A droplet of water crawled the digital window screen. The view had switched from a scene outside to an aerial tour of the city. Behvos noted first that the outdoor scene was not being fed from this building. It showed a lively street with distractible pedestrians. Tourists who paused to record streetlight dancing on a vendor's handmade trinkets. This city had none of that. Second, the aerial tour dipped and weaved across the multi-story avenues he was used to. This city had none of that. When he was here, he felt uncomfortable by how much sky he could see. Like he stood naked in a museum. Behvos didn't notice any mold where the leak formed. He saw the dried streaky residue of some salt deposite. This business was understaffed and none of the workers had noticed the issue. He wasn't surprised. It's why he chose to do business with them.

A young woman entered the waiting room and signaled to him with a facial expression because he was the only person there. He uncrossed his legs and stood. He brushed his creaseless, black shirt and squeezed a gold link on his bracelet. He had that swagger that wants you to know he’s rich. He followed her down a short hallway. After knocking once, the woman opened the second door on the left, next to the emergency exit.

Senhor Shen had half a breakfast bar in his mouth as the door opened. His eyes refocused from a virtual display. His mustache pulsed. His jaw clenched. The food bar fell to the desk. Tump. He said, “Oh, you finished the prelim already.”

The woman inhaled through her nose and shut the men in.

Behvos walked to the chair at Senhor Shen’s desk. He placed his hands on its back but didn’t pull it out to take a seat. Senhor Shen cradled the things on his desk into his arms so he could wipe away the crumbs.

If you were a tall person, you could probably touch the ceiling on your toes. Behvos was not but couldn’t help himself from the itch of claustrophobia. The space wanted to feel bigger than it was. The wall setting was configured to a few old movie posters. Neither blockbusters nor flops. Just vaguely familiar films with no cultural significance. The desk could be rolled aside. Behvos was familiar with the cabinet in the corner. It held a futon. It was a cheap model Behvos didn’t buy when he shopped for his own. While Behvos chose to sleep in the office building and emit the performance of that “last guy out, first guy in” image, he assumed Senhor Shen slept here out of necessity. A divorce? No ring but also no sign of a ring’s indent nor tan. An eviction? Behvos hated this man he had sworn to never see again. Shen didn’t bother with any fake plants. A table in the corner held an array of marketing samples, scrolled readout paper, and a few styluses. The chairs around it were the type nobody wanted to sit in.

Senhor Shen rewrapped the remainder of his bar. He placed it in the desk drawer along with a readout and controller. He pulled a separate device out. He clicked it on and placed it on the desk. He gazed to the side for a moment, focused on a virtual screen. After he had brushed the crumbs off his chest and desk he motioned for Behvos to sit. Behvos stood. Senhor Shen said, “Welcome, Senhor Pinheiro. I thought you’d be tied up at the Ophira Group career fair all day.”

“I had to interrupt an interview and come here.”

“Oh I’m so sorry. Was there a scheduling conflict?”

Behvos waited. He allowed his disgust, hatred, and annoyance to settle on his face. He allowed the silence of his rage to feedback on the bare walls of that cramped room.

“Shen,” Behvos said, “what did you do to my program?”

Shen’s mustache did this pulsing thing. Unkempt hairs stuck straight out like a caterpillar. Behvos was ready for it to puke out cocooning material.

“I, eh…” Senhor Shen stammered. Eyes ponged from the virtual display to Behvos. He couldn’t hold eye contact.

Behvos wanted to thumb the fletcher tube in his briefcase. He could grab Shen’s tie and slam both his face and the tube on the desk. He’d get the truth in seconds and walk back out the front door with the data he needed.

Behovs took a moment of meditation. He reviewed the mantras from his workplace violence training module. He placed his anger in a bottle, sealed the cap, shook it up, and poured it into a hot cup of tea. In his mind, he took a sip.

Senhor Shen gathered himself. “I sincerely apologize. I don’t follow.”

Behvos’ knuckles went from brown to white on the chair’s back. “Shen, it’s in your best interest to have transparency. I’m asking a simple question.”

“I really just don’t– uhm.” Shen flicked two fingers as if to sweep away an invisible fly. “And, I’m sorry. There’s a flood of noise happening. I think I need to get my assistant to–”

“I did it, Shen. There’s a botnet amplifying engagement on your worst reviews. Your company’s public ratings will be down to one star in about two hours.” Senhor Shen’s caterpillar mustache froze with tendrils poked out in a defensive ball. A lightning bolt knocked it dead. Behvos undid the clasp on his briefcase and pulled a clean readout. It was the size of an index card. Fully black with a green stripe down the middle. Reflected like sealant had just applied. The edges were capped in gold with an Ophira Group logo on the top left. “I’ve prepared this readout with a response if you continue to be uncooperative. I don’t want to keep asking. What did you do to my program?”

