The city hummed beneath him like an electric ocean.
Neil stood on the narrow roof ledge of the NBC guest-hotel, wind tugging at his hair, a miniature silhouette against the New York night. Below him, Manhattan burned in grids of gold.
Wall Street lay to the south—precise and ruthless—and the Twin Towers glimmered like silver blades holding up the sky. Even from uptown he could see their crowns cutting through a thin haze of summer heat.
In his other life he had sworn he'd own a skyline too—the king of Mumbai, he'd bragged at IIT Bombay, half-joking, half-mad with ambition: build a tower that touched the monsoon clouds, write code that bent markets, make venture capitalists spill their coffee.
He used to stare at photos of New York in the computer-lab wallpaper and imagine standing here someday. Now, somehow, he was here. Six years old, rebooted, a ghost haunting his own dream, its memory sharpened by a year of acting and plotting.
Through the open roof-glass door, the single computer screen in his temp office cast a blue glow across the floor. The LetterBox admin dashboard hummed with graphs and unread mail.
On a monitor the homepage banner looped the new campaign Cindy had wrestled out of Touchstone at a "Early adopters rate". To get this deal she'd designed air-castles till the Producers paid off:
***THE SIXTH SENSE — NOW PLAYING WORLDWIDE.***
The carousel flicked automatically: the blood-red door, the tiny silhouette of Cole, the poster's silence. This slot—studio-bought promotional real estate on the front page—was new, meant to give movies immediate visibility to tens of millions of monthly visitors.
Neil padded inside and opened the company mail thread. His pseudonym blinked in the header—[email protected]—Claire's alias read Tech.C.
> From: Tech.C (Claire)
> Subject: FW: 1999.08 Release — Beta Testing Updates
> After almost a week since the Verified Critics feature went live last Sunday, we're seeing better than 90% positive response. People love it. The San Jose team thinks this could change consumer behavior metrics. Good luck on Conan honey — I'll be back in LA, Sunday.
> Love you— Mom
> From: Mage.C (Cindy)
> Subject: FW: New Record!! Traffic Surge to 10M
> Ten million unique — we're officially the second-largest film database on the planet. Also, studio has increased the screen to 2400 for the weekend, so be humble tonight! ;) — C
Another forwarded note from Mage.C (Cindy) lit the unread section. Neil smiled. Humble wasn't exactly what he had coded into the site's DNA.
LetterBox that began as Claire's proof-of-concept—an earnest, neat movie-review board done in weekend bursts on a kitchen table; was now a behemoth.
He had insisted on a rewrite of nearly every page before the Phantom Menace release; after deciding to go gun-ho with this project.
His contribution on grayer, on cleaner design suitable for CRTs, on tiny UI details and interactions made the difference between scrolling and staying.
The Dev team hired later due to exponential surge in traffic; joined the company mostly to learn the new-age design and worked on the new features from scratch.
They soon learned the new coding patterns and asynchronous calling and called it revolutionary; Neil loved reading their comments on Pull Requests. Even if the code changes were made under Claire's name.
What began as a hobby in the Dunphy living room had hardened into an obsession for Claire and the LetterBox team. But it was his futuristic vision that provided better data, sharper features, a new way to measure how stories interacted with people.
"If I can't be King of Mumbai," he thought, "I'll be the Illuminati of digital media. At least then I won't be bored when the oligarchs realize the true potential of the Internet."
He scanned the charts on a site report handled by a team of interns that Cindy hired in LA. Everything was a series of green spikes and positive numbers.
Under a button labelled *Interest Counter* the number pulsed like a living thing. On the night of the premiere, the button had read roughly 25,000—a respectable number given the limited exposure of the Sixth Sense at the time.
Now it read 150,000; climbing: three times the post-premiere figure just after Thursday night and Friday's morning shows. The user adoption of site's new feature were apt; like hungry wolves meeting their prey.
Claire implemented the live counter with a neat XMLHttpRequest trick; it updated without a full refresh and felt impossibly modern on a browser from 1999. Small polish, big effect. Claire was now a full-fledged design engineer in her own right, although her back-end knowledge still sucked.
The Touchstone banner campaign had exceeded all expectations, even surpassing what Cindy had promised Touchstone executives.
