Vaporware

By Mel C. Thompson

Mel C. Thompson brings the struggle for power, technology, money, sex and meaning right home to Silicon Valley, to the very streets he himself has been walking for thirty years trying to find the very heart of the marketing machinery that runs the world. Lanny Carroway and his gaggle of fanboy venture capitalists are the supreme disruptors of every industry they enter. Ernie Fathoms is his statistical mastermind. And the parties they throw are massive. Everyone wants to be in the inner circle. The ones who get inside can see the secret gears of the machine that has us all running ourselves ragged, day and night, just to keep up. (Too bad the machine itself isn't real.) Welcome to Vaporware.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mel C. Thompson
• Release date: Mar 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215179451

Mel C. Thompson

Mel C. Thompson is a retired wage slave who survived by working through temp agencies and guard agencies. Unable to survive in the real world of full-time, permanent work, he migrated from building to building, going wherever his agencies sent him, doing any type of work he could feign competency in and staying as long as those fragile arrangements could last. He somehow managed to get a B.A in Philosophy from Cal-State Fullerton in spite of his learning disorders and health problems. Unable to sustain family life due to depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, lack of transportation and lack of income, he lives alone in low-income housing and wanders around California on buses and trains. He began writing at the age of 14 and continues till the current day. (He turns 64 in June of 2023). In his early years he wrote pathetic love poetry until, in his thirties, he was engulfed by cynicism and fell in with a group of largely antisocial poets who wrote about the underground life of drugs, sex, alcohol, poverty, prostitution, heresy, isolation and alienation. In his fortes he turned to prose and began to write religious fiction with an emphasis on the comedic aspect of theology and philosophy. He now writes short novels focusing on the attempt to find meaning in a economic world beset with money laundering, unethical marketing, contraband smuggling, human trafficking, patent trolling, corrupt contracting and every manner of spiritual and psychological desperation and degradation. When he is not writing, he wanders from hospital to medical clinic to surgical room attempting to sustain what little health he has left after a lifetime of complications resulting from birth defects and genetic problems. When he is able, he engages in such hobbies as reading, walking, yoga and meditation; and whenever there is any money left over from his healthcare-related quests, he goes to wine tastings and searches for foodie-related bargains. Before the pandemic, he spent many years gaming various travel-points systems and wrangled many free trips to Europe. He is divorced and has no children, no pets, no real estate, no stocks nor any other assets beyond the $550 in his savings account. His career peaked in the early 2000s when he did comedy gags for a radio station and had about 10,000 listeners per week. However, currently, he may have as few as five active readers on any given day. He no longer has the stamina to promote his work and only finds new readers through ran...

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VAPORWARE

Mel C. Thompson

Copyright © 2023

Mel C. Thompson Publishing

3559 Mount Diablo Boulevard, #112

Lafayette, CA 94549

[e-mail]

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Cover Photo Credits

The cover photo is a cropped version of the photo entitled Cupertino, United States, and was donated by the artist Kamesh Vedula for public use under some uncertain combination of Wikimedia Commons licensing and Unsplashed licensing. Both sites seem to indicate that the work is free to use, for commercial and non-commercial purposes so long as the artist is attributed and the photo is not itself sold as a complete artwork by itself or presented as a complete collection of photos meant to create a rival site to Unsplash. There is some controversy here as it initially appeared as a public domain work in Wikimedia Commons as uploaded from Unsplash, but then later Unsplash modified its licensing in ways not fully recognized by Wikimedia Commons. However, there seems to be consistent communication that the work can be used in ways similar to how it is used here.

