What are we talking about here?
You want us to launch a cryptocurrency?
You wanted an alternative to Laurie Bream?
Pied Piper Coin.
Mm.
I promised Richard that we would never
make him harvest data or sell ads.
I am not saying that we will force their hand on this issue,
but neither am I saying definitively that we will not.
Have you received my proposal?
Very promising.
Look, Monica, I will do the ICO, but only if you do it with me.
Pied Piper Coin is totally gonna work.
Yes! Totally is.
Whose idea was this again?
Okay, everybody.
Let's do this.
Photo time. Let's go.
Front-enders, come on in. Where's my back-enders?
I see you, crypto-geeks.
Follow me!
Old Pipey thing.
Holden. Are we set?
Sorry. I haven't used this camera before.
Are we set?
Yes, Jared.
Look... uh, look, guys.
I-I know we didn't have the budget we wanted to get here.
But, we are here.
Finally, all our hard work has paid off.
So now, the world's first, totally decentralized internet
will be live... in five...
Four,
three, two, one.
Yeah!
Richard. Richard!
Richard.
You have to see this.
What's wrong now?
A good thing.
A good thing has finally happened.
Don't fuck with me.
I am not fucking with you!
Come, come.
Look.
Look at the user numbers.
Wait, holy shit. Is that right?
I think we've reached the inflection point.
We made it.
Don't, just... don't. Yeah.
Well, I think this calls for a little celebration.
I just knew that if we kept plugging away,
eventually, we'd get some traction
and reach an inflection point.
What did I keep saying?
Give us time and then we'll climb, bitches!
Yes, Holden.
That's right, except for the bitches part, but yes.
And now, we are gaining almost 12,000 users an hour!
Fuck, yeah!
You get a high five and you get a high five!
Fuck yeah! I wanna give a quick shout-out
to my seven developers,
my Septapipers,
who stuck with us through thick and thin,
unlike K-Hole,
which took their game and totally bailed on us.
Lock them up! Lock them up!
Jesus, Jared. You really did a number on that kid.
God. Yeah.
I just chipped away everything that wasn't Richard's assistant
and this is what's left.
Lock them up!
So, how are things advancing?
To date,
we have manufactured almost 400,000 mobile devices.
And we are signing them all onto the Pied Piper network?
Yes.
Well, we have to do it manually.
It is slow.
But it provides an advantage.
They may not know what we are doing
until it's too late for them to stop us.
Indeed.
Yeah. To be honest,
at times, I find it difficult to tell what you're thinking.
Mmm, I see.
Pappy Van Winkle?
I'm not gonna have to start
locking my desk drawer now, am I?
Hey, does this seem odd to you?
What?
So, our user numbers have been growing for days,
but our coin value is flat.
It hasn't budged at all.
I thought the two would be correlated,
at least a little bit.
Yeah. Should be.
Sorry, I don't mean to rain on the parade.
I find parades to be
impotent displays of authoritarianism.
Whose bag is this?
Uh... oh. Scoot over.
Colin?
Hey, man. What are you doing here?
I like the beard. You throwing a party?
Yeah. Something that you and K-Hole Games could've been a part of,
had you not walked out on us.
Oh, come on, man. Laurie was our VC.
She's the one that made me pull the game and bail on you guys.
So you just do whatever Laurie says, huh?
Well, she had control of my board. Hmm.
Which is exactly how she just managed to fire me.
You lost your company?
Aw. Bummer.
But, the cool part is, I'm free.
Which is why I'm here.
I have been cooking up a solo project on the side
for a few years.
It's a killer new game.
And I was thinking maybe,
we would launch it on your network.
It's a sweet indie RPG.
I'm calling it "The Gates of Galloo."
I have a ton of presales.
If we put this thing on Pipernet, bam.
You're gonna have 80,000 instant users.
What do you say? You and K-Hole pull your game.
A game that was the central element
to our launch strategy.
And then literally days after everything starts to fucking come together,
you stroll on in here and act like nothing ever happened?
Stroll?
I just walked in here normally.
Besides, this would help you out too, right?
You... you wanna help me out?
You just lost your company.
I'm in there celebrating,
with my fucking victory.
