Chapter 99: (Re)Making History

Saturday, March 17, 1984

I woke to find the message light on the hotel phone flashing. Jas was still sleeping, so I slipped out of bed, went to the desk, and called their message retrieval system (which was, fortunately, automated — still a new thing in 1984 in many hotels).

The message was from Kyle. He had a number of suggestions and changes to make to the agreement. In my opinion, none of them sounded like a big deal. I was pretty sure all of them simply clarified what we’d already agreed to. Still, it was Kyle’s job to cover my ass legally, and a simple agreement in principle could easily turn into several times as many pages as a legal document.

Once the girls were up, I replayed the message for them. Each had a few small tweaks, but agreed that what Kyle had was essentially right on. Once we’d gone over it, I called back and left a message for Kyle saying we agreed with it and relaying our little tweaks. With that, and if he could get an agreement with Michael’s lawyer, we were fine. If not, we’d have to work on it. As long as we had everything close to settled today, I was okay with making the transaction and ironing out the language later. None of the terms were things Michael was likely to balk about. He needed the money now, and I wanted this done. The stakes for both of us were enormous, after all.

The girls all demanded Kerbey Lane again, so we found ourselves there at eight. Per Kyle’s message, he was probably in the office while we were enjoying gingerbread pancakes and omelets and other breakfast goodness. Still, he was getting paid, and paid well, to work his legal magic.

Fed and happy, we called Michael at nine. He answered right away. He’d gotten in touch with his lawyer and they’d hammered out almost everything. We’d have draft agreements waiting. A few things would need to be ironed out, but once we finished, we’d fax it back, the lawyers would do their magic, and we’d get final agreements.

It sounded great to all of us.

We drove over to the Dobie and headed to the copy shop. While I picked up the faxes, Jas spotted some disposable cameras and bought one. We took the faxes and camera and headed up.

Michael met us at the door, shaking hands with all of us. We headed in. This time they’d cleared a space at one of the desks, along with five chairs, so we had a place to much more easily sit and write.

We pretty much went through everything line by line, making sure we either understood the legalese or all trusted the lawyers to have done the right thing. On the few points that remained in question, we quickly reached agreement. Most of them were the sort of tiny details that are easily forgotten but might bite you in the ass. What happened if one of us died? Or if Michael sold? Could we (or, rather, the LLC) give away its shares? And so on, and so forth. Angie caught several of them, and Paige caught a few more.

Besides the reporting requirements we’d already agreed on, Michael added a few short-term ones. He wanted it to be completely clear that he wasn’t going to Tahiti on my investment money. We were certain everything would go into the business, but it made sense from his perspective. Bad feelings between us could sour things.

Sure, down the road he’d have nice houses and nice cars and everything else (not to mention enormous charitable donations!), but he knew more than enough to not take money out of the business until after it was humming along and solidly profitable.

We all knew what we wanted, and neither side was trying to screw the other, so we got through it quickly. Under an hour later, we had a final agreement.

Jas took several photos of the ‘big meeting,’ as she called it. It was possible that, one day, this meeting might be part of business lore. In my world, Michael had written two books on management, both full of Dell anecdotes. I could easily see a section about ‘See if your friends are willing to invest’ being in this universe’s version. That is, if this all worked out.

Michael wiped his hand across his forehead as we finished.

“Man, I’m going to have to really tell the folks. Like... ‘Dad, Mom, this thing’s taking off, and I even have investors. I have to give it a serious run. College can wait.’”

I nodded. “I hope they take it well.”

“Dad will be simultaneously sad and happy. He wants me to succeed, but he really wanted me to follow in his footsteps. This is totally different. Still, if we can keep up the pace and build our profit margin, I could beat him in take-home income within a few years. Not bad for a kid.”

Angie said, “Not bad at all. I don’t know your dad, but it sounds like his first concern is your success. I know our dad would be shocked and unhappy if we ditched college, but if we could convince him that we had a plan and were going to do great things, he’d be happy in the end.”

I couldn’t tell him that he’d be the CEO of his very own Fortune 500 Company well before he hit 30. He’d have laughed at me. Still, unless we’d broken something badly, that’s the path we were on.

So, instead, I said, “Like I said: kick ass, sell computers. Simple!”

He chuckled. “For now. It’ll get complicated. That’s what all that business school is for!”

Angie grinned, and said, “Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I have to say, I’m also looking forward to presenting business cases that are actually being executed in the real world and watching jaws drop if they find holes that aren’t there.”

“That’s just mean! In a great way, but still!”

“There’s no way that we’ll be the only kids at A&M with our own businesses, but I doubt there’ll be many,” I said.

Michael nodded, then said, “Fairly passive businesses, though. Unless you’ve got a time machine, there’s no way to do this and still do school.”

Considering our pasts, I chuckled inwardly. I was pretty sure the girls were, too. I could see Jasmine was.

“Passive to moderately active at best, yeah,” I said. “It has to be. With four of us, we can divide and conquer, though.”

“We will,” Angie said. “I’ve got my things, and Paige and Jasmine are finding theirs.”

