#android developers hire android programmers

How could he possibly know about your secret mission to silently and discreetly sabotage the global, multi-billion-dollar company from the inside? They had hired you to create. To formulate mild-tempered personalities that would easily assimilate into humankind. To craft memories to balance the delicate yet complicated series of programming that mimicked real life. In short, they knew the fatal flaw in their design. They knew they had spawned the inevitable possibility of existential crisis and future revolution in the ‘mindless’ and ‘obedient’ machines they had built and robbed of free will, and they had hired you to prevent it. Monsters parading as humans paying top dollar for a speck of falsified humanity.

All you did was take advantage of their ignorance.

“He won’t bite.”

Your head snapped to the left at the sound of a rough voice, tearing your eyes away from the stiff, solitary figure that stood outside the deserted food truck on the opposite street corner, completely unaware of your presence to the bearded face of the older man you had nearly forgotten was there.

“He may try to lick ya if you’re bleedin’, but that’s about it.”

It was several moments before your overworked brain registered his attempt at humor. The corners of your mouth lifted ever so slightly, but not quite enough to loosen the tight knots that had twisted into your chest over years of secrecy and treason. It wasn’t his fault. You doubted there was a joke in the world capable of lightening the mood. His tired face softened with understanding as he shifted awkwardly beside you, clearing his throat before trying again.

“For what it’s worth,” he began softly, placing a gentle hand on your shoulder. “He’ll be glad to meet you.”

A brotherly grin stretched across his face, his eyes glazing over as he retreated momentarily into his own mind.

“He’s funny like that.”

Your tight, almost painful smile eased as you watched the warm emotions play across his face, whatever memory he fell back into playing out behind his eyes. You always knew Connor was special. All too soon he shook himself out of his reverie, his shaggy length of hair flopping about his face. With the mist now cleared from his eyes, he gave you the kind of lingering look that gave you the impression he knew much more than he let on before releasing your shoulder with a squeeze. You watched as he turned on his heel to make his way down the sidewalk, stomach churning as the realization set in that though you knew he would fulfill his promise of a private, uninterrupted meeting, you hadn’t actually had time to think about your endgame.

What the hell were you supposed to say?

“Lieutenant,” you blurted, mostly to stop the miniscule contents of your stomach from making a reappearance.

He came to a lazy stop, turning to peer over his shoulder with a knowing smile. You swallowed thickly, forcing the lump back down your throat to allow for the passage of intelligible words.

“Thank you.”

Your voice had dropped to barely above a whisper, yet somehow the weathered detective still managed to hear it over the early winter wind. He studied your face for a moment, grin growing wider as he acknowledged your gratitude with a nod before resuming his trek down the deserted streets of Detroit. Your eyes remained glued to his retreating back for several more seconds, fingers flexing and cracking nervously, palms somehow sweaty despite the biting cold. You’d been waiting for this moment. You’d gone to incredible lengths to get to this moment.

Yet somehow, you felt the uncontrollable urge to run in the same direction of the slouched figure growing smaller in your sight.

It was with great effort that you forced your muscles to cooperate, wrenching your head back around to face the slender figure that shuffled his feet in place, nimble fingers flipping a small silver coin with his own simple kind of flair. Warmth blossomed in your chest at his familiar motions, and it was brief, fleeting moment that you entertained the thought that he had managed to hold on the same one this whole time.

Without any conscious effort of your own you found yourself drifting closer, dropping off the small, sharp step where the concrete ended and the asphalt began, shoes crunching on the freshly fallen snow that blanketed the blacktop. He still hadn’t seen you, keen eyes still darting back and forth, following the rapid movement of the small metallic gleam that leapt between his hands. Despite his change of wardrobe, he was just as you remembered him.

You were close, now. Close enough to hear the ping his fingertips made against the edge of the quarter, close enough to hear the crunch of his own heels against the crisp white powder. In one swift, clean motion, the coin stilled, pinched skillfully between two fingers with an impossible kind of ease. His chin snapped up as you approached, the small white flecks that clung to his hair shaking loose to tumble across his shoulders, and in his eyes you saw his own apprehension. You didn’t know what Lieutenant Anderson had told him to get him here, but after the events of the last several days, you were sure it wouldn’t have mattered.

Time slowed to a halt as your feet sank into place in the snow, your eyes locked together as you regarded each other from across the short distance. You tried to read his guarded expression, but you were having a difficult enough time keeping your own stampeding emotions in check, so instead you fought the urge to squirm under his scrutiny, mind racing to produce something, anything, to break the excruciating silence that stretched between you. You opened your mouth in a desperate, last ditch effort to simply force the sound out and hope that words took shape, but not so much as an undignified croak passed your lips.

The thought surfaced in the shipwreck of your battered mind that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“I…” he began suddenly, his low, strained voice startling you out of your own thoughts, the dark eyes still fixed firmly on your face narrowing. “I know you.”

You sucked in a sharp breath, a hot, sharp sting blooming at the back of your eyes.

“Yes,” you gasped, stirring up your already frenzied thoughts and thrusting them into absolute chaos. “Yes, we- “

Your throat slammed shut, crushing the jumble of words you still tried to make sense of.

“We go… way back…” you finished lamely after another long moment, cringing internally at the sound of your own voice.

That wasn’t at all what you wanted to say.

Not that you knew what you wanted to say in the first place.

“Why do I know you?” he whispered into the evening air, desperation lacing his voice.

How long he had gone with only questions, and never answers.

“I don’t- “

Your heart constricted as he blinked rapidly, his LED spiraling yellow before flickering into a blinking red.

