oh hi.
hello?
you would? wow. when would we come? 'think he hung up.
all the companies know. the faculties tell 'em. at the target schools.
you do?
i think i kind of lost it. i was just so thrilled to be talking to the richest, most powerful.  'didn't know i even cared about that stuff.
a lot of what larry says is true. they just clone stuff, or reverse engineer it, and everybody gets stuck with their inferior version cause they --
if he's really a bully, he won't cop to it, anyway.
when i was a kid? and he was moving us all over the place? i spent all my time writing stuff on outpost 1.0. i thought gary boyd was the greatest.
he's pretty tight with his family.
he just likes to write code. he's bummed there's so much secrecy and competition, everybody trying to own everything.
so -- how far are we from the campus?
who's that?
that's okay.
cool!
oh. no thanks.
you know a lot about art, i guess.
low enough to relay internet traffic.
skywire.
it needs a more object-oriented language. this doesn't scale, does it?
ask you?
i do!
if my dad'd leveled with me like that even once.  the weird thing is, my fantasy he could somehow be like the old gary? it's his fantasy, too.
but?
i forgot. that's why you have to help me decide.
c'mon, i wouldn't have a destiny without you. my destiny would be dying at 20. from eating --
you saved my life in alot of ways.
i know.
when's brian coming for the tv?
you got my e-mail?
is that how larry feels?
wanted to say goodbye to him.
outpost made me sign 1,000. 'guess we'll find out what else we have to talk about. life stuff.
guess what? they got their --
right.  what's that mean again?
it's just -- i kind of feel the need to do something with my ability. create something.
that took some fun out of --
his snapples were in alphabetical order.
she's a programmer?
i've got a girlfriend, remember?
tailgater?
he seems a little -- tense.
what're they building?
gary's not into fiber optics. he's betting everything on the satellites.
she is. she is!
no! just waiting for my counselor to come by and introduce himself.
do i?
that's insane. you're ahead of your time.
uh, might be one or two things.
could work with a new switch. there may be a few more things hidden.
you know he's never been anybody's counselor before?
oh, it's great. it's great! 'think i should tell him i learned everything using 1.0? maybe i could show him one of my early programs.
maybe i'm going too fast.
it's okay. really.
you did this -- overnight?
lisa.
you know mine.
i'm getting a teacher's pet rep.
were you?
me too! were you an army brat or something?
didn't mean to pry. i just have this theory. some of us who got to good at this? we were -- escaping something.
did i say something?
i used to wish that. all the time.
what've you got there?
show me.
cool!
sh-show me the next one.
well -- you sent for me.
you really wrote this just today?
nothing!
i'm sure.
definitely.
to our new life. . what's wrong?
he gave me some new code-fixes this morning. i said, "did you really do this just today?" cause i was impressed. he said "what're you implying?"
it's the way he said it. just the way my dad did, when he was caught in a lie. that's how you knew you were onto something ugly.
that's what i'm asking myself. does he have some genius stowed away? why not let him write skywire. 'not saying it makes sense.
i'm so stupid.
i know, i know.
isn't that -- extreme?
you're right. it's -- a working relationship. don't know what i was expecting.
no. please.
"there is no second place." plus every time i get jammed-up, gary has an inspiration. is it like that with your counselor?
right, right. but does he ever just, like, hand you code?
you're compulsive.
why's that?
so, when you were talking about wishing people were more like computers. was that then? or now?
you're living here?
sure, i'll see what i can do.
'forgot to introduce you. i have a girlfriend.
she saved my life.
how's it going down there?
what?!
jesus, teddy.
i met this girl.
i don't know.
no! i keep thinking it'll go away. but there's this -- connection. she's been hacking since she was little, she had to move around a lot. plus i see her every day, we're working on the same program. she's -- beautiful.
what d'you mean?
what does that mean?
i didn't plan this.
what's wrong?
what!
what're you -- what?
they caught the guys?
he told me about the break-in. he didn't seem to take it that seriously.
i didn't know he was working with fiber optics.
i know you lost all his work. maybe i could come down here and --
just thought his work should go on.
it's only meaningful when you've got 40,000 lines of code to back it up.
those really weird, short lines.
were the flags for teddy?
just once. 'guess i was worried we didn't have anything to talk about, since work was off-limits. non- disclosure.
talk about work? never!
oh. yeah.
it helps. alice said it would help. to focus on something. 'don't know what i'd do without her.
wow. you must have 20,000 lines of code there.
the wrong place?
gotta go home. 'think i ate something.
alice? alice!
i don't know what i'm saying. maybe -- maybe they hired those guys.
i don't know! i just know it was teddy's code. all these ideas flying in from everywhere. you know how he says "any kid working in his garage can put us out of business?" it's like they know what every kid's doing.
nobody does work like this on-line. it's in your pc, or in a mainframe. self-contained. they'd have to be, like, watching people. physically. oh jesus.
