The Rise of the Speaker

by Pete Driscoll

  “oh, you’re doing just fine as you are.” I couldn’t stop smiling at this siren of a woman, her passions worn so brazenly on her sleeve. Her excitement was infectious and the love she had for her work was exactly what I had been looking for in all those other interviews.

  “Well maybe this will sweeten the deal.” She leant back in her chair after tapping something into a calculator, her eyes fixed squarely on me, “I’m gonna start you off on a basic pay rate of seventy thousand a year… I know, I know, other companies could probably add another zero to that without breaking a sweat. But this is how our pay system works: we take ten percent of the additional profits our solutions generate, in this case, we have developed a new handset design for them and dropped their production costs quite a bit, which means they will make about an extra three or four hundred million dollars in profits. Ten percent of that is our commission…”

  “so, thirty or forty million dollars for the company.” I added, the mathematical equivalent of stating the obvious.

  “and ten percent of our commission… is yours.”

  I nodded blankly a few times before I realised what she was saying.

  “and we shall call that your signing bonus” she finished with a smile

  “holy shit!” I exclaimed, all notions of a formal interview setting were long gone by now, “you’re gonna give me three million dollars?!?”

  “probably closer to four, at least before the IRS gets their hands on it.”

  My mouth opened, waiting for my brain to send something clever for it to say, when nothing came it closed again. Then it opened a second time, this time willing to settle for something mildly coherent to say, still nothing so it closed again. It stayed that way until Maria spoke up again.

  “So, can I take that as a yes?”

  “you had me at MIT graduate… person… thing.” I finally answered. She shrieked with excited laughter as we stood and shook hands.

  She beamed at me as her laughter subsided. “I think you and I are going to get on very well.”

  “And she was right, I worked at Itek for the better part of a decade. Some - if not most - of the technologies that would later be used to establish the Atlantian state would be born from working at that company.” Penny was still typing furiously on her tablet as my monologue continued. “Throughout it all, there was never a bad word or harsh tone used between Maria and I, she earned my respect and loyalty in a way that very few people, before or since, ever have.”

  I gestured for the young writer to join me as I rose from my seat on the south facing balcony, rounding the building towards the north west – my feet on autopilot - all the while waiting for the inevitable question to come.

  “are you and Maria still close?” Penny asked, her eyes glancing up at me from the screen in her hands as she walked beside me.

  “In a manner of speaking,” I replied after a pause. I stopped and pointed out to a body of water in the distance. “Do you know what that is?” I asked the journalist.

  “Lake Serenity” she answered with a confused tone.

  I nodded, “and do you know what is in the middle of Lake Serenity?”

  A sudden look of realisation flashed across the girl’s eyes, “Isla del Maria – Maria’s Island” I could only stare towards the lake and its tranquil waters, those were memories I would have to build up to.

  Chapter 3

  the seven-year itch.

  Five years later

  Itek had been a revelation, it was the sort of job that young, idealistic and overly optimistic graduates dreamt of. I looked forward to coming into the office every day and the friendship that had blossomed between Maria and I was deep and lasting – Yes, she was my boss, but at no time did I ever feel like she lauded it over me; Her name was above the door but she treated me as an equal, as a partner. Often, she would come to my lab for advice with staff, or finances, or company strategy and I would go to hers for a fresh pair of eyes on a problem – Or simply to get out of the lab for an hour. Our visits to each other often ended up as just excuses to have a chat. Those chats became more and more pregnant as our relationship grew.

  Although we had come close a few times, Maria and I had never crossed that line, it was like friend-zone by mutual consent – although begrudgingly on my part. She was beautiful, in every way a person can be; but her mind, her enthusiasm, her down right brilliance was so much harder to resist than her looks.

  The hardships a man must bear.

  The work I pumped out had taken the company to new heights of influence and prosperity, we were now considered one of the go-to companies when it came to solving technological problems. As the relationship between Maria and I evolved, so did my work at the firm. For the first five years I had basically been doing variations of the same problem solving I had done during my interview: a company came to us with a problem, I would solve it and we would get a truck load of cash in return. The three million dollars commission that I had been so thrilled about back then was actually about par for the work I did, a five hundred-thousand-dollar cheque was considered a very quiet month.

  But I was getting tired of the bullshit that came with dealing with tech giants and the bigger they were, the worse I found them. The problem was hard to explain; the technological innovations I designed for these companies technically belonged to them, they were well within their rights to patent the new designs and release them as they saw fit but the way they went about doing that just… rubbed me the wrong way.

  As an example, I’ll use the company that benefited from my job interview. They were impressed with the work that we had done for them and over the next few months they had come back with more problems for us to solve. First, they wanted extra processing power which resulted in a completely new design for the internal microchip, then they wanted more memory capacity, that led to a revolutionary new way to compress data. Finally, they wanted us to upgrade the camera which led to a new type of lens. All in all, we had given them over a billion dollars’ worth of technology; innovations that would have changed the entire industry – customers would have had a much better product which could have improved lives. It sounds naïve, I know, but mobile phones had become an integral part of people’s lives and making those devices better made those lives better.

