Matrix Innovation employs 20,000 employee on a campus modeled on a summer camp set in the low hills outside of Portland, Oregon. The culture is caustic with bullying, tantrums and back-stabbing and the biggest morale killer is the half and half employee evaluation process. Half are good; half are not. Now famous and wealthy beyond imagination, Mark Harper, CEO, thinks it's time to change Matrix's environment. He is known as caretaker of the world's computing vision but is unable to see beyond his expectations. Drew Sayers, famous for his business theory is given free-reign. Over several months, he pulls together a team: Nik, a young surfer and electronic genius without a college education; Marid, holder of twelve patents and billions of dollars; Joi, doll-pretty, trash mouth software development wonder; and eventually Nancy, girl-next-door, system architecture specialist. Mark is upset that Drew didn't hire any of his candidates and took so long. He cannot help himself, and, in the spirit of adventure and good business, high-jacks the team's first idea and turns it over to a development group that proceeds to botch their vision. Eventually, the team quits and starts Digital V in an old Portland brick building and warehouse. For security they live together in a remodeled rooming house, and look over their shoulders often. Harper tries to quash them with injunctions, and demoralize them with lengthy depositions. Digital V hires notorious attorney, Irene Matson, an obese woman with a melodic voice and a lush bent smile who surprises all of them. In spite of spying on Digital V, Harper's development team is mired down in code muck and months behind schedule. There is nothing to release. They sabotage Digital V's manufacturing operation, coerce the media to release positive progress reports, and undermine Digital V's customer relationships. They deflect a barrage of underhanded tricks, one at a time, all in their own way. All is lost when their manufacturing investor backs out because of Matrix's shenanigans. They decide to play the game by Matrix's rules. The war is on.
About the Author: Marilyn grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. She has a master of science from Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, and a bachelor of science from Judson College, in Marion, Alabama. She worked as a systems analyst at Lockheed Missiles and Spacecraft Center tracking satellites, as author/editor lead for the Boeing CAD/CAM Task Force, and later as Program Manager of the corporate-wide text retrieval system, a multi-million dollar project that provided access to text. At Boeing she published films, videos, multi-media slide shows, news releases, posters, pamphlets, brochures, technical papers, presentations, monthly management newsletters, and ghostwrote for the Paris Air show, Journal of Aircraft, and international symposiums. She also designed the first text retrieval system in Boeing for the Electronics, Defense and Military companies which won numerous awards. Digital V was inspired by an artificial intelligence project involving language and neural networks. She lives with her husband, Harold Peterson, a civil engineer, and their cat, Ms. Peppermint. Her daughters, Caroline and Margaret, are both grown. This is her debut novel.