Before you can build the $300 network computer for the masses, you have to recruit the engineers to design it.
The Shiny Shoes
That was another thing. They hated having to translate their work into dumbed-down metaphors for the shiny shoe set - the meddlesome lawyers, media scribblers, and potential corporate sponsors who came through wanting to "understand" without doing the hard work of paying attention. Oh, god. This was just one more reason that Francis Benoit was glad he was working here at the La Honda Research Center and not out there in some corporate start-up, because despite all the roll-up-your-shirtsleeves myths and stereotypes, when you got right down to it, working for a start-up meant he'd spend 80 percent of his time doing complete bullshit - chasing VC money, writing technical documentation, hiring people - and all of it involved dumbing down your work. And the meetings! To participate in that game would be a waste of god-given talent, it would be a crime against his very own nature. Francis Benoit could just see himself cooped up in some office park, suffocating on his own unvented thoughts, poisoning himself, just to prove something to the shiny shoe set.
Then there was the time that photographer and his camera crew came out from New York to shoot an ad for a new line of casual clothing, Lo-Tech Workware. Some Italian conglomerate had built up sufficient internal consensus to approve its ad agency's recommendation: put unassuming clothes on semifamous titans of the American computer industry, take pictures, and print the pictures alongside the slogan "High tech insiders wear Lo-Tech on the outside." The company hired the renowned Italian fashion photographer Adriano Paschetta, flew him out to San Francisco, and gave him first-class treatment for several days to primp his artistic temperament, then put him in an air-conditioned van for the trip down to Silicon Valley.
The producer had received, by fax, very specific directions; they had found the turnoff for Old La Honda Road, passed over a little gangplank bridge, and ascended into an evergreen forest, where sword ferns straddled the one-lane road and neon velvet moss circled the tree trunks. But about 2 miles farther up the road, the asphalt became all cracked and broken so the wheels of their van started a drumbeat rump rump rump; then the canopy of forest overhanging the road began scraping the metal roof, and naturally they started thinking they'd missed a turnoff, this couldn't be it, no way, something was wrong here, this couldn't be the way to the world-renowned La Honda Research Center.
Right about when their ears popped from the altitude, they caught up with this fat guy on a frail 50-cc pedal-scooter, which was whining and bleeding a trail of oil-tainted blue smoke into the air. A plastic grocery bag dangled from the elbow of one arm; a diminutive Styrofoam helmet adorned his head.
There was no room to pass, and the fat guy wasn't about to pull his scooter over and lose all his momentum, so they had no choice but to roll along behind him for the next mile and stare at the pale smile of flesh between his shorts and shirt.
When the scooter-borne fat guy pulled into the entrance of the research center, Paschetta wondered if maybe all this was a prank set up by the boys in New York. Coming from Manhattan, where power is expressed, above all, in the concrete and glass of huge buildings rocketing skyward, well, they just expected more than a converted high school. Two three-story, I-shaped buildings with sloped, Spanish tile roofs bordered a field of overgrown, trampled grass. The buildings were brick but resurfaced with a thin layer of terra cotta or adobe, which had provided a porous surface for ivy to climb on. The flower beds, which separated the lawn from the buildings, had black-berry bushes growing in them. Blackberries! Where the camera crew came from, the blackberry bush was considered an invasive weed, even in the heat of summer with berries popping up beside every thorn; yet here it was growing in the flower beds, trimmed into orderly 4-foot-high thickets. The fat guy, who without locking it had leaned his scooter up against a bike rack in the parking lot, waddled along a pathway for several steps, the landing of each foot initiating a jiggle that tremored up and across the surface of his body. He reached into his grocery bag, dug around with his fist, and came out with a double-stick fruit popsicle. The thought then occurred to Adriano Paschetta that the whole notion implied by this campaign was dangerous - it might be a terrible and grave mistake to turn our couture over to a gang of brainiacs who cared not a wit about appearances.
They unpacked the van; it took all of them to move the gear indoors - lights, makeup kit, several camera bags, backdrops, and a rack of clothes to be worn by the titan, a man named Hank Menzinger, the executive director of the center. The crew had never seen Hank Menzinger - didn't even know what he looked like; and as far as they could tell, nobody involved with the advertising campaign had seen whether or not he looked good in the clothes. Nobody had even checked his size, for god's sake - the clothes might not fit! All they knew about Hank Menzinger was that he could be found in Room 211, which was supposed to be upstairs in back, down a long hall.
So they hauled their gear up the stairs and down the hall and knocked on Room 211, and a man inside said "Yup," and so they went in, banging their equipment on the door frame. There was something wrong with the room; this was certainly not the office of any titan they'd ever seen. Where was the false fireplace, the leather-bound books, the regal oil painting of the officeholder? Where, above all else, was the secretary? Instead, there were two sleek leather couches opposite each other and on one of the couches sat a man. His head was tipped back to the ceiling. He had a shaved but stubbled head atop a lanky frame and looked pallid, like he might have just been let out of the hospital after a long sickness. He was wearing a green T-shirt with a line of tiny white lettering across the chest, too small to read at a distance. His eyes were also green, and Adriano Paschetta mustered all of his artistic sensibilities to find inspiration in the very greenness of those eyes. Of course, they assumed this man was Hank Menzinger and had no idea he was really Francis Benoit.
Francis Benoit had been waiting 10 minutes for Hank Menzinger to finish his conference call in the inner room; waiting was not one of Francis' strengths, and he wasn't going to let this crew of photographers or whatever they were keep him from giving Hank a piece of his mind. He took this crew in with his eyes and started stalling while his brain figured.
"You're looking for Hank, huh? ... Who are you guys, some photo crew, rack of clothes, huh ... wait - this for an ad?"
Francis went to the rack of clothes and shuffled through the hangers, quickly delivering his pronouncement on each article. "Yes, yes, no, no, yeeesss, no ... hey, wait, these shoes ..." Francis turned to the producer. "These shoes are shiny."
"That's bad?" the producer asked.
"Yes, bad." He pulled the loafers out and set them on the carpet. "You know what shiny shoes mean, don't you?"
The producer's eyes squinted and his lips pursed. No words came out.
"Shiny shoes have to be continually reshined. Why would I buy a pair of shoes that have to be continuously reshined when I could buy a pair - for no more money, mind you - that don't have to be reshined?"
The representative from the Italian conglomerate stepped forward to offer an explanation. "Well, we thought that the shine, the polish, conveyed a sort of crisp quality, sort of that high tech, dust-free sheen."
Francis merely shook his head. "Crisp?" he said, drawing out the word. "Crisp? No, you see, this place is not about being crisp. Crisp is not a goal we aspire to. Using our time effectively is a goal we aspire to. Shining our shoes is not on the list."
"Not on the list," the representative repeated. He seemed to make some decision. "OK, no shoes. Thanks, thanks. Authenticity is important to us. Do you mind ..." The representative's attention seemed to be fixed on the block of tiny white lettering on Francis' chest. The point size was so small the representative had to push his face within inches of Francis' sternum in order to read: when are you going to learn that a t-shirt is not a fashion statement, nor a billboard for advertising, nor a forum for your political idealism and is just a swatch of dyed cotton that keeps me warm on cool days and cool on warm days?
The representative said, "Ohh, that's good, that's excellent. Now that's authentic. Can we take a Polaroid? Tommy, get a Polaroid of this right here. You don't mind, do you buddy?"
You don't mind, do you buddy? Francis put his palm over the type on his chest. "Hank Menzinger moved his office downstairs last week," he said. "Room 139. It's in the opposing wing of the building ... the other end of the main lobby. Big red-haired guy. Can't miss him."
