Chapter 31: Small Steps

Jeryl pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and secured it with an elastic band. I stepped behind her and wrapped my arms around her ribs and hugged her to me, while looking over her shoulder and into her eyes reflected in the mirror. She smiled and leaned back against me with the slightest purr.

I kissed her cheek, shoulder, and neck, and then smiled at her in the mirror.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too,” she replied. “If we didn’t both have meetings this morning, I’d drag you back to bed and show you how much I love you.”

“Promises, promises,” I teased as I gave her one more kiss and then turned toward the closet to get dressed.

We had fallen into a pattern when we were both in California of eating breakfast together with Ali, like a normal family. Anna or Alison then whisked our daughter away to get her cleaned up and ready for the day as Jeryl and I showered and got ready for work. Depending on our plans for the day, Ali would play in one of our offices, or be minded by Anna as we held meetings. About half the time we would come home or go out together for lunch. In the afternoon, she was with Anna (doing various activities supposedly beneficial to early childhood development) as we focused on work. In the evenings, we would play with her some more, have dinner, bathe her and then read her a story before putting her to bed. She was an easy baby most days, and a joy to both of us.

“What are you doing today?” Jeryl asked as she walked to the dresser and pulled on a lacy bra and panty set. I always loved to watch her get dressed.

“Calls this morning and then flying to the Nevada after lunch.”

“How’s the lab complex coming?”

“That’s what I’m going to see. The shell of the lab is up, but only the early stages of excavation have been done for the cabins so far. We should have utilities laid, now, so at least the trailers will have phones.”

“Good. Make sure you call, tonight.”

“I will. How are the intern positions coming?”

“Good, mostly. I’m getting a little tired of interviews and screening application videos, but we’re almost done. Tom wants to make the final selections this week.”

“Are we ready for the six months of bi-weekly reviews and tapings of us?” I asked.

She smiled and kissed me. “If you behave and put up with it all, I’ll give you a wonderful blow job after every review,” she said with a grin.

“Well, I’d be an idiot to refuse an offer like that,” I said.

“And I did not fall in love with an idiot,” she finished.

She slipped on her blouse and then reached for a dark skirt, as I grabbed my shoes and got out of her way. Soon, we were on our way into the office.

Thirty minutes later, we were at the office and I had finished the morning briefing with Sheryl. I stuck my head through the door of the small conference room and into Jeryl’s office. She was on the phone, listening distractedly while watching Ali pull herself up into a standing position in the playpen in the corner.

“No, we are not going to mandate that CRP establish dedicated production lines for you. I’m happy to talk to them, but we are a part owner, not direct management of that business. You can make your pitch to Rebecca and her lead team. They will decide.”

She listened for a few more minutes.

“Kyle, I’ve told you my position. I want a good working relationship with Nike, but I don’t have full visibility into CRP’s order backlog, nor their production forecasts. If you want them to make your pieces faster, or at greater volume, talk to them and work something out.”

She listened again and then nodded.

“Okay. We’ll see you next week in New York.”

She hung up the phone and shook her head as she smiled at me.

“They really like the CRP-2068 skis and helmets, but want more to test with. CRP is strapped for production right now. Somehow, he thinks I can wave a magic wand and get them what they need.”

“CRP is building a second plant. When does it come on line?” I asked.

“Not for a few more months, if they meet their schedule.”

I thought for a few minutes.

“How many prototypes are they looking for? Tens or hundreds?”

“Tens, I think. Why?”

“Well, if we had the molds, we might be able to produce them at the lab. One of the reasons I’m going to Nevada, is to make test pours on the CRP molding equipment. I want the capability to produce custom moldings for prototypes and experiments.”

Jeryl shook her head and said, “I don’t want you living in the desert making prototypes for a partner that didn’t plan well. They could have bought the equipment from CRP last fall, but chose to let their needs go through the CRP’s order process. Right now, that’s about six weeks of lead time. It’s their own fault.”

