A Tower in Space-Time (The Stasis Stories #5)

by Laurence Dahners

  Mahesh recognized Halser’s words as a direct quote from the initial paragraph of the measure congress had passed in authorizing the nationalization.

  Kaem blinked. “X would like to know why the government didn’t ask if the company would cooperate with the government in achieving these goals. Staze has already put what it believes to be unbreakable systems in place to prevent anyone else from obtaining the technology. It seems pretty unlike the United States, the supposed land of the free, to just move in and take the company away from its owners. Is this planned for other industries?”

  “No! It’s not planned for other industries! They cooperate with the military. When the Navy asked Staze for help in evaluating Stade for naval shipbuilding it was rebuffed.”

  Kaem frowned, then mildly said, “To make sure we understand, when you say ‘the Navy asked for help,’ you’re referring to a demand that Staze give the Navy a million-dollar, hundred-meter Stade submarine-surrogate for target practice without being paid for it?”

  Halser’s eyes widened, “Plenty of other industries provide free samples of their products to the military in hopes of future business.”

  “But Staze had given you smaller testing samples, hadn’t it? And it wasn’t coming to you, seeking business, was it?”

  “No, but it should’ve!” Halser exclaimed. “They’d have to be idiots to not realize the tremendous military potential of their technology. As loyal citizens, they should have contacted their country’s military and said, ‘here, take a look at this!’”

  Once again there was a moment’s hesitation, while Kaem seemed to be listening, then he said, “Perhaps Staze would like to see its products used peacefully?”

  “With this tech, our military can keep our country and the world safe!”

  “But, isn’t the U.S. Military already the most powerful in the world? Couldn’t the government just ask Staze not to build weapons for anyone, thus guaranteeing the U.S. remains dominant?”

  “What if some other state manages to steal your technology!” Halser shouted. “Your own country could suddenly find itself outclassed by the military potential of one of its adversaries!”

