Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 93: Unhealthy Competition
Saturday, February 8, 1986
For once, we had a perfectly quiet and lazy Saturday. There was nothing on the agenda except a bit of classwork and some phone calls to confirm appointments in Houston. The jewelers we were looking at were all happy to meet with us on the 15th, so that was set.
Some of the usual Sunday calls moved to Saturday. Gene and Sue were still elated, while Amit and Sheila were taking their time. Marshall was spending a near-insane amount of time watching game film, while Dave Mayrink was enjoying the spring semester thus far and fretting over when to pop the question to Caroline. His timetable truly was well behind ours, so I advised him to relax and see what happened. It was all of the other engagements that had him fired up, most likely.
We soaked in the hot tub in the evening (all eight of us). As far as I could tell, there was no further discussion about my cock amongst the lesbians, but that might have been wildly wrong.
After our soak, Candice and Sherry headed to their apartment and we headed to ours, but in our jumbled-up configurations, with Angie accompanying me to bed while Jas headed upstairs with Paige. As usual, Cammie and Mel teased us. Also as usual, Paige invited one or both of them to join in the fun.
If there was a downside to how fast things were moving, it was the notion that, less than two and half years from now, this phase of life might well be ending. I wasn’t at all sure that even the six of us would live together after that point. Many things would change with graduation. Not the usual things, perhaps. I was nearly certain Cammie and Mel would strike out on their own, though. Candice and Sherry might prefer to stay right here, but Jas and I and Angie and Paige might well move to our own places. Those places might not even be in town. And, if we weren’t here, Candice and Sherry might move, too. Would they share a house with any other boy? Unlikely, yet filling it with only women also seemed unlikely. Possible, but unlikely. If even one wound up with a live-in boyfriend, the problem would be immediate.
It might not matter by then, though. Candice would be considerably older, and she wasn’t fragile anymore. Or, at least, if she was, she hid it so well none of us could detect it.
Once we settled in bed, Angie and I rubbed noses.
She said, “I’m still slightly in shock about the whole Dell thing. That ... I seriously think we put Michael’s foot on the accelerator more than I thought.”
“It’s feeling that way, but I’m less sure.”
“My gut feeling is that they’re a year ahead — maybe two — not a quarter or two. I have some stuff I want to research in the library, though. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I don’t think it’s going so far that things will shake loose and fall apart, but ... well. Encouraging profit to go into long-term resiliency is a good idea. Except for right around the IPO, anyway. Need a nice big earnings per share number to make the share price nice and big.”
I chuckled and said, “We’ll see how much I can help. I’m just the junior helmsman.”
She giggled and nodded.
“Step one is getting Lee Whatshisname. At least, I think it is. Guy was good. He won’t last all that long, but he’ll get you through the IPO. Which was in 1988, and I think should stay in 1988 if you can help it. Meaning you start the process in mid to late 1987, pretty sure. I’m just ... we don’t know what else the IPO’s timing affects. Michael meeting his wife? Probably, and she was good.”
“She was really good,” I said, nodding. “I don’t want to break that, and I don’t know her maiden name. Jumping back, any idea what happens to Lee?”
“Some sort of illness, I think. Not life-threatening, but bad. He was a workaholic. I don’t think you can fix that, before you try. Maybe you could fend it off a bit. Maybe. I read some stuff from him and I think he worked longer hours in his later forties than Michael worked last year.”
“Remind me not to do that,” I said, chuckling.
“Jas will make her objections known!” Angie said. “Just like Paige will for me. Sometimes it’s fine to burn the candle at both ends. Too much, and ... no. That’s not why we’re doing all of this.”
“We might need a safety valve. Like, if any two or three of us say, ‘Okay, this is nuts. This isn’t the way we wanted life to be,’ the others have to listen. Now, we’re all stubborn enough we could ignore them...”
“But we won’t,” she said, nodding. “Yeah. I like that. I think it’s what we would do anyway, but having it sorta planned is good.”
“We’ll probably love what we’re doing. That makes it both easier and harder.”
