Chapter 30: Full Timers

THE EFFECT of the investment on the four partners was felt almost at once. Chastity started looking for office space. While she cut her ‘social obligations’ back to almost nothing, she still had several prior appointments she needed to keep. She was getting out of the business, but she didn’t want her name trashed by jilted customers. Still, she was going to the office nearly every day and had placed ads in several places for AI engineers and some office help.

She began receiving resumes the next week.

Luke and Isobel began driving back to Pittsburgh from Philadelphia every weekend, just to work in the office on Saturdays and drive back on Sunday. Henry’s last two patents issued and the company paid Henry 75,000 shares each at $1 per share for them.

“I’m beginning to see the writing on the wall,” Luke said as the partners gathered together for brunch on Sunday before he and Isobel took off for five-hour trip back to Philadelphia.

“What’s that mean?” Isobel demanded.

“I need to transfer to Pittsburgh,” Luke said. “We’re in the process of releasing another software application. We’re going to have employees here. Even if I’m not coming into the office daily like Henry plans to, I need to do more than show up on Saturdays.”

“That’s a big step, Luke,” Henry said cautiously.

“What?” Isobel screeched. “You’d leave me at Villanova while the rest of you are all here? You’d be fucking Chastity every night!”

“Whoa! Leave me out of it, Isobel. I’m not the company bike. The only one here who gets to ride is Henry, and even he hasn’t in a long time,” Chastity growled.

“If not you, someone,” Isobel lamented. “I’d be left behind!”

“Do you think you could transfer, too?” Henry asked.

“My parents would be pretty displeased. Unless...” Isobel looked meaningfully at Luke.

“Let’s talk about it on the way back to Philly,” Luke said. “It’s a conversation for the two of us, not the four of us.”

Isobel nodded her head with a satisfied smile.

“Hey! We should have our next earnings statement from EMEE tomorrow,” Luke said, changing the thought process at the table radically.

“Any idea what we should expect?” Henry asked.

“I think it’s going to be good. Ever since your interview with Gene Grey, sales have been picking up steadily. And there have been a couple of spikes. I don’t have the final numbers, but they should be positive. It will be a good launch for Open Cloak Search. The idea that ordinary people can have a private search engine that doesn’t give false listings based on SEO manipulation or corporate algorithms is revolutionary. EMEE testers were blown away and they plan to do a massive push from their site, not to mention what Gallitzin has planned for our release. Having money in the bank is allowing us to do a real release next week.”

“How is your Ask Dad app coming along?” Isobel asked.

“The time it takes to collect a person’s life information is inhibiting,” Henry said. “Pythia Speaks, however, has given us a great testbed for the AI training. And I’m going to start testing it on my dad’s data soon.”

“Speaking of which, why is Pythia running so slowly?” Isobel asked.

“Slow?”

“Yes. It takes, like, thirty seconds to get an answer from her these days.”

“Gosh! I don’t know. She ... It should be getting faster with more experience. I’ll run a test on the server this afternoon.”

“Do it tomorrow, Henry. You’re taking Lisa to that Chinese dance and acrobatics show tonight,” Chastity said.

“Yeah. Of course!” Henry said. “I meant tomorrow.”

They wrapped up their business brunch and all headed home.

Henry and Lisa had managed their relationship as a couple that dated and not one that lived together. It had been a little tricky, but they had a good start on the ground rules before they became lovers. The common area and office area of the house were off-limits to displays of affection. The difference was that when they went out, Henry walked Lisa to her door inside the house rather than the outside door. And often, Lisa invited him in.

On her visits to his suite, she was impressed with the care he took of his rooms. He’d also hired a maid service to come in and clean once a week, including the office and her suite in the contract. She loved having someone wash her sheets and make her bed every week.

Their intimate time was growing, as well. They moved from one date a week to two or three dates and were getting along well.

Monday morning, Luke put the four partners on a conference call and announced the results of their first quarter sales.

“We had sales of 1,731 units in the first quarter!” he announced. “In dollars, that amounted to a deposit of $4,742.94.”

“Cool!” Henry said.

“Well, we’re going to need to quadruple that in order to meet basic expenses in June,” Luke said. “But with Open Cloak Search releasing this week, we stand a chance. You know OCO sells for just four and a half bucks. The search engine is going to go for $29.99. Instead of $2.74 a copy, our share of the search engine will be almost $21 a copy. If we sell a thousand copies, that’s $21,000, which will meet our projected July expenses.”

“The thing is, we need to be using our revenue account for operational expenses when possible,” Isobel said. “I’ve moved the investment capital mostly into longer term CDs. We still keep transferring any shortfall in our expenses from the capital account, including the initial lease on office space. Daily expenses, like the server hosting and website and office supplies, should be met by revenue.”