The hotel is fancy. No, not just fancy. Gaudy. Ostentatious. Lots of gold and swirling marble. But Alan and Sheryl were sure that this would be the best optics for the press event in the morning. It’s not what I would have picked on my own, but I trust them.
I catch up to Chad just before he gets on the elevator.
“Hey Chad, got a minute?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. Turning to his girlfriends—yeah, I’m just going to call them girlfriends—he tells them he’ll be right up.
The elevator door closes with them on the other side of it. I walk with Chad across the lobby over to what is probably the fanciest couch I’ve ever seen and sit down. It’s a private corner far from the desk and no one else is nearby.
“What’s up?” he says, acting now as if he has no idea what I’m going to say.
“Chad, remember that time we voted to end Father’s breeding program, and you voted against it, but the rest of all of us voted for it, so the breeding program was supposed to end?”
“Yes, Noah,” he says. His voice is calm but his vitals are showing disdain and contempt. “I do remember that. It was a great example of how I seem to be the only one trying to continue Father’s work and legacy. Thanks for reminding me about your bad decision-making skills. Was there anything else you needed?”
He gives me his obnoxiously smug smile. There’s the old Chad back, the one I always wanted to punch in his too-handsome face.
“Chad, I know what’s in the contracts with your team. It doesn’t take a genius to tell that you’re sleeping with both of your staffers that you brought. Are you trying to break us financially? We don’t have spare funds to cover any babies getting born.”
He pulls himself up to his full height and steps close to me. He’s grown since we were last together and has a couple of inches on me now.
“Noah, what I do with my team is not your concern. You took away the legal team support, so now I can’t get new contracts done. Congratulations. But what was set up under Father’s direction and with his specific approval is none of your business.”
I had forgotten what a total dick Chad can be. I take a breath and force my fists to unclench.
“It’s exactly my business, Chad,” I retort. “What do you think I’ve been doing while you’ve been playing superhero in Africa? I’ve been running the whole business side of the Butler Institute. Your birth contracts call for a ten million dollar payout. Exactly where do you think that money is going to come from?”
He gives me a shocked stare.
“While I have been saving millions of lives in Africa, Noah, you’ve been sitting comfortably at your desk. Maybe we should sell that desk if you’re worried about money. Father left plenty of funds to continue operations, and what I’m doing is exactly what he wanted us all to do. Maybe if you’d get off your ass and start doing some real work, you’d be able to see that.”
His pulse rate is quickening and his blood pressure is rising. Microbeads of sweat are forming on his forehead. He’s even more angry than his tone and words indicate, and he’s got plenty of heat in his voice.
“That’s the thing, Chad,” I say, pushing down my anger. The last thing I need now is an open fight with him. “He didn’t have nearly as much money as you think. Not liquid assets anyway. Most of what he left us was in SynTech stock. Did you happen to see what happened in the financial markets when he died?”
“No, Noah.” His voice goes icy. “I was a little preoccupied with mourning my father and saving the world. I didn’t have a lot of time to sit and read the stock tickers.”
I shake my head. I know he’s not stupid. Just willfully ignorant.
“The company’s stock price tanked, Chad. Even though he hadn’t actively run the company in years, he was still chairman of the board and everyone still thought of him as the visionary behind it all.” I check my index for the SynTech stock price history. “The stock price fell fifty percent the first day. It continued falling every day for the next two months before it started to stabilize. It still hasn’t come close to recovering. Today, it’s worth a tenth of what it was the day before he died.”
“So what? He had a ton in the bank too.”
“You were his right hand man,” I say, exasperated. “How did you never dig into the financials?”
“Because I was focused on what he cared about!” he shouts. A small man behind the counter across the lobby looks our way and I turn my head to glance at him. Chad follows my gaze and lowers his voice. At least he has some sense of discretion. He lowers his voice but doesn’t lose any of the venom in it. “I worked on the Africa project with him before you ever met him. I knew him better than you ever could have. Don’t you dare question me.”
I step back and put up my hands, forcing myself to take a deep breath instead of engaging with him physically. He really is spoiling for a fight.
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“Chad, I’m not questioning your love for Father or your commitment to his cause. I read all the reports, I know exactly what you’ve done. I know that last week you dug 27 wells and put up 96 solar installations serving 9,423 people, and that was with cutting your week short to come out here. I’ve seen the hours you work. I know how many lives you’ve saved. I know that you are doing everything you can to honor his memory. I respect the hell out of you for it.”
That seems to mollify him a little. I’ve never told him about my index and he knows I don’t have a photographic memory, or at least didn’t when I arrived at the Institute, so citing the numbers seems to show him that I’m following his activities closely. His pulse stops rising and levels out.
