Balance of Power Shifted (18 page)

Walking down the street with Fiona on his arm was about as good as it go
t Rico thought.  It was amazing how comfortable he was with her and as if he had never left. No it was better than it was before, however he couldn’t place why.  Fiona was leading him to a local tavern that served a great steak or even a lobster tail if that was what one’s desire was and served 20 different beers from tap.  The building was an older stone structure and maintained its rustic look inside.  Although crowded, we were able to get a nice quiet table in less than 5 minutes.  We ordered the same German wheat beer or Weiss beer, which came in tall glasses.  We tapped the bottoms of our glasses in a toast and both said prost!  Before I showed Fiona what I had worked on, I asked her to give me the details on what happened at her job today and what her thoughts were since the weekend.  She relayed how she went in to see both owners of the company to give her notice and mentioned that she had an opportunity to get in business with some good friends that it looked really promising.  They had asked what type of business it was, and she had to beg off on answering due to confidentiality reasons.  They had asked her if she could give more notice and she said unfortunately that she could not.  “Have you had any second thoughts about joining the company?” I softly probed. No way, she responded.  The more I’ve thought about this the more amazed I am at what you and Bill are doing. It is so sick, sick, sick.  I can’t wait to get started.”

After we ordered dinner
, a three pound lobster for Fiona and a rib eye steak for me, I pulled out my iPad and with my cellular connection started showing her the properties in order of the ones I liked the most.  After looking at four properties, she stopped me and told me “why look any further, the first was by far the best building for our current needs.”  She then listed of 10 different reasons why it was the best, which was verbatim to what I had written down in my notes.  When I laughed, she looked up and asked me why I was laughing.  I told her that this was a test, and she picked the same building I had for the same exact reasons.  She raised her right hand for a quick high five and told me to go nail it down.  With business out of the way, we ended up having a romantic evening.  A single musician played an acoustic guitar on and off during the meal with good renditions of a number well known favorites.

On the way back to Fiona’s
place, we detoured past the building she chose.  If we had not been sure earlier about the choice, we were 100 percent certain now.  It was really a nice looking building in an idyllic location. 

It was a crisp June night with temperatures in the
upper 50’s.  Fiona leaned in closer to me for warmth and we continued to saunter along until we came to her place.  Without a word, we walked directly to her room.  When the morning sun came up, we lay there intertwined under a cocoon of blankets.  As I watched her, Fiona opened her eyes, saw me checking her out and formed her lips into a soft smile.  I was just leaning in to kiss her when her eyes opened wide and she literally jumped out of bed. “Shit! I forgot to set the alarm,” she said.  For the next 10 minutes, she was a whirlwind of motion and flew around the place in an effort make work on time.  Fiona liked to be punctual and if someone was giving you a paycheck, she felt compelled to do the best job possible at all times.  This trait is one of the many reasons we got along so well.  If she gave her word on something, neither hell nor high water was going to get in her way.  As she headed out the door, she tossed over her shoulder that we were going to have dinner at her parents and she wanted to pick up Fred, who I realized I had completely forgotten about.

It
was not until nine, that I could get hold of the commercial realtor representing the building management group.  He agreed to meet me at the building around 11:30.  Even though the building was open during construction, there were insurance rules limiting unescorted people walking around.  When I walked up for our meeting at 11:28, Calvin was waiting for me.  He was somewhat young and a little nervous when we shook hands.  I found him very knowledgeable about the building details and I think he had a calculator in his head as he provided me dollar amounts for different scenarios presented.  An hour and a half later, I had agreed to sign a 5-year lease for the first floor and I did the same for the second floor where the server room resided under that condition that the server room area was ready at the same time we took possession of the ground floor.  We also agreed that Efficio would have first option on the remaining floors.  Each additional floor would reduce the square foot price from 29 dollars a square foot to eventually $27.25 a square foot.  Calvin still had to run it by the owners, but felt confident they would agree.

