Our friends over at CanadaHelps notified us today that the Government Of Canada will be matching donations for the 2024 Alberta Wildfires Appeal. I've been to Jasper, after having seen Banff National Park in person, with three others who all beheld the same spectacular panoramas long before the modern graphical version of the WWW. I've been there. I've danced on glaciers. Had snowball fights with my brother in mid-July during 30° Celsius weather. We can save these people or at least help them rebuild.
Thats $3 dollars for ever $1 dollar you donate, not to mention the support that they need during an emergency like this. Not only those displaced, but those helping to track and fight the fires. You never know when someday anyone of us might need the same.
For up to date information regarding the spread of the fire, check this Jasper wildfire status page hosted on the Government Of Canada website.
Thank you for making a difference. Nobody put me up to this by the way, and nobody controlled me into doing this either and believe me, there are some very egotistical abusive people who believe they did and that my calling attention to this will somehow separate me from my allegiances with Southeast Asia (which it won't).
I think the important thing is that these people in Jasper need help.
This year's Summer Olympics in the historic city of Paris have been a great spectacle, including an incredible opening ceremony with performances to match the grandeur, including those by Celine Dion, Lady Gaga and a host of many others.
Using the symbolism of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and celebration during the opening was quite an excellent choice given those two staples of life in France, especially with Paris being host to the world events of the Olympics, another Greek founded tradition. A tradition of athletics and sport.
I just wanted to take a moment from the daily grind of Shhhh! Digital Media to express these three paragraphs out of my enjoyment of the Olympics, the tradition of athletics and sport, and the Dionysian wonder that is Paris, France. What great place and a fitting opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics, to celebrate athletics and sport.
What's Coming Up This Week July 29 - August 3, 2024 At Shhhh! Digital
This week I'll be focusing on artwork for the currently active stories (Lost Riff, Way Of The Warrior, Suffragium Per Proxy and possibly Night Boat). Between such efforts, I'll do my best to fit in a chapter or two here and there. For certain, there will be more writing from Thursday onward. The Butterfly Dragon: The Two Butterflies will also be receiving a new episode soon and by the time Lost Riff is done, I expect to resume writing on something to do with Crystals, Black Holes and marriage...
Have an enjoyable Monday and I'll see you in writing and artwork soon!
Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.
Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian):https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)
Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.
This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.
A recent picture of me, taken today (July 24, 2024) Brian Joseph Johns
Hi again. Before I really get started today, I just want to clear up a few things. First of all, I really considered dumping the most recent A Lady's Prerogative story Lost Riff as the result of a lot of harassment.
I actually had decided that today, I was going to offline it, and then consider running it through the proverbial digital shredder (which mixes up all the ones and zeros so that I'm not tempted to later come back and revive the story).
The truth is that having been a professional musician myself at one point in life (I've done many, many things in life), gigging in many places throughout Canada, my country of origin as the piano and keyboard player for The Act, that I've known many guitar players over the course of my life, and had a great many friendships with such instrumentalists as well.
Working with people creatively in a band (as much as working in any creative field) can be one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of a (young?) musician's life, and will provide endless nostalgia as you close-in on and enjoy your retirement years.
Egos are usually swollen and often fragile, and most members of bands focus on finding and defining themselves, while tripping over theirs and others' egos along the way. I'm the keyboard player so I should do this... and you're the guitar player and you should do this, and neither of us should step on each other's toes. Then the singer comes in and everything you've agreed upon is out the window for their needs, after all, their instrument is a part of their body and you don't want that getting damaged. All this when our toes are the biggest part of our anatomy because toes in this case really are a stand-in for ego.
If I could go back in time and do it all over again, knowing what I know now, I'd have encouraged the band to focus on being a sixth person who wakes up only when all five of us are there. All the writing and everything produced by us would have been together, as a group, and credited that way. However, in those times we were younger and much more naive, and struggling to get a feel for the world as much so as we were for ourselves and our own quirks.
Regardless, chickening out on this story because some malicious people want to steal it or claim credit for it is just plain nonsense. I owe a lot of gratitude to those musicians with whom I'm jammed, and played in a band, and I'm not going to back down on this one, because I think those guitarists I've played with, worked with and listened to deserve it, as much so as the people who've known guitarists themselves deserve the same. They know who they are, most of them. Those who don't certainly soon will.
Its a great chance too for Barris to get a taste of Mila's life obsession as an artist, all while she's ironing out the wrinkles of their lives and getting organized before their marriage. What a great time for Barris to become obsessed with a (supernatural) musical instrument...
How is it that a guy like myself, one who regularly cooks a wide assortment of stir fries, including chicken and even pork fried rice and more recently Char Siu BBQ Pork, and enjoys a glass of wine or coolers with most dinner-time meals, writes from the perspective of many different world voices from a political and sociological perspective, when my lifestyle and diet are often so different than that of those to whom I give voice through my writing?
I think that the answer to that question for just about any writer, lies in their ability to look at any given situation, and to gain insight and sometimes even empathy when writing meaningful characters and dialog for their stories. Its an investment in people that many writers and other creative people make, and one that often puts at risk, the concept of identity and independence of such a person in their pursuit of expression, and the purposeful effort to spread understanding rather than chaos, and without pitting oneself too far beyond the investment in their characters for or against the driving elements of the plot. If as a writer you do, and without giving each side their proverbial due, you stand to produce contrived rhetoric given without the careful consideration of the opposing idiom.
Such one sided presentation, is typically what we grow up with when reading classic (or modern) fairy tales. The concepts of good and bad are very clearly defined, as are the sidedness of the protagonist and antagonist. Often, without the need to define concepts of good and bad based upon the ideas of what they say and do, but rather because the writer says that one is good and one is bad, because in growing up, at one time in early society, the philosophers, mentors and early educators (including parents) saw it as being more important to teach a sense of direction to youth, without the need to touch upon or even fully understand why something is right and something else is wrong.
That ability to consider many different avenues is a very difficult one today and especially so as you get older, because there are purposeful social obstacles that harden people and prevent true diplomacy, in favour of turning aspects of our identities as individuals of gender, culture and ideology in specific social brands, that are then recycled into the next generation of hard barriers between people in the world. By the time we've broken down one set of barriers, another set of barriers has risen to take its place.
Those diplomats who were instrumental in dissolving those barriers, have often by that time been whittled away by society, sometimes disenfranchised, hardened by the same forces that create the new barriers for the up and coming generation. It is in this seam between generations that most social and diplomatic progress is lost, in favour of maintaining a machine whose repetitions are timed according to the passage of generations, rather than transforming them to become the next progression of our social evolution.
Are we to remain stuck in this paradigm, first explored in the modern world by the writer Joseph Campbell (The Hero With A Thousand Faces), whose observations revealed the true nature of the mechanations of society, which was echoed in popular culture from that time onwards in the works of many great writers and film makers, including George Lucas, James Cameron, David Fincher and Christopher Nolan as much so as they were from the first writers. You'll find this same theme in just about every culture in history.