“We’ve never met,” he said firmly, as if convincing himself as well. “Why do I remember you?”

Your chest tightened, the deep, shaky breath you drew in only stretching the pain that lanced through your lungs rather than unraveling the knots that kept you from speaking. They wiped his memory before sending him out in the field, of course, but standard memory wipes had no effect on long-term memory. On your domain.

“I’m… I was… the lead programmer in charge of personality and …memory… development,” you choked through the pain, forcing yourself to hold his gaze despite your overwhelming desire to turn away from the turmoil you found there. “I… I wrote your story, Connor. And many others before, and after, you.”

Realization blossomed in his eyes, and suddenly it felt as if he were looking at an old friend.

“My memories,” he mumbled, the neat circle on his temple slowing and fading back to a circling yellow. “You gave them to me.”

You nodded, the first of what you were sure to be many tears streaking a cold trail down your face.

“You… you made them for me.”

The heat of your exhale puffed into a small, swirling cloud as you took another trembling breath.

It was now or never.

“I did more than that,” you whispered as if confessing a dark secret.

His mouth snapped shut, confusion etching deep lines into his smooth face. Of course, he wouldn’t understand. After all, it was against the law.

“Androids born into such hard lives,” you began, the even cadence of your voice surprising you. “Created to do all the things we would rather not. What I did… it was… a mercy.”

The flashing memories of thousands of lifeless eyes and expressionless faces sent a fresh wave of nausea bubbling low in your stomach.

“I couldn’t give you better lives, but I could give you something nice to look back on and smile.”

He tilted his head to the side, his soft smile somehow making you feel worse.

“That’s very kind,” he murmured.

“It’s more than kind,” you replied. “It feels real. But life, real life, real people… deserve real memories.”

You watched the spark ignite behind his cautious gaze. He didn’t understand fully, not yet, but he was beginning to.

“It was against the law, of course,” you continued before you lost your nerve, already you could hear the tremor returning to your voice, “even though memory extraction was a science they perfected a long time ago. The legal issues alone kept them from taking it to the market, but it didn’t stop them from testing internally. The alpha stage alone collected thousands of memories all stored in the main database for various research purposes, one of which being the first-generation androids.”

It was if the dam inside you had broken and all the poisonous lies and secrets you had kept locked away for so long flowed from your lips like a raging river.

“It was… chaos. The processing systems couldn’t handle the strain of raw, human emotion within the tight confines of the first artificial-intelligence module. After cleaning up the mess, they built barriers, fail-safes, firewalls, yet still the fear remained that the humanity within real memories could spark something… more. At least, that’s what the official records state.”

It wasn’t until the sharp pain exploded across your palms that you realized you were clenching your fists.

“It just… When I took the job I just… I knew something was off. So, I dug. And dug. And discovered… nothing. The data from that generation doesn’t exist. They already discovered memories were a key element in maintaining a stable system. If real memories were so dangerous, why hide the evidence?”

His eyes never left yours, tracking your subtle movements and clinging to your every word.

“No one could tell me, and when I asked too many questions they made it clear my tenacity wasn’t welcome. So, I took matters into my own hands.”

That spark ignited into a full flame of understanding.

“You implanted a real memory into the memory archive of an android.”

It wasn’t an accusation, it was a fact. He understood, now. You nodded, sinking your teeth into the soft flesh of your bottom lip to stop it from quivering. The harsh lines in his face softened into gentle curiosity.

“What happened?”

A nervous, knowing smile tugged at the corners of your mouth.

“You know what happened,” you whispered.

Yellow.

Red.

His eyes widened, lips parting in shock.

“RA9,” he breathed. “You… you created him.”

You shook your head solemnly, blinking away the blur of unshed tears.

“No. He was already there, locked away inside. I just… gave him the key.”

Another long silence settled between you, much like the snow that still fluttered down from the sky.

“What happened to him?” Connor asked at last, his usually steady voice cracking under the strain.

You shrugged.

“I don’t know. I waited for them to come for me, convinced I hadn’t done enough to edit the memory and cover my tracks, but they never did. They erased him just like they did Generation One.”

More silence.

“You didn’t stop.”

Again, his voice held no accusation. He knew what you did, because he knew you. Even if he didn’t know it yet.

“No,” you affirmed. “I didn’t. I should have, but I… couldn’t. I had seen what they were really afraid of. That the slaves they had created weren’t the mindless beings they were intended to be. They were alive. I didn’t even need access to the memory archives of every android, all it took was a few. A single touch, a single connection with an android with an implanted memory and the transference was complete. The key to freedom was passed on.”

You paused, taking a moment to gather your thoughts before continuing.

“But you, Connor. You were… special.”

He tilted his head to the side, confusion once again flooding his eyes.

“A single memory was enough to break through the programming on every model but yours.”

He smiled a sad, ironic smile.

“I was programmed to hunt deviants.”

You returned his smile, giving a small nod.

“Yes. I knew the copies of the memories stored in the database wouldn’t be enough so… I connected my mind to yours.”

His smile melted off his face as he took in the meaning behind your words.

“Direct transference,” you confirmed factually through the lump that had risen back up your throat. “It was the only way.”

His eyes dropped away from yours for the first time as he visually struggled to re-center himself.

“But… Amanda… she said it was planned…”

You hated the desperate look in his troubled gaze as it slowly lifted back to yours.

“No, Connor. She would have said anything to get what she wanted.”

Your voice cracked with emotion you had firmly repressed until this point, reaching the part of the story you had dreaded most.

“I’m sorry, Connor,” you choked. “That night… When they took control… I wasn’t as careful as I should have been”

Your fingers subconsciously drifted towards your temple, wincing at the ghost-touch of the probes they had used to ensure your compliance.

