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

by Laurence Dahners

  “Tell me you’ve got these damn stazers figured out, Jack. I’ve got people all over my ass about the shutdown in medical stazer production. My constituents, my fellow Congressmen, and President Willis, who just got off the phone. He wants answers. He’s asking why this nationalization was a surprise? Why we hadn’t tried to negotiate our military requests before we just showed up and took over the company? Honestly, I told him I thought you had tried to strike a deal. You had, hadn’t you?”

  Halser took a deep breath, “Not exactly, Senator. We’d tried to negotiate with them for Stade ship’s hulls. They were singularly uncooperative. With that evidence of their lack of patriotism, it seemed better to ensure the company was locked in on the side of America, without giving them warning so they’d have time to hide their IP. We didn’t want to take any chances that we’d find out too late that they’d decided to cooperate with our enemies. As it turned out, they hid their IP preemptively, so I’d argue that we still didn’t move fast enough.”

  Starn sighed, “So, what’s gone wrong, Halser? Why aren’t you guys able to keep turning out the medical stazers? Rumors are that everything but space-launch has shut down?”

  “Um… yes, sir,” Halser allowed reluctantly. “Their IP wasn’t patented so they’d already gone to great lengths to keep it secret from anyone who might want to steal their methods. The situation here was far more bizarre than anyone could’ve anticipated. The, uh, CEO, believe it or not, seems to have been the only one in the entire organization who knew how to build a stazer.”

  “What?! Come on! You’re trying to tell me he was turning out all those medical stazers, plus whatever other ones they’ve been making by himself?!”

  “I think it sounds impossible too, but we can’t find a soul who knows how to build one.”

  “What about the CEO himself?” the senator asked. “If that’s the case…”

  “Yeah. Our legal people tell me, even if we could find him, we couldn’t legally force him to tell us.”

  “You can’t find him?! Did he flee the country?”

  “Well, maybe,” Halser replied. “No one knows who the CEO was. He was, quotes, anonymous. Went by ‘Mr. X.’”

  “For God’s sake, Jack, just have some IT types go through their records. Someone’s got his address, if for no other reason than to send him his paychecks.”

  “Yeah…” Halser gusted a sigh. “We can’t get into their computers. Hard drives are encrypted and even NSA hasn’t been able to break the encryption.”

  “I thought those quantum computers we bought the NSA could break anything?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’d heard too. They say they can’t break this, though.”

  “Wait a minute,” Starn said. “If no one knew who this CEO was, how’d he tell his underlings what to do?”

  “Communicated entirely through the kid that came up with the theory stasis is based on. Get this, the damned kid just graduated from college last summer!”

  “Jack,” Starn said patiently, “If this kid came up with the theory, he must be able to build a stazer!”

  “Um, you’d think so. But the story, a story everyone seems to believe, is that he just came up with an impractical ivory tower theory. That he had no idea how to build a practical stazer or even that one could be built. X heard about the theory and he’s the one that turned the whole idea from contemplate-your-navel speculation into a design that could be built.”

  “You’re speaking of this kid in the past tense? Did he get killed or something?”

  “No,” Halser said tiredly. “He cashed about fifteen million dollars of equity and left. No one knows where he went.” Halser snorted, “Their ‘technical adviser cashed fifteen million and the CFO cashed three hundred million. No one knows where they went either.”

  “Wait, if they left the country, Customs should know where they went.”

  “If that’s true they didn’t leave the country… or they left without showing their passports.”

  “Follow the money for God’s sake! They’re wherever it went!”

  Halser sighed, “I guess they live in a Swiss bank then.”

  “You’re shittin’ me!”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  “And,” Starn said, “X took delivery of his equity to a Swiss bank as well I suppose?”

  “Yes. Over a half-billion.”

  “That can’t be legal! How’d they even get it out of Staze’s accounts?!”

  “Damned CFO transferred it out right before she left,” Halser sighed, thinking it felt good to get all this infuriating stuff off his chest. “After the computers had been locked up, I should point out, so someone knows how to unlock them, just not anyone we know.”

  “Wait, if they took all that money, they owe a whole lot of tax. You can send law enforcement out to track ’em down.”

  Halser snorted, “CFO withheld and sent the IRS the estimated tax from the payout. My people tell me she withheld more than they’re likely to owe.” He laughed, “We might be able to track their refunds if they file for them.”

  Sounding incensed, Starn said, “They have to have broken some laws. Then the FBI or CIA should be able to track them down for you. The NSA’s got to know where they are, they supposedly track everybody’s phone conversations.”

  “Yeah, Senator, you’d think so. Neither JAG nor our civilian lawyers can find any laws they might’ve broken. There’re things they could be accused of, like stazing a woman with cancer without FDA approval, but our legal people say they won’t hold up in court since now everyone, especially the patient, thinks it was a great idea, and the FDA has approved medical stazing. The NSA people say they won’t tell us where they are without a warrant. But, get this, one of the NSA people told me confidentially that they can’t track or intercept their calls and don’t know where they are. They think whoever the SOB is that encrypted the computers, he did something similar to their phones.”

