ref: a00feb029ddcea6188f4324169e5f2b6a389de4e
dir: /troff/_-0206.ms/
.PP .ps 10 The business was failing. His standards were too high. Profits turned to steam and evaporated under the intense pressure of map revisions, course corrections, arbitrary edits, and total do\-overs. To be fair, the staff were hardly equal to the task. Blood from a turnip, and so forth. .PP .ps 10 So, another failure. He couldn't take much more of this. He sensed now that the blunt Earth could not accommodate his thundering footsteps. Maybe he was just clumsy. What was there to measure himself against? .PP .ps 10 New York. But he wouldn't go back there and look at that sky. .PP .ps 10 "Chief, what's next?" an underling asked. The Chief stared straight ahead. .PP .ps 10 Born of the pink triangle, rolling to his feet with the plan still fresh in his mind, he'd lost the plot somewhere along the way. Coming to Earth had been one mistake. Coming to New York had been another. Coming to 1986 had been the worst mistake of all. His efforts to prevent the inevitable had perhaps only hastened its arrival. .PP .ps 10 And now New San Francisco. The whole arrangement had been displaced, transplanted a full century forward into a future it could never have otherwise known. Megatokyo was not his Japan, and New San Francisco resembled the Bay Area of his youth only in its bare geographic contours. Everything else had shifted unpredictably. It never even got foggy here. .PP .ps 10 He didn't know what to do. He was certainly not going to call and ask T for help. .PP .ps 10 He'd have to consider taking on venture capital. This was an avenue he had scrupulously avoided, and for good reason. He had to keep control of the ship. Investors meant a board, and a board meant even more perceptions to manage. This, too, would be bad for propulsion. It was no way to get from Point A to Point B. .PP .ps 10 He'd just have to find another approach.