Chapter 24: Inside New Walls

“The company is looking to bank almost sixty-five million, this quarter, just on material production for Lockheed,” Jim said. “With ongoing demand by the military, we are practically printing money. With that in mind, given your security needs, I think we can not afford to not make these purchases.”

I scowled. I knew he was right and we would all be safer if Jeryl and I were harder targets, but the thought of buying and moving into a walled compound or fenced in estate rankled my soul. I had lived the end of my first life feeling fenced in by fanatics, poverty, ignorance, and fear. Planning on hiding behind walls summoned similar feelings for me.

Jeryl, who had been living with constant security for the past three months as well, reached over and patted my hand.

“Paul,” my Mother said. “What better use is there for the money than making sure you and Jeryl are safe?”

I sighed. It was the right argument to use with me.

“Okay. But do we really need three new places?” I asked.

Kelly smiled, knowing they had won. “That was Alison’s minimum recommendation. She would have you get five or six if she had her way. She would also move you randomly between them every week.”

“Well that’s not happening. I have to be back in Stanford in two more months.” We had been living in hotels and rented houses since returning to the States from England.

“So where could you live?” Jim asked.

I shot a glance at Jeryl.

“Maui was nice,” she said.

“Maui would be good,” I agreed. “Or really anyplace in Hawaii.”

“What about Chicago or New York?” Mom asked. “You will have to visit them for business, so why not get an apartment that can be secured?”

“We’ll need to bounce that off Alison, I guess. She was thinking more along the lines of the Kennedy Compound, in Florida, I think.”

“Utah has the mountains. Hawaii has the ocean and beach. What other climates or locations interest you? Forests?” Mom knew me well.

“That’s not a bad idea. Oregon has some wonderful forests. Maine or the Carolinas might be alternatives if we want something on the East Coast.”

“Okay,” Kelly said. “I’ll get some agents on property searches first thing. Jeryl, we may have to fly out to visit properties as they find them.”

“Not me?” I asked. They had insisted I agree on buying the property, and now did not want me along to look at things they found. I was surprised to have my feelings hurt.

“No, you’re going to be too busy this summer to do that. You have two research symposiums you are hosting over the next three weeks. Then you said you wanted to be down at Edwards for the first flight tests of the GX-2. That will take us into August. I want to have at least one property in escrow before then.”

I sighed. Kelly was right, again. My summer was booked before becoming an active target.

“Okay, do we need to vote on the motion before the board?” I asked. They nodded their heads. “All in favor?” Everyone nodded. “Any opposed?” Silence. “Motion passes by unanimous consent. The COO and Secretary are authorized to spend up to ten million each on no more than three properties. In the event they feel a property is worth more than that amount, they are to gain shareholder approval to move forward.”

“Candace, I believe you are up next with new business proposals. I turn the floor over to you.”

Candace smiled and stood as she handed out briefs. “Our patent portfolio has grown tremendously over the past three years as our research and development efforts are beginning to pay off. We have also expanded our filings into Europe to ensure the broadest possible protections for our research. All of our original contacts are coming up for renewal or renegotiation. With that in mind, I am proposing we split the portfolio into three different broad portfolios and establish a governance model that would allow us to license different portfolios or individual patents to our various partners and customers.”

“What sort of grouping?” Kelly asked.

“Control systems, manufacturing materials and processes, and power systems to start with. Right now, everything we have fits into one of those categories. We also have discrete industry groupings that align. There will still be some that want access to all three portfolios and some that might want two or three from each, but remember this is only a management structure. We would still be able to do custom deals for specific groups or individual patents.”

“What’s the benefit?” Jeryl asked.

“Many of our deals could be simplified. Also, within each group we would have versions for offer. Right now, as soon as we publish a patent, some partners have rights to it. Under this system, no one would have rights until we publish which group and version or class of the group contains that patent.”

“So something we want to exploit ourselves, we could get patent protection on but not have to license?” I asked.