Shen turned to the device he had placed on his desk. He pressed a button on it. “Senhor Pinheiro there must be a misunderstanding. You see, client confidentiality is of utmost priority at this firm. I hope you recall the thorough diligence I kept in complying with your RFP requirements and the increased security I installed on my virtual and physical systems. Nobody, especially me, at this firm has access to your program or any other partition running on our hardware.”

Behvos drew a symbol on the readout. “I suppose you’re a masochist.”

A compliance audit was triggered. It dropped hundreds of physical and virtual-space code violations in a twitch of an eyelid. Reams of unpaid licenses, labor law breaches, etc. filled Shen’s inbox.

Senhor Shen couldn’t ignore it. Behvos saw the man as a chihuahua-like entrepreneur. He scrambled with the notifications and virtual popups like a dog not gaining traction on the smooth finish of the desk. Shen said, “You’re not a farmer. You’re not working on vertical-growth optimization layouts.”

“You’re right. What I work on is significantly more important.”

The caterpillar on Shen’s lip shivered. “Can you make it stop?”

“I don’t like repeating questions.” Behvos held his index finger over the readout.

Behvos wanted Senhor Shen to admit to it. He wanted the man to shout “down with capitalists!” so he’d be vindicated to blow the man’s brains out.

“I sublet!” Senhor Shen closed his eyes tight. A few tear drops mixed with the sweat. “I didn’t touch your program. I make sure it’s running on the exact same hardware. Same operation system. I’m growing– your business is helping me grow. It’s just so I can get enough capital to expand my operation. Your program is so large I had to partition it.”

Behvos saw a flash of a nightmare: Filipe stood in the office kitchen. His hands spread across the island as the coffee machine poured his third cappuccino for the day. In a few minutes he’d be at his desk sipping it. A scroll would show the data Behvos had been gathering. The analysis and constructs the program built. A line cracked open on Behvos’ anger teacup.

You couldn’t count the number of buses Behvos and Felipe had thrown each other under. When they played their alliances into war, either one would emerge from the wreckage. “Yes, my team failed on this initiative,” they’d admit, “through a lapse of clear vision. This application I built is solid. Once we synchronize our key metrics to…” blah blah blah they said in all the right tones executives heard as lullabies.

What flaw did Behvos expose in his defenses by coming to this career fair? When the Vice President HR – Agriculture’s death was announced, they both applied for the position. The race started with a corporate bloodbath. They quickly exposed their competitors’ faults in sabotaged public demonstrations. They spawned internal rumors. They unveiled projects waiting behind the scenes as though they were sparked by a Friday evening lightning bolt of inspiration. It was easy for them. They both knew the game. They were experts at the corporate climb. They weren’t worried about foreign invaders since the company always promoted executives from within.

For Behvos, there was a law of nature which directed him into that corner office overlooking rio da cidade. His heart pumped corpo ethos. He started as a teenaged intern in the Automated Systems Auditing unit. Although he’d transitioned through many roles in his career, they were all at Ophira Group. Every move on this corporate junglegym towards C-suite was strategized. He had one tattoo: His SMART Goals on his chest updated each quarter. He read them as a mantra every morning in the mirror after showering. He’d been working for months on a project that would guarantee the promotion. He was on the final stages of a slide deck. Then Filipe stole three minutes at the last HR Department quarterly all hands. He delivered a presentation that got a standing ovation.

Now this fiasco.

Filipe had planned all of this out. Had waited for Behvos and most of the team to be out of the office. He had discovered Behvos’ project and hired someone to sabotage it meters from an unguarded goal.

An inhalation married with a shriek filled the room. Shen was excited. “It was a different terminal! We’ll pinpoint where your program stopped performing. We’ll cross reference what node was running…” Shen threw a screen onto the wall. It rolled through log reports and filtered by timecodes. “You know approximately when your program results were impacted?”

Behvos nodded. Shen hadn’t been lying to him. He truly wasn’t nefarious, just incompetent.

Behvos took steps towards the wall. He caught as many words and symbols as he could. He spoke without looking at Senhor Shen. “I’ll rescind the audits. The damage the botnet did is done. It won’t get worse. This is good, Shen. Very good.”

The report finished with a list of processing firms scattered through the city:

…

Neurobrasil

Recursos Organic Tecnológica Corporation

NaturaQuant

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