Big Data: A Startup Thriller Novel

Chapter 15

"Any news on Luna?" asked Doug Kensington.

"No," said Thor. "Does it matter anymore?"

"Everything matters."

"I'm sure she'll pop up soon," Thor said.

Both men had flown into the Bay Area that morning. Thor from New York and Doug from Seattle. They had Ancien's boardroom to themselves. It had been built to Luna's taste, which Doug had always despised. He thought it was too stylish, with details like crown molding in the corners and dark woods mixed with white marble. He preferred a clean and modern design—something more Swedish.

When Luna started Ancien ten years ago, nobody imagined it would grow this big. The first offices had been in a sketchy part of Cupertino, but after raising half a billion dollars in venture capital, they built a beautiful campus in Palo Alto. This came with the added benefit of being able to hire PhDs in machine learning right out of Stanford—usually, before they even graduated. In fact, it became so hard to scale the talent, not only for Ancien, but for their competitors like Google, Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, that they had were now hiring these undergraduates as soon as the ink was dry on their major declaration forms.

"And Taye?" asked Doug.

"I've made a call."

Doug strode toward the window and stared blankly out. This place still felt strange to him. Too much sun. Having come from Seattle, he was used to seeing 80 percent of his life covered by rain. Now it was reversed and everything felt backwards.

"I hope you called someone who can do the job this time," said Doug.

"They are very good."

"And Gaia?"

"Our team is still having trouble understanding how Gaia works without someone with more experience around to explain it. Just when we believe we have it all under control, it keeps changing on us. Like it's evolving."

Doug thought about this for a while.

"We need Taye and Luna here," said Doug. "If we can't keep things under control once and for all, my plan will fall apart at the seams. I didn't come this far just to give up. Remember that I made you CEO, and I can unmake you just as quickly."

"Calm down, Doug, calm down. Even if we don't get those two, my team is working on the problem. One way or another, we'll stay on track. Look, I've got other pressing matters to attend to now."

Thor left the room.

"If you want something done right," Doug muttered to himself.