Undo Part 14

Getting into the Joey, on the other hand, was easy, intuitive, like using a pop-top can; all you had to do was to look at it to understand how to use it, no special tools or knowledge were required. The built-in address book and calendar and phone dialer and e-mail program all looked like, and behaved like, their real world, paper-based counterparts. Plus, it was much smaller than the Mate and truly portable, able to run on its rechargeable battery for days at a time. The trackpad interface was so intuitive that in studies Wallaby conducted with brand new users, every attendee was naturally drawn to the small black square without so much as a clue from the study group guides, their fingers sliding across its surface without any thought at all about what they were doing. Just like the soda pull-tab.

So as for Locke's reported reputation of taking credit for what others had invented, Peter felt neither surprised or concerned.

It was a non-issue. He was the primary inventor in the company and everyone, including the public, knew it. Locke was being considered because of his abilities to run the business side of things, and only the business side.

Which was just fine with Peter. But what about Matthew Locke?

Would he be content with a second-place role to Peter?

That question had just been answered in today's board meeting.

The tables had turned, and now Matthew was the star. He had used Peter as a p.a.w.n in his own deceitful, unscrupulous game. How long had he been planning this coup?

Peter mentally lashed himself for not having taken some sort of action when, about a year ago, Matthew had suggested that Wallaby's products should be engineered to be more compatible with those of ICP. An alarm had gone off in Peter's head, but he had quieted it, tolerating the fact that Matthew did not fathom his desire to uphold Wallaby's proprietary-technology direction.

In the long run, that's what it all boiled down to. Matthew wanted to transform Wallaby into an ancillary concern, its computers acting as peripherals to ICP's machines, allowing ICP to remain as the number-one portable and desktop computer manufacturer.

He felt exhausted and lifeless, disembodied, his foot heavy on the gas pedal, drawn by gravity as he raced down the highway pus.h.i.+ng seventy-five miles per hour. Even the car was a f.u.c.king prop, Peter thought miserably. When Matthew had gotten one for himself just like it, he had told Peter it was because he valued his artistic appreciation for the machine, that he respected his pa.s.sion for beautifully designed products. How many other little games of pretend had there been, when all along Matthew had been treating him like a child, playing him along and pacifying him until he could drop the ax?

His throat felt packed with cotton b.a.l.l.s when the reality of what had just happened started to sink in. His stomach turned and rolled in mini-heaves. All he wanted to do was to make smart portable computers that made everyone's life easier. Couldn't he be allowed that simple pleasure? With this question, the weird feeling in his heart stirred. It had been dormant all morning, and he had all but forgotten about it. But now it was awake, and this time it felt a little different. A little larger, a little livelier. A little more painful.

All of Peter's work on the new and improved Joey Plus was over.

Matthew had taken away the thing that was more important to him than anything else in the world. Peter could just picture it, how it would proceed from this day forward - Matthew marching into the engineering group, armed with a complicated schedule and an army of bozo project managers, all meant to scare the development team into finis.h.i.+ng the Joey Plus. Then of course he would re-introduce it and take all the credit for Peter's hard work and vision.

How? Peter wondered. How could Matthew, the person he had sanctioned to join him in creating something so exciting and important, do this?

"Simple," Peter said aloud, at last letting himself acknowledge the underlying truth of the whole mess. "He used me."

Yes, he'd been used. But for the last time. Enough was enough. As soon as he got home, he would begin weeding from his life everyone who was using him.

His car phone jingled, and he punched it, knocking it to the floor. No more talking. It was too late for that. He gripped the wheel more tightly and pressed down hard on the gas pedal, eager to get home and begin undoing his mistakes, ditching the bad parts, nurturing the good parts. It would be just that easy.

He would start with Ivy.

"I think he answered, but then he hung up," Eileen said, holding the telephone to her ear.

"Forget it," Matthew told his secretary. He closed his office door and seated himself before his computer. He closed his eyes let out an exhausted sigh. Leave it alone, he told himself. Leave him alone, you can't get through to him, can't make him understand. It has to be this way. There is no other way.

