The Acquisition - 6

The hot weeks of summer passed without any news. There were rumors that the enormous company was conducting due diligence: investigations of legal issues surrounding our intellectual property, further analysis of the marketplace, line-by-line scrutiny of our software code.

Part of our software incorporated a product offered by one of the enormous company's competitors and they did not like that. But it did not seem to jeopardize the acquisition. Nothing jeopardized the acquisition.

Just when we'd permitted ourselves to forget about it, our CEO gathered everyone around the tables in the kitchen area. The acquisition was in the works, he said. Representatives from the enormous company were flying in the following week to conduct job interviews. There was some bewilderment. There was trepidation. But there was also the breezy sense of being carried on a ride, helpless. Something had been set in motion that could not be stopped. Something good or bad, nobody knew. But it was happening.

The Acquisition - 5

After the interviews we went to a dark, anonymous Midtown bar. Chris had martinis; Dave and I drank whisky. We tried to reflect upon the day's peculiar events, their absurdities and implications.

Only a few employees knew about the looming acquisition – the three of us, the CEO, some higher-ups on the West Coast. In the office the following day, everyone sat and tapped away at their computers like normal. Except nothing was normal anymore.

The Acquisition - 4

The day was punctuated by lunch in the conference room: scrupulously distributed white boxes containing a gourmet-style sandwich, a bag of kettle-fried chips, packets of deli mustard and mayonnaise, a dainty cookie. Meals assembled by gloved hands in a clean room. There was the requisite, tense small talk: Where are you guys staying in town? When do you fly back?

My last interview was with Vincent Shuck, a tall Dutchman with a cloudy accent. He conducted the entire interview beside the whiteboard of a conference room, dry-erase marker in hand. He asked me exactly one question: "How would you like your technology to be used?" I acquitted myself with a vaguely meaningful answer that I'm not sure he listened to.

Vincent turned to the board and drew elaborate diagrams and flowcharts. This product group, that product. Arrows from one node to another. From several nodes to one. The consulting services group. A Venn diagram. Synergistic opportunities. Vertical markets. Words inside boxes, words in a bullet-pointed list. Sales account managers. ROI. On the few occasions when he turned to me he fixed his gaze on my third eye. I nodded judiciously and strategically punctuated his discourse with affirmations: Uh huh. Yup. I see. Right. After forty minutes he capped his marker, apparently satisfied.

The Acquisition - 3

My second interview was with Kevin Morris, with whom I'd had some previous contact in the context of our tiny startup's occasional projects in partnership with the enormous company. In those interactions he'd seemed remote, brusque, somewhat imperious. He'd dart in and out of e-mail threads with prickly requests and seldom reply to those of others. Now here we were in a tiny, windowless room. Kevin gazed to his left and skyward before responding to any question, and sometimes while formulating questions of his own. His right leg fidgeted like crazy. He had white hair; cold, blue eyes and the faintest trace of a lisp.

He lifted his head and, wide-eyed, seemed to scrutinize an imaginary breach in the drop-panel ceiling revealing the secret lair of a race of dark and hunching man-beasts who peered back at him with immobile, glinting eyes, computing the cost-benefit of fight versus flight; or the building's foam-sprayed steel beams, its truest inner nature either way.

"Mmmm..." he hummed, his right leg going. Then he turned to look me in the eye.

"Do you have any questions for me?" he asked, fingers poised over his keyboard.

It had to be a trick, a trap. A mindfuck. If I don't have any questions, they'll know. But what does the questioned ask his questioner?

"Sure, I said. "How did this idea come about? The acquisition."

Kevin did not move his head. The corners of his mouth curled into a vaguely lascivious smile.

"The acquisition," he said, "was my idea."

The Acquisition - 2

The enormous company owned the sixth floor and the fifth floor too, possibly the seventh. We exited the elevator six, in the lobby between two wings, one keycard-protected and the other guarded by a three-seat reception console. A large flat-screen TV on the wall behind it broadcast news from the cable station the company ran in partnership with a major network, the anchor burbling as atrocities and market prices paraded mutely in the crawl.

We were instructed to sit in a waiting area beside a glass-walled cluster of enterprise servers; tall, black towers with blinking lights, sinister, mysterious. Computing God-knows-what for whatever reason. A display of what you're meant to never see.

We were greeted by Buckley Bean, a rotund and genial man in his forties. We were to have rotating interviews with him and his three colleagues, who were waiting in separate, windowless rooms, as though to turn us against each other. I hoped we'd get our story straight.

My first was Buckley. He questioned me cheerily, tapping away at his laptop. He wore braces and consequently spoke with sodden diction; each syllable seemed to emerge out of a puddle. Frothy spit accumulated at the corners of his mouth and a droopy strand ran from his upper fang to the back of his retainer, giving him the curious air of a rabid puppy, or a cherub with a venomous bite.

The interview was going well.

"OK, here's kind of a weird question," said Buckley. "It's not my idea to ask this question, we always ask a question like this."

"OK," I said. I'd heard about these questions.

"There's no real right answer. Well, there is a right answer. But we don't expect you to get it."

"OK. All right."

"I don't want you to worry about this question."

"Sure. I won't."

"It's just a question we ask. Kind of to get you thinking. To see how you think."

"Sure, sure."

"OK! So don't think this is too weird. Ready?"

"I won't. Yes."

"Keep in mind you don't have to get it right. But I'll ask you why you answered how you did."

"Got it."

"How much tea is there in China?"

The Acquisition - 1

We looked each other over and said, nice pants, nice shirt. We all wore the same pants. We all wore the same shirt.

We didn't really but we did, really.

We entered via the voluminous rotating door and there we were in a gigantic atrium, peered down upon by skylight and a gleaming acre of marble. Purposeful people came and went.

To and fro.

We'd been summoned by the enormous company for interviews with a view toward the enormous company's possible acquisition of our tiny startup.