Disclaimer - I do not own silicon valley. (AN - I had to reupload this chapter again because something went wrong.)

Chapter 10 – Bird Homicide

This was a big moment. Everything I had done till now was to make the base camp from which Pied Piper and I could scale the mountain of success.

We had finished the work on servers and they were up and running. Our office, that had the capacity for 100 people to easily work together was also up and running. Though so far, it did not even have a third of its capacity working in it. I had taken Jared aside and had him rectify the situation.

Though he was not pleased about it. Well, he was as displeased as Jared was could get, which be an equivalent of a tiny kitten pouting.

I had Jared hire 10 more engineers and coders despite his protest. I had even hired a team of 3 salespeople, even without having a product to sell.

Jared had annoyed me multiple times by telling me I was spending money too recklessly but all that time I could do nothing but tell him to trust me. That got him to shut up for a little while at least.

Spending a million on severs, I had spent another 200k on equipment and 100k on marketing. When I submitted the receipts to him, I swear Jared was about to have an aneurism. Even Monica had repeatedly cautioned me that I was spending too much money too recklessly. I had told her the same thing I told Jared, to trust me. Sadly that didn't have as much effect as it had on Jared.

Now here we were, my whole team of 30 people, most of them freshly hired, gathered to watch the Nucleus live stream of UFC.

"Let's hope this sucks.", Dinesh said and I took pleasure in knowing it would.

"Oh, good. Monica made it just in time.", Jared said as Monica was just about to enter through the transparent glass door after swiping her key card, putting the passcode in and scanning her biometrics. Yeah, I had gone overboard on security. And people had complained and compared the office to very high tech and comfortable jail. Pfff... Deal with it!

"Carla, looks like you won't be the only woman in the house for a change." Jared continued.

"Christ.", Carla said it, the rest of us thought it.

"One thing worse than being the only woman in a company - is being one of only two." She continued.

"Why's that?", Dinesh asked.

"Everybody puts this super-weird pressure on you to be friends. It's creepy.", she replied.

"Hey, did I miss it?", she came in and I thought she would give me a chaste kiss. But the kiss turned out to be a YAWOZA that left me dazed for a few seconds. I head a lot of whistles around me from my team. Once I regained my senses, I smiled at her but gave her a questioning look then I saw who we were in the direct view of when she kissed me. Carla. She did not look happy. God fucking dammit, I do not want to be dragged into this. "No. It hasn't started yet."

"Good.", Monica said dragging me and sitting us down on the couch together.

"Monica, I'd like to introduce you to Carla.", Jared the oblivious bastard said. "Carla, Monica.

Monica, Carla."

"What's up?" "Nice to meet you."

Is it me or were we suddenly transported to Syberia?

"I knew you two would hit it off." Oh, you poor naïve bastard.

"It's starting.", thank you Dinesh.

Tonight, for the first time ever, streaming live in 4K resolution over the internet, UFC Fight Night, powered by Nucleus! No networks.

No more middleman.

No bullshit.

We're bringing the fights straight to the fans.

We're cutting the cord forever with UFC Fight Pass, powered by Nucleus.

Tonight, you'll get ultimate fighting at the ultimate resolution.

Nucleus puts 4K UHD video in a lossless compression chokehold and forces the competition to tap out.

"Oh! - Who's Douchebag?" "He sure likes to break stuff."

We are live in Las Vegas.

And as soon as the stream starts, the picture starts crapping out.

"Are we getting a contact high off Erlich, or is the edge starting to warble?", Dinesh looked closely.

"No, I see it.", Carla said.

"Are they converting down to 24 frames?" I pointed out.

The defense so far….

"You see that frame judder as the camera pans? The picture's so blocky. It looks like Minecraft.", Gilfoyle commented.

"It doesn't make sense, it's supposed to be totally lossless. Let me dump their bitstream to disk and take a look.", Carla said getting to work.

"She's really smart.

But not afraid to be bawdy.", Oh Jared, you poor mother fucker. Monica's anger was evident at that comment by her tightening grip on my hand.

And just like that, the video froze as the audio kept going.

Exclamations of –

"Oh, my God."

"They are so fucked."

"Yeah, this is bad.", erupted from my team members. I found absolute Joy at hearing the glee in their voices.

Attack with the left! He's hurt! He's down! He's hit! Oh! It's frozen.

It is all over! Unbelievable! I have never, in all my years of watching fighting, seen a finishing combination more ferocious! What a spectacular finish by Molina! We're being told that the Nucleus live stream- - may have cut out during that exchange.