Dude.
Can I be real with you?
I really need this.
Can I be realer?
Kiss my piss.
What?
You heard me. Kiss my piss.
I was hoping you'd be cool about this.
Oh, really? You thought I might be cool, Mr. Backwards Hat?
Is this cool, huh?
To do this, maybe?
I don't know.
Kiss my piss.
Kiss...
my piss.
All right, I get it.
Kiss my piss.
I'll see you around, Richard.
Karma's a bitch, Colin.
Oh! Monica, hey.
Hey. Hey, I was just coming in early to clean up
for the custodial staff.
When did you get here?
We never left. We?
All right. Good to go.
You were both here all night?
Our coin price wasn't growing with our user numbers,
so we coded a diagnostic tool to go through the ledger
and figure out exactly where our users are coming from.
Yes. We coded it.
You're smoking my cigarettes, asshole.
In a public workspace, in the state of California, no less.
Shall we?
This breaks our users down
by which developers signed them on.
So, each bar is one of our seven Septopipers.
Wait, why are there eight bars?
Who... who's that? No idea.
But whoever it is, they are the reason for most of our new user growth.
Wait, so some non-piper out there is signing up
users to our network en masse?
How'd they get access to our system?
Without a key from us,
the only way in is to steal our software.
But no one has stolen our software.
Except for...
Oh, shit.
Hello?
Hey, Jian-Yang. It's Big Head.
How's it going, man?
He's been in contact
with Jian-Yang this whole time?
Yeah, they play Words with Friends.
Cool, cool. Listen, Gilfoyle wants to ask you a question.
No. I don't want to talk to Gilfoyle.
He's a racist and a witch.
I'm not a witch. Now spit out the kimchi
and tell me what the fuck is going on with our network.
Fuck you. I'll tell you nothing.
Okay. I'll tell you everything.
But I want to move back into the house.
I want to come home.
Wait, what?
It's not that big a deal.
I mean, Jian-Yang could just take Erlich's old room.
So...
I don't give a fuck about that.
So, Jian-Yang said Gavin Belson tried to buy our stolen software?
Yes, but before he could,
he was outmaneuvered by a Chinese man named Yao.
Yao? Who the fuck is Yao?
This guy.
He's a Chinese manufacturer
who just announced a partnership with guess who?
Laurie Bream.
She just led a $200 million round for something called YaoNet.
So Laurie and Yao are manufacturing phones,
and signing them onto our network.
But why? Why would they wanna help us?
Oh, shit.
They're not helping us. They're attacking us.
It's the 51% attack.
Has to be. I'm sorry, what?
A 51...
A 51% attack...
The beauty of our decentralized internet
is that no one controls it.
But if 51% were controlled by one entity,
like, say, Laurie and Yao,
they could rewrite the rules for everyone.
They can delete all of our users,
all of our developer apps, crash our coin.
This would be the end of Pied Piper. Fuck!
Okay. How many devices do they have?
Right now, they have 45% of our total.
And gaining. Wait, Gilfoyle.
Could you write a patch that kicks all of Yao's users off the network?
I would have to rewrite our consensus protocol,
but I could probably get that done in eight hours.
Okay, that's good.
And... and how long do we have
till we lose control of the network?
At this rate, half that.
I just went for a run.
I sprinted...
up the last bit, there.
I did open palm.
Aaah!
Wh-What's going on?
Richard, there's no easy way to say this.
Jian-Yang is moving back into the house.
Right?
Gavin, you've staked the entire future of this company
on the Signature Box Three.
Where are they?
Well, the last two months have been challenging.
The Chinese were petulant.
The North Carolinians proved very entitled.
And I held out hopes for our experiment in the Yukon Territories.
But as it happens,
the Inuit are surprisingly adept at collective bargaining.
But fear not,
I am in the early stages of a new plan.
Did you know that some of America's most capable, motivated laborers
are at this moment awaiting execution?
Gavin.
How many boxes have you actually managed to produce?
Well, we have the 40 prototypes,
which we've been using to drive sales.
And? And...
they are very impressive.
I see.
I guess it's time we tell you.
We've been exploring the viability
of an acquisition with Amazon.