She spent three grueling weeks haggling for the deal, trading favors and leveraging the highly valuable "LetterBox advertisement potential" generated by the ongoing Phantom Menace mania.
Her effort eventually secured a four-week, $240,000 site-wide ad campaign, strategically timed to coincide with the critics reviews following the August 2 premiere.
At the time, Phantom Menace had just delivered a record-breaking opening weekend of $64 million, and studios were desperate to bottle that kind of immediate heat. LetterBox beta ad-campaign feature was first run during that release.
Using LetterBox positioning of right place at the right time; Cindy sold them on the possibility of a direct pipeline: a route that would convert positive review buzz into a captive online audience. Lucas Films, eager for an edge, agreed to the experiment. The ad went live, and the traffic counter had spiked.
Touchstone was sold on the same possibility.
Neil understood the fragility of these new media deals, but he also recognized their crucial role in current times.
'Online advertisement is still in its nascent stage. There are few over-arching online ad agency like Google Ad Sense; and it is the right time to charge a premium.'
'Driving user engagement and successfully launching new features is paramount for LetterBox survival; especially in the early 2000s when the advertisers pockets will dry up due to market crash.'
'Critics would not be erased overnight—LetterBox has just placed a verified critics section—the site would extend critics shelf life for few more years and amplify audience emotions through them before the rise of independent journalism.'
'But they are already old. LetterBox has to pay them for their reviews now. Hehe. Once they loose audience trust, especially after the Harvey's fiasco. I need to be careful to not get any negative flake of that burn and Academy's fallout. They dare charge $500-1000 for a single review. I'll enjoy your downfall.'
---
Neil skimmed the feature list Tech.C. had left in the Dev channel:
- Renaming the ranking tiers—"Pass," "Good Time," "Experience," "Perfection"—with an internal scoring model blending per-release interest and post-release interactions. Even though LetterBox philosophy is not to bury movies under mere metrics; it isn't a good company policy to ignore that data. Data is the new oil and we needed to capture as much of it as possible, while being ethical and just.
- In the same regards, Anonymized digital IDs will help (to protect privacy while letting the ad engine learn). Current framework is lacking in ethical user-data gathering; to avoid future fall outs we need to introduce encryption and masking user-data. Especially don't log any user details into application standard output.
- ...
Most of the ideas currently being discussed in the Dev channel came from Neil, but because of his kid stature; these were discussed under Tech C. (Claire's) name.
---
Outside—on the roof ledge—the city felt far away. Inside, the counter blinked and blinked again. Neil loved the slow burn of overnight code reviews and brain storming.
Since the release with Thursday late night shows. The adults had been busier than ever.
Cindy moved like a cyclone between agency meetings and studio calls; she barely slept. Signing deals, promoting his movie and handling all the LetterBox marketing and getting big names in Hollywood to sign up to the platform and share their "Watchlist."
People were very surprised to know that Spielberg's "Good Time" movie from last year was The Wedding Singer.
Claire bent under design mock-ups, server freezes and deployment scripts; she built the parts of the site that made people stay. Discussed with the 10-people development and quality team about new features and led the overall direction.
Neil—the angel investor— has already put his $150,000 Cisco options windfall on the table as seed capital, was also silently contributing to the company vision and direction.
Too young and too proud to wave a list of receipts at anyone; but too careful to let anything affect his plans. Going over every company mail chain, people reaction on online media and forums. Grasping every little opportunity in the market to screw a little more juice to channel it back into the company.
Because of all their efforts. In August, the startup's valuation has already crept up toward $10 million—in eight months.
For a child and two overworked women, that was ridiculous and wonderful. No short of a miracle in the business circle, but Neil knew that it was just the start. In future, the Rotten Tomatoes would have a backdoor deal of $150M as per leaks and Neil planned for 10x that valuation within the next decade
'if everything goes right, that is'
He focused back to his screen and read the critics' column refresh next. Blurbs annotated in small, clinical fonts:
---
"A meditation on loss and attachment disguised as a thriller." — Roger Ebert
"Terror without cruelty. A psychological thriller masterpiece."— The New York Times
"Young Neil Dunphy delivers a performance beyond his years."— Variety
"A film that trusts silence more than screams and tropes. A vision of a new director that is beyond his peers." — LA Weekly
---
The embargo had held; reviewers wrote around plot and emotion, not spoilers. That made the users more expectant—an invitation instead of a direction.
