Technically Faking Read online

  TECHNICALLY FAKING

  ROBIN HALE

  CONTENTS

  1. Iris

  2. Amber

  3. Iris

  4. Amber

  5. Iris

  6. Amber

  7. Iris

  8. Amber

  9. Iris

  10. Amber

  11. Iris

  12. Amber

  13. Iris

  14. Amber

  15. Iris

  16. Amber

  17. Iris

  18. Amber

  19. Iris

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Robin Hale

  1

  IRIS

  “This can’t come as much of a surprise to you, Iris.”

  He sat draped across an expensive chair — some designer I’d never heard of, but the decorator had been adamant — wearing a suit that managed to be ostentatiously bespoke and ill-fitting at the same time. His brow was furrowed like the things he said were difficult for him to come out with, but that didn’t hide the smirking lift at the corner of his mouth and I didn’t have the patience for the charade.

  I’d never had the patience for it.

  My chair didn’t creak or scuff the floor when I stood, everything in the office was too well-made for that. Every lamp, every single stitch in the carpet, every last beam in my desk was precisely placed and created, bound to perform its function flawlessly. Anything less would be a distraction and if there was one thing I couldn’t abide, it was distraction.

  Distraction like the uselessly bloviating sack sitting across the desk, spouting off as if I hadn’t moved. As if I hadn’t crossed to the window and turned my attention to the city rather than him.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard enough to know the reputation you’ve managed to gather,” Garberson continued obliviously. He kept droning on, giving the distinct impression he’d practiced his speech in the shower that morning and he didn’t want to let my presence slow him down.

  Insufferable moron.

  Harry Garberson — Harold, he’d insisted when Carrie showed him in that he was going by Harold like a sixty-year-old man instead of barely the other side of forty — had been talking down to me since we first met. He’d started when I was a child and nothing about my career trajectory had convinced him to stop.

  “You’re difficult. Abrasive. People find you hard to work with. And while some companies have done well having that sort of CEO standing at the helm —” At least he hadn’t lost his fondness for tired metaphors. “SparkSignal is different. It has to be. When you have a product that’s supposed to be about connecting people, you can’t have a dragon for a CEO.”

  ‘Connecting people’

  It hadn’t been about connecting people. Not when I’d written the first lines of code that would become the company Garberson warned might be taken away from me. Not when I’d managed the crucial first round of angel investment. Not when the app had launched with support for nearly two-thirds of the world by language spoken.

  SparkSignal had been about sharing information in places where having it could get someone killed. Or at least arrested. It’d been about getting political dissidents out of war zones safely. About making sure that people with my own sexual proclivities wouldn’t find that their smartphones were a death sentence for themselves and everyone they loved.

  For all of that, I was aware most American users associated SparkSignal with texting nudes to someone they probably shouldn’t have given their first name.

  “I assume a date has been set to vote on my replacement,” I said calmly, watching the sunlight glinting off the windows of the surrounding buildings, hiding my bared teeth behind my disinterest in the man sitting at my back.

  Garberson paused for half a moment before he answered. Melodramatic twit. “They’re holding the vote in three weeks. Tuesday.”

  A frown pulled at my face, brow furrowing in momentary confusion. “That’s unnecessarily — ah.” The pin dropped. “Ski week. Of course.”

  Three weeks. The delay was a blessing — it meant I had enough time to launch a counter-attack. Provided, of course, I came up with something that would combat years of a reputation I’d thoroughly earned. I would coordinate with Carrie. Start pulling numbers from previous quarters, try to draw enough direct lines between my own actions and the public perception of the company. Beyond creating the product that SparkSignal’s board profited off in the first place, of course. Hopefully there would be something there to base my campaign on. If not, I’d keep looking.

  What did my afternoon schedule look like? Carrie would know. She’d arrange the time. Sometimes it seemed she pulled free hours out of the vacuum of space so I could get some work done instead of sitting in meetings with operational dead weight.

  “I understand this is difficult to take.”

  God, was he still there?

  My back went momentarily rigid while my mind slammed back into my body from the problem-solving headspace I’d occupied. I turned away from the window, looking back at Garberson in time to see him cross the office to lay a hand on my shoulder.

  Oh dear god. Was he going to insist on some kind of moment?

  “I know this is the first thing that’s really been yours, instead of your family’s.” It wasn’t. “And being removed can feel like you’ve failed.” It didn’t. It felt like theft, even though it was ridiculous. “But most start-up CEOs go through this, Irie.”

  The hated childhood pet name barely registered through the vibrating wall of ‘no’ that Garberson’s hand on my shoulder inspired. How long was he going to leave it there?

  “Somewhere between eighty and ninety percent of start-up founders are removed before IPO.” My voice was steady. It wasn’t some devastating revelation, after all. Just a fact. A fact I could deal with as soon as I got Harry out of my office. “This was always a possibility.”