it's a camera.
it isn't a broadcast studio. it's -- a surveillance post or something. that's why they have the dishes on top.
go where? you can't get away from people like this.
you think i don't know that?
how should i know? "solving a problem," i guess. or needing to control everything. i don't know. i've gotta get in there.
it's the only one with dishes on the roof. the studio's a front. that's why they keep postponing its opening. . gotta get in there.
i can't just walk away!
they stop the construction work at six or seven. the parking lot's mostly clear by two or three in the morning. even the early geeks don't get there before five.
no! i can't just keep my head in the sand. that's how i got into this mess.
i know how to get in there. but you've gotta help me.
so you believe me?
come on.
do you know who i am?
the kind of stock options i'm sitting on?
everything okay?
in a tree.
please don't be one of them.
he gave me this. 'said i should come see him if --
can i wait in his office?
please.
mr. barton, do you remember me?
yes sir. i need to talk to you.
yeah. hi. thank you for seeing me.
i am. i am, sir.
my friend, my best friend, teddy, was killed in silicon valley.
it was racially motivated. he's chinese. he was. and.  i know sometimes the fbi gets involved with that. don't they?
i -- just wanna help bring these guys to justice. they're neo-nazis.
'just didn't know who else to talk to.
yes sir.
nothing.
it's what they said it is. an unfinished broadcast studio. you were right.  i just drove to seattle and back.
remember lyle barton?
the justice department guy who came to the apartment when --
after i broke into 21 -- which was insane, thank god they didn't catch me! -- i just drove around. trying to figure out what possessed me. you know what? i've been putting my own guilt on gary.
if i'd stayed down there, maybe this wouldn't've happened.
i thought, instead of indulging all these paranoid delusions, risking my job, alienating gary, scaring you, i should do something useful with my grief. help them find teddy's killers.
been such a long night.
different?
i snuck into #21.
you thought about it too. you've been suspicious for a while. but it's not happening in there. it's happening in the day care.
can we go someplace else?
it's easy to know who the smart geeks are, the schools tell 'em. they upload medical files, school records, pharmacy files. they'd be happy just to steal code forever. but when a program gets close to fruition. like teddy. he was almost there.
you know. there is no second place. and what's the risk? the killings're undetectable, they're hand-tailored, they make "sense." i mean, they're in the information business. they have scenarios for all of us, too. in case we find out too much.
i'm not one of them. not trying to "suss you out."
they killed my best friend! i'm living with somebody they pay to go to bed with me. can't you trust somebody just once? i don't wanna be alone here.
i know why you're so secretive. why you won't let anybody near you. i know what he did to you.
they'd frame him.
they're already watching you. if they had to, they'd give him this drug that mimics an alcoholic blackout. he'd wake up not even remembering his "act of revenge."
nobody's gonna hurt you.
hmm?
no, no. never.
they've got this guy in the doj, maybe others. we tell the wrong person, it's over.
there's always a logical answer -- you just have to define the question.
we don't tell anybody. we tell everybody. at once. so there's no secret left to protect. when everybody knows, they don't dare touch us.
do we post it on the net?
right. but gary's tied-in to a lot of media conglomerates. have to be careful who we pick.
certainly not at my happy home.
gary, hi.
i'm okay. it's going well!
sure.
my dad was a compulsive gambler. only he didn't think he was. that applied to guys who didn't have a "system." "losers," who played games of chance. he could "read" people, so chance had nothing to do with it. no matter how deep a hole he dug himself, he'd give you the whole speech. and you'd better not point out the obvious. his creditors would catch up to him. loan sharks or whatever. he'd wake us in the middle of the night. off we'd go, again.
no. i just went deeper into the machine. preferred being the geek to having to explain. lying would've been worse.
cause he was a liar. and i hated him. "get your head out of that machine, wise up to the real world." the more he mocked me the deeper i went. cause if being savvy meant being like him -- guess that's why i'm kind of clueless, even now. didn't cultivate my conniving side. 'not sure i even have one.
he's buying up pretty much everything: cable companies, baby bells, picture libraries, museum rights, film archives.  getting ready for skywire.
yeah, they dig stuff like this. "cbs news has partnered with outpost information systems in a cable news network due to launch fall of 2001."
say there's just one "mole" working there, like barton at the doj. how do we know he's not the guy we've contacted? or she? or the guy she works for?
time-warner has a 40 per cent stake in gary's set-top device. that also takes out cnn. "ge joins outpost in new venture," which means nbc is out. "disney joins outpost," abc is out. "outpost and newscorp in new deal," fox is out. any of these places could have a mole. or all of 'em. it's like a a continuous loop. we can go to some alternative press place that 1,000 people read, get them and us killed. but anything big enough for this is a parent of or a subsidiary to something gary's got a finger in!
sorry.
what?
we can't just assume they're standing by to receive skywire 12 months from launch. i'd have to write in an aglet.
it's how on-line services push logos they wanna sell you. you don't ask for 'em, they just appear. 'have to work on it somewhere besides my office or my house. and then the quality of the broadcast wouldn't exactly be digital, that's 12 months away.
you'd have to design a graphic interface to make the data pop. maybe some audio, too. to tie it all in to gary. how long would that take you?
gary knows i'm close on skywire. we have to do this fast.
oh, man. i'd have to get into gary's house. to get the satellite positions.
i don't know --
why were you so careless?
why were you snooping in my office?