Some of the most tragic story telling where the protagonist attempts to escape the confines of this Campbellian machine, the hidden underpinnings upon which the cyclic operation of society is hinged, were explored by other writers and film makers, certainly as far back as William Shakespeare, but more recently by others such as Francis Ford Coppola, especially in his Godfather series of movies, which were based upon the works of writer Mario Puzo.
The Godfather III explores this very idea of escaping the Campbellian machine, by Michael Corleoné's efforts in the film to legitimize his family's business holdings, and to guide them into a future, stepping away from their clandestined organization, to become legally operating global business enterprises, free of their ties to the power struggle of organized crime. Like all great Shakespearian tragedies, this movie is no different, and perhaps in a sense it is a message in a bottle from Coppola himself, in the form of a story that explores what is at risk (metaphorically rather than literally) when someone attempts to escape the mechanations of that which made them in the first place. Fortunately, Sophia went on to become an inspiring performer, writer and director herself in real life.
However, in Godfather III, this is a theme explored again and again, and in just about every case, it almost always ends the same way. That certainly isn't to criticize the immense emotional investment of such stories that embody pathos, because they in turn help us to consider the consequences of our actions. Not by literal example, but rather by metaphor. Too much change and too quickly leads to tragedy, especially when one risks trying to escape the devices of their own creation.
The courage that these story tellers have in exploring such themes is remarkable, but as I stated, I believe that their stories are messages in bottles for the rest of us, there for us to learn from in the hopes that someday, we liberate ourselves from the Campbellian machine upon which society is currently architected. Where during the course of our lives, as we get older and older, we struggle to escape the fact that at some point in our path, we'll be expected to be the antithesis of who we were as we grew up. A loss of innocence ending with us becoming the enemy. To become the obstacle of progress for the younger generations. To become the monster against which we fought so determinedly when we were young.
I believe that such a future is possible and that such a radical change in architecture will eventually happen. The means by which it will are already flowering all around us, with a fresh and invigorated sense of storytelling that explores these themes, before the generations are eventually expected to become the monsters they once opposed. Where the obstacles that fuel the advancement afforded by friendly competition arrive from nature itself, or by way of our future technology in an attempt to inspire us towards the ends of individual and social betterment. Whatever life challenges that stand to make you better.
We have to see the works of these creators of generations past, and explore the fact that those works are much more than what they seem on the surface. There's hidden gems within them, and most often, such works are a message in a bottle created by someone who is trying to tell us something, more than that which is apparent on the surface.
Now, more so than ever, we have many different mediums through which to understand these themes in life and their importance. Video games have transcended their stigmatic origins to become the new medium of literature and story telling, and they too have their own messages in bottles as well, from their writers and the crew that produced those experiences, that are becoming a part of the growing pressure that will eventually fuel that revolution where we overcome the Campbellian machine.
As I get older, I've done my best to dodge it for my entire life, and yet as time goes on, I must warn you that your sense of individuality will become the weapons that those who want to keep such a machine in place will use against you. To harden you to the point where you either become the monster they want you to be, to suit the Campbellian machine, or you become a babbling and ranting mess, stressed by the efforts to craft you in the direction of becoming the antagonist of someone else's story.
To those of you who are cresting the summit of that peak, perhaps a few years beyond your metaphorical rite of ascension. The point at which your sidedness is no longer guaranteed by your generation, and the hidden forces at work begin teetering you towards their tried and tested architecture: you will eventually become the nemesis, but there are ways that you can resist such an effort, without compromising your values and your individuality, while protecting and preserving your sanity. Keep in mind though, that the risks are that you and your ideas will be diluted and weakened over time, until the distinction between the progress that so many others like yourself have struggled and fought for over the course of centuries, becomes indistguishable from the forces trying to maintain the Campbellian machine. Are you Cinderella or one of her jealous sisters? Are you Anakin, or are you Luke? And more importantly, regardless of your direction thereafter, what comes next?
As writers and creators, to keep yourself healthy in the throes of such effort, give your characters on all sides a voice. The ones that you like. The ones that you dislike. The ones against whom you hold moral contention and the ones with whom you'd ally yourself. Give voices to both your light and to your darkness, and to as many as you can, without giving in to those who'd take your voice, individuality and identity from you. When your message becomes loud enough (and it will), many will attempt to hide you and bury you, even taking over your identity and expression from you to wear as their own, like the suit that Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre was crafting from the bodies of his victims. Your own identity that such persons wield against you, and others seeking to liberate much the same as yourself.
Keep in mind that all those content creators never gave up. The ones that wielded this same message in a bottle. In the near future, the very nature of story telling and the experiences gained from it is going to become a radically powerful medium, both as beneficial and dangerous as all other forms of similar mediums combined from history. Where we'll actually be able to live stories, in such reality that our brains and endocrine system will not be able to distinguish these experiences, and yet we'll learn from them as effectively as learning from reality, to the point that our bodies will even feel strained from exercise we haven't physically done. At that point, we may transcend any architecture that requires us to eventually become the monster that thwarted us in our youth, or that requires us too yield our individuality in favour of a collective mind, rather than promoting individuality and the merits of cooperation.
As you get older, you're going to face all of these things, and some of them, when you first encounter them will seem unbelievable, even fantastic, but you'll soon learn that the world you thought that you lived in was actually a construct all in your mind and your sense of individuality will come under attack, when you need it most.
Just keep in mind that not all of us fold to this hidden enemy and that despite the appearances of what may seem, that if you look in the right places, you'll always find these messages in a bottle, because history is brimming full of them, and from the people that I and you likely idolized, who as much as you are, were trying to change things for the better.
Some of the people who wield the brands created by the very people who created the content that holds their messages in a bottle, would be opposed to the people holding their brands today. Just remember that the Pleroma that you're sold as being the real Pleroma, is not the true Pleroma.
Nobody is controlling me into expressing these ideas. They're well spread throughout every single work I've ever written here on Shhhh! Digita Media at https://www.shhhhdigital.ca and https://www.shhhhdigital.com in Torontro, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street in Suite 701, but sometimes my mentors and guides speak through me, for we are ourselves and those who've inspired us to express through the various mediums at our disposal, but what is said is the important thing.
However, despite my differences from those of my characters, I try to do justice when and where applicable, for often those characters represent those who don't have a voice or an audience. Despite my differences in belief, diet and sometimes conduct, I always do my best to express as the characters and for the people they represent.
Sometimes such characters tread upon stigmatic clichés (Alomera Zek for instance, and the often ill used cliché that is associated with fictional characters from Latin America). Sometimes by exploring these stigmas, we actually begin unravelling them, because in the process of exploring the character and his peers, we come to understand the many lives involved with someone of such a determinate destiny and there have been many such persons who've served as real life archetypes for such characters.
These characters represent the most exempliary of people from his region of the world, but it certainly is worthy to note that the same passion that drives such a character is certainly a remarkable quality in common with many people of that region of the world, however misdirected that same passion might be in this particular character. Some use the knife they wield to peacefully prepare their food, while some use it to gut their enemies. Its not so much the knife, but how one uses it, and its the same thing for that which drives a person, thumos, passion, whatever you call it. Its all about the purposes for which you wield it.
