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of the Internet: that people used the anonymity of the medium to do or say things they would never do or say in ‘real life’. Only, Clamor.us was now real life. The place where many of those 350 million members spent their days and nights! And in that light, how should the Clamor team re-view these ‘inner tendencies’? Slide 14 started:
    ‘Understanding the subterranean self’
    “OK, this is getting a little creepy,” Mike Marantz said.
    Wisnold narrowed his eyes. Natalie was struck by the curious, nervous energy circulating the room. It was flinty with tension, like a tinderbox –
    “I just don’t know that the term ‘subterranean’ sounds entirely appropriate,” Marantz was saying. “Couldn’t we use another?”
    “Like what?” Nancy said.
    “You have ‘hidden’ on the previous slide,” Nguyen intervened.
    “It still sounds weird,” Marantz said. “Come on, Berkeley psych major. There must be a better word.”
    Nancy visibly bristled, controlled herself then said: “Carl Rogers talked about the true self. I guess we could use true sel–”
    “I like true self.”
    A pause hovered with a life of its own. “With all due respect Mike, you are not responsible for creating the engine.”
    “Well neither are you.”
    “How d’you draw that conclusion?’
    “I coded it,” Yuri Malovich butted in.
    “ And ? Nancy hunched her shoulders, turning her palms upwards. “Yuri, you may have written the code, but I wrote the rules !”
    “Well if Yuri’s name is on the patent application as an inventor, perhaps legally we should be careful not to deny his contribution,” Nguyen tried to reconcile the room. “We should be mindful of the Six Degrees situation,” he added, somehow sealing his authority on the subject. “Although, with all due respect to you Yuri, on a go-forward basis my team does have responsibility for the engineering work on the engine.”
    Natalie’s mind was whirring, keeping up: the Six Degrees patent was some seminal social networking idea later fought over by the founders of LinkedIn and Friendster, one of which won control in a bidding war or something –
    “Oh this is like, so , lame !” Nancy cried, crashing her silver bangles down.
    “OK!” Wisnold shouted. “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘t.e.a.m.’! Or ‘U’.” His eyes flashed at Marantz’s. “Let’s just take a ten minute time out. This is worse than friggin’ family meal time!”
     
    “Can I talk to you for a second?” Natalie asked Nguyen.
    “Sure.”
    There was a door at the far end of the room, leading straight out onto the parking lot. By the time she caught up with him, he was lightning a cigarette.
    “I didn’t know you smoked.”
    The cigarette end reddened. “I didn’t,” he said exhaling, the smoke vanishing into the dazzling high-sun heat. They were a strange foreign brand – Krong Tip or something, unusually acrid.
    “Well that was weird,” she said with ironic understatement.
    “Which part?”
    “All of it! Where do you want me to start?”
    “At the beginning,” he said.
    “Fine. What’s with Marantz?”
    “What’s with Marantz. He’s pissed that he’s spent the last year pimping his underage boss beers when his boss is gonna be worth a hundred times more than him. He’s pissed that his boss’s main squeeze is two-thirds his age and now worth twice what he is. He’s pissed – he’s just pissed. I doubt he’s long for this place.”
    “Another, in the departure lounge. Who’ll be left?”
    “The CEO,” Nguyen speculated, inhaling again and attempting humor: “along with a supercomputer, back where it all began. Back in his living space.”
    “So, any recommendations on what I’m supposed to be doing here? Other than getting back on the 101 and taking the first flight home to Nassau?”
    What better reminder of why she’d chosen to do her own thing, far away from the madness of corporate life.
    “Let’s see – I guess you should meet separately with