I nodded my agreement. “Okay. Anyway, I stopped in to let you know that I’ll be missing lunch. I need to make a detour and visit Dr. Brighton in Utah before heading down to Nevada. He thinks he’s had a breakthrough.”

Jeryl cocked her head. “Big enough to warrant hopping on a plane?”

“He thinks so. He didn’t want to discuss it on the phone, or send an email, even encrypted. If I take off this morning, I should still make it down to the lab after lunch. Having the GX-3 gives us a lot more flexibility on travel now.”

Jeryl smiled. “You just like riding your newest toy,” she said.

I crossed the room and gave her a kiss. “Not as much as I like riding you,” I said with a quick grope.

She laughed and pushed me away. “Say goodbye to your daughter, and come home safely,” she said.

Two hours later, I was sitting in Dr. Brighton’s office. Donna was with us.

“Paul, thanks for coming so quickly. I think you’ll be glad you did.”

He handed me a small cylinder roughly the size of a AAA battery.

“This is the breakthrough.”

While it was battery sized, it was much lighter than I expected. I squeezed it between my fingers, but felt no give no matter how hard I pressed.

“And this is the breakthrough, as well,” he said as he handed me a thin, rectangular box slightly thicker than a piece of cardboard, and not much heavier. It had a couple of wires attached to one corner of it.

“What is it?” I asked as I turned it over and tried to see if it would flex.

“It’s a new kind of battery. It’s rechargeable, lightweight, and has a very high power per liter ratio. I and my team have been working on the concept, and testing formulations, since last year’s symposium after I had some discussions with both Dr. McTavish, Dr. Wilkerson and those folks from Corning. I guess they’re all with CRP, now.”

I nodded. I recalled the tight-knit group that had formed at last years conference.

“We essentially have an aerogel based lithium-ion battery matrix, wrapped in a spun carbon nanotube enclosure. Instead of using a silica basis, like CRP does, we use a polymer with just enough structure to keep the matrix in alignment, but still be flexible.”

He took the flat battery from me and connected the wires to an adapter connected to some type of inverter. He then plugged his NEXT workstation into it and powered the system up.

“We can make the battery in virtually any shape. Size is directly correlated to the power needs.”

I looked at the set up for a second, and began to get excited. I knew this was technology that exceeded what I had used in my prior life. This was a breakthrough I had not expected!

“So we could use your process to embed a battery directly in the frame or body of a car ... or computer!”

“Exactly. We’ll need very tight quality control, and some complex fabrication automation for complex shapes, but a portable computer should be very easy.”

“Donna, where is Candace, this week?” I asked.

She checked her notes. “She’s in Atlanta, with Matthew and Kelly. They are evaluating an acquisition.”

“Which one?” I asked as she looked at Dr. Brighton.

Given some of our success, we tried to keep our interest in companies very quiet.

“Canter,” she said.

I nodded. It was a small manufacturing firm that was starting to use some of our chips in building robots for industrial applications, such as assembly lines.

“Get either Candace or Kelly on the phone, please, and get me an update on LCD technology from their shopping list.”

She nodded and went to the outer office to use a phone. Dr. Brighton looked at me with a question in his eyes.

“If we have access to decent LCD technology, we can make a computer that could fit in your lap. We have the processor and memory, and you’ve come up with a viable battery to run it all without having to tote a ten-pound brick around. If we have a decent display, we could change how people think about computing.”

Donna returned as we were going over specifications on power density and charge cycles for batteries of various sizes.

“Candace said she can get a cross licensing deal for something called an active-matrix liquid-crystal display from RCA Laboratories, but that the production process is going to need a lot of work to make them at a competitive price point, at scale.”

“Okay. Tell her to do the deal, but push hard on the terms. A joint venture might be the best approach. See if Dr. Freis has any promising grad students that want to get into display technology and controllers. I want us to build out a working portable by May.”

Dr. Brighton’s eyes got wide.

“That’s just three months away. Can we make a new type of computer that quickly?”