“Agreed. And, like I said, some of that is fine. If I’m close to a breakthrough, I’ll go nuts and charge ahead and that’s fine. If I do it for weeks at a time, Paige has orders to clobber me. Or bite me places I don’t like being bitten.”
“Am I supposed to know there are good ones?”
“Sure,” she said, waving a hand. “Won’t cause any trouble now. Might come in handy, if and when. It’s all good.”
I clicked my teeth together.
“Biting is decidedly not behaving.”
“What if it’s your finger?”
“Fine. Behaving. Mean, but behaving,” she said, grinning.
“I wonder if Darla...”
She giggled again.
“We all wonder! The thing is, I know how hard you spanked Darla, or at least I’m nearly certain. It’s a lot less hard than Darla thinks she was spanked. So ... yeah. I don’t know what her preferences are, neither do you, and I doubt she does, either.”
“She thinks it was hard?” I said.
“She thinks it was really hard. And that she could’ve handled harder. I’m pretty certain it was light and teasing, so all I know is more is fine.”
“You’re right. I needed her to not be focusing on her sore ass.”
She giggled.
“Because focusing on her sore pussy was going to be much better!”
“It wasn’t my idea to make it sore. Well ... most of the soreness.”
“You’re just an overachiever, big bro,” she said.
“I guess so!”
“Just so you know: no, I have no more idea about my reproduction plans than before, which means I have no more idea about behaving than before, but I do know one thing.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“I will fly into a rage if we live more than a very short distance apart for more than a couple of years. It’s not happening! If we have that much money, we’re living where we can visit. Daily. Nightly, too.”
“I’m good with that. I’m very good with that.”
She grinned and said, “Of course! Why wouldn’t you be? Paige will be, too! But I mean ... dinners. Eventually, nannies. Hanging out, talking, watching TV, plotting — whatever. We will probably have our own nannies, but they should be friends and half-interchangeable. We’re entwined, and that’s that. It can’t change,” she said.
“I’m very good with that, too. It feels right.”
“We’ll build a compound or something. Two houses. Either directly connected or with a golf-cart path or something. Heck, three houses. Maybe a guest house or five. Staff quarters — nice ones. The whole nine yards.”
“This is once Miss Math multiplies everything?” I asked.
She giggled and nodded.
“It’s a lot of things. I don’t even know where stuff is going to go. We multiply everything. Even if you drop Dell out, though, and we can’t get success anywhere else — which is ludicrous, unless the Universe suddenly hates us — just piling what we think we’ll have from Dell into Berkshire stock has us doing just fine. Not billionaire great, but ‘never have to worry about money again unless we’re idiots’ great. The odds that we can’t beat Berkshire knowing what we know are low, though. It’s not just ‘the market,’ because I think increasingly we won’t know what ‘the market’ is going to do. It’s ... we know what Windows does to the market. No one else knows that. You know stuff about Apple — products you could reproduce, if necessary. We don’t have to know something like ‘Well, pile it all into Microsoft’ or whatever. Though, that should be this year, and I want every cent I can get my hands on put into their IPO going in. The ten-year return on that should be around 100x. If we had ten million, there’s your billion right there. But the three-year return is only about 5x, if I remember right. ‘Only’ 5x, mind you! You can see how silly my standards are! But that still means putting in fifty million in 1989 gets us to a billion. This is entirely doable. That’s probably the scary part!”
“I agree. Both that it’s not just you and that it is a bit scary.”
“Seriously, we have an honest shot at ridiculous wealth. The sort where we can rummage around in the couch cushions and buy IBM if we want. Not that I know why anyone would want to — they were looking like a train wreck when I died! — but you see what I mean.”
“IBM mostly sucked as an investment since well before now. I think there was one half-decent point, but ... yeah.”
“Not important, just ... the principle of the thing.”
“I agree.”
She giggled and bit and hugged me.
“It’s going to be one heck of a ride, and we have the right people to take on that ride.”
“We do.”
“Not that we won’t add some — we will — but ... switching subjects ... I seriously feel lucky right now even without one thought about money,” she said.
“Me, too.”
“Ring stuff is going to be fun!”
