AN: I do not own Silicon Valley. Also sorry for the delay but I am making it up with a Gigantic Chapter. Please let me know your thoughts. Reviews and favorites fuel my writing.
Chapter 5 - Who is the Wizest Man of them All?
As Monica's naked body, snuggled next to me with her head on my chest and her hand wrapped around my abdomen, all I could think was, Wow – life was good. But it wasn't stress-free.
After Garbage Door Prank as the world is now calling it, life had gotten quite hectic as I got back into the groove of things. But a lot of good things came before that and out of that prank. The first and foremost was the money. 4 Million for the art and with 90 million views for the prank video and 270 million views for the Reveal Video, I was swimming in cash.
I had become a small-time overnight celebrity. I had gotten innumerable requests for interviews and Late Night Talkshows after both my videos went viral and the story was picked up by national television.
I had rejected all those offers as I didn't want to overexpose myself than I already had.
Also right now I was Peter Gregory's most favorite person in the world, because of the way I pranked Gavin Belson. I had heard that after the reveal video came out, Gavin lost his shit and personally hosed the garage door with petrol and lit a match on it. This lead to the unfortunate side effect of a small part of grounds surrounding the sign to also catch fire. This lead to a little scorching of half a small building on Hooli campus.
And to Gavin's misfortune, the campus camera caught Gavin's meltdown and someone uploaded that video on the internet as well.
This had the domino effect of police arresting Gavin Belson.
Ron told me that charges were likely going to be dismissed as no one was filing a case against Belson for property damage. Right now though, Gavin was out on bail for the charges of arson and was extremely pissed at me.
The third and I could say, very, if not the most important thing that came out of it was Monica. That morning after the first night when I woke up next to Monica, I was both happy and a little disappointed that we didn't go all the way the first time. We talked, cuddled, talked some more, made out, then talked some more before we fell asleep together in my bed.
I was embarrassed the next day when both of us woke up in a teenage-style bunk bed. Though she wasn't. She just kissed me and I asked her out on a date. She said yes, in exchange for making me promise not to make her spend another night in the future in this bed again.
We both smiled when she said that, indicating that there was going to be a future when we would spend the night together again. Maybe this time doing something more.
Then we fast forward to the present.
After going on 4 dates in a week, we finally sealed the deal. After that, we have spent almost every night we could for the last 8 weeks together.
Though I couldn't do much last week as I was busy figuring out the cloud and middle out.
"Mmmm…. Good morning!", the naked beauty next to me rumbled.
I gave her a chaste kiss on her mouth, that lead to her legs and breast moving in such a way that did terrible things for my control and incredible things for little Richard. Though Little Richard was not so little. Richard might be a geek but he was blessed in the underwear department.
Before I knew it, we had gone 3 rounds and she was laying on my chest as both of us were panting.
"You know, I never thought a geek like you could do 'that', that well, that long and that hard. I know this will inflate your ego, but I have kept it in for long enough…. you are the best I have ever had.", she said biting my nipple.
"Thank you", I said flipping her and returning the favor by biting her nipple. The squeak was any indication then I was doing something right.
"Richard stop. I am sore, and we have a long day ahead. Are you ready for Tech-crunch?", she said pushing me down next to her to prevent me from going for a fourth round.
"More or less. We did the best we could in the time we had.", I told her, as I kissed her neck and was slowly going down.
"Richarrrrdddddd… noooo….. Move! I am getting out of this bed before you scam me into another shag.", she said getting up and moving to the bathroom.
"At least can I come to join you in there?", I asked from outside grinning as I saw her naked butt waltz into the bathroom.
"NO! The last time you did, we didn't come out for 3 hours and I was walking funny the whole day.", she said which had me laughing.
"Oh! Come on! I wasn't so bad!", I said from outside.
"You fuck like a man possessed when you are in the mood! I am not taking any chances.", she said laughing from inside of the bathroom.
I, of course, ignored her and went into the bathroom. It's her own fault for not locking it. There I found her skin being messaged by droplets of water cascading down her smooth white flawless skin. I was so mesmerized, that I didn't even hear the first time she said, "What are you doing here? I said No, remember." I snapped out of it the second time she said it. "I heard you, I just want to take a shower. No funny business! I promise!", I said grinning.
"You are a bad liar Richard Hendrickson.", she said narrowing her eyes.
"Why don't you let me prove it to you? We might bump and touch each other while taking a shower together, but I won't do a thing.", and I didn't. I think it drove her almost insane. By the end of the shower, she broke first and started dry humping me. 30 minutes, one fuck and one blow job later we had to take bath all over again.
"You are terrible you know that?" she said as she got dressed and ready to leave. I was still in the bathroom during that time.
"Umhmm…." I didn't reply as I was shaving. I heard my phone ring on the nightstand and then heard multiple message rings and then after a few minutes, I heard the door shut with a bang. That was weird, she didn't say goodbye and that door slamming sounded angry.
I got out. I got dressed and then picked up my phone and immediately cursed, "Shit." A miscall from Anastasia, who's caller id pic was her in a naked pose for me. That was what Monica saw when the phone rang. There were also messages. Some 3 messages and 2 pictures. One of the two pictures was her full body pic with open legs – with the caption – "Cum In". The other was her boob pics – with the caption – "Girls are missing you". The messages said –
"Missing You." "Let's hook-up" "You can take me anyway, anyhow, anytime you want!"
The phone was locked but she could have seen and read everything through locked-screen notification. Shit, this was bad. The sad thing was I wasn't even cheating on her. I had stopped seeing Anastasia the moment I and Monica started hooking up.
But that was the problem right? We were just hooking up. None of us had said anything about any kind of commitments.
Shit, this had to happen today of all days. So much was hinging on everything going according to plan. Fuck it, I was soon approaching a point where I will have to diverge from canon anyways, if I didn't want to be Jon Snow of silicon valley, like the failure original Richard in cannon.
XxxxxX
"I am little behind being stuck on that Island for 4 days but I think I am on top of everything.", I head Jared say that as I was still in my own world thinking about Monica. I felt guilty about Jared. I had literally just forgotten about Jared thing last week, as I was so focused on getting the work done. But I genuinely thought it wouldn't happen, as this time I didn't need a child coder to help me with the cloud and the child coder didn't need aderol. So Jared had no reason to get in that car. But somehow he still ended up in the car and on the island.
