by Dale Brown
and the Department of Defense.
And today, with billions in government contracts
and licenses in the works, Jon Masters now had a
little time to kick back and do what he really enjoyed
doing-tinkering, experimenting, lab workand
it was as if he had regressed to his childhood
when he played with transistors and drew detailed
blueprints for rockets instead of playing baseball
and drawing pictures of superheroes. But he never
lost the cocky attitude he had developed when, as a
superintelligent teenager going after his doctorate,
he felt he had to break down his professors' amused,
smirking self-righteousness about awarding an advanced
degree to a kid.
After all the years Kaddiri and Jon had worked
together, it was still impossible for her to determine
what that punk genius was thinking or feeling.
Helen Kaddiri, the American-born daughter of Indian
scientist-professor parents, had followed much
the same path as Jon, but at a more conventional
age and taking a more conventional route getting
there-she was eight years older than he was. She
started an aerospace company, Sky Sciences Inc., in
Tennessee, after being rejected several times for
senior-level positions at other companies where she
felt her talents were being overlooked because of
her gender. Her company was not large or hugely
profitable, but it was hers and it was her pride and
joy.
But in a surprise move, her own handpicked
board of directors voted a young, cocky engineer
from NASA onto the board, feeling he would surely
help take the little company into the big leagues.
The smart little brat took generous stock options
instead of a salary, pledging to get rich or go broke
along with them, a move that made him even more
popular with the board. Jon Masters did indeed take
Kaddiri's little company to a higher level-and in
the process took over almost all of the company's
outstanding stock, then control of her board of directors
, then Helen's position, then her authority,
and eventually even the company name. Kaddiri
made one unsuccessful attempt to wrest back control
; her failure made Masters even more popular,
even cockier.
She still enjoyed significant wealth, prestige, and
authority as chairman of the board and corporate
vice president of Sky Masters, Inc. But Helen Kaddiri
could not count the times she had resolved to
gladly trade it all in and go back to the bad old days
as president and chief bottle washer of a company,
no matter how dinky, that didn't include Jonathan
Colin Masters, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., CEO, RPITARoyal
Pain In The Ass.
Kaddiri clicked open the commlink again and
said sternly, "Jon, you know about the instability
problems, those power surges that we couldn't control
. The power surges could set off those explosives
. Now put the dummy, the other dummy, in
the seat and get out of there."
"We did a test with explosives before,
Helen
"But not with three separate chambers spaced so
closely together, and not with the amount you've
got loaded in there," Kaddiri argued. "It's too dangerous
. At least have the range safety officers take
some of those explosives out. Get out of that thing,
Jon, and let's-"
Masters looked at his watch and said quickly,
"Too late, Helen. It's time. We've got the satellite
constellation for only another hour, and the FAA
wants to reopen this airspace for the afternoon rush
into San Francisco and San Jose. Let's bring 'em on
in and get this dog and pony show started." Kaddiri
had no choice. She could either tell Masters to go to
hell and get out of there before she witnessed a disaster
, or comply.
Helen Kaddiri stepped up to the briefer's platform
after her audience filed in and the room was secured
. She stood before a large rear-projection video
screen, which showed the company logo along with
video clips of several military technologies in operation-satellite
reconnaissance systems, communications
satellites, space boosters, and military
weapons, all designed by Sky Masters, Inc. "Good
afternoon and welcome, gentlemen," Kaddiri began.
"I am Dr. Helen Kaddiri, vice president and chairman
of the board of Sky Masters, Inc. Thank you
very much for the invitation to present this technology
demonstration program to you. I must remind
you all that today's presentation and the
information contained in it is copyrighted and patented
material, and is also classified under Sky Masters
, Inc.'s memorandum of understanding with the
Department of Defense concerning weaponstechnology
information transfer, and is not to be
released to anyone outside this room without . . .
It soon became obvious that the assistant deputy
secretary of the Department of Transportation, Edward
Fenton, who was the highest ranking govern
merrt-exwutive at the briefing, was perturbed. just a
few minutes after Kaddiri began, Fenton raised a
hand: "Excuse me, Dr. Kaddiri, but.1 understood
that Dr. Masters was going to be available to answer
questions. Is he available today? If not, it would be
best if . . ."
"Yes, Secretary Fenton, he's with us now on a
live videoconference hookup from California."
