Trading Reality

by Michael Ridpath

  FairSystems’ factory was in the midst of an industrial estate just like all the others. When a big local computer company had gone bust three years earlier, Richard had been able to rent its facility cheaply from the local development corporation.

  It was a large, rectangular grey metal box, bigger than most of those surrounding it. The company logo was placed at various points round the exterior, an orange rising sun with the word FairSystems running across it. The only windows were clustered round the front of the building.

  I pulled into the car park, and walked across the tarmac past a newly planted garden in front of the factory. Scrawny young trees poked up from scantily planted flowerbeds. On two sides were similar featureless factories, and on the other was some wasteland stretching towards a small hill grazed by cows.

  Inside, the reception area was brightly decorated. The receptionist had very short red hair, and was wearing a simple black dress. I saw a chunky copy of Anna Karenina lying opened on the chair next to her behind the desk. When I said my name she gave me a sympathetic smile. She asked me to take a seat and wait for Mr Sorenson.

  So I sat down and waited. I was curious to see the factory. It had played such an important part in Richard’s life, and probably his death.

  The receptionist was staring out of the doorway, looking bored.

  ‘Carry on with your book,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’

  She smiled guiltily, and picked it up. She read a paragraph or two, and then looked towards me.

  ‘Mr Fairfax,’ she began nervously.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m really sorry about your brother’s death.’

  I smiled weakly.

  ‘So are all of us here,’ she went on. ‘He was a good man. We all liked him.’

  I was getting used to receiving condolences. But her sincerity was obvious, and suddenly touching. My eyes stung, and I swallowed.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said simply.

  She smiled quickly and went back to her book.

  Two minutes later Sorenson rushed into the reception area, followed by a man I didn’t know. ‘Mark. I’m glad you could make it. Good day yesterday, wasn’t it? Boy, that’s a great course.’ He held out his hand and I shook it. ‘I’ll be tied up for most of the day, today, so I won’t be able to show you round. But that’s probably a good thing. So David, here, and Rachel will give you the tour.’

  David Baker held out his hand. ‘Welcome to FairSystems, Mark.’ His accent was a strange combination of mild Scottish with an American intonation. He was in his early thirties, medium height, thin, with his dark hair plastered back over his head with oil. His small eyes peered at me down a long, pointed nose. He wore an Italian-looking suit, and brown shoes. A Hermes tie was held in place with a silver tie pin. Red braces peeked out beneath his jacket. He looked out of place in this grey Scottish factory. But then I probably looked that way, too, in my City suit.

  ‘I’m really sorry about your brother. He was a great friend of mine. It was a terrible shock. No one here can quite believe it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, politely.

  There was an awkward pause. I was getting used to these, too.

  ‘Right, well, come upstairs,’ David said. ‘I thought you might like to have a chat with Rachel Walker and myself first. Then I can show you around the factory, and take you on to Willie Duncan, our finance director.’

  ‘I’ll catch you later,’ said Sorenson. ‘I’ll be in Richard’s office if you need me.’

  We moved out of the daylight, and into the factory. We were in a long corridor. There was glass on both sides, and through it I could see a jumble of plastic and electronics, with men in bright blue overalls moving about. Posters of VR systems covered the walls; the orange FairSystems logo was much in evidence. A radio played pop music somewhere in the distance. We walked up some stairs to a similar corridor, but this one was lined with more familiar office spaces. The carpets were light grey, and most of the furniture was black, although there were the odd flashes of blue or orange plastic. It was a world turned inside out. The external walls had no windows; all the internal walls were glass.

  David showed me into what looked like some kind of conference room. There was a large screen against one wall, and a computer with a headset, 3–D mouse and keyboard next to it. A long oval table stretched the length of the room, and a side table held two more computers. Embedded in the ceiling was a series of tiny cameras, pointing down at the seats below.