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Table of Contents

The Difference Between Bloatware And Vaporware

Bring Your Daughter To Work Day

Inside The Office of Ernie Fathoms

The Hard Life of A Silicon Valley Psychic

Intentionally Unsustainable Business Models

An Entity With Predictive Powers

When Bloatware Meets Vaporware

The Party Machine

Bobby Says It’s Time To Move

Bringing Nothing New To A Saturated Market

Posses, Groupies And Entourages

The Wild Beast Comes Out

The Perpetually Turning Wheel of Unreal Products

A Chain of Resorts From Tahiti To The Bahamas

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The Difference Between Bloatware And Vaporware

Return to Table of Contents

Mickey Underwood was a bit surprised and a little annoyed to receive an invitation to the office of William Hinges. Of course such an invitation should have been received as a great compliment, but Mickey had been a little fish in the big pond of Silicon Valley for too long to nurse delusions of grandeur. Flattery is a treat only to those capable of believing it. When a great white shark seeks the company a typical cod fish, surely nothing good could come from the affair. All that being said, turning down big invitations by whales (and killer whales at that) had its own hazards, so protocol demanded that Mr. Underwood appear when asked and try to duck out of any exciting proposal that came his way.

Mickey Underwood got his BA in electronic engineering at the legendary state university at Bloomington, Indiana at a time when technical pursuits were considered a sign of manliness, stability and forthrightness. Electronics and computer programming were the domain of very serious family men, the sort who rarely had affairs and made it a policy to maintain a stoic distance from their emotionalistic wives and daughters. Such men viewed sex as a fact of life to be dealt with in the least dramatic way possible. If one held any great love of children, one discussed that sort of thing in hushed tones. All of this meant that the giddiness and mania of Silicon Valley could not have been foreseen. And thus when Mickey migrated to Sunnyvale, the place was sleepy, uneventful and certainly not full of business celebrities. From Mr. Underwood’s way of looking at things, What the hell were businessmen doing as celebrities anyway?

And so the boom of Silicon Valley caught him off-guard in two ways: firstly due to its aforementioned manic tendencies and secondly due to its penchant for creating great peril along with undeserved opportunity. Mr. Underwood was just seeking to make it to retirement with enough money to guarantee a certain amount of basic comfort and safety but not so much money as to draw unwanted attention. Silicon Valley was one of the world capitals of false accusations of racism, sexism, financial impropriety and sexual assault. Any falling from favor could find one under investigation, put on trial, sent to prison or otherwise sued and defamed to the point that life became unlivable. In short, there was no trusting anyone and no safety anywhere for any man. Therefore, any out-of-the-ordinary advance was to be viewed with deep suspicion. One had to be polite, yes, but skeptical to the core.

William Hinges liked to pose as a stylishly modest person. Therefore, amid the gleaming towers that surrounded a vast courtyard, there sat a small suite of offices resembling a one-story, three-bedroom adobe that one might see in Taos or Santa Fe. But there were some signs that told against this little pretense. For one thing, the trim was made of long strips of perfectly formed steel and the windows were made of glass blocks. The front double doors were made of heavy hardwood decorated with rust-colored bolt-heads that were each an inch across. And just near the ground, to the right, as one entered, one saw a small plaque that said, Severtson and Roland, Architechts. Since Severtson and Roland rarely took projects worth less than a billion dollars, the sheer vanity involved in paying millions extra to have them make a little show-office further irritated Mr. Underwood. Nevertheless, for this meeting, he would paint on the face of Bay Area thoughtfulness and metrosexual understatement.

As he entered, he recognized the receptionist, Alissa Roseman, a renowned climber who’d been a fixture in the Silicon Valley office scene since anyone could remember. It was no secret that she always got overpaid and had the nerve to demand stock options in spite of the fact that she knew nothing of technology and had a BA in Afro-Brazilian Studies. She made herself invaluable to CEOs by attending all of the parties they didn’t have time to attend in order to bring back intelligence on everyone. She remain unmarried by choice but loved sex, and she was not above using sex to get insider information for her bosses. Her great looks, even at 50, and her winsome and amiable sociability — these all combined to land her the best reception gig in world history. Hinges loved having her around and didn’t mind paying her a million dollars a year plus perks. (It must be noted that Hinges was faithful to his wife and so he and his receptionist did not carry on romantically.)