Next,
I took a drive out to Julius’s office where I met Iris and Julius and signed some incorporation and insurance documents.  While there, we conferenced Bill in and Iris gave him instructions on signing papers faxed to him.  I took the opportunity to fill everyone in on the building status, which surprised everyone on how quick it was completed. When they saw it online and I filled them in on some of the other details they all agreed it was a great choice.  After Bill faxed back the documents, he gave us a quick rundown on his Hummer project.  He had ordered parts from a firm specializing in vehicle conversions to electric and they had provided a general systematic plan, for a charge of course, on how to do a conversion.  Otherwise, everything was going well, and as we were speaking, Steve was at 30,000 feet on his way out there.  Steve got a 2 week paid vacation from his employer since they automatically released employees giving notice for security reasons. Just before we signed off, Iris informed us that Efficio would be a corporate reality with the filing of papers tomorrow.

Jeremy and I met at Newark Airport since he was going to catch a shuttle up to Boston t
o talk to another client.   Jeremy handed me the fully executed non-disclosure form I had sent him earlier, which Julius wanted me to have in place prior to providing Jeremy with the details.   Using my iPad, I gave him part of the presentation given to everyone else.  At the end, he gloomily said, “Mike, you and Bill might as well have a bright red bulls eye painted on your behinds and your friends won’t be much better off. Everyone will want a piece of you or bury you six feet under.  I would not wait to put in some intense security measures up front and especially before you go public.  Let me talk to some of my team members who specialize in this sort of work and get back to you.”  Thanks Jeremy, we appreciate you getting back to us so quickly.  He laughed and said “I hope you feel that way after you get our bill.”

Later that evening while hanging out I Fiona’s parents, I was introduced to Fred.  He
was this lovable ball of energy and took to me right away.  Her parents were very interested in our venture, and understood we could not go into specific details.  We didn’t mention how dangerous it might turn out for obvious reasons.  I speculated to myself that this dinner at Fiona’s parents place may be the last quiet moment I would have for a long time.

There was a constant stream of documents from Julius and Iris
requiring review and signatures.  I was also busy securing office furniture and computer needs.  Once Fiona freed up from her previous employer, she was instrumental in hiring administrative staff.  When Kristen and Taylor came on board, they used their business and accounting degrees to get us off to a great start.  Taylor became our human resources department and Kristen our finance department.  Fiona became our Chief Information Officer and together we designed our computer network, secure corporate email system and extranet for building our company website.  Sean ended up heading out to California to work with Bill and Steve.  Sean had a degree in mechanical engineering and a minor in electrical engineering and Bill wanted Sean’s expertise out there ASAP.  Steve, our resident microbiologist, took ownership of studying Electricus and Bill and I decided to fill him in on everything except the discovery and reproductive details.

Towards the end of July, Taylor, Fiona and I took a trip out west to my place so they could see firsthand the lab and prototypes.  Bill had informed me that th
ey had the Hummer running but where working out a few problems.  Bill and I believed the team could use a change of pace since everyone was working long-hours and this trip could do just that.  Kristen was going to hold down the fort at the new headquarters building. Iris and Julius had already gone out West the week before and had come back excitedly talking about what they had seen and leaving the others a little envious. 

We landed
around three in the afternoon and Bill was supposed to be waiting for us.  We did not see him out front of the airport so I texted him about his ETA.  Bill immediately returned my text message to say that he was in the airport complex and would be pulling up to the arrival area in a minute.  The others were not aware of the significance of the somewhat strange looking Hummer driving up to the curb, but I near peed in my pants with excitement as I saw it.  The front hood and roof caught my attention first because it was not shiny black like the rest of the vehicle.  Instead, it had a gel like shield on the surfaces with chrome trim around the edges.  The look may not have been as nice as the original, but the team had done a great job integrating the Power Mat into the surfaces of the Hummer.

