Chapter 7

A few days after the meeting with Pam, Mike had a call from Kevin who was keen to show him how he was getting on with the Database project. Of course Mike was already semi familiar with progress as he had access to the program during development and had been keeping a close eye on the code. He had noticed during programming that Kevin had not tried to slip in any back door access or third party remote monitoring and that confirmed to Mike that Kevin may well be a man to keep hold of.

As Kevin explained the search process and how the program will try to give further answers based on entered search criteria, so if Mike searched for information on a town councillor, on a second screen it will provide information on fellow workers or other such secondary data. He had also made a start on predictive scanning for hand written notes, it was not perfect yet. The data was easily scanned and digitised however there was an issue with the scanned information putting itself in the correct boxes, he was still working on that. Mike was impressed with the basic program and authorised more development, allocating another 100 hours of funding to Kevin.

Thinking it through Mike realised that it was time for Carl to start working, although there was still a week of school left, Carl had indicated that he would like to start earning a bit of ready cash. So that evening whilst the three friends messed around at the house Mike brought this up and Carl was keen, however he was a little less impressed when he was only offered 5 dollars a hour. However Mike explained that he was paying for work done, scanning hand written notes is a low skill job and so the lower pay, however creating the program was a higher skill job hence the higher pay, he also reassured Carl that there was other work in the pipe line which would give him a higher income, but he was not ready for that yet.

Although Carl was not totally happy with this, he understood and 5 dollars a hour for boring repetitive work was better than trying to get paid to mow lawns.

The next morning over breakfast Mr Mike spoke with his son, recognising that Tom had signed up for care using one of his charitable positions. Part way through breakfast he asked Mrs Mike to leave the room for a moment, with a worried glance at her husband she excused herself and went through to the kitchen, closing the dining room door behind her. Mr Mike looked at his son and told him that he does not want to know the details behind Tom’s charitable donation but if what he suspects is true, then Mike had best keep his pet under control. If anything where to come back to Mr Mike then he would ensure that Mike is suitably punished.

At this Mike blanched as he understood the threat in the voice, it also triggered a thought in him, perhaps Mr Mike is the same as Mike and was more in control than it seemed. Food for thought for later.

The days passed and Mike sent a text to Pam asking her to contact him, two hours later his phone rang and Pam was on the other side of the call. Mike gave her a simple instruction, same place tomorrow evening, her husband will be working and Tom is old enough to look after himself for a few hours. Pam acknowledged the call and Mike hung up.

The last few days had been a period of change and concern for Mike, the establishment of the database and the development of friends had started to take on a life of their own and if he did not stay in control he could easily see how they could start to run away from him. With the database project he could quickly lose control of the coding and lose track of the data entry and this was utterly unacceptable to him.