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“Oh, we’ll figure it out.”
As they dropped to the bed on all sides of me, I realized how incredibly lucky I was. How outrageously happy and sated I would be by the end of the evening, and not just this evening, but every evening from here through the immediate and distant future.
And I had zero doubt in my mind that the boys would ‘figure it out.’
Epilogue
HARPER
“This is incredible,” Adrian gawked, walking in a circle. “Unbelievable. I mean, this isn’t even camping anymore!”
He put his arms straight out, and still couldn’t touch any of the walls. I couldn’t help but notice those arms looked especially tanned and amazing in his sleeveless leather shirt. But for once, that wasn’t the amazing part.
“He’s right,” Jax agreed. “I wouldn’t call this camping. This is some real next-level shit.”
The title of the YouTube video had been innocuous enough: ‘The Largest Inflatable Tent on Amazon.’ It led us down a rabbit hole of other impulse purchases like sleeping bags, inflatable beds, portable grills… even an indoor, solar-powered air-conditioning unit.
The tent was so big it had it’s own furniture. Chairs. A table. We could set up a television in here if we wanted to, but we decided the experience would be more enjoyable without it. There were doors, windows, skylights. I had to agree, it was kind of nuts.
Even so, I was grateful that the whole thing went up in only five minutes with just a plug-in blower. And that’s because we’d spent the last eight hours walking the entire New York Renaissance Fair, catching just about every single show and exhibit. By the time we retreated to our designated spot in the adjacent camping area of Sterling Forest, we were utterly and completely exhausted.
“So… when are we eating?” Jax said for the twentieth time, rubbing his hands together.
“Once you start the grill,” Adrian poked him.
“Are you serious? But I put up the tent!”
“Yeah, and that must’ve been brutal,” laughed Preston. “You flipped a switch and the tent inflated itself!”
“Not all by itself,” Jax protested. “I had to run the extension cord between the blower and the truck.”
I smiled and watched them fall into their usual banter, while carrying in the rest of our supplies. Two full days and nights away, just the four of us. It wasn’t much of a vacation, but I was happy to take it. And considering the whirlwind of non-stop work I’d been exposed to since taking my haptic system to market, it was going to be absolutely magical.
“Did you bring the radio?” asked Jax.
Adrian shrugged. “I didn’t. I thought you had it covered.”
“How can we listen to the game without a radio?” Jax seethed. “It’s opening week, for fuck’s sake!”
“When the game comes on, go sit in the truck. Turn it on in there.”
“The hell with that,” Jax spat. “Preston?”
He turned, and Preston was already smiling. “Don’t worry,” he grinned. “I’ll pick it up on an internet station. We can stream it through my phone, cast it to the portable speaker, and…”
His voice faded as I wandered back to the truck. There was a lot to carry. Like everything else we did, even in camping we liked to go big.
A year and a half!
I still couldn’t believe it had been that long. It seemed like only yesterday I was presenting to Oculus, and then SONY, and then back to San Francisco to pitch Meta. These companies didn’t just like my tech, they went totally bonkers over it. I ended up spending weeks traveling from meeting to meeting, and being presented with contract after contract.
Unlike my men however, who were happy to share me, none of these companies wanted to let me go. Soon they were all pitching me, instead of the other way around. They offered me dizzying advances that were in the millions of dollars, to license my hardware, my software, and a contract to keep me on as program and design support.
I almost signed three times, until Valve sent a jet for me. I spent a week at their headquarters in Bellevue Washington, and came back with a licensing agreement for one of their products, too.
The strangest part about the whole thing wasn’t the sudden influx of money. For everything I’d sacrificed, and prepared for, I expected that. No, the most unexpected aspect of my success was the continued work. Instead of selling my design and walking off into the sunset, I’d licensed it to multiple companies who hired me on as a consultant. That is, after paying me ridiculous sums of money for rights to the initial software, that is.
I opened the truck, saw my phone, and picked it up. Before I could turn it over to check the messages however…
