Comet!

by Laurence Dahners

  Chapter Three

  Emma arrived at Il Palio and gave her name to the Maitre d’.

  “Ah, yes Dr. Kenner. Your party is already at the table. Would you like to join them now?”

  Emma checked the time on her HUD, worried that she was late but it read 6:59. “Thank you, yes.”

  As she followed the Maitre d’ through the restaurant she was surprised to see that Roger and Ell were in the same restaurant having dinner. There was a momentary pang at the thought that they appeared to be getting along great. Emma had occasional fantasies about being there to comfort Roger if he and Ell broke up—or whatever you called it when you weren’t really boyfriend-girlfriend—she’d had a crush on Roger for years now. Ell was disguised as “Ellen” which wasn’t too surprising considering how much she’d been in the news lately. Once again Emma wondered if she should have asked them about the possibility of getting a job at D5R? She’d certainly love to work on the kinds of things that they were working on. But she’d decided that she shouldn’t presume on their friendship...at least unless she got to be desperate for a job. She gave them a brief wave and resolved to make excuses to her hosts from Quantum Research to get a few minutes to walk over and talk to Ell and Roger later.

  With some consternation she realized from the Maitre d’s trajectory that she was going to be seated quite close to Roger and Ell. That seemed like it might be a little uncomfortable...a dinner job interview right next to some friends that were having a romantic evening out.

  Then she realized that Roger and Ell were grinning unrepentantly at her. And the nearby tables were empty. She glanced back up at her HUD...she was meeting R.E. and E.D.!!! She’d thought it was weird that they’d only given their initials...it was a setup!

  Emma stopped, hands on her hips, “You two?!”

  Roger stood. Deadpan, he lifted an eyebrow and said, “Good evening… Dr. Kenner I presume?”

  Emma and Ell broke out laughing. When it wound down Ell wiped a tear from her eye and said, “Roger, I had no idea you had such a flair for the dramatic!”

  After ordering and explaining that D5R had become a holding company and split into three Roger said, “So we’d like you to join us in our research section.”

  “Yes!” Ell said, “We could really use someone like you who has a genius for electronic circuit creation ‘cause the fields we’re trying to create for the next phase are pretty weird.”

  Emma looked back and forth at them, “And you guys are approved to do the hiring?”

  Ell said, “Well it has to be approved by Human Resources still, but pretty much yeah. You’d start at $150,000/year plus shares like Roger did, though Roger’s due for a raise,” she lifted an eyebrow at Roger.

  Emma’s eyes widened. “Wow, that’s pretty good.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not just getting them to pay me more because I’m your friend are you?”

  Roger laughed, “When they offered me that much I just elevated my chin and figured I must be worth it. Haven’t you ever been told not to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

  Emma grinned sheepishly, “OK, I retract my last question. What are “shares?”

  Ell shrugged, “The investors want everyone to be ‘invested’ in the success of the company so every employee gets some shares. That means that if the company makes a killing, you do too.”

  “That’s great!” Emma said and leaned forward conspiratorially, “So tell me what kind of cool things we’re going to be trying to do?”

  ***

  Ell got out of her car in her “Belle” disguise and started across campus to her astronomy class. She was wearing her “not too fat” pants to put a little bulk on her hips. They weren’t as bad as her “Ellen” disguise had been but she was hoping to distance her appearance from “Ell” somewhat, as well as to somewhat decrease the attention Belle’s looks had gotten her last semester.

  With some relief she noticed that, though she got some second glances from the guys, they didn’t seem to be tracking her with their eyes like they had Belle. It was nothing like they always tracked her as “Ell.”

  Shortly after she sat down in the classroom Gordon thumped down next to her. “Long time no see! How the Belle are you?!”

  Ell rolled her eyes, “Fine Gordy, how are you?”

  His eyebrows shot up in horror, “Gordy! Gordy! I hate that!”