The talks are still preliminary,
but thus far, they seem quite promising.
You expect me to work for Jeff Bezos?
No fucking way.
I mean, don't take this as any kind of threat,
but if Amazon buys this company, I am out.
We spoke to Jeff an hour ago.
It sounds like the two of you are on the same page about that.
Priyanka, start separating legitimate users
into their own pool.
Becky, I need you to rate-limit enemy devices.
Danny, find shortcuts to deploy a new consensus protocol.
Sorry, but we're never gonna finish in time.
Not with that attitude.
Yeah, we would need to add a shit ton more users immediately.
Working on it. Colin, hey. It's... it's Richard Hendricks.
Leaving you another voicemail.
Um, just wanted to talk to you about your game.
And, uh, those, uh, 80,000 users you got there.
And also, to apologize for last night.
You know, I was just really wasted. I was so drunk.
We had such a crazy party going on.
Anyway, call me back and we'll, uh,
we'll chat some "Gates of Galloo."
We'll, uh, we'll "Galloo" it up.
How's that sound? Well, just call me back.
Okay? It's... it's Richard Hendricks, it's...
Thank you. Bye.
Left another voicemail. Doesn't really matter.
He's gonna be off the grid for the next three days.
What? Yeah, I just spoke with his girlfriend.
Whatever the fuck you said, he took really hard.
Colin went camping. Alone.
Well, did she say where he went?
The Los Trancos Preserve?
Wait. I know exactly where that is.
I used to go foraging for mushrooms
with my friend Muriel there before she passed away.
I could drive up there and... and look for him.
It's only 20 miles away
and they don't really enforce the speed limit.
Fuck your Volt. I'll drive.
What... what are you doing? I'm borrowing my Tesla.
It's my Tesla. I pay for it.
And if I don't get to Colin in time,
Pied Piper ceases to exist.
So, pretty please with a fucking cherry on top,
can I borrow the Tesla I bought for you?
Can Jared drive? No.
Fine. Thank you.
So...?
So... we're fucked.
No, we're not. Okay, we just...
We need a few more users
to give Gilfoyle some breathing room and...
And what if you call Dana from Quiver?
He hates me. Everybody does.
And to be honest, they're right. I'm an asshole.
No, you're not, Richard.
Yes, I am.
Colin was here last night, out there in the hallway,
down on his luck
and he was begging me to take his subscribers.
And I told him to...
kiss... my piss.
You what? Kiss my piss.
I said it again and again.
Oh my God. I did a dance.
Okay, okay, okay. Let's just move on from... this.
I am a spiteful, vengeful prick.
Oh my God, Richard.
Yes, you fucked up.
But that doesn't mean you're a bad person.
Look at you, you're sitting here, regretting it.
That's not the move of an asshole.
Okay? I mean, you think a guy like Gavin Belson just sits around,
feeling bad about being a dick to people?
He doesn't even notice, okay?
The guy's a prick when he was on top
and now after everything that just happened,
he's still gonna be a prick.
What do you... What do you mean?
Everything that just happened. What happened?
I just read that Amazon's probably gonna be acquiring Hooli.
What?
Yeah, so Gavin Belson's gonna be out on his ass,
but do you think he's gonna change at all because of it?
No, he's always gonna be a...
prick.
Exactly. Okay, so stop whipping yourself
and let's just figure out what we can do. He's a prick.
Yes. Gavin Belson is a prick.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
He's a... he's a total...
fucking prick. Wait, where are you going?
How could it be this crowded?
Burning Man's in two weeks,
so people are beta testing their new gear.
Why would people who aren't refugees
choose to come here and live like refugees?
You know that's not, like, a desirable thing, right?
Living like a refugee? Ugh!
This place is offensive to homeless people.
- Hello? - Hello, Gavin?
It's Richard Hendricks. Richard Hendricks.
Mind the glass. Yeah.
Oh. It's all smashed up again.
What do you want, Richard?
I need your help.
Look, my network is in trouble.
And I know that deep down, in your heart, what you...
Oh, for fuck's sake. You're not gonna give me
another one of your inspirational,
in defense of great technology speeches, are you?