The producer waved his crew into action, and they all picked up their gear and filed back out into the hall, clanging and clicking. When they were gone, Francis Benoit sat back down on the couch, bent over, and began to untie the laces of his canvas sneakers. He tossed them in the trash can at the end of the couch. Then he stood up, slipped his feet into the shiny shoes left behind by the crew, and marched into Hank Menzinger's office.
In Room 139 was a big red-haired guy who looked like one of those plots of land allowed to return to its natural habitat - he was cavemanish, his beard climbing all the way to his eyes and descending right into his flannel shirt. But as the camera crew eventually found out, he was not Hank Menzinger, either.
"Who told you that I was?"
"Well, this guy in Room 211, he seemed very helpful at the time ..." the producer's voice trailed off.
When the producer described the characteristic bald head and T-shirt copy, the big red-haired guy began to nod appreciatively. The big red-haired guy was named Ronny Banks, and he was the closest thing Francis Benoit had to a best friend. Ronny Banks had a master's degree in computer science or physics or electrical engineering like everybody else at La Honda, but it was well known that when push came to shove, Ronny Banks just didn't have "it" - it being the one commodity valued around here: brainpower. The one reason Hank Menzinger had kept him on for three years was that Ronny kept Francis Benoit happy. Ronny's sole purpose at La Honda was to play along with whatever pranks or riffs Francis was into at the time. So when the producer described Francis, Ronny knew exactly what was going on.
"Aww, that must have been Francis Benoit," Ronny explained. "He hates visitors, they interrupt his thinking. He was just playing a little prank on you."
"Can you just then, won't you tell us where to find Hank Menzinger?" the producer asked.
"Oh, sure, sure. He's in the administration building, across the quad that's the grass patch. First door on the right after you go in. I'll call ahead to make sure he's there."
The men went out. Ronny Banks picked up the phone and dialed an extension. "Tiny" Curtis Reese answered the phone. Ronny could hear him slurping
on a popsicle.
"What are you doing right now, Tiny?"
"Compiling ..."
"Look it, you gotta go right now to the conference room in the south building. Take the tunnel - don't go across the quad. Right now, you hear me?"
"Awright." He hung up the phone. Tiny was a precise person, and if you told him to go somewhere right now, he assumed you meant this very second. He wouldn't even pause to ask why he was supposed to go to the conference room, or why he was supposed to take the tunnel. Tiny Curtis Reese didn't want to know, and he didn't want to ask, because it would only distract him from pondering the lines of code he'd written that morning. He sat down at the conference table and leaned forward to put his elbows on the tabletop, and that was how the camera crew found him when they came through the door.
The fat guy!
Adriano Paschetta gasped. The producer stopped in his tracks. The representative from the Italian conglomerate shuffled through his rack of garments, hunting for the largest item he'd brought, a terry-cloth bathrobe embossed across the back with the phrase "sprockets & cogs," it was here somewhere....
"Excuse us," the producer said, stepping forward.
Tiny said, "I've been waiting."
"We're very sorry we're late," the producer said. "We've had a little trouble finding you. You are Hank Menzinger, right?"
"No."
"You're not?"
"No."
The producer let out a barely audible sigh of relief.
Tiny said, "Hank Menzinger, Room 211." Sometimes Tiny failed to use familiar components of speech, preferring an abbreviated English akin to the code he wrote. He would often repeat words rather than modify comments - to say a dish of food, for instance, was extremely hot, Tiny would simply say "hot hot hot." He was particularly this way with strangers.
"Is that in this building?"
"No."
"In the other building?"
"Yes."
The producer charged out of the room. The crew followed him, swearing and cursing. Adriano Paschetta stayed behind for a moment. He watched Tiny push his chair forward and backward. He'd been waiting all day for proper inspiration; he was looking for some distinct quality to capture on film, a quality that spoke to what La Honda was about. Suddenly Adriano Paschetta felt a surge of empathic energy rush through him, and he understood, he got it. He absolutely had to capture this, this what? This incredible level of concentration. This focus. He went up to Tiny.
"Excuse me, but, did you know ... did you know that you are still wearing your bicycle helmet?"
Tiny put his hand on his head. Sure enough, the guy was right - he'd left his trusty Styrofoam helmet on his head this whole time. "What do you know ..." he said. Then his hand went back down, and he fell back into his trancelike thoughts.
He didn't take it off!
Adriano Paschetta ran all the way to Room 211.
This was the favorite kind of prank that Francis Benoit liked to play, because it stored a message, it taught a lesson - a lesson that would have to be learned by anyone who wanted to understand the way these computer engineers looked upon the rest of society. The name of the prank was the infinite loop, a term borrowed from programming. An infinite loop is what causes computer programs to apparently stall or stop working. A program starts looking for a particular variable, the way the photo crew went looking for Hank Menzinger. It follows its instructions to go to a particular line of code, just as they went to Room 211. That line of code performs a function, such as steal their shoes, then orders the program to go to another line of code, such as Room 139. Still the program is looking for the variable, but at Room 139, it is told to try another room. Francis Benoit knew that sooner or later somebody would set the crew straight and send them back to Room 211, completing the loop. Were this a computer program, though, it wouldn't get frustrated or exasperated. It would just follow the orders stored in Room 211 - leave some shoes and go to Room 139 again. It would continue to go around and around endlessly, infinitely. When a computer appears to stop responding to keystrokes, usually it is caught in one of these infinite loops, working just perfectly, following instructions one at a time - with no idea it's caught in a loop! This last part was important to the lesson. People can be caught in their own infinite loops and have no idea they're caught in a loop. Each step seems logical, while the illogic of it all evades them. As a necessary part of their work, the engineers at La Honda had trained themselves to spot infinite loops, wherever they might be.
When the engineers at La Honda looked at the way society worked, sometimes all they could see was infinite loops. Just open the newspaper. Politicians ensure that taxes are always high enough to campaign for reelection on the pledge to cut taxes. Meanwhile, the public complains that it wants its politicians to "discuss the real issues," which the politicians would be perfectly willing to do as soon as the public would stop caring about the first lady's haircut. The cure for this loop is the educational system, but that happens to be caught in its own loop. Our failed educational systems guarantee that students will graduate uneducated, thereby creating an even greater demand for more failed educational systems. Education could get out of its rut if the entertainment industry would just clean up its act, and the entertainment executives would happily clean up their act if the public would just stop clamoring for more flesh 'n' blood. But flesh 'n' blood was the great pacifier, and we needed it, particularly in hard times like these when taxes are so high. From the engineer's point of view, up there in their little utopia, tucked in amidst 87 acres of Bishop pine and Douglas fir overlooking Silicon Valley - a vantage point that they considered, without question, to be outside the "system" - society had some time ago entered into an infinite loop and stopped responding.
If the Lo-Tech producer stopped any one of these scientists on the footpaths around the center and asked what he was doing with his time at La Honda, he would never get them to say what they really thought, what they really believed. The scientists' goal was bigger than any of them ever cared to state outright, for fear of coming across as unrealistic. They all knew why they worked around the clock, week in and week out: they wanted to jolt society out of its infinite loop! Nothing less!