  Ell narrowed her eyes at him, “Good! Know you then,” she raised an eyebrow, “that I intend to call you ‘Gordy’ anytime you entertain yourself with my name.”

  Gordon shrank back in mock terror, “Nooo, not that! I would never have imagined you to be so cruel.”

  Ell grinned at him. “Hah! A very cruel girl am I.” She widened her eyes. “Hey you guys were pretty amazing at the Cat’s Cr…” Ell ran down, suddenly remembering that she had been there as “Ell,” not as “Belle.”

  “Cradle!” Gordon finished for her, “Yeah, wasn’t that amazing! You must have seen it on the net. Ell Donsaii! Holy crap she’s sooo gorgeous! And, Oh my God, can that girl dance or what?! Velos got millions of views just ‘cause reporters were tracking her and…” Gordon waggled his eyebrows and lowered his voice, “we got contacted by an agent.”

  Ell felt her thoughts stretching all different ways. Good, he doesn’t realize I was there... He thinks I’m gorgeous?! He’s telling Belle that Ell’s beautiful, isn’t that kinda rude? He likes the way I dance! After a moment she said brilliantly, “An agent?”

  “Yeah! He wants us to go on tour!”

  “Are you going?”

  Gordon slumped, “Nah… we can’t afford it.”

  “The agent isn’t sponsoring you?”

  “Nah. He’ll book us gigs and advertise us but we’d have to get ourselves a van and pay for our own room and board.” He winked, “School loans don’t cover fleabag hotels and fast food, I checked into it.”

  Ell tilted her head and looked at him carefully. It seemed like this might be pretty important to him. “You really want to go huh?”

  “Yeah,” he shrugged, “ain’t gonna happen though.” He smiled, “Besides, I like physics and astronomy too. ‘Amazing guitar player’ will just have to continue being a sidelight.”

  Ell leaned a little closer to him, “I’ve got this silly rich aunt who’s always making crazy investments. You want me to talk to her about you and your band?”

  Gordon leaned back and stared at her a minute. “Really? You’re not just blowin’ smoke up my…?”

  Ell shook her head.

  “Oh yeaahh! I’d need to know in the next couple of days though so we can drop our classes while we can still get our tuition back.” He raised his eyebrows in question.

  Ell shrugged. “I’ll talk to her tonight, she can watch you on the net and decide. I’ll bet she’ll have an answer for you tomorrow. How much money do you need?”

  At that moment the professor started the class and Gordon put up a finger to pause their conversation.

  When the class finished, Gordon turned to her and said, “I hope your crazy aunt comes through, ‘cause I’ll never pass this class now! You completely destroyed my concentration and I didn’t hear a word the Prof said!”

  Ell got up, “Well, I’ve got another class to get to, so you’d better give me your estimate pronto.” She started walking up out the back of the classroom, winking at Steve from her security team as she went.

  Gordon scrambled to catch up. “Oh, sorry, I’ll walk with you. I think about $30,000. Twenty to get a used van and ten for expenses for a few months to get us started. If we flop we could sell the van and probably get fifteen back out of it for her so it wouldn’t be a total loss.”

  “And if you succeed?”

  “We’ll pay a 50% return on her money. Forty five K.”

  “How big do you have to succeed to pay her off?”

  “Our agent will be collecting the money, once we bring in a hundred K, over expenses, we’ll pay her back the original thirty. Once we get to two hundred K we’ll pay her the additiona
l fifteen K?”

  Ell shrugged, “OK, I’ll see what she says.”

  Walking behind them Steve saw the young redheaded man stop, spin around and pump a fist. He wondered if the young man had asked Ell for a date or something.

  Gordon turned again to watch Belle walking away. She’s put on some weight, he thought. Too bad. She’s still cute but she looked better last semester.

  ***

  After her biology class Ell hustled to her truck for the ride back to the house behind the farm. She changed out of her “Belle” getup on the way. Then she jogged through the woods to her own house and jumped into her Focus to drive to D5R/Quantum Research. She was trotting into the building when Allan said in her ear, “The video conference with Dr. Horton has begun. I’ve logged you in using the screen and camera in your office.”

