So when he ran out of that first run of a thousand boxes, he began shipping in a much smaller box with no printing on the outside, just a sticker that said "The only word processor you'll ever need-$29" and began making four dollars a unit. It sold even faster, and the profit per unit got even better, and one day his wife said, "Ray, I got no house left, it's all Eight Bits Inc. Either me and the kids move out or the company does."

That's when Ray Keene bought the ugly building on Palladium. It had originally been a climate-controlled clean shop for the assembly of calculators in the mid-70s, but it had been stand ing empty for a couple of years and the owner sold it to Ray at a price that said he was just glad to get it off his hands. Ray had the whole thing rewired and half the big factory space cut up into offices. There weren't any windows and the place was ugly but everybody in the company, which was up to ten employees by then, was so happy to have enough room to turn around that they loved it like a mama loves an ugly baby.

When Step came down for interviews six weeks before, all he got from everybody was that sense of exuberance and excitement. But this first day at work there was something else. Ray Keene had remodeled his office since Step was there before, and it showed signs that Ray had apparently read that book about power that was on the lists the year before. Ray now sat behind a massive desk in a rock-back chair while all the chairs that visitors had to sit on were hard and too low and didn't have enough space from front to back, so that you always felt like you were sitting on the edge of the seat because, in fact, you were.

"You won't report to me," said Ray. "I've made Dicky Northanger the vice-president in charge of the creative end of things, and you'll report to him, but send me memos from time to time. We'll be hiring an assistant for you as soon as we can, but for now all the manuals for all our software will come through you, but pass it all by Dicky for final approval."