But not just anybody could jolt society out of its infinite loop. It took ironmen. "Big iron" was industry slang for the fast, powerful computers invented at La Honda and elsewhere. Ironmen - they loved that word. No other word quite fit. Hank had given them that word. Every May, Hank Menzinger had to go to the four-drawer, gun-metal file cabinet in the back of his office and comb through the La Honda personnel files to decide who was special enough to be one of them and who wasn't up to the task. And those that he decided were worthy he reinvited for another year. Reinvited! What a choice of words! Nobody was ever fired from La Honda - not one person in 30 years - but plenty had failed to be reinvited. Because to be fired implied that you had been employed, which itself was to imply a commercial quality that just didn't exist at La Honda. La Honda wasn't like the commercial sector. There were no semiannual performance reviews, no 10-rung salary ladders to climb, no job titles to garner, no business cards to hand out to friends. There was no marketing department to pass off your bloated code as sublime; no fancy software boxes to put on your bookshelf and say, "I did that"; no sales figures to derive pride from. Oh, in a commercial company there were any number of ways to know where you stood in the grand competition. But at La Honda, there was only one: you were either reinvited, or you weren't.
The process of reinvitation was torture. Throughout the year, new people had been brought on as needed, so by May the number of ironmen had usually bloated to 110, maybe 120, people. Hank usually cut that by a fifth - but sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the success of fund-raising and corporate sponsorships. But he never told any of them how many he would reinvite. Instead he would occasionally post a list on the cork bulletin board in the foyer of the north building, right below the bronze relief portrait of the grand matron who built the place. On this list he might have scribbled 10 names, all of them reinvited. Then, for a few days, nothing. The agony! Then another posting, 10 or 15 more names. Word of a posting spread through the buildings. The hopefuls rushed to the foyer.
When the number of names got to be around 80, there was always the possibility that Hank would just say, "That's it - that's the cutoff." You just had to wait. The names slowed to a trickle; undoubtedly, some of the fellows and chairs were debating the merits of a particular student with Hank. And this was exactly why Francis Benoit had been waiting to see Hank Menzinger on the day in late May of 1995 when the photographer and his crew had popped into Hank's anteroom, and Francis had managed to con them out of a pair of shiny Italian loafers.
Francis Benoit kicked back in an armchair across from Hank and, tipping over a jar of green pencils, put his feet up on Hank's desk. Hank wore a short lambskin leather coat that was as shiny as a Crisco'd baking sheet; he had a broad back and a thick gut, a symbol that his ironmen interpreted as greatness of character rather than weakness for sweets. He had broad flat lips, long wiry hair that had once been red, and a grin that made other men in its presence feel less alive. Hank Menzinger had once been an engineer, a good one, and had worked at Fairchild Semiconductor in the '60s, when that meant something. But at some point along the road, Hank realized that his greatest gift had not been the power of his brain but the power of his personality. And that was nothing to be ashamed of, particularly if he applied his energy to the same goal he'd been applying his mind - jolt society out of its infinite loop!
Francis was looking out the window. His best friend, Ronny Banks, still hadn't been reinvited. He said, "Some key people still haven't been reinvited. So, naturally, those of us who count on those key personnel are wondering what's going through Hank's head ..."
When Hank spoke, his hands parted, like the wings of a bird. "If you're asking whether I'm going to invite any more people back, Francis, then my answer is 'Yes.' But I have to be very selective this year, Francis. Especially selective. You know already ... I don't have to explain to you, that the defense industry isn't as capable of sponsoring research as it used to be. I don't have spare spots to dole out."
Francis said, "You need people who you can count on to get results."
"I'm glad you understand."
"And Ronny Banks ... what's he done in the last year except inject red food coloring into the milk in the cafeteria?"
"Right."
Then Francis added, "And everybody else you are reinviting meets this criteria."
Hank stopped. "Well ..."
"Do you have a list?"
"Tomorrow, Francis. The combination of people, the chemistry - it has to be right. You know that."
Francis said, "But there must be some names on it today?"
"Well, of course."
Francis waited him out. Eventually, Hank pulled a folder aside and brought up the list. He handed it to Francis, who read over the six names on it, going "yes, yes, yes" to each name as he considered the talent of the person. Then Francis got to a name, Caspar Andrews, and had to think about it for a second before he realized that Hank was talking about Andy Caspar. Caspar was a fairly new guy, he'd been brought on only six weeks before to test several software programs that had been written by others during the year. Testing wasn't a way to demonstrate you had it, it wasn't proof of one's prowess.
"Well hell," Francis said. He brought his feet down and leaned forward onto the desk. "This kid Caspar here, he's just a tester! He hasn't proven himself!"
"Francis ..."
"But you said you had no spare spots to dole out, and here you've got a mere tester who's been here only six weeks on your list! I think this spare spot right here ought to be put up for discussion." Francis slapped the list down on Hank's desk.
Hank Menzinger slid his chair back from the desk and turned to face his gun-metal file cabinet. He pulled out Caspar's file. He knew this was going to happen. "A few years ago, Caspar used to work at Omega Logic." Omega Logic was one of La Honda's biggest sponsors, if not the biggest, and partly because of that the president of La Honda's board of regents was Lloyd Acheson, CEO of Omega Logic. Every year Lloyd Acheson looked over the list of reinvitees, and he swelled with pride if someone from Omega was amidst the brethren. Every year Hank Menzinger tried to make sure somebody who had worked at Omega was on the list at La Honda - even if they had only worked in Omega's marketing department, as Caspar had done.
Two floors below, in his office in the basement of the building, Andy Caspar was staring at something that had been carved into the well of one of his desk drawers by a previous occupant. It said: What does it say about a man, that he spends his days at a gray desk in a windowless room?
Since he'd come to La Honda, he hadn't been given a decent chance to prove himself. Caspar had been brought in to a small, six-person team that was redesigning part of a chipset for digital satellites. All of his attempts to give input were rebuffed.
"How the hell can you possibly appreciate the intricacies of our problem?" they said to him. "You're just a tester."
So Andy resolved himself, If I'm just gonna be a tester, then I'm gonna be the best goddamn tester this place has ever seen. He pored over their code for weaknesses. Every day the team thought they were done, Andy yanked them back to their desks with yet another wrinkle they had missed. Over the last six weeks, Andy had transformed from the peon the team looked down their noses at to the gremlin in the basement they feared.
Now, Andy got a call from Hank Menzinger, requesting him to come by. Andy had to ask for the room number, since he'd never been there. He walked upstairs and entered Menzinger's office. Francis Benoit was also there. Menzinger pointed to a swivel armchair.
Menzinger's office was so cool; it wasn't pretentious at all. He didn't have cheesy slogans on the walls. He had some bookcases, but not every book he'd ever read. He didn't have a humidifier. There was no CD player piping out ambient music. His desk wasn't anally organized.
Menzinger grinned. "Listen, Andrews, as you know, I'm in the process of making reinvitations to personnel."
Benoit chipped in. "I want him to keep my friend Ronny Banks, but Hank here has been trying to convince me that we should keep you instead."
Andy was caught off guard. "Look, I'm not a conventional engineer," he started out. "I didn't even study engineering in college, but maybe that makes me ... different." He was just talking to say something, but Francis Benoit leapt at it.
"Different? Now that's an interesting theorem. How do you think it would make you different?"
"Well, I might approach a problem differently."
Francis baited him. "Are you saying you are different because you approach things differently, or you approach things differently because you are different?"
Now Andy wished he hadn't said anything. "Sometimes I think I see simpler solutions ..." he offered.
"Perhaps Andrews would be a little more comfortable if you asked him some questions," Menzinger offered.
Yes, do that, Andy thought. But wait - Andrews? Menzinger had said Andrews again. Menzinger thought his name was Caspar Andrews! Menzinger was his supposed advocate in this debate, the one small chance he had at being reinvited, and Menzinger didn't even know his name!
"Uh, it's Andy ..."
Francis said, "You used to work at Omega, huh? Did you ever sell the Falcon chip?" Francis had designed the Falcon.
"I left before the Falcon. I was selling the Eagle, the 486."
