by Karl, Victor
By the time everyone left, it was time to start dinner. Fiona pushed me out of the kitchen and told me to find something to do while she prepared the meal. We had sent to guards away with Jeremy since we were not leaving and made sure to enable the security system. Without argument, I sat back in the recliner, sipped a cold beer while channel surfing and enjoyed the aroma of the cooking dinner. Fiona was preparing Monkfish and fresh vegetables for roasting on the grill and the citrus marinade she made smelled out of this world. One of the cable news channels was talking about the Middle East and the standoff between Israel and Iran. Neither country seemed intent on escalating past the current status quo however, Iran was still postulating about blocking the Strait of Hormuz. The announcer touched on the status of Venezuela regarding their leader’s poor health, which was affecting Venezuela’s oil export capability. Already, dissidents were coming out in droves there to challenge the legality of his administration exacerbating the situation. The combination of these events had speculators driving up the price of oil up and gas prices at the pumps were soaring to over $4.50 per gallon on average. The commentator then said something that almost shocked me out of my chair.
With a stoic expression the announcer said, “There may be a White Knight in our future and that White Knight’s name is Efficio.” The screen then showed our headquarters building and the announcer mentioned we were in Summit New Jersey. He continued by saying, “Some exciting stuff was unveiled last Friday at an invitation only event where attendees were stunned at what they saw.” The camera then panned our show room building from outside and the announcer stated that at this facility a small organism that has electrical characteristics that can continue to provide electricity even under low light situations is providing all the building power. Peering into the camera to emphasize his next point the announcer said. “This building has no electrical costs and is disconnected from the local power grid. To make it more interesting, this 1997 Hummer H2 driven by an Efficio executive has no combustion engine in it, and if you can look closely at the hood and roof, you can make out something they call the Power Pad, which contains interconnected cells of an organism, they call Electricus.” The camera, while focused on the car, clearly showed Fiona behind the wheel. This elicited a squeal of laughter from Fiona since she looked kind of bug eyed with the camera lights shining in her face. I was glad to see they did not capture the faces of any attendees, which was the only requirement we had insisted on for camera use.
I sat stunned in my chair and just uttered, “can you believe this” in a rhetorical fashion. Fiona just calmly accepted it saying, “What did you expect.” Mike, talking to himself said, “I knew they would like it, but I thought there would be more skepticism and not the full-blown endorsements like the one we just saw.” “Why don’t you grab the salad and stuff and meet me up on the deck. The fish will not take long,” she said. As I was putting everything on a tray, including a couple of bottles of very good wine, my phone started to ring. Of course Bill was the first to call and chattered excitedly about the positive coverage, however I burst his bubble by telling him about the intruders and told him it was good that we were going to move the Electricus inventory into a hardened storage facility and should have it on a truck by tomorrow afternoon. Bill did not take the news well regarding our uninvited guests and kept asking if I was OK. I said, “I am fine buddy and Fiona is cooking me dinner right now and if I don’t get there in 30 seconds she will finish what those goons started today.” “Fly like the wind” Bill said and hung up. While talking to Bill, I had three text messages come in and one voice mail and decided to turn my phone to vibrate.
Dinner was out of this world and afterwards we watched the sun set sipping wine in our lounge chairs and holding hands. I have to tell you I really had a moment there where my life clarified in front of me and in that moment of clarity, I realized I wanted to marry Fiona.
I left Fiona sleeping off some of the wine from last night, got on the phone with Taylor and Kristen at 6 am local time, and asked them to start looking into an experienced marketing executive that we could bring onboard. Bill and I will have to agree on this before it gets serious I caveated. I also told them to watch for an email I will be sending shortly about yesterday’s invasion. I proceeded to write an email that calmly stated the facts on the break in, the drugging of the guards and a tamed down version of my involvement. The goal of the email was to motivate everyone to be diligent.
Next, I looked at all my text messages and listened to my voicemails. All except one were regarding the rash of publicity we were getting, but the last voicemail was from Jeremy and mentioned that they had a hit on one of the fingerprints left behind by the assailants. They were going to continue to investigate and see if they could determine whom they were working for. He also added that I was very lucky, because it appeared the intruder identified was ex-military. Jeremy then asked if I could book time later in the week when I had returned to New Jersey for a person who wanted to stay anonymous but wanted an in-depth look at Electricus and its applications. Jeremy ended the message by saying he would catch up with me when the shipment was loaded.
