Here it is.
This is your future.
One of your Pied Piper boxes would go right here in this rack.
okay-
Okay.
Let me show you the next location in which we would install one of your boxes.
Richard, what the fuck are we doing here?
I don't like it any more than you do.
I told Jack we'd come check this place out and then we'd have a discussion.
I can't believe you suggested the idea of building a fucking appliance.
I didn't, okay?
I pitched it as an example of what not to do and the fucking sales guys ran with it.
I didn't want to go to enterprise.
You were the ones who said it would be fine.
- No, we didn't say that. - You said it all the time.
That's not what we said. That is not...
Here it is. This is where another one of your Pied Piper boxes would go.
Okay. Good.
Okay. Let me show you the next location in which we would install...
Actually, you know what?
Sorry. No offense, but once you see one space in a rack,
you've kind of seen them all.
That's what I used to think until I saw them all.
Would you like to see your desks?
- Our desks? - What?
This is where we would install a Pied Piper engineer.
Sorry. Why, exactly, would we need to be here?
Your sales representative promised 24-hour-a-day, on-site maintenance,
at least for the first year.
So, one of us would have to be down here for a year?
Even at night?
There's really no difference between day and night down here,
so it makes things easy.
Okay, well, we should probably get going. Now.
- Almost right now. - Yeah, right now even.
Okay. Uh, there are 16 stairwells.
Which one would you like to see first?
Uh, just whatever's as fast as possible.
Your favorite one.
Hmm.
Okay.
Oh!
You see these fucking mole people?
Hey, where did John go?
Oh, shit. Did he go in a room?
No. Uh, probably around here.
Hey. John?
- John? - Oh, uh... John?
- John! - Oh, shit.
John!
- Where is he? - John!
John!
We can't take my algorithm and put it in a box and bury it at Maleant.
- We just can't. - I think this thing is dead.
Jack, look, I have no doubt
that your guys can sell a box
and an appliance may be a good short-term play,
but in the long term, we need to be building
-our full-time platform. - Gloria!
Could you call the fish guy and see what kind of warranty
we have on these things? I think one of them is dead.
Jack, please.
You said that when we got back from Maleant, we would discuss this.
Okay, let's discuss it.
Take a look at the Conjoined Triangles of Success.
Now, what do those two triangles make together?
- A square? - A box. They make a box.
- You can't make that shit up. - But you literally did make it up.
Yes, I did. And now they teach it at business schools.
But I was only referring to the serendipity of the coincidence.
Look, if we build you the box,
will you promise to let us build the platform when it's done?
We'll think about then then.
Now we need to worry about now.
Build me a box now.
How'd it go?
Uh, not well.
All right, then.
What do you... What do you mean? What are you doing?
Well, first, I'm changing my Linkedln status
to "Looking for work."
That box is artless commerce. I won't be a party to it.
So, you're just gonna quit?
Just like that? How can you do that?
By saying the words "I" and "quit" in conjunction together, i.e., "I quit."
Well, there's actually some paperwork involved.
Hey, can I have that USB missile launcher?
I'll just fish it out of the trash later.
Gilfoyle, come on.
Give me some time to figure a way out of this, 'cause if you quit now,
you're gonna lose all your shares.
And what if Barker changes his mind and lets us build the platform?
And the odds of that are?
Already? Recruiters move fast these days.
This is Gilfoyle. Dazzle me.
More recruiter swag?
You got an Oculus?
- Yup. - That's a hoverboard?
How many meetings are you taking?
None. That's the irony.
The more meetings I turn down, the more these recruiters send me.
- What are you doing? - Eating popcorn.
- That's my popcorn. - You have seven tubs of it.
You could be the mayor of Popcornopolis.
Don't eat the caramel. You can have the cheese or the plain.
- You're leaving me with the cheddar? - That's right. Dick.
Hey, can I borrow this? Just for a little bit?
No. Whoa, whoa, hold on.
You're wearing a gold chain?
Oh, right. Yeah, I've had it for a while.