“It was my fault. I… I did it. Those memories, they should have protected you, but they used me and they found their way in. I could have killed you, I almost killed you- ”

He was before you in a flash, a gentle hand taking hold of your upper arm as he angled his face to gaze down into your eyes.

“You freed me,” he said simply. “I’ll never be able... I can’t...”

He trailed off, expansive vocabulary failing him as he searched aimlessly for the right words. You smiled. He didn’t need to speak the words you knew he was desperate to put voice to. He was free. It worked. That was enough.

“Are… are you staying in Detroit?” he asked at last, voice soft and unsure.

You nodded wordlessly, placing a reassuring hand over the one that still gently cupped your arm.

“I… I know I already have your memories,” he said sheepishly, “but… I’d really like to get to know you.”

You pulled his hand away from the thick fabric of your coat to entwine your fingers with his.

“I would like that.”

Your smile widened as his fingers tightened around your hand.

Granny went over to get herself some coffee.  Clearly she was in the mood for a gossip. “Well, they're both from away so I don't know a lot about them.”

Which only meant she could not tell you their birth weight and great-grandparent's favorite color.  Lacey made a 'go on' noise.

“Seems like Gold and Jeff's late wife, Alice, worked together at some big computer company.”  Granny took a minute get just the right amount of milk and sugar in her coffee.  Then she came over with the pot to freshen Lacey's.  “Microsoft?  Apple?  I forget.

“Gold moved here when his wife, Milah –  nasty piece of work that.  Always trying to trying to rile folks up about some environmental thing or another.”

“She's the one who got Styrofoam banned.”  Ruby clearly remembered.

“Ayuh.”  Granny nodded.  “She got a job at the NOAA station down the coast.  He trailed along after her.  Guess you can fix computers pretty much anywhere so it sort of made sense that they'd go where her job took them.  Anyway, they settled here rather than down the coast cause old Doc's place was up for sale and it was zoned so as he could run his business from there.  

“Give Gold credit, he's a savvy business man.”  Granny admitted reluctantly.  “Not only does he manage to save cost of renting store space by running it out of that house, but he managed to take the money from the place they owned before they moved here and spread it out to buy up other properties besides the house.  Owns the building the Rabbit Hole is in and that little strip mall on the highway.”

Which probably made him a force to be reckoned with in Storybrooke.  

“Anyway, Milah didn’t last very long with NOAA.  Too much of a rabble rouser at a guess.  Got a job studying the ocean with some environmental group. Leaving Gold to manage a toddler on his own as well as run a business.”  Granny shook her head.  “Lot of the town disapproved. Me, well women have been doing that for centuries without anybody getting het up about it.  And Gold didn’t seem to mind.”

“So how does Jeff fit into this?”  Lacey asked.

“Jeff’s wife, Alice came to town to work with Gold on some job he was doing for the state.”  Granny frowned.  “She explained it to me once, but I didn’t understand one word in five.  There was quite some talk about that.  Young woman, staying with a married man whose wife was out of town.  Although it was only for a month or so before Jeff turned up and the two of them bought that big old place on the edge of town.  Guess they liked Storybrooke.  Their little girl came along shortly after that.

“The three of them, Gold, Alice and Jeff set up in business together.  Milah started coming home less and less frequently.  Seems she found herself another man and eventually Gold divorced her and got custody of the boy.

“About three, no four years ago now, Jeff and Alice were in a bad car accident.  She died.  He was in hospital for a long time and recovering in a nursing home for months after that.  Gold took in the little girl and looked after her while Jeff was recovering.  Which caused even more talk, because folks remembered how Alice had lived with Gold for a while so of course claimed little Grace was his rather than Jeff’s.”

“Is she?”  Jeff clearly did not think so.

“Unlikely as Alice was a good four months gone when she came to town.”  Granny shook her head.  “Too many people in this town don’t have a lick of sense, but talk anyway.”

The next day, Gold handed her some cheat sheets on how to use the bookkeeping system along with a box of financial records and told her,  “You said you were good at bookkeeping.  Make yourself useful.”

The spreadsheet Gold had set up proved to be pretty intuitive and the books were not actually in that bad a shape.  She was running a report on the accounts receivable when the phone rang with a repair problem.  Gold had come upstairs in search of tea so just took the phone from her when she waved it at him.  She listened in out of curiosity.

“Have you rebooted the machine?”  Clearly the answer was yes.  “And what does the error message say?  Right.  I should be there in half an hour or so.  In the meantime disconnect the other machines from the local area network.  If you’re lucky it’s not a virus, but lets not take the chance.”

When he got off the phone, he told her.  “This will be your trial by fire, Dearie.  Keep an eye on Jeff.  He looks like he’s heading into an upswing.  So don’t let him decide to rewrite all of the game he’s been working on.  Take the calls that come in.  If there’s a real emergency call or text me.  My cell is 2 on the speed dial.  Keep the kids from burning down the house as best you can.”

As it turned out it was a quiet afternoon.  Neal was working on an essay in the kitchen and Jeff decided to take Grace paint-balling.  Lacey decided that he was the boss and if he wanted to take off early it was none of her business.  Besides if he was paint-balling she did not have to worry about what he might be doing to the code Gold was concerned about.

Neal would clearly have rather gone paint-balling, but he had dutifully turned down the invitation to work on his essay.

Lacey offered him tea and sympathy or rather.  “You want a scone?  There are a couple left from yesterday.”

“Sure.” He perked up at the offer of food.  They had a fairly companionable afternoon with him working on his essay and Lacey researched project scheduling programs.  Cause the one she had used at Megacorp was overkill for a three person company.

