All the end-user needs to know is that a bunch of step-by-step instructions would pop up on their phone each day (or whatever interval was required, kind of like automated email marketing... but useful).
Our biggest problem was our patients’ lack of internet access.
I’d had internet access since high school and it was now so integral to my daily operation that it was astonishing to me how many people went without. I understand it’s expensive... but it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t have been in 2012 and it definitely shouldn’t be in 2018 as I finish this self-portrait. At the very least, municipalities of larger than five hundred households should be able to set up and manage their own Wi-Fi system capable of blanketing the entire village.
Those who are on food stamps would qualify for a minimal connection (of around five megabytes per second). Veterans, the disabled, and the elderly would also qualify for this minimum.
Our current provider refuses to offer less than 100 Mbps. We don’t need this much when 25 Mbps works just fine. It’s a scam.
Give me the level of internet I need for thirty bucks a month. That’s completely reasonable and had the current presidential administration not revoked so many regulations surrounding high speed internet, those packages would have still been available. I live in a rural part of the state. People out here don’t have a hundred dollars to spend on 100 Mbps.
As long as internet access is controlled by for-profit entities, we will always be making some form of this argument. A few years ago, when my company failed, I cited the lack of fiber infrastructure. Now fiber is finally catching up, but the price isn’t going down as it should (seeing as a majority of the initial fiber infrastructure was taxpayer subsidized, the cable companies should be giving it away).
Prices have stayed the same or increased, while the average cost to deliver the service has gone down. Which means cable companies are getting away with wealth-extraction from the millions of powerless average workers.
If everyone had internet access, the company I built five years ago would have been a success... as would’ve many other companies with a similar vision. I can’t even imagine the number of ways a completely connected community could improve itself on a micro-local level.
Yes, there will be some lazy bums who just want to play Call of Duty, but that’s the bare minimum of what a connected society can be. That’s all I’ll have to do to sell my internet plan to voters: cheaper Call of Duty. My First Rule of sales is to undersell and over-perform. Mark’s First Rule has always been that if you give them what they pay for, then you can get away with anything. So if we promise to make the internet a basic utility, we can use the goodwill from that initiative as a jumping off point for other big ideas.
But then you think about how the current administration has rolled back so many regulations that it’s legal for internet service providers to do just about whatever they want to their customers, including selling their search history (regardless of which search engine or browser you use) and pushing ads or notifications to your screen or throttling service to whatever website they feel like.
So much for a free internet. Someday, we’ll come to our senses and make it a public utility. Right, guys?
IN MY MOMENT OF NEED, I turned to Suhail. Begging for his assistance made me feel guilty, especially after he had already denied me over and over. But this time I would bring out the big guns—unlike the last time, when I wasn’t authoritative.
Despite my forceful request, Suhail hesitated.
“Dude,” I said into my phone, pretending like we were speaking face-to-face. “I really need you right now. We're not going to make our deadline. Can you come after work at least?”
“I can't. I can't get roped into this right now. I'm sorry.” He seemed truly torn.
“Why not?”
“I know how you are, Chris. You sweep everyone up with your charisma. But I just don't think it's gonna work. I don't think it's viable. You yourself have told me multiple times that it's too early for something like this to succeed.”
“But if we don't try, we won't know. And if we don't try, then the next person who tries won't have a better understanding of where we went wrong. We can make a difference.”
“You're thinking too highly of yourself. It's all wasted time to me.”
“It's not a waste of time to me. We got funding before... we'll get more.” Maybe from one of our college incubators. “I’ve had a few serious nibbles over the past couple—”
“When you get the funding to hire me for a year, then I'll think more seriously about it. I can’t give up my job otherwise.”
“You’ll make a promise here and now that if I can acquire one year's worth of your salary, you’ll give me that year of your life.” Talk about mind control—I was a natural.
“I'm not going to get trapped like that because I don't doubt that you can make it happen. You're a resourceful guy, perhaps the most resourceful man I’ve ever met. If I give you a number to hit, you'll hit it. But that doesn't make your underlying project any more feasible. Why would you throw good money after bad?”
“It's not bad money! We're going to do this. It's important to me. I went through a transitional period and it took years for me to get my body under control. And my disorder is not even the worst. I have nothing to complain about! There’s some people who are so much worse than me. It needs to be done for them!”
He sighed. I could hear Melanie talking in the background. “Call me when the project is stabilized,” he said at last.
Then he hung up.
I had failed once again. If I wanted my friend to join the crew, then I somehow had to convince investors to give us another year's worth of time after we'd already blown six months. Rome wasn't built in a day, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Ro wasn’t built inna day. Rowa built inna day.
Maybe we should call the app ‘Rowabiad’.
My company needed to get in with a hospital and it needed to have happened yesterday.
So, instead of making another fruitless cold call in a long line of failed cold calls, I told my team that I was going for a drive. They could see that I was frustrated and didn't question why they were being abandoned.