  “Just reverse engineer one of the stazers they left behind, for Chrissakes!” Starn said exasperatedly.

  “We’ve tried Senator,” Halser said. “Believe me, we’ve tried.” He sighed, “We’re still trying.” He took a breath and launched into an explanation of the problems they’d had going down that road.

  “There are a whole lotta people who’re gonna be unhappy about this,” Starn said ominously.

  Seeing one of his aides vigorously trying to get his attention, Halser said, “Just a moment Senator.” He put the call on hold, hoping Starn didn’t blow a gasket.

  The aide leaned close, “We’ve got substantiation of that rumor that they’re using Stade to rebuild a factory near Florence, Italy.

  With a sharp nod, Halser reconnected the call, “Senator?”

  “You put me on hold?!” Starn growled.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I just got confirmation of a rumor that a company in Florence, Italy is using Stade to reinforce a building.”

  There was a moment of hesitation, then Starn said, “So?”

  “It’s new Stade, sir. Either someone else has figured out how to make the stuff from Seba’s theory, or some of the people who quit here, moved there. Presumably to start over.”

  “They left the country?!”

  “Sir, we don’t know. They resigned and we don’t know where they are and don’t have a legal justification for asking the FBI to track them down. As I said before, in response to our concerns that they might have taken secret material out of the country, we did get Customs to check for egress through the various ports of entry. They did tell us that they didn’t find a record of any of them leaving the country. But their space plane has continued making test flights. It usually orbits a few times, then lands again. One of my guys suddenly wondered if they might’ve landed somewhere. If they did, it could easily have been Italy.”

  “Wait, I thought the damned plane had to be launched from that tower? How’d it get back home?”

  “Lots of people assume that, but it does have a rocket engine it uses in space
and when landing. Apparently, it can use that engine to take off from an airfield if needed. Some of the employees here say the space plane system was envisioned to grow into a ‘spoke and hub’ travel system. Planes would fly in from other airports around the country, then they’d launch from the tower to travel worldwide or up to orbital space. Eventually, they were figuring on having launch towers scattered around the world. Europe, India, and Korea for starters, then South America, Africa, and Australia. Eventually, there’d be even more places. Um, launched from Virginia you can get to Europe in fifteen minutes, though the landing would take longer than the flight. Get this, it’s cheaper to put up one of the damned towers than it is to build a jet airport.”

  “Goddammit! They weren’t even planning to keep control of space launch in the U.S.?!”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, I know some people in the CIA. If they were to extract someone from Italy and bring them back for questioning, who should they go after?”

  Halser brightened. It’ll sure as hell be good to have someone with balls join the team, he thought. He said, “Ideally, they’d bring back Mr. X, if they can figure out who he is. Barring that, then this Kaem Seba character that serves as X’s conduit would be next best. If I’d thought the bastard might flee the country, I’d have put him in protective custody or something.” Musingly, Halser said, “In fact, we could argue that the fact he disappeared the day we took over the company suggests he’s got to be guilty of something, right?”

  “Yeah,” Starn said, “though my time in law school suggests we need something to accuse him of if we’re going to arrest him… Wait, can’t we accuse him of leaving with the intellectual property of Staze, the government’s company? Someone must have taken it to Italy, right?”

  “Well,” Halser said slowly, “they’d all claim it was Mr. X, but we could arrest him on the basis that it’s our belief Seba is Mr. X”

  “I’ll see what my people at the CIA say.” There was a moment’s hesitation, then Starn said, “But, Jack, you’d better prepare yourself for a Senate hearing about what’s going on down there. There’re just too many people who’re upset about Staze being shut down. They’re also pissed about it getting moved under the federal umbrella. These are people who think they deserve answers.”

  “Senator,” Halser said exasperatedly, “this is consuming my every waking hour. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get this mess straightened out if I have to go up there and spend days answering questions.”

  “Honestly, Jack, there are so many pissed off people up here in D.C., I’d be more concerned about keeping your job than the time you’ll waste at the hearing. I understand you got sucker-punched by the way the people who were running Staze fled the country, but it’s hard to put spin on a soft cow pie. People are gonna say, ‘It was fine. Why’d you mess with it?’ You and I can see the national security implications, but they’re gonna be more worried about the loss of their shiny new toys unless you can get them back in the next few days.” He sighed, “Maybe if my friends at the CIA can get X or Seba back here pronto we’ll still come out okay.”

  ***

  Brad Medness had been almost frantic for days now. He and Jeremy had finished optimization and extensive testing, then begun writing a paper describing their laser-accelerated hydrogen-boron fusion system. They wanted to begin testing more practical systems. Ones that could be patented and used commercially. To do that, he needed Seba’s company to staze more Stade test fixtures.

  Because of Brad’s great preference for hardware over people, he’d designed their next fixture without reaching out to Seba first. Then, as he’d learned to do before the previous stazing, he’d emailed it to Seba for suggestions. He’d carefully couched the request for review in terms that suggested that he believed Staze would cast Stade in the mold for free like they had the previous one.

  After all, this one was much smaller, consisting only of a group of modified versions of the target fixture.

