"Dave's crashed."

The bearer of bad news was Brian, weaving among the desks, ashen-faced and slightly out of breath, only his head and shoulders visible above the partitions.

"Have you heard the news?" he asked nobody in particular. "It's Dave. He's crashed."

Pam lifted her eyes from the computer screen, a frown playing across her face. "Is he alright?"

"What about his family?" asked Nigel. "Was anyone else in the car?"

Brian winced. "No, you don't understand. He's crashed."

Jay Rothwell slipped off his jacket and walked up to the table where, from behind, he recognised the hunched shoulders of Howard Whitehead, sales director of Omega Solutions. Howard was studying the menu but seemed to sense Jay's approach, glancing over his shoulder, then rising to his feet and extending his right hand.

"Jay - hi!"

"Howard, good to see you." Jay draped his jacket over the back of his chair and both men sat down.

"So," said Howard, nodding. "I guess congratulations are in order."

Jay smiled. "I guess they are. You ain't doing so bad yourself, what I hear."

It was the first time the two had met since Jay Rothwell had taken up his London appointment as Marketing Director of Centaur Business Information Services. He had worked with Howard in the States where Omega had been one of Centaur's key technology suppliers. Now, both were working in London and Howard was buying lunch.

"So, how're you finding London?" asked Howard, himself a Londoner by birth but atuned to the American way of life.

"It's great, isn't it?" said Jay. "I mean, so much history. And the pubs you have here - they're just great."

Howard patted his stomach which bulged above his belt. "Tell me about it."

Over starters, the two men began to talk business. "So tell me, Jay," said Howard, breaking open a crusty roll. "You're new in as Marketing Director - what's your single biggest challenge? What's your number one business issue?"

Jay sniffed. "No doubt about that," he said. "Information overload."

"Is that right?"

"You bet. Way I see it, my organisation is supposed to keep the rest of the company up to date with what is happening, what the market's doing, what our competitors are up to, etcetera, etcetera. Trouble is, the goddamn market's moving so fast, my people get buried. It's all they can do just to keep on top of the news. Doing any analysis on top of that just seems impossible for these guys."

"I know," said Howard. "But there's a hell of a lot you can do with technology nowadays."

Jay frowned. "Technology we got. I don't think it's a technology problem. It's more of a, erm, a people problem. A yuman thing."

"Like I say," said Howard, grinning, "there's a lot we can do to fix that with the latest technology."

They were interrupted by a piercing arpeggio coming from Jay's jacket. He retrieved a tiny matt black mobile phone, flipped open the mouthpiece, pressed a button and lifted it to his ear. "Hi," he said softly. He listened. "Okay," he said, his face expressionless, "here's what you do - get Simon on the phone, get the e-mail across to him and ask him to take care of it, okay?" He blinked slowly. "Thanks. Bye." He snapped the phone shut and returned it to his jacket pocket. "I'm sorry," he said to Howard, "I'm going to turn the damned thing off. So, where were we?"

"We were talking about people and their natural limitations."

"Uh-huh?"

"I was saying, there's a lot we can do right now to overcome these issues."

"There is?"

"Sure there is. We need to get you down to our labs in Basingstoke."

The meeting was already under way when Dave arrived, flustered. Beads of sweat had formed upon his forehead and upper lip; perspiration had caused his glasses to slide down the bridge of his nose. He was weighed down on his left side by the black bag that contained his lap-top computer and which bulged with files; the strap bit into his shoulder. With his right hand he clasped a mobile phone to his ear. "I'll, er, I'll get it to you tonight… look, I'm late for a meeting. I'm going to have to go… Okay, bye."

He shut off the call and looked around the table at the faces staring back at him. He was still slightly out of breath. "Sorry I'm late," he said as he shuffled to a spare seat at the far corner of the table.

"Hi, Dave," said Nick Crayford. Nick was one of the young bucks in Corporate Accounts and was chairing this, the second meeting of a virtual team assembled to work on Project Gemini. Gemini was a high-profile project initiated to deal with the forthcoming tender from RHP, one of the largest buyers in the market. This was a big opportunity to win business back from the company's biggest competitor, CFC. "You've arrived just in time. We were just going through the actions from the last meeting - you were due to circulate a company profile of CFC."

