Chapter 9: Who Wouldn’t Move Mountains for the Appetizers???

“The sales figures for our last quarter went above and beyond anyone’s expectations, including mine,” Raemon Kentworth was saying, “and you know my expectations are as high as it gets.”

He leaned forward slightly, placing his elbows on the table and clasping his wide, firm hands in front of him.

The three other people at the table, two middle-aged men and one woman, had their eyes fixed on him with undivided attention, soaking up every word he spoke like it was gospel.

“From here on out, the reach of our product will only grow.

“Our projections for the future clearly indicate future growth, and given what new features we’ll be releasing, a seven percent growth is more than likely to—”

~CRUNCH.~

Raemon Kentworth stopped and turned to his right. The other three people followed his gaze.

Octavia had just taken a large bite into a toasted bagel. She was happily munching away when she noticed the sudden silence and looked up.

Her apologetic mumbled, “Oops,” came out as “Uumphs,” between bites of bagel as she wiped cream cheese from her mouth.

Raemon Kentworth looked from the bitten bagel in her one hand to her laptop sitting untouched on the table beside her.

He cleared his throat and turned back to his audience and continued.

“Yes, well, as I was saying. A seven percent growth in the future can be expected, which will further solidify us as the world’s leading supplier of technology.”

Beside him, Octavia was slapping another glob of cream cheese onto her bagel.

Raemon Kentworth paused shortly as he glanced sideways. “It’s good news for our shareholders, of course, but that doesn’t mean we do not need to keep innovating.”

Just before she took another bite, Octavia decided to add a dab of peanut butter to her already overloaded bagel.

“As I’ve previously mentioned, if we consider the increased functionality of the product’s new features alone…all statements that my assistant is no doubt taking note of—”

Octavia did not look up from her bagel.

“That gives us a suitable benchmark for what needs to be achieved in the next quarter. As for the concerns you have voiced in this meeting…

“My ASSISTANT will have recorded them and will no doubt be able to enlighten me on all the main points brought up during this meeting.”

Octavia took another hearty bite of her bagel.

Forty-five minutes later, Raemon Kentworth stood, shook hands with the three people, and escorted them to the door of the restaurant.

He returned to their table shortly to find Octavia dipping strawberries into a pool of peanut butter.

“Please, enjoy your meal,” Raemon Kentworth said, resuming his seat next to Octavia. “It might be your last.”

Octavia popped the strawberry into her mouth and grinned. “Damn good one at that. How have I never tried this combination before? Peanut butter and strawberries. Divine. You should try it.”

Raemon Kentworth laid an arm over the ledge of the boothlike seats and sat back, watching Octavia with a stone-cold face.

“I hope you realize that I expect a full write-up on everything that was said in this meeting—and I expect it today.”

Octavia swallowed and licked a spot of peanut butter off one finger. “Umm…how soon?”

“As soon as we get back to the office. And if you are unable to produce it within that time frame, you probably shouldn’t bother going back to the office at all,” he answered curtly.

She reached for her laptop. “How about now?”

“…Excuse me?”

“The write-up,” Octavia said, “I can give it to you now.”

He eyed her warily. “Very well.”

Octavia tapped a few keys on her laptop and then pushed it across the table to Raemon Kentworth.

“I just emailed it to you. There it is,” she said.

He took a few minutes scanning over the file that Octavia had open on her laptop. When he was done, he looked at her with an even more suspicious look.

“You didn’t take down anything throughout the meeting. All your attention was on that damned bagel,” he said.

“Damn good bagel,” Octavia corrected him. “And you’re right. I didn’t.”

“Then how did you end up with…?” he gestured toward her laptop.

Octavia grinned wider than she had all day. “I’ll show you.”

She clicked open an application on the laptop and set the device in front of her boss.

A small window with a black screen was open, a thin green line stretching across it. It quivered and moved in some places in response to the ambient noise.

“Now,” Octavia said, “say something.”

“Excuse me?”

“Say something,” she prompted. “Go on. Talk about anything.”

He said nothing but gave Octavia a look that clearly communicated the unlikeliness of him doing anything she asked.

Octavia sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it.”

Octavia cleared her throat, then began to recite a Lewis Carroll poem.

~“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,~

~“And your hair has become very white;~

~“And yet you incessantly stand on your head—~

~“Do you think, at your age, it is right?”~

~“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son.~

~“I feared it might injure the brain.~

~But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,~

~Why, I do it again and again.”~

Mr. Kentworth stared at his assistant, his granite face tinged with confusion. Then his eyes went to the screen in front of him.