“Exactly. I’ve laid it all out in the brief. I’m not asking for a vote today, but wanted to start the dialog. Our first renegotiation will begin in August. I’d like to have permission to regroup our portfolio at next months board meeting.”

I noticed Jeryl looking at Candace. I don’t think anyone else saw the brief nod Candace gave her. I smiled. The questions had been well orchestrated.

“I move,” said Jeryl, “that we authorize the realignment per this brief to begin, following the next board meeting, unless objections are raised at that time.”

“I second the motion,” Kelly said.

Jim and Mom smiled. They may have not been in on the planning, but knew the girls were doing this for a reason.

A minute later, the motion had passed.

“Is there any other new business?” I asked.

“I would like to propose some grants,” Jeryl said.

I was surprised, but held up my hand. “Before we entertain another motion or discussion, I’m going to call for a recess. The board will reconvene in five minutes or whenever a majority of members are ready to resume discussions.”

I stood and stretched. We had been meeting for nearly three hours. I headed to the private restroom between Jeryl and my offices. A few minutes later Jeryl and I passed on the way in. She paused long enough to give me a kiss.

“What sorts of grants is Jeryl thinking about?” Jim asked as he joined me.

“I’m not sure. I figured we could discuss it informally before we reconvene.”

He nodded in agreement and then moved over to Candace to ask the same question.

Five minutes later, we were all back.

“Rather than resume the meeting, I think we should hear Jeryl’s ideas. Then we can decide if formal board approval is required.”

I turned the floor over to Jeryl.

“We’ve talked a lot about security over the past few weeks, but we haven’t’ talked about the damage we’ve done. I know insurance has paid the families of Alison’s people, but I think the company should do so as well, without admitting complicity or anything.”

“I agree,” I said. “How much were you thinking?”

“Alison carried a two hundred and fifty-thousand-pound death benefit for each employee in her policy. I think we should match that.”

Jim, Mom, and Candace looked a little stunned at the amount. Kelly appeared to agree with Jeryl. I knew my own heart in the matter.

“What else?” I asked before we got into a discussion.

“I think we should also award a performance bonus to Alison and her team who were with us in Greece as well as Tiffany and Sanford for their performance during spring break.”

I nodded again. “What else?”

Jeryl took a deep breath. “Given the risks we seem to be facing, I think we should award Alison some stock and give her a position on the board.”

“How many shares?” Candace asked.

“I think that each current board member should surrender five shares to award to Alison after we pay this quarter’s dividends. That would grant her thirty shares but maintain Paul’s majority with him holding 545 shares.”

“Our current valuation after the dividend we just granted ourselves is about $800,000 a share. $24 Million as a gift to Alison seems a bit generous,” Candace said.

“I guess we know the value of our lives, then,” Jeryl snapped. “You had no problem voting yourself a million dollars in dividends less than an hour ago. Does that mean any of us are worth less than six years of dividends?”

Candace had the grace to blush and look away. I took Jeryl’s hand in mine.

“I agree that Alison has earned a place in this room with us. I have 550 shares of stock. I’ll fund her grant myself.”

“No, I’ll contribute,” Jim said. Mom nodded as well. Kelly looked at each of us and then nodded while staring at Candace.

“Look,” Candace said. “I don’t want to devalue your protection or the services Alison has done for us. I just think that from a business perspective, a twenty-four-million-dollar gift is too generous. After all, we are paying for her services, already.”

Jeryl looked at Candace for a minute and then sighed. “Okay, so what is reasonable?”

“If we each surrendered one share, it would be four point eight million.”

“And a seat on the board?” Jeryl asked.

“Of course.”

“I can accept that. What sort of bonus for their actions in Greece and Utah?”

“One year’s salary,” I said before anyone else could voice an opinion. I think if they save us from deadly harm, it is the least we can do.”

“I agree,” Kelly said. “They all earned it over the past year. Lord knows just hearing about Greece took a year off my life. It had to be as bad or worse for them.”

“Okay, shall we reconvene and vote on all this?” I asked.