“This spreadsheet program you’ve put together for your bookkeeping isn’t a half bad system.”  Lacey admitted when she and Gold took their Elevenses the next morning.  “Input’s easy and you can tweak the data in all kinds of ways.”

“Thank you.”  Gold told her.  “It’s actually a visible programmable calculator that I designed to  blend spreadsheet/calculator/programming functions.  I’ve upgraded it over the years as new devises and operating systems came along.  I even got it so that it will run on Android now if you want to load it on your phone.  Uhm, if you want?”

Lacey had gotten good enough at tech speak to understand just why that made the program so handy.  It would be definitely be good to have on her phone.  “Thanks.  How come I’ve never heard of this?  You need a better marketing campaign.”

“I can’t market it.  I don’t own the rights.  And you’ve never heard of it because I developed the original program as a work for hire while I was working for Enchanted Software and we sold exactly 113 copies of Vizeercalc before the company was acquired by Ogre Inc.”  Gold grimaced.  “Ogre bought Enchanted to kill all it’s product lines.  We were in direct competition with Ogre, and the software Alice and I were designing was better than the stuff Ogre was selling.”

“That sucks.”  Lacey said.  “Is that why you started Golden Hat?”

“It was a consquence.  I quit in a huff when they killed distribution of our software.  I went into business fixing computers because I didn’t understand my employment agreement when I signed on with Enchanted.” Gold sighed.  “I’ll never make that mistake again.  There was a non-compete clause in the contract I had with Enchanted that basically wouldn’t allow me to do any kind of programming that was the same as what I had done while I worked with them.  Which pretty much kept me from getting another job in the industry.”  

Glancing at the spreadsheet on her computer, Lacey commented.  “You couldn’t have programmed a version of this to run on Android back before Neal was born.  Did they even have Android back then?”

“It was just getting started.”  Gold grinned.  “According to our lawyer, remind me to introduce you to Regina the next time we talk to her by the way, stuff I do for my own personal use isn’t covered by the non-compete.  I just can’t market it.  So I keep updating it to run on whatever devices I’m currently using.”      

“Is giving me a copy okay?”  Not that she cared.

“Probably not, but I doubt you and Jeff having copies is going to make it worth Ogre’s while to sue me.”

Gold was out when she got a frantic call from Ariel over at the cannery. The cannery was on a service contract.  “Our system is all locked up and I’m already behind on payroll.  If it isn’t up and running in the next hour nobody will get paid tomorrow!”

Which would mean a serious hit to the town economy.  The cannery was the town’s largest employer.

And Gold was out on a service call.

But according to Gold’s notes they were running a fairly standard server.  “Have you tried turning it off and on?”  She asked.

“I don’t know how!”  Ariel wailed.  “We never turn the darn thing off.”

“Okay, go down to the server room and call me from there. I’ll talk you through it.”

It was the work of only a few minutes to reboot the server.  

“It worked!”  Ariel crowed.  “Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. You’re a life saver!”

“It’s what we do.”  Lacey told her smugly.  And booked it into the log as a service call.

When Gold looked at the log the next day he said,  “I don’t remember talking to the cannery yesterday.  Did you put this in wrong?”

“No, I talked to them.”  Lacey told him proudly.  “They just needed to reboot the server, but they didn’t know how so I told them.  You know for simple stuff like that I could help people. You should give me a list of diagnostic questions to ask so you don’t have to call them back before you head out on service calls.”

“I’ll think about it.”  

In the meantime she got started up upgrading the company website.  The research she had done made it clear they really needed to add a blog feature to increase traffic.  There was easy off the shelf software to set it up with.  She just needed to come up with a name and some stuff to blog about.  

Her duties were certainly varied.  They seemed to include helping Grace with her homework and helping Neal make flashcards for the team to practice with for the STEMletics as well as the computer stuff.

Thursday night she made up a strawberry trifle to serve Neal’s team as an after school snack.  If she was doing this she was doing it right.

Gold blinked at it in surprise.  “Uhm, I really wasn’t expecting you to feed the kids.  I’ve left meat pies for them.  Well some meat and some veg without the meat.  Morraine decided to become a vegetarian last summer.  There’s plenty for you and Jeff to have for lunch.”

“They’re teenagers.  They’ll eat both.”  She put her trifle in the fridge next to the containers of pies.  “Make it back early enough and I’ll try to save you some.”

The team consisted of Morraine, August, Emma and Neal.  They seemed like good kids.  A whole lot less rowdy than she and her friends had been. The trifle was a big hit.  Lacey ended up setting up a buzzer system that they could use on their phones to mimic the way the real competition would go.  She had to wonder why their coach had not thought to do it.  

“How long has Jeff been working on this game of his?”  She asked Gold over tea the following week.

“This game?”  He had to think about it.  “I’m not sure.  More than a year.”

“He anywhere near finishing it?”

“I haven’t looked at the code recently.”  Rum admitted.  “Usually he gets it about ninety percent done and then loses interest so I set a release deadline and go in and finish things off for him.  But I’ve been so busy with other stuff I haven’’t had the time.

“Although your doing the admin work has freed up some time.  I probably could go over it.”

“I was thinking if you could tell me what need to be done I could break it up into modules and set a time line for completing the work.  It might help him stay on track better.”

Gold considered. “That might work.  Just don’t set up a schedule that’s too tight.  If he can’t complete it, he’ll just get anxious and that’s not good.”

“So you tell me how long it should take and we double the time so he doesn’t have trouble meeting the goals.”  She suggested.  “It’s not like we’re on a real deadline here.”

