Chapter 2: The Round Table Convenes

The Round Table room had no windows.

This was intentional. Arthur had made the decision during the build-out, when the architect presented three options for the conference suite on the seventh floor, each one featuring the kind of floor-to-ceiling glass that Silicon Valley treated as a moral statement. Arthur had looked at the drawings for a long time and then tapped the fourth option — the one the architect had included almost apologetically, as a historical reference point, a room turned deliberately inward. Good thinking happens without a view, Arthur had said. The architect had written it down as though it were quotable, which it was, and the room had been built as specified: warm oak paneling, a circular table that had required a crane to install, and twelve chairs of identical height so that no seat was architecturally superior to any other.

The table itself was nine feet in diameter. There was no head.