"Ok so give me your Id's an…." Jared started saying but was interrupted by Monica who came to us from the kiosk with our Id cards. She looked at me for a second and then looked down. "Got your credentials and wristbands for the walkthrough at 4 pm today. Here you go."
I had thought a lot about how to deal with the Monica situation. And I had decided that I was going to take my queue from her. Today was too important for me to deal with something like this. If she wanted to pretend nothing happened… even us having sex in the last 8 weeks, then I was fine with it…. for now. After the Crunch was over we could talk it out.
"Thanks," I said simply. She looked at me with narrowed eyes for a micro-second and then she was back to normal.
"I am so sorry", I heard Jared apologize for not informing us about the walkthrough.
"That's why I am here. Peter is on safari with Loren Michaels and Kanye West till next week so I can put all my attention on you guys at once." She said narrowing her eyes at me once again before turning her back to us and walking away with us following behind.
"Trouble in Paradise?", Gilfoyle asked for beside me. "Just shut up.", I snapped in a low voice to him so that no one would hear.
"Gentlemen welcome to the big show. Tech-Crunch motherfucking Disrupt." That was Erlich.
"Okay guys this place is a vortex of distraction, normally the tech world is filled with two percent women. Guys these next three days, fifteen PERCENT!", she said the last thing a little bit louder as it drew my attention away from the girl jumping in a pink sweater doing something. Oh Shit, I pissed her off again. I need to leave right now, the more time I am in front of her, the more chances are she is going to erupt very publically on me.
"I NEED YOU TO FOCUS! CAN YOU HEARD ME RICHARD!", she said a bit too loudly for my taste. I don't reply, I just nod my head in the positive.
"How we do here is the entire future of your company. Don't screw it all up now.", she said calming down a little. But still keeping her eyes on me. I need to get out…stat…
"We need to win in the preliminaries if we want to get to the finals on Friday."
"I have a question. The program says Dan Melcher is judging our round. Is there any way to get him removed?", Erlich said reading the brochure. Oh, this is going to be hilarious.
"Not unless there is a conflict of interest.", Monica said without turning around as she walked ahead of us.
"Well, there may be. I did have sexual intercourse with his wife.
What...? It was 3 years ago!", Erlich said defensively.
As Dinesh and Gilfoyle were ripping Erlich a new one, Monica came to hastily whisper to me. "What do you mean you are not giving the presentation? Didn't you hear the man say, he fucked the judge's wife?"
"Yes, but I can't work a crowd this big. I can present to a few people but not thousands. If push comes to shove I will do it, I won't do it well, but I will do it. He asked me for another chance, I gave it to him. Let's see what he does with it.", I told her in the same whisper voice.
"You are impossible.", she said in an angry whisper. Okay, mount Monica is about to blow. Retreat Retreat.
"…either way Richard you may have to present, so be ready. We may be fine, we may be totally fine. We also may be totally fucked." I didn't say anything but just nodded my head. Monica, on the other hand, had her hand on her head and seemed to be messaging her temple.
"I don't want to present. I am not even done with the demo.", I said making my excuse to escape.
"Okay, Richard you need to go to the hotel right now and finish.", Monica said handing me the key. That was suspiciously too easy.
"You already checked us into the hotel.", Jared asked feeling inadequate.
"Yeah. Yeah.", Monica said.
"Okay, so I will do this module by module. Dinesh when I call you, you come. Till then I will cross check the code to make sure I haven't missed anything. For now, go to the booth with Gifoyle and Jared.", I said and started to leave.
"You know what, I will come with you, I need to get something from my room anyways. I need to tell you something Peter told me.", Monica said. There it was, the proverbial talk.
"Can't we do this later?", I said hoping against hope that she would say yes.
"We could, but this is urgent. This won't take long.", she said with a tight smile.
"Umhmm…." I hummed not believing her but not being able to deny her request.
As we both started walking out of the conference hall, Big head walked in front of us and told us to follow without looking back.
"Monica why don't you go back to the hotel and I will meet you there," I said as we were following big head.
"Umm, No.", she gave the flat reply and kept following us until big head turned. "Hey man! How are you? Sorry for the cloak and dagger, I just can't be seen talking to you. There are hooli people all over the place. I just don't want to rock the boat. Oh did I tell you that I was getting a boat? And a boat guy to take care of it. You know you got to have a boat guy.", big head said.
"Yes, yes you got to have a boat guy.", I said trying to finish this conversation as soon as possible and escape to my hotel room where I can lock the door and hide.
"Hey, you know that girl right? Sherry, I think her name was? She said you guys went to school together?", he said pointing at sherry across the road. Oh, shit Monica saw her too. "I saw her at the valley wag party last night, which was crazy by the way! Dude, there were like 20 girls there!"
"Holy shit!" Yes, holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit! Memories of Richard and cannon do not match up. I have a very bad feeling.
"Nuts. Anyways, she said you guys went out for like a year and then you dumped her and by the way she was talking about you last night. That girl is obsessed with you. Ever since the Prank on Gavin, you have gained a cult following at hooli, although no one dares talk about you on campus. Not since last week, when people were fired just for talking about you and the prank during lunch. Anyways as I was saying, that girl said she will get you back before the week is out, even if she has to handcuff herself to your bed. That girl is all kind of nuts. What the hell did you do to her man?" Fucking BIG HEAD. You had to say all of this NOW! Motherfucking Big Head!
"Listen, Big Head it was nice talking to you and all but I need to go now." I said practically trying to run away now. "Yes, we need to go now. We have something very important to discuss.", Monica said. I didn't even look back to know, that Monica was fuming. And as fast as I was going, she was keeping up pace with me.
XxxxxX
So I somehow managed to reach the hotel room. Before I could close the door, Monica barged in. I was thinking that she would blow up now, but she didn't. She just went to the windows and stood there for a good five minutes with her back to me. I took my cue after the first two minutes and set up my laptop, with a resigned feeling that my relationship with Monica was going to blow up today, even before it started.
"So this girl is walking around the conference that is obsessed with you.", Monica said sitting on the chair next to me. Her tone sounded accusing. Now that just really pisses me off. How is it my fault, if she is obsessed with me?
"Umhmm…. That's fascinating. Let's just forget about her okay?", I tell her hoping against hope that she would drop it.