“Paul, can we talk for a bit?” Jim asked after knocking on the side of my opened office door.

“Sure,” I said as I tossed a paper onto a pile on my desk. Matthew had me reviewing papers for the first of two upcoming symposiums.

Jim came in and closed the door.

“I don’t know how to come at this delicately, so I’ll apologize in advance. We need to discuss a pre-nuptial agreement with Jeryl.”

“What?”

He held his hands up hurriedly. “I know. I know, but as your attorney, I have to talk to you about it. If it is any consolation, Kelly is having a similar conversation with Jeryl today while they’re house hunting.”

I snorted. “They’re looking at estates. If that is house hunting, I don’t think either of them can shoulder the gun they’ll need to bag a prize.”

Jim smiled at my attempt at humor and sat down across from me. “Look, I know neither you or Jeryl plan on parting ways, and I hope you never do, but the reality is you both have a lot of money now and you are sharing business interests. If something should happen, you will both be better off having an agreement in place before hand.”

“Jim, it is never going to be used.”

“I hope you are right, but it is the smart thing to do.”

I thought about it for a minute and nodded. “Okay, if Jeryl agrees it is smart in principle, I’ll do it. However, I want a fifty-fifty split of assets.”

Jim paled. “That would be no better than letting state law prevail.”

I shrugged. “If we split up, it won’t matter to me. I’ve already got more money than I can realistically spend.”

Jim did not look happy as he asked, “Let me talk it over with Kelly. Perhaps the four of us need to sit down and discuss it further, when they are back.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said dismissing it from my mind. “Anything else?”

“Well, your mother and I want to give you and Jeryl a special wedding gift, but we want your agreement before we say anything.”

That got my attention. “What did you have in mind?”

“Together, we have 248 shares of the company stock. We want to give Jeryl 50 shares and you 49, reducing our stake to 99 shares.”

“I don’t want your shares back.”

“We know, but frankly we have more than enough money to live on and we want Jeryl’s stake to be as large as the next largest shareholder, which would be Candace. We want you to have the excess shares so you can grant them, as you need to as we add people. We just declared a $10,000 per share dividend and that was just for the excess windfall we had this quarter. With my investments and the farm income your mom still receives, we don’t need that many shares. We’re also modifying our will so when we pass, Kelly will get 50 shares bringing her total to 99 and the rest will revert to you. Neither of us wants you to lose control of the company.”

“Okay. It makes sense. I was going to give Jeryl some shares as a wedding present, but I was getting close to the 501 holding limit. This will accomplish the same thing and give us some long-term flexibility. Thank you for thinking of this.”

“It was your mother as much as me.”

“Well, thank you both. On a different topic, where are you two going be staying over the next year or so?”

“We had planned on staying out here for the summer, then the fall in Illinois, and maybe a couple of months in Taos. Why?”

“How would you feel about doing some house sitting?”

“Where?”

“Utah to start. Once Jeryl and Kelly find some other properties, I thought you guys might check them out and enjoy some different scenery.”

“Why?”

I laughed. “Never try to fool your lawyer, right?” He nodded. “We’ll be setting up security in each place. As long as there is a threat, I’d like to make sure you guys have some protection. Traveling to the new places and getting them vetted would help us, and protect you two.”

Jim sighed. “It makes sense. I’ll discuss it with your mother.”

“Thanks,” I said as the phone rang.

“This is Paul,” I said as I picked it up.

“Paul, this is Alison. It appears Dr. Wilkerson has been kidnapped in Austin. We’re in contact with the FBI who is taking over the investigation.”

“Shit.” I had focused on my family and let my employees down. “Shit, shit, shit,” I said as I pounded on my desk.

“How are you doing, Ian?” I asked as I stood beside Dr. Ian Wilkerson’s hospital bed.

He smiled at me. “Better, so they say. I’m so sorry, Paul.”

“What do you have to be sorry about? I’m the one who needs to apologize. I was so wrapped up in my on worries that I neglected ensuring you were protected as well.”