My differences from my characters are an important line for me, but they never prevent me from writing (compelling?) stories that make these characters interesting to my readers. Hopefully, they inspire others to pursue their own passions in a meaningful and productive way for their lives, and at some time might I find myself as an audience to their pursuits, which is the greatest inspiration of all.
Brian Joseph Johns
Latest Chapters
Hybrid (Finished June 8, 2024)
Tour (Guide) Of Duty (Finished June 9, 2024)
Forensics (Finished June 11, 2024 at 2 PM EST)
The Nerd And The Shark (Finished 12, 12:30 AM EST)
Daughter Or Dina? (Finished June 17, 2024 2 PM EST)
A Return And A Requium (Finished June 17, 2024 4 PM EST)
At Enertrinsic (Finished June 19, 2024 2 PM EST)
Definitely Needs Alibi (Started June 19, 2024 3 PM EST)
Con Fusion (Finished June 20, 2024 12 PM EST)
Solutions And Problems (Finished June 22, 1:30 PM EST)
Toured Fusion (Finished June 24, 6 PM EST)
Dina's And Linda's Disclosure (Finished June 25, 2 PM EST)
Justice Has Two Sides (Finished June 25, 2 PM EST)
The Dialog Of Transformative Architects (Finished June 29, 2024 5:30 PM EST)
Unwinding The Copper Coil (Finished July 8, 2024 3:30 PM)
Grace's Date (Finished July 16, 2024 2 PM)
Scene Of The Crime (Finished July 17, 2024 8:30 PM)
Entry Point (Finished July 18, 2024 6 PM)
A Morning Round (Finished July 20, 2024 10:00 PM)
This content is produced by the artists indicated on the site, including myself, Brian Joseph Johns.
I, under no circumstance will trade, barter or otherwise swap my own identity for that of another person and I protect the same right for those who've contributed their artwork to the various projects under my management at Shhhh! Digital Media, my own company, no matter the colour symbolism involved. These rights are protected by law under the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms under section 7.
Also, FYI, I don't reverse or alter the polarity or context of my expression (sometimes referred to as "blove" by some people). I say what I mean and mean what I say, and generally only joke or am sarcastic with people I really know very well.
If you enjoy reading the content on this website, then please consider making a donation to one of the following charities below, or by the purchase of merchandise on our shop at https://shop.shhhhdigital.com.
Support Charity
The goal for this story is to support Leukemia Treatment and Research
In the chapter: The Nerd And The Shark, you'll find out why...
Also, I shaved my head purposely to show my support for Leukemia research and treatment.
Yes, under this hat my head (was) as barren as the North Pole. I'm lost.
Oddly enough that's where Santa lives, and his wife and himself and all of the Elves that live there certainly want to see Leukemia eradicated, and all the children of the world safe and sound from it.
I've put checkmarks beside charities that specifically have Leukemia related research or treatment:
Not a charity per se, but a conglomeration of charities all under one donation window roof. A means by which registered charities may host online donation programs to reach a greater audience of supporters. Each entry includes a lot of information about the charity in question, including a short description of their mission, their tax status, how they keep their books and what not and certainly a means by which to support them. A great resource and living proof that CanadaHelps.
Two organizations whose contribution of expertise, human and financial resources and volunteer efforts provide humanitarian solutions to real world problems the entire world over. These charities operate worldwide. The United Nations Fund supports the various programs part of the United Nations' global mandate, as much a foundation as it is a roof around the world.
World Veterans Federation The World Veterans Federation is a humanitarian organisation, a charity and a peace activist movement. The WVF maintains its consultative status with the United Nations since 1951 and was conferred the title of “Peace Messenger” in 1987.
I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.
"None can speak more eloquently for peace than those who have fought in war."
The Reeve Foundation provides programs for research, uniting Scientists and Specialists from many different fields to find treatments for spinal cord injury translating them into therapies and support programs.
For over 60 years, Heart & Stroke has been dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. Our work has saved thousands of lives and improved the lives of millions of others.
The ALS Society Of BC ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a progressive neuromuscular disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary muscles paralyzed. The ALS society provides a variety of programs to combat this disease and help those with it to survive.
Muscular Dystrophy Canada Muscular Dystrophy Canada’s mission is to enhance the lives of those affected by neuromuscular disorders by continually working to provide ongoing support and resources while relentlessly searching for a cure through well-funded research.
Humane Society International The Humane Society protects the health, lives and rights of animals the world over, ensuring that they too have a voice in this world. We are interdependent upon the complex web of life this entire planet over for our mutual survival. This is a world wide charity.
The Global Foodbanking Network Ensuring that people the world over have enough food day to day in order to survive and lead healthy lives. In this challenging day and age services like this are becoming more and more essential. This is a world wide charity.
The Edgar Allan Poe Museum Because Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I could kill him and bury his heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of Amantillado!
In all truth, there's a good chance that thanks to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herbert George Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Clive Barker and Pierre Burton (for The Secret World Of Og and his ground breaking interview of Bruce Lee) that all of us are literate. Actually that goes back much farther to the Phoenecians and their first 22 character system of symbols. Literacy is important. Really it is. Literally. It allows us to approach our employer at the end of the week (with a big club) and ask: where my money?!Math important too. It help us count our thirteen fingers and toes.
Wikipedia The model for what may become the Encyclopedia Galactica, a complete reference and record of history, events and knowledge of humanity and its journey beyond. It is the encyclopedia of all that we know, what we surmise that we've known and will learn in the future. Yes, Wikipedia is a charitable organization of great importance. If you enjoy what I am doing here then please take the time to donate to Wikipedia. Surprisingly only 1% of Wikipedia's users donate yet the site serves pages to millions every day.
Humble Bundle A video gaming storefront benefiting a vast variety of different Charities in the United States and United Kingdom (hopefully soon to be expanded to include other areas of the world?). By software their software bundles and choose which Charity your money benefits and how much of your money benefits that Charity. See? Gamers can do their part too.
Multiple Sclerosis is a degenerative disease currently affecting an estimated 2.3 million world wide. By donating you are contributing to effective research in finding a cure and tipping the scales of MS research to change lives forever.
Donate your idle computer time to science! Join the World Community Grid by clicking on one of the links below and follow the instructions for how to participate:
Stanton stood in front of the command console for reactor A3, a rather expensive ribbon cable reaching out from the digital logic probe he held in his hand, winding its way to piggyback atop of the diagnostic processor system.
Adjactent to him at another similar console his good friend Dave, another Engineer and coworker of Stanton's whose own logic probe was similarly plugged into the corresponding console of reactor A2.
The two of them silently scanned the initialization procedure checklist, which was presented cleanly by the logic probe's own Android based software kernel, albeit a version of the same kernel which had passed certain CSA and ISO-MISSION CRITICAL standards.
It wasn't the latest and greatest Android operating system, but it was currently the most stable available for the suite of test tools and support systems in any electrical engineer's tool bag.
"Heh, looks like my last EKG..." Dave responded, checking the timing line of the processor subsystem.
"A good thing I hope..." Stanton responded, an amused smile on his face.
"Apparently, though I ended up arguing with my own Doctor for at least fifteen minutes on the subject because apparently they track heart rythm and palpitations using both pressure and voltage..." Dave explained to Stanton, who smirked, not quite understanding what Dave was getting at.
