“Well, it has to be approved by our committee, but essentially that is what I expect. The University may keep a 5% interest, just in case you are actually able to make a useful device from your concept, but it won’t invest any more of its resources into development. The committee meets on Friday so we should be able to let you know then.”
Chapter Eight
Ell wandered back to the physics building in a daze, somewhat ecstatic that NCSU would likely grant her most or all of the rights to her invention rather than only 40% of the royalty stream as was their usual, but daunted by the need to commercialize it all by herself. “Allan, please see if I can speak to Dr. Smythe at MIT?”
She was nearly back to the physics building when Smythe came on line. “Ell, great to hear from you! Sorry to say, we’ve been unable to get diddly going using spin bumping. Are you and Al having any luck?”
For a moment Ell was confused, and then remembered that Dr. Johnson’s first name was “Al” and Dr. Smythe would be referring to him, not Al the grad student in the Johnson’s lab. “Uh, no sir. No luck. In fact, Dr. Johnson forbade me to work on it except evenings and weekends. I have had some luck with photon-gluon resonance though.”
“Oh no! Is Al one of those guys who are pleasant at meetings but a real curmudgeon at home?”
“Uhhh…”
“No, no, don’t sugar coat it, go ahead and tell me if that’s what’s going on. Al and I are friends but, I’d like to think that you and I are friends too.”
“Uh. Yes sir. Most of the grad students find him pretty harsh I would say. My particular problem is that he’s pretty focused on ‘disproving’ those ‘crazy Donsaii theories’ and really doesn’t want to hear about things that conflict with that world view. He’s had me working on dual slit and our current setup shows single photons creating flux at both slits which he really doesn’t want to hear about.”
“Flux! What? Tell me about this.”
Ell explained their high energy photon setup and the results they were getting using the new flux detection technology. Smythe interrupted repeatedly with perceptive questions. “But, Dr. Johnson is still trying to figure out what is wrong with the experiment because he’s sure the results can’t be correct.”
“Well he’s in the right there. ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ and all that. But—that’s phenomenal! Be sure you do everything you can think of to make sure you haven’t made a mistake before you publish, but if you don’t find a problem with your setup you’re gonna be famous in physics! Let me suggest…” Dr. Smythe went on to suggest several refinements to their setup that Ell thought were amazingly perceptive. Then he said, “But you were going to tell me about - was it photon-gluon resonance?”
“Yes sir, I’ve been working on it nights and weekends and I’ve been able to send a digital signal from one entangled molecule to another.”
“My God! How? No, don’t tell me. That would be incredibly valuable IP. Your university is going to make a fortune. You too I suppose, depending on how they do their royalties?”
For a moment Ell puzzled over “IP” then realized it was short for “Intellectual Property.” “Well, yes sir. That’s the issue. Normally the inventor gets 40% of the royalty stream but, I’ve become kind of a ‘persona non grata’ with Dr. Johnson because I keep working on this. He’s told the university that my IP is without merit and so they’re probably going to return the rights to me. They might keep 5% but they won’t help me patent or commercialize. That means I need to find funding for a patent and a company to commercialize it myself.”
“Holy shee…! Don’t they know who they’re dealing with? Oops, no I guess they don’t. You’re working under your pseudonym aren’t you?”
“Uh, yes sir.”
“Do you want me to call them up and tell them what idiots they’re being?”
“Un, no sir. I’m not happy here so I think I’ll probably leave NCSU pretty soon anyway, though I would like to submit the dual slit paper first. I was actually calling you hoping you can help me make some contacts with folks that could help me commercialize?”
“Well, you’d have to have a working model of a communication device to get much traction with industry. An esoteric lab bench setup can be a pretty hard sell to them, even if Al would let you bring people in to look at it. How close are you to trying to design and build something close to what might be made commercially?
“Uh, I have four prototype pairs.”
“What? You have been busy! How big are they?”
“Ten by ten by seventeen millimeters.”
“Your prototypes are that small? And they work?!”
“Uh, yes sir. They’re really pretty simple. Once you understand the principles involved, that is. We used a lot of off the shelf chip tech.”
“We? I thought you said Johnson wasn’t involved?”
“No sir. But one of the other grad students is a tech wizard and she helped me design the second set of physical prototypes. The ones I made myself were much larger and quite a bit more expensive. I bought time on the circuit fab here in the department to make both my original prototype and the better ones that Emma helped me design.”
“You bought? Johnson is making you spend your own money on this project?”
“Yes sir. He’s repeatedly told me to ‘stop wasting time’ on it.”
“Well I guess if you worked on it nights and weekends and paid for supplies yourself you should own it. Or at least most of it. Damn right! I’ll touch base with a couple of venture capital folks I know here in Boston. I think they’ll be interested. Can I tell them your real name?”
“I think I should wait on that until we know whether NCSU is going to keep rights to the invention or not. It may be that if I’m commercializing something that is partly owned by the ‘U’ that it’d be simpler to do it as ‘Ellen Symonds.’”
“OK, I’ll try to set up something for December, maybe the…” there was a pause as he checked a calendar, “the 12th. Will you have any finals or anything that would keep you from being able to make it then?”