His plan had worked. The executive staff and board of directors had faith in him to run the company after all. Peter could no longer stand in the way of his taking control of Wallaby. Now he was free to build momentum and power as he moved into the next phase of his plan. He felt a dizzying rush of elation as he fully comprehended what he'd just done. Though he had sincerely cared for Peter when they'd first met, after awhile he had grown less enchanted as he was reminded that falling for the young inventor would prevent him from ever achieving his real goal at Wallaby.

He wholeheartedly wished things could have turned out differently. But they had not. And it was over. He only wished Peter had tried harder to understand the real reason everyone in the boardroom had voted against him, even though they themselves had not yet admitted it. He had known all along that Peter would not simply bow out gracefully and accept a non-management role in the company. If only he had been more receptive to the idea of connecting to ICP's computers, this would have never happened.

There was no room for being sentimental now, he told himself. Why revisit the past? But as Matthew rested his eyes, he allowed his mind to wander back anyway, letting the memory of those intoxicating early days deepen the resonance of his most recent triumph.

The airplane banked left, changing its coastal orientation, and rose through the hazy grayness surrounding JFK Airport.

Destination: San Jose, California.

When the seat belt sign blinked off, Matthew eased his seat back into a more comfortable position. Sunlight broke through the grayness and the cabin was filled with sunlight as the plane climbed.

"Good morning," a stewardess said. "Can I bring you a gla.s.s of orange juice? Champagne?"

"I'd like Orange Fresh, please," Matthew said. He was certain the airline carried the soft drink-it had, after all, been his idea to test-market the all-natural citrus beverage with this very carrier before it was introduced by International Foods several years ago.

The stewardess returned with a gla.s.s of the sparkling orange beverage. She placed a napkin on the tray and then set the drink upon it.

"Do many people drink Orange Fresh?" he asked.

"It's one of our most-requested soft drinks. Though most folks don't keep it all that soft," she said with a wink.

He felt a burst of pride and love for Greta. Thanks to her, Orange Fresh had carved a new and highly profitable market niche that had earned Matthew kudos from the company's executives.

Though International Foods' marketing of the all-natural refreshment ("Good for you, and fun to drink!") had created a markedly successful soft drink, a second, unexpected market had blossomed, thanks to Greta - the Sa.s.sy Screw. One part vodka, two parts Orange Fresh. The healthy soda had instantly become a popular c.o.c.ktail mixer, displacing Mother Nature's own natural contender, orange juice. In its first month of sales, the product reached the magic 50 million-case mark, and the company threw a yacht party for Matthew. That day, however, had ended in tragedy.

And now, as he flew to California, he hoped that maybe, if he landed this job, the loss that he and Greta had suffered that day might be amended.

Finis.h.i.+ng the beverage, he made room for the materials he had received from the headhunter who had contacted him two weeks earlier, expressing Wallaby's interest in him. He pulled his briefcase from beneath the seat in front of him and opened it on the vacant seat beside him. The over-stuffed folder inside contained newspaper clippings, annual reports, and magazine article reprints, as well as a brochure of Wallaby's computer, the Mate.

Although Matthew knew of Peter Jones - who in the Fortune 500 didn't? - and the highly publicized invention Jones created in his bedroom while a senior in high school, he became more and more intrigued as he browsed through the clippings.

A cover story in "Time" two years earlier touted Jones as "Silicon Valley's Hottest Kid On The Block."

"Forbes" magazine listed Jones in its directory of America's richest people. An accompanying article detailed Wallaby's phenomenal growth and financial milestones, ranking it the fastest-growing company in America. When Wallaby had gone public five years ago, Jones's total worth was estimated at more than 250 million dollars, with Wallaby reporting annual sales of just over 600 million. Holding the second largest share of Wallaby stock was Hank Towers, who was estimated to be worth close to 200 million dollars. A five-year-old "Fortune" article told the story of how Towers was the man Jones first approached for start-up cash with his hackneyed portable computer design. At the time, Towers had owned a small company that built highly-specialized computers that were ruggedized for field and medical applications. Towers had invited Jones to visit him at his offices after seeing the invention, the first truly all-in-one portable computer, at a science fair. Towers, unlike some of the others to whom Peter had shown the product, hadn't balked at its radical design, nor had he laughed when Jones explained his vision for manufacturing the computer at very low cost so that millions of people could have their own portable personal computer to take with them wherever they went. Not long after their initial visit, Towers gave Jones a check for 200 thousand dollars. The rest was history.

