The Sensory Deception (13 page)

“Can you do a wise-cracking blind guy?”

They both looked up at the framed cover art.

Ringo said, “Daredevil’s my favorite.”

“Mine, too.”

“Something about overcoming blindness.”

“And he’s the smartest of all of them.”

“I don’t know about that, but he’s definitely the funniest.”

Bernie said, “Endangered animals, huh?” He went back to the CAD images.

Ringo wanted to save the world as much as the next guy, but he didn’t get the visceral buzz from Moby-Dick that he’d get from a Daredevil app.

Bernie’s version of the helmet had an antenna that looked like the hackles of a lizard. “We’ve never done anything at these data rates.”

Ringo said, “The antenna communicates with the experiential database, the e-db, a multi-petabyte central server.”

“I’m worried about crosstalk when you have more than one system in the same room.” Bernie zoomed in on the shielding. “Maybe if you make this copper.”

Ringo said, “Daredevil will be easy.”

Bernie raised an eyebrow. “Giving someone the experience of a blind superhero will not be easy.”

“Once I’ve done Moby-Dick, it will be.” Ringo stepped to a whiteboard on the opposite wall that was covered with circuit diagrams, sketches, and flow charts. “Can I erase this?”

“Anything but the grocery list in the corner.”

Ringo described how whales visualize objects by using sonar, delivering essentially the same mini-lecture he’d given at the Sand Hill Ventures meeting, but fortified with technology. Then the two engineers waded into technical minutiae that filled Bernie’s whiteboard with equations, a Moby-Dick data
processing flow chart, and a cool little circuit design for background subtraction.

Staring at the whiteboard, Ringo said, “I could have the superhero apps ready by the time we launch the nature apps.”

“Might as well,” Bernie said. “You won’t need any new hardware, and it sounds like the software is portable. You’ll have to license the characters…”

“Oh, yeah,” Ringo said. “I’ll talk to our VC; she can do it. We’re funded by Sand Hill Ventures.” As he spoke the words, he wondered what Farley would think. Chopper would absolutely hate the idea. Gloria, though—Gloria might like it. In any case, he had time to figure out the internal politics. At that thought, he groaned.

“I can change it,” Bernie said, referring to the design for mounting the video display inside the helmet.

“Huh?” Ringo said. “Sorry, I was spacing out, just thinking about some office politics I’m going to have to deal with.”

“I thought the whole point of working at a start-up was to get away from that sort of thing.”

“Me, too,” Ringo said.

“If you recess the video screens half a centimeter, you can—”

“The VCs would love a Spidey app, but my partners, I don’t know. Maybe someday, after we’ve accomplished what we’re setting out to do and the market gets up to speed.”

“At least make one for yourself. And me. Some people play with model trains or collect stamps, right? Creating superhero VR could be a hobby.”

N
o one was around when Gloria walked into the Captain’s house for the morning meeting. She dug through Ringo’s extensive stash of caffeinates and pulled out a Hawaiian blend. With the coffee on, she went out on the deck; no sign of Chopper, but she saw Farley carrying his surfboard up the trail. She stepped inside and looked at the list of milestones on the whiteboard. They’d be meeting with the VCs for their annual review after Ringo returned from the contract manufacturer.

Farley stepped through the sliding glass door, the top half of his wet suit dangling around his waist, exposing his chest and dripping on the rug. The seawater would dry, and the salt would crystallize and contribute to the carpet’s odd texture. He greeted her, leaned his surfboard against the wall, and continued down the hallway. He said, “I’ll be right out.”

Gloria asked, “Where’s Chopper?”

“Gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah, he needs to sleep,” Farley yelled from down the hall. Stepping back into the living room, barefoot in shorts and a T-shirt, Farley said, “You know he’s an insomniac, right? He takes long hikes. All he brings with him is a knife, or at most that little yellow tackle box he carries around.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. The desert? The mountains? He’ll be back in a few days.”

“It’s just you and me, then?” As she asked the question, she realized that she and Farley hadn’t spent any time alone since developing the original business road map.

He went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. “Unfortunately, we have business to do. Otherwise, maybe we could do something inappropriate.”

“Inappropriate?”

He laughed that deep bass laugh. “I guess saying that was inappropriate. I apologize.”

She leaned against the counter and he stood next to her, maybe a foot away. She looked up at him, and he either was blushing or had acquired a sunburn. Several inappropriate ideas passed through her mind. She reminded herself that her career depended on their venture, avoiding the words
partnership
or
relationship
even in the privacy of her own mind.

In her deepest voice, she imitated him: “Farley, what have you got?”

“There’s a problem with the Moby data.” He explained that the research proposals had all been rejected. “But I have the locations of four pods. The best solution is for us to rent a ship and crew.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t make any sense, but I should have anticipated the possibility.”

“But the bottom line is that we don’t have a whale, right?” Gloria felt her face heat up. “We’re about to manufacture product and we can’t develop the killer app?”

“I don’t think it’s that bad.” As he spoke he held out both hands, a gesture of openness that conveyed confidence and calm. “A ship and crew for a maximum of two months will cost a small fraction of our Series A funding.”

“Series A is long gone.” She took her laptop from her briefcase and pulled up the spreadsheet.

“We shouldn’t need more than a hundred thousand.”

She pulled herself up on a stool, positioned the laptop in front of her, and ran a macro to calculate the cash available to them. She sighed. “Look, we have five thousand dollars, including every credit card the four of us own and what I got for trading in my Lexus.”

“What about the mortgage I took out on this house?”

