Accelerating Returns

by Peter Anthony

  Chapter 8. Fortune - 2020

   

  On the cover of Fortune magazine, the June issue of the year 2020, Arrica stood with folded arms looking down at the camera.  The caption read, "Not America's Sweetheart: How Arrica Pelius and her GRAINers are changing the rules for everyone."

  Standing in front of a podium, Arrica held the magazine in one hand, a champagne flute in the other.

  Holding his glass, Lucas smiled back at Arrica.  They were at the annual stockholder's meeting, which doubled as the company picnic, since every employee owned stock.  Like Arrica's fame, the price of Pelius had climbed for the past decade.  Analysts compared her to other tech icons of the past - Watson, Venter, Gates, Ellison, Jobs - but with more bite, aptly put because Arrica kept two rottweilers by her bedside. 

  The Pelius picnic, as untraditional as the Pelius corporate culture, was held on the infield of Giants stadium, to commemorate Conrado.  His image never died.  Conrado became the George Washington of Pelius, the venerable icon of the company's humble, noble beginning, and the image became highly romanticized. The company knitted its own narrative to sell an image of persevering and winning, against all odds.

  Lucas observed his boss and considered her rise to power, recalling many victories of the past ten years, including several over Talbot. 

  The first acquisitions proved profitable, with Brio-Nano in Portland being the first company Pelius swallowed whole.  Then they took over two companies in India, a British biotech, and three artificial intelligence and robotics startups bursting with creativity but suffering from wretched financial management - engineers trying to play bankers.  The connections with the universities Berkeley and UC-Davis became integral to staffing.  Bright young graduate students submitted "idea-box" applications to Pelius for consideration, and the east coast Ivy Leaguers started to drop out of school to come work for Pelius.  Students from abroad flooded human resources with unsolicited "idea-box" applications, which Lucas poached, even if the applicant didn't get hired.  All tech tycoons in Silicon Valley wanted to play with Pelius, and because of joint efforts, the turnaround time on projects soared.  In the early years, firings occurred on a daily basis, but layoffs never happened.  Roving auditors, like company police, constantly searched for fat to trim from the company payroll.  People were rearranged like puzzle pieces, and those that couldn't shift shape, the square peg that couldn't fit into a round hole, fit just fine through the exit. 

  It was a hive of activity, of internal shouting matches governed by a company policy of open politics.  Arrica encouraged any employee to notify her about any bottlenecks created by grudges.  Whenever someone saw her marching down the hall with a scowl on, the path parted before her as if she wielded an assault rifle.  Her worst tirades came down on condescenders and prima donnas.  Whether the recipient of snobbery was a peer or a night janitor, she corrected the snobbery or fired its owner and sent a recommendation, overnight Fed-Ex, to Talbot in Chicago, suggesting a good employee for their firm, with the sole intentions of irritating the CEO, Marcus Jovan. 

  Even with all the creative input, industry insiders wondered how Pelius managed to keep up its amazing output.  Stockholders did not care, did not wonder where it came from, just so long as it continued - they did not ask questions. A Business Week article asked, "Where does Pelius get those wonderful ideas?"  Press requests to shadow projects were generally denied, except in low-profile cases and late-stage, established products.  Security clearances for most projects were required, barring all outsiders. 

  The company took a hit in 2016 when a chemical engineer wrote a scathing attack on Pelius practices, calling Arrica a dictator, but Pelius performed damage control, swamping the airwaves with denials and attacks on the character of the malcontent author until he disappeared like a puff of smoke.  The blog community and techies loved Pelius and derided naysayers.  Likewise, politicians doted on Pelius, seeing the company as a research leader for the 21st century, therefore an economic savior, a symbol of American ingenuity and the ability of a nation to re-invent itself. The narratives of Pelius and the nation followed a similar story grammar. 

  Because of the status Pelius enjoyed in 2018, funding became less of a problem, although with every dollar they received in grants, the sought fifteen dollars in loans.  A massive facility went up in Dublin, California, right next to the smaller building they had built in Fremont a few years prior.  The facilities had nicknames: Fat Man and Little Boy, named after the first two atomic bombs, a homage to the Manhattan Project.  Even the Japanese employees used the nicknames, as if they had forgotten about the immolation of their countrymen.  Sections of the buildings took on related names, like Bloch, Rainwater, Rickover, Fermi, Reines, and Fitch, to honor the lesser known scientists of Los Alamos.  They consciously avoided using famous names, like Einstein and Oppenheimer. 