Paige grinned. “I think business school is going to mean a lot more to me if I’m doing it and not just learning it.”

Jasmine nodded. “For me, I’m the one coming from a different angle, but a lot of what I want to learn I can also be doing as well as learning.”

He shrugged. “And you’ve all got the bug to go learn things. I’ve got the bug to go build things. Both are cool.”

“Definitely.”

We faxed off the hand-edited copies, then hung out in Michael’s apartment, trying to talk about everything besides business. Just after eleven, the phone rang. It was Michael’s attorney, saying that he’d just faxed off the proposed final version of the agreement.

We headed back down to the copy shop and read through it. We were happy, Michael was happy, both lawyers were happy (yes, I called Kyle to triple-check), and thus, we had an agreement.

Michael signed, Jas signed, the copy shop owner notarized it, Angie took pictures of us doing it, and that was that. Michael’s lawyer had also made up ten nice ten-share stock certificates. They were on fax paper, but no less legal for it, and Michael promised to replace them with fancy ones later.

I had a feeling that we’d just completed the biggest business deal in the history of the Dobie, and that included the deal to build the Dobie.

We took my car to the RepublicBank location in Austin, catching them with thirty minutes left in their day. It only took them ten minutes to cut a cashier’s check for $40,000 made out to ‘Dell Computer Corporation’ (Michael preferred that to ‘PCs Limited’ for this purpose). Angie took a picture of Michael and me holding the check in front of us right away.

From there, we headed off to Michael’s bank and got the check deposited. We didn’t even have to go through the drive-through teller. Michael handed me the ten hand-signed stock certificates, we shook hands once more, and Angie captured it in a photo.

From there, it was back to the Dobie, where Michael headed back upstairs to get back to work building computers. Or, more likely, figuring out which components to order first and looking for a place to rent.

In the car, Jas said, “So ... how does it feel?”

“It’s...” I said, then paused. After a second, I said, “It’s a mix of relief and excitement. This is ... um ... the culmination of a year and a half of ‘work,’ with more time spent planning it in my head. It all had to go right, and it had to be genuine. Yeah, I had a huge advantage, but it also had to be about Michael’s friend Steve helping Michael out, really and truly.”

“And you got there.”

“We got there. Angie helped a lot, especially in the early going.”

“I did!” Angie said, chuckling.

“And you helped too, Jas,” I said. “Left to myself, I would’ve dithered, I think. Heck, at first I was scared of the idea of having big piles of money. I don’t want to get fat and lazy, and I definitely don’t want to turn into one of those rich assholes whose primary goal in life is making sure he gets more and more at the cost of everyone else.”

“You’re not going to turn into that,” Jas said, reaching over and squeezing my leg.

“Hell no!” Paige said. “We will all kick your ass if you even think about it!”

“What she said,” Angie said. “And that goes for all of us. One for all and all for one also means kicking each other’s asses if we’re fucking up.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re all right. Michael never did, not in my world. He was right out front on a lot of things that I was happy to see him supporting. But, still, I think a lot of those rich assholes never thought they were going to follow the path they followed, either. A lot of them slowly build elaborate fantasy worlds in which they’re the heroes who — by virtue of their ... well, virtue ... and character and ingenuity and work ethic and grit — have become rightfully rich, and all of the little people are just nuisances who want the things that are rightfully theirs.”

“Someone dislikes Ayn Rand,” Paige said, grinning.

“There’s a quote that I think hasn’t been written yet. It goes something like ‘There are two books which can change a bookish teenager’s life: ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’. One of them is a childish fantasy that can lead to a lifelong obsession with its unrealistic characters, leading to an emotionally stunted adulthood and trouble dealing with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.’”

All three of the girls started giggling. Angie, in particular, went to full-blown laughter for a bit before settling down.

“That’s hilarious!” Paige said. “I hope whoever wrote that writes it again, if they haven’t already written it.”

I nodded, then said, “Rand had some interesting things to say, and it’s a logical fallacy to smack down all of her work because she also wrote a ridiculous amount of crackpottery. That said, it needs to be read with a big, big block of salt.”

“Definitely!” Angie said, mostly recovered now.

“Lunch?”

I got three ‘yes’ votes on that. Since we were in the area, I took us to Dirty’s. Everyone enjoyed their burgers, and the place was very quiet thanks to Spring Break.

After lunch, I said, “So ... what do y’all want to do with the rest of the day?”

“Hrm...” Jas said. “Are there any museums or the like around here?”

“There’s a nice little natural history museum on campus,” Angie said. “We went there with Mom and Dad.”

I nodded, “There’s a small art museum, too. I’m not sure what else. UT is going to build a really nice art museum, but it’s decades away. They have some nice collections, too, but most aren’t on display yet. Austin is going to have some really funky museums, too, but I think almost none of them exist. Austin’s a weird place, pretty much. It went right to becoming a big city without anyone planning it, and missed all of those things you associate with big cities, so they had to backfill them all later.”

“That makes a very strange sort of sense,” Jas said.