Just kind of throw it on every now and then.
None of that is true.
- I definitely would've noticed. - Okay, listen.
I've been working hard. I'm making money for the first time.
I was like... Buy myself something nice, you know?
But instead of that, you bought a chain?
You're just jealous I have a salary, quitter.
And you are too legit to quit, eh, MC Hamas?
- Fuck off. - Later, Chain the Virgin.
Well, Gilfoyle, looks like your recruiters
are gonna have to take back their gift baskets,
because I just got off the phone with Monica
and she's getting me in to see Laurie this morning
so I can tell her what's going on.
But you're going over your CEO's head?
That is a serious breach of protocol.
I mean, if Jack finds out, he'll be furious.
Hey, when you push a man so far,
he goes out and buys a gun and shoots everyone in a bank.
Whoa.
No, l wouldn’t, l wouldn’t. I'm not... I'm not going to.
Just... The point is, what other option do I have, anyway?
What other option do you have, Richard?
Can I speak with you alone, please?
Hmm?
Are you angry with me, Richard?
Have I done something to offend you?
No. What are you talking about?
You know, when you and the boys picked up and went to the new offices,
and didn't invite me along,
- I didn't say anything. - Yeah, because you don't work at Pied Piper.
And you haven't let me forget that for even one moment, have you, Richard?
I'm having trouble tracking this.
I don't know what you're mad about.
You publicly proclaimed, "I have to go over Barker's head
"because what other option do I have?"
What other option do you have, Richard?
- Uh... -'Cause there is another option,
and he's standing here, looking you in the face,
and you're staring back like he don't even exist.
Just to be as clear as I possibly can be here,
are you trying to tell me that you want to talk to Barker?
No, Richard, I don't want to talk to Barker.
- I want you to want me to talk to Barker. - You know,
at this point, if it'll make you feel better, sure, you can go talk to Barker.
See? Was that so hard?
Actually, yes, that was painfully difficult.
Yeah, she's definitely dead.
I'm sorry for your loss. Gloria!
Gloria!
Would you, uh, take this daughter of Neptune back from whence she came?
The toilet, dear. That's okay.
What can I do for you, Mr. Bachman?
Ah, yes, to the matter at hand.
I spoke with Richard about the box project,
and, well, here are some of my thoughts in no particular order.
- Why a box? - What information do I not already have?
I'm sorry?
I said, "What information do I not already have?"
I already have a five-year run rate plus a full market forecast for my appliance.
I have the same for Richard's platform.
I've heard all of his engineering team's complaints.
So, before you waste time
with some freeform jazz odyssey of masturbatory bullshit,
just tell me what concrete information you have for me
that I do not already possess!
Richard.
The way I see it, you've got about two options.
One, you build yourself the box.
Two, you get Laurie Bream on the phone ASAP.
All right, I'll see you back at the house.
Uh, okay.
Uh, Hiroki-san.
Um, what is that one?
It is a question mark made of human hair,
harvested, apparently, from dead people in India.
It's a pun. it signifies that at Raviga, we ask the big, hairy questions.
Right. Speaking of questions,
what should we do about Jack?
Well, I concur with your assessment
that a backup appliance for data centers seems
an uninspired application of your technology.
I will contact him and we'll have a frank discussion about this.
Great. I really appreciate you hearing me out on this.
And it goes without saying, I was never here.
Oh.
What?
You are here. Now.
What Richard means is he would prefer
if you didn't tell Jack that he came here to talk to you about this.
Yes, because the other interpretation makes no sense.
Jack, Laurie Bream on line one.
Guys. Guys, it's happening. It's happening.
Hello.
Okay. Drop the hammer, Laurie Bream.
What are you doing? He's going to see you looking.
I can't see 'cause of these fucking monitors.
- Whose fucking fault is that, okay? -It's not my fucking fault.
Something's happening.
What?
What's happening? What's happening?
Oh, man. Barker's pissed.
How pissed? Scale of one to 10.
