Balance of Power Shifted

by Karl, Victor

  Sitting in the back of an ambulance while one medic took care of my hand and another was checking my pupils for a concussion, Fiona was finally able to locate me. She had tears streaming down her face since the first ambulance she saw had rushed out of here with Bill onboard and she had heard that there were some fatalities. Squeezing me so hard that it hurt more than my injuries did, she kept saying thank God you are all right. Finally she stepped back and told me she had organized an evacuation using the back stairway and out to the trees behind the building. I also found out that she had risked going back in to the third floor to see if anyone was still there and had tried to make her way down to the first floor, but the smoke scared her away and one of the Clavis people told her it had been an attack and to go back outside. I broke the news to her that our receptionist and a Clavis security guard died, which shook her up even more.

  My phone started ringing and when I answered Jeremy was on the line. He had already been on the phone with Ty, the FBI and Homeland Security and told me to expect representatives to be showing up soon. He said, “You and Fiona cannot go back to her place until we figure things out. I am working on an option and am just waiting for an approval to come through. For now if you need to hang around. I suggest you go over to the showroom building and Ty will make sure there is security there. Julius and Iris had not been in the building when the attack happened, but arrived as the ambulances did. Julius came over to check on me and said he and Iris will head over to the hospital to see how Bill was doing and will keep you updated. I said thanks and I will get there as soon as I can. As we were talking, Ty had walked up, showed us a picture on his phone of the dead attacker and asked if I had seen him before. I shook my head no, but Julius looking over Ty’s shoulder said, “That’s the bastard that snapped each one of my fingers.” “Are you sure?” Ty asked. “I can’t forget that face” Julius responded angrily.

  I dealt with issues at the site the rest of the day and had multiple discussions with the local police, FBI and Home Land security. They took the serial number off the missile launcher and fingerprints and pictures of the deal assailant. I had asked Fiona to set up a command center at the showroom building and to make sure she had contact information for all our employees. We had a contingency plan in place that allowed employees to work from home during inclement weather. We implemented that plan, and asked the employees to perform their duties as best as they could from their home offices by connecting over the Internet using our secure remote connection service. Fiona confirmed that all corporate systems were operational and not impacted. We also had our backup servers in California online if we needed them. If any employees felt safe enough to work at the showroom, in particular the R&D people, they were more than welcome.

  Gwen was standing in front of about 25 reporters outside the show room building. She was still trembling from the tragic events of the day. Nevertheless, was able to push it aside and address the boisterous crowd. Ladies and gentlemen, at approximately 9:10 am this morning two vehicles drove into the parking area of Efficio’s corporate headquarters. There was an attack on some of the senior management of the company in an effort to deter the launch of a new our energy source. The senior management attacked, though injured, survived the attack with one in grave condition. We however regretfully inform you that one employee and one security guard died in the attack. Our heartfelt condolences go out to their families. Since this is an active investigation, this all I can speak to you about and for more information I turn you over other our Chief of Police.

  Chief Roscoe did not have much to say since jurisdiction belonged to the FBI, which is what he told the pool of reporters. He reached out through the cameras trained on him to ask the audience to report anything they may have seen that was suspicious.

  A tall well-built man dressed in a suit and tie approached Mike. The person looked all business as he strode closer with a set of piercing eyes and forceful stride. He looked to be in his late 30’s or early 40’s with close-cropped hair but not quite a crew cut. “Mike Carter I assume,” he said, as he held out his hand to shake. I nodded yes and shook his hand. “I am Agent Matt Morgan out of the Newark FBI office,” he informed me as he showed me his badge. “I am personally sorry about this tragic event and the loss of life. I am the agent in charge of this case and will use all of the FBI’s resources to track these perpetrators down. I have the statements provided by the local police, but wanted to know if you could think of anything else.”

  “Do you know that the dead attacker was one of four people who tortured our Finance officer a few weeks ago?” I asked. “We are aware of it Mr. Carter. I am sorry to ask this again, but can you repeat to me why you think you, Mr. Bates or your company are targets?” “Agent Morgan, there are literally hundreds if not thousands of people who would be negatively impacted financially if our Electricus power source is pushed out globally. The price of oil and gas are predicted to plummet over a short timeframe. Mr. Bates and I are the only two people on Earth who know how to replicate the organism that is Electricus and if we are gone, the threat is gone. The company itself is not the target. We have been aware of the danger from day one and have engaged a well-known security firm called Clavis Aurea run by their CEO Jeremiah Stevens, but I do not think anyone expected an attack like this.” Agent Morgan was writing in a black notebook the entire time and then asked me questions about the attack in California.

