Free Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne

coat. “You up to anything fun this weekend?” she asks.
    I will be refining Kapitoil to operate at full efficiency, but I cannot tell her that. I also do not want to lie 100%, so I say, “I will be laboring on some projects.”
    She crashes her hand against her head as if we are in the military. “At ease, then.”
    Over the weekend I finesse Kapitoil. I am focused, but several times on Saturday night I wonder what Rebecca is doing, e.g., is she at an event, is she with friends, or is she alone like I am.
     
     
finesse = labor on for enhancement
put one’s nose to the grindstone = labor intensively

 
     
    JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: OCTOBER 25
     
    On Monday morning Kapitoil continues generating hourly profits. By noon, out of a possible 2.1% profit based on how much the oil futures have vacillated per hour, we have made a 1.7% profit, which is not full efficiency but is still robust.
    Mr. Ray emails me:
    Meet me in the conference room on 89 at 1:30.
     
    Possibly he has reconsidered that Kapitoil might still be too risky. There are rumors that layoffs will soon occur, and maybe they do not have the money to continue high-risk programs like mine.
    Or possibly they do not even have the money to retain me as an employee.
    I omit lunch because my stomach is turbulent, as it frequently becomes when I am anxious, and do not run Kapitoil at noon, because I do not want it to lose money suddenly and give Mr. Ray more reason to kill it.
    At 1:30 I knock on the door of the conference room. Mr. Ray says “Come in” from inside, and I open the door.
    He is sitting, and at the head of the table is an older man. He has tan skin and black and white hair, and his nose slightly curves down like a vertical asymptote. His suit is gray and blue and his tie is dark red like blood that has dried.
    It is Mr. Schrub.
    “Karim,” he says. He stands and extends to a few inches taller than I am. “Glad to meet you.”
    I am afraid to look into his eyes as we shake hands, so I look at his red tie. “It is my honor to meet you, Mr. Schrub.”
    Mr. Schrub puts out his arm to signal his permission to sit down opposite Mr. Ray.
    “George tells me,” he says, “that you can see the future.”
    I look at Mr. Ray for help, but he is not looking back at me. “The program has been successful so far at predicting pricing variance,” I say.
    “What’s the 1,000-mile view on this thing?”
    “I am unfamiliar with that term,” I say.
    “What are its long-term prospects?” he says.
    “It is employing a market signal from news reports, and it should function for the duration of that signal’s strength,” I say, and I am no longer nervous because I am in the intersected world of programming and finance. “But if the signal converts a great amount, I will have to write a 100% new program, and that new program might not function as efficiently.” Because I am uncertain if he is familiar with these terms, I translate them to a sports analog: “It is parallel to predicting the strategy of a racquetball opponent. If you compete against him for a long time, you can predict his strategies. But if you receive a new opponent, you have to adopt new tactics because your old predictions will be obsolete.”
    He smiles, possibly because he does understand the jargon terms and does not require the racquetball analog. “Is there a chance our competitors could catch on to what we’re doing?”
    “If we continue making anonymous desk transactions through offshore holdings and keep them frequent but minimal, then no one will know it is Schrub, and therefore our market entry will not cause fluctuations in the market,” I say. “We can still make strong profits, as long as we practice restraint.”
    Mr. Schrub taps his fingers on the desk. It makes a loud sound in the large room. Then he says, “I’ll level with you, Karim. We took a big hit in the fourth quarter. We bet the lion’s share of our capital that the bubble would finally burst, but it