“If we push hard, yes,” I answered. “It does not have to be perfect. Tear apart a NEXT computer, and put its innards in a portable form factor with a built in keyboard.” I stood up and began sketching a laptop form-factor on his whiteboard. “Attach the display to it as the lid. You should be able to embed the battery into the case itself.”

“What about the mouse?” Donna asked.

“Put a small trackball in it with a couple of buttons. We should be able to make this even before we have the display ironed out. I want to show this to Jobs, in May, and let his team take over the final design; but, I want it clear that it is our idea. That means patent protections, and for that I want a working prototype.”

Dr. Brighton nodded. “We can do that. I’ll get Milton and Ellen on the phone.”

“No,” I said. “Let’s get your teams together, in person. Set it up for next week. Do it here, in Utah. Donna, get Sheryl to coordinate it. Call it ‘The Park City Summit,’ or something, and keep the real intent quiet. This is big, folks. I’m pretty sure this will change our already evolving thinking around computing, once again. This is great work, and a huge accomplishment! If we can pull it off quietly and quickly, all the better!”

“You’re late,” Alison said as I climbed out of the Land Rover at the Lab site.

What had been gently sloped desert hillside now had an imposing building slightly recessed into the slope. The walls, where they rose from the dry landscape, were white in the afternoon sun. It looked very similar to the machine shed on the farm or the hanger one ridge behind us near the runway. The only difference were evenly spaced translucent windows along the top of the walls.

“Sorry, something came up,” I said as I looked at the building.

“You could have called. I was starting to get worried.”

“We have phone lines run in?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I didn’t realize,” I said.

“Nor did I,” Donna added as she joined us.

Alison just gave me her patented arched eyebrow, and then motioned us toward the door.

“We’ve got the shell of the building complete, and part of the interior walls in place. The power and utilities have been run here, and to each of the cabin sites. It’s not really ready for full-time habitation, yet, but we’re getting close.”

Alison had taken it upon herself to visit the site every other week. She had told Jeryl and I that she liked the solitude, and wide open spaces, here in the desert. It was so different from England, where she had grown up. She still visited her offices in London on a regular basis, though. It seemed like our paths were crossing frequently, but we were not together very much.

“It will be nice to be able to settle into one place for a few months,” I said as I surveyed the building site.

Alison snorted and said, “I doubt you will ever gather much moss, Paul.”

I frowned and we headed inside. While most of the cavernous space was empty, one set of interior walls was up, along the long side of the building. Large bays with sliding doors were built there, each for a different fabrication process. One was a welding bay filled with a variety of welding equipment and a small gas forge. Next to it was a machine shop, which would eventually hold lathes and other machining tools. Next to that was the bay we were here to inspect.

Inside were large molding tables, and hundred-liter ultrasonic mixing chambers. These were used for the production of some of our special aerogel based compounds. The process Corning had helped create required continuous ultrasonic agitation, as the glass-like compound was either injected or poured into its mold, and agitated as it cooled and set. I had the capability to conduct both processes, here.

Donna and Allison watched me inspect the equipment and verify the wiring on each device. They soon got bored with the mundane testing procedures, and let me know they would be in the lounge near the door. I nodded absently and continued with my work.

Hours later, Alison came in as I finished a test pour of a simple I-beam form and set the molding on one of the ultrasonic shaker tables to cool and set.

“Time to call it a night, Paul,” she said in a motherly tone.

I looked up, pulled off my safety glasses, and smiled as I glanced at the clock.

“Okay. That will need twelve hours of cooling time, anyway, so I guess I’m done until tomorrow, at ten.”

I began turning off the equipment, and turned off the task lighting, too.

“What then?” Alison asked.

“I have to get the tensile strength numbers for that size beam when produced by CRP. I’ll test this one, and see if I got the mix and process correct to replicate their results. If I did, the equipment is performing to spec, and I will sign off on the install. If there are problems, I’ll fly the installation engineer back out here to figure out what I or he did wrong.”

“Why didn’t you just have him do the test before he left?”

