Chương 6: The Toll Booth (08/11/1979)

DATE: Saturday, August 11, 1979 LOCATION: Glendora, California | The Yauney Residence LOCAL TIME: 02: 45 PM The air smelled of chlorine, Coppertone, and charcoal smoke. The Yauney pool was the center of the universe. It was a kidney-shaped oasis in the baking heat of the San Gabriel Valley. In 2025, a gathering of this many unsupervised minors around a body of water would result in a call to Child Protective Services. In 1979, it was just a Saturday. I sat on the hot concrete coping, my legs dangling in the water.

The chaos swirled around me. My cousin Deeana LaFong (age 10) was the general of this army. She treaded water in the deep end, barking orders like a drill sergeant.

"Marco!" she screamed, her eyes squeezed shut.

"Polo!" shrieked a dozen voices, scattering like minnows. Leslie Yauney (5) and Jenny Tillman (3) held hands on the steps. My own brother, Chase (2), bobbed around in orange water wings that looked big enough to float a Buick. A heavy lump formed in my throat. Just like the barbecue in Fallbrook, I was seeing ghosts before they were ghosts. I saw the men and women they would become. I wanted to freeze time.

I wanted to keep them here, safe in the chlorine-scented embrace of 1979, before the world got its hooks into them. But I couldn't. I had work to do.

"Chad!" Jason Yauney (4) stood by the sliding glass door. He wore swim trunks, but he was dry. He wasn't looking at the pool. He was looking at the house. Jason was the Tech Cousin. While the other kids wanted to play tag, Jason wanted to know how the pool filter worked.

"Lights?" Jason whispered, pointing inside. I nodded.

"Lights." We were on the same frequency. We slipped away from the pool party, leaving the noise of Marco Polo behind us. We dried our feet on the AstroTurf doormat and entered the house. LOCAL TIME: 03: 15 PM | The Sanctuary The party noise was muffled here. We were in Uncle Bob's home office—a converted den smelling of ozone, heated dust, and lemon polish. Three men occupied the room. Uncle Bob Yauney sat in his leather swivel chair. Uncle Jack leaned against the doorframe, nursing a gin and tonic.

And sitting in the corner armchair, dissecting a stack of ledger paper with a red pen, was my cousin John Battisti. In my original timeline, Uncle Bob spent the 1980s and 90s building airtight mainframe databases for hospitals so they could efficiently charge insurance companies for patient care. He was a brilliant, high-level systems architect trapped in healthcare bureaucracy.

I didn't need to teach him how to build an empire, and I certainly didn't need to teach him how to code; I just needed to hand him the keys to the right kingdom before Bill Gates found it. Jason and I walked up to the desk. We stood by Bob's knee, staring at the machine. It was an IMSAI 8080. It didn't look like a computer to a modern eye; it looked like the control panel of a submarine. Rows of red LED lights and blue toggle switches.

"This," Bob said to us, flipping a switch, "is the future, boys." The machine hummed. The lights danced.

"Lights!" Jason shouted, clapping his hands.

"That's right, Jase," Bob said.

"Binary. On and off." I ignored the lights. I didn't know how to write an operating system. I didn't know machine code from Morse code. But I knew the history of the 20th century. I knew IBM was desperate, and I knew a guy in Seattle had a quick-and-dirty solution. Bob was the engineer who could evaluate it; Jack was the salesman who could fund it; John was the accountant who could structure it. I just had to point them North. I looked at the magazine on his desk—the June 1979 issue of BYTE.

I reached up with a sticky finger and clumsily flipped the pages until I hit page 204. I pointed to the Seattle Computer Products advertisement.

"Brain?" I asked, tapping the chip. Bob looked down.

"That? That's the 8086. It's a big brain. A 16-bit brain. It thinks much faster than my computer." I tapped the picture of the chip again, then pointed to my own mouth.

"Quiet." Bob chuckled, but his brow furrowed.

