Chick Flick Page 7

  If I’d learned one thing from the business books Todd had loaned me over the course of our time together, it was that you should spend a lot of time getting to know angel investors, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with them in the future—a crucial time in your business life. That was easier said than done for us; we were under time constraints, as are most people in the start-up line of work. One doesn’t find an angel every day. Isn’t that why they are called angels? Normally, they’re high up there in Heaven, and if they come down to visit, it’s not very often that you can just take your time to get to know them before you say yes.

  I thought of Charlotte in one of my favorite books, Pride and Prejudice. Although she was speaking about marriage, I thought the sentiment also applied to relationships with angel investors:

  Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.

  This is why, when Roseword offered to invest, I said yes right away.

  And for a change, my instincts were right on the money; Roseword was nothing less than Mr. Right. He wanted a 10 percent stake in the company, which was fair and would help protect his investment. We agreed not to take certain actions without consulting him first, but, to my relief, he did not demand a veto vote. Instead, we were only to consult with him on selling the company’s assets, issuing additional stock and antidilution provisions, which meant that if the business issued stock at a lower price than what he paid, he would receive additional stock. Other than that, he only asked that Todd and I would be in touch once we reached the milestones we had agreed upon, and that we would notify him of any perceivable difficulties we might encounter.

  He was more than an angel come down from Heaven; for the time being, he was also our dream come true.

  Now that money wasn’t a pressing concern, I felt the world expanding in front of me. I could now sign a lease with Splice Incubators for the next year, using all of the equipment in the building to run my experiments. I could afford to buy more sophisticated materials and kits that would help enhance and expedite results.

  Still, I was quite frugal, and I appreciated everything I bought. I had developed the habit of being so frugal that sometimes I would save old materials that should be trashed, but I held on to them just in case I could use them once more. Every time I purchased a new kit, I felt like a child getting a new toy, thrumming with excitement as if assembling a puzzle, from the opening of the bag and taking out all the pieces to the moment when that last piece clicks in and the picture appears.

  Today’s molecular biology is mostly done with kits, which means you buy the ingredients ready-made and follow the protocol: easy as ABC. The tubes are usually color-coded, and the stickers used for labeling are fun and colorful. It recalled for me that first day of school, when I’d open up my pencil case and arrange my fresh, new school supplies.

  The science of it all is still difficult, but the logistics are not as difficult as they used to be. At one time, scientists would pipette by mouth, and had to weigh and calculate everything, spending precious time calibrating systems that are now on autopilot. That is not to say that everything is already determined. Research still needs standardizing, of course, but the general practice has become easier, which leaves more time and room for carefully setting up the question of the experiment. Still, if one maintains one’s own lab, 90 percent of the work is maintenance—buying materials, daily setup and prep, getting rid of waste, etc.—and 10 percent is the fun part: running experiments.

  It takes time to acquire independence in a lab and since there are always new things developing and new protocols, it’s difficult to keep up that independence without asking others. In a shared lab space, this is where your lab mates come in, even if you’re not working on the same project or even, as was the case in the incubator, for the same company. Sometimes it’s more like cooking; if you just read the recipe from a cookbook without asking a seasoned chef, you might miss out on the secret tip of adding nutmeg to your carrot soup to give it that extra oomph!

  Still, even with all of that overhead, it’s still so addictive, and the sense of accomplishment simply can’t be described. When I got that initial investment, I jumped right in, feeling like I could dance and sing my way through my first day back in the lab.

  And, in fact, I was so grateful to Roseword, that that’s exactly what I did.

  Later that evening, I felt as though I could sing and dance all the way to the pub to meet William. The feeling was so infectious, I just had to do it. As he saw me coming toward him with a shy smile, he returned my smile and then some, his eyes shining. It was a sight I will never forget. I decided then and there that this time, we were going to get to know each other better. Besides, talking to hackers had always been a secret pleasure of mine.

  “What’s with the smile?” he asked, almost laughing.

  “A lot, actually,” I said with a laugh. “I got an investment. A hundred thou, no less! I’m not quite sure how we did it so fast, but we did.”

  “We?” he asked, his eyebrows giving a conspiratorial wiggle.

  I thought about that time I had looked around his table for evidence of a date, and wondered if he was doing the same thing now, trying to sort out if I was available, if I was interested. Yes and yes. He must have felt me wondering about his motives for the question, because he waved it off as quickly as it had slipped out.

  “Well, congratulations. I am happy for you,” he said, raising his glass in a toast.

  I laughed and clinked an imaginary glass to his.

  “I noticed you don’t eat much. Can I invite you to dinner with me to celebrate?” I asked, thinking that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

  “Thanks, I eat dinner later, since I wake up late. I usually eat just fruit for lunch. But we can certainly order anything you like,” he said.

  “Just fruit? Wow! And what did you have for breakfast, if I may ask?”