  The frown on Garberson’s face was the expression equivalent of speaking slowly and loudly to a non-native speaker. “You don’t have to pretend.”

  “Of course not.” The suggestion was offensively stupid. “The message has been received, Harold. Carrie will show you to the elevator.” I nodded toward the office door, already swinging open because Carrie was the sort of hyper-competent assistant I had once thought only existed in comic books and Bond films.

  The sputtering was only slightly less tedious than the hand had been, but Garberson settled himself after a moment and followed Carrie’s smiling gesture out into the foyer. He was disappointed. It was all over his face, the line of his back. He’d expected me to throw some sort of fit. Maybe rail at him. Treat him as more than a messenger.

  As soon as the door swung closed again, I shoved my hands beneath the heavy plastic frames of my glasses, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes. Damn it.

  Damn it.

  The movement of the elevator didn’t actually echo in the floor beneath my feet. I knew that. I’d seen the specifications for the building. The fact that I thought I could feel it was self-delusion. Nevertheless, something trembled.

  Scowling, I dropped my hands and prowled the tastefully understated carpet, restlessness running through every inch of my body. There was work to do. Plans to make. Three weeks was enough time if I knew where to look, what to put together, but I didn’t yet. I needed every minute available to me. Three weeks.

  My eyes landed on the ridiculous crystal paperweight — why did they even make paperweights anymore? — sitting on my desk. It had been a gift from Dahlia when there’d been some idiotic, hand-wringing article about SparkSignal contributing to the fall of civilization by allowing people to sidestep ‘natural consequences’.

  The paperweight was heavy, an abstract crystal monstrosi
ty with the words ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ etched into the base. If I got it going at the right angle, would one of the sharp, protruding bits concentrate the force of a throw enough to shatter the safety glass in the window?

  I was considering the physics involved when the door opened again.

  “Stop thinking about that right now.” Carrie’s fond exasperation cooled the live wire running through the middle of my mind.

  “You were listening?” It’d been standard procedure from the beginning that Carrie would listen in on conversations in my office unless specifically told I wanted privacy. It saved time, made sure Carrie had the necessary context, and generally kept our operation running smoothly. If I could’ve linked Carrie directly into my own brain, I would have, if only for the convenience.

  “I was. And Mr. Garberson felt compelled to let me know you were probably feeling fragile, due to the board seeking to remove you.” I could hear Carrie’s eye-roll before I looked at her. “With all due respect, your father has kept company with some staggering idiots, Ms. Spark.”

  The sharp edge of a bitter grin cut into my cheek, and I took my hand off the paperweight. “Garberson probably thinks I’ll pass along to Dad that he did me this colossal favor, warning me. Apparently, he believed I wouldn’t notice he was hoping I’d have a breakdown.”

  “Here’s hoping they continue to underestimate you, then,” Carrie said. “And that breakdown?”

  I drove the point of a canine into my lower lip, clinging to the edge of physical pain breaking through the roiling mass of anger and frustration that had bubbled up since Garberson first sat down. “I’m — angry.”

  “I’d be surprised if you weren’t.”

  I had been angry about the circumstances before Garberson had succeeded in needling beneath my skin to make it all personal. Using my childhood pet name. Connecting it to my ‘reputation’. Feigning concern. It took the problem from ‘the board wants a CEO they find more palatable, one they can control’ to ‘the board wants to get rid of you specifically’.

  They wanted to erase me from the company I’d built from nothing.

  Suddenly, that paperweight was looking awfully good again.

  “Go for a run,” Carrie broke in.

  I scowled. “I don’t have time. I have to start pulling numbers to fight this thing —”

  “And how much of that do you think you’re going to get done while you want to murder someone?” Carrie asked, well-manicured eyebrow lifting. “I have your things in the wardrobe there. Go for a run, clear your head. You’ll find the answer quicker if you do.”

  It was hard to keep my irritation going when Carrie insisted on being so reasonable and obviously correct. “Fine,” I bit out at last. “But if I lose this because I needed one more hour —”

  “Then I’ll deliver myself to the stocks to be pelted with rotting vegetables without complaint.” Carrie’s finger still pointed to the wardrobe. “Run.”

  The corner of my mouth quirked in amusement. “Slave driver.”

  “Masochist. Ma’am.”

  2

  AMBER

  I looked down at my neatly labeled ‘To Do’ list with pride.

  Twelve new social media posts scheduled in their correct aspect ratios, formatting guidelines, and content rules across six different platforms.

  The beginnings of a campaign overview for a new client.

  Three spreadsheets updated with traffic data for the context and audience for memes of different purpose and origin from the past week.

  It wasn’t a bad chunk of ‘work completed’ for being three hours into my official workday. That was definitely good enough for a latte and a pastry, wasn’t it? Then I’d get started on the work I needed to get through in the afternoon.

  The new calendar for seven different client campaigns.

  The feedback on the revised designs from my graphics contacts.