"And...?" Stanton queried his friend.
"And Carol, who's been reading those Men's Health articles ever since the Doctor told me I had an irregular rhythm of the heart, due to stress induced palpations... she misinterpreted pressure for voltage, and of course brought this up at the dinner table..." Dave continued to explain to Stanton as the both of them continued through their checklists like the pros they were.
"I'm guessing that Hanna wasn't around?" asked Stanton.
"Thankfully, she was at University in Waterloo when this all came up and my son was at Summer Camp, apparently shooting unoccupied cottage windows with a slingshot with his friends... but that's another story... the little delinquent..." Dave scrolled down the checklist with the touchscreen window of his logic probe.
"Sounds like he takes after his father..." Stanton smiled.
"That he does, but don't ever tell him you said that, and that I agreed..." Dave checked the last few items on his list before initiating the startup procedure for the reactor.
"Or Carol I'm guessing..." Stanton added.
"She's with me on that one. She's old school. Believes that every guy has to have a bit of an edge, but being good parents and all, we can't tell him that..." Dave finished the last of his initialization procedures and pulled the piggyback clip and ribbon cable from the processor housing, winding it all up and returning it to his tool pouch.
"And this is where your EKG comes in I'm guessing?" asked Stanton, snickering at Dave.
"So you were listening. Damned right that's where it came in. So Carol told me that if my EKG chart looked like an inverted bell curve, that I'm healthy. Anything else and I'm a goner..." Dave smiled as he used his ISO approved Robertson screwdriver to fasten the bezel of the console back in place.
Stanton's smile grew even more, suddenly realizing where Dave's story was going.
"So naturally, my EKG chart looked anything but like a bell curve... and so there I was arguing with the Doctor for the better part of fifteen minutes, when Carol taps on the door twice, and opens the door. She peeks her head in and tells me that she realized that she mixed up pressure and voltage..." Dave explains to Stanton, who's face was struggling to contain the laughter.
"She says 'sorry 'bout that', like nothing happened, and the Doctor looks to me and says: You're an engineer and you didn't even double check your own wife's conclusions? Darn, she's got you well trained!" the Doctor says to me, and we both burst out laughing.
"That she has..." Stanton smiled back at Dave, just as Elena walked into the command room.
"Maybe, but if it was like she'd interpreted it, I'd have been rushed into surgery already... Speaking of, look who decided to show up..." Dave laughed as Elena snuck up behind him.
"I thought you might want to know that the monitoring station systems are nominal, and we got your diagnostic logs. Things are running perfectly..." Elena assured both Stanton and Dave.
"Until you got here..." Dave responded with a sarcastic smile on his face.
"On the contrary, they're running perfectly because I got here. I understand that neither of you are scheduled for any other critical operations for the afternoon?" confirmed Elena with both Dave and Stanton.
Stanton retrieved his processor piggyback clip and ribbon cable, returning it with the logic probe to his tool belt.
"That's a big negative Elena. I'm back at reactor A1 during the test to make sure that the Hybrid doesn't overdraw..." Dave explained to Elena.
"That leaves you Stanton? You have nothing planned I take it?" Elena confirmed with him, already knowing that to be the case as she was his direct supervisor at the power plant.
"I'd like to double check on the nearest transformer station, just outside of Darlington if I could..." Stanton requested of his direct supervisor.
"Stanton honey, I actually had you reserved for something else..." Elena looked to him, seductively though Stanton played professionally cautious.
He knew that she enjoyed subtle flirtation and playfulness, it was part of her management style in an organization that still ever so slightly favoured men. Not because of their hiring practices, because Ontario Power Generation was far ahead in terms of as much. The electrical trade had taken a bit of time to attract women to a role that had historically been one trained for and stationed by men.
By the time Stanton had arrived after serving his country in various military roles, the measure of employment equality had been shored up considerably, though it was still far from balanced. Elena had arrived a few years after Stanton (about a decade), and as part of a force of focused, career minded women who now populated much of, but not quite half of Ontario Power Generation.
Stanton replied to her professionally, without so much as alluding to her flirtation which often further encouraged her.
"What did you have in mind?" Stanton returned an innocuous smile to her.
"To tell you the truth Stanton, the big wigs asked me to provide a senior engineer to assist with a tour group today and I immediately thought of you," Elena explained to Stanton, who seemed to smirk ever so slightly at her request.
"I thought we had engineering trained public relations specialists for tours?" asked Stanton, somewhat concerned for how exposing him to the public might play out with his secret tasking.
"Not for this one. We need a different kind of specialist. Your kind," Elena smiled at him, satisfied that she'd cornered him in her power play.
"What about me? I'm a senior engineer too...?" Dave responded, somewhat offended that he'd be overlooked for the role.
"Dave... we need subtle, quiet and attentive. If the tour group decides to attend the local Jack Aster's, you'll be on the top of the list..." Elena responded.
"If they're going to Jack's, I'm in for that... Just give me some notice so I can call Carol and have her meet me there..." Dave was immediately appeased with the idea of a social tour of one of his favourite sports bar restaurants.
"What kind of tour group are we talking?" asked Stanton of Elena.
"Big wigs. The kind who like to use opportunities like this to get re-elected, and the kind who are CEOs that like to use opportunities like this to increase their sales to other countries that are evaluating hybrid reactors as part of the energy growth strategy..." Elena explained to Stanton, who considered the risk that interacting with such persons in a tour group might pose in terms of his secretive role.
"I left my business suit in my closet at home..." Stanton responded, trying to cover for himself.
"They want a 'hands-on, hard-hat on' kind of guy like you, and I can't think of anyone better for the job..." Elena smiled at him, satisfied she'd trapped him into a situation out of which he couldn't weasel his way.
"...except for Dave. He's the senior when it comes to experience here..." Stanton dodged Elena's play.
"...True. He's our senior engineer, but when it comes to being the poster boy for engineers... Its a close race between him and you..." Elena tapped her small tight belly with her right hand, then miming Dave's slightly protruding beer gut.
"Oh come on now! Please... Fatherhood does that, you know?" Dave responded, pulling in his gut.
"Not to mention we have some international guests that I feel Stanton would be best skilled to address, as an already well proven diplomat. You remember the time we had those guests up from the Derry, Maine reactor site in the United States?" asked Elena of Dave, looking to him accusingly.
"That's not fair! That was a clearly unique situation which was well beyond my hands and out of our jurisdiction as Canadians!" Dave responded defensively.
"Regardless, the whole green beer incident after the tour, something that you personally organized, went wrong..." Elena defended her example.
"How was I supposed to know that their Senior Engineer would be allergic to Green Dye number three?" challenged Dave, now defensive over the incident.
"If Stanton hadn't known CPR, that engineer would be dead right now..." Elena reminded Dave, who returned a painful smirk to her.
"...you're right... he's the better man for the job..." Dave responded, throwing his hands up in the air.
"...Dave, it was you who called for the paramedics before anyone else... You had as much hand in saving him too..." Stanton added.
"...Gotcha! That is precisely why you should be the Senior Engineer in this tour. If anything happens, you'll protect everyone... even those who mess up..." Elena added.
