Chapter 70: What’s Changed?

July 23, 1995, Chicago, Illinois

“Next time we have to stay longer,” Kara said on Sunday afternoon as we relaxed with Jessica and Michelle in the sauna.

“It was a whirlwind trip,” I said. “But I’m not sure a longer one is really practical until the kids are older. Other than Jesse and Matthew, the kids were mostly bored in Russia.”

“The four boys really enjoyed the lunch in the officers’ mess!”

I smiled, “I think the officers enjoyed it just as much as the boys did.”

“Do you think it’s too soon to go to Disney World next year?” Jessica asked.

“I think it’ll be different. Going to the beach, visiting Daytona International Speedway, going to Disney World itself, plus Epcot and the new Blizzard Beach water park should give the kids plenty to be interested in. Not to mention Kennedy Space Center. And remember, most Disney rides are fine for five and up, and Ashley will be five.”

“I also think the kids will like Discovery Island,” Kara said. “Especially Stephie with her love for animals.”

“Where do you think we’ll stay?” Michelle asked.

“Either Polynesian Village Resort or Wilderness Lodge. I already have Barney working on it, and he has ‘agency’ reservations at both while he works out the details.”

“Would we fly or drive?” Kara asked.

“I think we want to drive, otherwise we’ll have trouble with going to the other places. We won’t need it on Disney properties because of the monorail and shuttles, but to get to Daytona and Kennedy would require renting cars. Bethany said they want to go at the same time, and so did the Jaegers.”

“Look out Florida!” Kara laughed.

“Tiger, sorry for changing the subject, but are you thinking of going along with Vanya Voronin’s idea of expanding your business to Russia?”

“Honestly, I don’t think we can do it, at least not as a direct part of NIKA. That said, some kind of partnership might work. I know the perfect person to run it, but I don’t think she’d be willing to move back to Russia.”

“Lyudmila?” Kara asked.

I nodded, “She’d be perfect, but she’s so Americanized I don’t think she’d go for it. I’ll discuss it with her when she’s here next month, but I doubt she’ll be interested. That said, the opportunity to make a ton of money and become a truly decadent capitalist might just entice her!”

“Better than marrying a decadent capitalist?” Kara teased.

“She wanted to marry you?” Michelle asked.

“She wanted to escape the Soviet Union; I was a very convenient, and interesting, escape route. But I was seeing Tanya at that point, and there was no way I was going to let Lyudmila interfere, despite her showing up naked in Tanya’s bed at age fifteen to try to entice me!”

“She tried very, very hard to convince Steve to abandon Tanya,” Kara said. “But she never succeeded!”

“Tanya is a wonderful woman,” Michelle said. “I very much enjoyed talking with her. Jesse is smitten with her daughter.”

“Which girl ISN’T Jesse smitten with?” Jessica laughed.

“Hey, he has not let anyone come between him and Francesca,” I said. “At least officially.”

“He wasn’t happy with the sleeping arrangements in Stockholm,” Kara smirked.

“They’re getting a bit old to sleep in the same bed,” Jessica said. “At least until they’re ready for that.”

I nodded, “Pia and I talked about it and she agrees. When they get to be fourteen or fifteen, it’ll be a different story.”

“Are we going to do anything about the sauna?”

“No. We’ll let the kids self-select for that,” I said. “Birgit won’t care, but Stephie and Ashley are a bit more modest. And we already have the ‘friends’ rule for anyone who isn’t a ‘cousin’. The last thing we need is Carol or Carla or Julie to flip out because Francesca or Rachel or Tiffany is naked in the sauna.”

“Who are the ‘cousins’?” Michelle asked.

“The kids from our closest circle of friends,” I replied. “Basically the Jaeger kids, Bethany’s kids, the Ferguson kids, Cindi’s son, and Penny’s kids. The Kallas and Carston kids are close, as are Joyce’s kids, but because the dads are more conservative, they don’t get quite the freedom the others do. Oh, and kids of any of our Swedish friends.”

“If you just assume ‘cousins’ means the kids of everyone who is comfortable with having them in here naked with the adults, that pretty much defines it,” Kara said.

“Though that’s going to change once puberty starts,” I said. “As I mentioned before, either the kids will opt out or their parents will, at least until the kids are ready for that kind of thing.”

