By Marc Sheinbaum
PROLOGUE
Josh Brodsky drove through the early morning mist, approaching the La Quinta Inn outside San Francisco International Airport. His brother Donny stood outside, gripping his rolling travel bag.
“Throw your gear in the back,” Josh said.
On the drive to Menlo Park, the air was cool, but a row of perspiration formed on Josh’s brow. Ten minutes after exiting Highway 101, the car turned down a long gravel driveway that led to a sprawling rustic home.
“Very nice, bro,” Donny said. “This is more of what I’d expect from a Silicon Valley big shot. Really freaked me out thinking you were living in a trailer park.”
“Let’s go in,” Josh said as he got out of the car and bounded up the porch steps. “Mom’s diaries are inside.” Diaries that Donny believed held the truth about how their father died, over thirty years ago.
Donny removed his luggage from the trunk and limped up the stairs. He crossed into the living room, admired the surroundings, and said, “I didn’t see you as the—”
Before he could finish, he felt a blow below the knees, and his feet slipped out from under him. A flurry of arms and legs pounced on his chest.
Josh shouted out instructions. “Hold him down!”
Donny fought back, swinging his arms wildly, when a second voice called out, “Stop hitting me, you motherfucker!” The voice of their younger brother, Louie.
Josh and Louie pinned Donny to the ground, securing his legs with zip ties. Josh placed a large piece of duct tape over Donny’s mouth. They dragged him to a back room, where the bed and furniture were pushed to one side. Miniature cameras were visible in each corner. A laptop and a speaker sat on a single table surrounded by three chairs.
“Listen to me, Donny,” Josh said, after they lowered Donny onto a chair. “I need you to calm down. Everything’s okay. We’re just going to have a nice conversation here—”
Louie pushed his way in, shook his fist, and said, “Unless you want to delete your fuckin’ ransomware right now!”
“Louie, that wasn’t the plan!” Josh shouted.
Donny tried to speak but could only manage a series of muffled groans through the duct tape. Josh sat and flipped open the laptop and started typing. Suddenly, a humming sound came from the speakers, followed by a voice. A distinctive, elderly, female voice, with an unmistakable Brooklyn accent.
“Hello, boys. It’s good to see you all together,” said the voice of their mother, who had died and been buried nine days earlier. “But why is Donny tied to that chair?”
One Week Earlier
Sunday
Chapter 1
“Coffee, Dr. Brodsky?” Stacy asked, pressing the light switch in the subbasement office.
Josh rolled over on his cot and squinted at his young assistant.
“Sorry,” she whispered as she turned the dimmer to the lowest setting. “But you asked me to wake you at seven sharp.”
“It’s okay, Stacy,” he mumbled. “Coffee would be great.”
She returned a minute later and placed a steaming mug on the small conference room table and quickly backed away, twisting her nose as if she smelled spoiled milk.
“How many days in a row have you slept in here this time?”
“I’ve lost track,” he said, taking several quick slurps, the caffeine clearing his brain fog. “Is anyone here yet?”
“Dr. Brodsky, it’s 7:00 a.m.” Stacy had one foot in the hallway.
“Naveen did say he’d have the team here early,” Josh said.
“I know, but for Naveen, ‘early’ could be nine.”
“No, no, no,” Josh said, standing and making sure the blanket was covering him from the waist down. Naveen understood the gravity of the situation. He had promised Josh that he’d have the entire team at their workstations bright and early. But Stacy was right. His project leader did have his own definition of early.
“How many hours did you get last night?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I left the team around two. They were still going at it.”
“Maybe you should go home and get some real sleep,” she said as she stared at his crumpled pants lying by the sofa. “Get a change of clothes. Take a good shower.”
Josh picked up the slacks and glanced at his assistant standing in the doorway. Over 50,000 of his fellow employees at Sway Inc. had long ago migrated to fully digitized and robotic support systems, and the capability was finally being installed in his subbasement lab. While there was something quaint about working with the last of the human assistants, Josh was looking forward to the upgrade.
“You can turn that light up. I need to get to the lab.”
Stacy dialed up the dimmer, which shed a light on the bare cinder block walls.
“I’ll be outside if you need me.”
“Just call down to the lab to see if Naveen is here,” he shouted as he buckled his belt. “And come find me if Andre calls.”
Josh expected the company CEO would burn the place down if they didn’t have a working prototype by the end of the day. He slipped on his loafers. Two more quick sips of coffee and he was out the door.
“Naveen just messaged me,” Stacy said as Josh walked by. “He’s at his workstation. He said he would have texted you but—”
“If I only kept my cell phone on. I know, I know,” he said over his shoulder as he made his way down the hall. Enough about his phone. No matter how many times he explained it, he still took flak. When he entered these demanding periods, he needed to become completely immersed in the task at hand. That’s why he slept in his subbasement office, stayed off the internet, and shut out all external distractions, including his cell phone. That’s just how he rolled. If he was ever needed, they knew where to find him.
He opened the door and was relieved as he walked onto the observation deck above the lab. The clock on the wall read 7:18, but Naveen had kept his promise. The large room was alive with activity, a bevy of bright and modern workstations, organized in a way that made the room appear like a Ferris wheel lying on its side. Forty artificial intelligence engineers were divided into eight pods lining the circumference, with walkways forming spokes leading to Josh’s central control station. Each five-person mini team worked on distinct modules, supposedly to drive team dynamics. But the real goal was to create an intense, competitive tension among the pods—part of the “S” way designed by Sway’s CEO, Andre Olaf. There was no denying that in ten short years Andre had built the hardest-charging and fastest-growing tech company in Silicon Valley, specializing in everything from the internet of things to autonomous passenger drones.
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Marc Sheinbaum grew up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. After graduating from State University of New York at Albany and New York University, he worked in business for over thirty-five years, mostly within large corporations. He currently resides in Westchester County, New York, with his wife, Hildy, where he spends his time writing fiction.
To learn more about Memories Live Here and where you can order it, please go to the author’s website here.