'think everybody in this place is here the same reason we are?
i told teddy about you.
"a beautiful geek? what're the chances?"
i felt guilty. 'cause i "owed so much" to alice. but even then i was starting to wonder. is it so great to be so consumed by this one thing that you let another person do your thinking for you? if you have a lucrative skill, it's all anybody wants from you. you grow older but you don't grow up. you turn into -- into --
larry used to say how the guys who wrote the first cool operating systems, like the unix guys at berkeley? they just gave it away. they figured it was human knowledge, it belonged to the world, like shakespeare or aspirin. 'know what i'm gonna do after we broadcast the incriminating stuff? air the skywire code. then nobody can have a monopoly.
okay, yeah. i did something naughty.  there's this amazing comix store in seattle. to tell you the truth, i did it once or twice at stanford. 'guess i can't keep anything from you.
look at this.
why doesn't he ask us to his party. he's never even met you.
it's for the museum. he knows you're a painter. if anybody should be invited --
i know you think i'm too attached to him, but still. i am close to gary. and you're the most meaningful person in my life. i'm going back to the comix place, why should i be killing myself.
this is a lifesaver. my pc crashed just before finals.
sure.
great. i knocked off the aglet, as soon as i get a passable version of skywire we're there.
thank god.
they know i broke in. alice helped me. shrot's not one of them. he's blundering into this on his own.
hardly anybody does, that's the beauty part. no cameras, the doj doesn't bother with it, it's accessed by a tunnel they boast about. you know the best place to hide a leaf?
oh.
that's great! thanks.
perfect. how am i gonna get away from the party long enough to --
that's lame, isn't it?
cool.
where's the bathroom?
there's like eight women waiting in line. they take forever. please?
i couldn't do it at work cause of security or at home for -- obvious reasons.
i'm not much good at handwriting. or parties.
gary, i'm sorry if i was rude --
gary, i --
i do know, gary. i feel the same way. i thought i was coming here for a job. but it's meant a lot more.
i'm pretty close. but when i wrote the last contact switches, it wiped out a piece of the content filer. you know what it's like, writing software.
i went to see the skywire model in gary's office. you know. just to hold it again.
no. no. i sent an e-mail to somebody, just now. to tell her how i feel about you. you know i'm clueless, without you. you know i --
he suspects i know something. i think he was sort of -- explaining himself to me, in case i do. we have to go in tonight. i'm two hours from a beta version. but i've gotta go home for an hour.
she called to apologize. i said i was pulling an all-nighter. she said then come home just to say hi. which i always do when we fight, it's suspicious if i don't.
at this point the worst thing i could do is anything out of the ordinary.
great!
you look beautiful.
what?
don't we have any chopsticks?
one more minute.
great.
wanna savor this.
right. wait. a toast.
to the artist.
it's great. it's great.
great! great! thanks for asking!
you're better off not knowing.
they're surveilling programmers from in here. they steal their code. sometimes -- i know this sounds insane -- sometimes they kill one.
they let me break into 21. 'cause there's nothing in there. you know they've been keeping things from you. 'getting in the way when you try t'do your job. that's why you never told 'em your suspicions about me. right?
if you had i'd be dead now.
you've been following your gut all along. please don't stop now?
maybe another time.
meet me at the other location.
they know, i had no choice. get out of the house now! do you have a laptop?
bring it to the other location.
brian here? brian bissel?
this is the biggest beta demo in like the history of software. you'd be my partner.
brian! you wanna be a big deal, don't you? that's your dream in life.
no. but you can write your own ticket in the valley after this. we're gonna bring down outpost.
what'd they ever do for you?
great. great! we need to drag a lot of heavy stuff in front of the door --
wanna be a part of history?
well -- would you like to pick up an extra -- 232 dollars?
gimme the coordinates?
is it your dish?
let's try #2.
we're there.
damn!
he knows.
he's been altering the coordinates since we logged on. he's a step ahead. let's jump to #12.
wait a second. he knows i know.
he's working backwards, too. let's do number five?
one more second.
you should've called a few times to bug me about your job prospects.
'last thing you wanna do is hurt us now. right?
come on, bob. load in the other disk.
larry, lisa.
we'll come up with the next big thing.
got out of my other commitment.
hey, wait! not giving everything away.
cool.