  ‘This is our board room,’ David explained. ‘We use it for demonstrations. You can even have a virtual meeting here with half the people in the room, and the rest at other locations. It’s not always practical, but it looks flashy. Have a seat.’

  I sat down on one side of the table and David sat on the other. He placed a smart leather folder on the table. Inside was a gleaming white pad, and some business cards. He handed one to me.

  ‘These are old,’ he said. ‘It should say “Managing Director”. Rachel will be here in a moment.’ He looked quickly at his Rolex just to confirm that Rachel was, in fact, late.

  ‘I thought you and Rachel were joint managing directors?’

  David looked at me suspiciously. ‘Oh, that’s right. But I’ll handle all the business side of things. Rachel has a great technical brain,’ he said, ‘a great technical brain.’ He managed to make it sound as if this was an unfortunate state of affairs, and would explain why Rachel could not use her brain for anything useful.

  Just then the door opened and Rachel ambled into the room carrying a cup of coffee in a plastic cup. She pushed long frizzy brown hair out of her eyes, and offered me her hand.

  ‘Hi. Rachel Walker. How are you?’ She had a pleasant soft Scottish accent and a low husky voice.

  ‘Mark Fairfax. Nice to meet you,’ I said.

  She sat down at the other end of the table to David Baker, and pulled out a packet of Marlboro. She began to light one, and then looked over towards me. ‘You don’t, do you?’ she asked, nodding at the packet.

  I shook my head.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ she said. ‘I can always tell.’

  I realised now where the huskiness in her voice came from.

  David coughed. Whether to express disapproval of the cigarette, or to attract my attention, I didn’t know. ‘How much do you know about FairSystems?’ he began.

  ‘Not much. Richard told me a bit. I read the placing document, but that was a few months ago. And I have used a system.’

  ‘That was Bondscape?’

  ‘Yes. I was impressed.’

  ‘It’s good,’ said Rachel matter-of-factly.

  ‘But assume I know very little.’ This was in fact the truth. I wished I had listened harder to what Richard had had to say about his company and about virtual reality. I was all ears now.

  ‘Fine, let me tell you something about us,’ said David. He clicked a remote control, and slides appeared on the screen behind him. He made a professional presentation. He talked about FairSystems’ history, its market, its products, forecasts for the virtual reality market, and gave an outline of the company’s strategy. I listened very closely, following every word.

  It seemed absurd, David in his carefully ironed cotton shirt, his cuff-links and Hermes tie, making a slick presentation to me, a twenty-eight-year-old trader. But it was a wise thing to do. I was now the single largest shareholder in FairSystems; my half of Richard’s forty per cent stake, together with my existing 3.75 per cent, made almost twenty-four per cent. I was important to the company and to David himself, and I was getting the red-carpet treatment to justify it. It was an excellent effort.

  When he had finished, David smiled at me. ‘Any questions?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about all the different applications for virtual reality, and FairSystems seems to be involved in most of them. But sales are only, what, three million pounds? Is there really such a large market out there?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said David. ‘Right now, the
only major spending on VR comes from the US military, followed by those machines you see in arcades. That will change. Once the technology is there at the right price,’ at this he paused to look tellingly at Rachel, ‘and people are used to the concept, no one knows how big the total market will be. But it will certainly be numbered in the billions.’ He flipped back a few slides to a virtual portrayal of an office block in Frankfurt. ‘It’s always going to be cheaper to build a virtual building, try it out, and improve it, rather than build a real one and live with the mistakes.’

  I nodded. He had a point.

  ‘Anything else?’

  I had a hundred questions about the business, but for the moment I thought it was more important to find out about the people. ‘Yes. Could you tell me something about yourself? How do you come to be working for FairSystems?’

  David’s face became serious; his career was a very serious topic.

  ‘Certainly. I’m an economics graduate from LSE. I spent several years on the fast-track management programme at IBM.’

  ‘Was that in sales?’ I interrupted.