- Like, a seven. - Fuck.
No,no,no,no,no. Like, a nine, nine and a half.
Fuck! I'm missing everything.
I'm going to go to the kitchen.
He doesn't know. I could be hungry.
It's over. It's over.
I missed the whole fucking thing because of these fucking monitors.
Richard? Jack would like to see you in his office.
Oh, okay.
If you'll excuse me, gentlemen,
I'm gonna go ask Action Jack how Laurie's dick tastes.
- Don't... No. - Yeah.
You wanted to see me, chief?
Sure, come on in, Richard. Grab a seat.
Sure.
Oh.
Yeah. Okay.
So, guess who I just got off the phone with.
Uh. I have no idea. Who?
- Laurie Bream. - Laurie Bream. From Raviga?
Exactly. She was pretty adamant
that the whole box project here at Pied Piper was
woefully misguided.
Whoa, strong words. Wow.
In fact, it was her opinion that we should immediately abandon the box
in favor of the consumer platform version of Pied Piper
which I believe you and your guys were bucking for.
I don't know about "bucking,"
but, yeah. Yeah, well, hey, look,
- Laurie Bream is the investor. - Yeah.
She is the investor.
Anyway, she wanted a comprehensive, go-to-market strategy
for the platform version within 48 hours.
Wow. Well, what Laurie wants, Laurie gets.
So, yeah. We should probably get started on that.
No, we shouldn't, Richard.
We're not building the platform.
We're building a box.
Okay, but...
Didn't Laurie say that she wanted the platform?
Yes, she said that, and then I said
that if Pied Piper was going to build a platform,
she would have to fire me.
What did she say?
She said she was not interested in doing that at this time.
And did she say anything after that?
We're building the box, Richard.
Twelve weeks from today, we're going to present her a prototype of that box.
So, let's get it done.
Okay.
Yup.
One more thing, Richard.
If you're going to shoot the king,
you better be goddamn sure you kill him.
You understand what that means?
Yeah-a r.
Did you just say "Yar"?
No.
Look at us. Two rogues on the King's Highway.
Let the rats run in their maze.
We chose this. This is our destiny.
Freedom. Isn't that right, Gilfoyle?
- Did you say something? - Of course.
If it's more popcorn, tell them we're at capacity.
It's a guy from Men in Black.
- Bertram Gilfoyle? - Yeah.
I'm here on behalf of Twen-X recruiting,
- I'm supposed to give you this. - Pappy Van Winkle.
Now we're talking. I'll take it.
They told me not to give it to you until after the meeting.
I respect your skills.
Let me get my jacket.
She was supposed to talk Barker out of making the box.
What the fuck happened?
- Richard. - What?
I was on the call, okay? She tried, he said no.
- Well, then she should fire him. - She can't fire him.
Why not? She fired me.
Exactly. She can't fire him because she fired you.
Firing a young CEO and installing a much more experienced one
looks like leadership.
Firing two CEOs in a month looks like chaos.
Richard, look, I'm sorry, but I think the box is here to stay.
Okay? Laurie's gonna have to pretend to be in favor of it.
She'll probably issue press releases
talking about how it's the best application of your visionary technology.
Is there nothing that we can say to Laurie to change her mind?
If I could control Laurie,
do you really think I'd be looking out my office door at that monstrosity?
Jeez, Monica, he's not that bad.
I mean, he's a little ugly, I guess.
Oh, the question mark. Sorry.
Mr. Gilfoyle. We're ready for you.
The guys cannot wait to see you again.
Again?
- Gilfoyle. - What the fuck?
Good to see you again, buddy. Why don't you have a seat?
You stole half of our algorithm.
You think you can bring me in here and pay me to give you the rest?
No. We want you because you're a full-stack engineer.
We already paid someone else for the missing piece of Middle-Out.
- Bullshit. - Do you know Naveen and Eric,
who, until very recently, headed up engineering at Nucleus?
- Hey, man. - What's up?