Dave's face reddened slightly. "Ah - that's what I was trying to get hold of you about earlier. We're still in the process of updating that."

"It's nine months out of date," somebody pointed out.

"I know," said Dave. "We're working on it."

"When," said Nick, "do you think the action will be closed?"

"Erm, end of the week okay?"

Nick nodded his assent to the girl seated to his right. Charlotte, a recent graduate recruit to the firm was Nick's project manager. Solemnly, she noted the action down on her pad as "Ongoing" and scribbled next to it the new due date.

"Since we're talking about CFC," said another member of the virtual team, "what would be really helpful would be a SWOT analysis of them - you know, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats."

Dave swallowed. "Yes, we're working on that as well," he said. "I was hoping to have a first draft for this meeting but we haven't got to it yet, I'm afraid."

"I think it's really important for what we're trying to do here."

"I know," said Dave defensively, "but it's just a question of resource."

"Have you spoken to Keith Watson?" asked Nick. To the rest of the team he explained, "Keith joined us a couple of weeks ago from CFC. He used to work on the RHP account." This raised a murmur of excitement around the room.

"No. I realise I need to debrief him," said Dave. "I've tried to get hold of him but we've just been playing telephone tag, I'm afraid. I'll er.." He was interrupted by the ring of his mobile phone; he fumbled in his jacket pocket before pulling it out, making the sound louder still. "I'm sorry," he said to his team-mates. "Thought I'd turned it off."

The Centaur board meeting had not been a comfortable one. The poor Quarter Two results had been accompanied by the disappointing news that the RHP bid had been lost; they had chosen to keep all their business with CFC.

Jay Rothwell had shrewdly chosen this meeting to make time on the agenda for a presentation for Omega Solutions. He had remained calm and dispassionate throughout the emotive debate on the RHP bid where, as part of the inevitable blame-apportionment exercise, his organisation had come in for some criticism for failing to keep the sales force equipped with the necessary ammunition. Being new to the firm, he recognised that none of this was directed at him personally - at least this time.

"Lemme introduce the next item," he said softly as his colleagues drifted back into the boardroom from their five-minute comfort break. "I'm cognisant of the challenges of today's market and it's tough for my organisation also. There's more happening out there, more quickly, than ever before. That's why the time is right…" - he held out his hand, palm down, in front of him, then raised it theatrically six inches - "…the time is right for a step change. Let me hand you over to Howard Whitehead of Omega Solutions." Howard had prepared a hard-hitting presentation; he took his place in front of the overhead and threw a question at Peter Edwards, the Managing Director. "Peter, tell me how many days there are between today and next Tuesday." Peter raised his eyes to the ceiling and thought for a moment. "Er… five!"

Howard nodded and looked around the table. "For all the talk today about knowledge management solutions, what nobody is doing right now is grasping one very important nettle. The bottle-neck in all this is not network capacity or processor speed." He paused and nodded. "It's the end-user; the human brain." There were nods of recognition among the Directors.

"Let's face it," Howard continued, "we humans practically have to count on our fingers to get to five." Peter nodded, smiling with embarrassment. "The reason Peter had to think before he came up with the answer to the question I just threw him is because he's missing something computer's have got and we haven't - RAM. Random Access Memory. It's RAM that allows a computer to hold a million digits or facts and recall them with confidence when working on a problem."

He switched on the overhead projector and put up an acetate showing a pictorial cross-section of the human brain. "Let's face it, what the human brain has is not software - it's wetware. You know what the brain is? It's a messy, throbbing puddle of neurochemicals. What's more, it's carried around by a body that can die or - worse still - get up and leave, join the competition. And how the hell do you back it up?

"The question now confronting the information technology industry today is not how to imbue computers with artificial intelligence in order to make them resemble humans. With the scale of data available to us in today's business environment, the critical issue is how to get the human brain to enjoy the processing and data retrieval capabilities that computers have enjoyed for decades."

He changed the slide to show the same cross-section with some circuits added to the area behind the eye. "At Omega, we now have the technology to transform the brain into a digital processing capability with several gigabits of RAM, several terabits of hard disk space plus a comprehensive back-up capability."

