The Rise of the Cyborgs

Interlude 1/San Jose women's awareness day, Hackathon

A/N This was orginally written to to celebrate Cyborg's Pet reaching 800,000 reads. This now fits much better here. Again not rebooting the book, just doing some tidying. Book 2 has more about  'old' Joe and the lead up.

This is an interlude.

San JoseCA 

Kayla walked into the hall. It was part of the University and served every purpose; theatre, stage, diploma presentation area and examination hall. At first, I was overwhelmed by the smell of poor personal hygiene. Regardless she walked in, and as one of the few woman there she got a lot of stares. Mostly, of the aliens-have-landed variety of expression. This felt a bit weird, this was supposed to be an event to raise awareness of women in Silicon Valley and it was full of men. Kayla decided the best thing to do was to show no fear. People were coming fully equipped, laptops, sleeping bags, the ultimately geeky sleep-over. It was if Google HQ had been bombed and this was a nerd refugee centre. Kayla saw Margaret my contact setting up a temporary table near the back of the hall.

She introduced herslef and unfolded a chair and sat down.

"So have you ever been to a Hackathon before?" asked Margaret. She was a thin woman with a diamond shaped face in her 40s or early 50s, blond hair and was the kind of bossy take charge matriarch the coverage of this festival of geekery needed.

"Do I look like I've been to a Hackathon before?" Kayla asked.

"Do you know what one is?" asked Margaret.

Kalya pursed her lips she should have googled it.

"Okay a hackathon is kind of like a programming contest." started Margaret. "You get a bunch of programmers and hangers on in a room for a weekend. The sponsors set a problem. Everybody starts making stuff. At the end of the weekend, they present their prototypes and the best one wins a cash prize."

Kayla nodded.

"So for San Joes women's awareness day, a bunch of Silicon Valley companies had contributed a steep sum of money to this event," said Margaret.

"So you are saying that these nerds are going to be asked to come up with some kind of app which promotes women's awareness? What could they possibly come up with? An app which says she deserves equal pay?" Kayla said.

"That's about the size of it, having a hack is the silicon valley's go-to method of choice when faced with something they have no idea about."

"Like women" Kayla said.

"Yeh, Our job is to run 42 hours of live streaming coverage. The best parts will be edited up into a promotional YouTube video. So you need to interview some of the people. Our sponsors want to encourage young girls into STEM"

"STEM?"

"Science Technology Engineering and Maths. Get the lingo" said Margaret.

Kayla looked around at the hall full of awkwardness. "you want more girls to be more like this?" Kayla said.

"Well, I want them to do it in their own style. I want them to compete on their own skills and abilities and I want a new perspective in Silicon Valley, but your mileage may vary" said Margaret.

"OK you made me a believer." I said looking around "where do I get started?".

"You might want to pre-interview some of the contestants," said Margaret looking at her self on the laptop while the camera behind her was switched on. I saw teams of programmers some of them teams girls coming and tentatively grabbing deskspace.

"What about him? The chubby programmer with long hair and the big beard near the pillar. He's all on his own. So sad" Kalya said he looked.

"Oh him Joseph Przybyszewski? Yeh he will probably win it" said Margaret.