“He probably did, but I need to know that I can correctly fabricate parts that I’ll want to be using, with my own efforts. I don’t want to have a production engineer sitting out here for my few fabrication needs.”

“Besides, you like your secret projects,” she added with a grin.

I nodded and flipped off the last light switch, and we headed out into the larger lab area and then to our temporary trailers.

and It had cooled significantly, and was now chilly in the winter desert. I walked toward the warm glow of one of the trailers, but Alison steered me toward a different one.

“Donna is in that one. We’ll be over here,” she said as she led me up the steps and inside another unit.

“Oh? Is this a working vacation?” I asked as she closed and locked the door behind us.

“Maybe,” she said with a smile. “If you play your cards right, I could take the evening off. But first, you need to call Jeryl. I’m going to take a shower. Give her my love.”

I recovered from my orgasm first. Jeryl was lying atop me, having exquisite shivers, and still milking my cock. Finally, she sighed and snuggled more tightly against my chest. I kissed the top of her head.

“You are marvelous,” I whispered.

She looked up at me and gave me a coy smile.

“You ain’t too shabby, yourself,” she replied.

I kissed her.

“We need to do more of this,” she said.

“Sex?”

“No, goof. Get away and take a little time for ourselves. You’re working too hard, again.”

We were in Saint Lucia for a long weekend. Jeryl had decided she wanted a little warmth and sun, and she also wanted to give Anna a break. Our mothers had Ali. Alison had sent Tiffany to watch over us, explaining she needed to be in London and could not join us.

“You put in just as many hours as I do,” I said.

“Hardly. Besides, my days are mostly routine. I come in and Rose has all my mail cataloged for review, and a list of phone calls to return. That takes very little actual thought. I spend time playing with Ali before lunch. After lunch, I get progress updates on our active projects. Lately, I’ve spent a couple hours screening candidates for the internship positions with Tom. I’ve then got a couple of more hours with Ali, or reading, before you are ready to go home.”

She stretched against me seductively and then slipped off to one side.

“You, on the other hand, are on the go continuously, and it is always heavy thought and hard work. If you can’t delegate what you do for us and the company, then you need to take some breaks and have a little more R&R in your life.”

“If you say so,” I said. I didn’t think I was working that hard. It felt more like I was in a steady routine.

“I do say so. Besides, you’re going to have to take some more time off in the fall, and I don’t want you getting all stressed out so you start chasing interns.”

I snorted, and replied, “Like an intern could hold a candle to you, kitten.”

She grinned at me as she said, “You say that now, but what about when I get big and fat, again?”

I suddenly put all her comments together.

“You mean... ?”

She nodded and said, “Ali is going to have a little brother or sister in November.”

I grabbed her for a hug and kiss.

“I love you,” I said.

“Me too, Paul.”

“That is one ugly computer,” Steve Jobs said as I opened our prototype laptop, and turned it on.

I smiled.

“That’s what I want you to fix.”

I spun the machine around and pushed it toward him. I saw his eyes widen as he saw the crisp UI on the thin LCD display along with the back-lit keyboard and small, recessed trackball sitting below the space bar of the keyboard.

“It’s running the same OS and on the same hardware you are shipping today, with only minor modifications,” I said. “Our battery life is about eight hours, but I think it will drop a little in a production machine.”

“Why?” he asked as he began moving the mouse around and typing.

“I think we’ll add some hardware bits that will drain the battery some. I’m thinking about wireless networking. I’m talking to Qualcomm, next week.”

Steve nodded and then looked up from the screen.

“What sort of production costs?”

It was my turn to smile.

“We put that one together for about ten percent over the cost it takes you to build a production NEXT machine.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, it’s true. I don’t know if we’ll be able to maintain that price point at scale, but we should be close. Obviously, you can sell a portable that small at a greater margin, because of it’s increased utility.”

He closed the display, and then lifted it again, to watch the screen come back to life. He seemed surprised at the speed and responsiveness.

“Okay. I’ll get a design team looking at this and making it better.”

