Trading Reality

by Michael Ridpath

  But, as I drove under the Victorian railway viaduct at Markinch, which acted as a sort of ancient industrial gate for the town of Glenrothes, the anger was still there.

  There was a crowd of people in the factory car park. They were pacing round in a tight circle, carrying placards that I couldn’t quite read. A dog darted in and out between their legs. A television crew was watching them, as was a group of four or five journalists clutching notebooks.

  I didn’t venture into the car park, but drove the BMW up on to the kerb fifty yards or so from the factory. I considered trying to sneak round the back, but I was pretty sure they would see me, so I chose the bold approach. As I neared the protesters, I could read their placards. ‘VIRTUAL REALITY – VIRTUAL HELL’, ‘VIRTUAL REALITY – THE HEROIN OF THE PEOPLE’, ‘JUST SAY NO’, ‘SAVE OUR KIDS’ MINDS’. As I walked nearer, I heard them chatting away to each other. It looked more like a nice day out than a protest.

  I was within twenty yards of the doors when they spotted me. I heard cries of, ‘That’s Mark Fairfax!’, ‘There he is!’, ‘Stop him!’

  I quickened my step to just short of a run. Two men sprinted over to me, and placed themselves squarely between me and the entrance. One was quite slight but the other was a big bastard. I hesitated. I could push past, and maybe start a fight. I could call the police. Or I could stay and talk. I was very aware of the TV crew’s film rolling, and I could hear the snap of camera shutters.

  ‘Fairfax! Just a moment Fairfax!’ I recognised Doogie’s voice, clear above the cries of his fellow protesters. I decided to push past the two men. They jostled a moment but let me through.

  Then, suddenly, Doogie’s face was inches from mine. It was a hard face, an angry face. A dangerous face. He was tense, the veins in his neck bulged. The front of his skull beneath his hairline was sprinkled with little droplets of sweat. I could smell him, his sweat, his anger.

  ‘Listen to what I have to say, Fairfax,’ he said in a calm, threatening voice, low, but clear enough for the journalists to hear.

  My first instinct was to hit him. He was so close, invading the square yard in front of me that was my space. Then I thought of the TV cameras, shoved my hands deep in my trouser pockets, and concentrated on controlling my anger.

  Suddenly, the protesters were silent. Doogie paused to let the press get closer. ‘Listen to me, Mark Fairfax,’ he said again, but this time in a loud stage hiss. ‘I have here a letter that you and your brother have both seen. Neither of you did anything about it.’

  He pulled out some papers. My heart sank. I recognised the heading on the notepaper.

  He held the letter up in the air. ‘This letter is from the lawyer of the family of a young man. A young man who was so disoriented after using a FairSystems virtual reality machine that he crashed into a tree on his motorcycle and died.’

  I could hear the scratch of pencil on notebook from the pressmen behind me. ‘There is more,’ Doogie said. ‘Richard Fairfax went to great lengths to persuade the boy’s family to keep quiet about the accident. They are scared. So scared that they don’t want their identity to be made public. But virtual reality kills people! You can’t cover it up for ever!’ He waved the letter triumphantly. There was a rustle of papers as the protesters handed out press releases to the journalists. ‘What have you to say about that?’

  I took a deep breath, and counted to three. ‘Nothing,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘Now, if you’ve finished, can I get to work, please?’

  A voice piped up from behind me. ‘Are you aware of this accident?’ I looked to see who it was. He was a tall thin man in his twenties, pencil poised over the classic reporter’s notebook. Doogie stayed quiet to let him speak. It must have been prearranged, I thought. All the more reason to be careful.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘But you must have a comment, this is a question of public safety.’

  ‘I said, no comment.’

  ‘Can we see this letter?’ It was a different reporter this time, a woman with an English accent.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t release it,’ said Doogie. ‘I promised the family I would protect their identity.’

  ‘Do you deny that this boy was killed after using a FairSystems virtual reality machine?’ The thin journalist again.

  I could see this was going to get difficult. He wasn’t going to give up. His high-pitched accusing questions were getting on my nerves. The press of people round me, and especially the television cameras a few feet from my face, made me claustrophobic. I decided to cut and run.

  I pushed through the crowd. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you, I must get to work now.’

  ‘Mr Fairfax! Mr Fairfax!’ the journalist shouted after me.

  I was out in the clear, when a hand pulled at my arm. I spun round. It was Doogie. He was smiling. ‘Take my advice. Go home,’ he whispered.

  I turned and walked into the factory.

  ‘When I say it can’t be done in two weeks, it can’t be done in two weeks!’ Keith was pacing round the table waving his arms. David, Rachel, Andy and he were all crammed into my office. The meeting was heating up.

  ‘We promised the market we would release FairRender on the first of June,’ said David icily. ‘It’s the seventeenth of May today. That means you’ve got less than two weeks.’

  ‘But I’m telling you, man, this is non-trivial. I mean we’re talking about two months, not two weeks.’

  David was clearly frustrated, but he kept his cool. ‘You mean you could miss the deadline by two whole months?’

