Undo by Joe Hutsko (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

Peter clicked the print button on the computer screen. The laser printer on his desk hummed. A few moments later the revised company organization chart rolled out of the printer.

Nowhere in the drawing did Matthew Locke’s name appear.

In tomorrow’s board meeting, Peter intended to surprise the team by proposing his newly drawn organization. Peter himself would temporarily fill the president-and-CEO slot until a qualified replacement was found. Though Peter had spent little time with the members of his executive staff over the past few months, he knew that they had faith in him. He was their leader, the company’s crown jewel. In founding his company he had founded an industry, one that had made every member of his senior executive staff a multimillionaire. Without a doubt, their loyalties rested with him. Any other possibility never occurred to him; he had too many more significant issues to contend with, like leaky batteries.

Leaving his office, Peter stopped for a moment to appreciate the sharp and elegant lines of the Joey prototype resting on the shelf beside his desk. In just two months, according to his plan, the world would finally benefit from his original Joey vision: the new Joey Plus. His plan for providing the Joey engineering group with more engineers was precisely what was going to move it off his shelf and onto buyers’ desktops.

Peter’s secretary Peggy looked past her computer screen as she heard his office door close.

“I’m leaving for the day,” he said.

Peggy had worked for Peter since the company began. She had been nineteen years old then, a year younger than Peter, and one of the first employees in the company. Like Peter, she had attained massive wealth when the company had had its public stock offering. She wore a colorful Wallaby T-shirt and jeans, and one would never guess that this young woman, worth slightly more than one million dollars, was executive assistant to the man who had started the fastest growing new market in the computer industry. However, looking at Peter’s longish hair, customary faded blue jeans and Oxford shirt, would anyone guess that he was worth eight hundred million dollars?

Before heading to his car, Peter decided it wouldn’t hurt to bolster his confidence in his plan by checking the status of a few key Joey Plus projects.

“How’s it coming?” Peter asked, leaning over an engineer’s shoulder.

“Good,” Paul Trueblood answered. He blew at the trails of smoke that rose before him as he lifted a soldering iron.

“I think I’ve got the battery problem fixed.” The engineer returned his attention to the electronic components scattered about his worktable.

“Great,” Peter said, noticing the pile of tiny batteries beside the main Joey unit. Each was charred with a caramel-colored resin. In the original Joey design the battery was located too close to the power recharger unit, and occasionally the excessive heat caused the battery to leak and burn.

Peter had tremendous faith in Paul and his work, and he was one of the first engineers who had started the company with Peter. The battery problem would be fixed, and thinking about it reminded Peter of a similar problem that Paul had corrected several years ago, in the all-in-one Mate personal computer. Unlike the Joey’s battery, which powered the unit away from the desktop, the Mate’s battery was deep inside the computer, and its sole purpose to keep track of the date and time when the computer was turned off. During extended use, the Mate’s interior would occasionally reach high temperatures, causing the tiny battery to leak. The obvious solution was to install a small cooling fan inside the computer, like every other brand of computer had. But Peter wouldn’t allow it. They said it couldn’t be done, that you couldn’t build a computer without putting in a small noisy fan to keep it cool. “If they say it can’t be done, that’s because they’re not smart enough to figure out a way to do it,” was Peter’s standard reply. That was how Peter Jones challenged his engineers to do the impossible. After two days of no sleep, and having sustained himself on soda and popcorn, Paul had revealed to Peter a design that would cool the machine by natural convection.

Peter leaned in over Paul’s shoulder for a closer look. “I’d sure hate to see us go back to the drawing board on that sweet little power recharger…” he said, hanging a mild warning in the burnt-smelling air of the engineer’s office.

“No problem,” Paul said, and blew out a breath that hinted mild frustration. Not catching the drift, Peter stayed right where he was, perched over the engineer like a hawk. Paul set down the soldering iron and retrieved a Walkman from his drawer. Loading a tape into it, he held the headphones just above his ears and raised his eyebrows at Peter, as if to ask if he had any more comments.

“All right, all right,” Peter said, grinning behind raised palms. “Just making sure we do it right.” He left the engineer with his head bobbing rhythmically through little smoke clouds. It was little triumphs like this that excited Peter, doing things people said couldn’t be done. The engineers were the only people in the company for whom Peter felt any admiration and respect. And, secretly, awe. They were the conveyers of his visions, the ones who possessed the power to turn his radical ideas into real products.

He swung through the software testing lab. Several test engineers, each seated before a prototype Joey Plus, were running system software programs through their paces. The inhabitants were oblivious to his presence as screens rolled and flashed, styluses scribbled and tapped, speakers chirped, and printers printed.

Satisfied that all was rolling according to plan, Peter exited the building and climbed into his BMW coupe. His natural appreciation for simple and beautifully designed products had prompted his decision to make BMW the company car for senior executives. When Matthew had gone out and ordered the exact same style and color coupe for himself, Peter was flattered. Until their friendship curdled. Now he’d begun to wonder if Matthew had only chosen the car because he was trying to prove to the executive staff that he and Peter were in some way equal.

As he drove down Clyde Avenue he passed the many single-story stucco buildings that comprised Wallaby’s international headquarters. Eventually he passed the larger and more corporate-looking three-story sales and marketing building, where Matthew and the other senior executives resided.

Peter preferred to have his office among his engineers rather than on the third floor of the larger corporate building. Though his title was chairman, his job was to create Wallaby’s computers, and to do that, he wanted to be right in the trenches with his team. Especially lately. The last thing he wanted was to have to sit near Matthew Locke. If he had been any closer, he might have taken pity on the man he’d hired, and not gone through with his new plan to remove him from the company.

Leaving the complex, he headed for Highway 280. Waiting for the traffic signal to change, he looked in his rearview mirror at the main corporate building with its Wallaby banner. The Wallaby logo featured a sketched pocket with a baby kangaroo, a joey, poking its head out.

He felt a small gush of pride whenever he looked at the company logo, at the thought of how many pockets he had filled with riches, in how many lives. And though tomorrow he would have to essentially sew shut one of those pockets, he was already beginning to feel the sense of relief that would come very soon, when he regained complete control of the company he had built.