Then, one day, Therese Loel of the Engineering Systems Group, who had been one of the party that visited SDC in California, approached Pinder with a request. ESG was the “specials” part of Pinder’s domain: a facility within the R & D division for designing and building customer-specified systems to order. In this it came halfway between one of CLC’s regular manufacturing divisions, who made and sold standard products, and R & D proper, which was funded either internally or under specific research agreements contracted outside. Therese had talked briefly about EVIE to some of her acquaintances at Feller & Faber, a major international client of ESG’s based in New York and involved in prestige marketing. CLC had supplied a package of AI-based learning software to track and predict market trends, which had proved quite successful; now, some people at Feller & Faber wanted to learn more about this new development and where it might be pointing. Could Pinder arrange for someone who knew more about the subject than she did to accompany ESG’s sales personnel on a visit to the customer and give them an overview?
Pinder was keen to spread the word about the new venture, and agreed. There were really only three people who knew enough about both the Pinocchio and VIV aspects that together composed EVIE: Corrigan, Eric Shipley, and Frank Tyron. However, Shipley’s disinterest in anything connected with selling or publicity was notorious, which ruled him out. Tyron was fully committed, and in any case could hardly be used to promote CLC’s private interests since he was not an employee. And that left only one. Accordingly, Pinder called Corrigan over to his office, filled him in on the situation, and told him to get in touch with the ESG sales executive assigned to the account, Henry Glinberg, who would make the arrangements.
* * *
They caught an early-morning flight up to La Guardia a week or so later. Having prepared himself for worse, Corrigan found Glinberg to be lively and alert, personable and appealing—the kind of salesman who made people feel important by listening, even when nothing they said was the slightest bit interesting. He didn’t contradict, disagree, or antagonize with unasked-for opinions—preferring to win sales rather than arguments. And he dressed and groomed himself well but not flashily: enough to make a person feel respected by being worth the effort; not so much as to make them feel cheap. His company came as a stimulating change from the tech-intellectual surroundings that Corrigan had grown used to, and after an hour Corrigan could cheerfully have bought a lifetime’s insurance, a new car, or anything else from him—and then done all his friends a favor by recommending their names too. It seemed to be generally considered a social virtue for somebody to be “easy to talk to”; “easy to be around”; “easy to get along with.” Corrigan could recall countless occasions, from buying an airline ticket to making a hotel reservation, when he’d practically had to battle with a company’s employees to be allowed to spend his money with them. Why, he wondered, was it so difficult to be “easy to buy from”?
From the airport they caught a cab to CLC’s Manhattan branch office near Lincoln Center, where they met up with Mat Hamils, sales manager for the New York City area. Feller & Faber was his customer, and he would be taking them there—Glinberg was a Pittsburgh-based ESG specialist who supported customers throughout the Northeast. Before leaving to go crosstown, they reviewed the situation over coffee in a meeting room adjacent to Hamils’s office.
“So in terms of spectaculars, you’re saying that EVIE will bring everything together sooner—touch, vision, talk, the works,” Hamils concluded. Clearly, he was thinking ahead and had customer demonstrations in mind.
“Yes,” Corrigan said.
“But it’s hybrid, not full direct-neural,” Glinberg reminded Hamils. He looked back at Corrigan. “Pinocchio Two will be all-neural, though—right, Joe?”
“Sounds better,” Hamils commented, nodding.
“But it just adds speech and hearing to the existing motor I/O,” Corrigan said. “Vision won’t be until later.”
Glinberg frowned. “I thought you said something on the plane about a new section being organized to move the interfacing up from the medulla to the pons.”