After sending off his feedback he went down to his main lab in the basement of the building to see if he could make some progress on the prototype sensors that were the keystone of his newest line of prosthetics.
After his body had been broken he had become brutally aware of the need for major improvements in the functioning of prosthetics. They were difficult to use and had a large learning curve. He wanted to make them more natural, and to do that he needed to work on the interface, the way that they were controlled.
His first line of devices had revolutionized the industry. He had developed sensors that picked up nerve impulses directly from the point of contact that the prosthetic was attached to. He was able to cut down the training time for a new limb from months to weeks.
His new line, if he could get it to work, would be a world changer. He needed to focus on making it work, but his new side project was calling to him as well. If he made progress on the prototype he would reward himself with some time on the side project in Lab B. Who knew? Maybe his two projects would intersect and complement each other.
“Time to prepare for your meeting, Mr. Alexander,” his house system said.
He looked up from his screen and checked his phone. He had about half an hour before the car Lindsay had arranged arrived to take him to the meeting with Blacksun. Their offices were on George Street, a short ten-minute journey from his home.
This face-to-face meeting was very unusual. Both he and the VC firm were firm believers in the importance of privacy. Of course, he had researched them when they first approached him, but not many hard facts turned up. They were rumored to be involved in emerging markets and they had connections with various mercenary groups that helped them to shape foreign policy in the aforementioned emerging markets. They were no angel investors; it was more like dealing with the devil. Then again, he was no angel either.
They had sought him out shortly after he got out of the hospital and only a month after he started to explore the shortfalls of the prosthetics that were available at the time. They convinced him to abandon academia and start his own firm. He was grateful that they were able to help him; without their funds he would have needed to constantly fight for funding from donors in the academic system. With their initial managerial support and funds he had been able to devote much more of his time to developing his ideas. It also allowed him the opportunity to pursue other side projects that would not be possible in a university setting.
Being grateful did not mean that he trusted them. Quite the contrary; their opaque nature and the fact that they had sought him out just made him more cautious.
The grey stone building looked like all the others on the street. There was a simple plaque on the wall reading “Blacksun.” The logo under the company name depicted two circles, one inside the other, that were joined by a series of twelve lightning bolts radiating from a central point. There was no description of what they did. The assumption was that they called you, you did not call them.
The drive had taken longer than expected. The Festival had just started and the Fringe had clogged the street with jugglers, fire eaters, comedians, general weirdoes and the crowds that flocked from all over the world to gawk at them. It was supposed to be a Festival of the Arts, but the Fringe had eclipsed the Festival itself long ago.
As he got out of the car, the building’s heavy wooden door opened. It was a serious door, practically medieval, and thick planks were bound with thicker beams and black iron rivets. The door was opened by a large — no, make that fucking huge — man in a black suit wearing sunglasses. The sunglasses were purely for show, as he emerged from a shadowed hallway into an overcast day.
The giant held the door open and ushered him past the stairs into a small elevator and pressed the button for the third floor.
When the elevator door pinged open his escort led him through double glass doors and past a receptionist to a conference room with seating for twelve. The two people sitting at the table rose as he entered. One he knew. She was an attractive woman just the wrong side of forty in a smart business suit that probably cost the same as a small car. Her name was Wendy and he thought of her as his handler. She claimed to be his Client Manager or Account Manager or something similar, but he knew she considered herself his handler as well. The other person in the room was a generic grey-haired suit.
“Thank you,” he said to his escort as he left.
“Thank you for meeting with us in person, Mr. Alexander. I know you prefer otherwise.” Wendy stepped forward to shake his hand.
He ignored her hand and limped over to one of the seats and settled in. “Yes, that is true, but I can hardly complain of a ten-minute journey, now can I?”
“Of course,” she said with a smile, “that’s why we obtained these offices.” She turned to the suit. “This is Henry.”
“Hello, Henry. I assume you know who I am or you wouldn’t be in this meeting. I don’t mean to be rude, but can we cut to the chase here? I would really like to get back to my lab. I feel we are very close to achieving a breakthrough on the new line. I assume that you had questions on the roadmap we provided, although I’m not certain why we needed to meet in person.”
“Yes, the roadmap was good, very good; it exceeded our expectations.” Henry leaned forward a little as he spoke. “Tell me, do you really think your next generation of sensors will be able to do all you say?”
“I’ll not take offence, Henry, since we just met. I always deliver, always. Wendy should have briefed you.”
“Oh, she didn’t need to brief me. You see, I have followed your work quite closely through the years, even though we’ve never met.” From the way Henry was taking charge of the conversation, it seemed that he was Wendy’s superior. He was a very big dick indeed, Wendy was a Partner at Blacksun, which was no trivial achievement. “Your idea to use your sensors to read someone’s thoughts was fascinating, but also, if I may say, a little fantastical. I needed to talk to you myself.”