"Yeah…..
Yeah…
Yeah yeah yeah.
…
….
I mean it's just so fucked up that a girl you barely remember is walking around telling people she is in love with you and she is going to get back with you before the week is out. Right?" Okay, I had never seen this neurotic and obsessed mode of Monica before. And it was turning me on. No. NO. Bad Richard. Very very bad Richard.
"Monica you don't have to worry about anything. It was years ago. This is the first time I have seen her in a long, long time. Nothing is going to happen.", I tell her, immediately regretting my choice of words.
"Why would I care if anything does actually happen? It's not like we are exclusive, are we? It's not like we are in a relationship? We have just been going out for, what, 8 weeks now? It's completely casual isn't it? So why would I care even if you bring back cherry…"
"Sherry."
"Right, sorry Richard. Your bring back SHERRY and NAIL HER ON THE WALL FOR HOURS. OR ON THE BED OR THE COUCH OR THE STUPID FUCKING BATHROOM LIKE YOU DID ME THIS MORNING!" Now she was screaming at the top of her lungs. I, however, refused to rise to the bait and just sighed and closed my laptop and turned my chair to face her fully.
"Spit it out. There is obviously something you want to say. Go on…", I say casually in a calm tone, which only serves to infuriate her even more.
"I AM NOT THE IRRATIONAL ONE OVER HERE. DO NOT MAKE ME OUT TO BE ONE HERE. THIS MORNING WHEN YOU WERE IN THE BATHROOM, YOU RECEIVED SOME MESSAGES FROM SOME SLUT CALLED ANASTASIA. YOU HAVE BEEN SEEING HER AND SLEEPING WITH HER WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING WITH ME, WEREN'T YOU? I SAW THE MESSAGES AND I SAW THE PICTURES. SHE IS VERY PRETTY, I MUST CONGRATULATE YOU ON THAT. DOES SHE KNOW YOU ARE SLEEPING WITH ME? OR HAVE YOU BEEN FOOLING HER JUST LIKE ME?", I am pretty sure some of the other guests on the floor had already made noise complaints.
I calmly open my phone, open the chat conversation with Anastasia. Before I had it over I tell her the truth, "The girl whose picture you saw was one of the girls at Toga party I left with. I had a threesome with her and the other girl whose boyfriend I kicked in the nuts." I say to her and she breaks down crying. I put Monica in a tight hug even though all the way she is fighting me and hitting my chest, but never saying the worlds to actually leave her alone.
"After that, I had been seeing the girl Anastasia on and off for hook-ups. I knew she was a gold digger, she knew I knew she was a gold digger, but after the first time we kept on meeting to fuck because both of us enjoyed it the first time. And every time after that. She even brought one other friend of hers on two occasions to join us.", as I said that I could feel Monica's nails digging into my chest and actually drawing blood through the shirt I was wearing.
"Are you gloating?", she said punching me in the chest and trying to move away. But I pushed through the pain and did not let her.
"I am not gloating Monica. I am telling you the truth. I think you want the truth right? So please hear me out, after that, I will leave you alone if you want. I promise.", I told still keeping her in my embrace. As I talked she stopped struggling. She didn't say anything but chose to keep quiet and keep listening. that was dishearting. Though I didn't falter and kept going, "I stopped meeting her, the day we kissed for the first time. Here check my phone.", I said giving her her phone. I was a little disappointed that she actually took it.
"She has sent you a lot of pictures. And all her messages are dirty.", I could not refute that. Ever since the day I messaged her, that I can't see her right now as I was, to quote, 'Exploring something real with a girl I really like. I can't in good conscience meet you till I find out what I have with this girl will work or it won't.' After that, I had given Anastasia a completely cold shoulder, not replying to any of her messages.
"You didn't block her number after we started dating?", she said. And yes I didn't do that.
"Were we? Dating I mean? I mean we have never talked about what we have. Or 'had' now I guess. Every time I wanted to raise the topic, I felt you chicken out. I just thought you weren't ready for a relationship with me, I can't honestly blame you for that. What girl would want to call me a boyfriend?" I told her.
"Say's the guy who has had multiple threesomes and by my count so far has made three girls obsessed emotional wrecks." I didn't even give her a chance to elaborate, she did it on her own, "Sherry, Anastasia and me. My god I was never this emotional. I have had boyfriends before. I even had boyfriends who cheated on me before. But I can't remember the last time I was this big of an emotional wreck because of a boy." She said slapping me on the chest again, soft crying in my arms.
"I really thought you were happy with everything between us being casual. I wasn't. And for your information, I never chickened out. Those bouts of nervousness were because of something else I was feeling.", she said.
"What was that something else?", I inquired to the girl who was sitting on my lap now, who's head was buried in the crook of my neck.
"That's not important. I really wanted you to ask me to be your girlfriend. I thought you were the one who wasn't ready.", she said looking up to me with red puffy teary eyes. I couldn't help myself as I kissed her and kept on kissing her till we were on the bed and our clothes were flying off our bodies.
That night I experienced make up sex for the first time in this body and it was glorious.
As she was approaching her fourth climax, I told her I was ready too, we held onto each other expressing our passions by kissing, licking and biting each other till we finally came together.
As we came down from the throes of passion, I really wondered how did the night take this direction. I was sure that today would be the end of me and Monica. But somehow we had just settled on that both of us wanted a relationship, and that too with each other.
"Monica Andrea Hall, will you do me the honor of being my girlfriend?", I asked the woman who was panting naked next to me while holding her hands and looking in her eyes.
"Did you really just ask me to be your girlfriend using my full name?", she said laughing and then kissing me.
"Monica. I was planning to take you to Kalypso's next week to a fancy dinner and getting down on one knee and taking the plunge at asking you to be my girlfriend anyway. But considering today's events, I thought it was better if I did not wait. Mainly because I was 100% sure you would kill me in my sleep if I didn't ask you today.", I said jokingly to her wide-eyed reaction. She hid her face with both her hands in embarrassment. Then after a minute, she peaked with one eye from between her fingers and then grabbed me into a very passionate kiss.
"Yes. I will be your girlfriend.
Yes. It is good you asked right now as I would have surely killed you later on.", she said.
What she left unsaid was the last line that echoed in her mind, 'Yes. I am falling in love with you and am very scared about it.'
