Meredith Johnson stood at the head of the table and said, "Next, we'll hear from Tom Sanders. Tom, I wonder if you could review for us where we stand with the Twinkle drive. What is the status of our production there."
"Of course, Meredith." Sanders stood, his heart pounding. He walked to the front of the room. "By way of background, Twinkle is our code name for a stand-alone CD-ROM drive player which we expect to be revolutionary." He turned to the first of his charts. "CD-ROM is a small laser disk used to store data. It is cheap to manufacture, and can hold an enormous amount of information in any form-words, images, sound, video, and so on. You can put the equivalent of six hundred books on a single small disk, or, thanks to our research here, an hour and a half of video. And any combination. For example, you could make a textbook that combines text, pictures, short movie sequences, animated cartoons, and so on. Production costs will soon be at ten cents a unit."
He looked down the table. The Conley-White people were interested. Garvin was frowning. Meredith looked tense.
"But for CD-ROM to be effective, two things need to happen. First, we need a portable player. Like this." He held up the player, and then passed it down the Conley-White side.
"A five-hour battery, and an excellent screen. You can use it on a train, a bus, or in a classroom-anywhere you can use a book."
The executives looked at it, turned it over in their hands. Then they looked back at Sanders.
"The other problem with CD-ROM technology," Sanders said, "is that it's slow. It's sluggish getting to all that wonderful data. But the Twinkle drives that we have successfully made in prototype are twice as fast as any other drive in the world. And with added memory for our packing and unpacking images, it is as quick as a small computer. We expect to get the unit cost for these drives down to the price of a video-game unit within a year. And we are manufacturing the drives now. We have had some early problems, but we are solving them."
Meredith said, "Can you tell us more about that? I gather from talking to Arthur Kahn that we're still not clear on why the drives have problems."
"Actually, we are," Sanders said. "It turns out that the problems aren't serious at all. I expect them to be entirely resolved in a matter of days."
"Really." She raised her eyebrows. "Then we've found what the trouble is?"
"Yes, we have."
"That's wonderful news."
"Yes, it is."
"Very good news indeed," Ed Nichols said. "Was it a design problem?"
"No," Sanders said. "There's nothing wrong with the design we made here, just as there was nothing wrong with the prototypes. What we have is a fabrication problem involving the production line in Malaysia."
"What sort of problems?"
"It turns out," Sanders said, "that we don't have the proper equipment on the line. We should be using automatic chip installers to lock the controller chips and the RAM cache on the board, but the Malays on the line have been installing chips by hand. Literally pushing them in with their thumbs. And it turns out that the assembly line is dirty, so we're getting particulate matter in the split optics. We should have level-seven air handlers, but we only have level-five handlers installed. And it turns out that we should be ordering components like hinge rods and clips from one very reliable Singapore supplier, but the components are actually coming from another supplier. Less expensive, less reliable."
Meredith looked uneasy, but only for a moment. "Improper equipment, improper conditions, improper components . . ." She shook her head. "I'm sorry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you set up that line, Tom?"
"Yes, I did," Sanders said. "I went out to Kuala Lumpur last fall and set it up with Arthur Kahn and the local foreman, Mohammed Jafar."
"Then how is it that we have so many problems?"
"Unfortunately, there was a series ofbad judgment calls in setting up the line."
Meredith looked concerned. "Tom, we all know that you're extremely competent. How could this have happened?"
Sanders hesitated.
This was the moment.
"It happened because the line was changed," he said. "The specifications were altered."
"Altered? How?"
"I think that's something for you to explain to this group, Meredith," he said. "Since you ordered the changes."
"I ordered them?"
"That's right, Meredith."
"Tom, you must be mistaken," she said coolly. "I haven't had anything to do with that Malaysia line."
"Actually, you have," Sanders said. "You made two trips there, in November and December of last year."
"Two trips to Kuala Lumpur, yes. Because you mishandled a labor dispute with the Malaysian government. I went there and resolved the dispute. But I had nothing to do with the actual production line."
"I'd say you're mistaken, Meredith."
"I assure you," she said coldly. "I am not. I had nothing to do with the line, and any so-called changes."
"Actually, you went there and inspected the changes you ordered."
"I'm sorry, Tom. I didn't. I've never even seen the actual line."
On the screen behind her, the videotape of the newscast began to play silently with the sound off. The newscaster in coat and tie speaking to the camera.
Sanders said, "You never went to the plant itself?"
"Absolutely not, Tom. I don't know who could have told you such a thing or why you would say it now."