“No, I’m not sure I’ll even still be enrolled here at State then.”
“Oh, wow, you do sound unhappy. Well, remember, if you think you can be safe here at MIT, we can still make a spot for you.”
“Thank you sir. And thanks also for any help you can give me making industry contacts. Is there any way I can repay you?”
“Hah! Sure, endow my research when you’re rich!”
“Do you really think this will be worth that much?”
“Oh my god! You haven’t thought too much about the possible applications have you?”
“Well, some.”
“Hmmm, consider that if it really works, and works reliably, it should be able to replace radio, fiberoptic and wired data transmission in almost all of our civilization’s communications systems.”
“Ohhh, that is a big industry isn’t it?”
“Yes, and there are a lot of other applications. Think about them and make a list for your prospective buyers. Just be sure that your prototypes work and work reliably before you show up for a demo in December. It’d be embarrassing for both of us if they didn’t perform as claimed. In fact, I would truly appreciate the chance to evaluate them before we put them in front of possible buyers. Is there any chance you could visit Boston before then so I can see them in action?”
“I’ll try to work it out.”
“Great!”
After she hung up, Ell focused back on her surroundings and found herself standing outside the Physics building. She went in and up to the lab where she checked the PGR that was hooked up to the clock in the FedEx box. It still showed a steady reading with no detectable difference between the readings of the two clocks, so she put the PGR-clock in her pocket. She queried FedEx for the package’s location and found that the other member of the pair was across town at the FedEx terminal awaiting shipment.
Ell modified the dual slit apparatus per Smythe’s
suggestions and reran the test with the same results, then altered the description of the setup in the paper and sent it to Johnson again. She checked her bank account and found to her dismay that she had burned through most of the savings she’d put away while at the Academy! She leaned back in her chair and tried to figure out how to handle all the things she had on the burner with so little cash available.
Roger saw her come in, work a little with her devices and then sit, staring up into space. He wondered what was going on. After a bit he came over and asked, “Ellen? Everything OK?
“Huh? Oh, yeah. I’m just trying to plan some things out in my head here.”
“How’s your experiment going?”
“Both are doing good. Was I right about your polarization filter?”
“Yeah! Thanks, I really appreciate your recognition of what was happening, though you messed up my hypothesis big time.”
“Hey, no problem. And don’t get too down in the dumps; some of science’s biggest advances come from things that don’t turn out the way they’re supposed to. You just need to figure out what it means, even if it doesn’t fit your original hypothesis.”
“Uh, you should know that Johnson was here in the lab when I got back from lunch. I should have told you before, but he was here messing with your stuff long before he called you this morning too. He was pissed the first time, but even more pissed the second time.”
“Really? He spent all that time on the dual slit apparatus? It is pretty simple to run and gives the same results every time. Was he running a lot of different photon energies or something? Or could you tell?”
“No he actually spent most of his time looking at your other setup. The one for your ‘spin bumping’ study. Do you think he’s coming around to thinking there’s a chance that might work?”
A chill went down Ell’s spine. “Hmmm, somehow I doubt it. Maybe we’ll find out at the lab meeting in a little while.” Ell picked up the rest of her PGR circuits from beside her bench top apparatus and put them in her pocket too. Thank goodness for the baggy clothing she wore over her “fat pants.” Then she resumed staring into space until three o’clock rolled around and they headed to the meeting.
At the meeting, Johnson was in a real mood. He grilled Al on his experiment for a couple minutes and then turned to Ell with fire in his eyes. “And just what in all the hells do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m trying to write up the dual slit experiment. Have you found an error yet?”
“No! Though there has to be something wrong, I haven’t tumbled to it yet. But, I’m referring to your reporting an ‘invention’ to the tech office?”
“Yes sir. My entanglement project has been fruitful, so I submitted a report so that the University could decide whether to commercialize it.”
“First of all, it hasn’t been ‘fruitful,’ I looked it over this morning and it’s a jumbled mess! It certainly isn’t capable of transmitting data like you reported. Second, if you did have something to report, it would need to be cleared through me as your supervisor!”
Ell’s eyes flashed in return, “Sir, I have on numerous times tried to tell you that that project was bearing fruit. You have repeatedly told me you didn’t want to ‘hear anything about that crap.’ You have required that I work on it on my own time, using my own funds. I have compiled an audio-video record documenting those repeated demands on your part, which my AI has just forwarded to yours. You, therefore, are not my supervisor on that project; I have been running it completely on my own. I reported it to the University because I have been doing it in their building while using equipment I checked out from their storeroom.”
Johnson rocked back. None of his students had ever given him any backtalk before! He couldn’t believe that a grad student in her first semester was mouthing off to him like this! He leaned back forward and ground out, “I helped you set up your first spin bumping apparatus!”
“Spin bumping never worked. Photon-gluon resonance is what worked and is what I reported to the tech office.”
“What!? You didn’t mention anything about photon-gluon resonance!”
