Discovery: Proton Field #1

by Laurence Dahners

  For a moment Vinn didn’t say anything, then he said, “Um, I have a laptop and…”

  “Aw shit!” Myr swore. “And it’s not encrypted, right? Why not?!”

  “Um, I’ve never had any secrets on it before. I just didn’t think…”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you look at the coil-plates!” Myr interrupted, “Where’s the laptop?”

  “At work,” he said hesitantly.

  Furious, Myr said, “You need to get your ass down there and secure it! If by some miracle it’s still there you need to encrypt it tonight. Really, you should move all the data off of it onto an external drive that’s not only encrypted but locked up in a secure location.”

  “Sorry,” Vinn said repentantly.

  Myr knew she should say, “It’s okay,” or something to that effect, but didn’t trust herself to speak in her current fury. Instead, she just said, “AI, disconnect.” Getting out of her car, she headed back into the apartment.

  She met one of the cops coming out of the bathroom, “Any chance you guys are going to catch whoever did this?” She hoped she didn’t sound too bitter.

  The policeman gave a tiny shake of his head as he said, “We’ll try, and there’s some chance, sure. But not a very good one. If they took a high-value item that we might find at a pawnshop or something? That’d give us a better shot.”

  Myr realized he was asking whether something expensive might be missing. About the most expensive things she had were her computer and her two big wall screens. The wall screens had been ripped off the wall for no apparent reason and one of them was broken. She looked over at her computer. It’d been moved, she realized. No surprise considering everything else in the apartment seemed to have been moved. As she got closer to it she realized its case was loose. Did they toss it around and break the case? she wondered. Then she saw some of the screws that held the cover in place lying on the floor. With sudden suspicion she pulled the cover off and saw the hard drives were gone. Dammit! Then she thought, Good thing I don’t keep anything important on this thing.

  The policeman said curiously, “You work on your computer yourself that you don’t keep the lid screwed on?”

  Realizing the cop hadn’t noticed the hard drives were missing, she opened her mouth to tell him. Then, deciding she’d rather the police didn’t know this whole thing had been an effort to steal proprietary secrets, she simply shook her head no. She didn’t want them to know it was industrial espionage until she talked to Arlan Miller. Maybe he could get the FBI involved? she wondered.

  The policeman reached out and patted her on the shoulder. It wasn’t reassuring. Instead, she felt like he was taking liberties though she tried not to react. He said, “Sorry about all this. I think we’ve got all the information we need. Do you have renter’s insurance or something that’ll help you pay for the damage?”

  She simply shook her head.

  “Want help putting some of the big things back in place?”

  “No thanks,” Myr said.

  She just wanted everybody out of her home.

  Once the two policemen were gone, Myr lifted the register off the HVAC duct in the kitchen and reached down inside of it as far as her arm would go. She remembered thinking when she chose the spot, that with her long slender arms, she could probably reach further into the duct than most people. With great relief, she found her back up data drive lying where her fingers could barely reach it deep in the duct.

  She put it in her other front pocket.

  Ten minutes later she’d packed a suitcase and was heading out the door to her car.

  Aleks looked up when he saw movement. Finally! he thought as he recognized Myr Sevii carrying a suitcase in the direction of her car. It was getting late and he was feeling tired.

  Aleks didn’t follow immediately; after all, he’d already put a cell tracker inside her bumper. He gave her a five-minute lead then asked his car’s AI to follow her based on the tracker.

  When Kelley realizes we aren’t going to get anything out of those drives and decides we need to do something more aggressive, he thought, I’ll be ready with the mom’s address. Maybe that’ll keep her off my ass.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Marvin Rauch sat down in the indicated chair and the FBI agent sat down across from him, giving him a distasteful look. The man said, “What’s this about?”

  Rauch leaned forward and extended his hand, “Marvin Rauch, attorney.”

  The FBI man grimaced, but shook Marvin’s hand, “Noah Deming.”

