Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery by Maria Schneider Page A

few key phrases into his own phone.  Could he possibly have obtained the code from the basics being worked at Borgot?
    Kovid sighed. “Since Pig Latin is just a string of characters respelled, it was easy to program it to translate back and forth for one of our early test beds.  It was a joke really.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I think Joe Black did the testing on it, and it did make for a proof of concept, but only at the basic level.  Real languages are much more robust.”
    “But it’s actually part of the product?”
    He frowned and shook his head. “That code was only in there for a short time. It’s not in the current version of code or part of this code review. It was never intended for the end product.”
    He tapped on the keyboard, and then frowned. “Oh, wait. The Pig Latin code is still in there. That’s odd. I know I removed it from the build.”
    I had no idea why it might have reappeared, but it did explain how Joe’s phone had come to spout Pig Latin.
    “Whose voice did you use?” I asked.
    “Early days?  Mine, Roscoe’s, whoever was around.  When we coded it, marketing hadn’t yet hired the actor to do all the final voice impressions for the voice assistant.”
    The voice on the phone I’d taken home had clearly been Joe’s nasal tenor.  “Did Joe help with the voices?” Everyone in the room was staring at me, including the lawyers, Monique and Cary.
    “You’re not suggesting,” Monique swallowed, “we include Joe on the patent, are you?  I mean, I know he’s dead and we all feel...sorry for him and all that, but just because he died...”
    I blinked.  She had mistaken my sleuthing for some kind of grand memorial intent.  I wasn’t that generous and Joe didn’t deserve it in any case. “Well, no, not exactly,” I said. “Using Pig Latin on a phone has zero practical use.”  I lied to cover up my curiosity. “I was just trying to understand the concept.”
    Howard, ever the eager assistant, sat up straight. “We could use Pig Latin to help explain the concept in the patent. Sometimes a simple diagram does wonders for getting expedited approval!”
    Cary gave a hearty chuckle.  “Excellent! I hired Joe. It was my idea to use his Pig Latin skills to lay the groundwork for the translation. I should definitely be on that patent.”  He slid a covert glance towards Lawrence, but Lawrence was staring at me.  As soon as he noticed me notice him, he dropped his eyes to his phone again, ignoring Cary.
    So now I knew who had hired Joe or at least the idiot willing to take the credit. Or blame.  Or whatever the weasel was trying to do.  “Did Joe have any other language skills?” I asked innocently.  “Seems like Pig Latin could be coded without needing a specialist. It doesn’t seem like such a simple exchange of letters would be patentable.”
    “Definitely not,” Lawrence declared. “Pig Latin is completely obvious and trivial.”
    Howard nodded his agreement.
    Cary spared a glare for me. My comment had not cost him a patent, but he probably didn’t see it that way. I sighed. What kind of boss tried to use a dead guy to get on a patent, anyway?
    The arguing continued. Being named on a patent did mean a bonus, but no one sunk quite as low as Cary to secure his spot of fame. From what I could tell, even Monique planned to be on the patent if possible.  I wasn’t sure how her boyfriend could pull that off even if he was the head lawyer at Borgot. To be on a patent, you had to be an inventor, not just the boss, the marketing specialist or some guy who happened to know Pig Latin.  Roscoe and Kovid were easy names; they had both done coding.
    The meeting might have ended then, but Cary, still desperate, took a new tack. “We finally have our official name for the phone assistant.”
    We did? The test phones still responded to “Borgot assistant,” the phrase I’d always used. Of course, the executives had made a big deal out of the naming of the assistant for