Dave looked to Elena, and then to Stanton.
"What can I say big guy? She's right. You saved..." Dave began.
"...No Dave... We saved the day," Stanton reminded Dave of the truth.
"You know, if this was a Parliamentary democracy with capital markets, an infrastructure and a social safety-net, Dave and I would have elected you..." Elena looked to Stanton, who shook his head at them for pulling such a stunt.
"...I'll do it. But only this once and only because you two asked. If it ever comes up again, I want changes to my contract that imply this as a direct role and responsibility, and for those changes to go before my representative in Management and the Union..." Stanton confronted them both, before a smile emerged from his face.
"...dammit... If I could, I'd want you two on the tour, because you're like the heart of this place to me..." Stanton tipped his construction hat to each of them.
"So you're giving in are ya? That means he's in line for the big bucks! The beers are on him next time!" Dave responded.
"You always were a lush...!" Stanton gave him a firm shake.
"I'll just leave you two love birds then..." Elena smiled, and then winked at them as she left.
"If Witches were real..." Dave began.
"...she'd be their leader..." Stanton finished.
Tour (Guide) Of Duty
Stanton walked ahead modestly yet confidently ahead of a small group of suits as they arrived at the command room, where a series of large screen monitors visualized the operating parameters of the Candu Hybrid Fusion System reactors.
"This is where every aspect of the operation of the reactors takes place. Both the original Candu Fission reactors, which are run from these recently upgraded stations, and the Candu Hybrid Fusion System reactors, which are run from these consoles here..." Stanton pointed out to both the political and corporate representatives.
As it turned, Queen's Park had sent representatives from each of the three main parties (whose reps were chosen years earlier as a result of the Provincial vote). There was the Ontario Minister Of Energy Resources, Richard Parks of the Conservative Party. There was the Liberal Energy Resources representative, Linda May. And finally, there was the New Democratic Party Energy Resources representative, Hien Ngon. These three political representatives, despite their different allegiances stuck together, each with their own assistant.
Beside them another group of two corporate representatives and their one mutual assistant followed as well. They were Mavis Wentworth, Corporate Project Leader. Sal Laselo, Technical Consultant. Finally there was Deborah Finley, Corporate Specialist, all of them from the newly revitalized Candu Systems.
"Is it a coincidence that the original reactor consoles were upgraded at roughly the same time as the Hybrid Fusion system was installed?" asked Linda May.
"No. A case study and careful systems analysis revealed that in order for the Pickering Station to acommodate the new reactor architecture, that the existing fission control systems would also have to be upgraded. Hence, the new AI system that controls the on-again/off-again architecture of the hybrid reactor system was integrated into the fusion command system. It was a necessary upgrade," Stanton explained to Linda.
Linda's assistant took careful notes of what Stanton had explained, which he reasoned might be used in a future election campaign, either for or against his current employer.
"You mentioned deuterium earlier when you were talking about the fission reactors. Is that the same deuterium used in the hybrid reactor?" asked Hien Ngon of Stanton.
"Chemically speaking, yes. They're the exact same thing, however, their application in terms of the differences between the fission and the hybrid systems is quite different. Deuterium is used as a high effectiveness cooling medium as compared to regular water, given their chemical difference, whereas in the Hybrid reactor, its used as an actual fuel source," Stanton explained to Hien.
"In the Candu Hybrid Fusion System, the reactors are dual role. We actually refer to them as breathers, because for one reactor cycle, the inhale cycle, they perform deuterium fusion, that is, the reactor fuses deuterium to produce helium at a ratio of one to three, and then for fifteen reactor cycles, the exhale cycle, the reactor performs fission, burning off the remaining deuterium from the inhale process. During the fusion process, the the deuterium is channeled as coolant for the fission process..." Sal explained to Hien.
"I thought you said it was the fuel?" Hien clarified this distinction with both Sal and Stanton.
"Its both. During fusion, its the fuel. During fission, its the coolant. That's why hybrid fusion systems are regarded as breathers. They inhale and produce helium, and the remaining deuterium is used as a coolant during fission. Then the entire cycle begins again ad infinitum..." Stanton explained to Hien.
"And citizens get energy as a result with minimal harmful emissions as compared to fission alone..." Sal continued.
"Whose exhaust output still requires safe storage buried in a pit for fifty years if I'm to understand it correctly?" Linda confirmed with both Sal and Stanton.
"That's the price, and everything has a price..." Sal stood his ground.
"Even at the cost of the health risks to our citizens?" asked Linda.
"Managed health and environment risks, Linda. Managed," Richard Parks defended the policies of his and earlier Governments.
"Can't blame a concerned citizen though. My children would certainly be greatful," Stanton saved face for both Hien and Linda.
"And why didn't the newly revitalized Candu Systems go with pure fusion? I mean its only exhaust is H2O, pure water!" a woman in a tight business suit and skirt and sunglasses walked into the command room.
"Yes, why is that Sal?" asked Mavis, quickly deflecting the observation of this late arrival.
The lady who'd just arrived removed her sunglasses and all at once, Stanton had a flashback to his time in Tel Aviv.
"Because..." Sal began.
Stanton looked into her eyes and saw a woman he hadn't seen for nearly thirty years. It was in fact such a shock to his system that he nearly exposed his role (and her's) by addressing her.
By some inert miracle of personality, he managed to cover for them both.
"Because, hybrid fusion reactors are an intermediate solution to a costly challenge, and one that hasn't yet arrived despite trillions of dollars of investment capital," Stanton responded spontaneously, and without having to think about it at all.
"...and what about Trifuse Reactor Technology?" asked Dina, looking first to Stanton, and then to Sal and finally to Richard Parks.
"...and you are?" asked Richard, cautiously.
"Dina Shalhevet. Red Sea Investment Group..." Dina responded to Richard.
"Dina? A pleasure to meet you," Mavis smiled, extending her hand to greet Dina and her investment capital.
"Candu Systems Hybrid Reactor is an intermediary solution available now, not a decade or more from now, for states seeking a reliable solution with Candu System's own time proven technology," Sal backed up Mavis as best he could.
"And what exactly does Candu mean?" asked Dina, wading through the heavy politics in the room fearlessly.
"Canada Deuterium..." responded Mavis.
"A crown mandated resource extraction company if I'm not mistaken?" confirmed Dina.
"An engineering firm actually, much like the now defunct Avro Aerospace, which I'm certain that Red Sea Investment Group would recall based upon the regional inquiries from your representatives with regard to the advanced nuclear capable design of the aircraft, which was decades ahead of anything else at the time. However, to get back on topic, our resource extraction mandate came into play as a requirement of the Candu Fission reactor design..." Mavis responded.
Stanton stepped back and watched with amusement as the two women went toe to toe. Mavis with her team and Dina all by her lonesome.
"And what danger is there to deuterium as far as radioactive isotopes are concerned?" asked Dina of Mavis.
"None. Deuterium is basically the same thing as drinking water..." Sal answered the technical aspect, covering for Mavis.
"...with a higher atomic weight than regular H2O water..." Stanton added.