  ‘I mean we’ve got to forget about deadlines altogether. Anyway, this deadline was your idea, not mine.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ll ever solve this problem?’ asked David.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, of course I’m sure. The chips are fine. It’s just the software driving them that’s the problem. If we release it now it’ll work, but not well. We’ll just be storing up trouble for the future.’

  David looked at Rachel. ‘Can’t you put more people on to it?’

  Rachel knocked the ash off her cigarette. ‘Not really, David. It’s a question of figuring out the best way forward, and then following it. Brute force won’t work. Andy and Keith probably will.’

  ‘So what can we do?’ asked David.

  ‘How many customers have you promised FairRender to?’ I asked David.

  ‘Five or six.’

  ‘And are any of them desperate to have it right now?’

  David hesitated. ‘No, I suppose not right now.’

  ‘Well, let’s just tell them it’ll take a little longer to release than anticipated. We’re only talking, what, a couple of months. Is that right, Keith?’

  Keith nodded.

  ‘But when Richard was around, we always delivered on time,’ David protested.

  ‘And I suspect we were the only company that did,’ I said. ‘Look, I’m sure they’ll understand, given what’s happened. And you have to agree, quality is the most important thing. We can’t ship a product that doesn’t work.’

  David shrugged, and nodded grudgingly. ‘OK. We can probably get away with it this once, but we’d better not make a habit of it.’

  ‘Marketroids,’ Keith muttered under his breath.

  ‘Cool it, Keith,’ I said. ‘And you and Andy had better have something good by the middle of July.’

  ‘OK, boss,’ said Keith, and smiled. The meeting broke up, and they left the room.

  ‘David?’ I said. ‘Have you got a moment?’

  David hesitated, turned round, and sat down again, his arms folded.

  ‘I checked Richard’s files,’ I said.

  ‘And you found that he had vetoed that clause in the Onada agreement.’

  ‘Well?’

  Baker didn’t say anything for several seconds. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, thinking. Choosing his words. Giving them more weight. Some trick he had picked up somewhere.

  ‘I’ve given up a lot to come and work here,’ he said. ‘I c
ould have gone all the way at IBM. I came in the upper quartile of my class at Harvard. I could have walked into any job in a big company anywhere in the world. But I came here.’

  I watched and listened.

  ‘Do you want to know why?’

  ‘OK. Why?’

  ‘I believe this company can make it. I believe virtual reality is one of the few true growth industries around. This is one of the leading companies in the world in that field. And I want to get in at the ground floor. Now, I have friends from B-school who are working for McKinsey, Bloomfield Weiss, General Electric. They wonder what I’m doing pissing around with a company like this. And I’ll show them.

  ‘But this company has to be run professionally. Richard did a great job, but he was an inventor at heart. He was more concerned about building bigger and better VR machines than making money. You know I’m right, don’t you?’

  I knew he was right, but I was damned if I was going to admit it.

  He looked down his long nose at me. ‘We had some extraders at Harvard. Good guys. Smart guys. But they took quick decisions. And once they had taken them, they stuck to them, whatever. Great in the pressure of a dealing room. Disaster in the real world.’

  Ouch! He was right there too. But even so I was sure that what he’d been planning to do with Onada was just plain stupid. And no matter what he said, I would back my own judgement. For better or worse.

  ‘I’m here to take decisions,’ I said. ‘You may not like them, but you will have to live with them. And to take decisions, I need to have the facts. You hid the fact that Richard had vetoed the Onada agreement. This company will not function if you carry on behaving like that.’

  He slapped his hand on the table. ‘This company will not function at all if it’s run by a bunch of amateurs! We’re facing bankruptcy, for God’s sake. A deal with Onada is the only way out.’

  I kept my cool. ‘David, I do not want you to withhold information from me again. Is that understood?’

  David turned on his heel and walked out.

  I felt isolated, stewing in my office. After a few minutes’ trying to concentrate on the figures in front of me, I got up and walked off to Software.

  Rachel was in her office, chatting with Keith. He scarpered when he saw me coming. God, being the boss took some getting used to!

  Rachel looked tired. Her face was pale, and her eyes were darkened under her glasses. I thought she was wearing the same black jersey she had worn the day before, but it was hard to tell. I was already beginning to realise it took a lot to make Rachel look tired. She must have been working straight through the night.

  ‘Did you see the demonstration this morning?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I must have missed it. But I did overhear something about a crowd outside. Of course, in this building you can’t just take a peek out of the window and have a look.’

  ‘Well, Doogie was there, and a mob of protesters from BOWL. And the press, and television. Doogie told them all about the Bergey accident.’

  Rachel suddenly seemed to wake up. ‘No!’

  ‘It’s not going to do our reputation much good.’

  Rachel frowned. ‘No, it isn’t.’

  I sighed. ‘We really didn’t need this.’ I glanced at Rachel. ‘And I do want to know what really happened.’

  ‘All right. I’ll check it out next time I go to California, I promise.’

  ‘Do you go to California a lot?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And who do you go and see?’

  ‘Oh, different people.’

  Rachel’s evasiveness was deeply frustrating, especially today.

  ‘OK, well next time you go, check out what happened. And make sure next time is some time soon.’

  She nodded. ‘David told me what you did on Monday.’