"A videoconference? From California?" Fenton
shook his head in exasperation, then nodded to his
assistant, who started to pack up his boss's notebooks
. "Dr. Kaddiri, I rearranged my schedule for
two entire days to accommodate Dr. Masters because
he was flying all the way to Washington personally
for this presentation. If we were going to do
this by videoconference, I wish you'd have told us.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to
The screen behind Kaddiri went blank, followed
immediately by the videoconference shot of Jon
Masters in the cabin of the 727. "Sheesh, Ed," Masters
said, taking a sip of Pepsi from his ever-present
squeeze bottle, "but you sure know how to spoil a
good show. I was all set to do a big entrance." Fenton's
irritation was quadrupled by being addressed
by his first name. Masters noticed this right away
and smiled. "Oh, sorry. I mean, Mr. Assistant Deputy
Secretary, I wish you hadn't screwed up my entrance
. But I'm ready to make our presentation
now.//
If Fenton was peeved at being addressed by his
first name, it angered him even more that Masters
was rubbing his nose in it by sarcastically using the
proper title. "Dr. Masters, you've wasted my time
and that of all these good folks by not being here for
this presentation. You will reschedule this briefing
with my staff when you can be here in person, as I
&
nbsp; requested, and I think you owe us all an apology.
Now if you'll excuse me
"Folks, I'm not being lazy-believe me, this is a
better way to do this demonstration. I'm ready to do
it right now, and I guarantee I'll blow your socks
off." Masters was addressing everyone in the FAA
conference room with a confident smile, but when
he saw that Fenton was still packing up, he quickly
added, "American companies should have first dibs,
but if I can't get DOT and FAA to sign off on it, I'll
go to Europe. Check my prospectus, folks-I've already
got Commerce Department clearance to sell
overseas. Time is money, guys, and this technology
is ready to go now. If I don't do this for you now, I'll
do it for Airbus tomorrow."
Fenton could feel all eyes move from the monitor
to him at that moment. No one in the aerospace
industry or the airlines really liked Jon Masters, the
genius with the attitude of a smart-ass seven-yearold
, but everyone knew that he represented the cutting
edge in aerospace technology. A license for one
of Masters's new gadgets could be worth billions.
No one liked the Federal Aviation Administration,
either. It was an agency that could be tolerated only
as long as its authority didn't hamper business.
Masters was being rude and crude as usual, but if
Fenton walked out, he'd probably cost all or some of
them billions. They all knew that Masters had
Commerce Department authority to export this
technology, whatever it was, and that fact alone
made this presentation important.
Fenton felt their icy stares and silent sit-down
commands, scowled at the video monitor, and said
angrily, "We don't like threats, Dr. Masters."
"Sorry, sir," Masters said. "But I'm just excited.
You know what it's like. I guarantee, you're really
going to like this. Really."
The aerospace execs breathed a sigh of relief. If
Masters kept up his punk attitude, Fenton would
walk. But the apology showed Fenton the proper, if
minimum, amount of respect, and Fenton returned
to his seat. His aide scrambled to rearrange his papers
and notes before him.
"Thanks, Ed," said Masters. The execs concealed
their chuckles. Masters went on: "Folks, I've been
building gadgets for twenty years to help the military
find and blow things up, but now I've developed
a technology that will help prevent something
from being blown up. It's called ballistic electroreactive
process, or BERP for short." Helen Kaddiri
swallowed her iffitation-it was just like Jon to give
his inventions ridiculous names like "BERP." "Let
me explain how I discovered this technology."
Jon Masters held up a square wire frame, then
dipped it into a pan of liquid on the seat next to him
and held it up to the camera. "We've all played with
soap bubbles as kids, right?" He poked the bubble
on the wire frame, and it promptly burst. "The film
is less than three-thousandths the thickness of a human
hair. Held together by simple chemical bonds,
negligible surface tension. Easy to break--obviously
. But while I was experimenting, I touched a
couple of hot wires to the frame that a bubble was
on, then shined a laser light on it. Here's what I
saw."
The lights in the cabin dimmed, and a beam of
green laser light emanated from somewhere just off
camera and shined on a new bubble Masters formed
in the frame. The surface of the bubble continued to
shimmer and undulate. "Watch." Masters flipped a
switch, then moved his finger against the bubble.