XxxxxxX
"Oh shoot its 3 already. You need to get to work and so do I. I will go and check on the guys and Erlich to see if he fucked or un-fucked the situation further. Be there at 4 for the walkthrough!", she said jumping out of the bed after looking at the time on her phone. Just as she was about to get further away from the bed, I caught her hand pulled her on the bed and kissed her soundly. "Now you can go," I said tucking her hair behind her ear caressing her cheek.
"You are something, Richard Hendrickson." She said shaking her head in a happy-content sigh as she got out and got dressed, with me looking at her the whole time.
I felt great regret when she left, but I did really have some work to do on the surprise.
Even the team didn't know that I had figured out, the Middle-Out. And unlike the cannon, I wasn't going to flush the modules down the toilet. Despite the team not knowing about middle-out, I had engineered the creation of the modules by the team in such a way that they could instantly adapt to Middle-Out algorithm, like a plugin.
There is a reason I didn't tell them about the middle out. This was because I needed the first season to play out just like it did in cannon. So that I could better prepare for the war that was coming from next season onwards.
I know soon my cannon knowledge would be useless, as I won't let myself make the fuck-ups, cannon Richard made. But goddammit I was going to squeeze all the cannon knowledge to my advantage as long as I could.
Xxxx
"Fuck that is huge!", Dinesh exclaimed looking at the size of the hall as we came on the stage for walkthrough and rehearsal.
"Yes, it is." Gilfoyle said. "Are you sure Richard you won't crap your pants if you have to give the presentation?", Gilfoyle teased with a raised eyebrow. "Well, let's just say, if I do have to give the presentation, hope to satan you won't have to stand next to me.", I replied with a smirk of my own.
"You are smiling. Joking. Have a glow about you mixed with a little arrogance and pride. You had sex!", Gilfoyle said catching me red-handed. Dinesh looked at my shocked expression and was shocked to himself realize that it was true.
"Fuck! Who did you have sex with? Did you even work?", Dinesh screeched.
"Hey, guys! How is the Demo coming?", Monica chose just that time to come on the stage to greet us with the biggest smile on her face.
"Aa… We are getting there.", I said avoiding eye contact and setting up my station to start the checks.
"Oh fuck it was you! You had sex with HIM?! Why? What could he have possibly done to make you have sex with him?", Dinesh screamed in shock pointing his finger at Monica.
"Dinesh, stop pointing your finger at my girlfriend or I will come there and shove it up your ass. Look around you, see where we are, and stop making an asshole of yourself and the rest of us in public.", I have never seen a finger go down so fast.
"You and him? Why?", Dinesh said, now going close to Monica and whispering to her.
By her looks, she seemed shocked and offended at first due to the abrupt confrontation, then she smirked and whispered something in Dinesh's ear that made his brown skin go red. He couldn't even look at her in the eye after that and promptly came next to me to set up his station, I chose to ignore it for now.
"Since when are you and Richard together?", Dinesh asked. Both me and Monica and queered our eyebrows at that. Didn't they see us kissing on the day I pulled off the prank on Gavin Belson. But Dinesh was a little thick when it came to these things. Erlich and Gilfoyle either knew or suspected. I had no clue about Jared.
"We can talk about this later when we are not on stage with mikes that can accidentally turn on. Let's just get this walkthrough done.", I interrupted before Monica could give a response to Dinesh.
I think she understood that I either wasn't in the mood or wasn't comfortable talking about it where we were right now so she moved on.
"Gentlemen I bring good tidings.", Erlich made an entrance on the stage. It looks like he didn't hear what went down just a few seconds before. "Turns out that Melcher is divorced, remarried and has put the previous relationship behind him completely. Problem Solved.", He said. I did my level best to control myself from laughing by closing my eyes and saying, "That's great."
"It sure is Richard! It sure as Hell is!", he said chucking and promptly went into the monologue mode. I watched it with unobvious enjoyment. Then Jared came running to help with the setup but I had to hurry him off to the booth as I didn't want to miss one of the best Erlich moments of the season.
Then things got even funnier as I got to personally see Gifoyle make Dinesh realize that Dinesh had fallen in love with a girl, because of a code he mistook as hers, which was actually written by Gilfoyle. Thus he had actually fallen in love with Gilfoyle. By the end of it, I was rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. My teammates might have thought I was losing it because the pressure was getting to me. But I didn't care, this was just too funny. "…would you like to masturbate to the subroutine that I just wrote?", oh I think I was going to die.
XxxxxX
I was sitting in the bar having drinks with the guys minus, Jared and Dinesh. Dinesh was probably right about now failing to hook up with the Java chick because of Gilfoyle mind fucking him. Then suddenly Dinesh came and sat down with a shell shocked expression on his face. I was trying my best to control my laughter as he and Gilfoyle talked, but my dam finally burst when Dinesh said, "Why is it that every time I am about to have sex with a lady,... he is all up in there somehow?"
"Richards in a good mood.", Erlich said putting a hand on my shoulder. "Oh, this is priceless. I don't think I have ever laughed this much!", I told my friends on the table, annoying Dinesh but getting a smirk from the rest of the two.
"Finally, it's just us. Guys, this round is on me…"Jared said as he came to our table but was immediately interrupted by Monica coming from somewhere with actual drinks in her hand. Thus stealing away Jared's thunder.
"Hey, Jared. Here you guys go. Drinks on me! To Pied Piper!" Monica said raising a glass along with us minus Jared. I knew this was the moment Jared was about to blow on Monica but I was not going to let that happen. It doesn't matter how funny it would be.
"Monica, can I speak to you for a minute," Jared asked. But before Monica could reply in the affirmative I interrupted, "Actually, I need to speak with Jared about something first, if you don't mind. I hope it's okay with you Jared?", I asked both of them. Monica just shrugged and Jared ever the polite guy did say yes even before I could finish my sentence.
I took him to another table and got us both scotch on the rocks. As we both clicked our glasses and took a sip, I started speaking I wanted to for a long long time, "Jared. How are you doing man?"
He was taken aback by the question, not expecting a personal one on one and instead expecting something work-related. "I am fine Richard." He lied with a smile, though his face said a different story.