  Kaem shrugged, “Mr. X believes you are going to find that our technology is extraordinarily well protected.”

  ~~~

  With the computer systems down, no more work got done that day.

  Halser demanded that Staze’s “IT people” get the computers working again. They made some efforts but threw their hands up in the air after a bit. Mahesh heard the head IT guy tell Halser that they didn’t know what was going on, had never seen anything like it, and didn’t know what to do about it. He waved an arm around, “All these computers’ memories are encrypted and suddenly the information on them can’t be decrypted, as if the passwords have been changed or the encryption’s coding altered.”

  “Who’s capable of doing that?” Halser asked in a menacing tone.

  “I don’t know. The NSA?”

  “Not, who could decrypt them! Who here is capable of encrypting them?”

  The IT guy gave him a puzzled look. “They were already encrypted, sir. Something’s changed about the encryption system.”

  “I know that, you idiot! I’m asking you who on your staff could’ve done… whatever has happened.”

  The guy looked around the room, “I… don’t know anyone who could do this. I would’ve sworn it couldn’t be done.”

  Halser rolled his eyes and snarled, “I smell bullshit.” He glanced around, then spoke loudly to the room as a whole, “And when we figure out what’s happened, there’s going to be hell to pay. You sons of…” He broke off at a commotion on the other side of the room. “What the hell?!”

  Mahesh saw that some agents were backing away from one of the stazers they’d taken off a shelf and put on a table. It was upside down. Oh, Mahesh realized, they were trying to open it up. Its insides must be going up in smoke the same way the one Wilson Delbet opened!

  Halser stormed across the room and started swearing.

  Mahesh turned to one of Halser’s men, “It’s quitting time. Can we go on home now?”

  The man pointed to a line of Staze employees who were filling out forms at computers across the room and recited, “You’ve got to fill out a questionnaire and give us your passwords to all computers, then you can go. Be back tomorrow to do your job. Nothing’s changed except the ownership of the company and some new limits on where your technology can be sold.”

  Mahesh went over and got in line, wondering how they were supposed to do their jobs with all the computers locked up. He didn’t pose the question because he didn’t want them to keep him any longer. I’m going to need to meet with Kaem and Arya over dinner to figure out what to do, he thought.

  To his surprise, he was out the door twenty minutes later. When he looked back over his shoulder on the way out, Halser was still in the corner, cursing the ruined stazer.

  Chapter Eight

  Arya knocked on Kaem’s door. Despite the fact that they were friendly and had occasionally been going out to dinner or a movie, she’d never been inside his apartment. He’d been to her apartment several times and they’d cooked dinner together, which had been very enjoyable. But the first night they’d gone out, she’d told him she wanted to go slow and he seemed to have taken her at her word. In fact, so much at her word, that she’d had to initiate all of the advances, such as hugging, that had occurred in their relationship.

  She found herself wishing he’d push a little, after all a girl wanted to feel desired. Nonetheless, she also basked in the respect he was giving her. Can’t make me happy, she thought. And, if I make him wait too long… she thought of the looks she saw other women giving him. Women, who, unlike Arya, didn’t know that in addition to being handsome, he was the preeminent genius of their time.

  Kaem opened the door, breaking into her thoughts. “Hey, Arya!” he said, as if excited to see her, not as if she were only there because he’d asked the leadership over to discuss the nationalization. “Come on in,” he continued, “we’ve got beer and pizza!” He said this last as if beer and pizza was the best thing in the world. He put out his hand, “Let me take your coat.”

  The first thing she noticed was that his apartment was neat. Exceptionally neat. Was his old dorm room only such a mess because of his roommate? she wondered, or did he toss everything in the closet tonight, getting ready for this meeting?

  Kaem took her coat and hung it in a very neat closet by the door.

  Well, he didn’t stuff it all in that closet, she thought.

  She wasn’t surprised to see Gunnar at the meeting, he was an owner after all. Mahesh and Dez were there too. She understood Mahesh, he was the CTO. Dez? Admittedly she was really smart… and a very old friend of Kaem’s. Are those her entire qualifications for this, Arya wondered.

  There were also the obvious people, Sylvia Contreras and Mei Lang, the federal law expert she’d brought in.

  Once everyone had taken a seat and been supplied with beer, they started picking slices of the pizzas. Mahesh asked, “Is X coming?”

  “Oh, lord no,” Kaem said with a laugh. “This kind of situation is just the reason he wanted to be anonymous in the first place. He’ll listen and contribute though.”

  “So, what the hell does he want to do about this?” Mahesh asked.

  Kaem turned to the two lawyers, “We’re assuming that legal confidentiality applies to these conversations?”

  They both nodded.