  As I finished up about our location and attack in California, I caught sight of Stevie searching through crowd of people still working the scene. I raised my hand and waved, which caught his attention and he headed our way. “Mike, man are you all right? How is Bill? Who were the casualties?” “Slow down Steve,” I said, “First off meet Agent Matt Morgan from the FBI.” Steve shook hands with agent Morgan and introduced himself. “Hi, I am Steve Kerry I work in our research area but am currently working with the Ar…my.” Steve looked at me like a dear in the headlights since he did not know if he could mention the Army connection. “Don’t worry Steve,” I said. “What my friend here was indicating is that we have R&D projects going on with the Air Force and Army” I confided to our new FBI friend. “The work is confidential but you should know.” “Good,” Steve said, “Because it is linked into what I was going to tell you. Jeremiah was able to go through channels and contacted me at the base to tell me what happened today as well as to get my butt over here and pick you and Fiona up.” “Pick us up,” I repeated. “Yeah, Jeremy pulled some strings and got you a couple offices near where I’m working, until we figure what the hell is going on. You and Fiona have been authorized to a base house.”

  As I thought about these developments, Matt asked, “What base are you talking about?” Steve jumped in before me and said “Picatinny Arsenal, you know their research and development base up in Rockaway Township.” Agent Morgan looked at me and said “Mr. Carter I think this is a great idea and you should take advantage of it. One last thing, we are putting around the clock coverage on Mr. Bates.”

  Steve drove the Hummer for Fiona and me to the hospital. We were not able to see Bill because we were not his immediate family, but Iris and Julius had done a good job collecting information. Iris’s two daughters were married and lived halfway across the country, which is why she was acting like, well like a mom. She had tightness in her face that belayed the positive spin she was putting on Bill’s condition. “It was bad,” she said. Soon after arriving they decided to drill two holes in his skull to help relieve the pressure caused by the ugly wound to his head. He had also needed immediate surgery to remove his spleen perforated by a projectile from the blast. Two broken ribs and numerous deep lacerations and punctures rounded out his list of injuries.” Iris added, “He is in coma from his injuries, but they have also drugged him to remain in a coma until he starts to stabilize.” “Iris,” Fiona said, “did anyone contact his parents yet? “I was able to contact his father in Florida and he will be here on an early flight tomorrow and his mother should be here in an hour or
so. She lives in Harrisburg Pennsylvania and is driving to the hospital.”

  Steve was grabbing me by my bicep to get my attention and I had been ignoring him until he dug in tighter. “Mike, Jeremy made me promise to get you to the base as soon as possible.” “I cannot leave Bill like this,” I said as my voiced cracked. “Yes you can Mike and you have to,” a voice said from behind me. Turning around I saw it was Ty and another Clavis employee as well as local police officer. “These two will stay here and protect Bill and we will rotate others as needed. I have two cars downstairs that will escort you to the base where Jeremy will meet you tomorrow morning and fill you in on the intel collected to date.” The day’s events caught up with me in a rush, as the adrenalin hit finally wore off. Fiona had to literally put an arm around me to prevent me from toppling over and looking at Iris I said, “please keep us updated with any change to Bill’s condition and thanks Iris.” She then steered me with Steve’s help out to the Hummer and with one Clavis sedan in front and one in the back of us, drove the 30 minutes to the base.

  Mike was in a fog for the most of the ride, but came out of it when they reached the main gate for the base. He had a very early memory of his father taking him here when he was a kid for Armed Forces day. Even as a young kid he was suitably impressed with the fly byes overhead and the tanks and other cool military stuff. After showing their identification, Bill and Fiona received base identification that had been prepared earlier. Steve then drove them to their small house, which was right along the base golf course. Fiona and I spent an hour decompressing in the living room of the house. Someone had graciously stocked the refrigerator so we were snacking on some fresh fruit, which I dug into when my stomach remembered it had not eaten all day.

  Fiona sensed that I was having trouble dealing with Bill’s injuries as well as trying to avoid not sticking my head in the sand in response to the attacks. She coaxed me along to start talking through things we needed to do. By the time we hit the sack around midnight, I had stopped feeling sorry for myself and became angry that the parents of our receptionist Pam would have to bury their daughter. I got angrier about the possibility of losing Bill and the audacity of our unknown enemies that they thought they could stop or control something that was so beneficial to humankind and our planet in the name of greed and power. I said to Fiona before crashing “I’m going to escalate getting Electricus out to all parts of the globe and tomorrow we will figure out how to do it.”