  “I have a client who’d like to turn state’s evidence.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “He’s been pursued by an industrial spy. Admittedly, he’s strung them along with a little bit of information now and then and he’s collected some money, but he doesn’t think he’s given them much of anything useful. However, he’s been having some second thoughts about what he’s been doing and decided he’d like to help you guys capture them.”

  Deming sighed, and Marvin could tell the man thought of this as small potatoes. “Who’s he work for?”

  Marvin said, “Miller Technologies,” hoping that the agent would have heard of the company. Although Miller Tech was a big name in high tech industry, it wasn’t a major player in the Kansas City area economy. Marvin knew that if the agent hadn’t even heard of the company he’d have a tendency to discount whatever’d happened as small and unimportant.

  Instead, Deming leaned forward intently, “In Bonner Springs?”

  Surprised, Marvin merely nodded.

  Deming stood up abruptly, “I’ve got some people who’d like to talk to you.”

  Marvin was taken to a small conference room and offered a coffee. Ten minutes later, three more agents showed up. The lead, Agent Foster, said, “We’re trying to track down someone who tried to steal some secrets from Miller Tech.” Foster waved at the man Marvin had first spoken to, “Agent Deming tells me that your client has been providing Miller Tech’s proprietary secrets to someone?”

  “No,” Marvin said, “my client does not believe he has provided useful technical information to his contact. He was sucked in, in what I assume is a typical slow fashion. At first he only agreed to keep his contact informed about the direction of Miller Tech’s research, something which is not necessarily secret. But, as so often happens in these situations, his contact slowly began to threaten blackmail, requesting technical drawings and actual proprietary information. Most recently, his contact has intimated that he will turn my client in as a spy if such information’s not forthcoming.” Marvin surveyed the agents with his eyes, “My client, now realizing that this man is actually engaging in illegal industrial espionage, would like to help you capture him.”

  The agents glanced at one another; then Foster said, “If you’ll give us a minute, we need to discuss this.”

  Marvin left the building with an agreement that if Joe cooperated fully, including wearing a wire and delivering a traceable chip to his contact, he wouldn’t be charged. However, Joe would have to tell Arlan Miller what he’d been doing.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Myr looked up to find Vinn standing hesitantly in her doorway. “Hey Vinn, I need to apologize for yelling at you the other night. I shouldn’t…”

  “Yeah, you should have,” Vinn said, sounding disgusted with himself. “Just because I’ve never had any really valuable information to encrypt, doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have been smart enough to recognize it when it came along.” He shrugged and grinned, “Besides, I know you were pretty stressed out from having your place broken into and trashed. It’s no wonder you were biting peoples’ heads off. Glad I could serve as a relief valve.”

  “I’d like to be better than that,” Myr said quietly.

  “Wouldn’t we all,” Vinn said slowly, with hushed emphasis. He didn’t say anything for a second, then moved on. “Hey, I’ve got some results on the coil and plate testing I’d like you to look at.”

  Brightening, Myr waved at the wall
and said, “Sure, throw them up on the screens.” As Vinn spoke to his AI and graphs started to blossom on the big wall screens, Myr pondered her relief that Vinn was showing her the results. When she’d first agreed to let Vinn and Miller look at the coil-plates outside their enclosures, she’d worried that somehow she might get pushed aside. Even though she was the one who’d really come up with the invention, she felt a little uncertain around them. After all, they’d both finished their PhDs and Miller kept calling Vinn the boy-genius. Maybe her big leap had been a simple bit of serendipity and they’d just been waiting for her to give up and let them develop it.

  Vinn started showing her the various plots of field strength he and the techs working with him had generated. The graphs showed how the fields changed depending on the materials the plates and coils were made out of. A coil made out of a better conductor did improve output, but not by very much. Surprisingly none of the materials they tried for the plates actually gave better results than the copper Myr had originally used.

  Myr was feeling vindicated that her original device worked so well but, at the same time, disappointed that they hadn’t been able to generate any major improvements that might increase the efficiency. Then Vinn threw up a new set of graphs. “But look what happens when we change the shape of the plates.”

