A Million Little Pixels

When asked about the discrepancy last week, a Kozoru spokesman said Flowers may have misspoken at the Kauffman Foundation and that the issue is one of semantics. In fact, Moss does acknowledge that Flowers may have a Capture the Flag victory to his credit. The problem, Moss says, is that Flowers has continually claimed he won on years when he didn't, and he fails to mention that he was part of a hacker team.

Flowers did present a paper at Def Con 8. A video of his speech, available on the Internet, shows an overweight and grungy-haired Flowers talking in a hotel conference room about network security. At one point in the hourlong presentation, he pops open a bottle of beer. At another point, he holds up a white paper by Network Associates, a leading security company now known as McAfee. Flowers expresses his contempt for corporate network security by flinging the document into the crowd.

"Fuck that," he says.

Flowers, who is 6 feet 1 inch tall, is standing next to his blue 1994 Mazda RX-7 in the parking lot outside the Kozoru office. He is wearing a "Cult of Chuck Palahniuk" T-shirt under a light jacket. Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, is one of Flowers' heroes, along with Steve Jobs and the late physicist Richard P. Feynman.

Like the T-shirt, the car speaks to Flowers' identity. A decal of his beloved Apple Computers is stuck to the rear window. Below the Apple sticker is a word in kanji, a Japanese writing system based on Chinese characters. The word, Flowers explains, translates to elite, a term hackers use to identify themselves.

The workday is over. Flowers leaves to meet his 3-year-old son, Case. He calls the boy "my own little organic learning engine."

Flowers is learning what it means to be a divorced father. Flowers and Case's mother, Gretchen, separated last year after 12 years of marriage. The divorce was finalized last month.

The couple married in Arlington, Texas. They lived in Kansas City for a time in the mid-'90s, when Flowers helped UtiliCorp (now Aquila) install an e-mail system. He moved to the Bay Area in 1996 for a job at Farcast, a now-defunct Internet company.

Flowers founded Hiverworld, the network security company, in 1998. He left in 2003. Five years, he says, is about twice as long as he can spend doing anything. "I left and decided, 'That's it. I'm done with technology. I'm going to write a screenplay. I'm going to write a book. I'm going to find a million things that aren't technology.'"

Whatever his artistic yearnings, Flowers did not leave the company in a blaze of glory. A year after founding the company in 1998, Flowers was accused of lifting the work of security expert Fyodor Vaskovich. Several employees left the company after the incident, which contributed to the decision to rename the business nCircle.

Restricted in what he can say by a confidentiality agreement, Vaskovich tells the Pitch that his copyright dispute with Hiverworld was "settled amicably" in 2001. "Since their reincarnation with new management, nCircle has become an important partner and a pleasure to work with," he writes in an e-mail.

Flowers calls the copyright claim "complete and utter bullshit" and says it has been settled. He adds: "I was accused of stealing something, but you know what? People get accused of stealing stuff all the time. The resolution was, there was no resolution. It never went anywhere. There was no trial. There was no case — nothing. Never went anywhere. It was just an accusation by someone who was mad at me when they quit. I have kind of a strong personality, and some people don't respond well to that."

Flowers says he stayed on for three years after the accusation was made. He also notes that he was able to convince a few nCircle veterans to join his new venture.

After leaving the Bay Area, Flowers says he and his wife were traveling around the country when they found a house they liked in Mission, Kansas. They hit the road again a few months after Gretchen gave birth to Case at Menorah Medical Center. "One of us had a rucksack, the other one had the kid, and we just took off."

What follows is another remarkable John Flowers story.

The young family went first to Boston and then visited several countries in Europe. "It was total Zen travel," Flowers says. "We would just wake up [and say], 'What do you want to do today?'"

Flowers wanted to see Hong Kong, but during a layover in Bangkok, he became captivated by Thailand. John, Gretchen and their toddler son moved about the country, staying in bungalows, before arriving in a place called Chiang Rai. There, Flowers knocked on the door of a temple and announced that he wanted to study Buddhism. A person who answered the door spoke some English and told him that his request would be difficult to meet. Flowers asked to see the teacher in charge.