With my studying done for the day, and two days until my meeting in the park, I set off for Kung Fu and spent a few hours both assisting and practicing, before returning home for a late dinner with dad.
Having gone to bed early on Friday night, I woke up early on Saturday and decided that more studying could wait. Outside of my window showed a beautiful day taking shape, with the sun just making its way up over the trees. It would be too hot to go biking later on in the day, but right now I could see the trees swaying slightly in an early morning breeze. After taking a few minutes to get ready, I quickly and quietly made my way to the garage and got my bike. I slipped into R2 to get out of the garage without making any noise and returned to reality once I was clear.
My usual route took me to school, where I like to ride several circuits around the track. At a quarter of a mile around, eight fast laps gave me a good warm up and I felt ready to move on. The university was my next stop. Although half the fun of hanging around the university was seeing the hive of activity as the students went about their day, riding around the quad and having the place mostly to myself also had its charms. Only a few hard-core early morning joggers crossed into my view, as I rode past the library and the Roark Geology Center.
The center reminded me of my tour last year with Mark and that in turn brought to mind the last time I’d seen Mark. It was only a week ago, when Mark had brought over all those papers for me to sign. I remember being so excited about signing the official papers to start up the Hannah Foundation.
When dad got home, he got a little misty eyed and told me again how my mom would have loved what I was doing. However, when I showed him employment papers, Dad had flatly refused to sign them. Dad’s signature was necessary because I’m still a minor. I’d be turning 17 in less than two months and starting my senior year of high school at the end of the summer.
“What’s wrong with the employment contract, daddy?”, I asked him when he refused to sign it. “Isn’t it just a formality? Jake wouldn’t try to cheat me out of any money that he owed me and the money isn’t much compared to what the auction for the gemstones is going to bring in.”
“Abby, you always have to be very careful with contracts, especially when they are between friends. You need to read contracts very carefully and understand what is being given by both sides. I’m sure that Jake isn’t intentionally trying to cheat you. His lawyers probably told him that they needed you to be an employee in order to satisfy their insurance requirements for you being on the trip. It makes sense and, in most cases, I’d have signed it already. The tricky part here is that the employer-employee relationship has certain legal implications. As an employee, anything that you discover while you’re an employee of McKenzie Resources would technically belong to them. You couldn’t use it for your own benefit.”
“But that’s what I’m going on the trip for. To help them decide on which potential mine site is better.” I still wasn’t seeing the problem and I was a little confused.
“That’s true, Abby. Jake wants to hire you to give your feelings about which mine site would have more potential. I’ve known that you could sense things about metals ever since you first brought me an ingot in my forge and told me that it wasn’t good. Jake knows it too. He saw what you did in finding the gemstones and believes that your ‘land sense’ will give you insights that will be useful in making his decision. I think he’s very astute and for the cost of using up an extra seat on his plane and your contract, he’s doesn’t have much to lose. The problem starts when you discover something in one of his existing mines that you’ll be visiting or if your sensing of metals leads you to other information that might be useful for McKenzie Resources. Under the employment contract, that information would belong to the company and you couldn’t negotiate with them to get more money for that information.”
“I like Mark and Jake. If I found out something that could help them, I’d be happy to share it with them for free. I’m mostly going on the trip to learn about mining and because I think it might be fun.”, I said.
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“That’s good. I was really hoping that it didn’t have anything to do with you finding Mark to be attractive.” Dad’s matter of fact tone and the sudden shift in the conversation caught me off guard and I barely managed a weak denial.
“Dad, he’s four years older than I am. He’s like an old man already, well past his prime.” I felt the heat of my blush and knew that I wasn’t fooling him.
“Uh huh. I read somewhere that young women your age seemed to have a preference for college men. I must be misremembering what I read.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere playing defense with dad. Time to go on the attack. “Don’t worry, dad. By the time someone gets to be your age, their head is full of so much information that it’s hard to keep everything straight. It’s not dementia or anything. I hope.” At that, dad gave me his ‘one-eyebrow raised look’ and sipped his coffee.
“Getting back to the contract”, dad continued, “let’s see if I can explain it another way. Do you remember the terms of my contract with Galt University? Specifically, the ones about any art that I produce?”, dad asked.
“Sure. Any art of sculpture that you make belongs to both you and the university and sales are split with 90% going to you and 10% going to the university. They don’t even charge you a fee if they’re the ones selling your art.”
“Good, Abby. Think about that for a moment. I am an employee of the university and I am creating that art on their premises, using their tools and their supplies. Why didn’t they insist on keeping all of the sales revenue?”
“Because that wouldn’t be fair to you. You’re taking basic materials and using your skill and knowledge to turn it into something that people are willing pay a lot of money for. Your reputation, that you’ve spent your whole life building, is a big reason that people buy the art. Over time, as your reputation grows, so does the prestige of the university that can claim you as one of their faculty. If you didn’t get a good portion of the sale, then why would you even make any art there at all?”.
“Exactly. My abilities add value to their raw materials. The university recognizes my value and they pay me accordingly. The same is true for what you can do for McKenzie Resources. You may be adding value and you need to recognize that. Have you taken the time to look at how much money a successful mine can bring in or how much money it takes to start up a mine? The sums are astounding. We sometimes hear in the news about huge corporate mergers of pharmaceutical companies or financial businesses that total between two and five billion dollars. In the mining industry, those sums are the norm. Sometimes setting up a single mine, along with all of its components, can cost between half a billion and five billion dollars.
If you’re simply going to tell Jake that you ‘feel’ that mine A is better than mine B, then this contract is fine, as it will help establish your credibility and reputation. But I think that you have the capacity to do more than that. I think that your ability can give him specific details about each property. Perhaps you’ll sense another deposit on his property or on another nearby property, or any other useful information. If that’s the case, then you’ll need to be able to charge for those extra services and get paid adequately. Even though you’re his friend, he should pay you what you’re worth. Harry Kronin is my friend and he made sure that his offer to me paid me for my value. Jake should do the same. Working with or for friends can be fun, but it’s usually a fast way to lose those friends, if proper care isn’t taken in the beginning.” Dad finished his speech and handed me the contract.
There was no way that I was going to ignore dad’s advice. I sat down at the kitchen table and started going over the contract line by line. When I finished, dad and I talked about what needed to be changed and I sent the contract back for McKenzie lawyers to make the changes. Besides transforming my words into legalese, they accepted all the changes.
I played dad’s monologue over and over in my mind as I rode away from the university and headed towards downtown. Dad only had the vaguest notion of one of my abilities, yet he had come up with several ways that I could add value to McKenzie Resources. Imagine how helpful he’d be if he knew about all my true abilities. By keeping everything a secret, I was losing out on some excellent advice from dad. I also hated lying to him. That’s not the kind of relationship that I’d had with him throughout my life. Maybe it was time to re-evaluate my decision to keep it all a secret. Why was I keeping my power a secret anyways? I know dad would never tell anyone, so it wasn’t that. I just..wasn’t ready.
I spend the rest of my bike ride considering dad’s suggestions of how to add value and how I could go about putting them into practice. By the time I got home, I had a mental list of what I needed, and I spent some time searching online for what was readily available. I had a feeling that I might need Howie’s expert procurement skills again. It’s a goo thing that I was already scheduled to meet up with him tomorrow.