"It's not broken, Chad. It's just... silent. It's useless right now. It's just hardware. A shiny car with no engine. Nobody has written an Operating System for it yet. Gary Kildall over at Digital Research is stalling." A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. I nodded. I pretended to study the ad, then shifted my attention to the Wall Street Journal sitting under his coffee cup. I tugged at the corner.

"Hey, careful," Bob said. I tapped the headline: IBM RUMORED TO ENTER MICRO MARKET.

"Blue man coming," I said. Bob stopped. He looked at the headline. Then he looked at me. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"You read that?" Bob asked.

"Mommy said," I lied, widening my eyes into maximum innocence.

"Mommy said the Blue Man makes a toy." Bob studied me. He didn't smile. The "Mommy read it" excuse usually worked, but Bob was an engineer. He looked for patterns, and the pattern of a three-year-old parsing the Wall Street Journal was an anomaly.

"Right," Bob said slowly.

"A toy." He picked up the paper. He scanned the article about the rumors coming out of Boca Raton.

"If they enter the market..." Bob muttered, his mind already racing ahead of the text.

"They can't use an 8-bit chip. They'd look like dinosaurs. They have to use the 16-bit. The 8086." He looked back at the BYTE magazine.

"But there's no OS," Bob whispered.

"Kildall isn't ready. If IBM launches..."

"Brain needs words," I said, putting on my best toddler pout. Bob snapped his fingers, the systems architect in him solving the logistical puzzle instantly.

"It's a mute brain. It needs a language, and IBM won't have time to write one." Bob turned to Jack and John, his voice accelerating.

"I know a guy up in Seattle. Tim Paterson. He works for this outfit, Seattle Computer Products. He's a genius, but he's frustrated. He's been complaining that Digital Research is dragging their feet on a 16-bit OS."

"So buy it from him," Jack said, rattling the ice in his glass.

"It doesn't exist yet, Jack," Bob said.

"That's the point. Nobody has built it. But if I go up there... if I front the money... I could pay Paterson to build it. A 'Quick and Dirty' Operating System. Q-DOS. Tailored specifically for the 8086."

"And then what?" John Battisti asked from the corner, his accountant's instincts flaring.

"We sell it to IBM for a lump sum?" I didn't answer. I had already dropped to the floor next to Jason. I grabbed three heavy wooden blocks from the toy bin and stacked them into a crude archway. Jason, eager to play, pushed a yellow Matchbox car toward the opening. I slapped my chubby hand down, blocking the tunnel.

"Toll," I said. Jason looked confused. I pointed to a plastic red poker chip sitting near the leg of the desk. Jason grabbed it in his fist and handed it to me. I lifted my hand.

"Vroom," I said. Jason pushed the car through happily. Then, I blocked the tunnel again.

"Another car, another penny." Jack barked out a laugh from the doorway.

"Would you look at that? Three years old and he's already running a shakedown on a bridge." John Battisti stopped writing. He stared at the wooden blocks on the floor. His CPA brain began turning the child's play into a financial architecture.

"A toll booth," John whispered.

"What's that, John?" Bob asked.

"The kid's running a toll booth," John said, standing up, his eyes locking onto Bob's.

"Jack is right. It's a shakedown on a bridge. Bob, we don't sell the operating system to IBM. It's not a product. It's a license. An annuity. We own the bridge, and they have to pay a toll to cross it."

"We charge a royalty," Bob realized, the sheer scale of the math hitting him.

"On every single machine they build."

"Fifty grand," Jack said, his eyes gleaming with the thrill of the hustle.

"I'll wire fifty grand on Monday. You go to Seattle, Bob. You hire Paterson. You tell him we're funding the development, but we own the code." Bob looked at his notepad.

"I can be there tomorrow." Then Bob looked at me again. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"You're spooky, Chad. You know that?" I just played with a floppy disk, spinning it in my hands.