- Nope. - Well, I'm sure you at least recognize
the code they brought us.
That's exactly how they had it.
Okay. So, EndFrame has our entire prediction loop,
down to the last fucking semicolon.
So, Nucleus stole half our IP, and EndFrame stole the other half.
And now they've knitted them together.
So, while we are busy building Barker's box,
EndFrame is beating us to market with a platform.
So, basically, we are a fucking mediocre appliance company.
At least we'll make a little money doing it.
Oh, great.
So, you can go back to the car wash and buy some more chains,
huh, Pakistani Mr. T?
Fuck you.
Wait. Are you not wearing it?
You're not. Did you take it off because I was fucking with you?
- No. it was itchy on my neck, so... - Bullshit.
That was a bad decision.
You flinched. Now the pain will never end.
I'm sorry to say it, but Gilfoyle's right.
You're making it worse. Sorry, Django.
Django?
Unchained.
Great. Now even fucking Jared is busting my balls.
I am. I'm... I'm busting your balls.
You know what? If you're gonna give me shit for it anyway, I'm just going to wear it.
Okay, Jared. Congratulations, by the way,
but we have our own balls to worry about, all right?
Uh, look, how are we going to save the platform?
What choice do we have? Barker is the CEO.
We have to do what he says.
Or do we?
I don't know. I don't want to lie down for this, okay?
I don't want to just give up so easily.
Richard, unfortunately, in this case, I think we have to roll over and take it.
Or do we?
- Erlich, you have something to say? - Richard,
when George Washington founded a little startup
we've come to know as these United States of America,
and he was tired of getting shit from his CEO, the King of England,
did he just roll over and take it from behind?
No. He called on his ride-or-die homeboys,
Tommy Jefferson, Benny Franklin,
and Alex Hamilton, who was half-black, so that's Dinesh.
I'm not half-black.
He said, "Avast, ye fellow badasses,
"let's build this country the way we motherfucking want to."
And so, Richard, if we want to build the platform,
all we need to do is
build the platform.
That was underwhelming.
Perhaps you can go into slightly more detail?
We tell Barker exactly what he wants to hear.
That way, he thinks we're being good little boys.
But what we're actually doing
is building the platform. Think about it.
What's he gonna do?
- Call the cops. - Actually, no.
Uh, Erlich may be onto something.
If all we gave him was the platform,
Jack would have no other option
than to embrace it and then say it was his idea all along,
because at that point, he can't tell Laurie the truth.
What? That he had absolutely no idea
what was going on inside of his own company?
He'd look like an idiot.
And Laurie wants the platform, anyway,
so she'd be good for it.
Okay.
We build a skunkworks.
A secret company inside the company.
We go all Ocean's Eleven on his ass.
Hold on. Ocean's Eleven?
It's a 2001 casino heist film, starring Julia Roberts and 11 men.
I know what it is, Jared.
I'm saying, not only are we going to have to engineer,
code, and stand up a full platform on our own,
we also have to make Jack and his sales weasels think
we're working on the box the entire time.
And if we fuck anything up and get caught,
he could take our stock and probably have us arrested.
- All right, I'm in. - Well, you're insane.
No, Dinesh, that chain is insane.
And not in the membrane.
Sorry, Cypress Halal.
Okay, Jared, settle down.
But this? This is fucking genius.
Okay, how do we even begin to pull it off?
Okay. Well, let's work through it.
I can generate fake status reports, purchase orders, deliverables updates,
and I can liaise with sales to coordinate what custom features we need to pretend to build.
Okay, great, yeah,
but faking the box is going to be the easy part.
Building the platform is the real challenge.
Gilfoyle, where are we on the server space?
That's gonna be tricky.
When we started moving out of the house, I dismantled Anton.
All the racks, GPUs, and cables are in storage at the office.
- We're gonna have to break him out. - That's a shit-ton of hardware.
Unless we do it one piece at a time,
like Shawshank Redemption or The Great Escape, you know?
I'd have bigger clothing on the day, but...