  Basil Jackson, Arrica's nuance man, became a major player in Pelius's success.  He managed the largest accounts.  As gracious as he was tactful, he rarely let down a customer and became the first face any incoming CEO would see at Pelius.  Unlike Lucas in the shadows, Basil could gladhand all day without ever losing the softness in his eyes.  His dovish personality provided hospitality all the way to Arrica's office, where Basil often stood in the corner like a sentry while she negotiated deals.  The other sentry was Lucas Perth.  Oddly enough, Basil's gentle spirit seemed to calm Arrica, and during meetings she often deferred to him, asking for his opinion, which irritated Lucas.  Despite her affinity for Basil, she showed him no mercy and ignored his advice as often as she accepted it.    

   

   On the Monday morning after the annual meeting, Lucas answered the phone in Arrica's office.  Lucas heard a shattered voice coming over the line.  Basil maintained a tactful tone and even apologized for having bad news before mentioning what happened.  The day was significant to Lucas, not because he felt bad for Basil, but because it was a day that altered Arrica's demeanor.

  Lucas hung up the phone and said to Arrica, "That was Basil."

  "Where the hell is he?" Arrica asked. "It's seven thirty already."

  "Last night his wife..."

  "Oh right, something with Caprice.  The baby.  His wife.  The baby.  I'm tired of hearing about his life at home."  Under her business suit, Arrica moved her shoulders sarcastically.  "You can't talk to him without hearing about Caprice.  Unfortunately, here in the real world we have a meeting with Axon this morning.  But I suppose he has to spend time with her.  All his time.  Nice as she is, I'm sorry.  She's really pissing me off lately."

  "Well, she won't anymore," Lucas said. "She's...ah...well, she's gone."

  "What do you mean, gone?"  Arrica sneered. 

  "Caprice died last night."

  "Oh, Jesus Christ.  That's just fucking great.  So he won't be here today," Arrica said, and threw up her hands.  "Well, call my secretary and send some flowers.  Send him a e-greeting."

  "Will do."  Lucas smiled.  "Should we prep for the meeting..."

  Arrica was not listening.  "Send Hallmark to his house, but God dammit, we need him at this meeting..." 

  When she raged near the window in her office, perhaps she saw her reflection, but something stopped Arrica in her tracks.  Suddenly she stopped speaking, covered her mouth, and gasped. 

   

  Lucas saw a change of mind conquer Arrica's face.

   

  "Oh God," Arrica said.  She turned and looked at Lucas like he was a mirror.  "Oh my God, I can't believe I just said that."  Leaning forward, she propped herself on her desk.  "Oh my God, what is wrong with me?  The real world?  What do I know about that?"  Moving her hands from her hips to her face and back again, Arrica could not stand still.  "Poor Basil.  Oh my God, Caprice.  What am I doing?"

  As she paced the room, she pushed back her hair with both hands.  Lucas flipped through the meeting brief. 

  "What am I doing standi
ng here?" Arrica asked herself, and added, "I'm going to see Basil."

  Lucas looked up.  "What?  Arrica, this is Axon..."

  She threw her hands down, palms facing out.  Her gray eyes flashed as her hair swung over her face. 

  "No, this is Basil, my friend." 

  She grabbed her jacket and rushed out the door, yelling back to her secretary as she walked.  "Call me a car.  Cancel all my appointments." 

  Down the carpeted corridor, Lucas watched her walk fast, with her briefcase in hand and heels clicking like a metronome.  After ten steps Arrica broke out into a sprint toward the elevators, dropping her briefcase in the middle of the hallway. 

   

  For the meeting with Axon, Lucas recruited a few managers to flank him, solely for their presence in the conference room.  The meeting required stoic faces, and Lucas asked the managers to sit like stone statues, instructing them to stare at the Axon faces, but not at their eyes.  "Stare at the forehead, between the eyes, like you are about to put a bullet hole in it." 

  Axon sent its brass to discuss contracts.  They were angry and wanted to discontinue doing business with Pelius altogether.  When they arrived, Lucas tried to keep things gentle for as long as possible, but after the greetings, Axon hurdled niceties and rushed straight to the finish line. 

  An Axon man said, "We want to know what the hell is going on in this research park.  The last three projects you declared finished were half-done.  Half-assed.  We don't deal with pseudo-science and you're sending us this...what do you call it?  Memetic Calculus?  Is that what they called it?"

  The other Axon representatives nodded.

  "Something's foul out here," the man said.  "I think Pelius is hiding something."

  Lucas asked, "Like what?"

  "Like everything.  Where is this junk science coming from?  We didn't ask for theory or for mathematical whims that can't be proven."