“They’ll need to talk to more of my folks, this time,” I cautioned. “The battery technology is safe, but understanding how it can be used, and what the manufacturing process is, might take them a little time. We also improved the video processing when we changed things to work with the LCD display.”

“How long have you been working on this?” There was a hint of accusation in his voice.

“Three months.” I said.

“Three months? Shit!”

He stood up, and quickly stuck his head out of the conference room where we were meeting.

“Rich! Bud! Get in here.”

We were soon joined by the heads of NEXT’s hardware and software teams. Steve pointed to the laptop, and both men began to look it over.

“Active matrix LCD?” Rich asked.

“Yes. We modified the drivers and video memory to map and refresh better, under battery operation.”

He nodded as Bud ran the mouse around the screen and fired up a handful of programs.

Steve paced around the table for a few minutes.

“Okay, enough playtime. Paul and his team put this together in three months. I want our take, on a design that doesn’t suck so much, in another three months; with a goal of announcing after Labor Day, and full production for the holiday season.”

The men looked at Steve and nodded.

I closed the lid on the computer, pulled the power cord out of the bag in which I had carried the machine, and handed both bag and cord to Rich. Steve watched the two leave, and then turned back to me.

“Now, when are you going to sit down with Larry and I and talk about DigiNet with us?”

“Man, this feels pretty brutal,” I said as the last of the new interns left the conference room.

Kelly and Jeryl were seated on one side of the table, flanking me. Tom, two cameramen, and his sound man were along the walls. We had just finished the first work review, with the twelve interns split into teams of three. Each team had presented a go-to-market strategy for Nike’s new line of sports helmets. After each presentation, we had discussed each team’s effort, and eventually scored their work and their presentation.

“So what did you think?” Kelly asked.

I shook my head.

“Their presentation was well delivered, but there were virtually no innovative ideas. It was standard MBA thinking.”

Jeryl nodded, before seeing Tom pantomime talking.

“That’s right. It was standard text-book. They didn’t demonstrate or highlight any of the unique features of the two special materials in a compelling way. None of them did, really.”

I agreed.

“Did we give them enough guidance?” I asked.

Kelly shook her head. “We gave them the assignment and threw them in the deep end, I’d say. It’s a good thing we did this initial review. I’d be a little embarrassed if we had Nike in the room with us.”

“Okay, then we owe it to them to give a more compelling demo, and a view of what we are looking for and where our expectations lie.”

I stood up as I said, “Let’s go talk to them.”

Normally, I would have headed straight for the door, but Tom stopped me.

“Let me get them assembled in their common area, and get the camera men in place for your entrance and talk. We’ll be ready in five,” he said as his folks began hustling toward the door.

I sat back down.

“How can we show them what we’re after?” I asked.

Jeryl stood up and looked at a couple of props we had in the room. She grabbed a mannequin with a batting helmet on its head. She handed me a bat from it’s hands.

“Paul, smack the helmet with the bat.”

I did as I was told. I probably could have hit it hard enough to take the head off, but held back some. Jeryl then pulled off the helmet.

“Hit it again, just as hard.”

I did. The side of the dummy’s head caved in with a bat shaped crease.

“Why didn’t any of them do that?” Jeryl asked. “All of the samples we gave them and no one did a physical demo as part of their presentation. I wonder if they tried it when they were ideating. If I were them, I’d be getting a pitching machine out, and shooting balls at a helmet wearing pumpkin and then show an unprotected pumpkin being shattered by the same machine.”

“Okay, what do you think of this idea?” I asked before explaining.

Camera lights came on as we entered their part of the second floor. We had reconfigured the office space to create four conference rooms around an open area filled with free-form seating. Desk space lined the outside walls with a small cafe area in the far corner. The twelve interns were standing in a rough semicircle. There were looks of concern when they saw the baseball bat in Jeryl’s hands.

She walked to a mannequin of the same size as the one upstairs, but lacking a helmet. Without a word, she swung the bat and bashed in its head, leaving the same deep indentation. There were a few gasps. Before anyone could say a word, however, I pulled the helmet on, and she turned and swung at me.

