They called XL SysCorp the first virtual corporation. It had the legal status of a corporation and all the tax benefits, but operated like a loose alliance of skilled free-lancers, some permanent, some temporary, all working out of their homes or small business storefronts. Only Chip Craft actually worked in the headquarters building itself.
Oh, there were problems. Community activists did not appreciate the revolution in business that XL SysCorp represented. All they cared about was that a new business had come to Harlem and no blacks were being hired. That no one was being hired of any color at all seemed not to matter.
"We gotta hire some of these people, sir," Chip had complained to Friend one day.
"We are in need of installers at the moment," Friend said.
"These guys don't have that kind of background."
"What is their employment background?"
"I'm not sure, but I think a lot of them don't have any."
"Educational backgrounds, please."
"Some high school, maybe a few GEDs. Most are dropouts."
"They are not qualified to work for XL, then," Friend said in the same smoothly inflected voice he always used.
"But we gotta hire some anyway."
"Why?"
"Community relations."
"Will community relations increase our profits?"
"Forget profits. They picket the building, blocking the entrance, and if we don't cave in, someone's going to bounce a brick off my skull one fine morning."
"What makes you conclude that, Chip?"
"One of them threatened to do exactly that."
Friend then said, "I cannot afford to lose my CEO to a brick. Hire them."
"All of them?"
"All. Set them up on the fourth floor."
"Doing what?"
"Give them busy work. I will take care of the rest."
Reluctantly Chip had done exactly that. He hired every picketer, installed them in fourth floor cubicles and telephone pods at better than average starting salaries and watched as they sat behind their desks making unauthorized long-distance phone calls and pilfered office supplies for resale on the street.
This went on for precisely a week.
One by one the new hirees began calling in sick. They began getting sick on the job.
"What's going on?" Chip asked Friend at the beginning of the second week. "They're all falling ill."
"I have hired an environmental engineer to furnish a professional opinion."
"A what?"
"One who inspects buildings for environmental problems."
The environmental engineer showed up the next day, made a three-week examination of the XL SysCorp building environmental systems and pronounced it a sick building.
"Sick!" Chip blurted out when he heard the news.
The environmental engineer went down his checklist. "This building is unfit for habitation by more than twenty persons at a time. The air-conditioning system is substandard, air is not circulating properly, there are airborne toxins present, and it's a miracle you haven't gotten Legionnaires' disease."
"Legionnaires' disease?"
"It's caused by faulty air-conditioning equipment. Your workers all have it."
"Damn. The lawsuits will kill us. What about me? Why aren't I sick?"
"You work on the fifteenth floor, correct?"
"That's right."
"Well, through some freak of construction, the air on that floor is fine. As long as you stay there and it's not occupied by more than twenty persons, you should be okay."
"We're not in danger of being condemned, then?" Chip had asked in relief."No. But if you rehire, the board of health will shut you down cold."
"It's amazing," Chip had told Friend once the story broke. "We're off the hook. The thugs who call themselves community activists can't say a damn thing about this."
"You are satisfied?"
"Well, we're going to look pretty foolish once it comes out XL spent 170 million on an office building that can't be inhabited. And if we ever need to hire on- site staff again, we're screwed."
"We will do fine," said Friend.
And they did. XL SysCorp took off after that. It expanded its customer base with the XL WORM-drive information systems, which could be deeply discounted because XL's overhead was so low. They bought up any and all suppliers who threatened to rival them one day, becoming a vertically integrated virtual corporation. XL branched out into telecommunications, ATM machines, and even dabbled in virtual-reality technology, all the while continuing to service the old government accounts, especially in the U.S. Intelligence community.
Business rivals fast went out of business. And when XL SysCorp landed the lucrative twenty-year project to completely replace the IRS computer system, Chip Craft thought he was set for life.
That is, until he returned from vacation to learn that Friend had evolved a business plan in his absence that depended upon blackmailing the U.S. government.
"We can't blackmail the Feds," Chip said, exploding out of his chair.
"Correction. Prior to today, we could not."
"What's different about today?" Chip demanded.