"Come on man, both of us know that's not true. Have you looked at your face in the mirror? You look half dead. Your dark circles have dark circles." I told him and he looked away, probably embarrassed by the weakness. "Look Jared, you need to understand something. You are one of the five people, because of who Pied Piper exist today. And I don't know, how the fuck did you do it, somehow you have wormed your way into my life and become my most loyal confidant and best friend. Better than even Big Head.", I didn't expect him to start crying at that. I never got to finish telling him he was a valued employee and he needs to eat something and get some sleep. He just wouldn't stop crying. So I had to take him to his room, order him some room service, sit with him till he ate in between bouts of crying till he finally fell asleep from exhaustion. Poor guy! He must have had a really fucked up childhood to turn out like this. But I made a promise to myself, I would try to be the best friend I could to him till the day I died, as I would never find a better friend than him.
As I closed the door to his room, I felt my phone vibrate and saw it was Monica's message calling me to her room and telling me she was ambushed by Sherry. I didn't know whether to laugh or not, as it might have been an epic confrontation.
From what Monica told me when I went to her room, the confrontation had been epic. Sherry somehow either suspected or found out that I was seeing Monica and confronted her. She declared her undying love for me to Monica and told her we were destined to be together. And she also told Monica that she was a shiksa that was leading me astray with her feminine vile's. To escape her, Monica had told Sherry that she wasn't dating me and I was actually gay and into a polygamous relationship with Erlich, Dinesh, and Gilfoyle. By the end of the story. My laughter was unstoppable. This day just kept getting better and better.
Then I told her about what I talked with Jared. Or rather how I talked and he cried till I had dropped him off in his room sleeping.
By mutual agreement, we both said it was tiering and emotionally tremulous day and neither were in the mood for sex. However, cuddling was definitely on the table.
So there I was preparing for tomorrow with my girlfriend snuggling next to me.
Xxxxx
"So we are all good?", Monica asked as the whole gang minus Erlich walked into the backstage.
"We are great. I killed it. Our weissman score on all test is 2.89.", I said walking with a smirk leading the pack. "Right at the theoretical limit.", Gilfoyle continued.
"Yeah. All the edge modules are humming. Even on mobile. They can throw anything at us.", I said and Monical just nodded along pretending she understood most of what I said. The rest of the guys seemed happy with the development too. "Great. Well, good luck. I am gonna go find my seat.", she said turning around before thinking about kissing me and then stopping herself.
"Except for 3D video. It's still a bit hinky. Erlich better stir them away from that just to be safe.", I told Monica and the others as she was walking away. This got a feeling of fear on her face.
"Where the hell is Erlich?",Gilfoyle asked looking around.
"He wasn't with you guys this morning?", Monica said looking at Jared, Gilfoyle and Dinesh. To which they just shook their heads.
A few minutes later, when we were just about to go up and I was ready to pull the plug on the whole charade, Erlich finally waked in backstage still getting his head through the Steve Jobs T-Shirt he was wearing. "All right, Let's light this candle."
"Where the hell have you been?" Gilfoyle asked pissed!
"There have been some developments," Erlich said. "You know how I fucked Melcher's old wife? I fucked his new one too."
"What!", I said with as pretend shock expression I could make.
"Eh. Don't worry he is not going to find out. I left way before he came back last night and didn't go back this morning until 20 minutes after he had left.", Erlich said fussing over his t-shirt avoiding eye contact with us.
"You went back?", Gilfoyle said incredulously.
"How many times did you fuck this woman?", this time Dinesh said incredulously.
"The old wife or the new wife?", Erlich asked in genuine query.
"The new wife!", Dinesh exclaimed.
"Last night or this morning?", Erlich again asked in genuine confusion tilting his head to the side.
Gilfoyle turned to me and said, "Please allow me to kill him. I promise to clean up after."
I had to ignore him, less I laugh and give the game away. "What were you thinking? This is kind of a big day…." I said but was interrupted by Erlich's defensive rant, "Relax, he is not going to find out and she is not going to tell him."
"How the fuck would you know that?", this was Dinesh this time questioning Erlich in a disbelieving tone.
"Because she would have to be crazy to tell him and I asked her point-blank, is she crazy and she said – No."Erlich said, justifying himself. No one was buying it though.
"Pied Piper, you are up." one of the staff informed us.
"Let's do it," Erlich said moving away in swagger. The rest of us stood there shaking our heads at his stupidity and our impending doom.
"Next up, Chief Visionary Erlich Bachman of Pied Piper!", the anchor announced our cue and we went on the stage taking our positions behind our stations.
Spotlight focused on Erlich as he emerged from the darkness with Motivational music playing in the background, "Since the dawn of time, mankind had sought to make things smaller but until now, no man…" and Erlich was tackled to the floor and was being plummeted by the husband who's wife he had sex with. I just couldn't control it. I started laughing. That took Dinesh and Gilfoyel out of their stupor and they looked at me questioningly but after a few seconds, their lips quirked as well.
"I think he knows", Gilfoyle commented on the brawl.
"Richard what are we going to do?", Dinesh asked in panic. As soon as I got my laughter under control, seeing security guards try and fail to pull the husband off of Erlich, I said four words that brought a smile to my face, "Call our lawyer of course."
Xxxxx
It is one thing to see it on tv but another thing to see a man almost piss himself at the threat of a billion-dollar lawsuit filed by one of Valley's best attorneys. He caved faster than a house made of tissue paper. Now we were in the finals and had bitching accommodations that I blackmailed out of the organizer instead of Erlich, as the poor guy was still shell shocked either in pain or by how quickly I moved to take advantage of the situation. Anyways, as we enter our new bitching Suite, I was getting pats on the back by the rest of the team, Monica included.
"I was so happy you got punched in the face Erlich, but now I am super happy!", Dinesh said seeing the room. "I am going to disrupt this bathroom.", Gilfoyle commented. "I don't think this couch pulls out, I guess I will get myself a roll away bed," Jared commented eyeing the couch.
"No, you will not. This is our room key, it's the suite next door. It has two bedrooms just like this one. One for you and another for me. Erlich can sleep on the couch here. He is in the dog house anyway.", I told Jared loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Oh come on guys, Richard, you cannot not give me the credit for this, I had to fuck a wife and take a punch but I got us into the finals.", Erlich said getting back in the grove.
"Sure you did. Let's go back downstairs to check out the competition.", I snorted as I told him.