Another "Fortune" story was the first among several of the more recent articles to raise in Matthew a curious caution. According to Nicholas Whitley, a science teacher at Sunnyvale High School, "Jones was a rebel. He never wanted to partic.i.p.ate in what the rest of the cla.s.s was focused on. He wanted to do everything himself, on his own." Whitley admitted, however, that had Jones been like the rest of the kids, Sunnyvale High would never have become, thanks to its simple all-in-one design, one of the biggest education customers of the Mate computer - or any computer, for that matter. His main concern was Jones's leaders.h.i.+p skills: "I wonder about Wallaby's long-term success.

He's a bright kid, with a knack for divining opportunity, but as a company grows, I'm wondering if he'll be able to handle it."

A month-old "Business Week" article crystallized Matthew's caution. A profile on Jones commented on his biting rivalry with ICP, the world's largest computer manufacturer. When Jones was queried about whether Wallaby was developing communications features in their products that would make them more compatible with ICP's mainframe, desktop, and portable computers, he had replied adamantly, "Never. We do it our own way. Though I would consider letting them license our operating system and hardware designs." It was that interminable audacity that raised many eyebrows about the future of Wallaby. When Matthew considered ICP's size, more than fifty billion dollars in sales, and the fact that its computers were used for almost every aspect of worldwide systemization in one way or another, a red flag unfurled in his mind. Matthew feared that he was probably wasting his time speaking to Jones about becoming the company's earnestly sought president. At the same time, though, the lure of being in a position to influence the future technology tools used by people all around the world aroused his interest. Perhaps Jones was working on something new and more powerful than ICP's own desktop and portable computers, which had quickly overtaken and then dwarfed Wallaby's market share. Many speculated that that was the case. Jones, however, had remained tight-lipped over the past year and would talk to no one about what he was working on.

If the speculation was true and he got in there now, while they still had a window of opportunity, perhaps he could help Jones build a strategy that would firmly seat Wallaby as the portable computer technology and market leader, with a perpetual lead over ICP.

He loosened his tie and pushed the seat to the fully reclined position. The stewardess asked him which entree he had selected from the lunch menu, and he said he was going to pa.s.s on the meal and nap until they arrived.

He had gotten little sleep over the few nights prior to his trip to Wallaby. Two nights earlier, after work, he had gone to a local computer dealer and purchased an Wallaby Mate computer. He had worked with the machine until two o'clock in the morning.

Though he read the manuals and stepped through the tutorial programs packaged with it, he found the computer difficult to use, and that made him wonder how long it would take before Wallaby's sales began to dwindle even further; its last-quarter numbers had slipped from those of the preceding quarter.

Furthermore, for a portable computer it was considerably heavier, bigger, and shorter-lived in the battery department than ICP's and other, smaller companies' portable computers. Although schools preferred the system because of its rich library of education programs, the market for the Mate was closing fast. If Wallaby wanted to be successful in the future it would have to bring something radically new to the table, something so compelling people just had to have it.

The Joey came close to fulfilling that tall order, but not close enough. But it would, soon enough. It was Matthew's plan to make Wallaby more compatible with ICP's computers. If only Peter had agreed, things would have worked out better, and he would not have had to unseat the young man from the company's top position.

As he loaded Joey's e-mail program, any pain he had felt at the loss of his friends.h.i.+p with Peter was almost fully entombed now.

With e-mail, Matthew had been able to communicate with his secret partner in Manhattan for the past two years, and he had been looking forward to this day, to sending this message, for a long time now.

He typed:

TO: [email protected] FROM: [email protected] SUBJECT: STATUS

Today I was granted full support by the board of directors and executive staff to take over all senior management responsibilities at Wallaby, including the development of the Joey Plus computer, which will be complete and ready for release in three months.

I attempted to persuade Peter Jones to accept a position within the company to oversee the development of our future products, but my sense is he will not accept.

We will succeed regardless.