When Roni asked Arsyen about prioritzation, Arsyen asked, "Is this on the roadmap?"

When Sven suggested adding images of attractive women to the car dashboard, Arsyen rubbed his chin.

"Does this align with our strategy?"

When all three looked to him for an opinion in how best to implement symmetry enhancement, Arsyen stood and put his hands on his hips.

"Does this align with the strategy on our roadmap?"

No one seemed to notice anything was amiss. If anything, it seemed like product managers just asked questions that other people had to answer.

[...] Although Gregor volunteered at a community garden, gave millions of each year to humanitarian crisis organizations, and voted only for socialists, he did like to cause a bit of microsuffering now and then. He felt it kept the engineers on their toes.

If the garish exterior of Gregor's palace had thrown Niels' preconceptions, the interior only reaffirmed them. Once inside, Niels could see nothing in the house beyond white walls and a single overhead light in each room. The few windows in existence were so high up from the floor that they reminded Niels of a cathedral ... or a prison. There was no artwork, no photographs, no sign of a woman, pet, plant, or any possible sign of life.

"You're not one for decorating, are you?" said Niels, turning to Gregor with a smile designed to communicate friendliness.

"I like simplicity," Gregor said. "I don't really like ... things." The word lingered in the air between them.

"Except for an enormous house," Niels smirked.

He grabbed the bottle of wine from the wooden table and passed it to Niels, who let out a low whistle of appreciation. It was a Chateau Margaux -- the holy grail of red wine. Niels couldn't help but grin. He was going to crush his enemy at the negotiating table while trying one of the world's most highly regarded wines.

Niels believed that learning to appreciate wine was an apprenticeship akin to golf -- at first difficult to acquire, but then indispensable for business and generally agreeable as a pastime. And he had, in fact, come to love the taste of it. Chateau Margaux was a real bragging right, and he had never held its deep ruby on his tongue.

"[...] I also asked that they teach him Spanish."

"Spanish?"

"In case we ever want to bring him back. We really need a more diverse workforce."

Bobby was always one step ahead.

"So if we divert them to Poodlekek, that town in the Philippines dies," Bobby said.

"Well, it's more like that town doesn't get computers for its schools."

"That town dies," Bobby said. "So, the question is: Is an Anahata engineer's life worth more than thousands of Filipinos?"

"Gregor, didn't we discuss you building an army just a few weeks ago?"

"It will take some time," Gregor said. "And as I understood it, it was an army of engineering evangelists you were asking for, not an army of real soldiers."

"Clearly our army should be multipurpose," Bobby said. [...]

Finally, in the darkest hours of the morning, taurine and glucose dripping from their pores, they reached the last, dramatic step. The team typed in the final line of code. The cursor blinked back at them, pulsing like an explosive light. They turned to Gregor, who gave them the nod. The team lead put his index finger atop a single "enter" key, closed his eyes, and on the count of three, pushed.