  The company hoarded the technology.

  Actually, to be more specific, they released it bit by bit over the course of years, milking the revenue from each consecutive upgrade before adding a little bit more of my invention to the next model and starting the cycle all over again.

  Profits over progress. The same old story.

  I worked for that company over the course of the first eight months of my time at Itek, the final piece of technology I designed for them was released twelve years later and they had made billions upon billions of dollars in the interim.

  Maria was a little more forgiving of the situation than I was, she understood the reality on the ground, how the business world worked and although it annoyed her almost as much as me, she found it easier to overlook. Me, on the other hand, it made me sick!

  After a little over five years, I had finally had enough after yet another company delayed role out on my designs just so they could make a few extra bucks. I leant back in my office chair – the only piece of office furniture in my lab – closing my eyes, reopening them after a few moments I looked up at the ceiling. I had tacked a single piece of paper to it, written in big black letters were four words:

  ‘don’t reinvent the wheel’

  It was a phrase one of my college professors had used in class once. The sentiment being that some things worked fine and either couldn’t be - or didn’t need to be - improved. To me, that was tantamount to heresy. First of all, the wheel has been reinvented hundreds of times since it was first designed thousands of years ago. A modern car tyre is nothing like the ones that were around even a few decades ago, let alone the original design. Secondly, the idea that some things are above improvement insults the very notion of
progress – everything can be improved.

  Every time I looked at those words, I was reminded that it wasn’t just technology that was never above improvement and as an idea formed in my mind, in walked the one person who could make it happen.

  “Hey you” I said, without shifting my gaze as the whirlwind few into my lab

  “Fucking Mason!!” Maria spat as she slammed the door behind her, she strode a few paces into the room and leant herself against edge of one of the workbenches. Mason was one of the junior engineers from upstairs, he hadn’t been at the company long but had already earned himself a reputation for making stupid errors in his work.

  I spun my chair around, not lifting my head from its position hanging over the back. I looked over to her out of the side of my eye, “What’d he do this time?”

  “decimal fucking points!” she growled

  I snorted out a laugh, for someone with an advanced degree in mechanical engineering the man had the ability to fuck up the most basic of mathematical principles. “Anyone catch it?” I asked. Mason was good at his job, his ideas were great – bordering on brilliant sometimes, but his frequent mistakes meant he needed someone to go over his work to find them. If – or more often, when – the mistakes were found… well let’s just say he wasn’t very good at taking criticism. He’d already been given an official verbal warning for the way he spoke to Maria after she’s had to correct his work for the umpteenth time.

  “Yeah, me” she answered with another huff. “this one would have cost us a few million dollars.”

  “And how did he take it?” She didn’t even answer, she just cocked an eyebrow at me, knowing that I already knew exactly how the arrogant son of a bitch had taken it. The man definitely had a temper. I sighed, “show him the door”.

  “Fire him?” Maria looked at me in shock, not only had I never suggested firing anyone before, but Maria had never been put in a position where she had ever needed to even consider firing someone before.

  “Or deal with his attitude” I shrugged nonchalantly.

  “Damn you and your flawless logic” she chuckled after a short pause. “Anyway, change of subject time. How’s things with you”

  “Same old. Client pulling the usual cheapskate shit.” I spun my chair towards her, finally lifting my head away from the headrest. “you ever get tired of playing the game?”

  She knew exactly what ‘game’ I was talking about, “sometimes, but it’s just the way that business is done.”

  “I know, I know… but…” I banged my hands into the armrest, lifting myself to my feet. “…haven’t you ever wanted to market our own inventions? Control the flow of our technology to the public ourselves?”

  She thought for a moment. Maria was never one to answer a question until she was certain of what that answer would be. “I used to…” she eventually said, “even tried doing it once but it didn’t work out. Then, just as I was about to throw in the proverbial Itek towel, a company offered an open contract to fix a problem for them, I fixed it, got paid and here we are.” She finished with a resigned shrug.

  I heard what she said and I understood the sentiment behind her words, “I’m just…” I knew what I wanted to say, but Maria had built her life, her business and her reputation around the exact type of work I was about to insult, “…I’m just tired of waiting for our work to be seen by the world. We do incredible things in this building! Some of the stuff that comes out of these labs could change the world and companies would rather line their pockets than see the world benefit.” Maria was nodding in understanding as I continued. “You know Jimmy Donovan on the third floor?” I asked her, her affirmative nod indicated me to keep going. “He designed a solar panel that was so efficient, it could have made non-renewable energy obsolete in a decade! Climate change, the nation’s reliance on foreign oil and gas, huge global problems could have been solved – or at least eased a bit. And do you know what happened to it?”

