The Gathering Storm
My name is Sam, Sam Iszdat. I used to live in cell 315 H at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution ("Club Fed"). I got caught up in a petty expense account scam at my former company (Ginantonix, a newly owned subsidiary of the ReKlyne! Corporation). I was caught by the love of my life, my high-school sweetheart, Karyn Muhlenberg, a backstabbing witch of an accountant. Then in a weird turn-of-events, I got sprung by ReKlyne! Corporation so that I could help them out of a jam with a patent infringement lawsuit.
Like most folks, I have a web page that tells my story.
Isn't that something? So here I am, Sam Iszdat, high performance microprocessor designer, working for the company that sent me up the river. It's been a few years since then, and I've settled into a bit of a routine. It would be a rut if I weren't so danged happy.
I got married a few months ago. That kinda changes your whole perspective on things. Her name is Janet. She's a dog groomer and owns "Sit Happens", a chain of obedience schools.
We met at one of those adult education classes. I'd read that the best place to meet women who are looking for men was in classes like "auto mechanics". Janet hadn't read that book. But she took "Intro to Gas Welding" just to satisfy a long held desire to join large hunks of metal together. One thing led to another, and -- well -- we bonded. (Sorry.)
The wedding was great. Her friends, my friends, my former cell mates. It made for a pretty bizarre assortment of gifts. (The most unusual: a pre-recorded answering machine message to the tune of "Some Enchanted Evening" sung by a friend of mine from the Big House.) It can be found here.
The wedding and life at home was great. Work was not so bad. Life was good.
So, I was a little surprised when Animal Ryker -- my college room-mate and long-time coworker (For an introduction to Animal Ryker see Book II, Episode 20.) -- barged into my office and said:
"Sam! The cat is out of the bag!"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Don't play coy with me Sam. The cat's out of the bag and its about to hit the fan."
I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded like we were in for another round of "interesting times".
"Animal," I said, "I have no idea what is really going on, but I do know that we'll be told about it soon. Until then, let's go fishing."
And so we did.
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We should have seen this one coming
We went fishing. It was not the best of fishing expeditions. We'd driven out to Lake Wegonadyhea where Janet had a cabin with a dock. Animal knew that I knew something. I knew that I knew something. I also knew that if I told Animal he'd either kill me, or -- under the terms of the non-disclosure agreement -- I'd have to kill him.
So we fished in silence, only broken by speech when the time-honored rituals of fishing demanded it.
"Pass me another beer, will ya?"
We fished for two days.
And on the third day, we ran out of beer. Animal retired to the hammock and I stretched out on the dock and slept like a baby. That is, I awoke screaming and wet. I had rolled off the dock and into the water. So it goes. It was time to drive home.
Janet told us when we got home that we were to attend a meeting that following morning at 8:00 AM. Animal went home to prepare -- the last time he'd been at work at 8:00 AM, it was the end of an all-nighter.
The meeting was a shocker. ReKlyne! had decided that sales of high-end seating and the controllers that I'd been designing for years, couldn't justify the investment. The weasels were bailing out of the business.
But the part that was hardest to swallow was that we were being sold to Leisuretel. The 900 pound gorilla of the seating industry. They'd been trying to break into our market for a few years, but couldn't quite get there. On the other hand, they knew what it took to be successful: money and marketing.
ReKlyne, in its hapless tradition, decided that marketing was just too expensive. We sold high-end seating -- chairs for "dedicated media monitors" (that is, folks who watch wayyy too much TV) and "Sporting Event Premium Seating" (sky box chairs for folks who have wayyy too much money). The sky box market was big for us, 80% market segment share. But the volumes weren't that high, and the story in seating is volume. We just couldn't sell into the dedicated media monitor market where the volume was.
It didn't help that our only advertisements were in magazines that nobody read. (Knot-tier's Quarterly, American Spoon Collector, and QST -- all favorites of our CEO.)
But we all knew that Leisuretel was in it for the long haul. They didn't even HAVE a high end seating system and they'd already spent more in the last two months on advertising than ReKlyne had spent in the last four years.
But Leisuretel had a problem. Their first prototypes were a little late, and had an annoying habit of firing springs across the room due to a few "glitches". The next model was going to be out in about a year, but they needed to have a few more options in the long term. Leisuretel wanted US to design their Mark IV version of their high-end ez-chair.
Animal was very very angry.
I was psyched. I'd loved our line of chairs. I worked on that product line almost from the very beginning. But I was tired of fighting an up-hill battle with corporate management back in East Moosejaw Idaho that was either incompetent or not dedicated to the cause. It was time to work for an organization that had the resources to do the job and was willing to put its money where its butt was -- into seating.
Animal was very very angry.
And he had a right to be.
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