The $100 Cover

My brother was very creative; in fact, in the business world he was almost seen as a genius with new, completely unusual ideas. His name was Roy and he was just a bit younger than me.

We shared a house and he was always wandering around with a pencil or pen in his mouth or behind his ear, muttering and half-way talking to himself. Then he would find a piece of paper, anything would work, and jot down a note or paragraph. These he would tuck into a pocket and then start all over again. Unless we were watching some TV show or movie together that totally engrossed both of us and at those times, muttering and wandering would cease for a little while.

His unexpected, untimely death rocked my world. One day he was fine, wandering the place and then the next he was gone, never to wander (at least not visible to me) again.

Before his service that sad day, his lawyer gathered us, the family, together in a small knot of humans. There were only four of us left. My parents were shaking, Mary and Richard. My little brother, Kevin, was speechless also.

Roy’s lawyer, Jim, asked if could read Roy’s will that following Wednesday in his office at 2 p.m. We all agreed to be there in person. That gave us the weekend together, but allowed for everyone to go back home where they lived several hours away. We were still working and couldn’t jeopardize our incomes.

So at the reading, not only were we very surprised and pleasantly stunned, but we heard the news identifying Roy’s puttering and muttering. He had invented a game. He couldn’t tell any of us about it for fear the details or the idea, even, would be found by a competitor. He had kept his secret safe. We had to sign a non-disclosure document before more details could be shared. Of course, we each signed eagerly.

Then Jim surprised us even more. “You see,” he stated, “Roy kept all the rules to the new game in an unlikely spot. He really was trying to keep everything quiet.”

Jim paused and then said, “If you can find the little black book of instructions and rules to play, you can all share evenly in the profit when the game is sold.” He proceeded to tell us that Roy had already obtained everything possible to protect his rights to his game, anything that could have a copyright or trademark, including all the special protections that occur with online video games. Roy had even talked with some of the larger game companies that enticed their players with online web ads, “play me” type of enticements, etc. Roy had protected the “code” of the game which was the software aspect. Roy had covered all the bases. He was basically ready to sell once he had finalized the rules and developed the final version of the software.

However, his little black book of rules was missing. He had misplaced it several weeks ago and of course all the rules were basically in the little book or in Roy’s brain. Unfortunately they were both not available to us now. The game’s development and manual couldn’t be checked or finished, until the rules were found.

When Jim was finished telling us what he could that Wednesday, we left. No one really felt like eating at a restaurant and friends and neighbors had been bringing us food of some type all week. That was just the mid-Western or Southern way. The refrigerator was bulging at the seams with the kindness of others. This did allow each family member to eat whatever piqued their interest, however slight that interest in food might really be at the time.

We slowly started talking about the afternoon’s discover from Jim. Actually none of us were surprised because Roy was always tinkering with a computer in some fashion. He had set up a website with recipes from our family. Sadly enough, I had never even opened up the site; I seemed to always be working. I felt horrible.

Kevin asked if I had any idea where to look. I had basically left Roy’s area of the home off-site to respect his privacy. He did the same with me. When we moved in to the house, we bought it equally; I guess at this point the house was mine to determine what to do next. It was a great home, four bedrooms, 3 baths and a den/ computer room. There was no need for me to have something this large and I’m not sure I could maintain it anyway. But this wasn’t an immediate issue right now; I had savings and a good job which could help overcome the financial issues, for now.

But if we could find Roy’s little black book and each earn at least $20,000 from the game sale? That would be amazing.

“Did Roy have a safe?” Kevin asked? I could only shrug my shoulders. I didn’t know.

Mom asked, “Did he have a safe deposit box?” Again, my sad answer was a shrug.

Dad then piped up and asked if he had a hiding spot in his room(s), like what you might consider a loose floorboard or even a wall socket that could be removed for safe storage. Mind you, we didn’t know the actual size of the little black book. We only knew that in someone’s terminology, it was considered “little”.

Since no one was motivated by television and no one wanted to leave the house, we decided to split up the area and look ourselves. Nothing was off-limits. We had to look everywhere. So I did what I normally do and the project manager in me took over and created a spreadsheet, with searching places detailed and noted. The laundry room, the garage, the bedrooms (including mine), the bathrooms, drawers, closets, shelves, knick-knacks (was there a hidden bottom in one?), etc. Tool boxes, craft supplies, computer books, even old computers could be opened and searched around the space usually taken by a hard drive. We were determined.