- Wait. - Wait.
I've got a better idea.
Let's say these LEGOs are Anton,
sad stacks of server components lying dormant in storage.
Sneaking all of him out would be too difficult.
So, if we can't break Anton out, maybe we can break in.
Stand the servers up right where they are.
- Can we do that? - Easy.
I can run cable through the drop panel in the ceiling
all the way to the building's main power panel.
When I pull a little bit of power
from each of the other tenants, no one will know.
Guys, I hate to keep shitting on your campfire,
but servers are not the real issue.
We have a manpower problem.
There's a ton of engineering to be done on the platform.
Yeah, he's right, but we have to pay them under the table.
I know just the right man for the job.
You guys are fucking nuts, but I dig it.
Here's the deal. I'm going to need the back pay you guys owe me
for when I was working for free,
not to mention lost wages from my old job.
Oh, and damages from when Jared sexually harassed me
into being friends with that Monica chick.
So, all that and you're in?
In? No.
That's just to keep me from telling Barker about your secret project.
What? Are you serious?
Oh, yeah.
Well, there goes most of our cash.
We just got extorted for $20,000.
Fuck Carla. She was dead weight, anyway.
- What's next? - I just thought of something.
It's a big problem, but I think I've got a solution.
Hello, this is Bertram Gilfoyle.
Yes, I'm still available,
and I would reconsider sitting down with you and your clients
if you send four large pizzas to 5230 Newell Road
in 30 minutes or less.
Okay. I think that covers it.
We've thought of everything. We have a plan.
- Everybody in? - In.
- Fuck yes, I'm in.
And I'm into the idea of taking a bigger leadership role in the company.
We're not gonna make the same mistakes...
Okay, Erlich, just... Just say, "In."
- We're all just saying, "In." - I'm in-volved.
Hey, you can't spell "involved" without an "in."
Just be in. Uh, Dinesh?
All right, fuck it, I'm in. But on one condition.
I'm going to need everyone to solemnly swear
that they will no longer make fun of my gold chain.
Not a word ever again.
Well, guys, I think we can agree to that.
This plan better fucking work with a sacrifice like this.
Shall we drink from the teat of Pappy to celebrate?
I think I might actually enjoy going to work now.
Wait.
We can't enjoy going to work.
Meinertzhagen's Haversack.
- What? - Meinertzhagen's Haversack.
No one? Really?
No one's heard of Meinertzhagen's Haversack?
Of course I have, Jared. Just explain it to them.
Well, it's a principle of military deception.
Essentially, it means you have to continue to act the part.
So, as far as anyone knows, we're still building a box that we hate.
- We need to act like it. - That's exactly right.
If we do anything differently, Barker's going to be onto us.
We have to keep complaining about Barker.
We have to keep bitching about the box.
We have to keep making fun of your gold chain.
We have to. We don't have any other choice, Dinesh.
- He's right. -It's a shame, Bell Biv Dinesh,
but unfortunately, that chain is poison.
All right. To skunkworks!
Hey, all right. I don't usually drink at 7:30 in the morning, but...
All right.
Hey, guys, um, look, we have to shred everything in this house
that pertains to skunkworks. If anyone catches wind
of anything that we've done here, we are fucked.
Okay, you guys, this is it.
No turning back now.
Dinesh, I have a few premium chain insults
that I'm going to lay on you when we get in there.
Not for myself, obviously, but for the team.
I might just have one, too. Sorry in advance.
Yeah. Great.
Have at it, assholes.
Hey, Dinesh, nice chain.
Do you choke your mother with it when you put your penis in her butthole?
What the fuck? Oh, shit!
- Whoa, Richard. - Here, I've got it.
No, no, no, that's private. Excuse me.
- Skunkworks? - Private information.
Uh, Keith, where are you going?
Richard, why did you bring all the skunkwork docs into the office?
You were supposed to shred those.
Yes, but I was gonna shred them here,
because we don't have a shredder at the house, do we?
Guys?
My office. Now.