  Ell jogged down the hallway to her office, waving off several people that wanted to talk to her.

  Her big screen had been divided into 8 windows for the various participants. One of the windows was blank until she slid in front of her camera. “Sorry! So sorry I’m late.”

  Presidential Science Advisor Horton breathed a small sigh of relief and smiled at the camera. “I’m sure you will all recognize Ms. Ell Donsaii who has just joined us. She has some important information to share with us but first let me introduce everyone…”

  Horton proceeded to introduce the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Transportation, and the head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

  Ell cringed a little. She hadn’t expected to be speaking to a Cabinet level group and felt even more embarrassed to have been late to log on.

  Horton said, “Ms. Donsaii, could you tell…”

  Secretary of Transportation Bayless interrupted, “Chip, I know you said this young lady invented some kind of fancy new rocket, but we don’t transport things by rocket here in these United States. Can you tell me why the Secretary of Transportation needs to waste time listening to some ‘wet behind the ears’ child, who couldn’t even be on time, talk about rockets? I can assure you that I have better things to do!”

  Agriculture, Commerce and Energy chorused, “Aye.”

  Ell shrank in her seat, mumbling “I’m so sorry.”

  Secretary of Defense Amundsen grinned, thinking to himself that his fellow cabinet secretaries were about to get “schooled” in not taking this particular young lady for granted.

  Horton rolled his eyes and said, “Listen for five minutes, if you still don’t think it’s important, just log off. Ms. Donsaii, please proceed.”

  Ell cleared her throat nervously, then said, “Once again Secretary Bayless, I apologize for being late. But I must clarify. The company I work for, D5R, didn’t actually invent a rocket sir. What was developed was a means to create a wormhole through the fifth dimension from one location to another. This capability allowed us to ‘port’ fuel from our facility in North Carolina to a rocket during its transit to orbit. Thus, even a small rocket—now freed of the necessity of launching fuel for the later portions of its flight—can fly all the way to orbit.”

  “So you can send small rockets to orbit.” Bayless rolled his eyes, “That’s all well and good Ms. Donsaii, but I can assure you we aren’t going to start moving tons of goods from one place to another with little rockets!”

  Ell blinked, as surprised as she had been before that it wasn’t obvious to people. “Sir, aircraft efficiency will also be improved if they port fuel to their engines rather than lifting it all at takeoff in fuel tanks. Secretary Amundsen’s UAVs will be able to stay in the air for unlimited periods. Well… until they need maintenance.”

  Bayless looked mildly surprised as he considered this but looked like he was about to interject again.

  Ell held up a finger, asking him to pause. She continued, “And your oil tanker trucks and trains?” she waved the finger back and forth, “No longer necessary. Liquids can be ported from one location to another. Pipelines? Unneeded. The national distributor can send liquids and gases directly to the end user. This will cause economic upheaval when the local distributors are cut out of their business. Gas and charging stations for cars? Closed. Your car will get its gas or electricity directly from a national company. Direct electric connections to cars will almost certainly lead to the end of gas powered cars.”

  Ell focused on the Secretary of Energy, “Wires can be extended through ports Secretary Morales. Therefore, thousands of miles of power transmission lines will be replaced by ports that pass wires a few feet long directly to the end user. Incidentally this will save tremendously on the transmission losses due to resistance in those power lines.”

  Ell looked at the Secretary of Commerce, “Oil and LPG tankers? No longer necessary.”

  She turned to the Secretary of Agriculture, “There will be tremendous upheavals in your area Secretary Nyquist, when farmers in dry areas find they can port water in from places with plenty. The Secretary of the Interior is not in this videoconference, but he will need to consider what to do when Los Angeles finds it can buy water from the abundant rainfalls of southeastern Alaska. Someone has to decide whether the states of the Great Lakes should be allowed to sell water to Arizona?