The surface of the bubble changed-the undulations
and shimmering stopped, replaced by a solid green
color. "See that? All the light refractions and sur-
face eddies on the bubble disappear. Now check this
out." Masters turned the frame horizontally, then
carefully placed a paper clip on the bubble. it did
not break-the paper clip appeared to float in midair
. Masters even waved the wire frame, and the paper
clip held fast.
"I know what you're thinking-the paper clip is
suspended by a magnetic field formed by the wire
frame, or by siirface tension. Not so fast, Sherlock!"
Masters withdrew a regular wooden pencil from a
pocket and dropped it on the bubble-and it too
was supported in midair. "That bubble is threethousandths
the width of a human hair, yet it's supporting
millions of times its own weight. Surface
tension? Chemical properties of the soap solution?
Yes and yes-but properties that were changed by
an application of a small electric charge." The lights
in the cabin came on again. Masters flipped the
switch beside him, and the paper clip and pencil
promptly dropped through the frame into his lap as
the bubble burst.
"I call it electro-reactive collimation, a realignment
of the molecular structure of the soap solution
so that the surface tension of the solution is
millions of times stronger than normal," Masters
said. "Collimation occurs in nature all the time, but
it's usually induced by temperature or chemical mteractions
. I can make it occur with the application
of a small electric current. By varying the amperage
and frequency of the electric charge, I can also vary
the properties of the collimated material."
"How long have you been working on this process
, Doctor?" one of the execs asked.
"Oh, about thirty years," Masters replied. "I first
discovered it when I was around seven years old. I
knew lots of kids who played with soap bubbles, but
as far as I know I was the only one who shot an
electric current through one. I just hooked up an old
six-volt dry cell to the wire frame, and there it
was."
"This is all very fascinating, Doctor," Fenton
said, "but can we get to the point of this demonstration
? "
"Sure, Ed." He held up a piece of cloth mounted
on a frame with wires attached to it. "It's possible
to collimate a whole variety of liquids and colloids-those
are substances that have properties of
liquids, solids, or gases combined. I can even use
seawater to protect ships and submarines from collision
or from damage due to water pressure-imagine
a submarine that can dive to the deepest depths
of the oceans without being crushed, using the seawater
around it, the very thing trying to crush the
ship, to protect it! Of course, it's also possible to decollimate
something, or make it less dense, without
using temperature or without mixing other chemicals
in it. When I get that technology working, the
applications will be truly Star Wars-like---can you
say phaser guns/ boys and girls?
"But the really cool application of electroreactive
collimation is in materials science, a
nd it's
there that I've had the most fun over the past couple
years," Masters went on, his excitement evident in
his voice. "That's because solids can be collimated
just like liquids and gases. Now we start getting
into some really neat applications!" He held up another
, larger wire frame, this time with a thin, light
gray material hung within it. "This is a piece of one
of the BERP materials I've developed. It's lightweight
fabric, about as light and flexible as nylon."
He rustled the frame, and the fabric swayed as everyone
expected. "Now check this out."
Masters picked up a hammer, hefted it, and
swung it at the fabric. The observers were stunned
to,hear a dull thud. They saw Masters drop the wire
frame after he hit it with the hammer, but they
were still too startled to take any notice. He picked
up the frame and shook it again, and the fabric
moved as before, like a linen handkerchief-but
when he swung the hammer, the fabric again instantly
solidified into a hard plate.
He also drQpped it again after he hit it, jumping
in surprise when the electric shock came, a bit
stronger this time. And this time Helen Kaddiri noticed
. "Jon, what's wrong?" she radioed to him via
his earset communications unit. "Why do you keep
dropping it?" There was no reply, confirming
Helen's worst fear. "Jon, is that thing shocking you
again?"
It's nothing, Helen," Masters whispered, loud
enough for his voice to be picked up on the private
earset link but not loud enough to be heard by those
watching the demonstration in Washington. "I'll
just hold it with the pliers, like we planned."
"But if it's malfunctioning, you've got to terminate
the demonstration," Helen said, horrified. "It's
one thing to shock your hand. But if it lets off a
voltage spike next to a hundred pounds of TNT, it
could malfunction and blow you to bits!"
"It's not malfunctioning, Helen. Look at these
guys-they're mesmerized. It's working perfectly!"
"Terminate this test, Jon. You can't do the demonstration
until we figure out why it's doing that."
In response, Masters picked up the wire frame,
this time using an insulated pair of pliers so that the
small electric current that built up on the frame