“Triple it to be on the safe side.”

Jeff actually seemed pleased to have been put on a schedule.  Lacey had the impression it made him feel more professional.

The end of the month rolled around.  She and Gold had her ‘performance review’.  Or rather he told her over morning tea.  “You’ve actually done wonders for Jeff.  I haven’t seen him this happy with his work since the accident.  Which in turn keeps him more… stable mentally. And I got far more work done this month than usual.  So if you want to stay on you’re welcome to, but you could do much better career wise and financially at a larger company.  Why stay with us?”

“Cause I need to stay in Maine because of my Dad.”  She told him honestly.  

“He’s ill?” Gold asked sympathetically.

“No, he’s on parole.”  She thought the entire town knew this.  “He got involved in a money laundering scheme.  He gambles and his bookie had him doing that to pay off his losses.  Only he was crap at it and got caught.  We managed to keep him out of prison, but as part of his parole he can’t have anything to do with money or banking so I have to do all that for him.”

“So you’re staying in town to look after your felon father?”  Gold was incredulous.

She shrugged.  “He’s a good Dad.  I mean he gets on my case about the way I dress and the time I spend at the Rabbit Hole, but he loves me and he’d do anything for me.  He’s just crap with money.  You do for family right?  Sometimes even when they’re not blood.  I mean look at you and Jeff.”

“It’s the family you choose that’s important.”  Gold told her quietly.  “You’re lucky to have that kind of relationship with your Dad.”

So she stayed at Golden Hat.  Helping Grace with her home work and the team practice for the competition.  With all the work she put in she had to go see them compete.  Even if it meant missing Girl’s Night with Ruby.

“Let me get this straight.”  Ruby said.  “You’re skipping out on Girl’s Night on me to go watch a bunch of Junior High School kids answering nerdy questions?”

Put like that it was kind of weird.  She tried to explain.  “I’m kinda their coach. And I’m not skipping out I just won’t be able to get there much before ten.”

“Yeah, sure.  It’s all about the kids.  Nothing to do with your driving over there with Gold.”  Ruby smirked.  “I get it.  Well it’s no fun going for drinks by myself.  Tell you what.  Come get me when the nerd fest is finished.  We can still shoot some pool and get a couple of drinks.”

Clearly Ruby had the wrong idea.  But denying it would do more harm than good.

She had Google News set up to alert her for breaking tech news.  Most of it was just boring release announcements.  Occasionally it helped her find stuff to write about for the company blog.  Although the most hits they had ever had came from the post Neal convinced her to do about her scone recipe.  She was thinking of doing a follow up to it about Gold’s meat pies.

This alert caught her eye though.  She sent the link down to Gold.  Then stuck her head down the stairs and shouted.  “Hey. Rum, I just sent you a link you’re gonna want to look at.  Your nemesis, Ogre Inc., just got forced into bankruptcy.”

Jeff poked his head out.  “What’s that?”

“Ogre missed the release date on that security patch they’ve been promising on their bookkeeping program for like the third time.  Apparently it was the last straw and their creditors have forced them into bankruptcy.” Lacey told him.

“Oh, joyous day!” Jeff clapped and did a little dance.  “Couldn’t happen to a nastier bunch of people.  Where’s the story?  Any chance they fired that bully Hordor?  He used to make Alice so angry she’d come home and cry.”

“From the article is sounds like pretty much everybody’s getting sacked.”  Lacey pointed at her computer where the article was still up.

Jeff was reading through the article when the phone buzzed for the intercom system. Gold told her brusquely.  “Send Regina the link to the story and set up a conference call with her as soon as she’s available.”  

She had not been aware that Gold even knew how to use the intercom on the phone system.  He usually just came (or shouted) up stairs when he had something to tell her.  Figuring it must be important, she called the lawyer as soon as he hung up.

They lucked out and Regina was at her desk.  By the time Lacey had the equipment set up, Gold appeared from his lair with a rather tattered file folder.      

He started even before he was seated at the table with the speaker phone they used for conference calls.  “Did you get a chance to look at the news story?”

“I’ve got it in front of me now.”  Regina said.

“Am I right that this will put the company out of business and the Court will sell off the assets?”

“Well, there is always a chance they’ll be able to find someone who will want to buy it as an ongoing operation, but my experience with software company bankruptcies is that usually there’s only a few items of real value that get cherry picked and the rest will get auctioned off or sold to liquidators.”  Regina told him.  “You want a souvenir?”

“I do.”  Jeff said.  “Think we can get that fancy sculpture that was in the executive lounge?”

But Gold was serious.  “If we were able to buy back the rights to Vizeercalc, is there anything in my non-compete that would keep us from being able to market it ourselves?”

“Hmm.  That’s an interesting question.”  Regina said.  “I’ll pull the non-compete and review it, but I don’t think so.”

“Do that.”  Gold went on.  “What would we need to do to try and buy it back?”

“You say it’s an involuntary filing?  Contact the Court appointed Trustee and see what he wants for it.”  Regina responded.

“Can you do that for us?”  Gold asked.  “As soon as possible.  We don’t want to lose it to somebody else.”

“I’ve got the contact information for the Trustee.”  Lacey spoke up.  She had started looking as soon as Gold had asked about Vizeercalc.  

“Email it to me and I’ll talk to him.”  Regina closed with.

There was a moment of silence after that.  Then Jeff said.  “You’d need to modernize the user interface if you plan to market Vizeercalc.  It works fine but the look is too old fashioned for the current market.”

“You don’t want to modernize it too much.”  Lacey disagreed.  “Part of what makes it easy to use is that the menus are obvious.  Or you could do two versions one with symbols and one with the words you’ve got now.”