  The next morning Steve came by with a few items from the base commissary and some basic clothes like his and her khakis and his and her golf shirts. After changing, Steve brought us to the place he had been working from the last 2-weeks. We were told that this was the only work area building we were allowed to enter on the base. It was an older brick building that may have been a motor pool at one time. They had a number of Humvees and one large open truck, which the soldiers were working on. Off to the side, I could see custom Power Pad assemblies under construction and modifications made to fit Humvee dimensions. One Humvee looked in a more advanced state than the other vehicles and appeared modified to have a protective shield over the Power Pad. Steve saw me looking that way and said, “It didn’t take you long to scope out that modification. That is a high impact resin that could deflect most projectiles under a 50 caliber.” Another civilian walked over and said, “They decided to stick with a dual electric motor solution to provide drive redundancy, but the electric motor selected was a motor specially built for the military by General Electric. The total gross weight of the vehicle will be 340 pounds lighter than the predecessor.” Hi, I am Ravi said the person throwing all the information my way.” “Mike Carter” and pointing to Fiona, “and this is Fiona Paschel “I finished. “Welcome” Ravi said and added, “I’m the lead project manager on this for the Army and specialize in field logistics. Your discovery has essentially resulted in the government throwing all my work for the last 5 years into the proverbial trash can and we couldn’t be happier,” he said with a wide grin. Ravi pointed to the back of the bay, where I could see a demo setup similar to the one we used in our showroom to demonstrate a field installation of the Power Pad. “Mr. Carter, with your company’s product we could literally setup a command post in minutes and run indefinitely. Amazing, simply amazing” he rambled. “I guess Steve can handle the logistics of getting you established in your offices in the rear there, so I’ll leave you alone for now, but would like to spend a few minutes with you on how you protect the reproduction of the Electricus organism when you have some time.” Throwing out “definitely Ravi” Fiona and I followed Steve to the offices. “Don’t mind Ravi” Steve said, “He is an excitable person and one of the top in his field and knows how to think out of the box.”

  The offices were basic but functional. The Army had already installed special network connections that only allowed Internet access to a visitor’s network and they made a special allowance for us to tunnel securely back to our network using our own laptops. This also allowed us to tap into the functions of our voice over IP phone system back at the home office. No one else would know we were not calling from the office. We were about 15 minutes away from our crisis team meeting, which we had agreed to hold every four hours during the workday using our teleconference service. Julius had sent out a couple of text messages over night and this morning saying that Bill’s condition had not changed. I quickly scanned through my corporate emails and discovered an interesting one from Charles Knight of Global Oil Corporation. In his email he states that he is representing a consortium of energy based companies and wished to speak with me in person. He left his phone number and message to call him anytime 24 hours a day. I motioned for Fiona to come over and look at the email. After giving her some time to digest it, I said, “well what’s your take on it?” Taking her time before answering she said, “I think they are going to offer to buy Efficio or at a minimum try and lock up exclusivity for Electricus for a long period of time.” “I’m in agreement with your thinking I said, however I’m leaning to purchase since that will allow them to suppress it for as long as they need.” “What would you do if they throw out an offer you can’t refuse?” Fiona asked with a pensive frown making her brow furrow as if she would be crushed if I told her the answer she did not want to hear.” “I hope that’s a rhetorical question,” I said and did not answer further. For purposes of privacy, we both put our headphones on and used the software based phone to call into the meeting.

  The meeting started off on a somber note as I had asked to have Iris and Julius give an update on the Bill as well as provide information on Pam our receptionist and Jason the Clavis security guard. A couple of the team where going to represent Efficio at Pam’s services and Jason’s body would be shipped back to his parent’s in Las Vegas. Neither Amy nor Jason was married or had children, which were minor blessings. Business then moved on to personnel issues. All of the R&D staff had volunteered to keep working and do it at the showroom which Sean relayed this with pride in his voice.

  Everyone else was working out of his or her home offices and there were no critical issues. Sean had volunteered to handle what to do with our building. As of this morning, the investigators had not yet released it to us, which also meant the municipal inspectors have not been able to get inside to look at the integrity of the building. As we wrapped up our checklist, I dropped the news on our team about the Charles and the consortium and the gist of Fiona and my speculation. I decided to ask the team this question and set it up by first stating, “I know Bill cannot tell us what he would think about this potential proposal, but due to the danger regarding our company who of you would endorse a sale if offer was put on the table. Well for the next minute and a half, a raucous outburst of comments assailed the listeners. As I keyed into some of the comments the smile on my face grew which I think was contagious since Fiona had the same smile on her face. OK, OK everyone calm down, calm down. As the voices died down I summarized by saying, “I guess the answer is no then.” Last item on
agenda is security. I have a phone call with Clavis in 25 minutes from now. Iris and Julius, do you have time to join Fiona and me on the call I asked?” “Certainly Mike” came back the response. “Look for the invite from me in about a minute then,” I followed.” “One last thing everyone, I am so glad and proud to be working with all of you. Many of you I have known personally over the years and others only recently, but your dedication to the success of this company and what we can do for other’s is unbelievable. Thank you.”

  Halfway around the world sat General Hu Jiabao in his plush office located deep in a government building in Beijing. The general was smiling to himself and as he thought about China’s emergence on the economic scene over the last decade. The General himself played a huge part in the success, however only a handful of the senior leadership where aware of him or even his little know office of ‘Patents and Trade.’ Years ago, the Chinese leadership had gotten together and had decided to follow thinly veiled aspects of capitalism in an effort to build their own economy.