  He scanned the others, “And that all of you are willing to keep our discussion confidential as well?”

  Once he’d taken nods from each of them, he turned to the lawyers again. “Mr. X would like to know what the legal options are?”

  Lang looked sour. “We can’t claim that the appropriation of the company is against the law. The constitution itself, in the fifth amendment, says, ‘nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,’ thus implying that it can be done as long
as the owner is compensated. When they make their offer, we could argue about the company’s value and demand better compensation. However, we can’t legally claim they can’t do it. If you want the company back, you’ll need to lobby Congress to repeal the bill authorizing it.” She took a deep breath, “Of course we can always find a pretext to sue and could potentially take it all the way to the Supreme Court. However, it’ll take years, and…” Lang sighed, “Nationalization is well established. I don’t think you’ll prevail in the end.”

  “Dang,” Kaem said, though Arya thought he’d expected that answer. “Do they have the right to the intellectual property? Specifically, how to build stazers?”

  Lang looked surprised by the question, “Um, it’s the IP that made the company, right? And they own the company, so by extension they own the IP.”

  Kaem shrugged, “Actually the articles of incorporation don’t specify that the company owns the IP relating to stazing. They do say that the company will build Stade devices using X’s IP, but all the stazers have been built by X, not Staze.”

  Lang’s eyes narrowed, “So he proposes to claim that the government only nationalized a company that uses stazers to make Stade products but doesn’t actually have the right to make stazers, or perhaps even to use stazers without X’s permission?”

  Arya kept her eyes away from Gunnar’s and restrained a giggle as Kaem calmly nodded affirmatively. As if it were perfectly normal to be talking about X in the third person when Kaem was X.

  Lang paused for a moment to think, then spoke slowly, “I guess that would put it off until they nationalized the business X uses to build and license the use of stazers.”

  “Perhaps I implied something incorrectly,” Kaem said, “Staze does license the use of the stazers, charging a fee for most uses. That money does go to Staze’s bottom line. Since X is the major shareholder, he benefits from those fees in the form of the increased value of the company. However, Staze cannot create product without X. It can continue to launch space vehicles from Staze East, since no more Stade is needed to do that. I’d assume the government cannot nationalize an individual? That would seem to conflict with the principles of freedom the country was founded on.”

  Lang took a breath and let it out slowly. “It would take a great deal more study, merely to decide the possible tactics that might be used to claim that. I’m afraid that X might find his freedom restricted while such claims were settled in the courts. In the end, the government might succeed in claiming that such important IP belongs to the country, not the individual.”

  Kaem looked around at the rest of them, “What do you guys think we should do?”

  Mahesh said, “Was it X that shut down Staze’s computers?”

  Kaem nodded.

  “So, he’s some kind of software savant?”

  Kaem shrugged, “I guess. He seems to be pretty good at it.”

  Mahesh narrowed his eyes, “I assume that if he refuses to let the government use stazers, everyone at Staze,” his eyes now passed over the others at the table, “is going to be out of work?”

  Kaem frowned, “Even without the ability to staze anything, space launch will still be functional. It should make enough money to support everyone’s salaries but I think most of our employees want to work on the cutting edge. They want to be involved in building new tech. Those who aren’t shooting that high may be happy to take jobs down at Staze East.”

  Gunnar cleared his throat, “What about Space-Gen and GLI? Their contracts say they’re still supposed to be able to build more spacecraft.”

  “X says their stazers still work.” Kaem shrugged, “As do all the medical stazers that’ve already been sent out. Of course, once Halser figures that out, he may appropriate those stazers, which will make them fail since they won’t be doing what they were licensed for. I don’t know what’s going to happen then.”

  There was a moment of silence. Arya thought of asking what X was going to do, but she was afraid she’d crack up. Or worse, get choked up.

  Gunnar broke the quiet. “What’s the plan then?”

  Kaem shrugged, “X wants to know what you guys think we should do?”

  Gunnar said, “Screw ’em. They’ve stolen something that doesn’t work. Let the bastards stew. I for one could use a nice vacation.”

  Kaem’s eyes twinkled, “I thought you’d advocate something even more aggressive Gunnar. You must be mellowing with age.”

  Gunnar shrugged and grumbled, “I’ve been aging for a long time.”

  Kaem’s eyes went to Mahesh.

  Prakant cleared his throat, “I wouldn’t mind running the launch facility, but… It’s far from the dream I had. The one where we developed technology after technology out of Stade, making the world a better place along the way. I wanted…” he broke off and waved a hand as if to remove whatever vision he’d been seeing. “But that dream’s gone. I’ve become a pacifist since I did my time in the military. I don’t want to work for the military-industrial complex, so I’m expecting to be looking for other work.”