I drove directly to Tim's office where I introduced myself to Tim’s secretary. “Hello, Claire.”
“Chris, I haven't seen you in a long time. Tim is in with a patient right now.”
“That's alright. I'll wait.” I brought out my smartphone and began typing. I hated using my thumbs, but the Bluetooth keyboard would have been too loud and cumbersome.
Minutes passed. I walked up to Claire and asked how she was doing.
“I'm doing just fine,” she said pleasantly. “I'm very happy you haven't overpowered me and charged to the back room.”
“I wouldn't do that.” How strange...
“That's what Mark did. He came in here and made a huge scene. Got his face punched in real good. I had to call security.”
“He didn't tell me that,” I said solemnly. “He got punched in the face? By you?” A mild-mannered secretary?
“Not me. By Tim.”
“Tim!” This was even more surprising than the idea of Claire clocking Mark in the jaw. “But Tim is, like, a foot shorter than Mark.” And a hundred pounds lighter.
“I know. He nearly broke his hand, which would have put us all at a disadvantage. His hands are what pay the bills. I can never forgive Mark for putting Dr. Tim in that position.”
“I'm back together with Mark. Have you heard?”
“That's the gossip.”
“So Tim has been talking about me. Is there a reason why you aren't letting me in to see him? I've been waiting here for half an hour. I have only a brief question.”
“He would have preferred if you called.”
“I did call and he didn't answer.”
“Now, now. Don’t you go forcing your way back there. He’s in with a patient and he’ll see you momentarily.” She reached for the phone.
“
You do realize if you call for security, we can never be friends again.”
“Tim will be seeing you, I swear. He's taking lunch after this patient. Five... ten minutes at the most.” She was acting like I was Mark or something.
I retreated to my seat and waited. Five minutes later, a patient left the office. Three minutes after that, Tim showed up with a scowl etched on his face.
“If she hears about this, I'm going to be in trouble,” Tim said. “Claire better not report back.”
“You know me better than that, boss.”
“I need your help,” I said gently. “I wouldn't be here otherwise.”
“Let's get lunch,” he suggested. “There's a good cafe across the street.”
We ate lunch together as he suggested and I made sure to pay for the meal.
“We need to get in a hospital,” I pleaded. “We need to integrate and prove that we can be useful to guys like you.”
“So what’s your presentation? Pretend like you’re making a sales pitch.”
“Dude, Tim... just give us a goal and we’ll adjust ourselves accordingly.”
“It doesn't work like that,” Tim said with a shake of his head. “You have to come to me with a concrete plan filled with results and details. There’s no way a hospital would take on an experimental software... or whatever you’re calling your thing. They just can’t do it.”
“I know! I’ve learned that. First we need to prove ourselves, but in order to prove we can scale to the size of a hospital, we have to actually get in a hospital. What are we supposed to do? How are we going to tailor our program if no one gives us a chance?”
“I'm not really the one to ask. But hospitals are chronically underfunded. It's not as if we can come up with thousands upon thousands of dollars. This is a pretty tightly regulated business.”
“But we're a small team,” I pleaded. “We're talented with coding. This project is going to be simple and intuitive. I hate that our clients have to be large institutions like hospitals because I didn’t start on this path with them in mind. I wish we could drill down to a personalized, individual basis.”
“Your motivation is entirely wrong,” Tim suggested. “You can't go into a meeting wishing for something that isn't going to come true. What if I got you a meeting with the hospital board where I perform my surgeries. What would you say to them? And what would you do if they said yes?”
“If they said yes, I’d probably die. That’d mean I could hire Suhail. He wants a year's worth of funding. And... wow... I’ve spent probably half of my time trying to secure more funding as opposed to actually working with my team.” I shook my head. “If we had more money, I could be more efficient with my time. We want to get this off the ground, which means we have to go where the money is. What do you think the hospital board would be most interested in? My guess is cancer patients.”
Tim finished his meal and very awkwardly related some words of wisdom that I went home and wrote in my journal. I even made a sticky note and stuck it above my workstation so I would see it every day. He said, “If you're following the money, then you're probably already too late. You’ll be competing with companies that are too far out of your league. You need to stick with your original goal.”
“But there’re so many autoimmune disorders! And there’s so many rashes and so many symptoms and so many things we don’t know about each disorder. The amount of money it would take to code for each and every one.... We don't even have proper visual identification techniques so you can’t automate this shit. You have to rely on the human eye. Someday soon there’ll be computers that can interpret pictures, but until then we have to—”
“You're going about this the wrong way,” he stressed again, breaking me out of my rant.
I wanted to tear my hair out. “I don't know what to do,” I admitted, feeling unusually emotional. “It's all building up on my shoulders. This isn't my area of expertise. I'm an engineer by training. I'm a writer by trade. I'm not this person who can just talk to people and make things up... I just can't do it. I can’t lie to these people.”
“That's not a bad thing,” Tim said gently. “You're a smart guy, but you can't do everything.”