  I tensed.

  ‘I think you were dead right,’ she continued. ‘We can’t let anyone get that code, whatever they pay us.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I did appreciate her support.

  ‘But I think David is pretty pissed off. You’ve hurt his pride, and he has a lot of that.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. We just had words about it. But he didn’t seem too pleased with your people this morning, either. What was all that about it taking two months to sort out the software for FairRender? I heard you three talking about four days.’

  Rachel hesitated. A small smile flickered across her face. ‘Actually, we cracked it at six o’clock this morning.’ That explained the dark semicircles under her eyes, neatly framed by the lower rim of her glasses.

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘So why did you tell David it would take two months to fix?’

  ‘Because we can’t release FairRender on the first of June.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Rachel was looking very uncomfortable now. She stubbed out her cigarette in an empty cup, and immediately lit another one.

  ‘It’s to do with Project Platform. And Jenson Computer.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, feeling the irritation rise in me. ‘And you can’t tell me anything about it.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’ She hesitated, as if deciding whether to say something. In the end, she spoke. ‘He’s coming in today.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Jenson.’

  ‘What! Carl Jenson himself?’

  ‘Yes. Carl Jenson. That’s right.’

  Even I had heard of Carl Jenson. He was a legend of corporate America. His company had been one of the first to imitate the IBM PCs in the early 1980s, and within five years he had built Jenson Computer into a business with sales of several billion dollars. He had achieved all this with style, and was one of the favourites of Business Week and Fortune. And, of course, Jenson Computer was FairSystems’ most important customer. Our survival depended on him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

  ‘I didn’t think of it.’

  Of course she had thought of it. ‘Come on, Rachel.’

  She straightened up and looked me in the eye. ‘Well, the thing is, he didn’t want to see you at all, but I told him it was a good idea, and he really ought to.’

  That made me feel about two inches high. It said a lot for my standing when the boss of our biggest customer didn’t even want to see me.

  ‘What’s he got against me?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re from the City. He hates the City. Actually, he hates Wall Street, but what’s the difference?’

  None, really. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, Jenson Computer made it big in the eighties. Jenson was a hero. But in the last couple of years the price of PCs has continued to fall to the point where even Jenson Computer is losing money. He was caught in a squeeze by IBM and Compaq price-cutting from above, and the Taiwanese and Koreans shipping volume from below. He bought a chip manufacturer two years ago, but that acquisition hasn’t worked well. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen to the company. So the share price has gone down.’ She tapped ash into her coffee cup. ‘And so Wall Street want Jenson’s head. He’s yesterday’s man. A has-been.’

  ‘And he doesn’t like it?’

  ‘You can say that again. Carl’s ego is massive. He doesn’t want to be a has-been before he’s forty.’

  ‘So why is he here?’

  ‘To talk about a few things we’re working on together.’

  ‘Like Project Platform?’

  Rachel knew there was no point in denying it. She nodded.

  ‘Rachel, what the hell is Project Platform? I have to know.’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t. Carl Jenson specifically told me not to. He’s worried about your City connections, and the fact you’re only here for three months. He’s paranoid about secrecy. You have to trust me.’ Her deep brown eyes were pleading. ‘It’s best for all of us that I don’t tell you.’

  I looked closely at her face, partially obscured by dark curls. I did trust her.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Does D
avid know?’ It was childish, but I didn’t want David Baker to know any secrets that I didn’t.

  ‘No. He knows it exists, but he doesn’t know anything about it. The only people who know are me, Keith, Andy and Sorenson.’

  ‘Sorenson knows?’

  ‘Yes, I think Richard told him. He cleared it with Jenson first.’

  ‘And you can’t clear me with Jenson?’

  ‘I told you. I tried. He wouldn’t have it.’

  I sat back in my chair for a moment and thought. Not knowing about Project Platform irritated me. But I had never let emotion get in the way of my trading judgement, and I wouldn’t now. I trusted Rachel. I believed that her reluctance to tell me was because she was afraid for the success of the project. And although I didn’t know what Project Platform was, I knew we needed it to work. Nevertheless, it was going to be hard to manage the company knowing nothing about its most important contract.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But see if you can persuade him to trust me. If I’m going to run this company properly, I need to know what’s going on in it.’

  Rachel smiled. ‘Good. I knew you’d understand. And I will try to get him to change his mind about you.’ She got up to leave. She paused, and glanced at my shirt and trousers. ‘Oh, by the way, I’m glad you’re not wearing a suit today.’

  I had to laugh. The scruffily dressed woman in front of me was just about to meet one of the legends of computing, and she was giving me advice on my clothes. The funny bit was, she was probably right.

  I sat in my office waiting. Rachel had said she and Jenson might come by any time after three. It was half past five. For two and a half hours I had sat at my desk achieving very little. Ed had left a message earlier, but I didn’t feel like talking to him. Harrison Brothers seemed a very long way away.

  I fielded calls from a couple of journalists asking about BOWL’s allegations. All I said was that we had received a letter from someone considering pursuing a claim but that they had chosen not to proceed, and that I had no further comment. I wanted to give them as little as possible to go on.

  I called Karen.

  ‘Harrison.’