“Except Birgit! She’s exactly like her mom!” Jessica laughed. “I need to get out so I can take a nap before work tonight.”

“Sorry about that, Babe.”

“It’s fine, Tiger. I knew this was going to happen. I’m going to skip the family dinner.”

“I understand. Ed and Stephanie are cooking and hosting, so that makes things a bit easier on the rest of us.”

We all left the sauna, and after showers, Kara and I kissed Jessica who went to bed. Kara and I went downstairs to the ‘Indian’ room to relax until dinner.

July 24, 1995, Chicago, Illinois

“Good morning, Steve!” Kimmy exclaimed when I walked into the office on Monday morning.

“Good morning, Kimmy! Thanks for not bothering me during my vacation!”

“Nothing super important came up. I do have a list of calls for you to return, but again, nothing urgent.”

“That is exactly what I wanted to hear!”

“Earl Grey or English Breakfast?”

“Earl Grey, please.”

“Coming right up!”

I scanned the list of messages and agreed with Kimmy’s accurate assessment that there was nothing pressing. As usual, as soon as my computer booted, I started Netscape Navigator, which had replaced NCSA Mosaic as my Internet browser, and MS Mail. I started checking email and Kimmy brought my tea. I sipped while I read and responded to a series of internal emails, leaving a few customer emails for after the leadership meeting.

“Kimmy, did you confirm my schedule with Ben Jackson and the professor at SDSU?” I asked.

“Of course!” she laughed. “I made notes on the itinerary which is in your travel folder. I guess you haven’t checked that yet.”

“No, I haven’t. Sorry about that.”

“It’s OK. You just came back from vacation! Did you have fun?”

“Absolutely. It wasn’t the best trip for the three littlest ones, but they did OK. They’ll enjoy Disney much more next year!”

“It’s almost time for the meeting,” she said. “I’m going to go set up the conference phone.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I said.

I finished replying to an email, refilled my mug with tea, then went down the hall to the reconfigured conference room. The meeting was fairly routine. Dave reported that we were making good progress on the new user interface and he expected to meet the delivery date we’d agreed with Cindi. According to Cindi, we were bringing Lone Star clients on board at a faster rate than projected, and losing very few deals to our competitors.

“Have we heard anything more from Lone Star or Peach?” I asked.

“No. Peach really can’t do much before the end of the year, which is when we’ll see the impact. Unfortunately, we don’t know what their technology choices are, though I’d be hard pressed to see them select anything other than Windows NT and MS SQL. But really, it doesn’t matter for now. We’ve already started the pricing discussions, and beyond that, we just need to execute our plans.

“With regard to Lone Star, they’ve begun a serious effort to try to retain their current customers. I can’t tell for sure if it’s to try to preserve something to sell, or if it’s an effort to recover. I think we’ll know for sure if they begin hiring sales reps.”

“Have we considered making a lowball offer for them?” Mario asked. “Just to keep the software out of the hands of a competitor or potential competitor?”

“I did discuss that with my dad and Joyce,” I said. “In the end, our legal business is about reputation. Even if someone with deep pockets and serious software expertise were to buy the Lone Star system, they’d have to work to build a reputation. We’d have plenty of time to revise our plans if something like that were to happen. But that’s all hypothetical at the moment. There are real and current challenges from Peach, Hastings Mill Software, and Chickasaw Systems. None of them really need the Lone Star software.”

“We just do our thing and worry about competition as it arises,” Cindi said. “We’re the best, and everyone knows it. Lone Star was close, but they imploded. Peach is up-and-coming, and so are the other two. Those are the ones we have to watch, at least in the next year or two. Trying to plan for competition beyond that would be soothsaying.”

“How are the new sales reps doing?”

“Coming up to speed slowly, but pretty much as we expected. They’re building their pipelines at a rate with which I’m comfortable. I don’t see any concerns.”

“Julia, how are things going with consulting in Dallas and the Raleigh-Durham area?”

“We ran ads over the weekend, so we should start receiving résumés. Kimmy approved me speaking to Steve Markman at Pencom to see if he could help us find people.”