  Kaem looked questioningly at Arya.

  It’s okay if my voice breaks talking about this, she reminded herself. “I… don’t want to work for the military-industrial complex either.” She essayed a weak smile, “Maybe that makes me a pacifist too? But I study karate, so maybe I’m not.” She sighed, “On the other hand, I kind of feel like I owe it to the people we’ve hired to stay at Staze for a while, trying to keep our folks from getting screwed over in this… whatever it is.”

  Looking steadily at her, Kaem asked, “You, Gunnar, and I all own small pieces of Staze and thus some of the cash on hand. Would you be able to get our shares of that money out for us?”

  Giving him a steady look in return, Arya said, “I could if my computer was functioning.”

  Kaem gave her a thoughtful nod, then said, “Mr. X says he can make that happen. He’d like his money too.” He turned to Dez. “What do you think we should do?”

  Dez looked around at the others at the table. “I think Halser’s a bully. And, I have life experience that says bullies don’t let up, they just keep hurting you worse. Therefore, I’m with Gunnar. Screw ’em. However, rather than a nice long vacation, I propose we move.”

  “Um,” Mahesh said, looking puzzled. “Moving won’t change much. They’d still own the company and they’ll still be able to run space launch at Staze East. Even if X set us up with fresh Stazers at our new location they’d just take over there as well.”

  She grinned, “I’m not talking about relocating to Kansas, Dorothy. I’m talking about moving to another country. Canada, Brazil, the UK, Spain, Italy, Greece, Japan, or Australia. Countries with eastern coasts we could launch spacecraft from and with the international clout to stand off attempts to grab us back. If X builds us some stazers we could get on with making the world a better place. Best of all, Halser’s plan to bully us into doing what he wants will have blown up in his face.”

  Kaem laughed delightedly and turned to Gunnar, “You are getting soft! Her plan’s got a lot more teeth than yours! What do you think?”

  With a predatory smile, Gunnar said, “When I spoke of a vacation, I was thinking of the beaches on the east coast of Spain.”

  Kaem looked at Prakant. “What about you, Mahesh?”

  Mahesh turned to the legal team. “Would there be legal problems with doing that? Would we be guilty of flight or something?”

  They looked at one another, then Sylvia said, “You haven’t been accused of a crime. Your company’s been appropriated. You should be free to resign and go wherever you like.” She frowned, “I’m a little confused though. You talk like they won’t be able to staze anything without you. Can’t they just dismantle the stazers they’ve taken possession of, then figure out how they work?”

  Gunnar laughed, “Tried and failed. Stazers are amazingly well protected. Opening them fries the circuitry.” He turned to Kaem, “Since we’re going to be starting on making stazers anew, I’ve been thinking that
instead of bolts to hold the Stade case closed, I could design a welder that reaches into a cavity and welds the case closed. Maybe we could work out an un-welder that only people who fix stazers would have access to.”

  Kaem shrugged, “Or we could just weld the case closed with no way to open it that doesn’t fry the innards. It’s not like they’ve been breaking down often, so we could just toss and replace any of them that need repair. But, back to the business at hand.” He looked at Sylvia, “If we decided to leave tonight, there’d be nothing to stop us?”

  Her eyes widened. “There shouldn’t be, but… you dealt with those men today. I’m not sure they’ll follow the law, are you?”

  “Not at all,” Kaem said cheerfully. “So, Gunnar and Dez are interested in a vacation out of the country. Mahesh, Arya. What do you think about leaving?”

  They were both on the fence and wanted to see how things settled out at Staze for the next few days.

  Arya said, “I think we owe it to the people working there. We shouldn’t bolt at the first sign of trouble and we should at least try to smooth the transition for the other members of our teams.”

  Mahesh agreed with her on that. “Besides, once they realize they’ve appropriated something that doesn’t work, they may rethink the whole thing.”

  Kaem said, “Halser doesn’t impress me as a ‘rethink’ kinda guy.”

  “Well, no, I don’t think so either. But there’re people over him. As soon as medical stazers stop coming out there’s going to be a lot of pressure on Washington.”

  Arya said, “Isn’t the country going to blame us for that?”

  “I don’t know,” Kaem said. “There’s a video of the way they behaved out on the net. It’s getting millions of hits and the fact that Halser acted like such an A-hole might influence public opinion in our favor.”

  Dez laughed, “I wonder how that got out there?”

  “Well,” Kaem said, “it turns out Mr. X has control of all the security cameras in the building. He might’ve assigned the system to keep a camera on Halser at all times. Our people come off looking frightened but helpful. Halser looks like a foaming-at-the-mouth jerk.”