The bankruptcy auction occupied a beige conference room that smelled of stale coffee. Representatives from second-tier tech firms and hardware liquidators filled the rows, each with the same asset list marked in different colors.
Their lists covered servers, workstations, fixtures, and the real estate. The patents appeared nowhere.
The auctioneer began with the server racks. “State-of-the-art equipment, ladies and gentlemen. Barely a year old!”
Bidding opened at ten cents on the dollar and crept to twenty. Without licensed software, the year-old servers had little value beyond their components.
Alexander sat beside me in the back row, reading the room over the top of his catalog. When the hardware bidding stalled, he nodded once.
I raised my paddle.
“I’m bidding on the entire lot as