  David smiled. ‘Sure. I’ve been at the sharp end selling to dealers. But I was also responsible for developing strategy, project implementation, production-marketing interface, divisional resource allocation, as well as some high-level general management responsibilities.’

  I didn’t understand any of that. A salesman then.

  ‘But I found IBM stultifying. I could see which direction the company was going, so I went to B-school. Harvard.’ A pause for the impact of this to sink in. ‘My goal was always to become an entrepreneur. So, when I left Harvard, and I saw the opportunity to join FairSystems, I jumped at it. I’m a natural entrepreneur, a money-maker. Richard and I made a good team. There’s no doubt that he’ll be badly missed, but I can take this firm a long way.’

  Rachel blew smoke towards the ceiling. David and I turned towards her. She looked impassively back.

  ‘Any more questions?’ David asked, hopeful for a chance to explain his talents further.

  ‘No, thank you. That was very helpful,’ I said. ‘Do you have a hard copy of the presentation?’

  ‘Here you are.’ David pushed one over to me. ‘Now, perhaps I can show you the factory?’ David gestured towards the door, and Rachel got up to leave.

  The computer world is not the only one with slick salesmen. We have them in the bond markets, too. I did not want my view of FairSystems to be entirely determined by David Baker.

  ‘Just a moment,’ I said. ‘I wonder if it would be possible to talk to Rachel? Perhaps she could show me round.’

  David frowned. ‘Rachel’s our top technical person. She’s very busy right now. Right, Rachel?’

  We both turned to Rachel.

  She paused for a moment and looked me over. Through her round glasses she had deep, brown, intelligent eyes. She was making some sort of assessment of me, and it made me uncomfortable that I had no idea what it was.

  Finally, she sat down and said, ‘No, that’s all right, David. I’d be happy to talk to Mark.’

  We both turned to look at David. He paused, couldn’t immediately think of any way of keeping me in his grasp for the afternoon, and reluctantly gave up. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Drop by when you’ve finished, won’t you, Mark?’ He smiled and left the room.

  Rachel stubbed out her cigarette. She was sitting upright in her chair, poised but relaxed. ‘What can I tell you?’

  I guessed she was about my age, but I felt very little empathy with her. Like David, I was clean-cut in my City suit; she was wearing a baggy grey jumper over black leggings. She wore no make-up and her hair kept drifting in front of her eyes. I had been told that she had a great technical brain, and, looking at those eyes, I could believe that she was frighteningly clever. I was scared of asking her any questions about FairSystems because of the inevitability of them seeming stupid.

  I pulled myself together.

  ‘An impressive presentation,’ I said.

  ‘Ah ha. David’s a good salesman,’ said Rachel.

  She paused. It looked as if she wanted to say more. I waited. She lit another cigarette, took an initial puff and blew smoke towards the ceiling in the same dismissive way she had done during David’s presentation. ‘It’s a shame he can’t program a calculator. Let alone a computer.’

  I leaned over the table. ‘Well, I can’t program a computer either,’ I said slowly but firmly, ‘but I am very interested in FairSystems and its future, and I pick things up quickly. So tell me about the company.’

  Rachel grinned. It was a surprisingly wide, warm smile, but in a moment it was gone. ‘Sorry. He gets up my nose sometimes. It’s not his fault. We’re just different people. Do you want to have a look around?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘I’ll show you the assembly areas first. We buy in most of our components. What we do here is put them all together to build a system to our design and specification.’

  We went downstairs and into the large area I had noticed before. There was no obvious production line as such. FairSystems was not yet at the stage of mass-producing machines. To the untutored eye, the production floor seemed to consist of groups of young men, and some young women, strolling around, fiddling with the bits and pieces strewn all over the place. Rachel sorted out the areas of activity for me. The first section was where circuit boards were assembled. They were fascinating, each one a tiny, bustling city of roads, bridges and buildings on a bright green field. Most of the power lay not in the boards, but in the little integrated circuits, or ‘chips’ – thin wafers of silicon, some containing millions of transistors, more computing power than had sent man to the moon.

