Characters

Sam (the Protagonist):

"Deep down, I care about Bodega. I signed up here because I believed our work had a purpose. I toiled here for two years because I thought we were changing the world, no less. But look around, Barb—all we do these days is run this company into the ground day after day, week after week, month after month."

Vick (Sam's friend and co-worker):

"Of course Eric wants to work with you!  And why shouldn’t he? You’ll do the real work and he gets the credit. And if it fails, it’ll be your fault. Not a bad deal for him, is it?”
  
Krishna (Sam's friend and co-worker; immigrant from India):

"When was the last time America did something cool? I mean really, really cool? That happened in the sixties, man, when you put a man on the moon. After that, what did you do? You lost a military war to Vietnam, suffered through an oil shock and then lost an economic war to Japan. That’s really all you guys did for a whole freaking generation. And then—fast-forward to the nineties and you’re back in charge. You guys are cool again, all thanks to the Internet…which is why I came to work here. I mean, what is America without the new economy and all these new ideas? Yet another nation of aging people. Just a fatter, dumber version of Japan.”

George (The villain; also the scheming, number-crunching CFO of Bodega):

“No, Barb, we don’t ‘develop software.’ We employ a bunch of nerds in the hope that the rest of the nerds out there are going to buy what our nerds produce. Oh, because we’re a 'new economy' company, we hang up posters all over the place full of words like panacea, nirvana and karma. And because we’re 'changing the world,' we party all the time like a rock star’s entourage cut loose on Las Vegas..."