You guessed it. My neighbor Norman. You remember Norman, don’t you? President, CEO, and undersecretary to the overseer for SoftPop Software? Well, there he was, knocking on my backdoor. I shooed him away, and he climbed in through the kitchen window.

"Good morning, Lincoln. Hope I’m not disturbing you."

"As a matter of fact, Norman, I’m busy."

"No you’re not. You were busy an hour ago."

My girlfriend leapt to her feet. "Uh, I think I better go now." She was out the front door before I could remind her that she was only wearing a bathrobe.

"Lincoln," Norman cried out eagerly, completely oblivious to my annoyed look, "you’ll never guess what’s going to happen to me!" Before I could show him, he blurted out the hottest industry secret of the year. "I’m about to become CEO of Apple!"

My anger turned to curiosity. "Norman, are you sure?"

"Well, who else could it be? Is there anyone else in this industry more qualified than me? I’ve managed SoftPop Software for eight years. That’s 32 quarters of pure profit."

"Really? You’ve had 32 quarters in the black?"

He looked a bit confused. "Uh, we did make a profit of 32 quarters, but I think they were gray."

Some gentle discouragement was clearly called for. "Norman, how can you take over Apple. Doesn’t SoftPop need you?"

His head fell to his chest. "As of this afternoon, I have resigned as Chief Executive Officer of SoftPop Software. The board of directors was dissatisfied with the financial performance of the company during my tenure. But frankly, they never gave me the support necessary to do my job."

"The board of directors?" I asked.

Norman’s expression hardened--he suddenly looked business-like and professional. "Absolutely. As the board of directors, we felt that Norman wasn’t performing up to our expectations, and we voted 1 to 0 to force him to voluntarily resign."

"Who’s going to run the company?"

"While we conduct a neighborhood-wide search for a new CEO, we’re temporarily bringing back the original founder of SoftPop to run the company."

"The founder?"

Norman smiled at me. For the first time in all the years I’d known him, he looked handsome and charismatic. "That’s right. I have ideas, enthusiasm, youth. Well, I once had youth. I can make SoftPop Software a great company again."

"But how can you make SoftPop Software a great company…again, and still be devoted to Apple?"

"Look at it this way," he said, holding up his hand as if it was something significant. "What does Apple need more than anything else?"

"Revenue?"

"Other than that."

"Market share?"

"Even more important."

"The immediate demise of Microsoft?"

He pondered that for a second. "What Apple needs more than anything else is fresh blood," said Norman. "And I’m going to give Apple fresh blood. Do you know how?"

"Animal sacrifices?"

"Even better…Massive layoffs. Isn’t that great? No one’s ever thought of that before. When I introduce massive layoffs at Apple, that company will be profitable before you can say Windows 98."

"I hate to say this, Norman, but massive layoffs have been tried. Just last year, Apple laid off… "

"Ah, but I’ll do it differently. For starters, I’m going to lay off Gil Amelio."

"Uh, Norman, Amelio has resigned."

"He must have heard the rumors. Okay, what about Ellen Hancock?"

"Gone."

"How about Mike Spindler?"

"That’s who Amelio replaced."

"Steve Jobs?"

"It’s been done, but you can always try it again."

"Fine. Then I’ll buy a failed manufacturer of Unix workstations and combine that technology with the Mac OS! What changes do you think I should make to the Mac OS?"

"Limit file names to eight and three letters."

"Of course. No one likes to type long names, anyway. Do you think it should have AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files?"

The phone rang before I could answer in the affirmative. Norman got to it before I did.

"SoftPop Software, how can you help me?…Yes, this is the home of Lincoln Spector…No, Lincoln is right here…I doubt it. I suspect he’s going to be spending the rest of the day with me. I’m giving him a major scoop on Apple’s future directions…That’s right; all day tomorrow, too…Basically, Lincoln’s not going to have time for that sort of thing, anymore…Yes, I’ll tell him. I’ m sure he’ll understand. Thanks. Bye."

He hung up the phone and turned to me. "That was the young lady who was here a little while ago. She made some comments about bad I/O and I think she called you a motherboard."

"Norman, why don’t you leave now?"

"But I haven’t told you how I’m going to neutralize IBM. You know the way you can hypnotize a chicken by laying it down on a straight line. Well, with Big Blue, you just…"

The things you learn! I never would have guessed that with enough adrenaline, I could throw a grown man out an open window.