"Did you like it there?"
Should he tell the truth? Probably not. "Yeah, I guess."
"Then why did you leave?"
"Dunno. They don't really let marketing people become programmers. The usual career path is the other way around, programmers burn out after five years, move to marketing."
Francis said, "Why do you think they burn out so fast?"
This was a delicate question, but Andy couldn't avoid the truth, even if Omega was a big sponsor for La Honda. "In that environment, programmers have to make so many compromises ... it's hard to keep the desire, the will, when half your work gets thrown out every year."
That brought a bit of a smile to Francis' mouth. Andy wondered if maybe he'd said something right.
Hank interrupted them. "OK, Francis, we've got to come to some decision."
Francis said, "How about this. I will come up with one simple question. And
if you get it right, I will give up my resistance and let Hank here have his way. If you get it wrong, then Ronny Banks is on my team another year. How about that?" Francis wasn't trying to think of a hard question - he was trying to think of a question that would show Hank how Andy Caspar wasn't sharp enough to be an ironman. Francis tried to think of the right question ... he looked around the room. On the wall above Andy was an old school clock.
Andy waited in fear.
Francis' eyes were closed. When he opened them, he said, "OK. You have 30 seconds to answer this one question."
He showed no emotion. "What time is it when the big hand is on the four and the little hand is on the eleven?"
What time is it when the big hand is on the four and the little hand is on the eleven? That was it? That's all? Well, hell, let's see, big hand on four is twenty, little hand on eleven, that's too easy, there must be some trick, what? Oh, shit - was the big hand the hour hand? It had been so long since Andy had looked at a clock that wasn't digital. Is the big hand the long hand, or is the big hand the fat hand? When he was a kid back in school they used the phrases "big hand" and "little hand" all the time, but that was a long time ago, a real long time ago, and maybe he had the terms switched in his mind.
Then Andy realized that this kind of second-guessing was exactly what Francis wanted him to do. Something else was going on. Francis was playing some sort of joke on him. Why? This wasn't a test at all - the question was too easy.
Hank could see the clock right behind Caspar's head, saying 11:20 right then and there! Beautiful! And yet just looking at Caspar, you could tell he was in turmoil - his head slightly bowed, his eyes ascending partly into his eyelids, lost in thought. Hank knew he was going to reinvite Andy Caspar, whether or not he got this question right - you had to please the sponsors, they were the source of money, you couldn't be impractical about this thing. But Hank couldn't help but admire the way Francis was embarrassing the kid. Simpler solutions! Hah. A man in a panic, he could get anything wrong. Brains could be as sharp as quartz or as dull as Jello, depending on the way a man handled pressure.
Andy said, "This isn't a real test. What the hell's going on?"
"Oh, I assure you," Francis said. "If you answer the question correctly, you will be reinvited. Or are you stalling because you're having trouble with such a simple question."
Andy tried to think back. What had he done to be fucked with?
"Time's up," Francis said, looking at the clock on the wall to keep time. There was a glint of pleasure in Francis' eyes. He said, "What makes you think you can be an ironman?"
"The time would be 20 minutes after 11," Andy said. He stood up and walked to the door. As he went out, he heard Francis burst out in laughter.
The camera crew was crowded into the anteroom again, waiting for Hank a second time, and here a man came out of Hank's office. What a relief - he was young and tall with thick hair and good skin. The producer was ecstatic; after the hospital patient, the mountain man, and the whale-boy, the producer couldn't hide his excitement that Hank Menzinger turned out to be a good-looking guy. He stood up and thrust out his hand.
"Mister Menzinger ... hi, hi, wow ...
I can't tell you how much of a pleasure it is to meet you." The producer watched a big smile come over Mister Menzinger's face. He even had great teeth! Those boys in New York had done their homework after all!
Andy instinctively shook this man's hand. He held on to it, shaking firmly and warmly, taking in their act, figuring out what was going on. Well, if Francis Benoit thought he was the only one with audacity around here, he would learn differently.
"So ... where should we go?" Andy said. "My office ... it's too small of course. There's a lab down one floor, a big room, plenty of outlets for your lights."
"That'll be fine," the producer said. "We'll just follow you down there."
Andy led them into the hall and - taking bold strides he thought appropriate for the executive director of La Honda - down one flight of stairs to the Materials Engineering Lab on the second floor.
He punched in a code to the cyberlock over the door, waited for the bolt to click, and then held the door open for his entourage. Once inside, he pulled a shade down over the door's porthole so nobody passing by would notice the camera flashes.
Finally having something to do, the crew broke into action. One man covered the lab's windows with dark cloth, blocking out natural light. Another man erected a scaffold and draped a white screen from its front. A third cranked down the telescopic legs of a tripod, mounted a reflex camera on the top, and plugged in an air-bulb shutter release cord. Done with the windows, the first man began popping flashes and testing light exposure.
"Don't forget to check batteries!" the producer called out. He took Andy by the arm and guided him to the rack of clothes. "We'll feed you clothes to change into as we go," he said. "But why don't you start with whatever looks comfortable. Go ahead, just pick some things off the rack and try them on."
Andy stood in front of the rack, browsing through its selection. The pickings weren't horrible. He slipped into a knit shirt and a pair of knee-length corduroys. He pulled his white socks up. Then he looked at the shoe selection, all sorts of shoes on pegs at the base of the rack. He turned back to the producer, who was across the room.
"Hey! Hey, um ... these shoes ... Don't you guys have any sneakers?"
Good good good
Francis Benoit's office was actually two offices linked together, with one serving as the anteroom. The anteroom was barren. It did not have chairs to sit down on and waste away the day. It did not have decorations to distract. It did not even have carpet to muffle sound. The anteroom was more of an airlock, a zone to remove all your insecurities and hang them up on the lone chrome coat tree before going into Francis' office.
Francis Benoit was staring at the ceiling when Andy entered. He did not change from this position - did not look at Andy - as he said, "Oh, good ... Caspar, great, you're here. Take a seat, please."
Andy sat down in a spare chair. The only thing hanging on the wall of Francis' office was a large dry-erase board marked with diagrams. There was a coffeemaker on the corner of Francis' desk, but no coffee mugs in sight. Maybe Francis drank straight from the urn. Tree branches shielded the windows from direct light, but Andy noticed that the ceiling had been rigged with special full-spectrum incandescent light equipment. Despite this seeming fixation on light, Francis Benoit was extremely pale.
Andy waited for Francis to say something. It was a while in coming. Andy knew that Francis Benoit was recruiting 30 engineers for a team to design a chip called the Jolt, the highest, god-almightiest hunk of heavy iron ever attempted at La Honda, and to be a part of it was a story to tell your grandchildren.
Francis cleared his throat. His tongue wet his lips. "I suppose it is your intention to volunteer for the Jolt project, like everyone else around here?"
"I was thinking of it."
"As you probably know, there will be way more volunteers than the 30 spots on the team. But since you used to work at Omega, Hank has it in mind to put you on my team. He tried to convince me your knowledge might be helpful, but the truth is he's just trying to kiss Lloyd Acheson's ass." Francis began to scratch his chin casually. Then Andy saw that there was an old scar on Francis' chin, and he was scratching the scar.
"What do you think of that? Do you think that's fair, leapfrogging the other ironmen?"
"You know, all I really want is to get out of testing. I just want to get on a project I can apply myself to."
"That's good, Caspar. Because if you do volunteer for the Jolt, let me tell you what the next year will be like -"
Andy jumped ahead. "You're going to make me a tester for the Jolt."
