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meter."
    "I wouldn't call it a people meter."
    "Course not. But that's what they'll call it. Except it's a whole lot better than the usual kind, I could see that right away. Anyway, you're going to go meet with a bunch of executives for movie and television studios, maybe some ad agencies, and persuade 'em to buy a whole bunch of these things, hook 'em up to man-on-thestreet types, show 'em movies and TV programs so they can do all that test audience stuff."
    "Yeah, that's about right. You're a very perceptive man, Mr. Ogle."
    "What I get paid for," Ogle said.
    "You work in the media industry?"
    "Yeah, that's a good way to put it," Ogle said.
    "You seem to know a lot about what I do."
    "Well," Ogle said. All of a sudden he seemed quiet, reflective. He pushed the button on his armrest and leaned his chair back a couple of inches. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, curled   one   hand   around   his   drink.    "High-tech   has   its   own biorhythms."
    "Biorhythms?"
    Ogle opened one eye, turned his head a bit, peered at Aaron.
    "Course you probably don't like that word because you are Mr. High Tech, and it sounds to you like cocktail-party pseudoscience."
    "Exactly." Aaron was beginning to think that Ogle knew him better than he knew himself.
    "Fair enough. But I have a legitimate point here. See, we live under capitalism. Capitalism is defined by competition for capital. Would-be businessmen, and existing businesses seeking to expand, fight for the tiny supply of available capital like starving jackals around a zebra leg.
    "That's a depressing image."
    "It's a depressing country. It's not like that in other countries where people save more money. But it's like that here, now, because we don't have values that encourage savings."
    "Okay."
    "Consequently you are starved for capital."
    "Right!"
    "You had to get capital from venture capitalists - or vulture capitalists, as we call them - who are like the vultures that feed on the jackals when they become too starved and weak to defend themselves."
    "Well, I don't think my investor would agree."
    "They probably would," Ogle said, "they just wouldn't do so in your presence."
    "Okay."
    "Venture capitalism is risky and so the vulture capitalists hedge their bets by pooling funds and investing in a number of start-ups at once - backing several horses, as it were."
    "Of course."
    "But what they don't tell you is that at a certain point a couple of years into its life cycle, the start-up suddenly needs to double or triple its capitalization in order to survive. To get over those cash flow problems that occur when orders suddenly go from zero to more than zero. And when that happens, the vulture capitalists look at all of their little companies and they cull out the weakest two-thirds and let them starve. The rest, they provide with the capital they need in order to continue."
    Aaron said nothing. Suddenly he was feeling tired and depressed.
    "That's what's happening to your company right now," Ogle said. "You're, what, three years old?"
    "How'd you know that!?" Aaron said, twisting around in his seat, glaring at Ogle, who remained quiescent in his big fat chair. He was almost expecting to see a crew from Candid Camera filming him from the galley.
    "Just a lucky guess. Your logo," Ogle said, "you designed your logo yourself."
    Again Aaron's face reddened. He had, in fact, designed it himself. But he thought it was fairly professional, a lot more so than the typical home-brewed logo. "Yeah, so what?" he said. "It works. And it was free."
    "Okay, this is ridiculous," Aaron said. "How did you know that?"
    "If you were old enough to have made the cut - if you had passed through the capitalization barrier - you would have immediately gone out and hired professional designers to spiff up your corporate image. The vultures would have insisted on it."
    "Yeah, that was going to be our next step," Aaron said.
    "That's okay. That speaks well of you, as a scientist, if not as a