The world had moved forward. Mikomi had now entered his sophomore year in college and his father, Ryunosuke had successfully returned to work with a new assistant in Mikomi’s best friend Ryan. It had been nearly a year since Ryan joined Onyx Technology Ventures and his progress had become something no one really expected. When Ryan told Mikomi that he had a knack for programming, he truly meant it. While he had not yet secured a spot on the programming team, he began to take Mikomi’s advice and shadowed different members of the team to try and learn as much as he could.
Ryan found himself overwhelmed at first but thanks to Michael, who had spent countless hours after his scheduled shifts coaching him, Ryan began to settle into the concepts and fundamentals of programming. Of course, Michael only wished that he could be given the sweet release of freedom and head home for the evening but when he found out that Ryunosuke would be paying him extra to stay late and coach Ryan, he didn’t mind it as much anymore.
Ryunosuke sat at his desk shuffling through some papers when Alice approached him with a manila folder under her arm. She placed it down on top of his desk and shot him a smile.
“It’s almost time for the team briefing. The notes you wanted me to prepare are in the folder.”
Ryunosuke opened up the folder and flipped through the papers that were in there. He nodded with each page as if to confirm that these were the notes that he was looking for. When he got to the end, he looked quite puzzled. He immediately started from the beginning once again as if he were checking for a document he might have overlooked. When he got to the end he put the folder back down onto his desk.
“I’m missing the template implementation document. Do you know where it is?”
As soon as he said that, Ryan ran into his office, almost out of breath, with a piece of paper in his hand. He caught his breath for a second and placed the paper, which was slightly wrinkled, on Ryunosuke’s desk.
“Sorry, I’m late with this. I saw something on the document that wasn’t right so I went into the file and changed it, reprinted it, and tried to get it over here as fast as possible. You had an outdated operating system listed as a system requirement rather than the current version we’re testing the A.I. on.”
“Good catch, Ryan! Thank you for your diligence! I think I have everything that I need now. Ryan, I want you to attend this briefing as this announcement concerns you as well. The meeting is in ten minutes down in the conference room. Head over there now and I’ll be following you shortly.”
Ryan nodded and realized he had to take off running as the conference room was on the other side of the building. Suddenly, he felt the same way Mikomi did when he had to go back to school to get his wallet in order to lend him the money to buy VX Command so many years ago. Alice turned her attention back to Ryunosuke who had a grin on his face.
“Sir, the meeting isn’t for another thirty minutes.”
“I know.”
When Ryunosuke made it to the conference room, he noticed that Ryan looked a bit peeved as he sat in the corner. In fact, by the time he got there, most of his team hadn’t even arrived yet. There was no doubt that Ryan had spent the entire time sitting in the room alone. Ryunosuke took his seat at the head of the conference table. George was already there as was Cassandra. Soon thereafter, Colin and Jared joined while Michael was the last of the senior staff members to show up.
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Michael took a seat next to Cassandra who almost immediately gave him a cold, icy stare. He took the hint and moved several seats down, taking a seat next to Ryan, clearing his throat in the process. Alice was the last to arrive with multiple folders cradled in her arms which she handed out to each of the team members, sans Ryan. She took her stance in the back corner of the room while Ryunosuke opened his folder, causing the others to follow suit.
“First off… there’s an extra chair up here. Feel free to sit at the table with us, Alice. I don’t like the fact that you’re making yourself stand while we’ve all made ourselves comfortable.”
Alice took notice of his warm smile and took him up on his offer, sitting down in the last empty chair at the table.
“I called you all here for this briefing because I’ve been meeting with all of the different teams for the past several weeks and I wanted to make an announcement regarding Project: Daphne. As you know, we started this project so many years ago. We created a prototype that was self-contained within its own program. While it worked rather decently when isolated, the true goal of this project was to integrate Daphne into various pieces of software, giving businesses advanced tools to further grow and develop.”
