‘If we find the right parent, then you can carry on your work,’ I said gently. ‘You can still bring virtual reality out into the world.’
‘Don’t patronise me!’ shouted Rachel. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this! You’ve seen how hard we’ve all fought to get this far. Richard, me, Keith, Andy, Terry, David, Willie, even you. All those seven-day weeks. The twenty-four-hour days. All those impossible problems solved.’ Her face was bright red now, and the words were tumbling out. ‘And we’re so close. So bloody close. And now you’re going to throw it all away, ignore everything thing your brother believed in, all he worked for!’ She stood up. ‘Well, you can do it without me!’ she shouted, and stormed out.
We all sat there, stunned. ‘She’ll come round,’ said David. ‘She doesn’t have any choice. All geniuses are entitled to a tantrum every now and then.’
I sighed. ‘OK, I’ll get in touch with Wagner Phillips and see what buyers they can come up with. One month should give us just enough time if we move. But we must stretch every last penny.’
David and Willie left. I sat and pondered Rachel’s reaction.
I had suspected she would be against a sale, but I hadn’t anticipated the strength of emotion in her response. David was wrong. It was most unlike her to have a tantrum. And without her the company would be worthless.
I was tempted to leave her to cool down. But something made me go after her. There was something wrong, something that she knew about and the rest of us didn’t. Now was the time for her to tell me what it was.
The blinds in Rachel’s office were drawn so I couldn’t see in. Keith, Andy and the others stared as I walked past them to her door. I knocked.
No answer.
I pushed the door open, crept in, and closed it behind me.
Rachel was sitting, her head in her hands, her hair falling down in front of her face to the desk. She was sobbing quietly. She didn’t look up.
‘Rachel?’
She still didn’t look up. The sobbing stopped and was replaced by sniffs.
I sat down in the chair in front of her desk and waited. Her weeping made me uncomfortable, but I decided to stay. I knew that if she wanted me to leave she would tell me.
She didn’t.
After a minute or so, she sat up and threw her hair back from her face. Her cheeks were blotched red and shiny with tear stains. There was a drip on the end of her nose, which she wiped with a sleeve.
We sat in silence.
Then she said, ‘You know this is the first time I’ve cried for him. He’s been dead nearly a month, and this is the first time I’ve cried.’
She tried hard to control her voice, breathing deeply, talking slowly and deliberately, but it didn’t work. She sobbed, and hung her head in her hands again.
I didn’t say anything. I wanted to say something like ‘there, there,’ but it seemed so weak I thought it better just to sit and listen.
‘God, I miss him,’ she said. ‘He was a wonderful person. A truly great person. And I can’t accept that he’s gone.
‘Sometimes, late at night, when I’m in here working, I feel that he’s here with me. That we’re worrying over a problem together. I can be working here for two or three hours with him. And we come up with ideas, with solutions. Together.’
She had controlled her sobbing, but she wanted to talk. ‘I worked with him for so long on all of this. I was often the only person in the world who could follow where his brain was going. I felt privileged, special. And now there’s so much going on in here,’ she pointed to her head, ‘and no one to share it with. Sometimes I think it will drive me mad.’
‘Did you love him?’ I asked.
She stared at me for several moments deciding how to answer. She wasn’t shocked by the question. I was sure it was something she had worried over during those long nights.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what love is. Do you?’
Did I? Of course I did. I loved Karen, didn’t I? Didn’t I? I wasn’t sure.
Then I thought of Richard.
‘I loved him,’ I said.
She gave me a small smile. An acknowledgement that she understood. That she respected my love for my brother.
Then her face darkened. She took a deep breath. ‘And then you talk about selling out, selling everything that he worked for. And it’s like you’re killing him again. Don’t you see?’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But there’s nothing I can do.’
‘You don’t understand.’
That hurt, but I didn’t want to argue. I shrugged my shoulders.
Her eyes rested on mine. Beneath the moisture and uncertainty, raw intelligence stirred. She was thinking. She came to a decision. ‘You don’t understand, because you don’t know about Project Platform.’ She stood up. ‘Come on.’
She shook out her hair, smoothed her jersey, straightened her shoulders, and walked out. I followed her.
We crossed the room to the door marked Project Platform. She took out a Chubb key and unlocked the door. I raised my eyebrows.
She gave me a weak smile. ‘The guys back there could break into almost any modern access system known to man. But none of them is a locksmith.’
The room was small. It contained a Silicon Graphics workstation, and two Jenson PCs. All three had FairSystems virtual glasses linked to them. There were also the tell-tale spoors of Rachel, an empty wine bottle, a full ashtray. One wall held a large white board. Rachel’s small neat handwriting covered it. It was a work schedule for Project Platform.
We sat down. Rachel turned on one of the Jensons. ‘Try this,’ she said, passing me the virtual glasses, and handing me a wand.
I put the glasses on. I found myself in a plush office. Rachel was sitting opposite me at a well-polished mahogany table. Behind her was a terrific view of a modern city under a cloud-less sky.