“But we were protected. Ms. Wilson had a man checking on us. I never thought anyone would grab my daughter at school and use her.”

The KGB, at least we thought it was them, had abducted Dr. Wilkerson’s daughter at Texas A&M and used her to force her father to drive to a meeting. Once there, they had grabbed him. She had been roughed up a little and he apparently had been injected with truth serum or other drugs to make him more pliant. He had revealed at least part of the process to manufacture our stealth material.

“Well, I’m glad neither of you were permanently harmed.” He had been found semiconscious from drugs and suffering from dehydration and some exposure. His daughter had been in similar condition.

“Right now, I just want to make sure you both are okay.”

“We will be,” the older man assured me. “I’ll be out of here tomorrow and am still planning on being at the symposium next week.”

I could tell he was tired so prepared to leave when he motioned me closer. I had to lean down next to his lips to hear him.

“Paul, I’m pretty certain I told them the new process and formulation. I also told them I did not know the application process.”

It was the first good news I had heard, today.

“Well done, Doctor. Very well done. Don’t let anyone else know.”

I definitely felt my spirits lift as I headed out of the hospital. Matthew noticed as I got in the car. “Good news, Boss?”

“Yes. Dr. Wilkerson is recovering well. Can you make a note so we cut him a bonus check next week? Maybe we should give it to him at the symposium. He deserves it for what he and his daughter went through.”

Matthew made a note. “I’ll take care of it. Where to now?”

“Back to the Hilton, I guess.”

Soon, I was preparing to return some phone calls from the suite at the Hilton. Alison was first on my list.

“What in the bloody hell are you two thinking?” she asked as soon as I identified myself.

“Hi, Alison. How is Vancouver?

“Everything here is fine. Now, what in the bloody hell were you thinking giving me shares in your company? I can’t accept them.”

“Why not?” I was totally surprised by her reaction.

“Firstly, it is too much. It’s worth almost five bloody million dollars. You could almost buy my whole firm for that. Secondly, if you give that to me, do you know how much the crown is going to take? You might as well just piss the money away in the Thames. Thirdly, do you know how it looks or makes me feel after our bloody vacation in Greece? What are people who know what I did on my vacation going to think?”

I could tell she was truly angry. “I’m sorry. We want to reward you for keeping us safe and we want you on our board of directors. As you pointed out, security is going to be a long-term problem for us. It had nothing to do with anything that happened in our personal lives.”

“We may both know that, but others won’t. I can’t take it, Paul. If you insist, I’m going to have to give them away to charity.”

“You can’t do that. Part of the grant gives me first right of refusal if you want to dispose of shares. Let me call Kelly, and hold up filing the paperwork so no taxes come into play. We’ll work something out. What if I bought you out, made you a wholly owned subsidiary with an ongoing employment contract for you to continue running things?”

“Talk to Kelly and I’ll think about it. Please don’t do anything like that again without talking to me first.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Okay then. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“I’m sure I deserved it, maybe not for that, but for something. Now, how is Vancouver?”

“Good. We’ve got security set up for your meetings next week. I’ve arranged secure transport for everyone from the airports. We are all on the same floor of the hotel and I’ll have a team staying on that floor. The meeting rooms are taken care of and we’re vetting the staff. When will you get here?”

“I’m supposed to fly up Sunday night. We’ve got the leased G-III flying us around this week and next. I’ll leave here in the morning and fly to Mojave to visit Edwards. They’re doing taxi testing for the GX-2 and Rolls has shipped over a test engine for the Air Force to play with. They invited me to visit for some static tests.”

“Well, have fun playing with your toys. I’m staying here through the weekend. Once your symposium is underway, I’ll be going to visit the new property.”

“Oh? No one has mentioned a new property to me yet. Where is it.”

“I’ve been sworn to secrecy.” I could hear the smile in her voice.

“Okay, be that way. Just so you know, you’re going to take a week off in August with us.”

“Really? I might be busy.”

“You will be. If you don’t want a vacation, that’s fine. But then Jeryl and I will be traveling alone, and I know you don’t like that, either. You’ll have to pick.”