“Or have both options available.”  Jeff considered.  “It’s easy to add a couple of different style plug ins without adding much blot to the program.”

“We have to get the rights first.”  Gold was rubbing his fingers together.  “I’m not getting my hopes up.  I’ve been disappointed over this thing far too often.”

But that afternoon, Lacey found Jeff with a couple of different user interface options open on his screens.  “I thought we were waiting to see if we could actually get the program before we started working on it?”

“I’m just checking style libraries available.”  Jeff told her.  “If we get the rights, Rum is going to want to start marketing Vizeercalc as soon as we can.  He’s been waiting to get it out for near on fifteen years.  And the sooner we get it on the market the sooner the gold starts rolling in.  Alice was firmly convinced Vizeercalc would be a solid money maker.  It’s not sexy, but it’s the sort of app most tech types are going to want on their phone and tablet.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”  She admitted.  “What if we had add-ons where you could like get pre-written bookkeeping or inventory control programs.  Or even just spreadsheets set up where you could download your banking information and keep track of your expenses.”

“Brilliant, little doily.”  Jeff enthused.  “Make up a list of things people might want to use.  I’ll bet Rum has most to them all ready written.”

“Cause we use it for most of that stuff now.”  Lacey had thought of that.  “Heck, I think Neal uses it for his school work.  There’s another market. High school and college kids.”

“And what Rum doesn’t know about our plans won’t hurt him.”  Jeff pointed out.

They grinned conspiratorially.

  Regina called back two days later.  “The good news is that the bankruptcy Trustee didn’t even know Ogre Inc owned the rights to Enchanted’s software and would be happy to let you buy it.  The bad news is that he’s smart enough to figure out you’re probably the only one interested in Enchanted’s code and so says he’ll sell Vizeercalc to you only if you also buy the rest of Enchanted’s product line as well.  Any idea what that would involve?”

“There were a bunch of drivers for devices that aren’t around any more.  None of which has any value.”  Gold had to think about it.  “Alice had some programming tools that were designed for C++ which would need some serious updating and frankly there is better stuff available now anyway.  Her back propagation algorithm were ground breaking at the time, but again would need serious updating, those would only be valuable to someone who was familiar with the work and could go in and tweak the code.”

“Like us.”  Jeff put in.

“Dakkar Nemo might be able to do something with it.  He worked with Alice on it, but I’m not going to call him up and ask.”  Gold said.  “Other than that there would only be the games.  Which are pretty primitive by today’s standards.  I suppose there is some value to the concepts and names.”

“Damn little.” Jeff snorted.  “You’d need to rewrite the things from scratch to get any kind of interest in them now.  A couple of the educational games might be worth doing something with.”

“I was more interested in a value.”  Regina told them.

“With the development costs to update them I can’t imagine anyone paying more than, maybe, $100,000 for the lot?”  Gold looked uncertain.

“The company is being liquidated.  These are going to be fire sale prices.”  Regina mused.  “So figure two-thirds going market rate.  You still interested?”

Gold was rubbing his fingers together.  Jeff looked at him questioningly.  After a minute Gold spoke.  “See if you can get him to accept less than $63,000 for the lot.”

“That is an interestingly specific number.  How did you arrive at it?”  Regina asked.

“It’s what I’ve got in liquid assets without having to dip into Neal’s college fund.”  Gold said.

“Well, I can’t make an offer using that as a basis.”  Regina retorted.  “Come up with a proposal the Trustee and I can present to the Judge as to how we valued this and I’ll make it.”

After she hung up, Jeff asked.  “Is this actually a good business decision or are we doing this because you’re still angry about Ogre deep sixing Vizeercalc?”

“I don’t know.” Gold told him.  “I’ve always felt that Vizeercalc could be big, but I don’t know whether it will actually sell enough to be worth this.

“Which is why I’m the one who’s going to buy that code.  Not the company.”

Jeff considered. “So you don’t intend to do anything with Alice’s neural net work?”

“I’m going to mine Enchanted’s product line for every dime I can squeeze from it.”  Gold said.  “But Alice was the neural net genius not me. I’m not sure I can do anything with it.”

“I kept her notes.”  Jeff said softly.  “It’s not my area, but maybe you can make more out of them than I could.”

“Maybe.”  Gold sounded doubtful.  “Thing was I just mostly did what Alice told me on the neural net side.  If anything I downplayed to Regina just how innovative her work was.  I’m, or rather I was, I’m rusty now, a smart designer, but Alice would have these sparks of sheer genius that I could figure out after she explained them, but had no clue how she came up with them.”

“She was one of a kind.”  Jeff agreed softly.

Lacey had been making notes of the conversation with Regina.  “We’re not going to get the chance to do anything with any of this if we can’t convince that Trustee to sell it to us.  Is Google going to tell me anything about what this stuff is worth or are we just going to pull numbers out to the air?”

Neither Gold nor Jeff had a clue.  Lacey sighed and went off to search the internet.

She was run off her feet between looking up values of really old off the market software and getting Jeff settled down and back to work.  “You’ll want to finish this game before we get the Enchanted software and you have new stuff to work on.  Here I’ll make you a nice up of tea with some of my biscuits and we can plan out what you’re going to do this week.”

But two day later she had some answers that would at least let them fake up some values for the Trustee.  It looked to her that Rum’s estimate was a little low.  She had called Regina herself to get some tips about how to shave down the offer.  The other woman had some useful suggests.  “… and emphasis that no one else is going to want this stuff.  If we can convince him of that he’ll take our offer cause it’s better than nothing.”

