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Eight board members in three days was a fairly hefty visiting schedule (especially for someone who didn’t usually interact with the others). It hadn’t helped that he was usually only nominally involved in board decisions. He owned a percentage that was wielded for voting purposes, but he would be the first to admit that he never put much prep work into the meetings. He had kind of always figured that RR belonged to his mom and dad. They had built it. They held the ultimately responsible positions of leadership. He figured that what they wanted for the company when it came to board decisions should be what they got. It had been his operating philosophy from day one.
He would have been willing to bet that three of the board members had only agreed to see him in the first place because they were so intrigued by the fact that he was openly siding against his parents on a business matter. He wasn’t going to complain. If it got him the meetings, then he would take it.
He didn’t know how the vote was going to go. He thought that might be his lack of social skills rearing its head. He couldn’t read the board very well. He hadn’t ever tried before, so that was not entirely unexpected. He hadn’t wanted to push for an immediate answer from any of them. He didn’t want anyone to not consider the information he was bringing them just because they were annoyed at the boss’s son (and he knew good and well that that was what they all considered him no matter what his official position was) being pushy.
He thought he had two solid votes on his side from initial appearances, but he wasn’t counting on anything. He had to have a backup plan. He always had to have backup plans. Despite the consequences, he knew that Anna would crash the project before she let Walsh and Meredyth get ahold of it. He wasn’t much comforted by that fact (despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that it meant that preventing Glimpse falling into their hands didn’t begin and end with only his efforts).
That road led to unpleasant consequences all around. He would prefer to avoid that. It wasn’t that he didn’t deal with unpleasant consequences fairly regularly, but he preferred to confine said consequences to himself whenever possible. He hoped that she understood that he wasn’t being unreasonable. If it came down to no other options, then he would agree with her. Ultimately, he was very sure that Anna would do it with or without his approval, and he wanted the notice to be in a position to mitigate whatever he could.
He could see that Anna was in a not so good place. She was caught in the trap of only seeing the potential abuses (or of only seeing that the potential abuses needed to be blocked), and he was afraid that that was his fault. He had barely talked her out of destroying Glimpse preemptively a few days ago.
He was not ready to let that happen. He wasn’t certain that he had conveyed to Anna how much he did not want that to happen. Glimpse was a tool. That was all that it was. It was a computer program. It did not have intention. It did not have purpose. It did not make choices or cause things to happen. Like any tool, what became of it depended on the wielder. That wielder was supposed to be Anna. Under Anna’s direction, there were so many ways that it could be used to help. There were so many applications that she should have the opportunity to develop. He wasn’t ready to give up on those possibilities.
It was about Anna, but it was also not about Anna. Thwarting the plans for an incremental shift in functional society that led to centralized control of Meredyth’s design was paramount at all times. That didn’t mean that you made sacrifices by default because they might lead down that path (or because they might happen to block it).
If they started making knee jerk responses, then they weren’t actively fighting (they were just running). He saw it as the difference between standing and facing someone and tossing objects in her path as you ran away in the hopes that it would slow her down. There was a time and a place for both options to be considered. It was dependent upon the circumstances which one you should choose. He was still holding on to the first.
It might be a poor analogy, but it was working for his purposes (which consisted of making sense of what he was thinking within his own head). If he ever had to explain that out loud to Anna, then it might not work as well.
It might be his pride getting the best of him (except he really didn’t believe that it was), but he didn’t want to destroy all the potential that Glimpse presented because some people couldn’t be trusted with it. It might not seem like it to anyone else, but he would see it as a defeat. They would be letting Meredyth’s proclivities dictate what they were doing.
It might seem no different than the fact that he turned his life upside down on a regular basis to try to counter her, but it felt different to him. The whole point was to not let Meredyth be in control. He wouldn’t let her control this. If for no other reason, then because he was not going to let her be the reason that Anna ruined her life. He wasn’t going to let himself be the reason that Anna ruined her life either.
This was not going to turn into another Will Walsh moment. He was not going to assume that he had someone convinced and be blindsided when they were not. He had more work to do.
Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy Page 14