“That’s how we’re paying for product manufacture. Ringo is handing the CMs a check today.”

“A hundred thousand is still a tiny fraction of our Series B request.”

“This isn’t happening. My career—and you could lose this house!”

“I’m not going to lose the house that the Captain built. And your career is going just fine.” He put his hand on her arm, looked her in the eyes, and said, “You’re a VC. Taking risks
is
your career.” Then he stepped into the kitchen to the coffeepot. “We’ve come this far. We’ll find a solution. Let’s work through our options and see what we need to do.”

“This is exactly the wedge issue that Sand Hill has been waiting for.” Gloria leaned back and added, “You know, if we sold development licenses, we’d have plenty of money for a ship and crew.”

Farley shook his head.

Gloria said, “Reinvesting profit is standard practice at most businesses.”

“I’m not against profit.”

“You’re going to have to give up something. What will it be?”

“I don’t think we’re at that point yet.”

“Well, if we can’t create the killer app, it seems to me that we are exactly at that point.”

“Let’s put together a request to fund a ship first.”

“I’m telling you, it will be rejected. You need a backup plan.” As she spoke, he stroked his beard and looked away. “Farley, what are you holding back?”

“Well, in the interest of full disclosure, one of the sperm whale pods is being monitored by a radical environmentalist.” He sat on the stool next to her. “I used to work with the guy, but he’s all wrong for us. Seriously, working with Randy Gaynes on the
Cetacean Avenger
would be worse than developing mainstream apps.” He explained how Gaynes would stop at nothing, commit any crime, perpetrate violence, even sink a fully crewed ship, to defend a pod of whales.

“Out of the question,” Gloria said. “Sand Hill would never go for it. I would never go for it.” She stared out the window and sipped her coffee.

Farley scrolled through the budget.

“Does it have to be a male sperm whale?” Gloria asked. “Why not a gray whale? Dozens of them swim by every day. You could row out and equip one. Or why not a singing humpback app?”

“Talk about too much
National Geographic
. A singing humpback VR experience?” Farley hung his head. “The top speed of a gray whale is six knots. You jog faster than that. They’re slow, gentle beasts that eat tiny creatures, krill and plankton. Moby-Dick needs to be Moby-Dick.”

“You should take the money from licensing.”

“Gloria, please. Is that what you want? You want us to compromise?”

“Negotiation is compromise, and business is negotiation. You can walk away or you can negotiate; that’s all I have to offer.”

“I thought you were on our side.”

“On your side? What do you think I’m doing here?”

“If you think I’ll compromise on our mission, you don’t know me very well.”

“If you think I’m not on your side, you don’t know me at all.”

Farley looked away.

She’d never seen him like this. Everyone else had gotten frustrated at some point. Ringo threw tantrums over circuit designs, Chopper screamed at a seagull for interrupting his concentration, Gloria cried the day she traded in her Lexus, but even when Farley mortgaged his house he was upbeat and encouraging, steady and strong. Farley had also been reserved, never high and never low, and he had never, ever, taken anything personally—until just now.

It was her turn. “I know this is difficult,” she said, putting her hand on the back of his neck. The muscles across his shoulders were tense, and she kneaded them. “I will get a cost estimate for a ship and crew and run the numbers. We’ll be ready with a proposal at the annual review next week. It will be a perfectly reasonable request, and they will turn it down. What we have to decide right now is what we are willing to sacrifice and what we are not willing to sacrifice.”

He arched his back. “Keep doing that. I must have pulled a muscle in the waves this morning.”

“No, you’re just tense, like every other start-up CEO in the valley.”

“Okay, Gloria, I mean, Ms. Baradaran, what do I have to sacrifice?”

“That’s better,” she said. “Negotiation is about managing information. We’re not going to permit licensing. You’ve made that clear. The only other thing we have is the ability to produce our own mainstream apps.”

“Damn it. No.”

“Take it easy, mister. If we offer to develop them ourselves, we control the schedule.”

“You mean we could agree to it but not do it at all?”

“Not quite. If we agree to it, they’ll require progress.”

“Either way, it buys us time.”

“One other thing, Farley.” She looked up at him. He put his hand on top of hers. She gripped his thumb. “I know you don’t like to think of contingencies, but if the Moby-Dick app is a flop, you’ll have to negotiate. Better to negotiate when you have something to offer than when you’re desperate.”

“You’re right, of course.” He sighed and sat up straighter. “Okay, but this is just between you and me. I don’t want to distract Ringo and Chopper. We’ll go all-in with Moby-Dick. If we have to negotiate, I’ll do what you suggest.”

She looked at the spreadsheet and said, “We were all-in two months ago.”

C
hopper stood on the bow of Farley’s sloop, the
Captain’s Tooth
, in a wet suit. He grabbed the jib sheet, the rope that controls the sail that stretches over the bow. Half a beat later, Farley said, “Take the jib sheet.” Then, recognizing that Chopper already had, he added, “How do you do that?”

Chopper shrugged. He felt a warm sense of security every time Farley recognized the synchronicity of their friendship.

As Chopper pulled on the jib sheet, Farley set the main sail and positioned the rudder. Both sails caught the wind simultaneously and the sloop vaulted into Monterey Bay. Each man locked his rope in a cleat at the same time. The tell-tales, small ribbons attached up and down the height of the sails, stood horizontal, indicating wind and sail in harmony. Farley relaxed on the starboard gunwale next to Chopper and let loose one of his long, full-body sighs. The sloop cut a wake through the swells. At the peak of each wave they picked up an increment of speed and at the troughs got a light, salty shower.