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According to the timer on Mark Zuckerberg's laptop, the meeting had been
going for 43 minutes, which was 33 minutes longer than Mark felt the
optimal meeting duration should be --- so much so that he had two other
laptops set up in the middle of the table (one facing each end) with a
full-screen digital readout counting down from ten minutes to zero and
into negative time, after which the background would pulse a dull
blood-red. The problem with this approach, he had gathered, was that
after a handful of meeting went "into the red" without much in the way
of reprisal, people seemed to ignore the pulsating laptop timers, which
made Mark feel that the process of setting up the laptops and timing the
meetings in such an ostentatious way only served to undermine his decree
that Facebook's meetings should not last more than ten minutes. His
employees figured that if a topic Mark deemed important was not covered
in the allotted ten minutes then it was not so important after all and,
as such, would be relegated to the bottom of some digital stack of
priorities. But Mark could not very well abandon the ten-minute-meeting
principle altogether, which would be an admission of failure. He was
stuck between a rock and a hard place. This thought reminded him of
James Franco in that movie where he cut off his arm. Mark looked down at
his own arm.

Francesca was suggesting a new way to test databasing schemas and wanted
to run these in parallel over the next month of beta trials, which Mark
knew would introduce load problems on the servers, but as it was now 45
minutes into the seemingly endless meeting, he lacked any of the stamina
required to explain why such error-prone schemas could not be run in
parallel. Instead, he pointed his stapler at her like a gun and fired
off a couple of staples. They landed harmlessly on the table but
Francesca still flinched and raised a hand in defence.

"Let's move along," Trevor Trivinski said. He was guiding this runaway
train of a meeting to its eventual derailment. Next up was Sam
Henderman, who Mark had planned on firing a month ago but now remembered
he had become distracted with a game of *Words With Friends*. Sam wanted
to talk about UX. Mark enjoyed talking about UX (user experience), but
on hearing Sam Henderman introduce it as a topic of discussion more than
thirty-five minutes past timer-zero inflated a bubble of anger in Mark's
duodenum. The bursting of this rage-bubble was averted when Mark noticed
a special notification appear on his own laptop screen: Paul Rankin had
posted some more fan fiction about him on Facebook. Sam Henderman's
concerns receded into the usual background hum as Mark read over Paul's
latest post: a short entry about Mark keeping a copy of Bret Easton
Ellis' American Psycho in his desk drawer with Post-It notes on his
favourite passages. Mark had never read American Psycho but liked the
film version starring James Franco.

Paul's fan fiction posts about him were becoming worse; lazy and
predictable. It hardly even seemed worthwhile; this would probably be
the last one. He opened a chat window.

	Mark: saw your latest post. great stuff.
	Paul: Thanks bro.
	Mark: just in a meeting, will transfer $$ when not so many people
	around.
	Paul: Cool. Whatever.
	Mark: c u.

Sam Henderman was still talking. Without looking at him, Mark raised his
stapler and fired off three rounds: a double-tap to the sternum and a
killshot to the head. Sam squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face
away but again the staples landed harmlessly on the table.

The red pulsating timers now passed negative 48 minutes.