Chasing the Dime (2002)

by Michael Connelly

  She was gone and there seemed to be nothing so permanent as being wiped from the system.

  She had called him Hewlett and he wondered about that for a long moment. In the past she had used the name as an endearment. A secret name only a lover would use. It was based on his initials—HP, as in Hewlett-Packard, the huge computer manufacturer that these days was one of the Goliaths to Pierce's David. She always said it with a sweet smile in her voice. Only she could get away with nicknaming him with a competitor's name. But her using it in this final message, what did it mean? Was she smiling sweetly when she wrote this? Smiling sadly? Was she faltering, changing her mind about them?

  Was there still a chance, a hope of reconciliation?

  Pierce had never been able to judge the motives of Nicole James. He couldn't now. He put his hands back on the keyboard and saved the message, moving it to a file where he kept all her e-mails, going back the entire three years of their relationship. The history of their time together—good and bad, moving from co-workers to lovers—could be read in the messages. Almost a thousand messages from her. He knew keeping them was obsessive but it was a routine for him. He also had files for e-mail storage in regard to a number of his business relationships. The file for Nicole had started out that way, but then they moved from business associates to what he thought would be partners in life.

  He scrolled through the e-mail list in the Nicole James file, reading the captions in the subject lines the way a man might look through photos of an old girlfriend. He outright smiled at a few of them. Nicole was always the master of the witty or sarcastic subject line. Later—by necessity, he knew—she mastered the cutting line and then the hurtful line. One line caught his eye during the scroll—"Where do you live?"—and he opened the message. It had been sent four months before and was as good a clue as any as to what would become of them. In his mind this message represented the start of the descent for them —the point of no return.

  I was just wondering where you live because I haven't seen you at Amalfi in four nights.

  Obviously this is not working, Henry. We need to talk but you are never home to talk. Do I have to come to that lab to talk about us? That would certainly be sad.

  He remembered going home to talk to her after that one, resulting in their first breakup.

  He spent four days in a hotel, living out of a suitcase, lobbying her by phone, e-mail and flowers before being invited to return to Amalfi Drive

  . A genuine effort on his part followed. He came home every night by eight for at least a week, it seemed, before he started to slip and his lab shifts began lasting into the small hours again.

  Pierce closed the message and then the file. Someday he planned to print out the whole scroll of messages and read it like a novel. He knew it would be the very common, very unoriginal story of how a man's obsession led him to lose the thing that was most important to him. If it were a novel, he would call it Chasing the Dime.

  He went back to the current e-mail list and the next message he read was from his partner Charlie Condon. It was just an end-of-the-week reminder about the presentation scheduled for the next week, as if Pierce needed to be reminded. The subject line read

  "RE: Proteus" and was a return on a message Pierce had sent Charlie a few days before.

  It's all set with God. He's coming in Wednesday for a ten o'clock Thursday. The harpoon is sharpened and ready. Be there or be square.

  CC

  Pierce didn't bother replying. It was a given that he would be there. A lot was riding on it. No, everything was riding on it. The God referred to in the message was Maurice Goddard. He was a New Yorker, an ET investor Charlie was hoping would be their whale. He was coming in to look at the Proteus project before making his final decision.

  They were giving him a first look at Proteus, hoping it would be the closer on the deal.

  The following Monday they would file for patent protection on Proteus and begin seeking other investors if Goddard didn't come on board.

  The last message he read was from Clyde Vernon, head of Amedeo security. Pierce figured he could guess what it said before he opened it, and he wasn't wrong.

  Trying to reach you. We need to talk about Nicole James. Please call me ASAP.

  Clyde Vernon Pierce knew Vernon wanted to know how much Nicole knew and the circumstances of her abrupt departure. Vernon wanted to know what action he would need to take.

  Pierce smirked at the security man's inclusion of his full name. He then decided not to waste time on the other e-mails and turned off the computer, careful to unplug the phone line as well. He left the office and went down the hallway, past the wall of fame, to Nicole's office. Her former office.

  Pierce had the override combination for all doors on the third floor. He used it now to open the door and step into the office.

  "Lights," he said.

  But the overhead lights did not respond. The office's audio receptor was still registered to Nicole's voice. That would likely be changed on Monday. Pierce went to the wall switch and turned on the lights.

  The top of the desk was clear. She had said she'd be gone by Friday at five and she had made good on the promise, probably sending him that e-mail as her last official act at Amedeo Technologies.

  Pierce walked around the desk and sat down in her chair. He could still pick up a sent of her perfume —a whisper of lilac. He opened the top drawer. It was empty except for a paper clip. She was gone. That was for sure. He checked the three other drawers and they were all empty except for a small box he found in the bottom drawer. He took it out and opened it. It was half full of business cards. He took one out and looked at it.

