After Gordon admits to an affair, Donna gives him an ultimatum: he must purchase and renovate a mainframe computer in California for Mutiny, move their family there with the company, and take a job with them; he agrees. Gordon writes Joe an antivirus program in hopes of helping Westgroup, but Joe uses it instead to pitch a venture capitalist. He invites Gordon to join him in the endeavor but is refused. Gordon is furious to learn that Joe has received $10 million in funding for a new company in the San Francisco Bay Area, MacMillan Utility. Having transitioned from games to an online community, Mutiny departs for California. In 1986, Mutiny celebrates 100,000 users and the launch of its mainframe. Gordon is involved in a copyright infringement lawsuit against Joe. After noticing that Mutiny's chat feature is facilitating user-to-user transactions, Donna and Cameron are inspired to build an online trading feature and begin pitching venture capitalists. One of them, Diane Gould, helps them acquire a competitor, Swap Meet. An underappreciated Mutiny programmer, Ryan Ray, quits, and after being inspired by Joe's presentation of MacMillan Utility's no-cost antivirus software, Citadel, he convinces Joe to hire him. The Swap Meet–Mutiny merger causes friction, as Cameron is resistant to making her code compatible with Swap Meet's and wants to fire their founders. Ryan is disconcerted to learn MacMillan Utility plans to charge users for Citadel. To keep it free, Joe enlists Ray in a special project to find another revenue stream. Ryan maps the ARPANET, an early predecessor to the Internet. Studying the map, they see potential in NSFNET, a backbone network not yet approved for commercial use. The two build their own regional network at MacMillan Utility, but after spending millions of the company's money and making a handshake deal with the NSFNET in defiance of the company's board of directors, Joe is stripped of his executive powers. As a result, he declares in a deposition that Citadel was stolen from Gordon. Cameron's and Donna's relationship continues to deteriorate; Cameron unilaterally fires the Swap Meet founders, and the women clash on how to implement credit card transactions and whether to undertake an initial public offering (IPO) after Mutiny receives a $20 million acquisition offer. Cameron wants to delay for 1–2 years to continue developing Mutiny, while Donna sees a window of opportunity of just three months. Cameron is outvoted by Donna, Diane, Bosworth, and Gordon on the IPO; feeling betrayed, she leaves the company, and decides to move to Japan with her newly-wed husband Tom.