Chapter 39

Andrew arrived at the Strong’s just after 10.00 on Saturday morning. Julian greeted him and they wandered through to the kitchen. Mrs. Strong looked up in surprise.

“No computer today Andrew? Did all the work for Julian (senior) over the holidays mean you need a break from them?”

“Yes and no Mrs. Strong. We did go pretty hard over the holidays but it was routine work. We haven’t had much of chance to do any programming as we have been working on the job for your husband. I brought the textbook with me and we will sit and go through some of the advanced chapters later and see what new techniques that we can learn. Julian was also working on writing some thin, elegant programs so we want to see if they compile properly and will run.”

What had started off as a general conversation had quickly descended into jargon and Andrew could see that he had lost her.

“Sorry. No computers today. Review some earlier stuff and start to plan ahead for next week.”

“Thank you for simplifying the last part. What are you going to start with?”

Here Julian jumped in.

“We are going to talk to Dad about the work we did and the opportunity for some follow up work.”

Five minutes later they were in Mr. Strong’s home office. He had been sitting there smoking his pipe and reading the newspaper.

“Dad, do you have some time to talk to us this morning?”

“Sure, what would you like to talk about?”

Andrew answered.

“I wanted to check that you were okay with everything at your office. I realise that I put you in the middle of a tough situation. We also wanted to pick your brain over the business and other opportunities. Would you help us?”

“If I wasn’t okay with what happened I would have let Julian know that you were no longer welcome in this house. I was very angry with you on the 26^th. Steaming mad frankly. But as you have astutely observed I was mad because a 14 year old was telling me what to do and pointed out, bluntly I might add, the mistakes we made. We then compounded them by sending in the wrong person to deal with you. George told me that he quietly observed you over the six days that you were there. Worked hard, clearly knew what you were doing, fixed everything, and took the time to clearly explain it to him and all the staff who would listen. His words not mine. I was proud of you and Julian. You also don’t suffer fools gladly. When it comes to computers most of us are fools and if we don’t recognise our own weaknesses then by heck, you sure will. I am a good lawyer and my son and his friend are good with computers. I would never consider listening to you about the law and more importantly you would never consider telling me what to do. Yet we as a firm did exactly that with you when it came to the computers.

“Once you had put us in our place you then just got on and did the job with a minimum of fuss and disruption. You were professional throughout even when you were not treated professionally. Don’t think we didn’t notice who listened to you yesterday and who didn’t. There will be consequences. So what can I do for you both?”

That was quite the endorsement. So between them they laid out the business issues. Andrew didn’t soften the language. The way Andrew had described Mr. Strong’s firm was accurate and he was sure that they were not alone.

“You have a skill that you can make good money with but you don’t have a lot of time and you don’t know how to reach your potential customers. I think that you wait this month and see if anything comes from working for us. I am sure that you are going to be talking to Brian Campbell as well.”

Here Andrew nodded in agreement.

“He will have some insights I am sure. You were lucky it was the holidays and that you could fix our problems. If you both only have Saturdays to work on this then you need to be careful. I would wait and see. If after a month there have been no follow ups then we can regroup.”

This was sensible, cautious advice but something nagged in Andrew’s mind that they were missing something here. Something wasn’t being said.

“That is good advice. It will allow us to get back to programming and working on our game and make sure that we are current with our schoolwork. There are at least another couple of things we need to talk about. The company has paid Julian £500 and we need a receipt to cover it for our accounts. He is not an employee. My lawyer.”

Andrew paused and shook his head.

“Said something about being a contractor. There may be tax consequences.”

“I know. I saw you shake your head when you talked about your lawyer. She is right. I will draft a receipt with Julian for you. Every person has what is called a personal allowance which is the amount that they can earn before paying tax. It is £1,165 for this tax year. I had already thought of this. Julian should be fine this year unless you have several jobs over the Easter break. But that would be a nice problem to have. What else?”

Mr. Strong was on the ball this morning.

“The future Mr. Strong. I wanted your thoughts on how we structure what we do. This will sound brash and you will have to excuse my lack of humility. I ended up with a company to work with other businesses, such as your firm. Do Julian and I need to do something similar for the game? We sit and work away. Total 50:50 involvement. I want to plan for it to be successful. How should we organise that? Does Julian need to have a company? I have hundreds of questions like that. All absurd in some ways but necessary to think about in others.”