‘Hi,’ said Rachel. It was a good image of her, almost as good as a photograph. And she moved naturally. ‘Although in reality I’m sitting right next to you, I could just as easily be hundreds of miles away.’ She smiled. ‘Both you and I could be working from home, and need to talk to each other. This way we can have a realistic meeting without ever leaving our homes.’
‘But can’t you just talk over the phone?’
Rachel smiled. ‘You can, but face to face is better. Body language is everything in social interaction. Sensors in the virtual glasses can detect a range of expressions that are then replicated on the virtual image you see in front of you. Besides, meetings are better than the phone when there are more than two of you. Let me get Keith to join us, and I’ll show you what I mean.’
She paused and a few seconds later Keith walked into the virtual room, wearing his uniform of black jeans and T-shirt. ‘Hi, Rache, what’s up?’ His eyebrows raised when he saw me. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked.
‘It’s Mark,’ Rachel said. ‘Don’t worry, I had to tell him about Project Platform.’
Then she turned to me. ‘To us, you look like Mel Gibson. That’s why Keith didn’t recognise you.’
‘Mel Gibson?’
‘Yes. He’s our default male. My choice. Once you’ve been body-mapped, then you’ll look like yourself in the virtual world. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you choosing a totally different image for yourself, if you want to. You’ll notice that Keith has managed to put on a fair bit of muscle.’
It was true. Keith’s normally skinny frame had filled out, his pectoral muscles clearly defined under his T-shirt. I laughed.
‘Now, let’s say we all wanted to look at some figures together. Boring, but one of those things people do in real life.’ She pulled out a piece of paper from under the table, and passed it over to me. It was one of Willie’s forecasts. ‘See that figure there?’ she said, pointing to the cash balance. Try to change it.’
‘Happily,’ I said. ‘What do I do?’
‘Just point to it, say “change”, and then the number you want.’
I changed the number to on
e million. The whole forecast changed, and FairSystems ended the year solvent.
Keith laughed. ‘Easy, isn’t it?’
It was strange how quickly I could get used to the virtual world. Within a couple of minutes it did take on its own reality. And it was true that it was much easier to talk to three people in a virtual office than over a phone.
‘Do you mind if I go now?’ asked Keith.
‘No, thanks for joining us,’ Rachel replied. The virtual Keith walked out of the office.
‘Now, do you want to buy a house?’
‘All right,’ I said, not knowing what to expect.
In a moment we were outside an ordinary suburban semi-detached house. ‘Follow me,’ said Rachel.
I didn’t do anything, but the virtual me followed Rachel inside. We walked through an empty hallway into a living room. There was a garden through the french windows.
‘Now, virtual representations of furniture have been saved in a database. Let’s see how they fit in the house.’
Rachel pointed and clicked, and soon a sofa, table, bookcase, desk and armchair were all in the room. She tried different configurations. ‘Wander round,’ she said. I found that I could now move around the house. I looked in the kitchen, walked up the stairs, and checked out the bathroom.
‘You see?’ Rachel said. ‘It certainly makes buying a house easier. The rooms can be fed into the computer from drawings, or even measurements, and the furniture uses a database of four hundred different pieces. You just select those which are most like your own.’
We were back in the office. ‘As you know, some of the biggest applications for computer programs are databases. Well, VR can help you see data in an entirely new way. Most databases can only be viewed in two dimensions on a record card. With VR, you can watch data in at least three dimensions. In Bondscape, there were eight dimensions. Let me show you a much simpler database.’
We switched to a map of Britain, dotted with a series of columns, each made up of a number of blocks piled one on top of die other. ‘Assume you’re a salesman, covering customers throughout the country. This database shows you all your customers. Take a look at Leeds.’
I pointed to Leeds, and clicked. I was standing on a station platform, next to a sign saying Leeds. Beside me rose a large column of blocks. Each had a name, address and telephone number.
‘These are stacked in order of when they were last seen,’ Rachel said. ‘The blocks at the top are those that you saw most recently. Or we can reshuffle them.’ The blocks blanked, and then stood out in a different order. ‘Now the blocks at the top are your biggest customers. Let me find out which buy widgets and which gadgets.’ Suddenly the blocks were coloured in, red for widgets, blue for gadgets.
‘It’s possible to get all this information on an ordinary database, of course, but in VR you can analyse it much more clearly. This is an example of how, when you begin to use VR, you suddenly see old information in a new light.’
We left the database, and went back to the office. ‘There are all kinds of other things you could use this system for,’ she continued. ‘Booking a holiday. You could see the area you were staying in, and the hotel. Shopping. You could buy anything from tins of beans in a supermarket to a car. You know from playing Manhunt with my brother how experiencing a game in virtual reality is much more fun than watching it on a screen. And the computer games market is huge.
‘Then there is social communication. We’re in an office here, but people will soon be able to communicate over the phone wires using VR. Once people are used to it, then voice or text messages just will not be enough.’
She shut the machine down. ‘With this system, VR will move from specialised, expensive applications, to the sort of everyday uses that an ordinary individual in a business or at home might want.’
‘Phew,’ I said. ‘Can we really do all that?’
‘We have the technology to do it, yes,’ said Rachel. ‘Of course we need communication systems to improve, but once fibre optic cable reaches most homes and offices, VR will follow.’