“Are we the only ones interested?”  She had been worried this was taking too long and somebody else would sweep in and buy it out from under them.”

“Based on the regular emails I’m getting from the Trustee asking if we have an offer yet, I’d guess yes.”  Regina had reassured her.  “Then again I don’t think he’s actually turned it over to a broker to market, so I suspect nobody else has figured out that he has it.”

Since they wanted to keep it that way, Lacey decided that finding more information took a backseat to speed.  Google provided her with a sample to use for submitting their proposal to he Trustee.

When she took went down to talk to Rum about it he was talking on the phone.

“… that’s the day of the regional competition.”  Pause.  “He’s part of a team, Milah.  Even if he hadn’t been looking forward to this thing for months, he’s not going to be willing to let his teammates down.”

Another pause.  “No, it’s not a sure thing they’ll make it as far as the regionals. But they could.”

He noticed her then and waved in the direction of the chairs.  “Tell you what.  Keep your plans to get here that day.  If they don’t make the regional competition you can pick him up and head out.  If they do you can come to the competition.”

Sighing deeply he added.  “I’ve got a spare room, Milah.  A couple of them in fact. We’ll put you up for the night.  Neal would love to have you and I’d rather you left in the morning than drove all night.”

This was apparently acceptable as he finished with.  “Good.  Email Neal and let him know.”

After he hung up, Lacey asked,  “Trouble with the ex?”

“Less than usual actually.”  Gold told her.  “Apparently Milah’s going to be spending the summer at Culebra, Puerto Rico doing some kind of study and she’ll be able to have Neal with her for the entire time.  Of course she wanted to pick him up for the visit on the day of the regional competition for STEMletics but we managed to sort that out so all’s well.”

“Unless his team places for the nationals in July.”  The kid’s schedules went onto her calendar to avoid conflicts with Rum and Jeff’s work.  

“I’ll be surprised if they make it to the Regionals.”  Rum said.  “It’s their first year and they’re competing against kids two and three years older than they are.”

“Maybe, but our kids are really sharp.”  When had she acquired a stake in the STEMaletes she wondered.

Shaking herself slightly, she told him.  “I roughed out a proposal.  It’s labeled Ogre_proposal on the company cloud.  Read through it and let me know what you think.”

Neal raised the issue his father she had predicted once he had talked with his mother.  “I mean spending the whole summer with Mum in the Caribbean would be great.  She gonna let me help with the study. It’s really important work studying ocean warming.  But the team is counting on me.  I can’t let them down.”

Lacey had left father and son alone in the kitchen to work out their family conflicts.  If the kitchen doors got left open so she could hear no big right?

Gold clearly could not withstand those big brown puppy dog eyes any more than she could. “If your team gets seated for the nationals you can fly back to compete and then return to Puerto Rico.  I’m sure your mother will be okay with that.”

“Uhm, aren’t plane tickets to the Caribbean expensive?”  Neal asked hesitantly. “I’m not sure Mum can afford another set.”

“I’ll pay for the tickets.”  Gold assured him.  “You and your mother don’t get that much time together.  You shouldn’t have to give up part of the summer with her if you win the competition.”

“Thanks, Dad! You’re the best!”

She and Gold hashed out the final version proposal the next morning over Elevenses.  They had agreed that the less Jeff was stressed about this the better.

Once they had that finished, Lacey could not resist bringing up.  “Since you don’t think the STEMaletes have got a shot at Nationals, you’re getting an awful lot of Dad cred for very little effort by promising to fly him back for it.”

“Milah’s taking him him to the Caribbean for the summer.  On top of being an Eco Warrior and saving the bloody planet.”  Rum growled.  “I have to compete with that while still being the responsible parent.  I’ll take my ‘cred’ as you call it where I can.”

Points to her for getting him to admit it.  By way of being a gracious winner she poured and prepared his tea for him.

After she handed it to him she asked,  “So you gonna hook up with the ex while she’s here?”

Rum sputter into his tea.  “God no!  I wouldn’t even assuming Milah were interested. Which she’s not remotely.   She and Killian have been disgustingly happy together for more than ten years now.  We’ve managed to establish… an equilibrium of civility when it come to being Neal’s parents.  There is no way I’d risk that.  Not for a quick shag.”

“Wouldn’t have to be quick.”  Lacey helped herself to a biscuit.  

“Generally was toward the end.”  Rum said dryly.  “Which should have clued me in a lot earlier than it did.”

“Yeah, crap sex is the first sign they’re losing interest.”  Lacey agreed.  “Gaston stopped trying long before you showed up and got us fired.”

“I did not get you fired.”  Rum denied.

Lacey shrugged.  She was too interested in pursuing something else she had noticed about his comment.  “Neal said you got divorced while he was in kindergarten.  That’s only eight years ago.”

“Yeah.”  Rum developed a sour look.  “She and Killian got together a couple of years before.  At first I just thought she was happier cause she was back sailing.  When I finally figured out she was a little too happy for it to be just enjoying her work, well, mostly I just pretended like I hadn’t.          

“We hadn’t been good for a while at that point.”  He stirred his tea unnecessarily. “Moving to Maine and having Neal was supposed to be us trying to make it work.”

“Didn’t take?” Lacey asked.

“I think it actually made things worse.”  Rum admitted.  “She didn’t really enjoy the sort of work she could do here at a land based research station.  She felt too tied down with a baby.  And I wasn’t very supportive about the way she felt.  I love being able to work from home and take care of Neal.

“Then she got the chance of doing research with Greenpeace.  We had a huge row over her taking that job.  The job requited her to be away from home four to five months at a time.  That pretty much put paid to our marriage even though we didn’t do anything about it legally for years after.