Howard pointed to the eye-socket on the slide. "What we can do now is put a chip behind the eye so small and powerful that it can record all brain activity and capture it as digitised data. A sophisticated lens superimposed on the cornea presents the user with a menu." He put up a slide showing a blurred photograph of a meeting, much like their own, on which was superimposed a transparent menu with non-intrusive white text. "When activated, he or she can access the menu with a simple eye movement and pull down any information that's stored."

"How do you down-load?" asked Peter.

"Let me put the previous slide back up." Howard pointed to a narrow oblong strip at the temple. "The whole thing is a simple surgical procedure - we insert an interface right here. It's just a standard V24 port."

Peter winced. "Is it safe? I mean, is this stuff proven?"

A grin spread across Howard's face. He leant across the boardroom table, turned his head to one side and pushed his fingers through the carefully groomed brown hair above his left ear. There was an intake of breath around the table as he exposed a narrow strip of matt black plastic containing two small holes.

"I like to lead from the front," said Howard. "I realise this is a big deal so I insisted on being the first triallist. Let me give you a small demonstration of what this kit can do." He looked around the table, making eye contact with each board member. "Let me have something," he said. "Something with a lot of data. Something busy."

Bob Raymond, the Finance Director, slid a document across the table. "How about the management accounts?" "He wants data, Bob," said Gerry Levy, Director of Human Resources, "not fiction." The others laughed as Howard ran his eye over the four page document for no more than thirty seconds before passing it back to Bob.

"This guy sign a confidentiality agreement?" Peter whispered to Jay. Jay nodded.

"Okay," said Howard. "Ask me something - anything."

Bob raised his eyebrows and looked for a figure. "Er… Consolidated P&L, depreciation - full year budget."

"Four-one-three-dot-one," said Howard authoritatively.

Bob looked up. "He's right." He looked at the paper again, turning over a couple of sheets. "Okay. How about UK P&L, cost of sales, month actual?"

"Forty-eight-dot-two."

Bob flung the document down on the boardroom table, momentarily lost for words. The others smiled and shook their heads. "Okay, answer me this - how much is this going to cost me?"

"For the trial," said Howard, "absolutely nothing. We like to think of Centaur as strategic partners. So all I'm pitching for right now is that you become Beta triallists."

"You talking to anybody else in the industry about this stuff?" asked Peter.

Howard shook his head. "Absolutely not."

"Well," said Peter, "I think we need to go ahead with this thing. What do you need from us?"

"I need the right guy," said Howard. "Somebody involved in a data-intensive part of the organisation. Maybe somebody out of Jay's shop."

The virtual team assembled to manage the bid for ComCo's business had its kick-off meeting at an off-site venue, a small hotel near Aylesbury. Nick Crayford, once again fulfilling the role of team leader was determined not to suffer the same problems he'd experienced with the RHP bid, battling for colleagues' limited time. He had received from his boss, Jack Cross, Director of Sales, a powerful incentive to make a success of this project. "I know you were let down with RHP, lad," Cross had said, "but mud sticks. If you lose this one, your credibility will be shot to pieces and there'll be nothing I can do for you. You'll be cold-calling the north-east in a Mondeo."

But, in spite of his boss's chastening warning, today's meeting had been a resounding success, not least because of the superlative contribution from Dave of Competitor Analysis. It had given the whole team a real lift, Nick reflected as he surveyed his colleagues enjoying a pre-dinner drink in the hotel bar.

Once again, CFC was to be their demon but today, Dave had had an inexhaustible flow of useful information. "What about their network?" someone had asked. "How well does it overlay with ComCo's own sites?"

"I need to know where ComCo's sites are. What does their internal network look like?"

"Here," said one of the account team, "I've got a map."

"Excellent," said Dave, holding the sheet of paper in front of his face.

The rest of the team watched in silence. Dave put the paper down and then raised his eyes as if he were looking at the far corner of the ceiling. "Okay," he said. "I've scanned the data in. What I'm looking at right now is a map of ComCo's network superimposed over CFC's." He paused. "I can tell you right now that CFC's nodes are in all the wrong places for this customer."

A murmur of excitement ran around the room. "One other thing I need to know," said Dave. "Where's CFC's head office?"

"Banbury," said Nick.

Dave blinked twice and smiled. "That," he said, "is good news." At the morning coffee break, Dave had downloaded the map to his lap-top and printed it off in the hotel's business suite; the team returned to find a colour copy for each of them.

