Flightsuit (5 page)

Taylor
heaved the last of his lunch through his open car door.  A truck horn blasted his ears as it passed, although Taylor was sufficiently off the highway.

Taylor closed the door, wiping his mouth with a sleeve.

His eyes in the rearview were shot-through with blood. 
If only I felt as good as I look, it'd be at least some relief
, he thought.  The migraine was crippling.  He hoped relieving the nausea might decrease some of the pressure behind his eyes. 
I don't have time for this
. 

He couldn't remember having a headache before his teens, but had them regularly since.  As an adult, it became a weekly occurrence.  They usually started on Friday or Saturday morning.  He thought it might be caused by not getting enough sleep through the week, but he'd never been able to stay in bed on
ce he woke up – and he usually woke before five.  He typically caught up on sleep with a Sunday afternoon nap, and reset for the week.  

When
a migraine started, he could function but couldn't maintain sufficient concentration for anything complex, so he shuffled around the house and caught up on the week's chores until it crawled back from his temples, down his neck and back to wait somewhere down there until the next week.  He usually felt better by mid-afternoon or evening on Saturday as long as he took the pills.

He
was at home packing when Sowyer called.  He'd already taken the migraine pill.  It was bad timing for a migraine when he needed to be sharp, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. 
Would've been better to leave on a Monday or Tuesday
, he thought, shaking his head.  The headshake was a mistake and he instantly regretted it, as his eyes rolled over the broken glass he felt lining his eye sockets.  He had packed all the essentials, a small case of clothes, the duffel bag of money and his checklists.  Once he'd zipped the clothes in, he stood looking around the room.

One last look around
. 
Don't want to leave anything important behind.
  The house was much larger than a single man needed.  There were four bedrooms, a large den that he'd converted into a home theater, a giant kitchen full of hanging copper pots that his girlfriends fussed over and his giant downstairs study.  He'd owned the house for two years.  The decorator he hired was still collecting pieces. 

The little throwaway phone vibrated in his pocket
.

"Taylor?"

"Yes, it's me.  Do you have everything?"

"Yes, I have it.  Do you have my money?"  Taylor winced. 
Head is killing me.
 

"Yes, of course, I'm looking at it right now," he lied, he was looking at his own duffel of money.  He'd forgotten to pull out some for Sowyer. 
Do that in a minute
, he thought. 
Stay focused, keep Sowyer calm
.

"Alright.  I'll meet you in two hours as we planned."  Sowyer said.  "I want to get this over with so I never have to hear your name again."

Whatever
, thought Taylor,
whatever it takes.  Just focus on the objective
.  He glanced around uncertainly before spotting the yellow legal sheet with his active checklist.  He snatched it from the desk and hurriedly scanned the list to make sure he wasn't missing anything important. 
No.  Nothing critical to this step other than just keeping Sowyer calm
.  The checklist said, "13. Keep Sowyer calm.  He is inclined toward anger and has tendencies toward solving problems with violence – do not argue with him about anything!"

"That is excellent Agent Sowyer." Taylor replied.  "I look forward to completing our transaction." 
He held back a sarcastic response to Sowyer's jab.

He disconnected the call and put the phone in his pocket, going back over the list.  He read carefully through each line, making sure he
wasn't missing anything.  He thought about crossing off the line that encouraged him to keep Sowyer calm, but decided he would leave it until he was certain he'd never see the man again. 

The line just above it read, "12. Pack bag of clothes (2 nights), duffel of cash (all of it) and book of checklists – don't leave anything behind that you need, you might not be coming back here again."

He looked at the two bags on the floor in front of him and moved a large leather-bound journal to the floor beside them. 

Realizing how important his checklists were becoming to his life, he'd decided to transcribe them into something more impressive.  The journal's thick leather cover was moss-green, soft and flexible.  He'd
had "T. Taylor – Timeshare Checklists" embossed deep into the bottom right cover.  He liked the way it felt so much that he often just held it while sitting in his chair, watching television as he dozed off.  It held a history of his past plans, instructions guiding his immediate actions and strategies for years into the future.  It had become the book of his life.  The pages were hand-torn, giving the edges a ragged thrown-together look like a magic tome. 

He was never able to catch up with the transcription process.  He didn't take the book with him to the office
.  It was too valuable to risk losing.  During the meeting sessions with clients, he used a different notebook filled with yellow legal pages.  He stuck the loose yellow pad pages into the back of the book as he filled them.  Several times a week, he'd sit down at his big desk at home and copy the checklists into the book with music filling his downstairs office.  The wonderfully acoustic shelves of thick, old books the interior designer bought softened the music's echoes. 

He paused, looking at the book on the floor. 
I'm forgetting something
. 
What is it? 
He remembered. 
Just about let it slip my mind again
.  He looked around the office for something the right size for $75,000. 
My briefcase, that's about the right size.  I won't need it anymore
.  He dumped it out and crammed two stacks of bills into the bottom before he noticed the little chrome nameplate with "T. Taylor" stenciled under the soft, leather grip.  He considered this for a moment, and then reached in and removed the stacks. 
Not be a good idea
.  He looked for something else. 
Aha.  Perfect
. 

His staff at Timeshare bought him a messenger bag for his birthday.  On the side, a stencil read "Mr. Wonderful".  Even though he suspected they intended it as sarcasm, they presented it with solemn expressions and phony smiles, so he went along with it.  He didn't care what they thought of him anyway as long as they did their job
s.  He preferred to interact with them as little as required.  Even that minimal interaction was more than he desired.  He brought the bag home and tossed it into the corner of his office.  His housekeeper later hung it on a lower rung of the coatrack where it remained untouched for months. 
It'll annoy him. 
He thought about Sowyer's reaction when he gave him the bag of money. 
With all his money in it, he'll just have to take it anyway.  Good enough for him
. 