Fiona finally reared her head about nine and came down with her hair still wet from a shower. I worked with her on ensuring that all the encryption keys for our research data were changed and installed software on the servers that would detect any unauthorized changes to the server’ configuration and automatically notify our people under certain circumstances. I had argued with Bill that we should shut down R&D from this site since much of the work had moved east and only use it for West coast activities as needed. He was onboard with it however; I think he was stretching it out due to a certain waitress from the Whine Not. Just after lunch, we saw two armored cars drive up to the garage as well as two black SUVs and watched as Jeremy and Miguel got out of the closet one. Jeremy had been authorized to access this facility so he used his retina scan to do so. I walked over, shook hands with Jeremy, gave Miguel a smack on the back, and said long time no see. Miguel said yeah last time we were here you were bleeding like a stuck pig after Jenny clocked you. As Miguel was speaking, Fiona had walked up and said, “Jenny, who is Jenny” while looking in my direction. With a nervous laugh, I deflected her question and said it was a long story. Miguel smartly sensed danger here and got busy barking out orders to get the drums loaded onto the armored cars. Jeremy came over and said that we should be on the road in a half hour and will do a convoy to the secret site. Fiona just nodded her head. She was aware of why we had all the secrecy around this location and accepted not being told the details. Anyone who had this information could become a potential target since if Electricus got into someone’s hands they could possibly figure out how to reproduce it. The site was only known to Bill, me, Miguel and Jeremy and would only be used to reproduce Electricus. Headquarters is scheduled to receive four barrels and be stored in a special high-security containment room on the third floor Research and Development area for use in building prototypes.
There was one other piece of information known by only Bill and myself. Through trial and error, Bill had figured out that the Arsenic, which was a critical catalyst for reproduction, was not needed at all once the organism had replicated to its maximum density. Bill had found a way to remove the Arsenic after the reproduction completed. He also added some other elements as ‘red herrings’ to drive anyone attempting to figure out Electricus down the wrong path. It was not impossible to figure it out, but a modicum of luck would be required. There was nothing written down regarding this and only existed in our heads. All of our initial research had been scrubbed of anything related to Arsenic as well as the plant from the deep that started all of this. In fact, Bill had declined to have his name associated with the plant and Rutgers University would take the credit under the care of his professor. We had feared that people might be able to associate information regarding the plants discovery with the emergence of Electricus.
As Jeremy and the convoy were getting ready to p
ullout, I told him that I had sent him an email with a date and time for a meeting with his mystery guest at the showroom location. “Thanks Mike,” he said. “I cannot tell you more, but it will be an interesting meeting. I will call you after we make the first drop at the storage location. I hope my back can hold up since it will only be Miguel and I unloading the barrels when we get there. The others will hold position while we drive the trucks to the actual site.” Jeremy stuck his hand out for a quick shake goodbye, got in the armored car, and drove off. I headed back inside and opened the large safe. There was about 3 gallons of Electricus in there that we decided we would keep until R&D was completely out of the building. “Rico,” I heard Fiona say from across the room, “I have nothing else to do, is there anything else you can think of that we need?” “No, I think we’re good. Do you want to go out to dinner tonight and catch a show?” I offered. “Sure” was Fiona’s immediate reply.
Back East, Julius and Iris were just returning from Kings Supermarket after picking up some nice rib eye steaks, petite asparagus and red potatoes for grilling on an old-fashioned charcoal grill. Julius was admiring the landscaping around their new townhouse in Basking Ridge as they drove into their 2-car garage. Iris and he had reservations about selling their home of thirty years, but had not regretted their decision once they realized how much time they got back to do other things besides maintenance around an older home. Since starting work at Efficio and committing 100% to the company’s success, Julius had also shut the doors on his law office that had hung his shingle for over a quarter century. If anyone asked, the truth was that he and Iris were having blast. As they walked into the downstairs hallway from the garage, they froze in shock. Their office area appeared completely trashed. Papers were all over the place, books strewn on the floor and their Macs and PCs were gone. Julius backed up Iris into the garage and reopened the garage door so they could stand outside. Once outside, Julius called the police.
The police arrived in less than five minutes and gave the all clear a couple of minutes later. Iris and Julius walked through the entire townhouse with an officer. In other parts of the house, it was pretty much the same with books and papers all over the place and drawers and doors wide open. It was clear to Julius since the expensive televisions and Iris’s jewelry were undisturbed that this was not a typical B&E. Whoever broke in was looking for information. By 9 pm, the police had left and Julius called Ty and filled him in on the break in and his own suspicions. Ty asked to talk to Iris and based on the one side of the conversation he could hear, it sounded like any important data about Efficio was in a strong electronic encrypted format as taught by the Clavis trainers. Iris put Julius back on and Ty expressed his opinion that no serious exposure occurred. He instructed them to check with Fiona when she returned with Mike tomorrow and she could outfit them with new workstations and should be able to restore critical data from the daily backups performed in the background. As Julius was hanging up the phone with Ty, Iris walked back in with a couple of glasses of wine and a tray of crackers and cheese. As she was laying the tray down, she said something very out of character for her which was, “I can’t believe those F’n scumbags ruined our steaks tonight.” Picking up her wine glass, she raised it to Julius and said, “Here’s to the excitement we were craving in our lives and let these assholes bring it on.”
Mike was in discussion with Jeremy and told him that they must have been after some intelligence about the company, which means they may have gotten away with information that might expose a kink in our security. I will send out an email to all employees regarding what has transpired and to be double vigilant regarding social engineering attempts. We do not want a Stuxnet situation where our staff downloads malware, which could then creep through our network uncovering all kinds of secrets. Mike ended the conversation by saying “Thanks Jeremy, I will talk to you later when we land.” Mike was evaluating all the new events going on when Fiona asked how the Filamore’s were doing. She was shocked when I started laughing, but when I repeated what Julius told me of Iris’s comments she had a Chuckle too. Fiona then looked at her watch and said the limo to the airport should be here any second.