"Aha, you catch on fast. Yes, you would be a tester. Nothing but testing. There will be 29 men giving you orders and making you their tester of first choice."
"Come on, you gotta give me a chance; this isn't fair. I'm sorry I took your buddy Ronny Banks's place, but once you get to know me ... if you give me a chance -"
Francis let out a little chuckle, as if it were a cough. "Don't try to figure out why I'm doing what I'm doing. You'll only get it wrong."
Andy took a deep breath. "We started off on the wrong foot. What can I do to set us straight?"
"Let me make you an offer," Francis said, ignoring him. "I will give you another project to volunteer for. If you do, and you stick with it ... then a year from now I will guarantee you a reinvitation for next year."
That didn't sound so bad. Andy didn't know what he'd done to rub Francis the wrong way, but at least Francis was giving him the signal now, rather than a month from now, when it would be too late to switch projects. In a small way Andy appreciated Francis' being up-front about it. And a guaranteed reinvitation? What could be better than that?
Andy said, "All right. I'm with you so far. What's the project?"
Francis slid a piece of paper across his desk to Andy. It was a list of potential projects. Francis leaned forward and circled a line at the bottom of the page. "A computer that will sell for only $300."
"Three hundred!"
"You think it can't be done?"
"Well, a computer can be built for any price. It's just a question of how much it can do. Three hundred bucks, that's just a step up from a cellular phone."
"Maybe."
"I guess the point, I guess the object, would be to see how much you could do for that limit."
"Exactly."
It was hard for Andy to hide his disappointment. More than anything, engineers wanted the respect of their peers. The best way to earn that respect was to design products other engineers found useful, that solved their problems. A $300 computer might make some schoolkid happy, but it would be as much use to an engineer as an abacus.
A project always suggested something about the men who designed it. Computers had symbolic value. And so what does it say about a man, Andy Caspar thought.... What does it say about a man, that he designs a computer that is simple and cheap?
"Why this project? There's plenty of others. If you just want me off the Jolt, why don't you let me choose another?"
"I have my reasons. If you're smart, you will probably discover them soon enough."
"So that's my choice, huh? Be the little man on a big computer, or be a big man on the little computer?"
"But with a guaranteed reinvitation. Obviously, the word can't get out that I'm promising reinvitations a year in advance. This conversation we've just had, this deal I am offering you ... it is just between us. If you tell anyone - if the word gets out - I will guarantee you that you will not be reinvited next year."
What the hell. It was a project. Work on it for a year, prove himself, get reinvited ... move up to something better next year.
Andy said, "Why? Why do you even want this project?"
Francis sighed. "Ten years I've been designing chips here," he said. "But do computers really operate any faster for their users? The software programs have grown so huge that it takes all the new hardware power just to keep the status quo. I'm tired of it, Andy. I want to see something that breaks that mold." He ran his hand down over his face, drawing down his skin. Then he looked at Andy. "What do you think of that?"
"That sounds like the sort of thing you tell the newspapers. What's the real reason?"
Francis only coughed out a little laugh. Then he raised his eyebrows, suggesting he had said all he was going to say. You could try to talk Francis Benoit out of a decision, but nobody had ever defied him. Andy was stuck with the project.
Andy Caspar did not stay at the La Honda Research Center that afternoon. He had never left the center during daylight before, but there was some beer in his refrigerator at home. Beer would not remedy his disappointment, but beer might help him swallow it.
When Tiny Curtis Reese received an email from Andy Caspar inviting him to come to lunch "re: volunteering for the VWPC," Tiny was wary.
He had recently received a photocopy of his last year's evaluation, in which his team leader had reported that Tiny was "a bulldozer who pushed through any task set in front of him." It was meant as praise, but nevertheless - bulldozer! Tiny was deeply hurt when he read the evaluation. He thought he'd done the right thing in accepting without complaint the tasks given him, working through the problems on his own without asking for help, and not bragging about his successes. But what was the lasting impression he'd left with his boss? That he was a bulldozer! What the hell did that suggest? An order-taker! Tiny's team had designed several gallium-arsenide chips, which are prevalent in digital wireless telephones and, more importantly, very cutting edge. It was the kind of project that made other engineers go, "Wow!" But a bulldozer shoveled dirt, a bulldozer was low tech, a bulldozer needs someone else to be the driver.
His boss was a bit of a joker, and the phrase might have been used satirically, in reference to Tiny's massive body weight - nevertheless, it had made its way into Tiny's permanent file. When Francis Benoit read through the file, looking over the volunteers for the Jolt team, did he recognize that the phrase was used satirically? Francis Benoit didn't like order-takers, he liked ironmen with balls. And so Tiny resolved to himself that he wouldn't join a project unless the leader understood him for who he was.
Two other guys had also been invited to lunch, Salman Fard and Darrell Lincoln. Tiny went down the hall to see if either of them had any idea what this VWPC project was about. He found Salman sitting alone in his office.
Salman looked like an Arab version of John Lennon circa 1966 - bangs slightly curling down his forehead, half-moon eyebrows, slightly hooked nose, and a drooping mustache that cut off the corners of his mouth. His hair was so black and so glossy that it looked wet. His sneakers had little nubby black cleats; if a football game suddenly broke out, he would be the only one prepared.
Recently, Salman had been getting headaches from staring at a monitor. To remedy the problem, he taped a folded-down paper napkin over his left eye. Bands of tape ran across his forehead and down his cheek. Then, as a joke, he'd squirted a touch of bright red iodine onto the napkin.
"Christ, what happened to you?" Tiny asked, wincing.
"Aww, my girlfriend and I had an argument."
"And she hit you in the eye!?"
"She's a little passionate."
"Jeez. What were you fighting about?"
Salman said, "I accused her of not being as passionate as her little sister."
"Hell, I'd hate to get in a fight with her little sister."
"Well, that's what started the whole thing."
Tiny was incredulous. "You got in a fight with her sister?"
"Yeah. She kicked me in the balls."
"Kicked you in the balls! What were you fighting about?"
"I accused her of living with us only to perpetuate a jealous rivalry with her older sister."
"Holy shit. They sound like a pair."
"Yup. You ought to come over for dinner sometime and meet them. The most beautiful couple of ladies in the whole world."
Salman didn't know why he told lies about his girlfriend. They just popped out. In truth, his girlfriend was a mousy sweetheart who taught sixth-grade English to Catholic schoolgirls. He loved her dearly and wouldn't have her any different, but for some reason he wanted the ironmen to think he dated a hysteric sexual adventuress who had nothing better to do all day than shop for a new purse.
"God, are my balls sore," he would say to someone as they waited in line for lunch in the cafeteria, pushing their orange trays toward the steam-heated food. Salman despised his own flirtation with normality. But he knew in his heart he wasn't normal, and he wanted to make sure everybody knew just how not-normal he was, even if he had to tell some white lies to get to the real truth of his individuality across.
Tiny asked, "What's VWPC?"
"Dunno," Salman said.
"Maybe 'virtual workstation personal computer.' You think that could be it? A personal computer that uses the Internet to tap into extra processing power."
"Mmmm."
"What's Darrell think?" Tiny asked. "Have you talked to him?" Tiny knew that Salman and Darrell were friends.
Salman shook his head. "I could call him. Should I?" Salman picked up his telephone and dialed Darrell's extension. Darrell's office was up one floor. Salman got him on his speakerphone. "Hey, Darrell, I'm here with Tiny in my office. We're talking about this memo. Why don't you come down?"
Darrell said, "Why don't you guys come up here?"
Salman sighed. "Just come down, man."
"I'm in the middle of something."
"But there's two of us down here."
Tiny tapped Salman on the shoulder. "Let's just go up," he whispered.