If that is true, what a travesty.

"Fuck! Gavin Belson just shit everyone's pants." Dinesh exclaimed.

"He sure did.",Gilfoyle chimed in.

"The encoding is totally underpowered to cover up their defects. Nucleus just can't keep up with 4K live stream yet.", one of my newer engineers said.

"This is an opportunity.", Monica said looking at me.

"I know what you are thinking Luv. Go make those calls.", I told her giving a peck on the cheek.

Then I got up and got in front of the crowd.

"Guys like we just saw, Nucleus just shit the bed.", I said making eye contact with all of my, just over two dozen team members, as I heard cheers from them.

"I had expected the stream to not go perfectly but I hadn't expected that they would completely shit the bed. What I was betting on was whatever they did, we could one-up them and do better. Thus proving, even before January, that we have a better product.

Now, most of you have that have been hired in the last two weeks have been hired to help me with that plan.

Erlich, you know a lot of people in the industry. Go make some calls get me a live stream contract. I want the world to know we are ready to go to war.", I said nodding to Erlich. "On it boss man, I am friends with the owner and CEO of Homicide. They are doing an X-Sports thing right now, let me make a few calls." He said leaving the room taking out his phone.

"Jared you are friends with the Natural history museum director correct?", I asked Jared. "Well, I am their most loyal if not the most long-standing patron and am a good acquaintance with their director." He replied being modest.

"Good. Go talk to him if he is willing to let us live stream some animals or birds giving birth, having sex, hunting or something.", I gave Jared his marching orders.

"I will get right on it. I know just the thing.", he said practically running away.

"Marketing team, you want to keep your jobs, then get me 4k live stream contracts.", I ordered them like generals and they ran away to carry out orders.

"The rest of us engineers are going to pause the work on the platform a bit, and optimize the system for 4k UHD live streaming.

Gavin Belson shits the bed trying to do one live stream. We are going to do multiple, simultaneously, and succeed. Let's go people and get to work.", I said as the crowd began to disperse excitedly, then suddenly I stopped them, "And hey, food and drinks are on me tonight! Fuck Nucleus and Fuck Belson!", I said screaming in the air and heard roaring cheer back from my team.

XxxxxX

Erlich got us the homicide gig. Jared got us the live streaming feed of nesting pairs of California Condors and a Kuala enclosure. The sales team got me bubcus. All the people or corporations, the sales team approached said they first wanted to see a sample of our work.

That was fine. I would give the sales team some leeway, for now. My only regret in this whole scenario up till now was that I didn't get to see Erlich tell Gilfoyle that 'He looked like a ferret that gave up on himself six months ago'.

Now for both the Natural History Museum gigs, I had dispatched a team of engineers under Carla, Dinesh and Jared's supervision to set everything up.

Erlich, Monica, Gilfoyle and I were on the Homicide gig. I took Monica aside and told her to stick with Erlich and be the anvil while Erlich hammers double AA into giving us what we want. Basically, play good cop - bad cop with double AA till he gives us what we want. Turns outs Erlich's abrasive and overwhelming personality and Monica's beauty, charm, and calming personality was a good combination. He didn't even get a chance to fuck us over. Oh, and I told Blaine, the stunt man, that "You are going to die if you don't check your math", the moment I spotted the white board. Turns out, he was so thankful that he decided to take a picture with me and tweet to his 500k followers – "This guy is the CEO of the awesome company - Pied Piper - which is going to be Live Streaming my stunt in 4K UHD online. Also, he is a great man as he just saved my life by spotting the mistake in my jump math within two seconds. #GoPP"

The internet and blogs blew up after that.

When the D-Day came, the stunt was live-streamed successfully without any packet loss. When the Homicide steam was done, let's just say, if I said the internet and blogs went through a nuclear explosion, then it would be an understatement.

The whole valley now knew Pied Piper could do something that the Multi-Billion Dollar Hooli failed to do. Something Gavin Belson failed to do.

The whole valley now knew That Richard Hendricks & Piped Piper had just given a bloody nose to Gavin Belson & Hooli, again!

XxxxxX

Turns out Endframe did survive without us showing them our tech. The tech they had was nowhere close to us but was better than Nucleus. They had proved this by doing their own live stream of a basketball match, exactly one week after ous.

Huh! This was going to get interesting.

XxxxxX

AN: If you liked the chapter let me know by clicking favorite or leave a review in the comments section. The next chapter will be posted either on Sunday or Tuesday.

~Till the Next Time!