Chapter 4: An offer and an HR form.
Driving to work, Sophie couldn't shake off the excitement. She had been dreading the idea of permanently abandoning her clothes for months. Now, after her experiment, after her talk with her parents, she couldn't wait. She wanted to get naked already and never wear anything else again.
That feeling was contrasted by the haunting idea of actually being naked in front of everyone. Her coworkers, her boss, random people at the street. She would have to deal with that eventually.
And it would start with today's conversation with her boss.
"Hey Sophie." Said Bea, the receptionist. "Running late?"
"Yeah, fuck me." Sophie said, before Bea pointed with her eyes to a client sitting on the reception, who Sophie just noticed.
"Oh shit, sorry. I mean, sorry."
"It's fine." He gave her a smile and she rushed her way.
She got to her desk, which was actually more like a large table shared by three people. That was the accounting team's table. Sophie was an accountant, with Luke and their immediate supervisor, Linda. Luke was on his usual office metalhead style. Blue jeans, band t-shirt with an open black social shirt on top. He had longish hair and a beard. Although the appearance, Luke was a sweetheart. Linda was nowhere to be seen. Was that bad?
"Sleep well?" Luke joked.
"Very funny. Where is Linda?"
"At the boss' office. I think they wanna talk to you."
Shit. "Because I'm late?"
"Don't think so. You should go check."
She left her stuff at their table and walked to the CEO's office.
"Come on in." She heard when she knocked.
"Hey, sorry to interrupt. Luke said you were looking for me."
Linda, a 30-something with light brown skin was sitting next to the CEO, a white guy on his forties.
"Hey, Sophie. Come on in." Said Raphael, the CEO. They both wanted to talk to her. This couldn't be good.
She got in and set. They were sitting at a couch and she sat on an armchair facing them. This all felt familiar.
"So, we wanted to talk to you about that software of yours." Raphael started. This could be bad.
Sophie's company, Boolean, despite the name, had nothing to do with tech. They were on the business of distribution of locally grown and ground coffee, and the founder had probably picked that name because it reminded him oy "boiling", and it sounded cool.
After a while on the job, as more and more demand began piling up on her day, she noticed a lot of the work could easily be automated. She had some experience with programing from her high school, and she did try for an IT bachelor before changing to accounting. She felt more at home with her current job, but she still took the opportunity to dust off some of the old skills she enjoyed practicing.
It began simple, transfer of data between a credit card payment system to the internal accounting software. They were doing it by hand, and it could take an entire day to a week depending on the demand. The script was simple at first, she spent some time ironing out the bugs, but ended up with something very workable, that could easily read one database and transcribe it to the other. All she had to do was check the final result for errors and she was all set. At the beginning she used it to spend time doing nothing, when she was down bad. But later she began using the extra time to work on the program for other work-related problems, like interfacing with other databases, converting monetary values of entire sheets, touching up the UI and so on. In the end, she had a software that could do most of her work, as long as she remained vigilant for errors and improving on new problems.
Until one day Linda noticed it.
"What is that?" She didn't sound angry, but Sophie was still scared.
"It's a code I wrote. It helps with some of the work's problems."
"Let me see." She sounded innocent and calm, but from Luke's expression he was as scared as her.
They spent about half an hour, with Linda over Sophie's shoulder as she explained all the functionalities she had implemented. Linda just looked and made questions with a face that was hard to read.
"Do you mind sending me a copy of that?" Linda asked. Oh shit.
"Yeah, of course."
She sent a copy to her e-mail and haven't heard of it for months. She thought it was over, but apparently not.
"What about it?" She was nervous and sweating a little under the cold AC.
"We think it has potential." Linda said.
"Would you be interested on further developing it?" Raphael continued. "We would like to buy it and have you on the lead of development. We'll treat it as a new product and, of course, part of the sales would go to you as royalties."
Sophie was still in trance. The shock of going from fear of losing her job to suddenly getting an offer required some time to process.
"I went through the program." Linda continued. "I don't understand any of the code stuff, but it worked really well for the work we do here. We think it might be perfect for other companies that run the same system or similar. Or we could even implement changes to broaden the use."
"We were thinking of starting sales locally with some acquaintances." Raphael picked up from were Linda stopped. They were barely giving Sophie any time to think. "I already showed some of them over dinner and they are interested."
"I... That is..." Sophie was still picking up pieces of the conversation to think through.
"You don't have to rush a decision." Linda said. "You can think it through."
"No, this is good!" Sophie interrupted, a little too loudly. She adjusted back her voice. "It seems like a good opportunity. I accept it."
"Great!" Raphael gave a little enthusiastic clap. "We can discuss it further later. We have been wanting to diversify for a while. This is way different from what we do, but I can't pass a good product like that. I want you to be the head of the project, both development and sales at start, later we can see how it goes."
"Great. But we will need some actual developers." Sophie said. She cringed at how much she downplayed herself.
"We will hire new talent as soon as we have a solid plan. For now, I'll get the lawyers draft up a contract for us to discuss."
"That's great."
"Any questions?" Linda asked.
"I actually wanted to talk to you two about something." The words had a hard time coming out of her mouth. She could see that made them look apprehensive.
"Everything ok?" Raphael gave her a worried look. He picked up on her anxiety.
"Yes, yes. Everything is fine. It's just about a new life choice I made that might impact my life at the office."
"Go on." Linda pushed.
Sitting there, on the armchair, facing them, felt a lot like the conversation she just had with her parents that very morning. The fact she was dressed didn't make it easier, being naked helped breaking the ice on the matter.
"I have decided to live the rest of my life naked."
Silence. They looked at each other and then back at Sophie.
"Does that have anything to do with your past situation?" Linda asked.
"Yes, actually. It is a decision I made to help with some of the lingering feelings."
"Legally" Raphael said "we can't do anything to stop you. And, besides that, we will fully accept your new lifestyle choice and not discriminate against you. But are you sure?"
"I am. Very." She hadn't felt that confident about it until this moment.
"Do you want to star now?" Linda asked.
"Not, not now. I was thinking of starting Monday."