XxxxxX
"….We are making all your files available for lightning-fast download. Accessible from any device. All the features will be seamlessly synced to hoolimail, hooli search and the whole hooli suite of hooli computing power.", Gavin Belson said giving my teammates the fear of their lives. "That is a lot of functionality.", Dinesh whispered to us in anxiety.
"Don't worry he can't come close to our Weissman score, even with all this extra shit. It's like a fancy car with a crappy engine." I told Dinesh to reassure him. Then the bomb dropped with Gavin showing the Weissman score to be the same as ours – 2.89. As far as the guys knew at least.
"….have the speed, we have the features and we have…Shakira!", Gavin Belson walked off the stage cueing Shakira and devastating my teammates. I tried to act sad while enjoying Shakira's performance. But it was really hard. She was sooo good!
XxxxxX
"They totally reverse engineered our whole compression engine", Gilfoyle said as we were all sitting in shock in an empty hall after today's presentation, bemoaning our fates. At least they were.
"They totally sniped up!", Dinesh said in a half shocked half moaning voice.
"We will be fine!", Erlich sniped from behind. Not ready to give up yet.
"What they judge this competition in terms of viability in the market place. I mean at best we are the worst version of Nucleus. I mean they have 50 modules and they are all awesome and we have 5 that barely work, I mean… we are still having trouble compressing 3d files. Who's lining up to buy that?", Dinesh said with his head in his hands.
"So the platform can't handle 3D files. You know what? 3D movies suck anyway. I could argue that this Gavin non-sense is a positive anyway.", Erlich said not ready to give up. "Please don't", Dinesh replied almost instinctively. "We just need to really dial it up for the big show tomorrow." Erlich continued without stopping.
"Dial what up? He just ruined us!", Dinesh screamed in Erlich's face. "Any until then we need to do what any wild animal does when cornered," Erlich said as he stood up ignoring Dinesh altogether.
"I agree.", I interjected for the first time in the conversation. That made everyone look at me in shock, Erlich included. "You do?", he asked. "I do." Nodding in affirmative to Erlich.
"Look, guys, I don't know about you but I am not ready to give up. We still have back up money to keep up with the burn rate, from the prank. Even if Peter pulls out after tomorrow. But..But but but… I am not yet ready to give up. So Erlich, get into Gavin's head. Gilfoyle help him but make sure he doesn't do something drastic.
Jared, go eat something and go to sleep. Dinesh, you are on Jared duty, more sure he doesn't die.", I told getting up from the seat and fixing my shirt. "Why me?", Dinesh wined. "Because after Jared, you are the most caring of us. Also, Jared is either going to collapse or go into stress-induced psychosis. Look at him, his eyes are already vacant and red. Get him to his room and sit on him! I am serious."
"I am fine.", Jared tried to feebly defend. "I will be the judge of that tomorrow after you have eaten and slept for 12 hours at least.", I said looking at him directly in the eye, which made him look away.
"And what are you going to do.", Gilfoyle asked this time.
"Try to pull a miracle out of my ass." I said already leaving the group behind.
XxxxxX
As I walked through the lobby, I saw Monica getting out of the elevator, leaving with her suitcase.
"Richard. Hi.", The greeting was warm but a significant side of sadness and pity mixed in.
"Hey. Suitcase?", I said pointing with my eyes at the object in her hand.
"Yeah" "Yeah, so.."
"Peter called." She said shaking her head in sadness. "He saw Erlich's presentation, such as it was and Gavins….", she said giving me a knowing look. "So he wants me to go back to Paulo Alto. There are just few other things that he want me working on.", she said cringing at the excuse peter gave her to give me.
"Especially, now that we are dead in the water.", I said smiling with my hands in my pockets.
"Listen..a… I am sorry you walked away from the money...the money like you did but I only wanted Peter to seed you because I thought you had a really great company. And that was before I found out how smart of a man you are. Its… Its just… that it didn't work out for you this time.", she said with her eyes getting puffy and red. Not crying but on the verge of doing so.
"Can I be honest with you? The day you convinced me to reject Gavin's offer was one of the best days of my life. Not because of Pied Piper. Not because I had a chance to build this potential Multi-Billion dollar startup. Certainly not because I got a chance to prank Gavin Belson. Hell not even fully because after a long, long time someone had shown trust in my capabilities. i.e. you.
The day I rejected Gavin's offer, was the best day of my life because,….. Because you entered my life that day.
Peter is right Monica. We are dead in the water.
You are also right, I am smart. So I know I will be fine.", I said smiling looking into her really red puffy eyes now, with my hand caressing her cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, as I had grown accustomed to doing. "But let me tell you a secret," I said leaning into her ear to whisper, "I haven't given up yet." I said kissing her cheek and walking away into the elevator without looking back.
XxxxxX
I had spent the whole night going over the algorithm and patching the whole platform to run on middle-out. I hadn't done that till last night for security reasons. Everything was running smoothly.
As I came out of my bedroom, I saw whiteboards littered in the living room with dick equations, like in cannon. I also saw the whole gang, minus Monica, dressed and ready to leave, hoping against hope that I had something.
"Richard! Is the platform up and running? And what are you wearing!" Erlich asked in shock as I came out of my room with my laptop in my hand.
"A 50k, three-piece Armani suit. And yes it's running. I just made a few changes.", I said as I kept walking right out of the door of the suite. I heard shuffling and fast footsteps behind me trying to catch up.
"You spent 50k on a suit?", Dinesh asked incredulously.
"Dress to impress. Plus it was an impulse buy after the prank money came in.", I said as I kept walking.
"I hope you didn't make many more impulses buy's with that money. Because we are going to need it after today, if Pied Piper needs to continue running.", that was Gilfoyle.
"I might have made a few more impulse buys.", I said without looking back.
"Few?", Jared inquired anxiously, looking quiet better physically than yesterday.
"Few Dozen. Don't worry about it right now. Erlich, Gilfoyle, how did your mission go?" I asked, changing the topic.
"Good. Too good. Gavin almost gave me another black eye. Oh, I wished he did. I would have sued his pants off of him.", Erlich said moaning in regret. "What he said.", Gilfoyle provided.
"Jared feeling better?", I asked looking ahead and minding the steps I was walking down.
"I am very well, thank you for your caring Richard. It means a lot. Really really means a lot." He said as quietly as he could manage.
