The Fake Genius (2)
“I’d be in trouble if it got out that I was the one who told you this...”
He looked as though he was worried even the slightest backlash might come his way. He wanted to bring Rolf down, but he didn’t want to get on Rolf’s bad side in the process.
“No one will ever know we met. Just like everyone else I’ve spoken to.”
Kumar drank several glasses in silence.
It seemed like he had something else he wanted to say, but I pretended not to notice and waited.
Sure enough, he opened his mouth on his own.
“I had a friend in MIT who was named Jason Kim.”
At last, the name I’d been waiting for came up.
Keeping my thoughts hidden, I asked, “Jason Kim? Was he Korean?”
“Yes. His Korean name was Kim something...”
Jason Kim, of course it had to be “Kim something.” To be exact, it was Kim Jae-hyeon.
“He said he’d come to the States when he was young, but he was a very timid guy. You know the type—kind of dark, awkward in front of people, and not very smooth when he spoke.”
“I know the type.”
When people hear “MIT engineering student,” they tend to picture a nerd, but that really depended on the person. Some were handsome and socially skilled; others just sat in their rooms and poked at computers all day.
And naturally, the people who made a name for themselves by founding startups were overwhelmingly the former. Rolf Buchi was exactly that kind of case.
Kumar said it like he was reminiscing.
“The first time I saw him, he looked ordinary, maybe even a little slow. But every so often he’d come out with something that hit right at the core. During his first semester he was barely scraping by, but by the time we graduated, he was good enough that the department chair offered him a teaching assistant position.”
There are people in this world who’re called geniuses as children and then become ordinary as adults, and there are others who seem like nobodies when they’re young but blossom into geniuses later in life.
They don’t understand everything at once, but they understand each thing thoroughly, building knowledge piece by piece until the moment they finally burst.
A late bloomer, in other words.
“We kept in touch now and then after graduation. We were fairly close, in our way. Then one day he called me and said he’d moved to Oakland recently and wanted to meet up.”
“So you met him?”
“Yes. We met in San Francisco. He’d gotten married in the meantime, too. That surprised me a bit. Judging by his personality, I’d have thought he’d never even hold a woman’s hand in his life. Anyway, he asked me to introduce him to Rolf Buchi.”
“Why?”
“He said he wanted to build a program and start a company, and he wanted Rolf’s opinion on whether it had any business value. He knew I was in business with Rolf, so he asked me to make the connection. Good programmers are everywhere, really. The important question is whether the thing can actually be turned into a business. Honestly, I’m not sure about the quality of the code, but Rolf could smell that kind of thing a mile away.”
He made it sound like nothing, but it was a remarkable talent. How many developers wasted years building apps nobody wanted?
That was how they succeeded.
“So you introduced them?”
“Yes.”
I asked, feigning surprise, “From everything you’ve said so far, it sounds like you don’t think very highly of Rolf. Why would you introduce them?”
Kumar gave a bitter smile.
“Because I didn’t think that way back then.”
“Had you met him, you’d understand. Rolf has a strange kind of charm. He draws people in.”
In Silicon Valley, there were plenty of people Rolf’s age who’d achieved even greater success.
Scott Brown, co-founder of Snaptok, and Bobby Coney. Brian Gavin of AirBnB, Joe Chaser, and so on.
And yet Rolf Buchi came to be seen as the archetypal Silicon Valley founder because of his handsome face and polished tongue.
He appeared on all kinds of broadcasts and lecture stages, showing off his silver-tongued wit, and he was constantly rumored to be involved with famous Hollywood actresses. His current girlfriend was Kiara Chesky, a Victoria’s Secret model.
On top of that, he kept active contact with the public through Tweeter.
Because of that, there were people who dismissed his fame as bubble and hype, but those voices went quiet after Cooloud succeeded.
“Are you saying Rolf copied his program?”
Kumar shook his head.
“I don’t know. I never saw the program Jason made. I only heard it was something to do with cloud computing and big data, but that narrows it down very little. Still, if I had to guess, I’d say there was a good chance Rolf copied parts of the system or the code.”
Even while he suspected Rolf, he didn’t seem able to imagine that he’d stolen the entire program outright.
That alone was beyond common sense.
“If you think he copied it, why not just ask Jason?”
Kumar shook his head with a bitter expression.
“He died in a car accident.”
“I see...”
Of course I already knew, but I asked anyway.
“Not even six months after Jason died, Rolf Buchi wrapped up the business he’d been running and founded Cooloud.”
The dead say nothing. That made it easy to go around claiming someone else’s work as your own.
I asked the most important question.
“Do you know anything about Jason Kim’s wife?”
He had a wife and children. But none of that had made it into the press. If I wanted the truth, I needed information about her.