  But he hadn’t gotten any answers to his email.

  Eventually, he’d called Staze and asked to talk to Seba. It’d been disconcerting to learn from the receptionist that Staze had been taken over by the government. Though the reasons for this weren’t revealed, Medness feared it might have been related to their giving away too much product to people like himself.

  When the receptionist informed him that Seba was no longer employed at Staze, he’d felt bad for Seba but had simply requested to be put through to whoever was currently in charge of stazing.

  To Medness’s horror, the person he’d been connected to hadn’t seemed to know much about stasis or even the mechanics of how it was carried out!

  “So,” Medness had said, “I just need a very small mold stazed. When could I get that done?”

  “Um, let me get some information from you first.”

  The guy wanted name, demographics, employer, previous business done with Staze, pricing, and on and on. Exasperated, Medness, asked, “Can’t you just find all this stuff in your records?”

  “We’ve had some, uh, problems with the computerized record systems here, so we’re having to backfill a lot of information.”

  “You lost information?!” Medness said, stunned that in the modern age of redundant backups any reputable company could lose information. He blinked, Well, if anyone could lose stuff on a computer system, it’d probably be the government, he thought.

  “As I said, we’ve had some trouble with the computer systems.”

  Medness opened his mouth to accuse the man of lying to him, remembering only at the last moment that he was counting on these people’s largess for his Stade fixtures. Resignedly, he said, “Okay, what else do you need to know?”

  The questions just kept coming, making it obvious that the company knew nothing about Medness’s previous dealings. It was like starting all over.

  He’d resigned himself to that, but at the end of answering all those questions, the man he’d been speaking to said, “Okay, thank you for that information. We’ll put you on the list.”

  “On the list?” Medness asked.

  “Yes, for when we get the stazers working.”

  “What?!” Medness asked, shocked.

  “They haven’t been working since, uh…”

  “Since what?!”

  “Since the takeover, and um…” the guy trailed off.

  “What happened?!”

  “Well, some people quit, and… the people who’re left don’t… don’t know how to make the stazers work.” His voice gained a forced cheerful tone, “But we’ve got a bunch of smart people working on it—”

  Resisting the temptation to cut the connection, Medness broke in to say, “So, you’ll let me know when you get the stazers working again?”

  “We will.”

  Medness had to force himself to politely say, “Thanks. Goodbye,” before hanging up. Then he slowly bent and put his forehead down on his desk. How could this have happened? he wondered.

  It was several minutes before he sat back up. When he did, he noticed an icon on his phone’s screen saying he had a message. Why didn’t I hear the chime? he wondered. He frowned, And what the hell kind of icon is this?

  It definitely wasn’t the product of his usual messaging app. It said, “I’ve received your message that you’d like to cast another target. If you’ll install the attached app, we’ll be able to communicate privately about your issues.”

  Medness remembered the old issues with phishing emails. They hadn’t been a problem for years, but this message sure reminded him of them. ISPs pretty much filter all the harmful stuff out nowadays… don’t they? he wondered. He blinked, realizing that the guy on the other end of this message shouldn’t have been able to send him an app without his approval. Or, can they send them, and the approval is implied when you install the app?

  “Received your message that you’d like to cast another target,” he thought. Whoever sent this has read the emails I sent to Seba’s address… After another minu
te’s consideration, he decided, I’ve got to take a chance on this, and installed the app.

  Twenty seconds after the app finished installing, Medness’s phone rang. When he took the call, he heard Kaem Seba’s voice on the other end. “Hi, Dr. Medness, sorry you got caught up in this.”

  “In what?” Medness asked suspiciously.

  “This disagreement between Staze and the government. If you’ll use this communications app to send me your plans, I’ll look them over.”

  “But, what good will that do? No one can staze anything anyway.”

  “Oh, sorry. That’s not true. We can get your target stazed. You’ll have to mail it to someone who’ll forward it to me. It’ll come back in a similar fashion. Best if you don’t tell anyone down at Staze what we’re doing though.”

  “Um, is this legal?”

  “Well, I’d say it is, but I don’t doubt there are people who’d disagree. The long and short of it is that, as I’m sure you know, the government nationalized Staze Incorporated. This gives them control of the physical parts of the company…”

  Nationalized? What the hell does that mean? And why haven’t I heard about it? Medness wondered. Maybe because I don’t keep up with the news, he decided.

  …however,” Seba continued, “it’s our position that they cannot nationalize people or their ideas. So, we’ve moved elsewhere and are manufacturing Stade there. As far as you’re concerned, this doesn’t matter much. You can still get free Stade fixtures. It’s just that shipping’s gonna take longer.”

  “I’ll send the plans,” Medness said, anxious to send his plan and not giving a damn about what had happened to Staze. He especially didn’t want to learn too much about it. If it was illegal, he wanted to claim ignorance.

  However, that evening he clicked on a news story about the nationalization of Staze. After some thought, he decided, I don’t think nationalizing Staze was right. Maybe I’ll talk to Allen about it. His uncle the senator… Blythe or something? The senator might be interested in the trouble Staze’s nationalization is causing the scientific community.