"Why are you thanking him? I was the one who took care of you.", Dinesh sniped.
"Thank you, Dinesh. And I am glad that you are doing better now Jared. You are one of us, we take care of our own.", I said as we finally reached the backstage.
"Talk to me Richard, what were you working on last night?", Gilfoyle asked.
"Well, I might have made a breakthrough.", I said navigating backstage to our assigned spots.
"Good because for a second we thought you committed suicide.", classic Erlich.
"So everything is working?", Gilfoyle continued.
"Umm…More or less."
"Yeah, I get it Richard you changed a lot, now just give me the basics so that I can roll with it.", Erlich asked stopping me mid-walk.
"You can't do it, the system is too different than what it was. I think I will just do it.", I told him.
"Come on Richard. You have a world-class showman on your team, unleash him.", he said gaining my attention by grabbing both my upper arms from the side.
"I know Erlich. And I appreciate it. But this is something that I need to do. Whether it succeeds or crashes and burns, it's going to be me facing the music either way. So keep your fingers crossed." , I told him and moved out of his grip.
"I hope you know what you are doing Richard.", Erlich said sighing. "So do I, my big hairy friend, so do I.", I told him and took my spot to be announced on stage.
XxxxxX
"All right, let's welcome our final team to the finals, of this years 'Ted-Crunch Disrupt: Start-up Battlefield.' Presenting for Pied Piper, Erlich Bachman." The anchor finished with applause from the crowd. "Actually there has been a change, Richard Hendrickson will be presenting for Pied Piper.", Erlich announced and that was my signal to step out of the shadows in a three-piece Armani suit earning a whistle from the crowd along with applause. Pretty sure that whistle was Monica. I didn't know she could whistle. "Richard!", Erlich said snapping me out of the trance of imagining Monica's whistling face and taking in the crowd. "Sorry got a little light-headed for a second", I said taking the mike and passing on the laptop and papers to Gilfoyle and Jared.
"I set them up for you, now knock 'em down.", Erlich whispered in my ear and I certainly was going to try.
"Hello, My name is Richard Hendrickson. I am the Founder and CEO of Pied Piper. That is the rest of my team, Jared out business wiz, Gilfoyle and Dinesh our dynamic duo of engineers and Erlich, our first investor and my landlord.
We are Pied Piper, a compression company. Well in your pamphlet it says we are a cloud-based multi-platform solution for user-focused compression, and we were, till yesterday." I said taking a pause and giving my attention to whole room one section at a time, just as Dale Carnegie's book said.
"But Now We Are Not. We Are Not. The reason for this is simple. Hooli seemed to be able to what we were trying to do, better... way better. The nucleus is built on the same engine as ours. Like EXACTLY the same, digest that for a second." I said taking another pause and looking at the middle section of the hall where I thought Gavin was sitting.
"And their Weissman score was 2.89, the same as ours." Another pause, creating a build-up for the big reveal. "Till YESTERDAY."
"But see the thing is, that they build a ton of great stuff, on top of what we have, that we can't compete with yet. So now we have to be something else. Well played Hooli.", I said giving a small chuckle at the end. I am pretty sure by now, everyone thought that I was having a nervous breakdown.
"Jared please display sheet 1," I told Jared, and he did so with a little bit of fumbling and the image came on screen. "We all know the most obvious way to do compression, is with Shannon coding, right? Top-Down? Then David Huffman came along and we got Bottom-up, correct?" I said half turning to the image being displayed behind me.
"Then Limple-Zip came up with left or right, yes? And for decades we used these codes to compress JPEGs, MPEGs, MP3s, ZIPs, all that stuff. But we all know that so there is no point talking about it. After's yesterday's Hooli presentation we were dead in the water. We could see the writing on the wall. But we refused to accept it. So…. I went and got us a miracle.
So I was thinking about ways to manipulate data yesterday, sitting on my bed, drinking a glass of scotch on the rocks, you know the usual. And I thought what if there was a way that data could be processed simultaneously from TOP-DOWN, BOTTOM-UP, LEFT-RIGHT, RIGHT-LEFT, and Crisscross… all simultaneously.
And it just came to me, I call it the Richard formula." The next paper showed, with just Richard Formula written on it instead of any diagrams.
"Yesterday night I completely rebuilt all our engines from scratch. I upgraded our modules as well, but I am not going to show them to you today. Now, this morning I only had time to do one compression test today and when I did, We hit a Weissman score of 6.", that created a lot of buzz in the room. I turned back to see the sheet with the 'Weissman score = 6' written on it.
"Now I know that the theoretical limit was 2.9 but at Pied Pieper we believe in making 'The impossible, Possible.'
Sorry, that was really corny, I am just making this us as I go along.", I said drawing considerable laughter from the crowd.
"I am.. I am sorry?" A judge said stopping me, just as I expected. "You scored a 6 on Weissman score? 6? More than double the theoretical limit?", he asked incredulously. Well, I can't blame the guy, if I was in his place, I would have the same reaction too.
"Yes, sir.", I replied simply, with calm confidence.
"And this a universal lossless compression engine? Text? Audio? Video?" he asked still in a disbelieving voice.
"Yes sir", I replied with the same calm certainty with a smile.
"Well then, I am sorry to interrupt, your eloquent presentation Richard, but rather than say anything more, why don't we just give you a file and we will see whether this thing can do what you say it does. Because if it can't, then we are all just wasting our time aren't we?", he challenged.
"Umm…Sounds about right. Let's do it.", I replied accepting the challenge with a chuckle and a smile. That I think shocked the judge.
"So we can give you any kind of file and you can compress it without degradation at this standard? 6?", he said pointing at the 6 written on the big screen.
"Yes, sir.", I think my calmness was beginning to unnerve him. I think it would be the same thing happening to Gavin Belson in the crowd.
"All right, give us a minute, please." He said seeming sure that I was bluffing. The judge sitting next to him seemed to have a file on a drive with him in his bag. That would be the test.
"Okay, Andy Stanford has a file for you. It's 132 gigabytes uncompressed and it's in 3D." he said handing me the file. I could hear Dinesh say 'Oh fuck', even as I was walking to him to hand over the file. "We are screwed!", he whispered near my ear anxiously even as he was handing the file over to Gilfoyle to be plugged in. "No, we are not. Trust me.", I told him.