“I swear you are not too big for me to paddle just as I threatened Jeryl, you know?”

“We’ll have to see. I’ll see you Sunday.”

I smiled at the thought of my little surprise and then began dialing my next call.

“Thank you all for coming this week,” I said as I looked out over the room of thirty or so researchers and inventors.

“Welcome to our first annual Innovation Symposium. Hopefully you all got a chance to meet during breakfast, but if not, I’m sure you will over the course of the next few days. This is the first time all of the research partners and fellows sponsored by PT Innovations have been in one place, in a venue that will allow us to share our research and ideas. While I have engaged in some cross-pollination of results over the past few years, most of you have only a limited idea of what each person or team is working on. I hope that changes starting today.”

I took a sip of water from my glass on the podium. “Over the past three years, we have funded targeted research in a range of the sciences. My goal has been to drive advancements in some fundamental research areas. Many of the ideas you have worked on have been turned into successful commercial ventures. Others have yet to see light outside a lab. That too, shall change starting today. But it is not just the sharing of ideas and research that caused me to write several checks to bring you all together.” There were a few chuckles in the room. “I want all of our research partners to begin collaborating this week. I know, from reviewing all your projects, that while you are doing amazing individually, if you start working together, we can change the world.”

I had hoped for at least a smattering of applause at that line, but paused for silence instead.

“Let me give you an example of a possible line of collaborative research. Dr. Milton Freis,” I motioned for him to raise his hand and pointed at him, “has been working on microprocessor architecture and fabrication while Dr. Ian Wilkerson has been making carbon nanotubes and working on how to manipulate them in a substrate compound. Does anyone here know the electrical properties of carbon nanotubes?”

No one moved.

“You will after Dr. Wilkerson’s presentation today. Let me just foreshadow a bit of his research. If you have a carbon nanotube, and are able to ‘unzip’ it, you can produce a layer of graphene a single atom thick. Graphene is a semiconductor. Using this method, we may be able to dramatically reduce the size of the microprocessors Dr. Freis is designing and building, but only if those two gentlemen talk together and collaborate.”

I was pleased to see many heads nodding.

“They should also talk to Dr. Ellen McTavish, who has been doing fundamental research in electromagnetic fields. Dr. McTavish has already helped change how electric motors are being made, but she will present a paper on the use of magnetic gates for high-speed, non-volatile memory arrays. There is a strong chance that her work will let Dr. Freis stuff a lot more memory onto the same chip he is building his microprocessor on.”

More heads were nodding.

“Fostering those kinds of conversations is what this is all about. Now, you all have been around academia much longer than I have. You probably know how these types of conferences are supposed to be run. Since I am a lowly undergraduate student amongst all you Ph.D.’s, I didn’t have the advantage of all your years of being bored to tears at dry conferences when I organized this. So please bear with me.”

“Instead of presentation of papers and dry reviews of those same topics, I have challenged each presenter to spend only fifteen minutes sharing the salient points of their research and what problems their results might be relevant to. They will then have fifteen minutes to take questions from you, their peers. After the Q&A, we will take a fifteen-minute break where you can talk individually as the mood strikes you. We’ll do three of these lightning rounds in the morning and three after lunch. We will then go out and do something together in small groups in the evening. Your symposium badge has your individual groupings for each night printed on it.”

The room murmured. I had taken the format from several conferences held in my past. I had always enjoyed the format. I hoped they would as well.

“Finally, on a more serious note, all of our conversations need to be kept confidential within our group. I want nothing more than to change the world, but many people outside this room wish for nothing greater than maintaining the status quo. They will feel threatened by your ideas. They will seek to suppress them or steal them. For those reasons, please be mindful of your conversations outside our dedicated rooms.”

“Now, without further ado, I’d like to ask Dr. Ellen McTavish to take the podium for our first talk of the day. Please welcome Dr. McTavish.”

I began clapping and stepped away from the podium as Dr. McTavish made her way up to the room.