He was getting a little uncomfortable in the swivel chair. His chair at home had been specially built for his rather unique physiology. “The sensors will not actually read thoughts, but rather motor impulses. The sensors will just be an order of magnitude more sensitive than the existing sensors. Instead of picking up a single set of nerve impulses from the point of contact where the prosthetic meets the flesh, they will detect the electrical patterns directly from the brain as it processes. Other than the sensitivity issue, the trick bit will be the calibration and the software to interpret the impulses. I plan to use a more complex variant of the self-learning software that we used to calibrate my previous lines of prosthetics. First, however, I need to solve the sensitivity issue, or lack thereof.”
“The implications are huge –”
“Of course they are. We could allow a paraplegic to control an exoskeleton that would help them move their limbs. We may eventually be able to pick up the language impulses for those who lost the ability to speak.”
“Correct me if I am wrong, but could they also be used to pass information silently or fly a drone or even, shall we say, assist with an interrogation?”
He looked from Henry to Wendy. “You know, whenever I forget what truly evil bastards you are, you do something to remind me.”
Wendy had the decency to pretend to be embarrassed. Henry just waited for him to answer the question. He did not oblige.
“I need to get back to my work. Was that all you wanted?”
Wendy spoke up, “We also wanted to raise a delicate matter with you and did not want to risk the discussion being compromised.”
“Compromised? My communications encryption is rock solid. Now I really am offended.”
“Forgive us, Mr. Alexander, but we didn’t want to take any chances. Shall we proceed?” When he did not reply Henry continued, “We have reason to believe that a rival firm called the Ankh Corporation has taken an interest in your research.”
“An interest? As in they want to invest?”
“We do not believe that their interest is benign. We believe that they will attempt to arrange a security breach. Industrial espionage is their most profitable line of business.”
“A breach? No way they could get in. I developed the security protocols myself. No one can get past them. You should know; all of your attempts have failed.”
Wendy again had the good grace to look embarrassed. “We needed to ensure that your data was secure.”
“It is.”
“They may try something more aggressive, such as influencing key employees or even direct burglary; these people are no Boy Scouts.”
“What, exactly, do you want?”
“What we want, Mr. Alexander, is your permission to provide you additional security support until the threat passes.”
“No.”
“Sorry?”
“Absolutely not. I will consider any surveillance or counter surveillance by you or your colleagues or your agents to be a breach of the privacy condition of our contract. If you breach the contract I will get other investors. My proven success in getting product to market means that you are not the only ones willing to play. I do like your discretion, but it is only worth so much to me. Overstep my bounds and we will part ways.”
“Now hold on, Mr. Alexander, no need to overreact. We were offering our support. If you do not want it or need it, we will not provide it.”
“Good. The answer still is and always will be, no.”
He got up to leave.
He was further along with his design of the processing side than he had told them and he was very close to solving the sensitivity issue; he knew he was just missing a simple solution. The solution was always simple once one thought of it. He decided then and there that he would buy his way out of his contract with Blacksun once the new line was launched; he needed get out from under them.
He did not need the distraction of being accountable to anyone; it took too much time away from his interests. After the developments of the previous night he was anxious to get on with his side project.
After Alexander left, Henry turned to Wendy and said, “He’s definitely hiding something. Get someone discreet to set up the surveillance. We need someone who cannot be linked to us, someone special.”
“I know just the person.”
St. Andrews, Scotland, 1994
Finn poked his head in the door. “Professor? Do you have a minute?
“Hello, Finn. Please come in, have a seat. Tell me, how did that pub crawl last week go?”
Finn sat and looked up at the poster on the wall that showed protesters holding signs that said things like, “Animal Experimentation is Cruel” and “Free the Chimps.” The caption at the bottom of the poster said, “Thanks to animal experimentation these protesters live on average 5 years longer.”
“Great, Professor. Lots of fun had by all. Well, almost all.”
“Ah, yes, I heard about our friend Mr. Brown. He really is a tit isn’t he?”
“Yes, Professor, I believe he is.” Finn sat down. “I wanted to say thank you for granting me access to the data. I just started my analysis, but my preliminary findings are, um, interesting.”
“What exactly are you looking for? We didn’t have time to discuss it last week.”
“Well, Professor, you remember a few weeks ago we tested a subject and she scored off the charts on the card test? We retested her again last week and she scored horribly.”
“Yes, and …? We all know the variability of results is the bane of our science.” Proctor slipped into lecture mode. “The purpose of Science and, arguably, the brain itself, is to determine how things work and then to be able to use this knowledge to predict the outcome of events. The purpose of experimentation is to determine what variables influence a particular outcome and, if possible, to quantify the outcome based in the variables and their strength.”
“Agreed, Professor.”
