Off The Grid

by Dan Kolbet

  Rachel waited for the red lights on all five of the news cameras to come on before beginning. She wanted to make sure nobody missed this.

  “The town of Mill Creek has been off the grid for more than 11 years. As much of the country has become electrified through StuTech’s wireless technology, small towns like Mill Creek have been forgotten. The utility company that served Mill Creek went bankrupt when StuTech took over its more populated service territory. Its customers quickly signed-up with StuTech and soon enjoyed less expensive and more efficient service from us. The original utility couldn’t afford to serve just the tiny, out of way town of Mill Creek. So, like so many other towns across the country, it went dark.

  “I’m not from this town, but I’ve met some of its residents,” she glanced back at Tilly and smiled. “They are good, decent people. They didn’t ask to be forgotten, but they have been and they’ve suffered for it. Only about 175 people live in this town today, down from around 4,000 before they went dark. There have been 17 murders in this once-picturesque town in the past three years alone. People fighting for survival. The mill closed, but not for lack of lumber. There is simply no electricity to turn it on. There is no electricity to do anything.

  “Mill Creek shouldn’t suffer because StuTech succeeded, but it has. So today I’m announcing the end of all this. My company’s actions, that were intended to help society, have hurt too many. We need to fix it and we’re starting here on Main Street. StuTech is committing $25 million to restoring this once proud town. It will start with free electricity to all current and former residents who wish to return. We will restore the buildings that burned to the ground when firefighters couldn’t get water pumped to the scene. We will fix what we broke.

  “The lessons we learn here will help us restore countless other towns that have been forced off the grid by our actions. StuTech is going to make this right. Across the entire country. I promise that.”

  Luke and Tilly stepped up on either side of her and smiled. The camera flashes were blinding.

  ***

  The news articles and photographs flooded the Internet and social media sites moments after Rachel ended her question-and-answer session with the media. “StuTech to Restore Rural America” said one outlet, another claimed, “Electricity Giant Looking Out for the Little Guy” and “Monopoly No More.” The gushing stories generated priceless goodwill toward the company, even as it admitted to its past mistakes. It was brilliant and all Luke’s idea.

  Sitting on the front porch of Gina’s home overlooking the town, Luke hoped that it would work. If just one comment from the company said it was a hoax then the plan would fail.

  “And now we wait,” Gina said. “Let’s have dinner.”

  As they got up to go inside the house, Luke pulled Rachel aside.

  “There’s something you need to know about this place. About something I did here. I should have told you before, but I just couldn’t.”

  “I know about Elliot Cosgrove,” Rachel said. “Gina told me. She said you shouldn’t have to. Those were different times and you were protecting her from a rapist. You have nothing to explain to me. He deserved what he got.”

  A look of relief came over Luke’s face. They embraced, but separated when the loud, thump, thump, thump of propeller blades overhead and the white and red blinking lights of a news helicopter came into view over the town. It kept flying up the curve of the valley and hovered over Gina’s house. Luke and Rachel walked out into the front yard to get a better look and saw it wasn’t a news helicopter.

  The black and red StuTech logo was emblazoned on the bottom of the chopper. It was her father.

  “Well, that didn’t take long,” Rachel said.

  Chapter 72

  Warren Evans waited until the helicopter blades had stopped spinning completely and the dust had settled before stepping down onto the driveway. He leaned heavily on his cane as he moved toward the front porch of the house.

  Rachel met him at the bottom of the steps.

  “I think it’s about time for you and me to talk,” he said.

  “Good, we’re about to make dinner,” Rachel said. “You’ve got until it’s ready to convince me I should listen.”

  With that she turned and walked into the house.

  “One more for dinner,” she said to Gina as she passed the group on the porch. The elder Evans slowly mounted the steps and shuffled into the house for the first meal he would share with his daughter in more than two years.

  Gina and Tilly worked on a stew in the kitchen. Kathryn quietly excused herself out the back door. Luke had given her a job to complete before dinner was ready.

  Luke, Rachel and Evans took seats in the living room. An uncomfortable silence filled the house as everyone waited for Evans to speak. When he did finally speak, his voice was a low, throaty whisper that sounded every day of his 70 years.

  “You caused quite a ruckus today with your announcement,” he said to Rachel. “I think it was a clever maneuver. There is no way I can backpedal from the commitments you’ve made for the company. We’d be vilified from Wall Street to Main Street.”

  “That was the goal,” she said. “To force corrective action.”

  “Then you’ve succeeded,” he said.

  “So you’ll agree to allow the reconstruction of off-the-grid towns?”

  “You’ve forced my hand,” he said. He wasn’t trying to hide the rage in his voice. “I’ll do what I can to save my company. My life’s work! Your stunt could have taken it all from me.”

  “You’ve misused your power,” Luke said. “It was time to make up for it.”

  “I gave the world a gift,” Evans said. “If it wasn’t for me, half the country would be in the dark. Misused? No. I should be praised for what I did.”

  “For leaving thousands of towns to rot – for people to die?”

  “My invention helped far more people than it hurt,” Evans said. “Every revolution has some collateral damage.”