“Paul, this has been an invigorating week,” Dr. Freis said as we shared a stand-up table at our closing cocktail hour.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it. I wanted to keep a looser atmosphere and get you all talking to each other.”

“You did a wonderful job. I’ve got so many ideas to flesh out that I may be asking for a significantly larger budget soon.”

I laughed. “I’m not made of money, but let Candace know and we’ll see what we can do.”

“I’ll hold you to that. Will next week be the same format?” Dr. Fries was one of the few researchers attending both conferences.

“No. Next week will be more working sessions, than idea exchanges. There will be more people there from industry, so not quite so collaborative.”

“So, no talking about graphene microprocessors and magnetic spin memory?”

“That’s right. Besides, next week is more about the software.”

“Which is good. If I can work out the fabrication process, we’ll need to think differently about how we write and manage software.”

“Exactly. That’s why I had you review my paper for next week.”

“Yes, very interesting ideas. Your model of flow-based, stateless software is very interesting. I was wondering about building a processor tailored to such a language.”

I smiled. It was exactly what I wanted. My paper was title “FLO, a future programming paradigm”.

“Well, as you think about that, consider having a network of independent processors that are monitoring and sequencing very complex control signals in real-time. The language is designed to run on such a distributed network of processors to control and manage very complex system interactions.”

“Yes, yes. You did something similar for the handshakes between the microprocessors in your car, right?”

“Yes, but that was all written by hand in assembly. I then had to add three processors with code just to orchestrate and monitor the interactions.”

“So this language will let you program the entire system?”

“Possibly. But what I really want is asynchronous interaction between components and a way to visualize all the components while organizing them into a cohesive system. The language itself doesn’t care if it is running across a network of processors, or on a single machine. It also allows you to abstract out the low-level processor code. With processors tailored to specific functions with the FLO interfaces implemented in hardware, we get very close to a hardware I.C. layout paradigm for programming.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I have a collection of 6800 and 8088 processors? If they all implement a light FLO interface for input and output, we can program the system without ever looking at the underlying assembly or C or Pascal code the processors are executing.”

Dr. Freis laughed. “You’re taking an object-oriented paradigm back to physical objects. Wonderful. I can’t wait to see the response next week.”

“Well, it’s not fully fleshed out, but I do have a proof of concept running and wired into a hacked up Macintosh computer. Hopefully that demo will go off well or I’ll never be able to show my face at my own conference again.”

“Based on your paper alone, that won’t happen. You have proposed some startling ideas in the software field.”

“Thank you. Imagine what we’ll be able to do when we combine those ideas with your next generation of processors.”

He raised his glass to me. “That will be a sight to see, Paul. I look forward to that day.”

“How did it go, honey?” Jeryl asked over the phone.

I had stayed for the weekend in Vancouver while she and Kelly continued their property-shopping spree. I had taken the time to continue polishing my presentation. I was a second day presenter and had just gotten back to my room after presenting, then defending, and then expanding on my new computer language concepts. Arguing language merits with Alan Kay was a heady experience.

“It went well, but had a few bumps and potholes,” I said as I looked at the scotch in my hand. Someone had handed it to me, but I had hardly had a sip during the cocktail party as people approached to congratulate or argue with me.

“I’m sure the bumps were not that significant.”

“Hah! One of the first people to comment was Professor McCarthy. You know, the guy that invented LISP and runs the Stanford AI Lab?”

“I’ve heard you mention him. What did he say?”

“He asked why we needed another LISP replacement. I wanted to melt. It took ten minutes for him to finally agree that FLO would simplify the programming of complex systems, but was really a domain specific language and that as such, it could be implemented in LISP. Afterward, at the cocktail party, he came up and asked why I wasn’t in any of his classes and that I should come see him when I got back to campus.”

“Well that sounds good. Who else stroked your ego?” I could hear the teasing in her voice.

“Well, there was that cute doctoral candidate from MIT...”

“Hey now! Do I need to fly up there and keep you in line?”

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