Salman rolled his eyes. "Don't go anywhere," he said to Darrell, then disconnected the line. "You can't give in to him, Tiny. He always does that." They headed out the door.
"Does what?"
"Aww, he makes minor moments into challenges to his status. He doesn't want to come downstairs because he doesn't want us thinking that we can order him around."
"I don't think that," Tiny said.
Salman shook his head with frustration. "Of course not. But he's got a hair-trigger personality. Last year, we were on the same project together ... there were 12 of us, and we rotated the duties of making backup copies of all our work. Every day, it was somebody's turn. But Darrell hated doing it - it was beneath him. He thought we should hire an undergraduate assistant to do it."
They reached Darrell's office. Darrell looked like a study in alternative fabrics: he wore sports sandals with neoprene straps, nylon jogging pants, a fleece baseball cap, and a casual coat made out of gray shag carpet. He worked very hard to maintain the image that he cared not a wit about appearances.
Darrell had a couple cans of cold soda waiting for them. He popped them open himself, wiped the condensation from the side with a napkin, and offered the sodas with the line, "See? We wouldn't be having these in your office."
Salman didn't say anything. He wanted the soda, but Darrell had offered the sodas only as a way of winning the argument. If Salman drank the soda, it would be giving in. He held it in his hand. It was cool and wet. It was only a few seconds before he took a big slug.
"What do we know about this Andy Caspar guy?" Tiny asked.
Salman said, "He's new here, two months new."
Darrell objected to inferring anything from that. "He had to be sharp enough to get invited here."
Salman said, "Not sharp enough to get picked for the Jolt."
"You weren't picked for the Jolt, either," Darrell reminded him.
"I got screwed."
"Screwed? How?"
"You took credit for my work," Salman said.
"I did?"
"Mmmm. You did it all the time."
Darrell shot back, "If I took credit for your work, wouldn't I have been picked for the Jolt if your work was any good?"
That caught Salman without a comeback. Salman was just rambling. He didn't have a legitimate complaint. Darrell finally said, "You know, we could just ask Andy what VW means."
"Mmmm ..." Salman concurred.
"Volkswagen," Tiny said without thinking. "A cheap, simple, mass-produced computer."
His words stayed in their minds.
"Oh shit," Salman said, as the three young men came out of the building at noon. Parked beside the south building was a car he hadn't seen before, a vintage orange Volkswagen bug, with chrome saucer hubcaps and sheepskin covers over the front seats. Andy Caspar was leaning casually against the car's bubble hood. When he stood up at their approach, he was a foot taller than the car. There wasn't any beanpole quality to him at all; he wore an alligator shirt hanging out over his khakis, but both were so faded that the look wasn't preppy. His arms and shoulders weren't flabby or bony. A red baseball cap shielded his eyes from the sun. His face was slightly freckled. People with freckles never have bad skin.
Andy shook their hands.
"Shotgun," Darrell said.
"Tiny's the biggest," Salman said. "Let him have the front seat."
"Sorry. Should have called it."
They climbed into the car. Tiny sat behind Darrell. His knees pushed through the seat, gouging Darrell's back.
"Cut it out, Tiny."
"I'm not doing anything. You should have taken the backseat."
It took them a while to settle down. Andy didn't say much until they had dropped off the ridge and pulled onto the 280 freeway headed north.
"OK," Andy said. He rolled his window down an inch. "My guess is you already know why I've asked you here, but let me make my pitch anyway, arright?"
Darrell and Tiny nodded. Salman stared out the window at a woman in a Mercedes two lanes over.
"OK. Darrell - how fast are we going?"
Darrell glanced at the speedometer. "Fifty-five."
"And that Mercedes over there, how fast is it going?"
"Fifty-five."
"The speed limit," Andy said. "She could go twice as fast as me if it weren't for the speed limit."
"What's your point?" Darrell said.
"For most computers today, the Internet connection is the speed limit." Andy repeated what they already knew but hadn't quite thought about in this context: at that time, June of 1995, the biggest rage was to connect via modem to the Internet and from there gain access to far more uses of the computer than could be conventionally stored on your hard disk. You couldn't help but imagine that in a few years most computers would be connected to the Internet for several hours a day. The problem was that connection was slow. It was doubling in speed every year, but it was still far slower than the rest of the computer. A computer can only work as fast as its slowest link. Just as a Volkswagen performs almost as well as a Mercedes on a freeway, a cheap processor would work as well as a Pentium when the data coming in to it was regulated by the modem. "Power is going to waste," Andy said, echoing what they had been taught was the ultimate sin, to waste their own brainpower. "You see, for the average person, they don't need all that power."
Well that may be fine and dandy for the average person, but as far as the ironmen sitting in the car were concerned, they didn't build computers for average people. They didn't relate to average people. They couldn't imagine what went through the mind of an average person. Brilliant minds design brilliant products. But average minds, well, hell - they designed Water Piks.
They didn't try to argue, though. To argue the point was to imply that the issue was up for debate, which it wasn't. Mostly they just shut up and let Andy drive and talk.
And as they saw it, driving along that afternoon, the VWPC was not cutting edge, it was not cool, it would never make another ironman go "Wow." At best it would look and act the same as any plain vanilla box-o-wires. At the end of the year, even if the toy was a roaring success, where would any of them be? A year behind, that's where!
"Hey, look at Tiny," Salman said.
The two in front glanced back. Tiny was stiff as a statue. His arms were suspended unnaturally. His head was dipped down slightly, the mouth open. He was breathing but his eyes weren't moving.
"Don't touch him," Darrell said.
"Why not?" Salman said. His instinct was to jar Tiny.
Darrell said, "You're not supposed to wake sleepwalkers."
"Who says he's sleepwalking?"
"Well, what do you think it is?"
"Maybe he's having a seizure or something."
"Here, I'll roll down the window, put some wind on him." Darrell did that, and soon Tiny's eyes blinked, and then he was back.
Salman said, "Wow, man, you sure had us scared. You passed out or something."
Tiny explained that it wasn't an uncommon occurrence. "I feel just fine, though."
"What is it?" Andy asked. "What causes it?"
"I've got a bad back, cuts off my nerves," Tiny said. "Things go haywire."
Salman reached forward and popped Darrell on the shoulder. "You shoulda let him have the front seat, man."
"How the hell was I supposed to know?"
Tiny hadn't told them the truth. There was a medical explanation - petit mal epilepsy - but Tiny wasn't much of a believer in medical explanations. Even the doctors said stress was a factor, so Tiny didn't blame anything but himself. He believed the epilepsy was just a manifestation of some fault in his mental approach to life. Somewhere, way down deep in the biochemistry of his body, at the level where thoughts were chemicals, his system had a bug.
Andy eventually drove them to the Peninsula Creamery in downtown Palo Alto, though there were a hundred faster ways to get there than detouring onto the freeway. They took a booth and ordered quickly.
The Peninsula Creamery was not one of those chichidiners where all the waitresses were young artists and the specialty was a $22 flaming cabbage, though there was an oyster bar across the street that catered to that crowd - a crowd that, at lunch, was composed mostly of software salesmen schmoozing purchasing agents. Through the Creamery's big plate-glass window, the guys could see them at their sidewalk tables, wearing prescription sunglasses and tossing back shots of French water, sans gas. The Creamery was the ironmen's type of place. Practical. Beside every booth was a chrome coat rack. All the forks were the same size and had the same number of tines, four. Nobody came around scraping crumbs off the tabletop while you were eating. They didn't play music in the bathrooms, and nobody had ever paid attention to the lighting, except to make sure there was some.