‘Who designed all these applications?’
‘A whole range of software companies. They all used our software and graphics chip.’
‘It’s very impressive. But can’t you do much of this on standard computers?’ I asked.
‘You can do the calculations. But display is all important. Once you’ve used VR, then a flat screen will seem primitive. Businessmen, Internet surfers, games players, they’ll all want it.’
‘And we’ll do all this with Jenson?’
‘Yes. We use our graphics chip, our simulation manager, and our headsets. Jenson manufactures them all in volume. The price comes down to two thousand dollars a system.’
‘Two thousand dollars?’
‘Yep.’
I thought it through. There was still a big problem, the problem that had dogged us all along. ‘We still don’t have a mass market. How do we create one?’
‘That’s where Project Platform comes in,’ said Rachel. ‘Look at this.’
Rachel clicked some buttons on her computer. Windows came up. Windows is the operating system used on eighty per cent of personal computers.
‘OK?’ I said.
‘Look at the bottom row, on the right.’
I did. There was a little picture, or icon, of a person wearing a pair of virtual glasses.
‘You mean our system is going to run under Windows?’
Rachel grinned. ‘Yes. Project Platform is the codename for the alliance between us, Jenson and Microsoft. Our system will be bundled up with every copy of Windows sold. If anyone wants to use a VR application under Windows they’ll have to use FairSystems’ simulation management software, and the FairRender graphics system. And it will be right there, on everyone’s computer, just waiting for them to try out.’
‘How much do we charge for this?’
‘Not much,’ said Rachel. ‘But it will give us a tremendous advantage in developing new software. And even a couple of dollars is a lot on tens of millions of computers sold.’
‘And Jenson makes money on selling the computers.’
‘Right. He gets a head start over the competition in making virtual reality PCs. What’s more, if anyone wants to make a PC that will use VR, they’ll have to buy a FairRender chip, made by Jenson.’
‘So we all make money. How about Microsoft? What’s in it for them?’
‘They get the use of the most advanced VR system for PCs in the world, and they kick-start a whole new market.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘If this works, our royalties could be worth millions.’
‘It’s more than that,’ said Rachel. ‘This is a revolution in computer technology that is about to happen, almost as great as when IBM introduced the PC in 1981.’
‘You’re right. And we’re IBM.’ I thought about the IBM PC, and how many millions had been made during the 1980s. Soon companies like Compaq and Jenson had learned how to clone them. IBM had made good money for ten years, and so had the others.
‘No,’ she said patiently. ‘Jenson Computer is IBM.’
Then it came to me.
‘Microsoft.’
Rachel nodded.
I saw the weedy image of Bill Gates staring up from the book Richard had left open on his sofa. Bill Gates’ firm, Microsoft, owned DOS and Windows, the operating systems that drove most of the millions of personal computers used round the world. In less than fifteen years, Microsoft had grown from nothing to be worth more even than the mighty IBM. And the reason was that the Microsoft operating system had become the standard. Just as IBM had promoted Microsoft with its personal computer, so Microsoft would promote FairSystems through Windows.
In the new world of mass market virtual reality, FairSystems would own the standard operating software.
I remembered Microsoft was worth more than thirty billion dollars.
And I was considering selling FairSystems for ten million dollars or even less.
No wonder
Rachel didn’t want to do it. No wonder Richard had been so keen to avoid a sale at all costs.
Richard had been right all along. He was on the brink of building a company that would change the world. And it wasn’t just pretty technology. This company could be stupendously successful in terms that I understood: turnover, profits, market capitalisation.
My trader’s mind began churning. This would be the trade of the century if I could pull it off. Sure, the odds were against it. It still looked like FairSystems would go bust before Project Platform hit the streets. But if I could manage to keep the company alive for the next four months . . .
I took a deep breath. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We don’t sell. We’ll get through to September somehow.’
Rachel’s face lit up. She jumped out of her chair. ‘Yes!’ she shouted, and leaned over and gave me a quick, triumphant kiss on the lips.
Surprised and elated, I said, ‘Let’s calm down and work out how to do it.’
We talked through the options. There weren’t many, but neither of us was downhearted. Although there was no obvious solution, I was confident that I would find one somehow.
‘Given what you’ve told me, Jenson’s decision to ditch us seems completely crazy,’ I said. ‘He’s shooting himself in the foot.’
‘I know. I can’t figure it out.’
‘I wonder what Microsoft think? Have you any idea?’
‘No. The negotiations for that end of the deal were all done by Jenson. He’s a big customer of Microsoft, and he has a close relationship with them. I think Richard met them, but no one else in FairSystems has. Apart from a couple of their software people who I’ve spoken to, that is. Why? Are you thinking of talking to them?’
I rubbed my chin. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t want to scare them into going somewhere else. We should carry on as if nothing has happened. Jenson’s bluffing, I’m sure of it. What I’m not sure of is why?’
‘I could go and talk to him,’ Rachel said. ‘I need to go to California anyway to check out the motorbike accident. Maybe I could find something out at Jenson. Until last week, he and I got on quite well.’
Trading Reality Page 24