  “Just coffee,” he said. “I don’t eat much.”

  “I am so jealous,” I smiled. “I have a sweet tooth, but I also love pickles.”

  “You should try pickle chocolate sometime.”

  I laughed at the absurdity of it, and blushed at his attention.

  “How do you like your coffee?”

  “Hot.”

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “Cream and sugar? I just want to know in case I need to make you some. You know, sometime.”

  “Yes, cream and sugar, please.”

  “OK, great.”

  I smiled at him, and our eyes lingered on each other’s for a moment. I tried to shake off my feelings and get myself together.

  After clearing my throat, I said, “So, I was in the lab today and got new kits for my experiments. I am so excited to have the resources. I love those biology kits and I follow the instructions to the letter.”

  “You do?” he asked, genuinely interested.

  “Yes, my father taught me early on in life how to read and follow instruction manuals. People go to so much trouble to write them and make them simple. The least we can do is follow them carefully! I can also follow instructions to fix electricity and pipes in my home.”

  “Quite the power-girl you are, huh? Get your toolbox ready and teach me a few things. I am pretty handy, myself.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said. “My dad taught me to read instructions even though he can’t fix anything if his life depended on it. He has two left hands, as they say, but a good heart.”

  “So you fix things better than he does?”

  “Yes, I have my mother’s hands and a good sense of abstract thinking. You can count on me.” Hesitantly, I added, “I only wish love came with a manual.”

  �
��You don’t need to read up on love. It comes naturally.”

  “Yes, but if it only came with directions of how to make your partner happy, I could do it much more easily. And women—men can never figure them out; if they only came with instructions!” I said, clearly joking.

  “You are right about that one point, but if a woman loves a man, she will open up to him and trust him.”

  “I will write down a manual to my heart and e-mail it to you, so you can read it. And when we meet next, I shall test you on it.”

  “I will be happy to study it closely and after that, I will take an exam on it, but I must warn you, I rarely fail,” he remarked with a devilish smile. “I even prefer the practical exam.”

  “Hashtag naughty. Do you like to study on a table or the couch?”

  “I start from the table, then move to the couch, then end up in bed. What about you?” he said, our earlier flirtation burning off but not the blush in my cheeks.

  “I am a couch-studier; when I sit at the table, it’s usually on the bench for work.”

  “Did you study alone or with your mom or dad, as a kid?”

  “My dad was always with me to help me work out what I couldn’t understand.”

  “Yes, mine too. Every child should have parents like that. I am very proud of my upbringing.”

  “Yes, so am I. Our parents gave us good values.”

  “Do you have a close-knit family?”

  “Yes, we were very close when I grew up,” he offered. “But since I moved out of town, I mainly see them on holidays now and again. I talk to my mother quite often because she is always worried about me. You?”

  “My parents and my brother and I are very close,” I said, feeling myself open up more. “I love to sit and have long talks with my dad. He reads a lot and always finds something to laugh about with me. I can ask him anything and he always knows the answer. It is very reassuring,” I said. “When I was a kid, the thing I loved most was that he would read to us at bedtime. I still love being read to before falling asleep.”

  “Then I guess you found the right man for the job, me being a writer. I also love to read and I would be happy to read to you sometime,” he said in his husky voice.

  Soon after, we parted ways at the pub and said good night, and I was left to imagine what his reading voice might be like.

  Soon, the whole team was meeting with Roseword again at his house to discuss the collaboration. It was beginning to feel real, and unlike the last meeting we’d had, Cole wasn’t there to muck things up. I was much more relaxed; we all knew each other and there was no question that we were all on the same team.

  “I hear from Scarlet that you’ve got your machine up and running, Joel,” Roseword began, “and that you’re testing it on synthetic DNA.”

  “Righto,” said Joel before Todd gave him a look to indicate that he needed to back off his informal tone a little bit. “Er, um, yes. That’s correct.”

  “As you know, we’re trying to examine DNA from the egg, which we believe is a better option than the one considered by our competitors,” I said. “They’re trying to determine the sex by hormone levels.”

  “Why is that?” Roseword asked.

  “Testing the hormones in a sample taken from the egg turns out to be correct only 85 percent of the time, which leaves the margins for error wide open,” I said. “DNA should provide a more precise result because genetics never lie.”

  Roseword nodded; again, I was so thankful to Todd, who taught me that it all had to come back to the bottom line. But I wanted to be forthright.

  “Although, our method, too, has its drawbacks. First, there will be an undeniable small percentage of chicks that have a genetic disorder, which results in an abnormal number of sex chromosomes. This should produce a 2 to 3 percent error rate.”

  “That’s manageable,” said Roseword, considering the options. “And how does Joel’s technology fit in, exactly?”

  I was happy to explain and let Roseword in on some of Joel’s brilliant work.