"So there's no inherent danger with deuterium?" asked Dina, looking to Stanton, whom she knew would respond that way.
Stanton concealed a smile, as he suddenly realized that Dina was playing them all.
"None to date..." Sal responded.
"Then how do you explain your waistline?" asked Dina of Sal, whose robust rotundness had suddenly become a subject associated with heavy water.
"I'm not lying to you when I say that its not the result of drinking heavy water, but simply my wife's great cooking," Sal smiled, patting his belly and drawing a hearty laughter from all in the room.
"Then I guess I'm here to find out more about your hybrid reactor systems," Dina held out her hand first to Stanton, who accepted it as gracefully as it was offered.
"I'm Senior Engineer Bradley Alexander Stanton at your service, and this is Sal Laselo, our Technical Representative from Candu Systems. He's the guy us engineers call when we need help," Stanton explained to Dina.
"Looks like I found the right people. So, when do we start the tour?" asked Dina, feigning the idea that she'd arrived on time.
"Actually, our tour has just finished. Thank you very much for a great tour, Mr. Stanton. Our office will be in communication with your supervisor to relay our kind regards for your patience and attention to detail," Mavis bid Stanton a farewell.
"Good to see you again Stanton. If Dina here needs any assistance related to our reactors, be sure to send her our way," Sal shook hands with Stanton and followed Mavis and Deborah out of the command room and through the building back to their transportation.
"It was a pleasure meeting you and thank you for all your help here and from the Conservative party," Richard Parks then bid Stanton farewell.
"We're grateful for your tour. We now have a much greater vision for our political future and the Liberal agenda, Mr. Stanton," Linda May shook hands with the engineer.
"Mr. Stanton, I am very grateful for your time and attention. The NDP will be in contact with you should we need any further details relating to the safe operation of this facility," Hien shook hands with Stanton and offered him a sincere smile.
"Thank you Hien. Glad I could be of service to yourself, Linda and Richard. I'm sure we'll all talk again soon," Stanton bid his tour group farewell as their assistants took photos for the press releases before they departed.
Stanton then turned to face Dina when they were finally alone together. He led her to the cafeteria where they sat in secluded seats away from prying eyes and ears as they spoke.
"Time certainly has kept you well. You look great Dina. Exactly as I remember you," Stanton told Dina, recalling the last day he'd seen her.
"Time it seems is very kind to men, who often take it for granted. You're certainly no exception Alexander. You're keeping active I take it?" asked Dina of a man she knew much greater than she had thirty years earlier.
"Less than you'd think, likely, and more than they know," Stanton responded, referring to his co-workers.
"Are you still in the same line of work?" asked Stanton of Dina.
"What do you think?" asked Dina of a man she once fell for.
"I think about engineering and other aspects of my job. Keeps me grounded," Stanton replied.
"Then that's your answer," Dina confirmed for him what she was up to in that moment.
"You certainly came a long way for deuterium, unless you're really interested in evaluating the Candu Hybrid Reactor System?" Stanton countered her.
"I have to admit that the technology is very time tested and promising, but I'm a little surprised that your Government revived Candu Systems, a Crown Corporation from the 1960s for such a specialized task like fusion reactors. How many of the same design engineers are still with us that designed the Candu Reactors?" asked Dina of Stanton.
"I don't meddle in corporate politics, but one of the engineers on that project was my Engineering Professor. So naturally, when we received the Government handout newletter from Ontario Power Generation, I looked him up. Turns out he and three of the other original engineers had been contracted as consultants rather than direct employees of the new Candu Systems. I'm sure there was a handsome bonus in it for them as well, seeing as they were all into their retirement," Stanton told Dina.
"Why would they revive an aging design like that? Must have cost billions?" Dina asked him, keeping her attention on the detail.
"The design involved has been tried and tested for almost sixty years. That means that most of the unforseen hiccups involved in any milestone based design process have been ironed out. That in itself saves billions rather than designing a system from the ground up. These engineers worked closely with the new engineers in desiging the upgrade for the fission reactors, and their corresponding fission phase, what we call the exhale phase of the Hybrid reactor. The design still holds up, plus it benefits from sixty years of advances in engineering materials science and computer simulation, which is used to test for structural or chaotic flaws. The construction and operating process during the evaluation of a milestone based design is the most costly. They literally saved billions by doing it this way, not to mention they've a new reactor product which can be sold abroad," Stanton explained to her.
"Weapons grade uranium?" asked Dina.
"No. Uranium-235 is the more stable cousin of Uranium-238, which is used in nuclear weapons. Candu reactors, thanks to their design cannot be used or adapted to the purposes of weapons grade enrichment from U-235 to U-238. However, these reactors are limited in terms of availability to regions not barred under current treaty limitations of course involving certain radioactive isotopes," Stanton continued.
"Of course. That's always the catch, isn't it? As much as I love water, I'm not here for deuterium, Stanton," Dina replied.
"That's a shame, I was looking forward to a nice sales commission. Then what are you here for?" asked Stanton.
"I'm here to find out what you know about Trifuse Fusion Reactors?" asked Dina.
Forensics
Tricia sat in the driver's seat as Halmand thumbed through a series of crime scene photos on his phone.
There were a pair of fresh Tim Horton's coffee cups in the vehicle's cup holder, steam still escaping through openings in their lids.
The sun had just barely crested the horizon, though they were far from being able to see it for they were surrounded by a wall of downtown Toronto concrete.
The streets themselves were mostly empty, with the exception of the occasional early morning commuter on their way to take one of the early streetcars, for the trains at this time were not in operation.
There were also the remnants of the night life, the nocturnal lost souls of the city who often found mischief and adventure during the late hours. They too were up and about, most often looking for a suitable place to turn in for a day's rest.
The traffic itself was fairly light, though it was clearly picking up as the hour approached five in the AM, Eastern Standard Time. Even their vehicle's radio chatter was minimal, leaving them with nothing but the morning silence to awaken them for their day.
"Find anything of note?" asked Tricia of Halmand.
"He clearly didn't see it coming. Definitely a professional hit," Halmand explained to Tricia.
"Someone he knew and trusted most likely," Tricia suggested.
"That's usually the case, isn't it?" Halmand responded.
"Often, but not always. There's no signs of it being a crime of passion. The only indication of implied trust was the lack of a struggle. I think your assumption of it being a professional hit is closer to the truth," Tricia reasoned.
"No signs of a forced entry though. No damage to any of the locks. No opened or broken windows. How'd the killer get in?" Halmand asked his partner.
"Maybe they were already inside, waiting for him?" Tricia offered.
"That certainly seems to be the case... Maybe followed him into his home earlier and waited for him to return before taking him out?" Halmand played off her idea.
Maybe..." Tricia said as she turned the corner and drove into the underground garage beneath the Bay Street headquarters of the Police Service.
...
They left the check-in point after identifying themselves as Federal Inspectors and followed the colour coded line on the wall to the Forensics Department on the same floor. When they arrived, they were greeted with another check-in at the reception area.
"Inspectors? They're expecting you. Here's your anti-contamination kit. Please put these on before stepping into any of the clean room areas," the receptionist, who was an armed and uniformed Officer presented them with a standardized disposable kit which would prevent them from contaminating any evidence.