  The final proofing on my pitch for the new councilman’s outreach project.

  And one metric fuckload of email waiting for my attention.

  I sat back in my creaking, second-hand office chair — lovingly rescued from the sidewalk when one of the tech firms nearby had been updating all of their furniture, God bless them — and surveyed the top of my stark white desk. It looked a little less white with all of the color-coded sticky notes and the stacks of old marketing textbooks I’d liberated from a ‘friends of the library’ sale, but it was still the seat of my empire. The place where I made the magic happen.

  Even if the magic was usually contained in a ‘drunk’ — I never posted while actually drunk, not ever — social media post at three AM, musing on the secret inner lives of corgis, it still reached thousands of people. Millions when I played my cards right.

  And up until recently it had been enough that I could live in my favorite city in the world with significant freedom and only two — completely tolerable — roommates.

  Until recently.

  The jagged, torn edge of the envelope had become menacing in the days since I’d dropped it on the top of my desk. When I’d torn it open, it hadn’t seemed any different from anything else. It might’ve been a change to the trash pickup schedule. Or a mold check. That illusion hadn’t lasted very long. The corner of the rent increase notice peeked from the tattered envelope like it was waiting for me to let my guard down so it could finally strike.

  The rent hike was going to be a problem.

  It might not have been a few months ago. But some of the promotional algorithms had changed in ways that my systems weren’t accounting for yet, so I was working harder and harder for less visibility — and all the visibility I used to get was becoming more expensive to maintain through paid features.

  It was all such a mess.

  The weight of my dwindling checking account sat on my mind with all the subtlety of an elephant on a tightrope. Any sudden movements in any direction threatened to upset the whole thing.

  But the price of a cup of coffee wasn’t going to make the difference, and if I intended to get through the mountain of work that waited for me without dissolving into hysterical sobs, I had better get over to the coffee shop and indulge a little.

  “Caffeine, caffeine, caffeine, caffeeeeeine,” I sang to myself, drawing laughter from the second bedroom.

  “Go and get your man, Dolly,” Dave called from behind the closed door.

  Heat rose in my face. Hadn’t quite realized Dave was at home. I frowned. He probably shouldn’t have been. Didn’t that venture capitalist he was always running around after keep him working from sun-up to midnight? I slung my bag over my shoulder and nudged Dave’s door open.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Dave was sprawled across his bed like he’d never move again if he could help it. His eyes were bloodshot. Bleary. His skin was waxy-looking in the filtered sunlight from the window’s sheer curtains.

  “Hey, princess.” Dave offered me a watery smile.

  “You doing okay? You look like you’re having a rough time.” I could feel the furrow in my brow from the inside.

  Understatement. He looked like he hadn’t slept in approximately twelve years and had been subsisting on vending machine peanuts and energy drinks. Cloying worry burrowed into my chest, made me want to drop my satchel and jacket, unwind the scarf from around my neck, and curl around Dave in the mess of his bedclothes.

  How long had he been lying there?

  “Oh, I’m fine. Just got back from a corporate retreat for Ms. Vogle’s firm.” The words wheezed out through slack lips and his grey eyes fluttered with the effort to stay open.

  “This is you after a retreat?” I asked with wide, scandalized eyes.

  Dave snorted. “No one rests on these things. Well,” he amended. “Some of the spouses do. I heard a rumor there was a spa on the grounds — not that I saw it.” He rolled over, tucking his hands beneath his pillow and sinking into the blankets like he wanted to drown in them. “Nah, the ‘retreat’ just means they were far enough away from civilizati
on that no one could hear the assistants scream. And the partners traded in their oxfords for derbys.” He lifted an eyelid to make sure the remark had landed. “I saw an associate wearing monk straps one morning. He was gone before they’d finished clearing lunch.”

  Suddenly, I felt extremely fortunate to have a job where I mostly wore yoga pants and slippers and only had to put on a bra if I wanted to dress up. The financial worries weren’t nothing, but I wasn’t likely to find myself fired for a fashion faux pas.

  “Isn’t this Silicon Valley?” I asked. “The land of ‘is that scruffy-looking gentleman homeless, or the CEO of a wildly successful start-up’?”

  Dave grinned into the sheets. “That’s only for programmers. Finance is a conservative game — even venture capital.”

  “Well,” I said, pushing off from the door frame. “I’m going to go down to the Spot and hide from a job with a dress code for a while longer. Want me to bring you anything?”

  “Nope,” Dave mumbled around a yawn. “Ms. Vogle gave me the day off. Going to sleep until work tomorrow.”

  My face went soft with fondness while I watched Dave burrow into the sheets and I chuckled under my breath, crossing the small room until I could reach his feet. “You can’t sleep in your shoes.”

  “Can though.”

  “Get some rest, okay?” I knew better than to drop Dave’s prized dress shoes onto the hardwood, instead tucking them inside the cedar-scented bags they’d come in.