  "Can't be proven?"  Lucas clicked his pen up and down and stared hard at the man's forehead.  "How do you know that?  We might have just handed you the keys to the revolution in neuroscience.  Maybe we just don't understand it yet. Especially as business people. In this type of research, we have to trust our GRAINers."

  "Don't understand it?"  The man moved uncomfortably in his seat and unbuttoned his suit jacket.  "Memetic Calculus.  Memes.  Oh, you're right, we don't understand the science of memes.  But then again, who does?  No, we don't get it.  We get nothing.  Twenty million dollars, we don't get that back.  The other thing we don't get is a return on investment.  We asked for research on neurotoxins, does that ring a bell?  A study on effective drugs to combat brain damage from smoke inhalation in firefighters and burn victims - you know, people that can use help.  What you gave us was a science paper that sounds like an undergrad on an acid trip, talking about pathways and mathematics that don't exist.  Memes.  I'm still waiting to find out that this is a practical joke."  The Axon people around him stifled a laugh.  He continued, "If we wanted a visionary to wax futuristic, we would have contracted Wired Magazine, or maybe High Times.  What we want to know is this: where is this stuff...I'm sorry...this shit coming from?"

  Lucas set his pen on the table.  "It's confidential."

  "Unsatisfactory.  Completely unsatisfactory.  Every other client we work with has an open door.  We can go into the labs and speak with the scientists, stick our fingers in a beaker, pipette our morning coffee into our mugs if we want.  In other words, we have accountability and oversight on our investments."

  "And you have it with us, too."  Lucas held out his palm.  "You always have access to Dr. Nguyen and his team..."

  "Not him."  The man waved his hand.  "We've talked to him.  He's useless.  He's as clueless as we are on this meme business."

  "I beg your pardon," Lucas said, "but Dr. Nguyen is a very accomplished researcher and physician, sir."

  "He's a front man, Mr. Perth!  I don't care what he's done in the past.  I'm sure he's a gem, but there's another door behind him somewhere.  He told us what he knows.  He said that the ideas come in from...from somewhere!  His exact words were 'somewhere else.'  It sounded like he had a tooth fairy working for him.  'Somewhere else.'  Like it was Manna from heaven.  He wakes up in the morning, checks his inbox, and lo and behold, there's a design document of an experiment, a theory, an idea, plus sixty gigagbytes of tested data on an FTP server.  Well, guess what, Mr. Perth, we want to know where somewhere is.  We want to see behind the curtain, where the wizard pulls the levers.  Otherwise, we are walking on this and every other contract.  Right now, our investment in Pelius is a money pit."

  One of the other men took off his glasses and said, "More like a black hole, actually."

  Lucas looked at his stony sidekicks, who occasionally pretended to write something quietly on a notepad between staring at the Axon foreheads. 

  Lucas inhaled and began to speak. 

  "Do you think, sir, that Axon is the first client of ours to walk in here and ask about our process, to ask about our ideas?  Every newspaper reporter and college tour that enters this facility asks the same question and we give them all the same response.  Now as an important client - a very important client - I don't blame you for feeling kept outside, in the dark about our internal affairs.  But those firms that stick with us can attest that we deliver.  I wish I could tell you how many times we've sat here, Arrica especially, fielding similar complaints from clients.  A year later, down the road and ten patents later, we sit down again with them in quite a different mood, counting our blessings, and rolling in cash.  Carbon nanotubes.  Remember that cover story?  Well, that, gentleman, was our Alamo.  Before you saw the glossy photos, there was a meeting just like this one, the one we are having right now.  Our client stormed in here like a typhoon accusing us of 'scientific wet dreams,' but in the end they stuck with their contract.  We promised that client that we could make polar and covalent bonds as light as feathers, yet incredibly strong.  And we did: stout as Golden Gate pig-iron and lighter than pumice.  Because they stayed with us, we'll all be lining up to buy lightweight Chevy starships in twenty years, mark my words.  The problem is the suits like you and me, sir. We can't see what the engineers can.  In the tiny world of atoms where our GRAINers play, there's plenty of room in there, much more than you and I can dream of with our business philosophy.  We hire visionaries, ones with credentials, who can rearrange Xenon to spell their names just for fun.  The pursuit of nanotechnology, and possibly memes, will make Pelius and Axon business prophets of the next golden age of science.  When we fully map memory and the brain, the applications will be endless.  Take your hand out of your pocket for one year more and then you'll see.  If we map the brain, you will be able to wire an on-demand internet into everyone's head.  Right now, gentlemen, you see the sand, not the castle.  Businessmen like you and I, we point at the balance sheet and worry.  Fortunately, Pelius scientists see the macro in the micro.  Those geniuses in our back rooms, they have a saying posted on the wall: 'The quark has got the whole world in its hands.'  I swear these guys say nanotech prayers at night before bed, and sometimes I wonder if they aren't already cyborgs.

