacked in many areas, including structural engineering, which I would need to be able to do to create the towers that would carry the signals for my internet system. These are things that Ted and his friends possess and were willing to use for a fair price. Read cheap price, seeing as they were not top of their class and were recent graduates with no experience in the real world.

"Ah, nothing much. I just wanted to let you know that I think the guys and I have the black box ready. We only need to run a few more tests before moving to patent it. We wanted to know if you're ready on your end yet," Ted asks.

"Just about a few more lines of codes. I think I have it sent at the right setting, so it will no longer overload the system," I tell him with a smile.

He smiles and says, "Good, good."

Then takes a seat across from me and smiles.

I raise an eyebrow at him and ask, "What?"

He waves me off and says, "Notting. I was thinking."

"About what?" I ask him.

He shakes his head and looks at the server across from us. It was made from nothing more than second-hand parts, old computer chips, and motherboards, some dating all the way back to the late 1980s. Yet, if their calculations were correct, it had the processing power to provide the internet to tens of thousands of people—all at a cheaper rate and faster speed than anything currently on the market.

It was a real game-changer, but as impressive as that was, the truly amazing thing sat right across from him. Ted had heard about genius before and had even met a few that made him look like a complete idiot in comparison. Yet not one of them compared to Isabel, who, with nothing more than a single computer, had created an antiviral software that had the world's computer engineering departments in a spin. Who then went on to discover a previously unknown wavelength that, if his friend Michael was right, had the potential to replace all known ways of sending information around the world. Then, to top it all off, create a new way to provide the internet to the world. And all without taking a single class at a college.

It was enough to drive a lesser man insane with jealousy, but not him. Not him, and all because he was smart enough to take the offer that others had passed up when Mr. Smith showed up at the UM looking to recruit some talented people to work at the admitting small company he was running. Now, here he was, getting paid a good wage and about to make history along with a girl the world would soon come to know as a once-in-the-lifetime genius. The type that would be put right up there with the likes of Nikola Tesla and Alan Turing.

"I was just thinking how close I came to not taking Mr. Smith's offer to come to work for you and how close I came to quitting when I found out you were just a young girl without a college degree." He says with a smirk.

I smile at him and say, "I can't say I blame you. If I were you, I would also have had my doubts."

Ted nods and says, "If you hadn't shown me your Starlight prototype and explained how it worked, I definitely would have left. God, am I happy that I didn't. We are right on the edge of creating history, Isabel. Do you realize that?"

I think to myself, " More than you realize," as I turn back around and get back to work. If we wanted to finish testing by today, I needed to finish this.

At the end of the day, I and the other employees who worked for my company gathered in what we liked to call the conference room, which was really just the biggest room in the building—looking at a computer monitor and a black box with a red light showing in the corner. It was time, time to test if Starlight Internet Services would be a go or a no. I could feel Dong's eyes burning a hole in the back of my head as we waited. He may have been on board with my desire to create my own internet service, but he foolishly thought I meant I wanted to do what everyone else was doing. Run some cable and use the pre-existing phone lines to provide internet that may or may not have been a bit faster than AOL.

So understandably, he was still kind of pissed at me from four months ago when he found out I had spent in the realm of 25,000 dollars on the project without telling him. That was before I showed the prototype. Add in the lone we had taken out this project was costing the company 1 million dollars in total. A lone easily covered thanks to the sales of Buzzsaw, but it would still be a significant loss if this all failed.

Yeah, he was not happy right now, but he would be when we went online. I had checked and checked and checked again to make sure everything was ready. So, looking at one of our salesgirls, Miss Rose Aigar, who had taken this job as a part-time job at first before I raised everyone's pay to the point that they were making over 8 dollars an hour, she came on full time just like the rest.

"Rose, do you have the camera ready?" I ask the admitting good-looking older woman.

"Ready," Rose answered me. Holding up a camcorder.

"Jackson, if you will," I say to our IT specialist.

"Yes, ma'am. Now listen up, everyone. Once this light, "he points to the red light on the black box, "goes from red to violet, that means we are a go."

"Wait, why violet?" Rose asks from behind the camera.

"Because someone found green too boring," Jackson says, and everyone looks at me.

I look at everyone in turn and say, "What? It is."

They all shake their heads, and Jackson picks up where he left off: " Anyway when this light turns violet, that means we are a go, and Starlight Internet is officially online."

He says, then picks up a radio and tells Thomas, another IT guy, to turn on the main switch while he types in the password and we wait.

Then, a cold feeling comes over me.

"Wait, why do I feel like I am forgetting something?" I wondered, then looked at the computer we were using to run the test.

"Wasn't that the computer I used when I built Buzzsaw?" I ask myself, then feel my eyes open widely as I remember what I was doing the last time I was on that computer.

"Time to go." I think to myself as I back out of the room.

Once I am in the lobby, I hear the sound of a girl moaning in pleasure, "Ahhhhhh!"

Followed by Dong's voice yelling, "Isabel!"

Then I ran out the door, "Note to self: always remember to exit out of everything when I stop using the computer and delete the history. Fucking internet porn sites."