“We parapsychologists, with this particular type of experiment, are trying to determine whether the brain can detect remote events. Unfortunately, the variable results we see indicate to other scientists,” he said the word scientists with a sneer, “that we are fixing our results or are merely incompetent and are unable to design a solid experiment.”
“Again, agreed, Professor. This particular set of results intrigued me. The most recent set of tests offset the original results and obliterated the statistical relevance.”
“Yes, yes, and …? We both know that chance plays a large part in these experiments.”
“That is what I thought too. The interesting thing is, after combining her two sets of results, her predictions were exactly equal to pure chance. Exactly.”
Proctor indicated Finn should continue by waving his hand in front of himself in a circular motion.
“I started to review all of the experiments conducted here in the last five years. I am not done yet, but most of our results agree with results published by other institutions over the last century. We see a small but statistically significant evidence of psi. However, for a few subjects, when we first test them, their results are off the charts. They can guess every symbol, predict every flash of light and describe in great detail every remote target object. Then when we ask them to return for additional tests they score poorly, more poorly than chance even. So poorly, in fact, that when we amalgamate their results they look like everyone else.”
Finn took a deep breath. “And that, Professor, is the pattern. Someone or something is messing with our results or our experiments or both.”
Finn could see the cogs and gears turning in Proctor’s head. His eyes glazed for a second as he focused his remarkable brain on Finn’s proposal. Finn knew this was a good sign. Proctor had not immediately spotted a hole in his theory.
“Finn, this is interesting. Do you think the data will allow you to prove it? Without a clear pattern backed up by rock solid stats we will just end up damaging our reputations even more in the scientific community. We will also make a number of enemies in our field if we suggest some sort of conspiracy.”
“I agree. If I can prove this, it leads to two very interesting questions. Who is doing it and, more importantly, why?”
“Once you have something that looks solid I want Dawson to look at it. I'll brief him.”
“Um, about Dr. Dawson. I was hoping you could review this personally.”
“Look, Finn, I know that Dawson can be a bit prickly and you both don’t really like each other, but all the more reason for him to review your analysis. If you can get it through his review it will be bomb proof. I will review it, but I want to come at it fresh when you think you have it all down.”
“I suppose you’re right, Professor. I just wanted to keep this as quiet as possible. I don’t know who to trust.”
“I trust Dawson completely, and you can too. I do not know of a brighter, more dedicated researcher. Nor one as abrasive.”
“Alright, Professor, I’ll see if I can get him something in a few weeks.”
“Thank you for bringing this to me, Finn. This could be the opportunity that this department, indeed, this whole science of ours, needs to break into the Premier Division.”
“I got it, Professor. Nothing will stop me from getting to the bottom of this.”
Finn was going to the Ball with Bex tonight.
Well, he was going with Jonni but meeting her there. He tried to tell himself that this was the same thing, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. He had not actually asked her to go with him.
He thought back to when he kind of asked her. It went something like this:
“Hi, Bex, I hear that Old Hall is holding a ball on Saturday. Are you going?”
“Yeah, I heard about it, I think I’ll go. Are you going?”
“Yeah, I think I will go too.”
“OK, see you there, maybe.”
“Sure, maybe.”
That was the same as going to a ball together, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?
He rushed back t
o the flat he and Jonni shared on Market Street, across the park from the Student Union. He and Jonni shared the flat with Aye, another post grad.
The place was filthy, really, really filthy.
None of them wanted it to be filthy, but they were all just a little lazy and none of them wanted to be the “flat Mum.” Finn had made that mistake before. When he was fourteen and studying for his first degree at Cambridge, he had shown weakness and cleaned the entire flat one tedious, horrible weekend. His flat mates at the time were very grateful, oh so very grateful, but they also then knew that he was more likely than anyone else in the flat to break down and clean again. And so Finn became the “flat Mum,” the maid.
The alternative was to get organized, which was a sort of hell on earth. Posting schedules on the fridge, arguing about whose turn it was to buy cleaning supplies or toilet paper. No way were they going to fall into that trap. Or maybe they were just fooling themselves about the magnitude of their laziness.
Finn was hungry so he had picked up some food from Greasy Joes, the chippy around the corner. Black pudding and chips with curry sauce, lovely.
He had some food in the fridge he could have prepared, but that would entail finding a partially clean plate on the floor, then locating the kitchen sink under the piles of crockery so he could run some water on it. He would then need to find something semi-clean to dry his plate on, all before he could even start preparing dinner. It really was not worth the trouble. The food from the chippy was cheap and it came in its own disposable container; much simpler. Based on the size of the line, many other students felt the same way. It wasn’t the quality of the food that packed them in.
When he was nearly done eating, Aye came in with a similar container. “Greasy Joes?” said Finn.
“Aye,” said Aye and sat down on the couch, started to eat and turned on the TV. Oh joy, Gladiators was on, again.
Aye’s real name was Angus. Everyone called him Angus to his face and Aye behind his back.
Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1) Page 7