  Nicole R. James Director of Competitive Intelligence Public Information Officer Amedeo Technologies Santa Monica, California After a while he put the card back in the box, and the box back in the drawer. He got up and went to the row of file cabinets against the wall opposite the desk.

  She'd insisted on hard copies of all intelligence files. There were four double-drawer cabinets. Pierce took out his keys and used one to unlock a drawer labeled BRONSON.

  He opened the drawer and took out the blue file —under Nicole's filing system the most current file on any competitor was blue. He opened the file and glanced through the printouts and a photocopy of a news clipping from the business section of the San Jose Mercury News. He'd seen everything before except for the clipping.

  It was a short story about one of his chief competitors in the private sector getting an infusion of cash. It was dated two days earlier. He had heard about the deal in general already —through Nicole. Word traveled fast in the emerging-technologies world. A lot faster than through the news media. But the story was a confirmation of everything he'd already heard —and then some.

  BRONSON TECH GETS BOOST FROM JAPAN

  By Raul Puig Santa Cruz–based Bronson Technologies has agreed to a partnership with Japan's Tagawa Corporation that will provide funding for the firm's molecular electronics project, the parties announced Wednesday.

  Under terms of the agreement Tagawa will provide $16 million in research funds over the next four years. In return Tagawa will hold a 20 percent interest in Bronson.

  Elliot Bronson, president of the six-year-old company, said the money will help put his company into the lead in the vaunted race to develop the first practical molecular computer. Bronson and a host of private companies, universities and governmental agencies are engaged in a race to develop molecular-based random access memory (RAM) and link it to integrated circuitry. Though practical application of molecular computing is still seen by some as at least a decade away, it is believed by its proponents that it will revolutionize the world of electronics. It is also seen as a potential threat to the multibillion-dollar silicon-based computer industry.

  The potential value and application of molecular computing is seen as limitless and, therefore, the race to develop it is heated. Molecular computer chips will be infinitely more powerful and smaller than the silicon-based chi
ps that currently support the electronics field.

  "From diagnostic computers that can be dropped into the bloodstream to the creation of 'smart streets' with microscopic computers contained in the asphalt, molecular computers will change this world," Bronson said Tuesday. "And this company is going to be there to help change it."

  Among Bronson's chief competitors in the private sector are Amedeo Technologies of Los Angeles and Midas Molecular in Raleigh, N.C. Also, Hewlett-Packard has partnered with scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles. And more than a dozen other universities and private firms are putting significant funding into research into nanotechnology and molecular RAM. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is partially or wholly funding many of these programs.

  A handful of companies have chosen to seek private backing instead of relying on the government or universities. Bronson explained that the decision makes the company more nimble, able to move quickly with projects and experimentation without having to seek government or university approval.

  "The government and these big universities are like battleships," Bronson said. "Once they get moving in the right direction, then watch out. But it takes them a long while to make the turns and get pointed the right way. This field is too competitive and changes too rapidly for that. It's better to be a speedboat at the moment."

  Non-reliance on government or university funding also means less sharing of the wealth as patents in the area become more valuable in years to come.

  Several significant advances in the development of molecular computing have occurred in the last five years, with Amedeo Tech seemingly leading the way.

  Amedeo is the oldest company in the race. Henry Pierce, 34, the chemist who founded the company a year after leaving Stanford, has been granted numerous patents in the areas of molecular circuitry and the creation of molecular memory and logic gates —the basic component of computing.

  Bronson said he hopes to now level the playing field with the funding from Tagawa.

  "I think it will be a long and interesting race but we're going to be there at the finish line," he said. "With this deal, I guarantee it."

  The move to a significant source of financial support —a "whale" in the parlance of the emerging-technologies investment arena —is becoming favored by the smaller companies. Bronson's move follows Midas Molecular, which secured $16 million in funding from a Canadian investor earlier this year.

  "There is no two ways about it, you need the money to be competitive," Bronson said.

  "The basic tools of this science are expensive. To outfit a lab costs more than a million before you even get to the research."

  Amedeo's Pierce did not return calls but sources in the industry indicated his company is also seeking a significant investor.

  "Everybody is out hunting whales," said Daniel F. Daly, a partner in Daly & Mills, a Florida-based investment firm that has monitored the emergence of nanotechnology.

  "Money from the hundred-thousand-dollar investor gets eaten up too quickly, so everybody's into one-stop shopping —finding the one investor who will see a project all the way through."

  Pierce closed the file, the newspaper clip inside it. Little in the story was new to him but he was intrigued by the first quote from Bronson mentioning molecular diagnostics. He wondered if Bronson was toeing the industry line, talking up the sexier side of the science, or whether he knew something about Proteus. Was he talking directly to Pierce?

