he spoke. He laughed. “Piece of cake. The security around here’s a joke. Pretty smart of Lou to think of it, though ... we don’t want anyone stealing our idea.” Then he lowered his voice to a whisper, complementing the atmosphere of paranoia that was starting to spread over me. “So, are we going to quit too?” He was like a little boy asking permission to go outside and play.
I wanted to slap him on the head and say, Are you crazy? This is just some harebrained scheme we’ve been sucked into, and we’d be idiots to throw away our good jobs. But I didn’t. I could lie to you and say I was only trying to spare Stan’s feelings, but the truth is, even if it was at some subconscious level, I had subjugated my will to Fisher’s. I would do whatever he told me to do.
“Let’s wait until we hear from Fisher,” I replied.
I wish I had paid more attention the last time Stan had us up here to the trailer. The main power just kicked out (again, my first thought was they had found me) and I’m writing this on my laptop’s battery reserves. I know there are solar panels on the roof, and a fair-sized propane tank attached to the side of the trailer, but I have no idea how full it is, or what my status is energy-wise. There are a few hours of daylight left, so I’d better try to figure things out while I can see what I’m doing.
Article updated Sunday 2 November 11:13
Man, I’m an idiot. It didn’t even register with me that I wasn’t on the grid anymore, and had to conserve my power. I was so cold when I got here two nights ago that I turned on the electric heaters, and ran them all night and all through the next day ... until I drained the trailer’s batteries. It’s taken a while to recharge them from the solar panels, and during that time I’ve taken stock of things. I appear to have about half a tank of propane, which I’m only going to use for cooking and hot water, so that will last me for weeks. And I’ve stocked up on firewood for the little wood stove that does a dandy job heating the trailer, although I had to wake up a few times during the night to keep it stoked. If I’m frugal, the solar panels will provide all the juice I need for powering my laptop, for lights, and for running the fridge.
When I went looking for the cause of my power outage yesterday, I found labels and notes in Stan’s handwriting in the battery bay, including one on a circuit-breaker that said: HEATERS—HIGH POWER CONSUMPTION. USE SPARINGLY. That’s so typical of Stan: to provide that kind of detailed instruction, even though his folks could barely read English. Or maybe it was just his way of reaching out from beyond the grave to help out his technologically-challenged buddy Brad. God, I miss Stan.
Back to the task at hand. I was writing earlier about how Fisher quit his job the very next day after we hatched our internet scheme, and how Stan and I were waiting to hear from him. Around 3 p.m. I got a text message from Fisher saying to meet him at Macbeth’s after work.
When Stan and I showed up, Fisher was ensconced at a corner booth, scribbling away alternately in three different hard-covered note pads. He quickly spotted us and earnestly waved us over, before I even had a chance to order a drink from the bar.
I’ll never forget the unsettling expression on Fisher’s face. He’d always had this somewhat superior look about him (not unusual for a top gun in a major ad agency, I suppose), but now his lips seemed twisted in a self-satisfied smirk, as if everything that was going to pass from them was undiluted wisdom. I admittedly have the advantage of hindsight as I write this, but I mention it because it made such an impression on me at the time. It’s important, too, because you need to know Fisher is a manipulative, two-faced bastard, and it’s so easy to be taken in by him. Maybe you’re one of his followers, and as you read this, you’re fuming because the only look you associate with Fisher (the one he struck for the cover when he made Time’s Man of the Year, for example) is one of compassion and benevolence. Trust me, he’s been rehearsing that one in front of a mirror for years.
Stan and I slid into the booth, and Fisher began spouting a detailed report of what he’d been up to all day, and wow, had he ever been busy, especially when it came to making good on his word to liquidate all his assets in order to accumulate working capital for our venture.
“So, which one of you two am I moving in with?” he asked. A lump appeared out of nowhere and took up residency dead center in the middle of my throat (and me without so much as a beer to wash it down with.) I had a flashback to the time in college when this chick I was screwing suddenly announced I’d knocked her up, and proceeded to begin taking control of my life. The pregnancy turned out to be a false call, and I dumped her immediately after learning the blessed news, but the conversation I was having with Fisher had the same your-ass-is-mine vibe.
Fortunately (for me, not for him) Stan jumped right in and eagerly volunteered to share his place, a rundown but spacious two-bedroom down in Tribeca. I could tell, however, that my reluctance did not go unnoticed on Fisher’s part, even if he did not so much as murmur a single overt syllable of criticism or complaint. Neither did he press us about our own promised financial contributions, or insist that we had to quit our jobs too. He had the patience of a spider.
Once again, Stan was at the front of the line when it came to showing his loyalty. “I’ll serve my two weeks’ notice at work tomorrow,” he volunteered, practically jumping up and down in his seat. “The best part is that I’ve got like a month’s vacation coming to me, so there’s a couple extra thousand bucks for the kitty.” I’m convinced Fisher hesitated just long enough to be able to get a read on what I was going to say next, because the second I opened my mouth to jump on the bandwagon and say I was willing to quit too, he interrupted.
“I think you guys should hang on to your jobs,” he said, surprising us both. I do remember, however, that it was Stan he locked his eyes on as he explained why. “This thing will take too long to come together if we just do it by ourselves. That’s what the money is for ... to buy the talent we need.”
“But I wanted to build this myself,” Stan said. “I don’t want someone else to have all the fun.”
“And you will build it,” Fisher said soothingly. “You say you’ve got a month’s vacation coming, right? Well, how much work do you figure we can get done in that time ... I mean if we work around the clock, and only take time out for sleep and meals?”
We both puckered up our faces in contemplation. Stan was clearly weighing the problem at hand. As for me, I was wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into, and was silently saying goodbye to life as I knew it. Little did I realize how true that really was.
“I can’t code it all in a month,” Stan finally concluded. “There’s just way too much work for one programmer.”
“You have to stop thinking like a worker bee,” Fisher chided. “You’re management now. Your job is to architect the system, especially those cool features we talked about the other day, and delegate the grunt work to others—maybe offshore to some bargain-basement coders in India or Russia.” At this point he pulled out one of the notebooks he had in front of him and handed it to Stan. “I’ve allocated seventy per cent of the budget for the technical development ... that’s like 300K. Figure out how many people you’ll need on your team, and we’ll hire them.” Fisher flipped open the book to the first two pages, where he had sketched out everything we’d talked about over the past two days, using exquisitely rendered multi-color bubble diagrams and flowcharts. “I’ve started it off with the big picture ... you’ll have to fill in the rest.”
Stan was clearly impressed. (Diagrams will always do that for a geek.) “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he was saying, and immediately pulled out a pen and started to add notations of his own. “Of course, there are some parts I won’t trust anyone else with,” he commented as he worked, “but you’re right. There’s no reason someone else can’t do the low-level shit.”
I now understood that one of the other notebooks Fisher was fingering was meant for me, and I must admit I was dying to know what my role was going to be in the new order.
Fisher had read my mind. “As for you, Brad,” he said, sliding over my black-bound notebook, “you need to write all the copy and scripts