“Someday. Maybe it starts today.”
The Bell boardroom looked more like a retail operation than a back office, decked out in brand-consistent livery, from the fabric-dyed rag carpets to the avant-garde lighting fixtures. They were given espressos by the young secretary-barista whose skirt-and-top number was some kind of reinterpreted ravewear outfit toned down for a corporate workplace.
“So this is the new Bell,” Kurt said, once she had gone. “Our tax dollars at work.”
“This is good work,” Alan said, gesturing at the blown-up artwork of pan-ethnic models who were extraordinary- but not beautiful-looking on the walls. The Bell redesign had come at the same time as the telco was struggling back from the brink of bankruptcy, and the marketing firm they’d hired to do the work had made its name on the strength of the campaign. “Makes you feel like using a phone is a really futuristic, cutting-edge activity,” he said.
His contact at the semiprivatized corporation was a young kid who shopped at one of his protégés’ designer furniture store. He was a young turk who’d made a name for himself quickly in the company through a couple of ISP acquisitions at fire-sale prices after the dot-bomb, which he’d executed flawlessly, integrating the companies into Bell’s network with hardly a hiccup. He’d been very polite and guardedly enthusiastic when Alan called him, and had invited him down to meet some of his colleagues.
Though Alan had never met him, he recognized him the minute he walked in as the person who had to go with the confident voice he’d heard on the phone.
“Lyman,” he said, standing up and holding out his hand. The guy was slightly Asian-looking, tall, with a sharp suit that managed to look casual and expensive at the same time.
He shook Alan’s hand and said, “Thanks for coming down.” Alan introduced him to Kurt, and then Lyman introduced them both to his colleagues, a gender-parity posse of young, smart-looking people, along with one graybeard (literally—he had a Unix beard of great rattiness and gravitas) who had no fewer than seven devices on his belt, including a line tester and a GPS.
Once they were seated, Alan snuck a look at Kurt, who had narrowed his eyes and cast his gaze down onto the business cards he’d been handed. Alan hadn’t been expecting this—he’d figured on finding himself facing down a group of career bureaucrats—and Kurt was clearly thrown for a loop, too.