  Those words hung in the air. Evans knew about the car accident that killed Luke’s parents. He had done an extensive background check on Luke when he and Rachel started dating. He also knew Luke had an ax to grind with StuTech, which is why despite his skills and promise, Evans blocked Luke from the Advanced Analytics team at every turn. Luke was a variable that couldn’t be controlled, which is why he had shipped him off to MassEnergy.

  “My parents weren’t collateral damage to Gina and me,” Luke said. “It could have been different. You didn’t have to let these towns go dark. They didn’t have to die.”

  Evans cleared his throat and picked up a cup of hot tea that Tilly had placed on the table for him. He sniffed it, wrinkled his nose and quickly placed it back on the table.

  “I wasn’t driving that truck,” Evans said. “I can’t predict the future either. I didn’t know back then that we’d force so many towns into a blackout. Hell, if not for Rachel’s reports from the Moldova outpost, I wouldn’t even know about the mine.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I asked you to visit all those outposts because I suspected there was more going on than I was being told,” Evans said. ”I wanted you to confirm we were just setting up to launch our products and nothing more.”

  “You can’t possibly want us to believe that you didn’t know each of those locations contained a rare earth element that you needed for wireless electricity,” Rachel said.

  “Yes, of course I did. That’s why they were located where they were, but my orders were not followed. I never authorized those sites to be mined for their minerals. We weren’t ready. The first time I heard about Moldova’s factory was when I read your report. That greedy bastard hid it.”

  “You mean Steve Lunsford,” Rachel said.

  “Yes, him and others.”

  “How could you not know?” Rachel asked. “You review the operational budget of every department in the company. You sign off on everything.”

  “But I’ve kept the security ope
rations separate from the rest of the company’s books. I paid it out of my private account. I trusted that Steve, my oldest friend, was being truthful. He kept asking for more money – lots of money. I assumed it was to continue to secure the locations, not full-scale mining operations. I wanted the locations under wraps so we could develop them over time, maybe raise demand a bit first. Jack up the price.”

  “What about Nevis? Why didn’t you build an outpost there?” Luke asked. “It was just like the other locations.”

  “I found out about the ocean field much later on and kept it to myself. I bought Atlantis Oil to keep an eye on it. It was too exposed and too valuable to leave unattended.”

  “So Lunsford didn’t know about it?” Rachel asked.

  “Not until you showed up,” Evans said, glaring at Luke.

  “And you didn’t know he was selling StuTech’s minerals to MassEnergy?”

  “Of course not. Apparently he made a deal with a man named James Beckman. Steve provided MassEnergy the raw material in exchange for a stake in their company. Lot of good it did him.”

  “Not knowing what he was up to was one thing, but how could you authorize Lunsford’s goon squad? You even forced me to spy on the competition,” Luke said.

  “You needed to be watched. Still do. I told you to stay away from Rachel. You aren’t like us. Lunsford’s little spy academy was the right way to keep an eye on you.”

  “There is no ‘us’ here, dad,” Rachel said.

  The word “dad” seemed to hit Evans like a dagger. She had never called him that.

  “Well then, I think we’re done here.”

  As he slowly got to his feet, there was a knock at the front door. The helicopter pilot stepped inside and turned his attention to Evans.

  “Sir, we’ve got a slight problem,” the pilot said. “We’ve ruptured a fuel line. It looks like we’re going to be here for a few hours until we can fly in a replacement line and more fuel.”

  Evans looked defeated. He sat back down on the sofa.

  Only Luke noticed Kathryn emerging from the kitchen, wiping off her hands with a wet towel. Helicopter fuel can be so messy.

  Chapter 73

  With Evans forced to stay at the house for at least a little longer, Luke could finally get some answers. He explained how he’d created a mathematical model that showed StuTech’s process was intentionally under-powering the wireless system, limiting its reach. Reconstruction wouldn’t work unless the system could reach greater distances.

  “Of course it’s underpowered,” Evans said. “We could have turned up the maximum power input and output, extending the distance of the towers and stubs, but it would shorten their usable life by more than half. We’d burn through a 20-year tower in five years. Stubs would have to be replaced every six months. It would make our internal costs skyrocket. It's not worth it.”

  “So then it was always possible to reach the off-the-grid areas, like right here in Mill Creek?” Luke asked.

  “Possible in the short term, but not practical.”

  “Even today?”

  “Our system may be able to absorb the infrastructure costs to bring some of the off-the-grid towns back online, but what’s the point? We’ll never make a profit here.”

  “I can find a way to make the numbers work,” Rachel said. “Trust me.”

  “Since you’re laying everything on the table,” Luke said to Evans. “Tell us about Blaine Kirkhorn. I know you met at Pueblo Bluff.”

  Warren’s chin rose and he took a deep breath, as if he was trying to recall a memory from long ago. He picked up the cup of tea, this time taking a small sip, but curling his lips after doing so.

  “I assumed you’d want to know about Blaine. I did meet him at the Pueblo Bluff archeological dig in the mid-1990s. He was working on the same plot of land as my team from Cornell. And to anticipate your next question, yes, he did introduce me to the rare earth element we use for wireless. But he wasn’t interested in commercializing it, which was to his detriment in my opinion. He had the chance. I wouldn’t have known it existed or how to find it if he hadn’t willingly shown me that summer. He had the first crack at it, but wanted to study it and that was it. He was fascinated by its attributes and possibilities.”