Taylor realized when he noticed the sign for Mclean that he couldn't remember any details of the drive.  Couldn't remember cars he'd passed.  Other than stopping to be sick, he'd just been on autopilot. 

He'd be early
.  He hoped for an hour's nap before Sowyer arrived.  Closing his eyes for even ten minutes might give the pill a chance to slide the headache back down, at least far enough that he could function.

He looked down
again at the checklist, just to make sure he was still on track.  He'd crossed out "
12. Pack bag of clothes (2 nights), duffel of cash (all of it) and book of checklists – don't leave anything behind that you need, you might not be coming back here again
," with a single ruler-straight line.  The checklists were essential.  Without them, there was no way to pass instructions to himself from the high-energy timesharing bouts to his normal times afterward. 

He'd s
tarted referring to his talent as "timesharing" years ago.  It was a term from the early days of computers, before everyone had one for themselves and expensive ones were shared by many users.  Even the earliest computers could process calculations and procedures tremendously faster than humans, leaving a computer spare time between one user's input and a human's ability to review its output.  During this spare time, the computer easily processed input from other users, delivering new output without either user noticing a delay.  The processing speed difference between computer and human was so great that many humans could share computer processes with little noticeable reduction in performance.  From the computer's perspective, it was a serial response – one user's request after another, but the speed was so quick the users didn't notice.

Taylor's timesharing had much
more in common with the massive distributed computing model of the SETI@home project.  In 1999, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley developed a distributed-computing program that included a downloadable screensaver.  When downloaded, the screensaver linked thousands of unused computers to analyze radio telescope signals from the Arecibo radio telescope, searching for signs of intelligent life in background static.  

"Timesharing"
linked Taylor's mental processing capabilities with the minds of people around him.  

As far back as he could remember, he'd felt some aspect of this ability.  He always felt smarter and more productive around other people, although never to the extent he
achieved now.  He remembered exactly when his ability step-changed.  A few years ago, returning from a seminar in Texas, he experienced the first real taste of
clarity
.  It followed a couple days off work following his return.  He'd caught something on the plane and felt terrible. 

He felt better over the weekend and fine on Monday. 
At first, he didn't notice anything different.  He'd worked for Berc then, one of dozens of business analysts.  He helped the developers compile business requirements documentation during brainstorming sessions with the company's clients.  He had a good mix of business and technical skills with enough technical understanding of software development that he could communicate technical information to business people and vice versa.

That
Monday, Berc was meeting with a startup software company.  Berc often "reviewed" new software products and classified them by market position and cost, provided the startup subscribed to Berc's research services.  Both client and consultant understood that it was essentially an advertising model with a pretense of objectivity, but it was an effective way to sell new software.

The startup team included two business and three technical people.  On
Berc's side, there were an equal number of developers, an application architect and the customer liaison, in addition to Taylor.

Normally, Taylor said almost nothing in these sessions.  The discussions were highly technical, with each of the technical folks vying for superior caste by challenging the other's concepts or understanding of related design methodologies. 

Once the discussion started, Taylor keyed into it in a new way.  He understood in a way he'd never experienced before.  When the startup's lead developer described the approach they'd taken, Taylor understood, in a detailed way,
exactly
what he meant.  More than that, as the description spread out in his mind, he clearly saw the layout of the data that would feed into the system from the startup's business partners and envisioned how
those
systems pulled data components from
their own
customer data.  He held the entire value chain in his mind at once, simultaneously seeing both detail and scope.  While they talked about data that supported their application's function, Taylor's mind mapped out source data from upstream and planned possible business ventures using the data produced by the startup and the startup's clients.  It was unlike any experience Taylor had ever felt or even conceived possible. 

It was clarity
.  Every detail in his mind was clear.  He knew why they'd designed the software the way they had even though they'd not even alluded to it in the discussion.  He projected from their design that they'd missed most of the business opportunities he saw for their product.  They were too-narrowly focused on their primary deliverable.  Taylor saw what they missed.  It was exhilarating to feel such a solid understanding of things yet-to-occur.  Things he knew
wouldn't
occur unless he shared his insights.

He realized that he'd said something
, and that everyone was staring at him.

He took a deep breath and plunged in, telling them about all the opportunities they'd missed.  In his excitement, he started too many steps away from their own
conclusions.  When he saw they weren't following his logic, he backed up and talked through connections until he saw a few of them nodding. 

Moving to the whiteboard, he diagrammed the opportunities he saw and made scribbled notes and plans that were three steps beyond deliverables they'd considered.  Taylor smiled thinking that they looked like a table of bobble-heads as one-by-one they caught on. 

Then he recommended changes to their approach.  Changes would require major rework now, but align better with more downstream opportunities.  He looked back from the board and saw his ideas slowly gel for each of them.

But Taylor's own team from
Berc
didn't
get it.  Where the startup's developers had spent months discussing the application's design requirements and business opportunities, the consultants had no frame of reference to connect with Taylor's ideas. 

Taylor's boss was not pleased
.  "Mr. Taylor, if you would please join me outside for a moment, I think we should leave the
technical discussion
to the
technical people
."

Outside, his boss was furious.  After several minutes he let Taylor know that this recent behavior seemed to fit into a pattern that had apparently been disappointing for some time.  Taylor reeled
, and realized he was a lot closer to losing his job than anyone had communicated to him before. 

At which poin
t, the conference room door opened.  The startup's lead architect asked, "Could Mr. Taylor rejoin us?  The developers would like to ask him some questions and pick his brain." 

For a moment, neither responded.  Taylor grinned
meanly at his boss and said, "Of course, I would be glad to." 

Two years later, the startup's Initial Public Offering was the third largest of the year.  Every startup employee in the meeting that day became a millionaire.