Neil flipped to the early metrics for Thursday midnight and Friday morning. Even before the last packed matinees of Friday, LetterBox's aggregated user flags showed over 98% "Will Re-watch" or initial viewers who'd posted.
The distributor's morning wire hinted at sell-outs in major markets. For a film that relied on whispers and only Bruce Willis as big name, the numbers looked obscene—audience behavior bending toward repeat viewings, talk that fed itself.
He let the data sink in. Closing his eyes, then staring at the ceiling. A warm chandelier hanging with dim lights. Then someone knocked.
"Come in," he called.
Cindy pushed through the door with Mitchell right behind her—she in a blazer that made her look like trouble encoded into silk, Mitchell with a theatrical flourish and a suit that had been borrowed from confidence.
"So you're up here pretending to be a philosopher?" Cindy said, dropping her bag on a chair. "You'll catch a cold contemplating Wall Street."
"Just checking server load and the online praise," Neil smirked.
Cindy's smile softened. "Right. That's what you say all the time. Code, Tickers, and Acting. But don't get too over in-your-head. Industry isn't kind to people who get emotional over light successes."
She leaned toward the monitor. "Although. One-fifty and climbing. Touchstone's really got a sweet deal out of us. No one could have guessed that online marketing could be so beneficial. We'll have sleeves of data by morning. But I'm sure this year's company revenue won't be in negatives like the first few months of the year. I'm really regretting distributing my 15% off my total 30% shares to Claire and Dev team pool."
Neil shrugged. "I told you it is better to keep the shares and invest more. I had no problem diluting 10% from my 70%. As long as I find the right team and people; I'm willing to share my wealth and let it grow together."
Cindy gave a hard look to Neil. 'You think if I knew that Internet company could be run like this, I wouldn't have. This devil, makes me doubt my 20 years of industry experience every day. But that's what I love about him, he isn't greedy at all.'
Mitchell peered at the screen and raised an eyebrow. "Forget that. Is that—150k?!! That's like—" He waved, searching for the right metaphor. "more than the rally of very opinionated people."
"People who will change theaters' schedules tonight," Cindy winked. "And make studio accountants cry with joy."
"or pain once they remember the contact they signed with me." Neil smirked.
"Ok. Ok. Stop. No time for glory right now," Mitchell added. "We've got a show to get to. Conan won't wait for your analytics sermon."
Cindy handed Neil a little jacket she had insisted on—a tiny television-safe blazer. "You look like you mean business in that," she coached, tugging the collar just so.
"... And I mean business tonight. After the taping, we'll be in three morning shows. You'll have to remember to breathe. There is only few hours of sleep in between."
His throat tightened in a way that was equal parts tiring and excitement. "I will."
They left in a black car, the city sliding by in streaks of neon. On the way, Neil caught another view of the Twin Towers—calm, indifferent—and the memory of that other ambition flared briefly: towers and code, markets and mega-structures.
He had wanted skyscrapers; now he had servers and headlines. Both kinds of skylines were built by people who refused to rest.
---
August 06, 1999 — The Conan Taping
At Rockefeller Center the lobby smelled of coffee and makeup. Backstage, the studio was a small planet—lanterns, cables, cue cards, and the house band warming up. Bruce Willis lounged in sunglasses; M. Night Shyamalan paced with a script dog-eared in his hands. The green room hummed with rehearsed chaos.
"Ready?" Shyamalan asked when he saw Neil.
"Yeah," Neil said.
Cindy smoothed his hair. "Smile at Conan. Not like you're interrogating him."
Mitchell mimed a bow. "And if Conan flirts, blow him a kiss for the camera. Instant ratings. I understand housewives better than your mom, you know. ~Hehe"
The stage manager put a hand on Cindy's arm. "Five minutes," she hissed. "Get the kid in make-up."
They hustled. The lights switched; the curtain breathed. Cameras rolled. The audience applauded like a sea.
Neil sat under the lamps and felt the heat of a hundred people, hundreds of eyes. Conan began, the band struck, and Neil felt all the little levers of fate engaging.