I was glad she didn’t swing with her full strength, as my head snapped to the side, but the helmet did its job. I felt no worse from the small demonstration.

“This product will save some little league player from a serious concussion, or a major league ball player from a killing blow,” Jeryl said as they all stared at her and me in slack-jawed wonder. “How many of you actually tried it out?”

No one raised their hand.

“Did you do any testing to see if the data you were provided was factual?” I asked.

Most of their eyes were downcast.

“Did you think of ways to make the data real in a TV ad, for the average mother or father who will want to protect their child?” Kelly asked.

There were several head shakes.

“Okay,” I said after a pause. “We need you guys and gals to go back to the drawing board on your strategies and presentations. Today was really your first attempt, so think of it as a learning experience. You’ve all tried once and failed. Now put that behind you and try again.”

“Think outside the box,” Jeryl said. “We want a strategy that addresses many of the fundamentals you all presented, but need you to come up with the actual product positioning and key messaging, as well. You have a wealth of background on each of your teams, you need to leverage each others skills and ideas to create a full strategy.”

A few heads nodded.

“What constraints were you given?” Kelly asked.

They hesitated for a moment before Casandra Sanchez, a soon to be graduate from UC Berkeley spoke up.

“None, other than having our first pitch, today. We got the data, the sample products, and the project brief.”

Kelly nodded and said, “And none of you asked for anything in terms of outside resources or assistance. I know. I was the point of contact if you needed anything. None of you asked.”

I stepped closer to them.

“Look, you are all very bright and energetic. You need to really push yourselves, and try the wild and crazy things that just might work. I expect you to have failures! That’s part of the process. I don’t expect you to fail because you played it safe, though. That type of failure means we chose poorly when we selected you for this program.”

I made deliberate eye contact with each of them.

“Whether you succeed or not, on any given project or on the show, each of you have already won. At the end of the internship, you’ll have a year’s tuition paid to any college or university you’re enrolled in. Your safety is assured. Now, I want you all to play to win. Are we clear?”

Heads were nodding.

“Okay. We’ll do the next review in three days. As part of it, I want to hear not only your best ideas and pitches, but what all was considered, and how you got to ‘the best’. Any questions?”

Pat Tennison, one of the two men paired with Casandra raised his hand. I nodded at him.

“Three days is Sunday,” he said.

“It is. Did you think this was a nine to five job? We’ll do the reviews starting at 1:00 PM. I hope you can all show me something quite a bit more exciting and interesting. Nike will be here next week to hear your best effort. I hope we don’t let them down.”

“Wow, those were all impressive,” Kyle Fredrick, Nike’s VP of Product Development said. We had just sat through back-to-back reviews of the intern’s go-to-market presentations. All four teams had stepped up their game in the week since the first review.

I smiled and caught Kelly and Jeryl’s grins as well. We had done three reviews with the interns over the past four days, starting with our Sunday afternoon critiques which led to some all-night rework by the teams. Each iteration showed marked improvement and after our last walk-through yesterday, we were confident Kyle from Nike would be impressed.

“So, Kyle, as part of this process we like to give each team positive and constructive criticism. I hope you kept good notes,” Kelly said.

He chuckled as he replied, “I did. All of the teams brought ‘out of the box’ demonstrations that showed the protective capabilities of the new helmets. It was really great to see them show a wide range of approaches to that.”

“Did you think their demonstrations were in line with their proposed product placement?” Jeryl asked.

“Mostly, yes. I think,” he glanced at his notes, “that third team had the strongest connections. Focusing on the little league player, but targeting their message at the parent, was spot on. The parents are the ones who will have to pay for these helmets, at least for that market. That team really created an emotional connection between the product and the viewer.”

“Any other particular strengths?” I asked.

“Yes. The second team of Cassandra, Pat and Scott really went above and beyond in terms of the sheer breadth of application. I counted over twenty different examples of them showing the protective properties in their sixty second commercial. They made the Nike brand stand for safety and protection in a vivid, engaging way.”

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