Variation on a Theme, Book 7
Copyright© 2026 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 35: Action Items
Saturday, September 27, 1986
I wound up sitting with Kim and (perhaps improbably) Gregory for breakfast. Gregory had recognized my name, too, which resulted in Kim hearing quite a bit of my story, up to and including the part about Angie and Paige’s proposal.
She said, “I knew a couple of girls in high school who would’ve been jealous. Most of us probably did, no matter how many people pretend otherwise. When I was at UT, people made fun of A&M balking at Gay Student Services, but it feels like they’re doing just fine.”
“They are now,” I said. “A couple of good court decisions, plus the sense to know when they’d lost, made a lot of difference.”
From there, we got back to business. No specifics, but we danced around the question of the weekend a bit. I don’t think Kim thought her wish was actually realistic, and she seemed almost a bit embarrassed about having made it. I did my best to reassure her that, as wishes go, it was a pretty good one and totally met the terms of the question.
Our meetings proved me right. With the wishes as a backdrop — but not one we directly referenced — we dug through approaches. Could we offer support as an upcharge? If so, how much? Five dollars? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? What would that money buy a customer who chose to get support? And what would we do if we offered service worth $50 a customer, but only a small percent or so took us up on it? Spinning up that sort of support system might cost more than $50 times a percent of the number of units would cover. It could create a serious cost we would have no way to offset.
Beth proposed charging everyone for baseline support at a much lower price. It might not even be explicit — just a $5 or so increase on every unit. That would create a large pool of money. With P.C.’s Limited the clear value leader right now, that should be fine. Adding $5 wouldn’t materially affect our prices relative to other vendors.
We went through plenty of scenarios. For my money, Beth’s $5 proposal was close to Kim’s free proposal, just by another name. I doubted Lee saw it that way, but we were free to differ on that. I intentionally didn’t make a point of saying that. My supporting Kim might feel like ‘the kids’ pushing some pie-in-the-sky plan.
I was certain that plan could fly. I’d seen it fly! But I couldn’t prove that. More to the point, I had no idea how Dell had done it the first time. It hadn’t been by building out their own support system. They’d done that in the 1990s and 2000s, and then bought Perot Systems to reinforce their support and consulting arm. Perot Systems didn’t even exist yet, so clearly that wasn’t how Dell fixed this crisis.
Lee would find the answer. He would have to. We might help, certainly. And I definitely would try to help later. But not today.
At lunch, I called both Jas and Mom. Both of them were happy to hear from me, glad the meeting was going well, and hoped I would continue to have a good time. Jas told me to say ‘hi’ to Lee, which I did.
We made it to dinner with no one killing anyone. Nor even putting anyone else’s ideas down hard enough to hurt. That had been a real possibility, at times, I thought.
The consensus so far was that we’d found a lot of common ground and everyone had plenty of ideas to work on. Nothing was solved, but perhaps we had set the grounds for a solution.
Since it was a non-working dinner, we wound up talking about anything and everything. As seemed inevitable in retrospect, ‘anything and everything’ included ‘60 Minutes’. I answered questions, then got us moved along to something else.
If there was a best moment, I think it was saying, “The whole thing is ... well, it’s not overblown, but it should be overblown. Ideally, people will stop worrying about what other people might or might not do in the bedroom or who they love and kiss. Going back to the ‘wish’ question, my wish is that, within a few decades, people the age I am now will have trouble understanding why any of this was ever news in the first place.”
I paused, then added, “Looping this back to work for a second, that’s maybe a continuation of the wishing. Before too long, I hope this is a solved problem, something customers don’t worry about and only business students like me are interested in, from a ‘How’d they solve this one?’ perspective.”
That was a risk, but a calculated one. Assume there is a solution and all we have to do is realize what it is, instead of thinking of it as potentially intractable. Even without the knowledge I had, that’s a useful tactical move, and one I thought Lee appreciated.
It worked, both taking the focus off me and getting people to think about things differently. Many people, given a chance at the limelight, won’t let it go. It would have been entirely understandable if I’d seen a long-term niche for myself as a friendly, well-spoken straight advocate for gay rights. I wasn’t all that confident this would be ‘solved’ in a few decades. Perhaps — this universe was different — but I doubted it.
In another sense, I did see a niche for myself that way, but it only went so far. I didn’t want it to define me. I suspected I would be in the news one way or another. That wasn’t the one I wanted the most. If people would just accept Angie and Paige, Cammie and Mel, Andy and Cal, and all of my other friends, I’d be thrilled. All of this was much ado about nothing, as Memorial had learned when Lizzie and Janet danced and the world didn’t end.
We broke up a bit earlier, which gave me the chance to catch the girls before bed. I’d apparently missed an unexpected barn-burner of a game. A&M had been heavily favored versus Southern Mississippi, and had dominated the game statistically, but had only won 13-7, with the game not decided until fairly late in the fourth quarter when Kip intercepted a pass and stopped a drive that was threatening to score. Overall, Southern Miss had blocked two field goals, A&M had missed another, and our quarterback had thrown two interceptions, one in the end zone. Change that, and we would have won comfortably.