As the green audio line quivered, a separate window opened and text began to form on its blank surface.

Once Octavia had finished speaking, she reached over and clicked a button labeled “Summarize and Export.” In seconds, a PDF opened, revealing a blurb of text.

“A father and son engage in conversation on the dangers of attempting gymnastics as a senior and the benefit of being cognitively unburdened in the athletic field.”

After Raemon Kentworth scanned over the sentence, he looked from the screen to Octavia’s face several times.

“What…?” he started. He stopped, then began again, “What I mean is—how?”

Octavia was giddy with excitement. “Isn’t it fun? I wrote it myself. The program, of course…not the poem.”

“When?” he asked incredulously.

“Last night.”

“How?”

Octavia shrugged.

“A simple matter of using speech-to-text software and then configuring a program to eliminate all unnecessary words, string the remaining words together, and rephrase them so that it summarizes the main points.”

Raemon Kentworth’s mouth was set in a hard line. “What makes you think you could just download any type of software onto a company device?”

“I didn’t,” Octavia said. “I used the software that was already there. Of course, it would have been faster if I could have used something else, but”—Octavia shrugged—“I used what I had.

“And it wasn’t easy, you know. I had to keep feeding the algorithm examples of past summaries I’ve written. And then I had to set up a bunch of keywords to guide the program to the right idea.

“And then I ran the program over and over, working out the many, many bugs. But it was so worth it. That bagel was delicious!”

By now the confusion had left Raemon Kentworth’s face. His usual stone-cold look had returned. But there was something different about the eyes.

They didn’t hold the familiar look of reserved scorn. There was almost a flicker of respect in them.

“You did all that in one night?” he asked.

“Technically. I already worked on something like this before. It was my senior design project in college. I was able to build a lot of it from that.”

“So that’s why you were late this morning,” Raemon Kentworth mused.

“Almost late.”

He gave a slight shrug.

A waiter came by and approached their table in trepidation. Raemon Kentworth signaled for the check and said, “And give me two of my usual—to go.”

The young man nodded vigorously and dashed off to the kitchen.

Octavia closed her laptop and slid it back into her bag.

Mr. Raemon Kentworth was eyeing her with his intense, penetrating stare again. She was just about used to it by now.

“Perhaps I underestimated you,” he said, his voice low.

“Perhaps,” Octavia said.

The waiter came back with the check and set two steaming cups of coffee before them.

“Here,” Raemon Kentworth said gruffly, setting one cup in front of her.

Octavia looked at the cup before her in surprise. “But why?”

“Don’t you like coffee?”

“I do, of course. But…why would you…?”

“You spent all night on your program, didn’t you? I don’t need my assistant falling asleep in the middle of the workday. I have a lot more I need to get done.”

Octavia accepted this explanation and gratefully took a sip of the warm, earthy, deep-brown liquid. Her eyes widened at the taste.

“God, this is so good!” she exclaimed.

Raemon Kentworth nodded knowingly. “Only the best kind of coffee is served here. And I only take the best.”

Octavia took another enthusiastic sip. “Sure beats the crappy shit they serve at the office!”

She froze, realizing what she had just said, and then gave her boss a sheepish smile.

“I mean…forget I said that.”

“I never forget,” he said.

Octavia was relieved he didn’t seem any more pissed off than he had been seconds before. “The office coffee isn’t that bad! Really—it’s just…” Octavia’s voice trailed off before she sighed.

“No, it is that bad. It’s terrible. But I never meant to tell you that.”

“Are you always so blunt?”

“Yes, actually. It’s almost as if I…I have a unique condition. When I’m put on the spot, I can’t help being brutally honest about some things.

“Like, once my housemate asked me about her outfit—she told me to be honest—and I told her the truth.” Octavia’s face went solemn.

“It looked like a box of crayons had thrown up on her. She didn’t appreciate that.”

Raemon Kentworth stroked the sides of his mouth and chin with his thumb and index finger as if in thought.

To a casual observer, it wasn’t clear whether he was contemplating her words in deep thought or making an effort to reinforce the solemn, rigid line of his mouth.

“You should probably keep a tight rein on that tongue of yours, then,” he said finally.

Octavia’s shoulders drooped with genuine sadness. “If only that were possible.”