Cory Doctorow - Makers

“What’s up?”

He sighed and cracked his knuckles. “Might as well tell you now as tomorrow morning. I’m resigning.”

She felt a flash of anger and then forced it down and forcibly replaced it with professional distance and curiosity. Mentally she licked her pencil-tip and flipped to a blank page in her reporter’s notebook.

“Oh yes?”

“I’ve had another offer, in Westchester County. Westinghouse has spun out its own version of Kodacell and they’re looking for a new vice-president to run the division. That’s me.”

“Good job,” she said. “Congratulations, Mr Vice-President.”

He shook his head. “I emailed Kettlewell half an hour ago. I’m leaving in the morning. I’m going to say goodbye to the guys over breakfast.”

“Not much notice,” she said.

“Nope,” he said, a note of anger creeping into his voice. “My contract lets Kodacell fire me on one day’s notice, so I insisted on the right to quit on the same terms. Maybe Kettlewell will get his lawyers to write better boilerplate from here on in.”

When she had an angry interview, she habitually changed the subject to something sensitive: angry people often say more than they intend to. She did it instinctively, not really meaning to psy-ops Tjan, whom she thought of as a friend, but not letting that get in the way of the story. “Westinghouse is doing what, exactly?”

“It’ll be as big as Kodacell’s operation in a year,” he said. “George Westinghouse personally funded Tesla’s research, you know. The company understands funding individual entrepreneurs. I’m going to be training the talent scouts and mentoring the financial people, then turning them loose to sign up entrepreneurs for the Westinghouse network. There’s a competitive market for garage inventors now.” He laughed. “Go ahead and print that,” he said. “Blog it tonight. There’s competition now. We’re giving two points more equity and charging half a point less on equity than the Kodacell network.”

“That’s amazing, Tjan. I hope you’ll keep in touch with me — I’d love to follow your story.”

“Count on it,” he said. He laughed. “I’m getting a week off every eight weeks to scout Russia. They’ve got an incredible culture of entrepreneurship.”

“Plus you’ll get to see your kids,” Suzanne said. “That’s really good.”

“Plus, I’ll get to see my kids,” he admitted.

“How much money is Westinghouse putting into the project?” she asked, replacing her notional notebook with a real one, pulled from her purse.

“I don’t have numbers, but they’ve shut down the whole appliances division to clear the budget for it.” She nodded — she’d seen news of the layoffs on the wires. Mass demonstrations, people out of work after twenty years’ service. “So it’s a big budget.”

“They must have been impressed with the quarterlies from Kodacell.”

Tjan folded down the flaps on his box and drummed his fingers on it, squinting at her. “You’re joking, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Suzanne, they were impressed by you. Everyone knows that quarterly numbers are easy to cook — anything less than two annual reports is as likely to be enronning as real fortune-making. But your dispatches from here — they’re what sold them. It’s what’s convincing everyone. Kettlewell said that three quarters of his new recruits come on board after reading your descriptions of this place. That’s how I ended up here.”

She shook her head. “That’s very flattering, Tjan, but — ”

He waved her off and then, surprisingly, came around the desk and hugged her. “But nothing, Suzanne. Kettlewell, Lester, Perry — they’re all basically big kids. Full of enthusiasm and invention, but they’ve got the emotional maturity and sense of scale of hyperactive five year olds. You and me, we’re grownups. People take us seriously. It’s easy to get a kid excited, but when a grownup chimes in you know there’s some there there.”

Suzanne recovered herself after a second and put away her notepad. “I’m just the person who writes it all down. You people are making it happen.”

“In ten years’ time, they’ll remember you and not us,” Tjan said. “You should get Kettlewell to put you on the payroll.”

Kettlewell himself turned up the next day. Suzanne had developed an intuitive sense of the flight-times from the west coast and so for a second she couldn’t figure out how he could possibly be standing there — nothing in the sky could get him from San Jose to Miami for a seven AM arrival.

“Private jet,” he said, and had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Kodak had eight of them and Duracell had five. We’ve been trying to sell them all off but no one wants a used jet these days, not even Saudi princes or Columbian drug-lords.”

“So, basically, it was going to waste.”

He smiled and looked eighteen — she really did feel like the only grownup sometimes — and said, “Zackly — it’s practically environmental. Where’s Tjan?”

“Downstairs saying goodbye to the guys, I think.”

“OK,” he said. “Are you coming?”

She grabbed her notebook and a pen and beat him out the door of her rented condo.

“What’s this all about,” Tjan said, looking wary. The guys were hangdog and curious looking, slightly in awe of Kettlewell, who did little to put them at their ease — he was staring intensely at Tjan.

“Exit interview,” he said. “Company policy.”

Tjan rolled his eyes. “Come on,” he said. “I’ve got a flight to catch in an hour.”

“I could give you a lift,” Kettlewell said.

“You want to do the exit interview between here and the airport?”

“I could give you a lift to JFK. I’ve got the jet warmed up and waiting.”

Sometimes, Suzanne managed to forget that Kodacell was a multi-billion dollar operation and that Kettlewell was at its helm, but other times the point was very clear.

“Come on,” he said, “we’ll make a day of it. We can stop on the way and pick up some barbecue to eat on the plane. I’ll even let you keep your seat in the reclining position during take-off and landing. Hell, you can turn your cell-phone on — just don’t tell the Transport Security Administration!”

Tjan looked cornered, then resigned. “Sounds good to me,” he said and Kettlewell shouldered one of the two huge duffel-bags that were sitting by the door.

“Hi, Kettlewell,” Perry said.

Kettlewell set down the duffel. “Sorry, sorry. Lester, Perry, it’s really good to see you. I’ll bring Suzanne back tonight and we’ll all go out for dinner, OK?”

Suzanne blinked. “I’m coming along?”

“I sure hope so,” Kettlewell said.

Perry and Lester accompanied them down in the elevator.

“Private jet, huh?” Perry said. “Never been in one of those.”

Kettlewell told them about his adventures trying to sell off Kodacell’s private air force.

“Send one of them our way, then,” Lester said.

“Do you fly?” Kettlewell said.

“No,” Perry said. “Lester wants to take it apart. Right, Les?”

Lester nodded. “Lots of cool junk in a private jet.”

“These things are worth millions, guys,” Kettlewell said.

“No, someone paid millions for them,” Perry said. “They’re worth whatever you can sell them for.”

Kettlewell laughed. “You’ve had an influence around here, Tjan,” he said. Tjan managed a small, tight smile.

Kettlewell had a driver waiting outside of the building who loaded the duffels into the spacious trunk of a spotless dark town-car whose doors chunked shut with an expensive sound.

“I want you to know that I’m really not angry at all, OK?” Kettlewell said.