“I can't afford to hire people to do this for me. We have to do this on our own. We have to have a startup mentality and stay focused.”
“Then I don't know what to tell you.”
“How's Stacy doing?” I asked, changing the subject completely.
“Let's stay on topic. I don't want you to get me in trouble. It's bad enough that we're eating in an open location like this. If Stacy were to drive by and see me... that would be the end of me. I would never hear the end of it.”
“Is she really that mad at me?” Please lie.
“Let's not talk about it. It'll only make me upset.”
“I don't want to fight with her,” I said. “I didn't do anything on purpose.”
“Chris, be real. You do everything on purpose. You think through every option. You knew what you were getting into with Mark and you knew how Stacy would take it. God, that woman can hold such a grudge.”
“I didn't do it on purpose! I showed up in the park and he was just sitting there. What was I supposed to do? He looked so sad and lonely. What was I supposed to do!”
“You were supposed to do what Stacy would have done. You're supposed to walk away. You're supposed to tell him how much you hated the way he ended it and how it’s over. How many times did I lie there and hear you two talking about it? You went over and over the different ways you would confront Mark if you ever saw him again. Do you know how hard Stacy worked to prevent him from contacting you? She sheltered you and helped you come back from... shit, she helped you come back from addiction.”
“I know,” I whined. “I love her so much. Please, can we not fight about this anymore?”
“It's not me you have to talk to,” he insisted. “I'm not getting in the middle of this. You never should have brought it up.”
We separated after our lunch.
That night I video-conferenced with Mark and told him about my bad day and how Tim was absolutely no help. I was in a bad mood and felt overwhelmed by anxiety.
“You need to calm down, little man.”
“Quit calling me little man. It's not funny and I'm not in the mood for your games right now.”
“Oh... I’ll show you my games.” He wiggled his eyebrows and that got a begrudging laugh out of me.
“Stacy’s on my mind. Tim won't help me break through with her. My project is going under and Tim won't come near it because of Stacy. What is with that woman? She has like a death-grip over him.”
“Forget about Stacy. She doesn't know what she's missing. You have me... you have plenty of friends. Friends everywhere. My friends, your friends. Your family, my family.”
“Hopefully your family,” I muttered. “I thought they were supposed to hate me now.”
“My parents aren’t involved in my life. My family isn’t like yours. They're going to love you. Forget about Stacy.”
So does that mean you talked to them or that they still hate me?
We put my worries on the back burner and read two more chapters of Pride and Prejudice. We got to a scene with the mother... who reminded me so much of my own mother that I couldn't stop laughing.
“What's so funny?” Mark asked.
“I can hear my mother saying the same exact thing. When was this written... like, two hundred years ago?”
“Something like that.”
“Shows you how much human behavior has changed over all that time. We think we're a super advanced society, but it seems like mothers will always be the same.”
“That they will. You'll make a good mother someday.”
“What the hell! We're not starting that again! We’re having a good night and I don't want you referring to me as a woman again. It wasn’t funny before and I’ve made my thoughts on it clear now. And don’t call me your ‘little man’. I'm not some toy.”
>
“Except for the times you want to be a toy. I've read your kinky shit.”
“Let's not talk about it.” No teasing.
“Then when are we going to talk about it?”
I tried to cuddle over the internet, but it just wasn't the same as in person. He asked me what I was doing so I said I was trying to touch his body through the screen and distract him.
“We can have phone sex, if you want,” he suggested. “Do you need me to turn off the screen? Oh yeah baby... touch me there, babe. I wish you could see how hard I am for you.”
“Quit talking like that.” I giggled.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah. That's the spot. Feel my... what's the word you use?”
“Don't make fun of me now. I'm going to hang up on you.”
He scowled, but laughed. “You wouldn't dare hang up. What's the thing you say all the time? Lats. But what you really mean are traps. You love the neck and the nape of the neck, but you call it the lat.” He lifted his arm. “This is a lat.” He touched the nape of his neck. “This is a trap.”
“Quit making fun of me,” I complained for the fiftieth time that night. “So what if all the guys in my erotic stories have amazing lats? Not the worst thing in the world. You know I don't pay attention in the gym.”
“That's a huge lie. You're forgetting that I've read your shit.”
“When did you read all this?”
“I read through what you posted.”
“When did you do that? I took it all down.”
“You didn't take it down quick enough. Plus there’s multiple archives. Once you post something on the internet, it’s pretty damn hard to scrub. I looked up your kinky shit. Saved a couple of the hot ones.”
“You saved some of my erotica?” Really?
“It's archived on my hard drive. Only like two or three. You had some real intense stuff and I couldn't read through all of it.”
“Yeah, I don't really feel all that stuff, either. I had some followers and they requested some of the freakier stuff. So I went with it. I went with what was popular, but I’m never doing foot fetish again. That stuff is gross.”
The Fiancé (It's Just Us Here Book 6) Page 23
