THREE MONTHS AFTER MY FIRST CAR DASHBOARD PRODUCT launched, I brought out an even better, premium version. One that featured real-time updates. It was a big improvement. Customers loved it. I made a lot more money as a result. But as I stood in my kitchen that afternoon, listening to Carolyn’s tires crunching angrily across the gravel on our driveway, I couldn’t help but picture how my life would look now if it was displayed on the upgraded system. The “marriage” needle would be moving before my eyes, winding back from green to amber. But no farther. Not all the way to red. Maybe I’d been wrong about our issues. Maybe they weren’t as far behind us as I’d thought, but our marriage was fundamentally strong. It would survive. Carolyn would be back, once her rage had burned itself out. I mean, she’d literally left the door open. How much more symbolic could she have been?
I had no idea how long Carolyn would be gone—she’d never done anything as extreme as this before—but it made sense to take advantage of the time she’d given me. Especially now that there’d be no tequila-fueled distractions in my path. So, I went to my study, pulled out the memory sticks, and fired up my computer. I was excited. I didn’t know if I could really turn my vision into reality, but if I succeeded, it would be nothing short of the Burj Khalifa of analytical tools. It would etch my name into the competitive intelligence landscape forever. But to change the game that dramatically—whether you’re talking about architecture or software design—you need to build on solid foundations. I knew that how I approached these first steps was absolutely critical. And that by leaving me in peace to concentrate, whether she’d meant to or not, Carolyn had done me a huge favor.
Like most big ideas, mine was actually incredibly simple. The seed had been planted in my mind at AmeriTel’s headquarters over the weekend, when I was putting the finishing touches to a new report I’d created. The report contained a ton of dynamite information, but my heart sank when I pictured myself presenting it to AmeriTel’s board. It would be the same old story—their two-minute pretense of paying attention, followed by increasingly feeble attempts at disguising their boredom while one vital detail after another sailed over their empty heads. The anticipation was weighing me down until it gave way to a momentary fantasy—the thought of walking into the boardroom with a cappuccino in my hand instead of a sheaf of handouts saying, Nothing to worry about this week, guys, and then just leaving. Because it struck me: Ultimately, most people don’t give a damn about details. Busy people, anyway. They just want confirmation that things are OK, or a warning if they’re not. I’d known that instinctively when I created the Car Dashboard system, but now I thought, why not take it a step further? Why not take it all the way to its logical conclusion? What if I put an attention-grabbing object in the office of every director and every manager in the country? It could be anything. A glass sphere. A sculpture. A football-team mascot. The frame around the obligatory family photograph. And with no human interaction at all, the whole thing would change color, foreseeing the future like a twenty-first century oracle.
I pictured a CEO’s office: A meeting in progress. Four or five of the company’s top people sitting around a table, arguing. A crystal globe in the center, glowing softly. The whole thing a warm, reassuring green. Then it changes to red. The debate stops, mid-sentence. They know they have a problem. But where do they go to uncover the source? What can give them the exact information they need to fix things before it’s too late?
One thing will be able to. And one thing only. My new software.
Like most ideas that don’t seem complicated on the surface, mine was going to be fiendishly complex when I stripped it down to the nuts and bolts. But that knowledge only encouraged me. I actually have a version of JFK’s words from 1962 in a frame on my wall: We choose to do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. So, I did what I always do when I’m starting something new. I glanced up at that quotation for inspiration. Then I rolled up my sleeves and started pounding on the keyboard.
IT TOOK ME JUST over four hours to come up with a first pass for the basic algorithms I figured I was going to need. Some parts were taken from products I’d created before. Some parts were new. They were cobbled together into a very bare skeleton, and it was going to take weeks more work to even get close to fleshing the whole thing out. But the first step had been taken. Now it was time to run the initial batch of tests, which would tell me what to do next. This is where the data’s needed, so I plugged in one of the memory sticks. I drained it dry, and was about to add the files from the second when I paused. I’d already given the system hundreds of millions of bytes to chew on. That was enough at this early stage. More would just slow things down. It was time to cross my fingers and roll the dice.
When you click the mouse and set a prototype running, you don’t just trigger a program in a computer. You trigger a series of emotions in yourself. And they always go the same way. First, elation, that you’ve taken a tangible step toward your goal. Then anticipation, because you’ll soon see how big that step is. And finally impatience, because once the machine starts to run, there’s nothing for you to do till it spits out its results. Depending on the complexity of the job, that can take anything from a few merciful minutes to several torturous hours.
This job was a large one. It was going to take a while.
To distract myself, I generally use the time to think of a working name for the project. I got up from my desk and a stream of random titles floated through my head as I made my way through the house in search of coffee. Avenger came to mind, as I mulled over the events of the day. Or Backstabber, I thought, picturing Roger LeBrock’s lying face. Maybe The Towering Inferno, looking ahead to AmeriTel’s inevitable fate. But then, when I reached the kitchen and saw a dirty mug Carolyn had left on the countertop, I had a flash of inspiration. Traitor. She’d always wanted me to name a project after her. What better time to make her wish come true?
I picked up Carolyn’s mug, uncertain whether to put it in the dishwasher or throw it in the trash, then I saw what was inside it. The dregs of black coffee. Normally Carolyn took her coffee white. She only skipped the milk when she was particularly stressed. Or if we’d run out. I looked in the fridge, and found two cartons. One was half full, the other unopened. Both were fresh. That meant she must have been really suffering as she waited for me to get home.
How many times had I come in and found her sitting on the stairs, overcome with anguish? It was always something trivial—a ding in her car, a disaster in the kitchen, buyer’s remorse over another extravagant purchase—but the words would come tumbling out so fast it often took a while to understand what she’d actually done. I never cared, though. Seeing her smile chase away the tears as she unburdened herself made anything forgivable. Until that day, when the mold had been broken.
I replayed Carolyn’s last words in my mind, wishing I’d been smart enough to say something before she’d walked out, and the idea of talking to her prompted another thought: After she left I’d gone straight to the study to start work. I didn’t take the time to switch my phone off silent. What if she’d been trying to call? Wanting to patch things up, but put off by my failure to answer?
I whipped my phone out of my pocket, terrified of finding a screen full of missed calls. And when I saw there’d only been one, I somehow felt even worse. I hesitated for a moment, then—like a wounded man desperate for the coup de grâce, even if it had to be self-inflicted—I hit the Voicemail key.
The message began with several seconds of silence. Had she called my number by mistake? I pictured her phone lying unattended in her purse, and her going about her business with no desire to speak to me and no knowledge that the line was even open. But then, as my thumb was reaching for the End button, I heard Carolyn’s voice. It was shaky, like she was struggling to keep her tone neutral, and her words were brief. She wanted to meet. To talk. To see if we could put things right. She suggested a time and a place, and I almost dropped the phone in my haste to check my watch, suddenly convinced I was already too late.
The restaurant she’d named was a half hour away. She was going to be there in twenty minutes. I headed straight for the door. And hoped there wouldn’t be too many traffic cops in the area that night.