Hopefully, the offense would get things back on track next week. Tech wasn’t supposed to be very good. After today’s game, though, there was an argument to be made that A&M might be a bit overrated. Teams ranked in the top ten aren’t supposed to struggle with ‘directional schools’ like Southern Miss.
They were amused, but not in the least surprised, that my reputation preceded me. That’s just how it goes.
I read for a bit after the call, then hit the hay. Tomorrow would be a very long day.
Sunday, September 28, 1986
Our working brunch came with champagne and a buffet spread that might have lacked some variety compared to others I’d been to, but made up for it with quality.
Over brunch, we talked through what we’d decided. The consensus was that we, indeed, needed ‘all of the above.’ Manufacturing needed to be as perfect as reasonably possible. Burn-in testing needed to be beefed up to catch issues. Product development testing also needed to be stepped up, with some effort put into trying marginal components and seeing where the smoke came out (perhaps literally). The tracking system needed to be perfect, capturing every part variation. If a part was bad, we needed to know where the bad parts were. If person X’s system failed, we needed the exact parts needed for their computer ready to go without X having to read off part numbers.
And, as painful as it might be, we needed a support system. ‘Mail it back’ wasn’t going to cut it. Could we build that? Buy it? Rent it? No one had any answers, but we knew what questions to ask.
For my money, Kim’s wish was the ideal. Lee probably still hated it because it was factually unreasonable. But the whole situation was ‘unreasonable.’ It was also necessary, though. P.C.’s Limited had grown faster and bigger than anyone expected, but it was still, fundamentally, an overgrown mail-order company. Orders went in, boxes went out. When something went wrong, a box had to come back in.
That wasn’t going to cut it for mission-critical customers. This was, most likely, the first of many places where P.C.’s Limited had to grow up and act like a major player if it was going to be a major player. And everyone in this room — even the consultants — could see that ‘major player’ was the next step.
It might even be necessary in another sense. There’s a reason business courses push growth plans, not steady-state models. Sometimes — in business, and in life — the situation becomes ‘grow or die.’ Staying still ceases to be an option. Stagnation is death.
That’s certainly not always true. The companies Dad had worked for might have grown by tiny increments, but they were largely static businesses. So were many other smaller businesses. Find a profitable model, make it work, and just keep on keeping on. Heck, Michael Dell’s father’s medical practice was an example, too.
But those are, largely, not the sort of businesses one learns about in ‘business school.’ They’re not the ones who wind up with IPOs, and they’re not what Michael wanted to build or Lee wanted to run.
Spirits were fairly high on the bus ride. We didn’t have a magic solution, but we had been through a pretty good process and felt like we had multiple paths forward. Most of the conversation wasn’t business-related. A lot of people were making tentative plans to come back here, perhaps bringing husbands, wives, boyfriends, or girlfriends.
Susan even brought it back around to me.
“Steve, you’re planning a wedding,” she said. “Any thoughts of coming here for your honeymoon?”
“I considered it,” I said. “I’d love to bring Jasmine here. We’re all over the map right now as to honeymoons. We were thinking Europe, but we’re going to France this winter. Her family is from there, and our summer trip to meet them had to be delayed when her father had a health crisis. He’s fine now, fortunately. Anyway ... will we go back after half a year? Maybe. It’s beautiful here, definitely. I think we’ll avoid too much heat, given how warm it is where we live...”
That got laughter.
“But ... we’ll see. Our plans have a way of changing.”
I got suggestions from a few of them. But many of them were prefaced by things like, ‘You won’t like it, because it’s pretty warm... ‘
Still, I didn’t want to put down the places others had honeymooned. They were all great options, even if they weren’t great for us.
Once we were through security at the airport, most of us called loved ones at home, and I was no exception. Jas and Dad both wished me a safe flight. Amy tossed in a ‘Do not die!’ I promised to do my very best not to.
We piled onto the plane and were in the air by three. Most people napped on the flight, and I was no exception. I did talk a bit, though. Kim surprised me by thanking me for supporting her with my much later wish. I had, but it was a rather indirect sort of support, and I was glad she’d seen it for what it was.
Switching planes in Dallas was annoying (as it pretty much always is), but things went smoothly and we were back on our way in seemingly no time.
Back in the Austin airport, Lee pulled me aside and said, “Thanks for coming along, Steve. I think you really added something.”
“I’m glad I could help.”
“You’re always a help! And it worked in a couple of ways. You distracted people when they needed a distraction, and you made some pretty astute comments. That last one, about your down-the-road wish, was inspired, I think. It flips the script and says there’s definitely a solution. And not just a solution, but a good one, one worth teaching. I think you’re right. It’s out there, buried in what we said.”
“I agree, Lee. It’s out there, and we’ll find it,” I said.
“You know this means I’ll pull you into more things,” he said, chuckling.
“Happy to help. Just don’t make me miss all of my tests.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it! Unofficially, expect something in ... November or early December. I understand your busy schedule. But I think we’ll be talking with Goldman in a month or two about a fundraising round. If I bring you, I don’t need to bring Future Boy...”
He paused, then said, “I started calling Michael that a bit ago. ‘Back to the Future’ reference. He likes it.”
“I like it, too,” I said. “It’s funny, and it fits. Now I’ve got a vision of Michael in the other Michael’s jacket. I wonder...”
I paused long enough for Lee to say, “Wonder what?”
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