"No talking until the food comes," Darrell said, a bit perturbed by it all.
"Why? Why can't I talk?" Andy said.
"OK, you can talk all you want," Darrell said. "But I won't listen."
"Why? Am I offending you?"
"Don't ask me. I'm not listening."
"Why not?"
Darrell didn't say anything.
"Christ, Darrell, I'm trying to make an important point here. I'm not going to shut up so you can eat your french fries in peace. Schoolkids can't afford a computer, few people outside of America can afford a computer."
Darrell slammed down the ketchup bottle on the table. The cap blew off and a dollop of sauce landed on his cheek. He swore. "They don't make the Volkswagen Bug anymore, hate to tell you buddy."
"Bullshit, Darrell. What do you think they drive in the rest of the world, Hondas with dual airbags? They build Bugs at VW plants in Manaus, Brazil, and in Puebla, Mexico - same design for 15 years. You know what a brand-new Volkswagen costs in Brazil? Two grand! A fifth of what the cheapest car costs here."
"Two grand?" Tiny said, with interest. He didn't know that. Tiny had never traveled anywhere. A new car, for two grand? For the first time it occurred to him that maybe somebody really could build a computer for cheap, if they had enough volume. Not him, but somebody. As he thought about this, he stuffed fries into his mouth like an assembly-line worker, one right after another.
Andy talked about how the VWPC was the kind of device that might bring "the other 50 percent" online - "the other 50 percent" were all those stubborn Americans who had never bought a computer despite having purchased cars, VCRs, and refrigerators. The "other 50 percent" was a sort of holy grail for the computer industry - a market they'd been unable to tap despite a blitzkrieg of hype. The conventional wisdom was that "the other 50 percent" would jump en masse, all at once, and whoever led them - whoever instigated the jumping - would go down in history as big as Jesus Christ. Because what would more likely jolt society out of its infinite loop than the other half of America jumping into the computer age?
Darrell felt that Andy had him all wrong. It would take more than a speech to win Darrell over. Words were comparatively cheap. Darrell wasn't devoid of opinions on weighty matters, he knew all about the toxic hazards of chip manufacturing and the human rights violations of the countries where chip plants are located. Darrell was not a geek anymore, and he hated when people assumed that he was. His only enemy was hypocrisy, and the only virtue he thought worth praising was authenticity.
Darrell shot back. "Listen to yourself, Andy. We don't disagree with your ideals. We just don't see why we're the ones to do this project. It's an exercise in economics. Three hundred dollars of economics. I didn't study economics. Tiny didn't study economics. If we did, we'd be in Hoover Tower, not La Honda. We don't worry what it's going to cost. All that matters is what it can do. Then we turn over our project to some profitseekers who can worry how to get the cost down."
Salman let out a little cough into his clenched fist.
Darrell said, "Turn your head when you cough, please."
"I'm not sick. I just had a little something in my throat."
"So what? You still should turn your head when you do that."
"And cough toward the other table?" Salman shot back.
Darrell just shook his head.
They gave up talking awhile and went to work on their food. Andy had been careful not to recruit anybody older than him, since an older guy might resent working for someone who was only 29. But appealing to their ideals wasn't working at all. Their idealism was a mile wide and an inch deep. He was going to have to really push their buttons. Andy had picked each of these guys because of their computing specialty, but it wasn't going to be enough to just tell Salman, for instance, "I need a good graphical-interface guy, and you're the best available." Andy had to appeal to more primitive instincts. Take Darrell - Darrell seemed to like arguing, but once he was engaged in a fight he was so intent on winning that he stopped listening. This guy loved to fight. Andy had to get Darrell to see that by working on the VWPC, he would be fighting against the status quo at La Honda.
Andy was also worried about Tiny. The guy almost never spoke. He gave no clues. Most engineers don't have any trouble speaking up, but Tiny was like a kid trained not to speak unless spoken to. Or someone accustomed to taking orders. Maybe he was waiting to be asked for his opinion.
Tiny stared out the window. A pack of ties came out of the oyster bar, patting their stomachs and reaching for their sunglasses. They paused on the curb, said something to each other, then crossed the street in the direction of the Creamery. They came in the back door and slid into a booth behind Tiny. Tiny glanced over his shoulder; there were five of them. One of the guys told the others about how this was a legendary place, then he started on some bullshit lie about how Steve Wozniak had drawn his original vision of the Apple on a napkin from the Creamery, and the napkin now hung in the Smithsonian. Tiny couldn't tell if the guy's audience knew they were being had. Then the waitress came, and they kept calling her Flo even though her name was Linda, and then one guy wanted to know if he could have wheat germ in his milkshake.
As he was listening, Tiny was thinking, That's the other life for an engineer. They were lucky to be at La Honda at all. Maybe they were being too critical of Andy's project. Building the damn thing might not be so easy; the $300 limit was so tight that conventional software couldn't run on a computer like that. They would have to write an entire new library of software - not a small job. By the time lunch was over, Tiny had thought about it long enough to be intrigued ... but then, on the way home - the short way - he was riding in the front seat and out of curiosity opened the glove compartment, where he found the car registration and saw that the VW wasn't registered to Andy Caspar, it was registered to one Alisa Jennings.
Tiny passed the registration back to Salman, who said, "Hey, you, you don't own this car!"
"I never said I owned it. It's my neighbor's."
"You let us think you owned it."
Darrell grabbed the registration. "Well shit, what kind of car do you drive, Andy?"
"'84 Lincoln. It's a piece of shit, though."
"What, a Mark IV?"
"Uh-huh."
"That's a V-8!"
Andy nodded.
Darrell said, "Ahh, fuck you, man, you yuppie gas-guzzling hypocrite. Nothing's worse than a hypocrite, man. Nothing."
"But I never said I owned it!"
There was about a minute of uncomfortable silence. Salman tried to smooth it over. "Hey, you guys remember the joke about if Microsoft built cars?"
Nobody said anything. Finally, Darrell said, "Well?"
Salman said, "What?"
"Well, what about if Microsoft made cars?"
"Yeah - you remember the punch line?" Salman asked.
"So what is it, for god's sake!?"
"I don't remember. I'm asking. I think it was funny."
Darrell shut his eyes and pursed his lips. "Sometimes, Salman ... you ... Jesus." He shook his head.
"What? What'd I do?"
Andy let the silence hang there for a moment. Then he said, "If Microsoft made cars ... we'd all have to switch to Microsoft Gas."
"That's it!" Salman said. "That's it!"
To which Darrell said, "Do you see me laughing?"
At about that same time, Francis was reading in his office when Hank Menzinger walked right in. The pallid engineer didn't look up to acknowledge Hank until he was done reading the page - and by that time Hank had rested his butt on the windowsill.
Francis said, "There are two chairs here which have been specifically designed to be sat on."
Hank would have none of it. "What the hell's with this $300 computer project you've got in the works?"
Francis grinned. He knew darn well why Hank wouldn't like the project. "What about it?"
"It's a piece of plastic, a toy. When my sponsors hear about it - what's that going to do to the reputation of La Honda, huh? When funders think La Honda, they think big iron, not plastic."
"The projects are my turf, Hank. You just do your job, and I'll do mine."
"You're making it hard for me to do mine, Francis, that's what I'm saying. I have to raise money for this place. La Honda designs the computers that keep the margins high in our business. This, this piece of plastic ... How do you think that's going to make me look? I'll be sitting in some congressman's office in Washington with the heads of LSI and Motorola, and we'll be arguing how we need Asian import tariffs relaxed, when in will walk some staffer with an article about this, this PC lite, which suggests that of all people Hank Menzinger is the person trying to turn this industry over to the Japanese mass producers. And the guy from Motorola and the guy from LSI will look at me with a face like 'What the hell are you thinking? You're gonna kill the golden goose.' I can see it all happening."
