"That is unfortunate," Noah deadpanned.
Damien chuckled. "A problem at one of the Stark properties that I have to take care of personally, but I'll admit that I hope to wrap it up quickly and enjoy a long weekend in Italy with my wife. So I'm afraid dinner's not an option. Are you going to be in LA for Lyle's wrap? He said he invited you."
"Absolutely." Noah had met Lyle Tarpin, one of Hollywood's newest A-listers, not long after he moved to Los Angeles. They'd become good friends. Good enough that Lyle took certain liberties--like setting up Noah on blind dates with pretty lawyers. "It's on a Thursday, so I'll probably fly in that morning."
"Good. We can catch up more then."
"Looking forward to it. But what about the timeline?"
"It's been slashed." Noah heard the edge in Damien's voice.
"For the rollout?" Noah did some mental math, and the answer he came up with was What the hell?
They'd already planned on a fast and hard campaign. He wasn't sure they could move any faster or any harder, and he told Damien as much.
"I didn't get where I am today by being the second man to any party," Damien said. "Trust me when I say that we're going to have competition. And that's fine. Competition doesn't scare me. But I want us to be the first through the door."
Noah sifted through everything Damien was suggesting. "Someone leaked my design?"
"Not as far as I can tell. But The Project is a natural progression of your listening device that I licensed, and that's been commercially available for a couple of years now."
"But only to governments, military, and contractors." Even as he said it, Noah knew his words were nonsense. Damien was right.
The listening device functioned like any bug that might be planted by the police or a private security team. But unlike those devices--which required breaching the premises--Noah's tech accessed the entirety of a building through the building's electrical system, then filtered all the internal chatter into an infinite number of channels that could either be monitored live or with keywords input into an AI-operated review system. So far, the device was most useful to off-book, covert security teams, but some law enforcement agencies were looking into using it upon receipt of a warrant.
Noah had invented the device while he was working at Deliverance, the covert organization founded by billionaire Dallas Sykes, which specialized in locating and rescuing kidnap victims. Because the existence of Deliverance was known only to a key few, Dallas didn't use his own corporate connections to manufacture Noah's device. But they'd needed it, and fast, and so Damien Stark had been pulled into the secret. Stark had licensed the tech for Stark Applied Technology--giving Noah a hefty royalty that produced an income in excess of anything he'd ever imagined--and provided Deliverance with the original prototypes and the final tech.
After a while, Stark recruited Noah as well, which was easy enough to do. Noah believed in the work Deliverance did, but he'd needed to heal, and to do that, he'd needed to escape the daily reminder of his wife and daughter.
He'd originally come to work for SAT in Los Angeles, and his focus had been on both new tech and the expansion of the listening device to the limits of the design. The Project piggybacked off the original tech, utilizing significant AI technology to construct a full building control and monitoring system. And because of the nature of the technology, it could be adapted for everything from covert military use on the one end to suburban home operation on the other.
From the get-go, Stark had seen the potential and had provided Noah with whatever development resources he'd needed. Noah had worked round the clock, not because he was in a race with a competitor, but because the work itself pushed him on.
Noah frowned, thinking about all the hours he'd put in. Hours that someone else with skill and vision might make obsolete.
"Who?" he demanded.
"It's still a rumor, but it's a solid one," Damien said. "My intelligence indicates that an Israeli-based company with military connections is close to rolling out their own prototype
of a remarkably similar product. If it's earmarked only for the military, then all that does is remove a significant chunk of our potential customer base."
Noah nodded. "But the odds are that they'll develop a private, retail version, too."
"Which means the clock is ticking," Damien said.
Noah sighed, the possibility of all his work being swept away was almost too horrible to contemplate. He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. "I guess we better hope at least one of these consultants knows what they're doing."
That, however, was a hope that died a slow and painful death.
The morning's first two applicants were probably fine at their jobs, but neither brought anything new or innovative to the table, despite repeatedly saying that they were up to the task and the faster rollout wouldn't be a problem.
The third assured them that the compressed timeline wouldn't be a problem, then spent the rest of the meeting justifying his increased fee without any explanation of how his plan would change to fit the new parameters.
By the time the sixth--another dud--left, Noah was starting to think he ought to chuck it all and go back to writing video games. At the very least, he was confident all the applicants would know how to market that.
"We haven't seen one with an innovative approach," Noah said.
Damien nodded in agreement. In the meetings, he looked equally fresh for all the applicants. But now, as they waited for contestant number seven, he pinched the bridge of his nose and looked as tired as Noah felt. "It's not just innovation we need. The product itself is innovative. We need a company with ideas that are fresh enough to match our product."