A Termite & A Crane

By the fall of 1999, just under half of the nascent World Wide Web was under the control of consumer technology giant Temujin Systems. Notoriously secretive, only those lucky enough to call themselves employees had any idea how the company operated. Fewer than that knew the late founder's ultimate goal with dictating the transition from an analog world, what remaining influence the company did not have and was poised to take.

But at the end of the millennium, without warning, Temujin shut down. No employee ever came forward to explain what led to their sudden closure, how the most important name at the most significant stage of the human adventure could be snuffed out in a single day.

Until two of them needed jobs.

In the Summer of 2001, interviewing at separate companies, former Temujin data clerks Jannetty and Yo are each asked the same, routine question: Describe a challenging day from a prior role. For this, they have the same answer.

Their challenging day was the final day. When Temujin CEO Chris Falconer personally ordered them to the abandoned sublevels beneath their high-rise headquarters to retrieve an unidentified employee accused of conspiring against the company-a man secretly considered by some among the workforce to be their Net-messiah, poised to reshape the Internet as it barely exists.

For Jannetty and Yo, the most unappealing part of the assignment wasn't the prospect of operating the building's one functioning elevator, visiting with some of the company's least-visited people, or determining the veracity of an apparent plan for the mass exodus of humanity dating back to the genesis of cyberspace.

It was just the idea of working with each other.