  "I admit, Pelius has made mistakes."  Lucas stood and picked up his pen in his hand.  He pointed it at the Axon men.  "We've almost gone broke ten times because of this breakneck pace.  But our interests are yours.  We share the same goal.  Being in the red, to Pelius, is a disgrace.  That's why we never stop working. Because the stakes are high, ours and yours.  This meme business," he tapped the pen on the table, "it will pay off or I will lay my head down on the block.  Some of our most ambitious contracts have died off or strayed, but the project, no matter how insane it sounds to us accountants and MBAs, has hit paydirt seventy percent of the time.  I know that some of you folks own shares in Pelius.  Tell me, did you not buy the shares without knowing that we push the envelope, always, always, always?  The Pelius shares you own, you took a
big chance, but then you knew that already and you wouldn't have bought them unless we did.  We strike oil. Over and over again, we find success.  We take the risk, we shove off where others won't venture, and when the gas runs out we row on, without looking back.  Truth be told, when I started here at Pelius, I half-expected the whole plan to fail.  The day Arrica came out of her office declaring a state of perpetual emergency, I knew that we might be in for a quick death.  But years of urgency and look around."  Lucas pointed at the wall behind him, which was decorated like a General's left breast, with J.D. Power trophies and every international business accolade the world awarded.  "Gentlemen, temporary suffering like this is how we earned our acumen.  This is where we feel the squeeze.  This is where the squeamish jump overboard.  These are the crossroad moments when a company takes a chance on a great idea or becomes a footnote in history.  Remember the graphical user interface and Xerox?  Some executive didn't like the idea of a computer mouse and they missed out on a trillion dollars.  Right now, if you cancel on us, I can imagine the history of Pelius having a footnote that states: 'Axon, Inc turned down a chance to work with Pelius on Memetic Calculus.'  That will be mentioned in a passing line of a documentary on the Discovery Channel, and viewers will snigger at your luck. If Memetic Calculus turns into a proof, I'm sure you'll want to be back on board with Pelius, but then it will be too late, because every Glaxo, Smith-Kline, and Beecham in the nation will come with flowers and candy to our doorstep.  If you don't want it, Talbot will, or some other giant. Here at Pelius, we've learned the business of risk so well that we can laugh when we fall.  We are a risk culture, like Goldman Sachs standing on Teflon, but knocked down, we rise, stand up, and strike out again.  This is how we do it at Pelius."

   

  The contract with Axon survived the meeting.  At lunch, Lucas entertained the Axon men with industry anecdotes, mostly lies, but he found that they enjoyed talking about their younger days when they were new to the business world.  Every story reminded them of a moment in time, a boss, their first contract, a mishap, or when they dropped the ball and caught hell for it. 

  "I was a spreadsheet babysitter for the longest time," Lucas lied. "It was a manual data-entry system for garbage truck parts on a production line in Ohio."

  One of the Axon gentleman frowned. 

  "My sentiments exactly," Lucas said and laughed.  "Do you guys remember when you finished your master's degree, when you came out all hot and bothered, with so much energy, ready to start a business bonfire?  Well, my fire didn't last long.  Mine was smothered by dead trees, snuffed under a flattened forest of Collier paper reams.  I tried very hard to marry my expectations with my job, but I couldn't do it.  One day, sitting among the stacks of paper, I thought to myself, 'Does a kid growing up today know what's out here?  Does he have dreams to grow up and be the caretaker of an Excel spreadsheet?'  Of course, that was my motivation for upward movement, to get up the ladder.  I thought about teaching accounting at a small college." 

  The Axon men scoffed. 

  "Yeah, right, I know," Lucas said.  "I couldn't leave the paycheck.  How could I go back to academia?  I remember sitting in my cube, rubbing at the numbers on my paycheck, trying to push out an extra zero until the ink smeared onto my hands.  To make a long story short, one day I looked at the stacks of paper around me.  The piles had nearly reached my ears, and I said, 'I've got to escape this dead triple-canopy.'  It was a family company.  I never would have made executive.  That was the first problem.  My other problem was being drugged by lattes and reading blogs.  All day I stayed high on double mocha newsfeeds, but without realizing it, I was aging fast.  I already took Tums and had signs of an ulcer.  Guys, I was thirty years old, with gray hair!  So I said: that's it - back to square one, back to the cruel world.  That's when I moved to San Francisco.  I couldn't find a job out here, so I ended up selling hot dogs at Giants Stadium.  Of course, that's where I met Conrado Pelius, and the rest is history."