“I asked permission to tell you about it in one of our lab meetings, you said, and I quote, ‘NO! Damn it! I am not interested in any weird results you are getting out of that crap. Don’t waste my time on it! It’s bad enough that I have to spend time trying to figure out how you’ve screwed up the double slit apparatus.’ Therefore, I continued working on it by myself.”
Johnson stared at her for a moment, then said, “Photon-gluon resonance? Sounds like some malarkey you just made up.”
“It is predicted by Donsaii’s equations.”
“All that aside. It doesn’t work. I tried it out this morning. It has a terrible feedback loop in it for God’s sake!
“Yes, once I realized that it represented a valuable intellectual property, I disabled and rewired it to protect that property.”
“That’s a load of crap! The rest of this lab meeting is cancelled.” Glaring, he rose to his feet. “You and I are going to go down and you are going to show me just what you think your setup can do!”
The rest of the grad students were appalled and looked back and forth at each other, completely dismayed at the way Ellen was being treated but fully expecting her to go along with Johnson to save her position.
Instead Ellen remained seated, eyes flashing while she took several deep breaths. She trembled, but not as if she was in fear as they expected, but rather as if she were very, very angry. One more long deep breath, then she calmly said, “You, sir, are a tyrant and a bully. You may believe that your behavior in dealing with your students is acceptable, but it has not been and is not tolerable in modern human society. I hereby notify you that I am resigning my position in your lab. I also notify you that I intend to submit the dual slit paper; do you wish to withdraw your name from it?”
“You can’t submit that paper without my permission!”
“There is no law in science that says I have to have my supervisor’s permission to submit a paper. I will simply note that you do not approve it. When it is published, others will attempt to replicate my results. I am confident they will obtain the same findings and the paper will be judged on its merits, with or without your approval.”
“Do as you like with that paper. But you will demonstrate this photon-gluon resonance phenomenon to me or I’ll write such scathing letters about you you’ll be lucky to be hired as a janitor!”
To the astonishment of the other students Ellen’s eyes crinkled, then she laughed! She calmly stood and said, “Do your worst. I believe the world will be more interested in my results than your letters. I’ll be heading over to the admin office now to formalize my resignation.” She turned to the other grad students and said, “Good luck to you guys. Sorry to leave on such a note.” She turned and walked out the door. As her chair was nearest the door, she was down the hall before Johnson made it out the door himself and, still seething with frustration, watched her turn into the stairwell.
On her way home Ell sent Dr. Smythe a message that she could visit Boston with a prototype for his evaluation any time the rest of that week or the next as long as she was back before Thanksgiving. She didn’t want to miss seeing Phil when he was back home.
Once she was back in her apartment she submitted the paper to Nature with a letter noting that one of the investigators did not accept the results and had withdrawn his name from the paper.
Allan said, “You have a call from Dr. Smythe.”
Excitedly Ell said, “Put him on – hello Dr. Smythe.”
“Hi Ell. How are you able to get away to Boston so soon?”
“I’ve resigned.”
“Oh!” He paused, then said somberly, “I’m so sorry to hear that. Well, come on up tomorrow or the next day. You can tell me about it and we’ll put your prototype through the mill here in the lab.”
“OK, I’ll make a reservation and let you know.”
Once she had plane reservation
s for the morning and had notified Smythe, Ell sat back, realizing that she felt immensely better and more relaxed, even though she was concerned about the cost of flying to Boston. Johnson’s constant harassment must have been stressing her more than she thought. Allan said, “You have a call from Roger Emmerit.”
Ell felt a little glow at that, and took the call. “Roger, how you holding up without me to reorient your polarizer?”
He sounded depressed, “OK, I guess Ellen, but we all miss having you around. Are you OK?”
“Oh yeah! I feel great just getting away from Johnson. Sorry that you’re still under his thumb.”
“We’re wondering if we can buy you dinner, now that you have no visible means of support?”
“Sure! A girl’s gotta eat you know.”
“Meet us at That’s Amore?”
“When?”
“Now.”
When Ell walked into Amore she saw Roger, Emma and James sitting forlornly at a table in the corner. “Hey guys.”
“Hey.” They said together, sounding as if they were attending a funeral.
“You guys this depressed just because you miss my scintillating company?”
Emma said, “Ell, don’t make light of it. The guys told me about the row you had with Johnson. He’s a vindictive SOB and will destroy your career. I think you should talk to Dr. Sponchesi. He’s really nice.”
James put a hand on hers, “You really should consider putting your tail between your legs and apologizing to Johnson. He ruined another grad’s career a few years back after they got in a lot less of a fight than this one.”
Ell looked around at their long faces, “I’m gonna be OK, believe it or not. I really am.” Their waiter came to take an order then, defusing the moment and they managed to share a large pizza without any more dramatic conversation. They even got a few laughs in, Roger being particularly tickled about the look on Johnson’s face when Ellen called him a “tyrant and a bully.” He snorted, “Then you should have seen him rampaging through your stuff back in the lab. He took pictures of your setup from every angle, then cussed at it while disassembling and reassembling parts of it. When I left he was still in full storm mode. I hope you didn’t have any design files on the department computer system. I’m pretty sure he spent some time looking in your folders there too.”
Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2) Page 11