I nodded, “I think that’s a good plan. We want to be careful about spending too much on recruiters, but if it cuts the time to find good people, it’s worth spending some money. I trust Steve Markman; he brought us Sam. If there is nothing else, please remember I’m flying to San Diego tomorrow evening, then flying to LA on Thursday morning and back to Chicago on Friday.”

“What’s in San Diego?” Mario asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I’m going to talk to the Dean of the Humanities department and some philosophy professors about doing a weekend seminar similar to the Rap Sessions I used to hold here in Chicago.”

“How did you get into that?” he asked.

“I ran into him on the plane to Australia. He overheard the conversations I was having and thought I was a philosophy professor. We spoke on the phone a couple of times and now I’m going out to get the ball rolling.”

“Cool. Are you going to start your quarterly trips again?”

“Yes, but not before October,” I said. “And we’re going to have to figure out how we handle the remote offices in Dallas and Raleigh. And there’s the issue of my regular visits to see Ben Jackson in LA. I’m not quite sure how to handle this just yet, but it’s going to get out of hand if I visit every office four times a year.”

“What if we set up a videoconferencing system in each office?” Kimmy asked. “It’s not quite the same as visiting, but doing videoconferencing is different.”

“We do have a WAN which will support it,” Julia said. “And there are systems which would allow us to conference in four remote offices simultaneously.”

“Have Sam look into it, please.”

“I will,” she replied.

“Thanks. It’s not a complete solution,” I said. “But being able to use it for our ‘all staff’ calls and for all of you to talk to each other will help keep our far-flung empire together! I think I’m going to have to limit myself to two trips to each region and visit the two offices on each of those trips.”

“Nobody is going to complain about that, Steve,” Mario said.

“I agree,” Barbara said. “They know you care. And coming to visit twice a year is fine.”

“OK. One last item, are we ready for Microsoft’s release of Windows 95 next month?”

“Yes,” Julia replied. “The only issue Sam raised is that the ‘gold’ master release is less stable, and less ready, than the final beta release.”

“Say what?!” Zeke asked in astonishment.

“That’s her analysis. I believe Brenda and Eve have said the same thing. I know it makes no sense, but that’s what they’ve found.”

“Wonderful,” I said sarcastically. “What about our build?”

“Our current build runs fine on both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95,” Julia replied. “As usual, we’re recommending customers only use Windows 95 for testing for now, but we’ll fully support them if they run under Windows 95. Have you had a chance to look at Internet Explorer?”

I laughed derisively, “It’s no Netscape Navigator - not even close. They licensed Spyglass Mosaic and reworked it, but Navigator is far better. I’ve been experimenting with our website and the use of something Netscape calls ‘cookies’ which allow for storage of information by the browser on your local hard disk to maintain state or, for example, a list of books you want to buy from a brand-new website which just came online called amazon.com.”

“What could we do with that?” Cindi asked.

“I’m playing around with a way to allow customers to submit bug reports, ask technical questions, or check their invoices. A ‘cookie’ would let them stay logged in, but only from that particular PC. It would have, among other things, their customer number to facilitate lookups. BUT there are a lot of technical hurdles, especially with security. And right now, the secure transport, HTTPS, only works reliably with Netscape Navigator because Netscape invented it.”

“Why is this the first I’m hearing about this plan?” Cindi asked.

“Because it’s not a plan!” I countered. “I’m experimenting and testing. If I think it’ll work reliably and securely, THEN we’ll talk about whether or not we want to do it. It’s a part-time project for me, with some help from Sam and Brenda on occasion, that’s all. Dave knows about it. And it won’t be all that different from doing support by email, which we already do.”

“I’m wondering if this shouldn’t be a more formal thing,” Elyse said. “I can see some huge advantages.”

“You mean put someone on it full time?” I asked. “I’m not sure enough about it to make that commitment. And the skill set is pretty esoteric at the moment. Sam, Brenda, and I are all self-taught and use Usenet newsgroups to get help.”

“Speaking of that, are you still involved in that Bible-study newsgroup?” Zeke asked.

“I’m the moderator of soc.religion.christian.bible-study. I’ve been doing it two years now. It’s fun, I have a few automated Korn shell scripts, and I get to engage in lively debate. I’ve made a few friends that way. But we’re getting way off topic. Elyse, I think there is serious promise here, but we’re just experimenting. Not to mention very few of our customers have Internet access at the moment.”