  “The samples we take might have DNA that exists in low quantities, prohibiting our ability to detect it. We want to be ready if this indeed becomes a problem, and that’s why we initiated the collaboration with Joel. He has developed a machine that has high sensing capability. Our biology, along with his engineering, is a winning strategy!”

  The science was solid, and now it was Todd’s turn to talk about the financial aspects of the collaboration. Once we had combined our technologies to form a machine that simultaneously draws samples out of eggs and lays them on a detection plate, we could sell the machine for $200,000 to $300,000, as well as the biological reactions per each segregated egg.

  “The pricing structure is very similar to how they handle inoculations in ovo,” said Todd. “This means you get paid for every egg you separate. That adds up to a lot of eggs.”

  “I love it,” said Roseword, speaking the words that would become music to our ears many times over.

  Todd had taken some time off from Spells, focusing on his day job and his family of six. But although his feet weren’t out pounding the pavement, he couldn’t turn off the ideas humming in his mind. We got together to discuss some reading he’d been doing, and to go over an important decision he’d made: he thought I had made enough progress in the lab for us to advance to the next level and establish the collaboration with RICPCom.

  We met at the Flying Cow.

  “I want us to set up another meeting with Joel to talk to him about the new equipment he is developing,” said Todd. “I was thinking that if Nikola is still trying to bridge the size gap between her egg trays and reading plates, that maybe Joel’s expertise and equipment could help fill that gap.”

  “I don’t know, Todd,” I said. “I want him to focus on being able to read the signal from our DNA samples. If it happens, then we might not need the smaller plates that Nikola’s working with. Then, Nikola would not need to bridge the gap; she could use the bigger plates, and Joel’s new machine could read them as is.”

  Todd took his time considering my point, twirling his pint glass around on the coaster in front of him.

  “I see your dilemma, Scarlet,” he said in that same measured tone that I always appreciated from him. “But I don’t want to fall behind in this race. If Caroline and her research group at RICPCom make progress with adapting their machine and we then need to integrate Joel’s, we could be working from totally useless specs. That’s a lot of time and money down the drain.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” I admitted.

  “We’ve got to stay moving fast if we want to keep up,” he said. “I know from experience working in high tech. It doesn’t matter if you’ve poured five years of your life into a project; if they change the operating standard and your stuff doesn’t fit in, that’s it, you’re history.”

  Don’t shoot the messenger, I said to myself, trying to calm down about the pressure cuff of time squeezing all around me. Todd’s right. We have to find a way to work that satisfies everyone’s requirements.

  “What do you suggest that we do now, then?” I asked.

  “I want to see how easily we can adapt Joel’s machine to work with the bigger plates and/or the smaller plates. The small ones are standard for the reading machine for 96-well plates,” he offered. “I think we should also contact NavoLogic. They don’t have an injection machine, so they don’t have a size issue with the egg trays. Perhaps we could collaborate with them on developing the entire sexing system, injection to reading. No integration required. Then, we could dominate the market when we launch.”

  “We’d control the whole process then,” I said.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Plus, I talked to Roseword about it, and he thinks we’re ready.”

  I had been trying to keep my cool, but this felt wrong to me. That Todd would talk to our primary investor without consulting me—the one who was actually in charge of producing the technology. I tried to soften my reaction, owing to our friendship, but
I could tell from the apprehensive look in Todd’s eyes that he knew I was hurt.

  “Todd, of course he would think we were ready,” I said, pushing back. “Roseword wants a return on his investment. He doesn’t care if we embarrass ourselves in the process of getting it.”

  I knew that it was common practice for investors to roll over their investments onto another investor. If we got an investment from NavoLogic, they could buy out Roseword’s shares and he would make a profit even before our product went into production, or even if it never did.

  I was suspicious of Roseword’s motivations and worried that Todd was being unduly influenced by them. Maybe it was the relaxing glass of beer, maybe it was my substantial trust in Todd, or maybe it was just the maturing instinct within me to know when I truly didn’t know it all. Whatever the case, I let the argument lay that night and agreed to go forward with feeling out negotiations with NavoLogic.

  Before we parted for the night, we agreed that Todd would contact NavoLogic and set up some sort of meeting, likely by phone, as they were headquartered in France.

  I was looking for some comfort, since I was, contrary to what Todd said, worried about a possible conference call with NavoLogic. Indeed, comfort was waiting: William, my newsman, was at the pub—and to my delight, with a piece of pie waiting for me.

  “How’s it going?” I asked as I sat down on the seat with the cinnamon apple pie in front of it. “Thanks for the pie. For me, yeah?” I asked.

  “Who else?” William smiled handsomely.

  I smiled back and ate my pie in silence.

  “And what have you been up to?” he eventually asked.

  “Not much, I am pretty exhausted today.”

  “Wearing yourself out buying all those new biology kits? Don’t spend Roseword’s money all at once.” We both laughed.