  One of the Axon men who had been quiet all day said, "I swear I've seen you somewhere before." 

  "What?"  Lucas said, shifting his weight.  "Maybe in a magazine."

  "No.  I've only read about you, Lucas.  You're notorious for being absent from photos.  In fact, every time I open a newspaper or read about Pelius, the only person I see is Arrica, or possibly one of her GRAINers.  But now that I see you, I know I've seen you somewhere.  We've met before."

  Lucas gripped the napkin on his lap, twisting it around his knuckles.  The din of the restaurant, the spoons clinking on plates and the low conversations, filled the silence as Lucas considered a response.  All eight Axon eyes focused on him, examining his face.  For the first time, he realized that age was catching up with him, that his face was changing into a fully matured adult. 

  He broke up the awkward moment using a joke. 

  "Oh, I know where you saw me.  Ever watch America's Most Wanted?" 

  The Axon men laughed and didn't push the issue further.  However, the comment was enough to send Lucas underground, deeper into the company and away from meetings with external clients.  The snowball effect of Pelius could take care of itself now. 

   

  A week later, Lucas talked to Arrica about becoming a private consultant for Pelius Research.  Arrica flatly refused the request, forcing Lucas to remain in charge of research and development.

  "I don't care what you do," Arrica said, "just keep the ideas flowing."

  "You don't care what I do?  Are you sure?" Lucas said.  "Can I get that on paper?"

  "Never."   

  "Arrica, I need to know one other thing."

  "What?"

  "I know that your time spent with Basil has affected you a great deal.  Over the past few weeks, I've started to worry about you.  I'm worried about your focus."

  "No, Lucas, you're worried about Talbot, as usual."  Arrica fell into her chair and exhaled.  "And you know what?  I don't want to think about Talbot as the ultimate goal anymore.  I mean, we're better off where we are, right now, out of the spotlight."

  Anxiety, like rising water, filled Lucas's chest and throat.  "I disagree, Arrica.  I think we need to undercut them a few additional times before the playing field is level.  Injure them, just once or twice more."

  "Well, that's a nice segueway toward something I wanted to talk to you about, Mr. Perth.  I've heard you've been applying grease to a propaganda machine outside of Pelius.  I was told that someone saw you, Lucas, making a little drop-off one night.  Anything you want to tell me about that?"

  Lucas shook his head.  "No."

  "Fine.  Then Talbot will remain a non-issue.  If I hear anything else about your side-projects, I will put an end to it.  Understood?"

  Wrong, Lucas thought, but smiled and nodded.  He said, "Maybe I could buy you dinner and we could talk about it."

  "Dinner sounds fine, but two things will no longer be discussed," she said.  "The first is Talbot.  The second is that night in my office.  If you ever say anything about that night, I will feed you your tongue.  That night was a mistake, but I hold no grudge toward you regarding it.  Just know: it will never happen again."

  "Sure thing, mum's the word."  Lucas smiled. 

  The friendship between Lucas and Arrica was over, but the business relationship kept up appearances.  As time went on, Lucas separated from her, but she still accepted advice from him and he offered more than she solicited.  The softer version of Arrica was still a bulldog.  She never backed down from any challenge, just as Lucas expected of her.  That was the reason he selected her.  She kept things in shape, always had a plan, and stayed terribly proactive through it all.  When she seemed defeated by a media attack or a bad business deal, she knew how to cry on demand.  She mastered the art of acting, learned how to win friends and influence people, and exercised the seven effective habits without seeming cutthroat to the world outside.  She took what was available, usi
ng defeats to stage an angle to recovery, and never became dirty in skirmishes.  She kept her hands bloodless and clean.

  Lucas kept the knife at the ready.  With Arrica providing sound bytes for the public, he kept a master inventory of employee and competitor weaknesses.  He found it a terrifying joy to watch his opponents fall into formations of mutual annihilation.  Rather than spark the fuses, Lucas wired the bridge and told his enemies how to destroy it.  He knew how to hold his tongue when provoked, to stoop in false subordination when helpless, and to attack along the appropriate avenue when the hour was ripe.  

  Even if Arrica knew about the seedy side of Pelius - and Lucas saw in her gray eyes that she understood - she pretended to keep her head in the sand, only pulling it out to look fierce for the cameras.  Her strength was in her silly beliefs about Conrado, justice, the American way, hard work, the Lone Ranger, baseball and apple pie.  For Lucas that was fine, as long as she wanted power, and as long as the Pelius comet kept moving, so that one day Lucas could slay the old boss, take the reigns from the cold, dead hands, and rise like twice the juggernaut.