The first thing Robert Osmark saw when he woke up was the ceiling fan spinning. Round and round. Bright daylight streaming in through the thin, strip window above and behind his bed told him it was late. He hadn’t set an alarm after last night’s debacle.

The Board had been fine; Susan’s preparation was flawless, as always, so the Board accepted his proposal to shelve Viridian for two years without a hitch. It was after, when that pissant Wagner had pulled him aside and told him to make sure he put mothballs in the containers because “It’ll be the end of the world before I back you starting this project again.”

Asshole. If Wagner hadn’t been pushed on them by Osmark Technology’s largest shareholder, he would have been gone years ago.

Robert rubbed his eyes, then sat up and swung his legs out of bed. He finished the half-full bottle of water sitting on his nightstand, then padded his way to the kitchen.

Coffee dripped into the pot. It was an Ethiopian variety called Gesha, after the region, which had been transplanted to a small estate in Panama. Robert’s smartwatch had sensed his awakening and turned the brewer on, the perfect symbiosis of man and machine. Robert leaned against the counter with his eyes closed until the coffee maker’s last sputter, then he filled his mug and stepped out onto the balcony.

The redwood decking extended over the side of a cliff, facing the Pacific Ocean and the white sand beach below. He stood there in the rising heat, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, and watched the waves while he drank his coffee. He was in his late forties now, graying, and not as slim as he’d like. It was a perfect photo op for a headline about Viridian failing. Robert both didn’t care and had a standing order for his lawyers to sue anyone they could prove had been on his property to take the shot. He didn’t even review the cases anymore. It was just one of several reports he let Susan manage.

He wasn’t sure when he’d lost control of his life. Everyone knew he was the boss. Even the newspapers he loathed said so. But while that gave him a financial freedom he couldn’t have imagined as a kid growing up in Brooklyn, it had bound him in layers of red tape and obligations so deep he didn’t know which way was out. The coffee pot had expectations of him—delicious ones, but still.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Part of him thought about ditching it all. He could find a CEO to replace him. They wouldn’t have his drive or programming skills, but he could find a solid leader with a strong commercial background who would make the shareholders and analysts happy.

Robert could carry on as a board member or as a strategic advisor. He could travel, see some of the orphanages and health clinics he’d funded, or just go sightseeing. Maybe he’d take a team and lead a project of his own—get back to the long nights and the simple pleasure of making a machine do something nobody thought it could.

He scratched his stomach. It would start small, he knew—a missed deadline; a news article; a faint catching of the gears. Then he’d be elbow deep in running the Company again. He finished his first cup of coffee and got another before sitting at his desk and putting on his reading glasses.

He checked his emails, forwarding some to Sandra, putting others in folders by topic or project until only those that required his intervention remained. He left those for later. A scan of the headlines that featured his name or his company’s showed the news had already leaked. Osmark Technology’s hush-hush Viridian project was dead. Robert sent an email to Sandra to track down the leaker and fire them, then call the usual contacts and let them know why. He made a point of always following through on his threats. If he didn’t, they’d stop being effective.

He pulled up the security log for the Viridian building and saw that the movers were 36% done with the common areas. Jeff Berkowitz, the Hardware Lead, was currently logged into the main server. Robert would ask him about that Monday, but the article had been heavy on design and light on technical details, and Jeff didn’t have the balls. The man was probably just making a last attempt to save the project, and Robert wished him well, even if nothing short of a miracle would do the trick.

Alan had come and gone already; he could be the leak. Robert considered it, then rejected it out of hand. Alan was a good kid, decent manager, and conscientious to a fault. He needed some technical training, so he didn’t say stupid things, like “saying goodbye” to the AIs. Robert thought of a few courses he knew of on Deep Learning and Neural Networks while he drained his second cup of coffee. Keep him busy for a few months, build his credibility, stop him from joining the competition. It fit together nicely. Tick tock.

He took his glasses off, put on shorts and running shoes, then went out the front door for his morning loop around the Devereux Slough. After that, emails and phone calls until lunch time. Round and round.