The receptionist smiled, winked and waved Mr. Underwood into Mr. Hinges office. Now, thought Mr. Underwood to himself, the skulduggery begins. And he reminded himself not to betray any disliking he had for Hinges and his type of people. He would act almost stupid, as though he were idiotically hopeful that Hinges might have something kindly or benevolent to communicate.

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Hey, Mickey, come on it. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. So, what’ll it be? Alissa’s running an open bar in the kitchen behind us. Hennessy? Gin? Dom Perignon? Pinot Noir? Grand Marnier?

I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m still planning to get back to work after this.

Okay, whatever. I haven’t worked sober in years. The drudgery of that must be nearly unendurable.

I get by okay.

But that’s the problem with you, isn’t it — just getting by. What kind of life is that — cutting corners, cost-cutting, austerity?

Well, I know it’s not your style but . . .

. . . but what?

Well, you can imagine my surprise.

Surprise at what?

It’s highly unusual. I mean, a software engineer of my middling rank; and you being the biggest fish around . . .

What? Are you trying to say you’re not used to being in the company of the rich and famous? And anyway, I’m not the biggest fish around. The biggest fish around, by far, is Lanny Carroway; and don’t you and him chum around as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world?

That’s different. That’s just an accident. We went to the same school together back when no one knew . . . what all this Silicon Valley stuff would be . . . back when he was just an ordinary guy.

But he’s the richest man in the world, not me.

No, but it’s not like that. I don’t work for him. I’m not pestering him for jobs or money. We don’t even talk about his work. Really, I never bring it up. We do stupid stuff together, like just watching the Superbowl, just like catching a Netflix movie; and we talk about childhood friends. He’s just sentimental.

I guess he must be sentimental in some way, given all the hangers-on he keeps around. The man never knew when to cut loose with the dead weight.

That’s his style, you know. He’s mostly casual. I try to stay totally out of his business life, even his personal life. We don’t even talk about problems. What he does in private — I’ve heard rumors, whispers, but really I don’t even want to know. We’re buddies. That’s it.

William Hinges called out to Alissa and said, Hey babe, bring me some hard-stuff on ice; and just some sparkling mineral water for our square guest today.

No problem, sweetie, came the reply.

Mickey straightened out the brown forelock that had broken away when his forehead had got a little sweaty. He adjusted his thin tie and reached down to make sure his shirt was still properly tucked in. William Hinges pushed back his designer frames and leaned back in his office chair as if he’d pushed a reset button inside himself. Alissa briskly whirled in with the drinks and gave Mr. Underwood a maternal pat on the shoulder as if to indicate that she was aware the guest was uneasy but that everything would work out fine anyway.

After taking a few swigs from his mineral water and wiping the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief, Mr. Underwood inquired, Hey, you and Alissa are a bit too casual and affectionate for this day and age. Can’t you get sued for that somehow?

William Hinges, shrugged a bit and gazed down at his slightly chubby stomach which was covered with an overpriced but unremarkable sweater and replied, "Sure. Anything could happen. But Alissa’s on our team. By that I mean she’s a real traitor to all the mass movements. She’s joined all of the Palo Alto women’s Facebook groups, the closed ones where they plan the hit jobs on rich and famous men. And she spies out everything for me. As it turns out, you and me are not in their crosshairs, me because I don’t mess around on my wife enough and because there’s too many witnesses and cameras on me — and you because frankly you just don’t make enough money. Alissa says the group’s attorneys are being brutal about it and don’t want the women bothering them with anyone who’s not making 2 mill a year or not in the news daily. So you and me — we don’t fit their profile just now. We’re kind of free to do as we like. I presume you’re not a conservative (and don’t tell me if you are because plausible deniability is everything) and so you won’t be contradicting anything they say in public. (Contradicting them in public is the only other way to get in trouble.) As for me, I have no convictions, so there’s nothing for me to argue