“How about we add it to the list of potential projects for next year?” Elyse asked.

“I think that makes sense,” I said. “Julia, this would be in Sam’s domain once it’s not my personal project.”

Julia laughed, “I’ll add it to her list. She and Brenda have a fairly full plate keeping up with all the technology changes which are happening, and it’s only accelerating.”

“Sounds like we need to consider staffing in that area,” I said. “Brenda is only working with Sam part time right now.”

“It’s time to revise the staffing plan for next year,” Elyse said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “But until we stabilize, only revenue-generating positions or absolutely critical positions will be filled.”

“Got it.”

“I think that’s it, then,” I said.

We all left the conference room to go to our offices. My first call was to Joyce who hadn’t called before I’d left for Europe.

“Did you have a good time in Europe?” she asked after we greeted each other.

“Fantastic. I was surprised you didn’t call.”

“There wasn’t anything to say, really. I told them what you said and they think we’re both lying, but they don’t have proof, obviously.”

“What’s their next move?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Anthony is a real hothead, as you know, and my sister is a scheming, vindictive bitch.”

“Which I also know,” I said. “And I’m not sure that evidence is going to matter to her if they’re convinced we did it.”

“They know who your friends are, and that gives them pause.”

“As it should,” I said.

The problem was, if my information was correct, a bunch of the guys who protected me were going to be indicted very soon. And if THAT was the case, I wasn’t sure exactly how Anthony would react. But that was something I couldn’t say to Joyce over an open phone line. Even the conversation we’d just had was a bit risky, but I honestly didn’t think the FBI, or anyone else, was tapping the phones.

“I’ll let you know if anything is said.”

“Thanks.”

We hung up and I went back to trying to catch up from my week away, and ensure I had everything taken care of before my trip to California.

July 26, 1995, San Diego, California

“Good morning,” Gerald Barkley said as I walked into the International House of Pancakes where we had planned to meet for breakfast.

“Good morning!”

We were seated a few minutes later and with our coffee cups filled and orders placed, Gerald gave me the plan.

“This morning we’ll do a campus tour and then have a meeting with three professors from the Humanities department - two philosophy professors and a sociology professor. They’ll join us for lunch as well. After lunch you and I will discuss what I’d like to see from the program I’m developing. Some of our graduate students and a few undergraduate students will join us for dinner and drinks.”

“And your ultimate goal?”

“A seminar series, assuming I can find more individuals who have the right personality and style.”

“All that from fifteen hours of flying?” I chuckled.

“And the few conversations we had on the phone. It’s not like I’m asking you to be a professor!”

I laughed, “You thought I was, on the plane!”

“I did; it was because of the way you spoke with your girlfriend. She’s brilliant, at least in my estimation.”

“She is,” I nodded. “Even though she hasn’t completed her college degree, she’s challenged me to push my intellectual limits several times!”

We finished breakfast and headed to campus. The campus was gorgeous, and certainly reflected Southern California. It certainly was head and shoulders above IIT in terms of environment and beauty, though I liked the park-like nature of the UofC campus. And I preferred having seasons, including the cold winters we had in Chicago.

“What do you think?” Gerald asked when we walked into the Humanities building.

“It’s gorgeous, and I can imagine it being very popular with students from cold climates!”

“You went to IIT which is in a rough neighborhood, right?”

“Yes. It’s basically mixed into the projects and ghetto. I made a point of not living on campus, or trying to live close. My friend went to UofC and we had an apartment in Hyde Park together.”

We headed to a small conference room where the three professors were waiting for us. We talked about philosophy, politics, history, and sociology, running right into and through lunch, which was brought in. When lunch finished, Gerald and I went to his office and over coffee discussed the details of the program he was trying to implement. He’d approached several people from Silicon Valley who had agreed to participate. There would be four weekend seminars per semester, and I agreed to come out twice a year, assuming all the details could be worked out.

We spent about an hour getting to know each other better, and then headed to our dinner meeting where I met six graduate students and four undergrads. They all seemed pleasant, intelligent, and open-minded, and I was sure they had been selected for exactly that reason. After dinner, during drinks, I had a chance to talk to several of them one-on-one, and enjoyed the varied conversations. At the end of the evening, Gerald pulled me aside.