  Next to it was a section where the headsets were put together from miniature circuit boards and tiny liquid crystal displays. Then came the assembly of the computers themselves, and finally a complicated array of testing equipment to make sure the whole thing worked. There was no noise of working machinery, just the ubiquitous babble of a radio.

  I met the production manager, Jock, a forty-year-old who looked as though he had been on some factory floors in his time. He seemed intelligent and capable.

  ‘One good thing about being located in Glenrothes is that we can get some excellent people,’ said Rachel. ‘There are whole families who work in the electronics industry, and the recession brought some very good people on to the market. They’re reliable and they work hard.

  ‘Take a look at this,’ she continued. She pointed to a cluster of electronic equipment: an ordinary-looking computer, a terminal, a headset not much bigger than a pair of sunglasses, an electronic glove and a mouse. Everything had the orange FairSystems logo stamped on it.

  ‘This is our current system. As you can see, many of the components are made by other people.’ She tapped the grey plastic casing of the computer. ‘This is just a standard IBM PC. It takes the messages it receives from the headset, the glove and the mouse, does all the millions of calculations necessary to create a virtual world, and transmits the results back to the devices. And it has to make these calculations twenty times per second.’

  ‘That sounds like a lot of number crunching.’ I picked up the headset. It was the same model I had used for Bondscape, and weighed only a few ounces.

  ‘That’s our own design,’ said Rachel. ‘We call it “Virtual Glasses”. But once again it’s made up of components from other manufacturers. The liquid crystal displays, which generate the images in each eye, are made by Horiguchi Electronics in Japan. The sound system is from Crystal River of California, and this,’ she pointed to a small black plastic cube embedded in the headset, ‘this is a head tracking system, which monitors where the user is looking. It’s made by a company called Polhemus, from Vermont.’

  She then showed me the electronic glove, and a ‘3–D mouse’, which was not a particularly lifelike model rodent, but a small plastic gizmo that fitted comfortably in a hand, and could be used to point things out in the virtual world.


  ‘Now, let me take you up to Software.’

  On the way to the stairs we passed a door that opened into a kitchen. Three or four people sat round the table in the centre of the room chatting while they ate burgers out of polystyrene containers. What really impressed me, though, was the row of fancy vending machines. They sold drinks of all types, hot and cold, chocolate, crisps and chips, and even hot-dogs and burgers.

  Rachel saw me pause. ‘A dietician would have a heart attack over some of the people here. This is the fuel that keeps them going all night. Personally, I think it’s all crap,’ she said wrinkling her nose.

  ‘So what keeps you going all night?’ I asked.

  Rachel gave me a look that suggested I was crazy, or a pervert, or both, and climbed the stairs.

  Software turned out to be a room about half the size of the production floor, but it looked very different. There were about fifteen smooth black desks, each manned by a programmer with his computer. So much for the paperless office – it was everywhere: printouts, newspapers, food wrappers, cuttings, photographs, and dozens of little yellow stickers. But each programmer ignored the paper around him, and stared at his screen in total concentration. The effect was spoiled by a group at one end of the room who were laughing loudly as they tried to hit a cup, perched on a filing cabinet, with a frisbee.

  ‘What are they doing?’ I asked as innocently as I could.

  ‘Uh, it’s a wee bit difficult to explain,’ said Rachel, embarrassed

  One of them saw my suit and the game stopped.

  I looked round the room. I suppose I’d expected rows of regulation nerds, stunted twenty-two-year-olds with acne, glasses and greasy hair. Well, there were some of these, but what struck me was the diversity of people. Most were in their twenties, but there were a couple of schoolmasterly types in their forties. There were two or three Asians. Some wore T-shirts and jeans, but others wore ties and hung jackets on the backs of their chairs. There were no women. The overall atmosphere was relaxed, and with the exception of the frisbee throwers, hard-working.