  “Shape?” Myr said as she stared at a graph with a much higher peak.

  “Yeah, this one has a dish shaped plate. You might think it’d work best with the concavity pointing toward the focus, but instead it works best with the convexity toward the focus.” Vinn shook his head in puzzlement, “You have any idea why that’d be?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “I’ll think about it. But I’m hoping you’re going to tell me that really high peak is generated with the same amount of power?”

  Vinn nodded, his eyes still focused on the screen. Then he turned to her and grinned, “It’s a lot more efficient… Launch to space efficient!”

  Myr jumped up and stepped toward Vinn. For a second she intended to hug him, but at the last moment she chickened out and put up her hand for a high-five. When he lifted his hand, she smacked it resoundingly, “Way to go!”

  She was rewarded with a triumphant grin.

  She studied the graph a moment longer, then said, “I’ll bet I could build a lot smaller field generator.”

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Ellen Mitchell rode the elevator down to the basement of Miller Tech feeling quite surprised to be there again. Dr. Miller, who rode the elevator with her, had called her a few days ago to offer her a position at Miller Tech. When she’d tried to politely decline because of her inability to accept their claims of nuclear fusion, he’d invited her out to at least consult on their set-up herself.

  All-expenses paid.

  He’d even invited her to bring along her husband and two young children so they could visit Jeff’s family in Lawrence, offering to pay their way as well. First class.

  The goal of the visit was to have her go over the fusion device herself. If she could prove they weren’t actually achieving fusion, that’d be important information for them. If they did have fusion…

  Obviously, they really think they’ve got fusion. Miller seems so excited; I really hate to dash their enthusiasm. But at least Jeff and the kids got to fly out to visit the grandparents first-class.

  Getting off the elevator and walking down the hall, Miller said quietly, “You’ll remember Myr, who you met last time. Just be aware she may be a little distracted, someone broke into her place last Thursday.”

  Ellen didn’t get to ask any questions about the home invasion before they entered a big high ceilinged room. To her astonishment, she saw a stack of lead bricks on a sturdy table. A lead castle?! You’ve got to be kidding me…

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Jeff looked up to see Ellen when the front door opened. With a happy shriek their toddler, Ada, barreled across the room to throw her arms around her mother’s knees. Chris, the four-year-old, glanced up, but was too focused on driving the electric car grandpa had bought him.

  Taking in the stunned look in his wife’s eyes, Jeff said, “No good, huh?”

  Wide-eyed, Ellen said, “Can we move to Kansas?”

  Jeff leapt to his feet and pumped a fist. “Yes!” he shouted.

  Jeff’s mother came in from the next room, an anxious look on her face, “Is it good news?”

  Looking at Ellen, Jeff said, “Do you think they’ve got a chance at fusion?”

  “They don’t have a chance…” Ellen said, pausing just long enough for everyone to get concerned, then smiling, “They’ve got fusion. And we’re getting in on the ground floor, with stock options!”

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Joe arrived at the Dari Dine five minutes early as Agent Foster had suggested. Walking toward the booth in the back that the FBI guys had suggested, he looked around with his eyes, but avoided turning his head. He spotted Agent Deming, who he’d been told to expect, though Deming didn’t look his way.

  Sitting down in the booth he waved at the waitress with a suddenly shaky hand. Thank God for Miller Tech’s informal dress policy, he thought. If I were wearing a tie, it’d be choking me. He pulled a couple of napkins out of the dispenser and used them to wipe a sudden prickly sweat off of his forehead and neck. Thankfully, John Smith didn’t come in while he was still drying himself off. Smith arrived right after Joe finished and had stuffed the moist napkins into the crevice beside the seat.

  As he’d been advised by the FBI, when Smith arrived at the booth, Joe didn’t make any pretense at joviality. Foster had pointed out that friendliness wouldn’t fit after they gotten along badly at their last meeting. Instead, Joe gave Smith a level look and said, “Morning.”

  As he sat down, Smith gave Joe a big smile. “You watch the game last night?”