They quickly donned their hair nets, masks and rubber gloves and then stepped through the first two sets of doors into the screening room for the first of the clean rooms, a door labeled Biological Forensics: HAIR-NETS, MASKS AND GLOVES AT ALL TIMES.
As they stepped through the door, their ears popped as the transition from the screening room into the clean room presented them with a sizeable difference in air pressure. Both of them yawned to equalize the pressure between their ear drums and their sinuses, allowing them to hear reasonably well again.
"Are we too early?" asked Tricia of James Harker, the Forensic Specialist of Biological Sciences.
"Are you kidding? We had the crime scene swept before midnight. The evidence arrived here shortly after midnight and I've been working on it ever since..." James responded to Tricia's question.
"I take it that's good news then?" confirmed Tricia.
"Its a definite maybe," James responded, returning to his workstation where a DNA analysis series was running in the device attached to the workstation.
A tiny centrifuge spun several times, automated by the device, and then ejected a slide which was automatically fed into a hidden series of sensors. The device hummed for a short time, sounding not unlike a laser printer, before a complex Fourier graph filled the screen.
"This band here in green is our victim's DNA..." James explained to Tricia and Halmand, who examined the graph carefully.
"Based upon what samples?" asked Halmand.
"This particular series is based upon any biological samples we obtained, without knowing to whom they belonged. A quick test against our victim's DNA and his mitchondrial DNA, allows us to filter out all of his relatives or others in his family that share his DNA. The rest, especially these peaks and in different colours, represent other DNA samples..." James pointed out to them.
"Did he have any pets?" asked Tricia as they tried to narrow down the possibilities.
"No. But one of his immediate neighbours has a cat. We're assuming that the cat spent at least some time inside the victim's house, because we found cat DNA. Most likely from fur samples or because the cat isn't spayed and had been marking the victim's home as its territory. That would show up under this kind of a scan as well," James continued.
"What's this particular peak?" asked Halmand.
"That's the narrow band where human DNA generally falls into. Any sample along this vertical portion of the graph will generally be human DNA. From what I can see here, there's at least twelve different people, nine of them are direct relatives of the victim, while three, possibly four are unknown," James told them.
"How'd the sweep for prints go?" asked Tricia, again looking for something against which to narrow down any evidence that was related to their suspect.
"I'm just waiting on their last series of analysis, but she gave me an early forecast and indicated that they got in the neighbourhood of eight sets of distinct prints. All fairly fresh..." James told Tricia, who looked to Halmand.
"That's enough to narrow things down significantly if we get a hit," Halmand smiled beneath his mask.
"So overall, we're looking at a bracket of three different people in terms of biological evidence?" Tricia confirmed with James, doing the math in her head.
"Four, maybe three if we're fortunate. I'll call you as soon as we have the combined data from the finger prints and the biological samples," James assured them.
"Thanks buddy. Call me and we'll hit the batting cage on the weekend," Halmand bid his friend farewell.
"Thanks James. See you around," Tricia and Halmand left through the screening room and once they were in the clear, they removed their protective gear.
"What do you think? Looks good, doesn't it?" Halmand asked his partner.
"Depends upon what we can get today by questioning his peers and by examining his life and work closely. I'm betting we'll have a suspect by tomorrow afternoon," Tricia carefully weighed everything before responding.
"I'll take them odds," Halmand held the door for her after they signed out of the Forensics Unit.
From there, they made their way upstairs to the data center. Within the hour after their arrival, they left once again, returning to their vehicle in the underground parking garage.
Halmand sat with a tablet computer in his lap, filtering a dataset containing all of the phone calls to and from the victim's phone over the course of the last seven days.
"Any names from the small list in the call logs?" asked Tricia as she started the car.
"One. Appears to be a peer of his. Another rocket scientist like our victim," Halmand explained to Tricia.
"In the city?" asked Tricia.
"Works in Missisauga, lives in Brampton. Vector Engine Dynamics. A Mr. Vander Griffin," Halmand told Tricia.
"Widen your search time span. Do they talk alot?" asked Tricia.
"Looks like our victim has a best friend that isn't his ex-wife," Halmand remarked.
"Its a quarter to eight. If we leave now we can be in Mississauga by nine thirty with traffic," Tricia pulled the car out of the parking lot and up the ramp towards the street.
"That's Dixie Road and Clark Boulevard. We're looking for Vector Engine Dynamics on Braemar Drive, which runs off of Clark..." Halmand gave Tricia the directions.
"Get comfortable, its going to be a stop and go ride. You can use the time to find any more names in the call log from the short list until we hear back from James," Tricia told Halmand.
"Aye Captain Bligh," Halmand joked with her.
"And you just keep that mutinous smile under wraps..." Tricia responded, a smile of her own thanks to Halmand's morning sense of humour.
The Nerd And The Shark
Halmand grabbed the glass door for Tricia, who stepped through into the front foyer and reception of Vector Engine Dynamics. A woman in her mid-twenties greeted them as they approached her large desk.
"Hi. I'm Gracie. Welcome to Vector Engine Dynamics. How may I assist you?" asked Gracie the receptionist, a tiny and cheerful voice greeted them.
"Hi Gracie. We're here to see Mr. Griffin. He wouldn't happen to be available, would he?" asked Tricia, who spoke firmly without losing eye contact.
"If you'll just give me a moment, I'll let him know that you're here. May I have your name?" asked Gracie, innocuously.
"I'll tell you my name, but you can't have it. I'm Inspector Tricia Camden and this is Inspector William Halmand of the RCMP," Tricia responded, already well familiar with that particular social jest and play on words.
"Ohhh? If you'll please take a seat, I'll let Mr. Griffin know that you're here to see him," Gracie's expression became one of concern having been caught in her little game and by the Federal Police, but without losing a step, she directed them politely over to the waiting area.
"Is it just me, or does that sort of thing seem to be getting worse?" asked Halmand as they found their way to the waiting area.
"No, its not you. Its getting worse. I've had to change my morning coffee stop a number of times to avoid that sort of thing. I have to admit though she's got a lot of nerve doing that without knowing who we were. I'd be willing to bet it'll be a while before she does it again..." Tricia smiled as she sat down.
"Heh, it'd be a rough career start with an attempted identity theft charge at the young age of twenty-eight," Halmand found the thought amusing, especially for all the times he'd encountered the same or similar behaviour from others.
"True. And she doesn't even look like a Tricia. Wait a second, how'd you know she's twenty-eight?" asked Tricia.
"It was doodled onto her desktop calendar, for last Monday's date. I guess she's an aspiring artist when the action dies down around here..." Halmand grabbed a pair of magazines from the coffee table in front of them, giving Tricia the choice between Engineering Today and Vogue.
She took the Engineering Today.
"I get the hint," Halmand sat back with the latest issue of Vogue, admiring Monique Defleur, the latest cover girl on the magazine.
"And keep your eyes off of Gracie. We're here on official matters..." Tricia reminded him just in case.