Nick smiled as he spotted Dave drinking at the far side of the bar with Charlotte; he thought he detected a degree of intimacy.

"You were great today," said Charlotte. "The way you had all that data at your fingertips…" - she clicked her fingers - "just like that!"

"It's this kit we're trialling," said Dave. "It's a totally new paradigm."

"Didn't it hurt when they put it in?"

Dave smiled. "Not at all. I only needed a local anaesthetic. It's not invasive at all."

Charlotte beamed at him. "Amazing."

Nick was about to offer Dave a drink when his mobile rang. "Jack, hi!" It was Jack Cross. "Heard what?" A frown played across Nick's face as he strained to hear his boss. "You're kidding!"

When the word spread that Dave had crashed, Derek Manley - Jay Rothwell's right hand man - became involved right away, taking the next train down to Omega's labs in Basingstoke.

Dave had been found in a catatonic state at his workstation, sat bolt upright in his swivel chair. No-one was sure how long he had been in that position since the entire office had been preoccupied with the shock news that the company was to merge with CFC, something that had not been previously known to anybody below main board level.

It was the fact that Dave's condition had caused him to lose control of his bodily movements that finally alerted his colleagues to the fact that something was badly wrong. An ambulance had been called and he had been rushed to hospital where staff were mystified by his vegetative condition. It was only when the duty doctor in Accident and Emergency discovered Omega's telephone number on Dave's V24 port that Howard Whitehead had become involved. Howard had sent a private ambulance to the hospital with the necessary papers to have him moved to Basingstoke. "It's a software problem," he explained to the hospital registrar over the phone. "We'll take care of it."

The midday conference call with Jay Rothwell was an awkward one for Howard. Sat behind his desk with Jay on speaker-phone, he had an irascible Derek Manley seated opposite him.

"Jay, hi!" said Howard, speaking slightly louder than was necessary. "I've got Derek here with me."

"Hi, Jay," said Derek.

"Guys," said Jay lethargically.

"I wanted to give you an update on the Dave situation," said Howard.

"Uh-huh," croaked Jay over the speaker.

"Our software engineers have been working through the night on this and we think we have identified the problem."

"Yeah?"

Howard cleared his throat. "Yeah. It's the company configuration, basically."

"Meaning what?" asked Jay.

"Well," said Howard, "right now the system works off of a data table of companies to which Dave has added profiles. All the analysis he was doing comparing your products and services with those of your competitors was driven by a relational database."

"Yeah?" said Derek. "So what's the problem?"

Howard sighed. "When Dave tried to incorporate the news about the merger, he was telling the software that CFC was now part of Centaur. But CFC was configured as a competitor and something in the code got disrupted. It hit some sort of infinite loop." He sighed again. "Basically, the software couldn't cope."

"Couldn't he edit the data table?" asked Dave.

Howard shook his head. "The table's hardwired in. Release two-dot-one will have a table edit menu in the options." He and Derek looked at one another. "If we'd known about the merger, we could have fixed it. The fact was, none of us knew about it."

"Somebody must have known," muttered Derek.

There was silence, then a click on the speakerphone. "No-one knew below board level," said Jay. "It was on a strictly need-to-know basis."

Derek swallowed. "So you knew all along, Jay?"

Jay cleared his throat. "Guys, this was share-price-sensitive information. Besides, how was I to know what the software would do? I rely on the guys at Omega to do that. That's why Howard gets paid the big money. Right, Howard?"

Howard said nothing.

"Where does that leave our trial?" asked Derek.

"It's not good," said Howard. "It's a total hard disk failure, basically." The speakerphone crackled on the desk but on the end of the line, Jay was silent.

"Can we recover anything?" asked Derek. Howard shook his head and buried his face in his hands.

"Jesus!" Derek stood up and walked over to the window. He saw two workmen in green overalls walking across the car park at the rear of Omega's metal-and-glass office complex. Each was holding one end of an object wrapped in polythene sheets; clearly heavy, it was around six feet long and sagged in the middle. The men stopped alongside a skip and paused before swinging their load back and forth. With one last swing, they pitched the object into the skip, dusted off their hands and made their way back across the car park.

Derek watched from the window, his fingers prising apart the white slats of the Venetian blind. "Jesus Christ," he said.

- END -