Dead In This Valley

Boom-time Silicon Valley. The VC funding flows like wine, cubicle slaves labor through the night, and start-ups grow 100% a month in a race for the Holy Grail of the IPO. Also, overgrown and overpaid high-tech kids compete in the Assassination Game - stalking one another through the dim halls and trendy bistros wielding a terrifying array of toy weaponry (up to and including shoulder-fired Nerf missile launchers). But when things go wrong on the road to riches, and a hostile acquisition looms, some employees - mere hours from vesting in their paid-for-with-blood stock options - decide toy guns just aren't cutting it anymore.

This 7,000-word short story, from the author of the acclaimed thrillers The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, takes the reader on a dizzying, horrifying, and hilarious insider tour of the through-the-looking glass world of the dot-com boom. Geeks, big money, and righteous kills predominate. But underneath are more subtle and unsettling issues: the quiet capitulation of solitary young men getting a long way off from their last decent relationship; the meaning we give to work, and to money, and the flight to and from both; and the truth about our real and implied commitments to other people, especially when things begin to fall apart.

Also included in the short story collection, Don't Shoot Me In The Ass, And Other Stories.