  “Oil company bought the patent.” She conceded.

  “A fucking oil company! What do you think the chances are that they will ever release those designs to the public… EVER?”

  “Zero.” Her resigned smile told me she knew exactly how I was feeling.

  “They’ve buried it! So how do you think Donovan is going to feel next time the US invades another country for access to more oil?” I didn’t wait for an answer for that one. “What if we had patented that tech ourselves, let it out to one of the more responsible energy companies? Yeah, we probably wouldn’t have made anywhere near as much money but… I don’t know… Id feel a damned sight better about the world than I do now.” I slumped back into my chair.

  There was a long pause as Maria’s eyes bore into me, as I met her gaze, I immediately recognised the concern. “Look Maria, I owe you everything and I’m not leaving you, or the company. I just…”

  “You want to be able to work on your own ideas and see where they take you” she finished for me. I flashed my eyebrows in agreement as I rested my knuckles under my nose and my elbow on the armrest. “Then do it”

  My look of surprised confusion prompted her to elaborate. “I wasn’t much older than you are now when I had my chance to create something new, it didn’t work and I needed to pay the bills. My ideas are gone, sold to help billion-dollar companies make a few extra bucks. All I can do with my life now is fix the problems that are put in front of me…”

  “Maria…” I started, suddenly feeling very guilty about trashing her chosen profession.

  “No, it’s ok...” She said, her voice as soft and calm as I could remember it ever being. “…just because my ideas are gone, it doesn’t mean I am going to stand in the way if you want to do your own thing.” She held her hand up to silence me as I started to speak. “But me granting you more freedom does come with conditions.”

  “Name them.”

  “Firstly – and I hate to be that kind of boss – but the profits are split fifty-fifty between you and the company.”

  “fifty-fifty?” I laughed, “I would’ve settled for the arrangement we have now.”

  She smiled as she kept talking, “second, you still need to work on some assigned commissions. If a project requires your attention - that is your priority.”

  “No arguments here” I agreed.

  “And lastly, I get to come help you and stick my nose in whenever I want” her face lit up into a smile as she finished her sentence, the radiance of her features never failing to create a knot in my stomach.

  “As if I could stop you.” I laughed back.

  “See, a man who knows not to argue with a woman,” she announced over her shoulder as she headed towards the door to leave, “you could make a lady very happy one day.” She finished with a wink.

  “That an offer?” I called after her, half in jest, half in hope.

  She leaned on the door stop for a second, turning back towards me with a twinkle in her eye, “cute, but not too bright” she smirked as the door closed between us.

  Two years later.

  The arrangement between Maria and I had gone better than either of us had ever imagined. My first ‘invention’ (for lack of a better word) came almost by accident. With most of Europe – the UK, France and Germany in particular – phasing out the sale of petrol and diesel cars over the next few years, the market for electric and hybrid cars had exploded. However, the technology simply didn’t exist yet and the automotive industry was playing catch up.

  So, when the owners of Audi Volkswagen approached us to make their current electric cars more efficient, I took the opportunity to completely reinvent a car’s energy cells and the way they worked. It increased the efficiency by over three thousand percent, giving the cars the range of a conventional diesel at a fraction of the production cost and zero CO2 emissions. But because it was a completely new technology – and outside the remit of their initial request – it didn’t automatically fall under their ownership. I completed their commission in another way and then – with Maria’s help -
marketed the new fuel cells not only to Audi, but to every other major car manufacturer in the European market.

  A bidding war erupted as soon as the value of the new technology was realised. What made it more interesting was the fact that we were licensing the design, not selling it. So, companies weren’t just offering us money, but conditions on how the tech would be used – no more waiting a decade to see my work on the streets.

  Eventually Lexus won the bidding war; although their dollar amount wasn’t quite as high as others from BMW and Mercedes, their stipulation that they would market a mid-range vehicle with this new design – not just high-end executive cars – that could be affordable to the average consumer pushed them passed the finish line.

  Despite the slightly less profitable terms, Itek still walked away with over two hundred million dollars, the single biggest payday in the company’s history. The hundred-million-dollar cheque for my half of that amount felt pretty good too.

  After that, the inventions came out thick and fast. Maria now had the resources to hire five new graduates from MIT, Caltech and Stamford to do my old job and I was given free reign to work on whatever I wanted to. A new type of fire-retardant furniture stuffing wasn’t far behind the new energy cells after local hotel burned down claiming over a dozen lives. My design was so effective that it would become the legally required standard in all commercially used furnishings within three years. This meant that every hotel, restaurant and office building in the country had to use this product if they wanted to pass their fire code checks. The ongoing royalties from this netted the company over a billion dollars by the time that law had come into effect nationwide.

  A new type of data compression technology allowed mobile data to be used at speeds comparable to fibre optic cables – Verizon got their hands on that one and used it to take a massive chunk of the US cellular market due to the condition that it was rolled out within a year.