"I like puzzles."

"We need a name," John said, pulling a legal pad from his briefcase.

"If we're forming a holding company to own this code, we need a name by Monday. Something solid." Bob looked around the room.

"Cyber-Data? Micro-Source?"

"Too dry," Jack said.

"Needs to sound big. Like 'General Dynamics' or 'Standard Oil.'" I looked at the bookshelf behind Bob. It was a chaotic wall of technical manuals, sci-fi novels, and academic journals. I needed to plant the seed, but I couldn't speak it. If a three-year-old said "Fractal," Bob would call an exorcist. I had to let them find it. I slid off the chair. I toddled over to the bottom shelf, where Bob kept the heavy oversized books. I scanned the spines. The Art of Electronics. CP/M Handbook. Dune. There.

A new hardcover, published in 1977. Benoit Mandelbrot's FRACTALS: FORM, CHANCE AND DIMENSION. I pulled it out. It was incredibly heavy for my small frame. I grunted, letting it thud onto the carpet. Thump.

"Whatcha got there, sport?" Jack asked, glancing down. I ignored him. I needed the second half. I scanned the lower shelf again. I saw a thick gray binder—an IBM technical manual. The spine simply read: SYSTEMS REFERENCE. I dragged the binder out, my muscles straining. I sat on the floor, breathing hard. The motor skills required to manipulate five pounds of literature were taxing. I opened the Mandelbrot book to the title page. The word FRACTALS was printed in bold, geometric type.

I pushed the IBM binder next to it. The spine was facing up. SYSTEMS. It was messy. The full title read FRACTALS: FORM, CHANCE AND DIMENSION and SYSTEMS REFERENCE. I needed to crop the image. I grabbed a wooden ruler from the floor. My hands were clumsy, the wood awkward. I dropped it across the Mandelbrot book. Clack. It landed perfectly, covering everything below the first word. Then I took the floppy disk I had been holding and slapped it down on the binder. It slid, stopping right over the word "REFERENCE."

I looked at the arrangement. FRACTALS | SYSTEMS I patted the books hard with my palms. Whack. Whack.

"Gate," I said, looking up at Jack.

"For the bridge." Jack looked down. He squinted at the arrangement of books and office supplies on the floor.

"Fractals," Jack read.

"Systems." He looked at Bob.

"What the hell is a fractal?" Bob leaned over his desk, peering at the book I had pulled.

"It's a geometry term," Bob said, his voice distracted.

"Complex shapes that look the same at any scale. Infinite complexity."

"Fractal Systems," John Battisti mused, testing the weight of it.

"It implies structure. Growth. Infinite scale." Bob looked at the books, then at me. He looked at the ruler. He looked at the floppy disk perfectly obscuring the unwanted words. The precision was... unlikely.

"He just grabbed the two biggest books on the shelf," Bob reasoned, his logical mind desperately trying to rationalize what he was seeing.

"He dropped the ruler. It's just random chance."

"There's no such thing as chance, Bob," Jack grinned.

"That's a sign. It sounds expensive. It sounds smart." John wrote it down on the top of the legal pad. FRACTAL SYSTEMS, INC.

"Fractal Systems," Jack said, raising his glass.

"I love it. Kid's a genius." Bob didn't raise a glass. He was staring at me.

"Chad," Bob said softly.

"Did you mean to do that?" I picked up the floppy disk and tried to put it in my mouth, drooling slightly on the magnetic media. I banged the ruler against the floor.

"Bang bang!" I shouted.

"Gate go boom!" Bob exhaled, his shoulders dropping. The tension left his face.

"Okay. Just a kid. For a second there, I thought..." He shook his head and turned back to his desk, grabbing the phone to call the airline.

"I'm going to Seattle," Bob said.

"And I'm taking the red-eye." I looked at Jason. We had the name. We had the money. We had the code.

"Lights," I said.

"Lights!" Jason cheered.