Julian and his dad sat looking thoughtful as Andrew talked about computers, the game, companies, and the future, all of it in a jumbled mess.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way Andrew, but you are the oddest 14 year old I have ever met.”

Mr. Strong looked at him in amazement.

“I have businessmen who have been in business for decades who don’t think like this, are not this confident. I know the answer but I have to ask the question anyway. Do you really believe that this is all necessary, that the game will be a success?”

“We are trying to develop our own game and will focus on the Apple system when Julian gets his new computer. What we have both seen is that there is a constant stream of new games being advertised. Nearly all from America. Those computer magazines that you got at New York airport were great. They showed the state of the industry in the US. It is miles ahead of where we are.

“So do I think the game will be a success, be able to be sold to the public, or make us any money? Nah, no chance. Would it be great if it did? Of course. The odds are absurdly long though, a couple of school kids in Edinburgh Scotland. What I want to do is plan my life so that if things go well then we can take advantage of it. We heard a quote in Latin class last term ‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity’ Seneca I think. I want to be prepared and most importantly I don’t want to fall out with my friends over money.”

Andrew finished his long winded answer, an increasingly common way for him to talk.

“So no blind optimism just thinking ahead. That is very good. I see what you are trying to do. My follow up question is what is the medium term future for you both? Do you plan to go to University? Here in Edinburgh or somewhere else? Are computers your career? This is to you both.”

And so the morning went on. Andrew and Julian sat with his dad just talking through various things. All low key, no drama. They both enjoyed computing but neither of them saw it as their future, at least at present. Andrew was about to start a computer science course at the Open University but that was more out of necessity than anything else. Andrew figured that they had maybe the rest of this school year to make some money helping people get their systems fixed before they got better themselves or others recognised the business that was there. Nice money but not change their career money. This was what Andrew missed with his own parents. Being able to talk about things without it becoming tense. The inherently different attitudes of him and his dad and his mum’s constant need to be in control and have the last word meant that Andrew didn’t have these long free form chats about the future. They broke at lunch and then he and Julian sat at his desk looking at the textbook.

“You think that we can make a go of designing a game?” Julian asked quietly.

“I doubt we have much of a chance, but think about a couple of things. At the beginning of each computer mag there is that section of the latest industry news. I skim through this section normally but there are always stories of people moving, companies being bought and sold, games being licensed. There is a whole business side to this. Look at those ridiculous templates that I designed over the summer. Nothing fancy, anyone can do it, but people will pay for it now to save them time. We sit here and think about creating a video game. Nobody is paying us to do that, it is our hobby and our interest. But people are paying us more than £10/hour to fix their computer systems or install templates that they could build themselves. Maybe we cut back on the gaming right now and focus on the business side. I have been wondering if I could build some new templates. I would need an accountant or a businessman to help me, just like Brian did. There is easy money there I think even although it is not coding or designing software. What do you think?”

“I had been thinking about the game versus the business aspect of this. I have mixed feelings about this. Hell, we both go to private school. We might not be filthy rich but neither of our families are poor. It is not like we desperately need the money. But it is also nice to have that feeling of power. When you called me on the 27^th and told me Dad’s firm had caved. I couldn’t believe it. Then I spent New Year with the old man and actually enjoyed it, mainly because of his attitude. There was respect there. I was doing something useful, at least in his eyes. And as you have said, we were just using common sense, taking our time over tricky things and applying some of the solutions that we had come up with ourselves through trial and error. It was being paid money to be ourselves or something.

“The coding is fun though, the creation process. ‘This is what I am trying to do, here is how I think it will work followed by success or failure’. Does the coding have to be a game? After working all break and thinking about it, probably not. It is what a couple of kids would try and code. I can’t imagine us coding VisiCalc. I can’t begin to figure how to code VisiCalc but someone must have. When I think like that then I realise that I am still a babe in the woods.

“We should do both I think. Keep doing system fixes for people if anyone asks but also keep coding. We just need to figure out what to code?”

This was why you needed friends.

“These talks are really helpful. Why don’t we park the game for this term and make an attempt at some simple business software? Not to try and sell it but to allow us to teach ourselves how to do it. I am like you with the coding. I lose track of time and like you there is that exciting feeling as the code compiles to see if you have been able to create something useful that actually works.”