Stand up and fight for innovation,
that kind of bullshit?
No. Exactly the opposite.
I happen to know that a man named Yao
fucked you over.
How would you like to fuck him back?
I'm listening.
I need you to attack me.
John? It's Gavin Belson.
Oh. Hello.
Listen, John. Do we still have the prototypes
of my Signature Box Three strung up?
Yeah.
They told us they were gonna send more, but...
they never did.
Well, that's a long story.
I got time. Yeah, listen, John...
I need you to give admin access to Richard Hendricks.
Becky, did you run connection throttling
on the latest batch of device IDs?
Yes. You know why?
I'm not a moron.
Oh, I see. I'm the asshole.
Really?
You really wanna have this conversation?
You're both assholes.
Shut the fuck up.
The fuck does it matter.
We're never gonna finish this patch in time, anyway.
Wait, what the fuck...
just happened?
Dick, where are you?
I'm at Gavin's.
I just gave his boxes permission
to mimic a shit-ton of phones on our network.
A second attack.
Yes, exactly.
Now Yao can't get to 51%. Where are we with the patch?
Close, but you do realize
that now that we're below 51%,
we can't deploy it.
For now, we can't win.
But since Gavin is holding off Yao, we can't lose either.
He just bought us some time.
Okay, I'll see you in a bit.
Well, Gavin, thank you very much.
You just gave me and my guys a fighting chance.
Is that what just happened here, Richard?
Yes.
No? Seems to me,
you are the one that just gave me a fighting chance.
Ni hao.
It's Gavin Belson for Mr. Yao.
What the fuck are you doing?
This is the last road, Dinesh.
He's not here.
Colin! Colin!
Will you shut the fuck up?
How would you like to die today, motherfucker?
No, it's not a real death threat, sir.
I'm sorry. I'm just stressed.
Shut up for a second. You hear that?
So, you want us to delete all of our phones?
Right now, we're in a standoff.
You can't win, but if you back off, I can.
I have more devices than anyone,
I will reach 51%,
and take control of this little shit's network.
You know, can I chime in here?
I actually think that this is a bad idea, and...
In exchange for deleting your principal competition,
I'm simply asking for a partnership
between your venture and Hooli.
Well, he's actually leaving Hooli. They're firing him.
So I don't know where the connection could...
For fuck's sake.
I'm sure my board would find
an arrangement between YaoNet and Hooli
vastly preferable to fire sale-ing
the company to Jeff Bezos.
My proposal is I help you,
in exchange for a 20% stake in your venture.
And I have a counterproposal,
that you do not do that.
Gavin...
How do we proceed?
Because...
We like it.
Hey, guys. What are you doing here?
We tried calling you. A hundred times.
Yeah, I'm off the grid.
And...
Done.
All right, so the patch is ready?
Indeed.
Now, maybe someday,
Dark Lord willing, we'll actually get to deploy...
Boo-yah!
We just crushed the patch, Pipers!
Holden, give me that fucking mallet right now!
Drop it! Wait, what the fuck?
Care to tell me what the fuck is going on now?
Gavin is fucking us.
He just convinced Yao to pull his phones.
What the fuck is that noise?
Gavin's making ice cream.
- Fuck. - Yeah.
- Can you kill his devices? - No, I can't.
He just had his server guy lock me out.
Look, we need Colin.
We need "Galloo," now.
All right, well, it's a pretty straight road from here, so...
Hold on to your kidneys, motherfuckers!
We are going Ludicrous!
What the fuck?
Oh. What?
Valet mode. You put me in fucking valet mode.
You wrecked your Tesla. You're not wrecking mine.
Come on, that caps me at 70 miles per hour, limits performance
to 80 kilowatts.
Come on, you have to let me do Ludicrous Mode, now!
I've been a total gentleman about this.
I have Colin!
I want two more months of payments.
One more month.
Fine. Do not crash.
Here we go.
Three...
two...
one...
We've got all 63 distributed systems engineers on the job, Gavin.
The patch you asked for is nearly finished.
Wonderful. Call me when we hit 51%.
Hey, Richard. I know what might cheer you up.
How about a little ice cream?