Francis took great pleasure in seeing Hank squirm.
Hank said, "Why are you doing this to me?"
Francis answered bluntly, "To piss you off, that's why."
"To piss me off?" Hank was incredulous.
"To give you a little feel of what it's like when your work is undermined."
"Oh, no - not this again."
Francis' face was not quite scarlet. "All you had to do was put a little clause in the license contract! A little clause - that's all you had to do!" Francis was referring to his last chip design, the Falcon, a competitor to the Pentium. In order to make the Falcon fast, Francis had taken advantage of a procedure called parallel processing: the Falcon was actually two redesigned 486 chips side by side. The proper software would divide any operation into two parts and give each chip half of the problem.
When Hank had licensed the chip, Francis had wanted him to license it to be used only with software that supported parallel processing. And why not? - otherwise, the chip's key feature would go to waste. But Hank had licensed the Falcon to Omega Logic, who was shipping it in PCs running 16-bit Windows applications that didn't at all support parallel processing. Three million Omega computers had been sold at more than three grand a pop, and consumers had paid that gladly, believing they were getting a top-of-the-line chip. But the chip inside was being wasted! One-half the chip wasn't even feeling an electrical signal! Francis' design was being wasted!
Hank said, "Omega never would have agreed to that kind of clause."
Francis threw up his hands. "You could have licensed it to someone else!"
"For far less money! We make $3 million a year in royalties from Omega, money which goes to fund many worthwhile projects here. We'd be in dire straits if we lost Omega as a sponsor."
Francis sighed. They'd had this argument many times. The $300 computer was Francis' little prank to get revenge ... and what better person to have lead the project than an Omega graduate, a kid who Hank took special interest in? That was a great touch.
When they got back to La Honda, Andy asked them to come up to his lab, which was on the hill a quarter mile above the main buildings. His lab was just an aluminum-sided single-room trailer, about 60 feet by 15, with a baffled roof to dissipate heat. The punch-code lock on the shabby aluminum door wouldn't stop anyone serious about breaking in. The walls were neither wood nor wood paneling, but wallpaper printed to look like wood paneling.
There were four desks with chairs, and when the guys went to sit down, it was a natural reaction to test how well the drawers slid in and out and to rub their palms over the desktop.
Andy began unpacking stuff from a box. He reached in and pulled out a quart-sized glass jar, medicine-brown in color. He set it down in sight of Salman. Andy gave Salman a big grin. Salman was easy; the guy was always telling macho lies about his girlfriend, which suggested he would join the project as long as he could see that it was somehow a way to prove his manhood.
"What's that?" Salman asked.
Andy slid the bottle across the desk. Salman took it in his hands and stared at the label, which said Bolasterone. Below that, it said, 5 MG. For oral usage only. Below that, but not in very small print, it gave a long warning: Warning! This pharmaceutical product should be taken under the supervision of a qualified medical doctor only. Limit intake. If patient begins to see blood in urine or have any pain in the kidney area, see your doctor immediately.
Salman's eyes grew wide. "What is it?" He handed the bottle back to Andy.
"Anabolic steroids."
"Where did you get them?"
"They're made in Mexico. My brother goes down there a lot, sends me a jar now and then."
"What does it do? Does it give you muscles?"
Andy had him going. "It would, if I worked out a lot. But since I don't, it just makes me mean and angry. Keeps up your stamina, your fight."
"Wow. Is it safe?"
Andy unscrewed the cap on the bottle. "Sure, if you keep it to two pills a day." With that, he poured out five white pills into his hand, shook them, and threw them into his mouth. He chewed them. They were really Vitamin C, ascorbic acid.
Andy held the bottle out toward Salman. "You want some?"
Salman's head shrunk back into his body, like a turtle. "No way."
"Darrell? Tiny?"
They grimaced and shook their heads. "Do you always take those?" Darrell asked.
Andy couldn't hold it in any more. He started laughing.
"What's so funny?" Salman asked.
"Sorry ... I'm not very good at deception." He gave another chuckle. "Any you guys want some vitamin C?" He held the bottle forward again.
Salman leaned forward and gave the bottle a sniff. He put his hand in and came out with a few. He sniffed them, put his tongue on one.
To get their respect, Andy said, "You know, I had a chance to work on the Jolt team."
"You did?" Darrell said. This had clearly caught him off guard.
Andy lied. "Francis let me choose between that project and this one."
Salman asked Andy, "How come you didn't want to work on the Jolt?"
"I don't know ... well, I didn't want to be just 1 of 30 guys, taking orders from Francis, stuck in some hierarchy. That's not me, that's not my style. You probably wanted to be on the Jolt, huh?"
"Me?"
"Yeah."
"Well, sure."
"So is being 1 of 30 guys your style?"
Salman had never thought about it that way. "Well ..."
"Taking orders from some subteam leader who is in turn taking orders from Francis Benoit who is in turn taking orders from some product manager at the sponsor? That appeals to you? Let me ask you something," Andy said. "At the end of the year, when the Jolt is done, other engineers around the country will know about it, and who do you think they will give credit to? Do you think they'll give credit to all those 30 guys?"
"I guess not," Salman admitted.
Andy took a chance with another lie. "When I told Francis Benoit about the VWPC, you know what he said? He was willing to let me give it a try, but he said he seriously doubted it could be done. He said it was damn near impossible."
"He said that?" This from Darrell.
"I just said he did, didn't I?"
"He thinks it's a tough project?"
"Damn near impossible," Andy repeated.
Darrell grunted in appreciation.
Andy said, "Francis didn't pick you for his Jolt team. What better way to prove him wrong than to achieve what he thinks is damn near impossible? What do you think, huh?"
He wanted them to answer together. If one volunteered, they'd probably all follow. "Salman?"
"Me?"
"Yeah. What do you think?"
"I dunno. I'm thinking." He turned to Darrell. "What do you think, man?"
Darrell's arms were crossed. From this defiant position he managed to shrug his shoulders, as if to suggest, "I'll go along but I'm still wary."
Andy turned to Tiny. He didn't want to ask a question that Tiny could answer no to. "Tiny, let me ask your advice. Let me pick your brain for just a moment. You've been here a few years, been on a few projects. If you joined this project, how would we start? What would be the first thing we would need to understand before we started?"
This caught Tiny off guard. He'd been given a lot of orders from team leaders before, and he's also been given a lot of intellectual freedom, but he'd never been asked for advice.
They all turned to Tiny. He was sitting with his chin in his hands, his elbows jackknifed on the tabletop. On each wrist he wore two athletic wristbands, darkened with sweat. As he spoke he looked down and away, toward the floor. "I've been thinking ... Francis is wrong, it's not impossible at all. And I can see that there's not just one way to design a computer that would sell for under $300. There's a whole set of quite different possibilities ... so, well, it wouldn't be like we'd just be assembling a train set."
He paused and licked his lips. "It's true that anybody worth their salt could design one, but they might design it the wrong way. And then, it would be just another brilliant idea that failed because of poor engineering. If someone else did this, and they did it badly, it would ruin the opportunity for better machines to come later."
Tiny put his hands down on the table. "So it's important, really important, that the first VWPC be good good good."
Tiny had drawn a line. Their computer would be a screwup, a face-plant, a botched job. Ours would be elegant, brilliant, righteous, and worthy. To get right down to it, theirs would prove that they don't have the brainpower, and ours would prove that we did. It's important that it be good good good! Not just anybody could build the VWPC!