The task suddenly became mind-boggling.

But, true to our natures we started in. We each had a list and would mark it off when we had accomplished something. They would bring their lists to me, I’d log them. We discussed what might have been missed – such as under the lamp? And start again.

As you can imagine this took us many hours, even days, to search.

Remember those odd slips of paper I mentioned that Roy would make a note on and then stuff in his pocket? I actually found a few stacks of them in various spots in his room. I told Mom, Dad and Kevin so that they could look for cryptic little notes like these. So they searched some of the spots they had before and did find a few. We put them all together in a small pile on the dining room table which was our “Control Room”. We started finding more and more of these little “treasure troves” in the oddest places. Under a computer keyboard, in the wall socket, under a box, in the couch, under a mattress, in an old shoe box mixed in with pictures, and even in the refrigerator butter dish section in a sealed baggie.

I guess Roy would be so engrossed in his thoughts he didn’t really remember all of his own hiding places. But were all of these in the little black book? We weren’t savvy enough about the game to even know if they were valuable or not.

Strangely, as I stumbled through Roy’s room, sniffling and crying, then blowing my nose, I started to remember odd questions he would ask me before taking such a diligent note each time.

“When you play Solitaire or Mahong, what’s the easiest way to win or lose?” Roy would ask me. He didn’t play much; he preferred to invent something new.

“If I see three of something, I wait until the fourth of the same shows up unless there just isn’t another move,” I would answer.

“Or for cards, I’ll take a move from the biggest stack on the right, unless I think there is only one card and the likelihood is that it can be moved also,” I explained.

He would mutter and then make a note and go back to wandering.

He would ask, “You have to play opposite colors in order to stack a pile of cards, correct? Like red on black on red, etc.?”

I would answer yes, if it was like Solitaire. But often, unless the tiles were exactly the same, they might not be matched with tiles of different colors for Mahong.

These conversations drifted in and out over the next few days until I thought I had realized what type of game had been developed. Once I started reviewing Roy’s notes, I could see the logic he wanted to create. I separated the notes into various piles that represented “how” to play the game, versus the strategy he wanted players to utilize. Additionally, I could see the way that he wanted to develop the habits of the players to be similar, however different, from the online games they had been playing.

It turned out Roy’s game was a mixture of removing Mahong-type tiles and Solitaire-type stacks from high to low. The players could have or hold up to five cards. The playing style was to prevent your partner from gathering pairs (like Go Fish). So if you couldn’t get a pair during your turn, one strategy would be to build out the stack, thus limiting the other player’s ability to get a pair. This is where the cards you could hold would become useful, such as removing a card from a stacked pile in order to expose a pair. Since the tiles or cards were stacked on each other, either by the game or by your opponent, it could be difficult to see what could be in play at your next chance. A player was done with their turn when they had no other plays they could make and the game moved to the next player. The winner was the first person with no cards being held, no plays that could be made and the player with the most pairs at their elbows.

All-in-all, it was a very strategic game, played individually against the computer or played online with a partner. Genius, really, as it could become very simple to play with kids or it could be very difficult if your opponent was savvy at both games.

At almost the last opportunity, in the last hour, we found it. It was much like the size of a scandalized “little black book” that had names, addresses, and phone numbers. But it was only a tiny, little black book that appeared innocent enough. Where was it found? Right beside Roy’s cell phone, in a small little section of his wallet. You see, it was so obvious that we all ignored it because we didn’t expect Roy’s little black book to be the size of a little telephone book. We had each looked for something much more separate, perhaps more obvious. It was wrapped up in a $100 bill, but Roy had carried that bill as long as I knew him and he wouldn’t break it down for anything. That should have been my first clue. I guess Roy had even forgotten it was there; he hadn’t been taking new notes lately.

We worked with Jim to finish the coding and the manual. Once on the market it was less than 48 hours that a deal was struck. We became richer than we could imagine.

We also realized we had been rich the entire time. Roy taught us when we were searching for our own objective we almost didn’t see the big picture; when searching for the obvious we were missing the entire real purpose.