Come on, guys. Where the fuck are you?
Well, this is fucked.
I heard on a podcast that patrol men
are actually a lot more tempted by bribes than you might think.
Officer, hi.
Is there anything I can do to make this all...
go away?
Sir, I would think very carefully
about the next words that come out of your mouth.
Oh, shit.
Well, look at that.
51%.
Yeah, Scott?
Yes, I know.
I just saw.
No, not yet. Hold on a moment.
Gavin.
What is our status?
Friends, I'm about to delete
Mr. Hendricks' life's work.
I thought you'd wanna see it happen.
Richard, was that too mean?
Oh, well. Should we get to it?
Scott... Wait.
Take it. Just take it.
Take what?
Pied Piper.
The whole network. All of it.
Just please don't destroy it.
I'd rather give it away than watch it die.
As much as I hate to admit,
who better to take it than you, Gavin?
I mean, you're really the only one
who realizes what the decentralized internet could be.
I find this uninteresting. Can we proceed?
You wrote the patent and gave it to me.
Hell, you hired the best 63 distributed systems engineers in the city.
I mean, you could build this into what it was meant to be.
Gavin, enough.
Come on, you know that my network
is way better than some knockoff.
And instead of taking a minority stake in their company,
you could take total control of mine.
Why would you turn that down?
Let's make it official. I will, uh...
I will sign my company over to you.
It's yours, Gavin. You win.
Okay?
Take it. Just please don't delete it.
All our phones are turned off, now.
Gavin, delete Pied Piper immediately or we will walk away.
Not if I walk away first.
Sorry, but this gives me all the cards.
I get Hooli back.
Fuck Bezos and fuck you and your 20% offer.
And fuck the Signature Box Three.
I get a complete do-over.
Tim Cook keeps inviting me to his brunches.
Fuck him!
I'll host the fucking brunches.
All because Mr. Hendricks here
was kind enough to...
Sorry, what does this say?
Kiss my... Piss.
Kiss my piss.
Richard, please stop the movement. Kiss my piss.
- I find it annoying. - Kiss my piss.
Yes, we don't like it.
What the fuck are you doing, Richard?
What does it look like? I'm fucking you over, Gavin.
You're what? I was stalling!
"Galloo"? What the fuck is "Galloo"?
Kaboom. You just got 80,000 new users.
Oh! Yes.
Scott. Run the patch.
It's not working.
We've lost control of the network.
Gilfoyle...
when you're ready.
Bombs away.
What the fuck just happened?
Colin, you did it. You saved us.
No. That was all Dinesh.
That was quick fucking thinking with that cop. Yeah.
Yeah!
Holden! Get the fuck down!
Monica.
Cheers. For me?
Yeah!
You saw our coin price, right?
It's going up.
Well, look at that.
Come on!
Jared finally broke him.
Get it! Yeah.
I like you.
Not in a...
Fuck yeah!
Yeah. You understand what I'm saying.
Sure.
Come on, don't be assholes.
We can still do our deal.
You still need an American partner
for your network, don't you?
I believe we are now entitled to explore other options.
Thanks for the help, Gavin.
And, uh, thanks for the ice cream.
We will tell Jeff Bezos you say hello.
Yes? Yes.
Fuck!
And we'd be right up here.
Ooh! Love the video fireplace.
Yeah.
Wow. It's magnificent.
It's a little bright.
But I could find a dark corner to settle into.
It's great.
When do these guys move out?
Oh, no, this isn't our space.
We're actually right through here.
Here we go.
What do you guys think?
Uh, I'm sorry.
What part of this would we be renting?
All of it.
What?
Yeah, we're signing new developers every day.
That's gonna require hundreds of new engineers, Richard.
And the staff to support them.
Legal, accounting, HR, government affairs.
Whoa. Why would we need that?
To deal with things like the NSA.
They called yesterday.
They have a lot of questions about our tech.
And about inserting a back door.
We can push back.
Against the government?
- I don't love that. - I do.
Do you guys wanna see the second floor?
There's another floor?
There's three more, actually.
This all used to be part of Hooli.
Okay.
Whoa!
I know. It's exciting, right?
Thank you!