“But I’m trying to tell you what our real situation is,” I continue, softening my voice and trying hard not to sound patronizing. “Father didn’t have a lot of liquid assets. Those surgeries he was always running off to do? That’s what paid most of the operating budget for the Institute. Most of what he had left when he died went to paying out the mothers that were already pregnant, plus the whole group of frozen sperm babies that we didn’t know about until it was too late.”
“The what?”
“He froze a bunch of sperm at some point. A bunch of women under contract knew about it and took advantage of it before I found out. Ten million a pop. There are still a bunch of sibs that haven’t been born yet. Do you not read the reports every week? I put those together for a reason!”
He looks away.
“We have to cover them all and that drained out most of what Father had left in the bank. The point is, I’ve cut costs as deep as I can and still keep the Institute running the way he wanted it to, but there’s not even enough cash left to get us to the end of next year. 53 weeks from now at our current spend rate. That’s it. That’s how long I have to get enough revenue set up to make us self-sustaining.”
He nods slowly. He opens his mouth for a moment, but closes it without saying anything.
“I’ve got a plan to get it done, but it’s going to be tight,” I continue. “If you get more pregnancies started, that comes right out of the budget. The day your first child is born, I’ll have to sell stock. We only own fifty point one percent of the company. If we sell a single share now, we lose control of the company’s priorities. They’ll start selling Father’s tech to the highest bidder, which you know is probably going to be the military. Or all the militaries in the world. We don’t know, because so far we’ve been able to block them even looking into that. They’ll pull our dev team to projects that make more money. You remember the big plan on Father’s whiteboard? The one to save the world? Your having a baby during the next year means that plan fails.”
He nods again. “I take it we can’t just quietly perform medical miracles for cash? Like he did?”
“No, making money Father’s way isn’t an option. Louise has done the cancer cure thing once, and that was on an otherwise healthy girl who didn’t have any other real options. Older patients tend to have a lot more complications, and even if we wanted to try going down that path, I don’t think his old clientele would trust someone without Father’s reputation. Besides, none of us has the medical degree or the licensing he had, so trying to do it for profit would probably end in a disaster. We’d get sued by the families of anyone who died within months of any procedure we did, whether it was our fault or not.”
He nods again, leaning against one of the lobby’s fancy pillars. His anger is finally fading. He just looks tired now.
“The fastest thing we can get going are our mining operations. The Geologists are good, but they’re not ready to bear the burden of paying for the whole Institute yet. A couple of years though, and they will be. Once we’re running in the black, we can start doing the big split Father wanted, separating the Institute from the company. The stock should have fully rebounded by then. Maybe even shot up, if the new SynTech smartphones that should be on the market by then catch on. But we’ll need to do it slowly, we’ll need to keep control of the essential tech, and we need to do it when the stock price is high and stable.”
He stands quietly for a moment. His pulse and blood pressure continue dropping back towards normal.
“What about your licensing stuff?” he asks, looking at me expectantly. “Won’t that cover costs?”
“That’s already baked into my numbers,” I tell him. “Without it, we would be running out just a few months from now. Just like we would if one of your staffers gets pregnant.”
He sits quietly for a long time.
“So what do you want?” he finally says.
“Two years, Chad. I need two years. I’d rather have five, but I’m trying to be realistic. Then you can go make as many little Butlers as you want with whoever you want. Just don’t get anyone pregnant until then. I don’t know what you have going on with Lucie and Keeya, whether that’s financial or friendly or romantic or what. That’s your business. But for this trip, I’m sure the concierge can get you a box of condoms. Or I can go book you another room.”
He doesn’t answer for a while.
“I’ll think about it,” he says, his rage entirely subsided now.
“Just think with the head up top, not the one down below.”
He smiles. I thought it was worth at least a chuckle.
“Doesn’t matter for a week or two anyway,” he says casually. “Ovulation isn’t due until then for either of them. I’ll think about it, and I’ll talk with them.”
He’s tracking their cycles? So they have been actively trying to conceive. I usually like being right, but I was hoping I was at least a little wrong on this.
“Thanks.”
We take the elevator up together in uncomfortable silence. As the elevator doors open, I’m tempted for a moment to peek into Chad’s room with my bots, but nothing I learn there is going to help, and I really just don’t want to know.
“Good night, brother,” Chad says. “It really is good to see you all again.”
I tell him likewise and turn towards my room. I shut the door and barely notice that my lodgings look like they were meant for royalty. I hope the rest of this trip is easier than tonight was. I scream into my pillow for a little bit then start getting ready for bed.
From Evan: You talk to him yet?
To Evan: Yeah, I think I’ve got some brakes put on it, but I’m not sure. Don’t pile on him now. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. We need a plan.
From Evan: A plan like strangling him?
To Evan: Maybe. We’ll worry about it tomorrow though. For now, just get some sleep. We need to nail the presentation in the morning.
From Evan: You don’t need to tell me twice. Ding my brain when you’re up and we’ll figure things out.