  Panic washed over Joe. Smith had never talked sports with him before, why was he doing it now? Joe couldn’t help but wonder whether Smith knew about the FBI stakeout and was about to act as if he didn’t have any interest in industrial secrets and never had. Joe swallowed and said, “The Jayhawks?”

  “Of course,” Smith said expansively, “who else?”

  “They, uh, looked pretty good,” Joe said tentatively.

  “Yeah! And that new freshman guard… 26 points!”

  The waitress came and Smith ordered a big breakfast. Joe’s stomach was roiling so he only ordered a coffee and a bagel. Smith gave Joe a look that made him even more nervous, then said, “What’s eating you?”

  “Um, I think it’s something I ate last night.” Joe patted his stomach, “I hope it’s not food poisoning.” Feeling a new prickle of sweat on his brow, he hoped that the possible food poisoning might explain his perspiration as well as his meager breakfast. Joe resisted an overwhelming impulse to glance over to be sure Deming was still there.

  “Hey man, I hope not too,” Smith said, though Joe didn’t think the man was actually sympathetic.

  Joe realized he’d forgotten to fold the tagged chip into a napkin before Smith arrived like he’d intended. He pulled a couple of napkins out of the dispenser and used one to dab at his brow. He lowered both into his lap but then had to dig in his pocket for the chip. At least he didn’t have to worry about his DNA being on a chip anymore. While Joe was working at this, Smith nattered on about the Jayhawks and how well they’d played. A minute later, Joe had slipped the chip between the folds of the clean napkin. He casually dropped it on the table. “I hope they can make it all the way through the tournament this time,” he said, referring to the Jayhawks’ chances in the NCAA.

  Agent Foster had specifically warned Joe not to bring up spying himself. The FBI wanted Smith, or whatever his name was, to solicit information spontaneously. Joe glanced at the little pin on Smith’s lapel. He’d initially thought that he shouldn’t look at it, but Foster had said that appearing nervous about it would encourage Smith. Joe wondered whether his glance at the pin had appeared nervous or not. He thought, I don’t suppo
se I’m much of an actor.

  Good enough, it seemed. Smith said, “Got any better info this time?”

  Their waiter returned with the food and, as he rearranged stuff to make room for the bagel and coffee, Joe managed to push the napkin with the chip out into the middle of the table. As the waiter walked away, Joe looked meaningfully at the napkin and said, “I managed to grab a few diagrams and a couple photographs, but they don’t mean much to me. Maybe your people can figure them out?”

  “I hope so… for your sake. The people above me, they can be… pretty unpleasant if they don’t think they’re getting their money’s worth.”

  Joe’s stomach cramped at this. He didn’t feel completely confident that the FBI would be able to protect him and his family if John Smith’s spy ring got angry. He mopped his brow again, relieved that, at this point, looking nervous would be appropriate for the conversation they were having. “Um, what do they want? I mean, what would they think would be worth their money? Uh, if I could get it for them maybe then they’d just leave me alone?”

  Smith gave him a smile that didn’t reach the eyes. “Fusion. They’re all atwitter about fusion. But they’re gonna want to know how to actually do it, not just have you tell ‘em somebody else can. You need to figure out how to get them a full set of drawings and specs.”

  Joe swallowed nervously, “I don’t know how I can do that. I’ve told you she doesn’t keep the information on Miller Tech’s computers.”

  “Come on Joe. She isn’t working on this all by herself, is she? Even if she’s good at protecting her data, there’ll be someone who’s got the information and isn’t as careful.”

  Joe wanted to get out of the diner. He thought that he’d gotten Smith to incriminate himself sufficiently, assuming the wire Joe was wearing was actually working. Joe glanced down and saw that Smith had snagged the napkin with the chip while Joe wasn’t looking. Then he realized he hadn’t touched his bagel or his coffee. What’s more, he really didn’t want to. He pushed them away, saying, “My stomach really doesn’t feel up to eating this morning. Maybe I’d better get on my way.”