“Several years ago, after our presentation to the media, we ran into a snag. The technology at the time didn’t allow us to achieve full-scale integration. In effect, we took some backlash as a company for showing off a product that was far from ready. It was quite understandable because we… or more specifically… I… was a bit ambitious and I wanted to share that ambition with the world as quickly as possible. In hindsight, that was a rather poor decision on my part as it revealed our hand to the world. Since then, we’ve had several global competitors trying to reverse-engineer Daphne and create a product of their own. While I could be worried about such developments, I’m happy to report that every single one of our competitors has been met with failure. Even two out of the five of them have given up pursuing this project as they felt it was a waste of time and money.”
“While that is certainly good news for us, we mustn’t waver. We must continue to work efficiently and diligently so that this project can come to true fruition. I am here to report to you all that we have done exactly that. Our team of highly skilled programmers and engineers has been working tirelessly for the past several years. Each time that they hit a dead end, they found another path. Each time a new version of a piece of software was released, they reworked the code. Each time we upgraded our systems with newer hardware, they implemented the A.I. into that hardware. All of which was for the sake of advancement. It is here, in the year 2000, that technology is catching up to where we want to be. Thanks to the latest round of testing, we have successfully implemented Daphne into a piece of software. While the performance isn’t polished and the quality is nowhere near the level that I hold my expectations to, we have finally made that first step towards our ultimate goal.”
Everyone, including Ryan, gave Ryunosuke a round of applause for his announcement. It truly was a moment for celebration and it showed on each of the higher-up’s faces. Ryunosuke himself boasted a prideful smile as he gazed across the room at each of his team members. He knew that they wouldn’t be in this position right now without their individual contributions.
“We have spent a tremendous amount of money on this project. All of the overtime hours, the hardware upgrades, the research. All of it made us pay a hefty sum. We have several venture capitalists to thank as well as George for pushing our other products hard and increasing global sales by nearly fifteen percent last year. Thanks to this extra revenue, we were able to push through and get to this point but the work is just beginning. Just because we’ve taken a big step, it doesn’t mean that it’s the final step. We have many more to climb and I am confident that we will climb them one at a time until we reach the very top. Once this project is complete, I have no doubts that all of the money, time, and energy we have spent pouring into this project will be reimbursed tenfold.”
“In your folders are copies of the very same documents that I have. They contain the latest system requirements, dynamic algorithms that we are using, budget, and schedule. Please share all of this information with your individual teams. I want us to continue to work hard at reaching the next step and I want to reconvene in a few months to see where we are at. Of course, I will be checking in with each team like I normally do but briefings like this are crucial as it ensures that everyone is on the same page.”
Ryunosuke paused for a moment and looked at Ryan.
“Before we end today’s meeting, I would like you to stand up.”
Ryan looked around and then pointed at himself as if to question whether or not Ryunosuke meant him. He gave Ryan a nod and he stood up quickly, sending his chair rolling backward toward the wall. Some of the other members of the team, most notably Michael, were snickering at his eagerness.
“Ryan is my son Mikomi’s best friend. Mikomi inspired him to become a programmer and instead of going away to college, Mikomi felt it would be beneficial for Ryan to come work here where he could learn in a hands-on environment. During the day, he serves as an assistant to Alice, doing odd jobs to help take some of the pressure off of her. Then, at night under Michael’s guidance. he shadows some of the programmers and starts gaining and absorbing knowledge. Ryan… I think you’ve been growing well and because of such, I’ve decided that you’re no longer going to be Alice’s assistant. I’m placing you on Michael’s team!”
“While this is a promotion, you won’t be a programmer. Instead, you’ll be a quality assurance tester. Here, you will be able to take the knowledge that you’ve learned so far and apply it to find bugs and errors. Your attention to detail is higher than you give yourself credit for so I want to make good use of that. I think the experience you will gain from this will be invaluable. Of course, I’ll still expect Michael to train you after your shifts so that you can move up further one day.”
“I still get that extra pay, right?” asked Michael almost instantly.
“Yes… yes, you do,” he replied with a hint of exhaustion in his tone.
“Right on!”
Ryan’s face lit up. He couldn’t believe that the work and effort he had put in would be rewarded in such a way. While QA work isn’t the most pleasant, he knew that the challenge ahead would bring him one step closer to his goals. He knew that he had a lot of work to do if he was going to catch up to Mikomi in terms of skill but little did he know that the difference between them, in terms of skill, was worlds apart. Still, it gave him a goal to work towards and he was going to give it his all nevertheless.