"Dam it, I hope this works.", I head Erlich say.
The file started compressing. Just like in cannon got stuck at 40% and then way quicker than it did in cannon, it was finished.
"Looks like it's done?" the anchor said in confusion while giving commentary. That was abnormally fast for a 132gb file to be compressed.
"Wait, 13.2 gigs? What went wrong?" Gilfoyle asked with a broken heart.
"There is no way it compressed the whole thing, it should be 4 times that size."Dinesh said.
"I mean 13.2 gigs that a tenth of the size of the file, no way the whole file got compressed. This seems dubious, Richard.", the judge said.
"But is it though?", I asked with as much confidence as I could muster.
"Tell you what Richard, why don't we run a Weissman test to find out and see where you went wrong?", the judge said sarcastically probably figuring me a flop.
"Did I go wrong though? We can certainly run a Weissman test to find out." I said calmly and gave a gesture to Gilfoyle to start the test.
For every green tick that appeared next to a frame number on the screen, the shock from the crowd kept increasing. "Validated score 7.2", when those words appeared on the screen, the whole crowd erupted and before I knew it I was being hugged on all sides by my team.
"Ladies and gentlemen, obviously we are going to keep looking at this to verify but with a confirmed score of 7.2, Pied Piper appears to have tripled the best Weissman score ever measured. Tripled it! Pied Piper ladies and gentlemen, Let's hear it for them!" , the anchor said as I was being crushed by my teammates.
XxxxxX
I was at the after-party, shaking hands with the big wigs promising future sit-downs for Series A funding. But person I wanted to shake hands, no hug… scratch that do a lot more than hug I couldn't find anywhere.
"Hey.", aa that melodious sound was like music to my ears. I turned around and saw Monica almost running towards me with a gushing expressing on her face. She came close and wrapped me a very tight hug, one that I didn't want to let go any time soon, but unfortunately had too.
"Monica"
"Congratulation!" She said it with a chuckle in her gushing voice with her face all red from happiness. Happiness for me, I realized. At my success.
"You were amazing up there! You looked amazing up here! My my, I didn't know you cleaned up so nice, Mr. Hendricks.", she said caressing her hands all over my suit, shirt and tie and sending very pleasant shivers down my spine.
"Yeah well don't get used to it. Next time I buy a 50,000 dollar suit I will shoot myself. As it is, after the impulse buy I did contemplate actually doing it. Just looking forward to the occasion where I would get to wear it, stopped me."
"So you were planning to wear it when you gave the presentation?", she said chuckling while roaming her hand all over my clothing covered chest, as discreetly as she could. Clothing – dammit, what I wouldn't give to be naked and alone with her right now.
"Oh, fuck no. Not until I knew I had to do it. I just brought it with me on the off chance I had to do the presentation. I bought if for our date next week at Kalypso's. Which I realized, I hadn't asked you out yet on.", I said face-palming causing her surprised to turn into a chuckle.
"Well let us correct that shall we? My Lady Monica, you would do me the honor of accompanying me to a date next Friday?", I asked in the best British accent I could muster. With I think must have been quite good as her breath got caught in her throat for a second and she had to visibly gulp before answering. "Wow, you really can do a sexy accent. Every day I learn something new about you Richard Hendricks." She said smiling and giving me a kiss as an answer. "I shall pick you up at 7, My Lady.", I said in the same accent.
"Oh you will be picking me up tonight lover boy.", she said whispering in my ear and sending shiver very pleasant sensations down my spine again.
"So where were you this whole time?", I asked her, changing the topic and taking a few steps back so that my underwear could become a little less tight.
"Oh I was on the phone with Peter, he was watching the steam online via satellite. And he said he was 'Not unpleased'." She said with air quotes.
"Oh yeah, that's great. So we are going to go back to working together, huh?", I said taking her hand in mine.
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. It's going to get pretty insane for you Richard.", She said shaking her head and contemplating our future. Our. Has a nice ring to it.
"Doubt it. If you hadn't noticed, I already live in an insane asylum." I told her in monotone, which got her melodiously chortling started again.
"You are going to have more offers of funding that you know what to do with.", she said regaining her composure.
"I know what I am not going to do. Wipe my ass with 100 dollar bills like Erlich was talking about.", that got her sniggering again.
"Stop making me laugh. I am trying to be serious here.", she said hitting me on the chest. "Oh so abusive!" I fake messaged my chest. "So you are going to run a business, hire staff, rent offices, get an assistant. Peter is going to be a lot more hands-on and a lot tougher on you.", I just nodded my head and but doubted it mentally.
"People may try to take credit for your idea and try and sue you! How awesome is that?", she said in an excited whisper. "Woman, you get your jolly's up with some weird things.", I said in the British accent.
She said nothing but just hit me in the chest again. When she went to do it again, I caught her hand mid-air and whispered in her ear, "The next one is gonna cost you a kiss luv and the one after that your knickers.", I said taking a step back and watching the worlds have desired effect on her as she closed her eyes and felt a familiar tingle pass through her spine as well.
"I mean if you thought, it was crazy getting to this point you will not believe what it turns into. I mean pretty soon you could be managing thousands of employees, who are all looking up to you. And Gavin Belson, he is not going away any time soon. But it's going to be amazing.", she said pushing through what we both wanted to do, running away from this party and to our rooms.
"I know. And I am glad I am going to have you there with me every step of the way to catch me when I fall and I will do the same for you.", I said holding both her hands in mine and looking her directly in the eyes with as much affection as I could muster.
I think her breath got caught in her throat again. Yes, multiple gulps. Definitely. "Cheezy one-liner?" she asked with a hitched breath.
"No I think it's from a song, but for the life of me I can't remember", I told her as we were almost nose to nose. And could feel each other's breaths on our lips.
She looked into my eyes and promptly gave two tiny taps on my chest, without breaking eye contact. I looked down at my chest where one of her hands still stayed. Then I looked back up and I promptly gave her a kiss delivering on the first part of the promise. Then I took her hand running with her towards my room to fulfill the second part of the promise.
Tonight would be fun. Because soon I would go to war.
XxxxxX
AN: So on Alternate History I had to remove the soft core scene due to guidelines. But here it is unedited. Hope you guys like it. Let me know what you think.
~Till the next time.