1999, March 20th

  William looked at the resumes of the interviewees who had come in the last few days. Josh, the first interviewee, was a sure-hire in his mind, but the others, he wasn't so impressed with. He had six interviewees he had his eyes on. They didn't exceed his expectations, but they were what he expected. He rubbed his head. Finding competent employees was so hard. The job market here was still going strong, so many of the more competent software engineers and other specialists were going to more established and popular companies like Microsoft. He didn't ask for unrealistic experience for his entry-level jobs. In fact, there was no experience required. The only requirement was to be able to answer his questions competently. And even then, out of 33 interviewees, only seven succeeded.

  He tossed the resumes aside. He texted Eve.

  William: Hire the other six. We should be able to hold the fort with these seven, even if just barely.

  A reply came from Eve a few minutes later.

  Eve: Got it.

  He sighed. This experience reinforced something he had been thinking about. He wanted to create his own private university. Simply because he wanted to get more talent working for him. If he created his own private university, he could get better talent. And it would be easier for research and development.

  But that wouldn't be possible for the first few years. He cracked his knuckles and got back to work. He had now been working on both VoIP and video streaming. For video streaming, he had been creating his own compression codec. The reason why he simply didn't recreate a future codec, like H.265 or H.264, was simply because it couldn't feasibly work on this era's hardware. It was simply too CPU-heavy. So he was creating a codec that would be the most efficient, most CPU-friendly, and the most scalable codec in the market. One simple advantage he had over everyone was that he knew how the future hardware would turn out. He could prepare for that.

  For now, he made it so that it could run at least a 240p resolution video, with an average framerate of around 15-24 fps. It would have a very simple motion prediction, as anything more advanced would kill the CPU.

  VoIP was easier for him, as he had dealt with it a lot in the past. By his estimation, the video codec would be complete in 3 months, and the VoIP codec would be finished in just a month. He sighed. It was time for work.

  1999, March 25th

  William woke up, eyes still barely opened, as he looked at his Nokia 3210 in resentment. He was just having a nice dream of himself and Eve on the moon. Why it would ruin such a beautiful dream was beyond him. He wanted to smash the Nokia, but he knew it wouldn't do anything anyway. It was far too durable. He sighed and got up. He didn't pick up the call and went to brush his teeth and wash his face. The interface showed that it was 9 am now. Still so early.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  He sat down on the bed, still shirtless, as he fiddled with the phone. It turned out that it was Eve calling. He sighed and called her back.

  "Hey, what is it?" He asked, still sleepy.

  William could hear Eve holding in her laughter, "You were sleeping?"

  "What do you think, dumbass? Get to the point."

  "Alright, alright, sleepyhead. So we just got some news."

  "Oh? What is it?"

  Eve paused for a second, "Microsoft just announced their Windows 2000. They're adding features that look suspiciously like ours."

  William shook his head, "That's fine. More competition just means more opportunity for growth. We didn't patent any of it anyway, so we can't do anything either way."

  "Right, right. So should we announce our own QuantumOS 1.5?" she asked for his opinion.

  He got up from the bed and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was some toast on the table. "I don't know. Do you think it's the right time? Don't be rushed by them. Go at our own pace."

  "Alright. How's your other projects going anyway?"

  "Great, actually. All of them are ahead of schedule. Well, except for the cloud service. The new employees seem to be struggling a tiny bit."

  "Just a tiny bit?" Eve seemed skeptical.

  "Well, maybe a bit more than a tiny bit." William bit into the toast. "They understand the system, but implementing it is turning out to be a problem for them."

  "Do you need to step in?"

  "Not yet. They'll figure it out. If they can't handle this level of challenge, they won't survive here anyway." He took another bite. "How's the timeline on QuantumPay looking?"

  "We're on track for the April 3rd launch. Beta testing just wrapped up, and we've locked down Visa and Mastercard. American Express is still negotiating terms, but it's going well."

  "And the merchant integration?"

  "Twenty retailers signed up for launch day. Amazon, eBay, and a few smaller e-commerce sites. We'll expand from there."

  William nodded. He made himself a cup of coffee. "You've been busy."

  "So have you," her voice replied.

  "Yeah. We can start doing internal testing next week?"

  "For VoIP?"

  "Yep. It won't be pretty, but it'll work. I'll need three more weeks for it to look good and to optimize it."

  "That's great." He heard her sip a coffee.

  He was still waiting for his. "I have a new idea for our hiring strategy."

  "Oh no."

  "The fuck?"

  "Every time you say you have a new idea, it's either brilliant or insane. Most of the time, both."

  "This one is brilliant. We should start a partnership with universities. We can offer internships, sponsor research projects, and maybe even fund scholarships. We get first access to graduating talent before they hit the open market." He wasn't going to talk about his idea of creating their own universities yet. It was for the future.

  "That's... actually smart. Why didn't we think of this earlier?"

  "Because we've been too busy growing. But now we're stable enough to think longer-term and start scaling. We target top CS programs like MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon and build relationships with professors by sponsoring capstone projects. Students who do well get job offers."

  "That would solve our hiring problem."

  "Exactly. And it's cheaper than competing with Microsoft for experienced engineers. We train them our way from the start."

  "I'll draft a proposal. We can start outreach next month."

  "Good." William took a sip of his coffee and leaned back on the kitchen counter. "Anything else?"

  "Uhh, nope. That's it."

  "Good, good. I'm gonna go work now."

  "Yeah, me too."

  "Hmm." He hung up and finished his coffee. He felt his mind getting faster. He cracked his knuckles and walked upstairs. He sat down on the chair and started working. Even as his fingers flew across the keyboard, his mind wandered back to the dream. The moon... He thought to himself. I wonder how it feels to walk around in zero gravity. Must be fun. He grinned a bit.