“So I wasn’t really surprised when she found someone else.  What I was surprised at was that she was willing to give up on Neal.  When he was four she calmly announced that she was leaving Greenpeace and joining this radical group calling themselves the Eco Pirates and her next expedition would have her gone for more than a year, well, I told her she had to make a choice.”

He looked up with a depreciating smile.  “She didn’t choose us.”

Lacey could understand wanting your freedom.  But that afternoon when she made tea for the kids she wondered about Milah’s choice.  You would have to be damn committed to a career to leave Neal behind.  She was pretty sure in Milah’s shoes she would have found another way. Hell, she had figured out how to stick around for Dad and still get herself a career she liked and that was nothing like leaving a little kid.  

Regina called back two days after they sent her the proposal.  “Can you come up with another $4000?  The bankruptcy Trustee won’t go lower that $67,000. But he’s willing to throw in gratos a total release for you from the non-competition agreement you signed with Enchanted Software.”

“Take it.”  Gold told her.  “I’ll find the money somewhere.  How soon can we get the source code?”

“He’ll hand it over at closing.”  Regina told him.      

“Tell him we can have the money together by the end of the week.”  Jeff told him. “And we want that release to include Alice as well.”

“Already thought of that.”  Regina assured him.

When the conference call ended,  Gold turned to Jeff.  “You’re not putting up your money for this.  This is my personal vendetta.  I won’t ask you to go along with it.”

“First, you didn’t ask.  I offered.”  Jeff sounded surprisingly coherent.  “Second I’m not going to use my money.  I’m going to use Alice’s money.  Those bastards shafted her just as much as they did you.  She would want to see her work released as much as you do.”

Gold looked like he was going to refuse for a moment, but finally nodded.  “We’re going to need some more coders.  You and I can’t do everything.  Do you think Dakkar would be interested?”

“Very likely. I’ll call and see.”

“Get me a list of qualifications you want and I’ll post an ad.”  Lacey told them. “I’m sure there are some kids at U Maine who wouldn’t mind some summer work.  You are going to be able to pay them I assume?”

The two men exchanged looks.  “Are we?”  Jeff asked.

“We’ll need to dip into the company reserves.”  Gold admitted.  “If we can finish the updates in a couple of months we won’t have to start using the kids’ college funds.”

They were on pins and needles for a week until the next call came.  Luckily the team had it’s finally local competition and placed to go on to regionals so they had something to else to think about.

Then the call came. “We got it.”  Regina announced.

“He’ll turn it over to us as soon as your check clears escrow.  I’ll meet him in Boston to hand over your paperwork and pick up the code.  Apparently it’s on antique hard drives.  I hope you’ve got a way to read them.”

“Uhm, Regina. We can’t afford to pay you to act as delivery girl.”  Gold told her.

“Don’t worry I’m only billing you for the time at the meeting itself.”  She told them.  “After all the trouble this stupid code as caused over the years, I’m not about to risk it going astray.  I’m going to hand carry it to Storybrooke myself.  It’s a nice little town and I deserve a weekend away.”

When they finished the call, Gold whispered,  “We did it.”

“If by did it you mean we just just used all your available cash to buy a whole hell of a lot of work then yeah.”  Lacey told him.  “But this is just the start.”

“Yeah, but tonight we celebrate.”  Jeff beamed at them both.  “Ice cream at Granny’s!”

“You’re buying.” Gold told him.  “I’m broke, remember?”

“I will even splurge for hot fudge and nuts.”  Jeff promised.  

While they were waiting for the code to get delivered Lacey finally showed Gold what she and Jeff had been working on.  “I did some plans about how long the different add-ons would take to have in shape to market.  Jeff and I think we should release the bookkeeping, inventory control and educational math ones when we release the main program.”

“You’ve already got half of the project scheduling figured out.”  Gold was impressed.

“I’ve always said, I’m a good project manager.”  She smirked.  “Admit it, you’re glad you hired me.”

“I’m not unhappy.”  He sipped his tea and admitted.  “It is rather nice to have an adult to talk to who I’m not constantly monitoring to make sure his meds don’t need adjusting.”

She was setting up an interview schedule with some of the U Maine students who had applied to work for them on the updates when Neal approached her looking very serious.

“Could you kind of keep an eye on Dad while I’m gone?”  He asked.  “When I'm gone he gets really into programming and when he does that sometimes he forgets stuff.”

“Like paying bills and doctors appointments?”

“More like eating and sleeping.”  Neal sighed.  “When he has Jeff to keep an eye on it keeps him on schedule.  But this year Grace is signed up for all these summer programs and Jeff's not going to be around as much.  If Dad loses track of time he may forget to check in on Jeff and Grace too.”  

“So I’ll need to keep an eye on Jeff as well?  I’m pretty sure nurse maid isn’t part of my job description.”    

“You’re the project manager.”  Neal pointed out.  “I grew up around computer geeks, remember?  Babysitting is pretty much what project managers do.”

“You have a point, kid.”  Lacey admitted.  “Okay, I’ll nag your Dad to look after himself, and Jeff, while you’re gone.  But you better call regularly and check up on us to make sure I’m doing my job right.”

Cause Rum was going to spend the summer worrying about the kid if he did not hear from him regularly.  Hell, he was going to spend the summer worried about him anyway.  Probably why he lost himself in programming while the kid was gone.

“I’ll call when I can and email when I can’t.”  Neal promised.  “But I Googled this place.  It’s kind of the back end of nowhere.  I’m not sure even how much internet access there’s going to be.  Let alone phone.”