  “He never contacted you after you successfully commercialized the material to go wireless?” Rachel asked.

  Luke couldn’t tell if Evans expression showed guilt, remorse or maybe both. Evans told them how Kirkhorn had made an appointment with him after Loretta got hurt. He asked for money to do research on spinal injuries.

  “I told him no.”

  “Why?” Rachel asked.

  “Because I did all the work on that material and I owned it,” Evans said. “It was mine. I wasn’t about to give it away. If the properties of that material were made public through medical journals or papers, we would lose our monopoly on wireless. It’s why we pushed the WES Act. Even if the material specifications were released somehow, we’d still have control of the market by owning the radio spectrum the wireless signals transmitted on.”

  “You didn’t stop Kirkhorn’s work,” Luke said. “He did the medical research anyway, we just don’t have the results.”

  “You don’t have the results, because I have them,” Evans said. “I had a team retrieve his papers and laptop after he died.”

  “So you wouldn’t help him when he was alive and then you stole his work when he died?” Rachel asked.

  “That’s the cost of doing business. I don’t regret it. I was right to take it. Had it been left lying around you would have found it in his possessions, put a bow on it and gave it to some medical journal or pharmaceutical company. Where would that leave us? I was protecting my company.”

  Rachel stared at her father in disbelief. His greed knew no bounds.

  “I did review Kirkhorn’s work though,” Evans said. “It was genius.”

  “I’d like to see the research,” Luke said. “We can put it to good use right away.”

  “Not a chance,” Evans said, shaking his head. “I’m not giving it up. Especially not to you. Oh, and how is Gina’s neighbor doing? Elliot, wasn’t that his name?”

  Evans didn’t know Luke had come clean to Rachel about Elliot Cosgrove’s death. They’d already moved on.

  “Elliot is fine, dad,” Rachel said, emphasizing the last word. “He moved out of town years ago. Everyone knows that.”

  “But I thought that he-“

  “There’s a lot you don’t know, dad. Like how to be a father for starters. And also how you’re about to hand me the keys to the kingdom.”

  Epilogue

  Tucson, Arizona

  Six months later

  Loretta Kirkhorn’s good friend Elvin Walker wheeled her chair into the community room at Sunset Ridge. Luke was planning on visiting today and he was bringing a friend. She had a system in place for visitors now that she received guests three or four days a week. Reporters and medical researchers came from all over the world to pick her brain about her husband who became an instant celebrity after word of his paralysis research was released. She had very little to share with her visitors about his work, but made sure they knew about the man himself, not just his research.

  She wasn’t entirely surprised when Luke told her months earlier the real reason her husband had divorced her so suddenly after her accident.

  “He knew that the only way he could fix you was to dedicate all of his time to finding a cure. Something that would help you regain some movement or maybe even walk again,” Luke had told her. “He never wanted to leave your side. The only way he could justify his actions was because of his research.”

  Her great regret, she told him, was that if Blaine would have just talked to her first, she could have told him that she would rather they spend their final days together, paralyzed or not. Suffering alone was unbearable. She would have understood his desire to “fix” her. He was just that kind of man. That’s why she loved him so much even after all these year
s.

  Loretta didn’t want Blaine’s last years to be a waste, so she had been quite pleased when Rachel and Kathryn had asked her to sign over documents authorizing MassEnergy to work on Blaine’s research. No legal paperwork had ever been filed on any refinement process of the raw viberock material. They beat Warren Evans to the punch by filing a patent application first. Blaine’s work was now useless to Evans, who regretfully gave up the boxes when Rachel showed up with a handcart to collect them.

  Kathryn decided to return to MassEnergy to lead a research team, utilizing her years of experience in pharmaceuticals. James Beckman had fled the country when Steve Lunsford was arrested, fearing his involvement in their scheme to steal from StuTech would get him jailed too. With him out of the picture, Kathryn was given his old job as VP of Development. She was focusing on the company’s new medical division and had already hired a familiar face.

  ***

  Loretta and Elvin were anxious to hear how the new research was coming. Luke met them in the community room, followed by another man with dark skin who Loretta didn’t recognize.

  “I’ve seen you on the news quite a bit lately,” Loretta said to Luke. “You’ve become a very famous man in many small towns.”

  “We’re trying to bring as many towns back online as fast as we can,” Luke said. “I’m the project lead at StuTech and we’re putting up four or five new towers everyday. It’s a tremendous amount of work.”

  “Your boss must have you working night and day.”

  “She’s not so bad,” he said. “Being married to the CEO has its advantages.”

  Luke and Rachel had gotten married in a tiny ceremony in Seattle just days after Warren Evans stepped down from management of StuTech and appointed Rachel to take over. He sited health concerns, but in reality he feared what Rachel would do to the company if he had remained at the top. She had demanded control, or she would dismantle the company bit by bit. It was easier to put her in charge than to fight her. At least then his legacy would live on, he told her.