Bill was eagerly watching the faces the team
as he drove up.  It was obvious by Rico’s dumbfounded look that he had figured it our as soon as he saw the Hummer.  The others began to get a quizzical look when the huge vehicle pulled to the curb with no more sound than an almost imperceptible whir.  He saw Fiona look at Rico’s expression, and she realized what was going on.  With a clap of her hands, she excitedly turned to Taylor and filled him in.  Bill, filled with a sense of satisfaction from witnessing the effect of his surprise on his friends, jumped out to open the back door for the luggage. 

After hugs all
around, I pulled Rico aside and said, “It’s tricky to drive until you learn all the controls so if you don’t mind I’ll drive back.”  Rico wrapped an arm around my shoulders and said, “Bill you outdid yourself, the Hummer looks great but how does it drive?”  “Better than I expected” I said.  “The acceleration is not as fast as the big V8 that was in it, but darn good.”  During the ride back to the lab, I kept stealing glances at all the passengers to gauge their reactions and was not disappointed.  Fiona and Taylor asked a million questions, while Rico paid attention to the controls and gauges in the vehicle.  The quiet of the truck is amazing Bill thought. After driving it all week he felt it performed better than he led on to Rico.  The dual electric motors were powerful and the Power Pad provided full juice even on a moonless night.

Rico was excited to be pulling up to his home for the previous two years, but not in the way he expected.  The last few weeks living with Fiona were about the most enjoyable he had ever experienced
.  They were so in tune with each other and easily slipped into doing things as a couple instead of individually. The recent excitement helped re-enforce for everyone what the company’s end goals were.  The Hummer experience was a fantastic exclamation point on what he wanted to accomplish, which was to give the management team a hands on feel to Electricus.  Fiona was in the back and I heard her say, “So this is Chez Rico.  I thought it would be a little more glamorous from what I heard about it,” she said has she lightly punched me on my shoulder.  “Don’t worry,” I replied, “it has some unique amenities inside as you shall see.”

Bill pulled into one of the garage bays and shut the doors once inside.  As everyone piled out, Sean and Steve came over and
initiated the hugging process all over again.  Steve and Sean looked like they were having a lot of fun.  Bill had told me that they were naturals and liked to think out of the box.  He thought that they probably would have worked free if we had wanted it so.  While Bill gave the grand tour of the place, I decided to head out to the market and get the ingredients for a celebratory barbecue.  Fiona asked me if I wanted her to come along, but I could see she was looking forward to the tour so I said “no need, but if you want to help me cook later, I would take you up on that.”  She smiled and said, “You got a deal.”

We were all sitting around on the roof an hour or two after a fantastic barbecue that included flank steak, shrimp kabobs and chicken.  We had already killed four bottles of wine and
many beers. However, nothing could slow the conversation down which had migrated to how pervasive Electricus could be.  We had mostly determined that Electricus was useable under almost every scenario that electricity is used and many applications where fossil fuels provided energy.  Bill and Sean had already refined the Power Pad and Power Module and made some significant design changes, while Steve and Bill had optimized the reproduction of Electricus and had four fifty-gallon drums ready for production.  By the end of the night, we had voted to retrofit two more cars and four homes of family members to gain design experience and get prototypes out there so we can collect more data on their operations.  We all said good night around midnight and agreed to have a 10 am meeting to discuss other company business and Jeremy was coming by at eleven to give the team an overview of security precautions that were in progress.

Fiona and I headed to my room.  Steve had been using it and
had moved out to one of the couches in the living room, which was starting to look like a homeless shelter due to use as an impromptu bedroom.  We grabbed a shower together where she said to me, “your place is really neat and I am suitably impressed.  Now I can see why you ignored us for two years.”  I simply said, “This place is nice but it’s the company that makes a place feel right and to me your place is paradise at this time.”  “Good answer,” she said and gave me one of the long sensuous kisses that weakened my knees.  We were exhausted from the long day and the effects of the time change and fell asleep immediately.