  Using the newspaper and his newfound Japanese money to throw down the gauntlet?

  If he was, then he had a shock coming soon. Pierce put the file back in its place in the drawer.

  "You sold out too cheap, Elliot," he said as he closed it.

  As he left the office he turned off the lights by hand.

  Outside in the hallway, Pierce momentarily scanned what they called the wall of fame.

  Framed articles on Amedeo and Pierce and the patents and the research covered the wall for twenty feet. During business hours, when employees were about in the offices, he never stopped to look at these. It was only in private moments that he glimpsed the wall of fame and felt a sense of pride. It was a scoreboard of sorts. Most of the articles came from science journals, and the language was impenetrable by the layman. But a few times the company and its work poked through into the general media. Pierce stopped before the piece that privately made him the most proud. It was a Fortune magazine cover nearly five years old. It showed a photograph of him —in his ponytail days —holding a plastic model of the simple molecular circuit he had just received a patent for. The caption to the right side of his smile asked, "The Most Important Patent of the Next Millennium?"

  Then in small type beneath it added, "He thinks so. Twenty-nine-year-old wunderkind Henry Pierce holds the molecular switch that could be the key to a new era in computing and electronics."

  The moment was only five years old but it filled Pierce with a sense of nostalgia as he looked at the framed magazine cover. The embarrassing label of wunderkind notwithstanding, Pierce's life changed when that magazine hit the newsstands. The chase started in earnest after that. The investors came to him, rather than the other way around.

  The competitors came. Charlie Condon came. Even Jay Leno's people came calling about the longhaired surfer chemist and his molecules. The best moment of all that Pierce remembered was when he wrote the check that paid off the scanning electron microscope.

  The pressure came then, too. The pressure to perform, to make the next stride. And then the next. Given the choice, he wouldn't go back. Not a chance. But Pierce liked to remember the moment for all that he didn't know then. There was nothing wrong with that.

  3

  The lab elevator descended so slowly that there was no physical indication it was even moving. The lights above the door were the only way to know for sure. It was designed that way, to eliminate as many vibrations as possible. Vibrations were the enemy. They skewed readings and measurements in the lab.

  The door slowly opened on the basement level and Pierce stepped out. He used his scramble card to enter the first door of the mantrap and then, once inside the small passageway, punched in the October combination on the second door. He opened it and entered the lab.

  The lab was actually a suite of several smaller labs clustered around the main room, or day room, as they called it. The suite was completely windowless. Its walls were lined on the inside with insulation containing copper shavings that knocked down electronic noise from the outside. On the surface of these walls the decorations were few, largely limited to a series of framed prints from the Dr. Seuss book Horton Hears a Who!

  The secondary labs included the chemlab to the left. This was a "clean room" where the chemical solutions of molecular switches were made and refrigerated. There was also an incubator for the Proteus project which they called the cell farm.

  Opposite the chemlab was the wire lab, or the furnace room, as most of the lab rats called it, and next to it was the imaging lab, which housed the electron microscope. All the way to the rear of the day room was the laser lab. This room was sheathed in copper for added protection against intruding electronic noise.

  The lab suite appeared empty, the computers off and the probe stations unmanned, but Pierce picked up the familiar smell of cooking carbon. He checked the sign-in log and saw that Grooms had signed in but had not yet signed out. He walked over to the wire lab and looked through the little glass door. He didn't see anyone. He opened the door and stepped in, immediately being hit with the heat and the smell. The vacuum oven was operating, a new batch of carbon wires being made. Pierce assumed Grooms had started the batch and then left the lab to take a break or get something to eat. It was understandable. The smell of cooking carbon was intolerable.

  He left the wire lab and closed the door. He went to a computer next to one of the probe stations and typed in the passwords. He pulled up the data on the switch tests he knew Grooms had been planning to conduct after Pierce had gone home ear
ly to set up his phone. According to the computer log, Grooms had run two thousand tests on a new group of twenty switches. The chemically synthesized switches were basic on/off gates that one day could —or would —be used to build computer circuitry.

  Pierce leaned back in the computer seat. He noticed a half full cup of coffee on the counter next to the monitor. He knew it was Larraby's because it was black. Everybody else in the lab used cream but the immunologist assigned to the Proteus project.

  As Pierce thought about whether to continue with the gateway confirmation tests or to go into the imaging lab and pull up Larraby's latest work on Proteus, his eyes drifted up toward the wall behind the computers. Scotch-taped to the wall was a dime. Grooms had put it up a couple years earlier. A joke, yes, but a solid reminder of their goal. Sometimes it seemed to be mocking them. Roosevelt turning the side of his face, looking the other way, ignoring them.