Halfway through the flight back, I asked Fiona if she had a current passport, which she said she had. “Why” she asked? “Well I am going on a secret trip to Italy on company business and Bill and I thought we should clue you in on some sensitive information since you and I sort of, kind of…have a special relationship,” was my cloaked response. “Why can’t you tell me what it’s all about then if I am going to be part of it,” she inquired?” “?Patience, you need to be patient on this one,” I said firmly. She pretended to pout for five minutes, and then started to ask questions about Italy and our destination there. Much to her annoyance, I was very vague on the details. It had taken a month to put this trip together, and it only appeared to happen after all the recent press. We had an outside party lobbying for us to talk to the right people, and to be honest, I was blind to who we actually would be talking to.
The cool thing about how the week progressed was everyone from investors to television news shows was soliciting us. On the investor side, everyone who attended the screening event wanted in on the action and the same number of unsolicited investors was trying to get in the door for a closer look. We had also voted and decided to do business with Max and his daughter Gisele and provide 20 homes in his new low-income housing tract with an Electricus set up. It was rare out there, but our investigation of Max had uncovered and documented his altruistic pattern for helping others. We did however ask Max to agree to a number of provisions, which was more of a lease of our gear and provided Efficio with certain rights for 5 years, which he had agreed or better yet his daughter had agreed since she had a law degree and was the legal counsel for their company.
My curiosity had built during the course of the week in anticipation of the meeting Jeremy had asked to be set up. Since the meeting was an hour from now, I went upstairs to the R&D area and grabbed Bill to head over to the other building. His curiosity was almost as strong as mine was. I did speculate that it was most likely military since that’s were Jeremy was connected.
About five minutes to eleven, a dark sedan with government plates pulled up and three gentlemen got out with two in uniform and one not. I am not up on my military dress or military insignias, but I could tell they were not all army and they were high ranking. I had no idea who the person in plainclothes was. The army driver exited the car complete with a sidearm and walked with the trio to where Bill and I were standing. I suggested we go inside and make introductions instead of standing around outside and escorted them to where we did our presentation, which was still set up. The first introduction was from General Randy Hotchkins and he said he worked at a special Army research and development group right here in New Jersey. Next, General Todd Reardon of the Air Force introduced himself, indicated he was out of Colorado, and attached to a similar group and vaguely described an Air Force R&D division. Mr. Plainclothes was next. Where the others where kind of stuffy, this guy was smiling and energetically pumped our hands as he filled us in on who he was, which was not much detail. He said he name was Carl and was with the CIA. I thought to myself, I guess no admirals. Bill spoke up and said “welcome gentlemen. Mike and I are a bit in the dark on your visit, but we think a lot of Jeremy and set this up like a blind date so we will take your lead on telling us what you are looking for.” “Gentlemen,” I added, “for your information we have two Clavis security staff on site and this building is swept daily for listening devices.”
From that point, General Hotchkins became the spokesperson for the group. He mentioned that he and Jeremy went way back and had worked on a number of projects together involving cyber security. “What we are looking for,” as he nodded towards his companions, “is as deep a dive on your technology as you are willing to provide and of course we will have some questions of our own.” “My suggestion then is to give you our canned presentation, then have Bill go thro
ugh how we applied the technology for automobiles and for powering structures like the building you are sitting it in. If you agree, we can proceed.” I got three heads shaking in agreement so I told them were the coffee was and that we would be ready in 2 minutes.
The presentation went by quickly since there were no questions and I cut out some of the marketing fluff designed to attract investors. I was a bit taken off my game when there was no response to my solicitation for questions so I turned the show over to Bill. Bill got up and asked them to follow him. Walking back to the electrical room, Bill gave them a close up and personal look at how the Power Module works and showed the connections into the main circuit panel and pointed out that the main breaker was in the OFF position essentially cutting them off from JCP&L. He added that if the breaker was is in the ON position, they would essentially be providing power back into the grid and may even be able to obtain a credit from JCP&L. Before we head up to the roof, I want to show you our portable system. Our field mobile unit sat in the middle of the cement floor of the warehouse. The only lighting provided came from the ceiling lights. Just off to the side were two leather recliner chairs and in front of them was a large screen television and surround system. An end table had a typical lamp with a traditional Edison style light bulb and a desktop computer. Pretending he was a magician, Bill went through the routine of demonstrating that no hidden power sources were in use including batteries and that the cement floor was solid and did not have holes going underneath. He then turned the master switch on the Power Panel to ON, turned on every device in the area and played a DVD of the movie Top Gun at high volume. Standing in front of the television and in very dramatic fashion, Bill extolled “gentlemen this is Electricus in its most basic form.” General Reardon said, “Very impressive Mr. Bates very impressive indeed, my only recommendation is to get rid of that Navy movie and put something more significant from the Air Force in place.” This seemed to lighten the bunch up somewhat.