“Or annoying. Jewelers ... eh. We need quality without cutting corners but also nothing excessive or getting overcharged,” I said.
She giggled.
“They will have no idea what’s hitting them until it’s too late.”
“Almost certainly.”
“Sleep?” she asked.
“I could sleep.”
“Me, too!”
“Love you always!”
“Love you forever!”
We rubbed noses, smooched just a bit, then snuggled up.
Sunday, February 9, 1986
After church, Angie headed off to the library, not returning until around four. When she did, she rounded up Jas, Paige, and me. Cammie and Mel were downstairs studying, so we had privacy for the moment.
“I think I’ve figured out what’s up with Dell. Besides their market share, earnings, gross sales ... all for that,” Angie said.
Jas giggled and said, “We do like that those are up, though. Right?”
“We love that, as long as it doesn’t mean they’re about to crash and burn for any of a zillion reasons,” Angie said.
“Crashing and burning is bad,” Paige said, “Unless it was a justified burning. Then it’s righteous.”
Angie threw a pillow at her.
“Hey! I’m right!” Paige said.
“Brat!”
“Your brat, who you love!”
“Children!” Jas said. “Please!”
Angie and Paige both giggled.
“Anyway!” Angie said. “I did some digging. We’ve been a bit too focused. Which is completely sensible, maybe. We made a change, and now we’re investors, so we’re focused on that change. What aren’t we watching?”
“Um ... competitors?” Paige said.
“Ding ding ding! So ... where’s Compaq?”
“Northwest Houston?” I said, ready for the pillow that headed my way.
“Buzz! Smart-ass answer!” Angie said.
“They’re there, right? I see ads for them,” Jas said.
“Oh, they’re there. The thing is, we studied Dell more in business school, because their growth didn’t plateau as much and Michael, despite being ‘famously tight-lipped’ — which is something you see in a bunch of articles — actually shares interesting stuff when he shares anything at all. Or, I guess I should say, you probably will see it in a bunch of articles in the future.”
This time, the pillows went in Angie’s direction.
She continued, saying, “Compaq was the fastest company to $100 million in sales when they got there. Dell didn’t beat that, mostly because Compaq was measured from day one of sales to day 365, but Compaq built up manufacturing and inventory before starting sales, while Michael started one PC at a time in that dorm room we all love because we’re going to get really rich from the deal we made there.”
Everyone chuckled at that.
“I’m nearly certain they went public in 1983, though early 1984 is possible. In my first life, I mean. And Fortune 500 this year or so. This Compaq? Late 1984 IPO, and they’re not even in striking range of the Fortune 500. P.C.’s Limited is nearly as big now. Not quite, but this was one-sided until Dell’s IPO in my first life. Right now, private Dell is nearly outperforming public Compaq, which means Dell will blow the doors off them, most likely, after scarfing up a bunch of money in an IPO.”
“So it’s the weaker competition?” Paige said, nodding. “That makes sense.”
“I’m nearly certain it’s not Michael winning so much as Compaq losing, yeah,” Angie said. “We didn’t do that. P.C.’s Limited, as we’re very aware, wasn’t much of a market factor in 1984. And it wasn’t even an idea in 1983, except to Steve and me. Still, Compaq’s IPO moved later, as best as my memory says. It’s something else. We don’t have to know, though. It’s just ... well, if the number of PCs out there is relatively constant, and you take a bunch out of the Compaq column, a bunch go in the P.C.’s Limited column, and there you’ve got it.”
“Risks?” I said. “Seems like Compaq being weaker might make Dell weaker, maybe. The competition between them was fierce.”
“Mayyyybe,” Angie said. “That’s on my list, yeah. But that might just be some other vendor. Or maybe something will kick Compaq’s ass and they’ll start upping their game.”
“Which I would have said was a bad thing until my fiancé maybe made it a good thing,” Jas said.
“Unknown, really. It’s a new world. But it also points out that we can’t say, ‘Oh, if we had just stayed silent partners, all would be well,’” Angie said. “We’re back to ‘this universe is its own thing and we may think we know but we don’t know.’”
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