  “I don’t have answers for you gentlemen, but ‘changes they are a comin.’ And they are big changes. Some businesses will be started to take down power lines and pull up pipes, selling the metal. Local distribution and shipping businesses will be shut down while the nationals expand to sell directly to the consumer.” Her eyes flashed over the screen at each of the participants, “Your country, gentlemen, will need your wisdom to try to minimize the upheavals these changes will cause because the ‘cheese has definitely been moved.’”

  Suddenly pale, Bayless looked at the Presidential Science Advisor “Chip?” he said querulously. “This is bullshit, right?”

  Dr. Horton bit his lip and slowly shook his head. He was torn between wanting to laugh at Bayless’ sudden loss of bluster, and horror as Horton himself considered some of the upheavals he hadn’t previously contemplated. “Sorry Jim, I’m afraid not.”

  Appearing shaken to the core, Bayless said, “My God! We’ve got to prevent the release of these damned ‘ports’? Make ‘em illegal or something?”

  “Well, that’s why President Teller asked us to have this meeting. My first suggestion is that we ask Ms. Donsaii what she thinks we can do?”

  Bayless sat up, “Why are we asking this, this, child! Why isn’t the CEO of ‘D5R’ here to brief us on these problems?”

  Patiently Horton said, “Jim… She is the CEO. And the one that developed the theory they’re based on. I’ll pretty much guarantee that no one else has given this more thought than she has and I suggest that we all listen to what she has to say.” He said, “Ms. Donsaii?”

  Ell cleared her throat, “Well, I think Secretary Bayless has the right of it in one sense. Not to prevent release of the technology. It will get out no matter what...too many people know about it. And though it will result in short term economic disruption, it will provide tremendous long term benefits to humanity. However, you may be wise to slow its release in order to distribute the changes over time. A rise in sea level say, rather than a tsunami. This will allow companies to adjust slowly, so that employees in newly superfluous industries can ‘age out’ rather than losing their jobs. Also it will provide opportunities for some laid off employees to find work, at least temporarily, in the recovery of infrastructure materials such as piping that are no longer needed. As local distributors cut employees, national companies will be hiring.”

  Dr. Horton looked at her in some surprise, “Would your investors really agree to slowing the release? That would significantly cut into their profits.”

  Ell smiled, “Our investors aren’t motivated by the ‘god of profit’ alone, Dr. Horton. Though I expect they would appreciate an extension of the patent in compensation for slowing the release of the technology?”

  Horton’s brows rose, “I don’t know whether
that can be arranged, but we can certainly look into it.”

  “Another reason to extend the patent would be the potential for harm from this technology. Like any other tech, bad people could do bad things with it.”

  Horton’s eyes widened, thinking, the other shoe’s dropping! he said, “For instance?”

  “For instance, porting flammables to locations and setting them off. Small cheap rocket attacks over great distances. Illicit drug trade would be much easier.”

  “And having D5R maintain its patent rights would help that how?”

  “Well, D5R’s offshoot ‘Portal Technology’ is committed to manufacturing ports that are resistant to such uses.”

  “How?”

  “If possible I would prefer not to describe the proposed methodologies. For obvious reasons, the more closely held such secrets are, the harder they would be to overcome. However, attempts to prevent such uses probably cannot be completely successful even if kept secret.”

  For a minute it looked like Horton would protest that the people participating in this conference could be trusted, but then he cleared his throat and said instead, “What’s to keep bad guys from taking ports apart, reverse engineering them and making ones that aren’t constrained?”

  Ell grinned, “Dexin,” she waggled her eyebrows, “as you know it is almost impossible to remove electronics from the new metal embedded epoxies such as Dexin without destroying the electronics in the process. The electronics that maintain the fields for a port are very complex and, if you don’t understand the theory, it’s almost impossible to tell which electronics are necessary for the port and which are actually resisting terrorism.”