Kumar looked puzzled. “Why are you asking about that?”
“I’d like to meet her and hear what she has to say. If Rolf really did steal or appropriate Jason Kim’s program, then that’s a crime, isn’t it? Shouldn’t people know about it?”
Kumar hesitated.
I already knew he’d tell me, so I waited calmly. From his perspective, this was a chance to have someone else do the dirty work.
If it went well, great. If it didn’t, he had nothing to lose.
As expected, he spoke.
“I heard they met at an IHOP in Oakland. Her name is Julia Witherspoon. As far as I know, she kept her surname even after getting married. She’s probably still working there unless something changed.”
“I see.”
Having obtained the information I needed, I smiled to myself.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Back at the hotel, I told David everything I’d heard from Ranjin Kumar.
“So Rolf Buchi copied a program made by someone named Jason Kim and used it to start his company?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it. After Jason Kim, who had been planning to found the company with him, died, Rolf quickly wound up his existing business and launched Cooloud. You really think that was a coincidence?”
“Even so, that doesn’t prove he copied anything. If it was only an idea theft, that’s not likely to be a serious issue.”
In the IT industry, accusations and disputes like that were common.
Even Mike Goldenberg, the founder of Facenote, had been dragged into multiple lawsuits over idea theft and equity disputes with his partners.
“Doesn’t it change things if he stole something made by a dead man?”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Syd said the same thing, and now Ranjin Kumar did too. He said it was definitely copied. If the person who studied with Jason and worked with him thinks so, doesn’t that mean something?”
In truth, he hadn’t said anything that strongly. He’d only expressed suspicion. But if I said that was what I heard, then that was what I heard.
I exaggerated everything Kumar had said and invented the rest. That was why I’d gone to meet him alone.
“He said he saw the program Jason made, and it was exactly the same as the early version of Mimir. That means Rolf stole his dead friend’s program. Since the dead can’t speak, nobody’s been able to say a word about it until now.”
David said carefully, “If that’s true, then he can be held accountable. But do you have any evidence or records to prove it?”
“Jason Kim must have had a computer. If we dig through that, we’ll find materials related to it.”
“Where is that computer now?”
“His wife would have it.”
The reason I was so certain was that I already knew the truth would come out later. So the records had to be somewhere.
“I also found out where to meet her. Let’s go see her first.”
IHOP is a famous American pancake-house chain, and there was only one branch in Oakland.
If she was still working there, I’d be able to meet her right away. Even if not, I could still find out something useful about her.
David exhaled as if he were giving up on the whole thing. “This feels like playing detective.”
I smiled. “Isn’t it fun?”
He looked like he couldn’t quite bring himself to disagree.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
At the Oakland IHOP, Julia Witherspoon had worked as a server since graduating high school. She was cute, kind, and very popular with customers, so the place was always crowded with young men.
Among them was an East Asian man in his mid-twenties. He came at the same time every day, ordered the same thing every time, and spent the meal working on something with his laptop.
“Welcome.”
“Oh, y-yes.”
He seemed so shy that he couldn’t even meet her eyes properly. He just kept staring at the laptop screen.
What is he doing?
Curious, Julia tried to peek at the screen, but accidentally spilled coffee all over the laptop.
“Ah!”
“Oh no! What do we do?”
She hurriedly wiped the coffee off, but the laptop wouldn’t turn on again.
Julia bowed deeply. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for the damage.”
The man waved a hand. “I-it’s okay. I was planning to replace it anyway since it was old.”
“Was there anything important saved on it?”
At her question, the man smiled. “Don’t worry. In the twenty-first century, all the important data lives in the cloud.”
“Huh?”
What’s a cloud?
As Julia kept apologizing, he asked her cautiously, “I-in that case, would you maybe like to see a movie with me? There was one I’d wanted to watch for a while, but it felt kind of lonely to go by myself. Ah, no, I don’t mind going alone, either, but I think it’d be more fun if we went together...”
There was something oddly endearing about how at a loss he seemed for what to do.
“Okay. Then let me buy the tickets as my way of apologizing.”
“N-no! I’ll pay.”
And that was how the two of them had their first date.
His name was Jason Kim. His Korean name was Kim Jae-hyeon. He’d come to America with his father when he was young, but his father had recently passed away.
“Are you a writer?”
“Huh?”
“You’re always doing something on your laptop, so I thought maybe you wrote.”
“Ah! I’m a developer.”
“What does a developer do?”
“We build programs and applications for computers and smartphones.”
He was, in fact, a prodigy from MIT.
Julia was stunned.
“MIT? Isn’t that where only geniuses go?”
Jason gave an awkward smile.
“That’s true, but I actually got in by the skin of my teeth. I barely graduated, too. I’m still learning things one at a time.”