Tricia turned the pages of the magazine she'd selected, which appeared to be a quarterly. She stopped and quickly scanned over an article about the Trifuse Fusion Reactor System, which apparently was stress tested by Vector Engine Dynamics, in their latest test suite software/hardware workstation, which was available for purchase for the one time low price of eighty-thousand dollars and included a one year site license for up to four clients. She quickly looked through the article and found an interview, which was given five weeks earlier by Vector Engine Dynamics Engineer Stan Leeski.
"This is interesting. Did you know that the average woman wears a total of one point five kilograms of mascara over the course of her life..." Halmand remarked with a decidedly amused smile.
"Take this down for me: Stan Leeski, Critical Systems Engineer for the Trifuse Fusion Reactor test suite. Worked with our victim on that project from two years ago until they reached the final milestone four months ago," Tricia dictated to him.
"When was the article written?" asked Halmand.
"Six weeks ago. A week before the quarterly went to press," Tricia explained to Halmand.
"Seems we're off to a good start..." Halmand responded as a tall lanky man with thinning gray combover hair arrived to greet them.
He peered at them from behind a pair of gentle eyes, smile lines extending like fractals from the corners of his eyes.
"Inspector Camden? I'm Vander Griffin, Senior Engineer and one of the partners here at Vector Engine Dynamics..." Mr. Griffin extended his hand to her, which she shook gracefully.
"Inspector Halmand..." Halmand offered his hand in turn.
"Pleased to meet you both. Now how may I be of assistance in this more dire of times..." Mr. Griffin asked the two Inspectors.
"Is there a place that we can talk in privacy?" asked Tricia of Mr. Griffin.
"I think we could talk in the board room if you'd like? It might be a bit chilly in there with the air conditioning... which reminds me, would either of you like a coffee? Its on the way," asked Mr. Griffin as he led them past Gracie's reception desk and around a large Vector Engine Dynamics sculpture that sat between the back end of the foyer and Gracie's desk.
"I'm alright, thank you for asking," Tricia responded.
"Me too. I'm fine," Halmand thanked Mr. Griffin.
"Well then we'll just head right to the boardroom and get comfortable. How was traffic getting here?" asked Mr. Griffin of them.
"A little slow, but we managed," Tricia replied.
"Frederick Milton, the other partner, he comes every day to work from Pickering, all the way across to Mississauga along the 401. I for the life of me have no idea how he does it," Mr. Griffin explained to them as they walked.
"I take it you're closer?" asked Halmand, who already knew the answer but was just interested in getting to the know the man through the wonder of small talk.
"And then some! I'm just up in Brampton, which is a short leap compared to Frederick's long haul. I'm guessing that's why he spends so much time in a bathroom stall every day after he arrives..." Mr. Griffin let out a short burst of joyous laughter, which both Tricia and Halmand joined.
"Its the best place to read..." Halmand agreed with Mr. Griffin.
"I think at our age its more a matter of anticipation. We're approaching retirement age, and so long trips in the car tend to amount to time in the out house if you catch my drift. I guess he's more the reader than I," Mr. Griffin remarked as they stepped through the doors of the boardroom.
Mr. Griffin closed the doors behind them and took a seat across from both Tricia and Halmand, taking a moment to get comfortable.
"Its a shame what happened. You know, you read about stuff like that all the time all over the news, but when it comes knocking at your door, it feels surreal. Like it wasn't supposed to happen to the people that you know. Only the ones you've never met," Mr. Griffin shook his head as he thought about the loss of one of his own employees.
"I take it that you were close?" asked Tricia, Halmand beside her already with his notebook in hand taking notes.
"I'm close with all my employees. Especially my engineers. So when we lost him, I really took it hard. It was like losing a son..." Mr. Griffin's eyes welled up momentarily, and Tricia watched as he gave it his best effort to keep his composure.
She could tell that he'd experienced loss, great loss of a similar nature in his life before.
"We could come back and finish this at a more conveninent time..." Tricia asked him politely, already knowing his reply.
"No. That wouldn't be right..." Mr. Griffin responded.
"You've lost someone before... A family member?" Tricia asked him softfly.
"Like I said... I lost a son. Leukemia, at the ripe age of thirteen years old. We knew it was coming, but our poor Steven... he was a fighter... right until the end..." Mr. Griffin recalled, and somehow the two people in his mind had become almost as one, Tricia could easily see.
Where Steven's life had ended at some point, likely many years earlier, the new employee's life had continued, almost as if he'd become Mr. and Mrs. Griffin's surrogate son. She'd seen similar things happen over the course of her experience as an Inspector, and knew that many who'd experienced such loss had found renewed meaning in the arrival of someone else who'd taken up the mantle of the one they'd lost.
In terms of the Behavioural Sciences, it could easily be overlooked in a very clinical manner, but even the investigator's best sociological and psychological tools could sometimes be indicators of the mechanisms of healing from such loss, as much as they could indicate the hidden masquerade of intent and motives of a killer.
She knew at that moment that they'd found a genuine friend of their victim.
"How was his relationship with other employees here?" asked Tricia, referring to the victim.
"He got along well with just about everyone, but he was a special one that one. If he didn't like the way something was, he'd be more likely to say it than to sit on it. He was often a great diplomat, but there were those few times that he just fell short of sparing other people's feelings. And that sometimes got other people's goats in an uproar. I could go on about how many times he made us smile and laugh, but I don't think that would help you as much as when someone happened to step on his toes, or when he happened to step on theirs," Mr. Griffin explained.
Tricia knew better than to lead his ideas about what she might want to know, and rather focused on the matters at hand, and the specific questions that would help her and her partner to get a good picture of the social dynamics at play in the company workspace, and during their social time. She wasn't there to teach Mr. Griffin about how to be a better Investigator. She was there to work with him to extrapolate an encompassing empathy for the victim and his interplay among his fellow employees, so that she and her partner could make informed evaluations about which aspects of their investigation to focus.
"How did these situations affect his specific relationships with your employees?" asked Tricia.
"You mean with specific people in here?" confirmed Mr. Griffin.
"Yes. Exactly. Did he gravitate towards some, while staying away from others?" Tricia continued.
Something seemed to spark in Mr. Griffin's eyes as he considered a memory.
At that moment, Halmand had happened to stop writing, and saw his expression, recognizing it intuitively thanks to Tricia's questions.
"Maybe with Gracie?" asked Halmand.
"He often flirted with her, and I think that she really liked him, but there was something keeping them apart. The spark was there, but it never caught and became a flame between them..." Mr. Griffin recalled several times, mostly during work related social outings that the victim and Gracie would often spend time in playful banter.
"How about anyone else? Do you recall anything like that or on the opposite end of the spectrum with specific employees?" asked Tricia of Mr. Griffin, after which she glanced over to Halmand and winked at him (without Mr. Griffin observing) as a secret thank-you for speaking his question to Mr. Griffin.
"What about he and Stan Leeski?" suddenly asked Tricia, taking a bit of a gamble and watching Mr. Griffin's reaction carefully.
"They were competitive with each other, and professionally they certainly had a lot of respect for each other, but their relationship wasn't a bumpy one. It was more like two people whose chemistry was good enough that they could argue over semantics, and believe me, in engineering, most ideas communicated between engineers are composed entirely thereof, but they'd never hold a grudge against each other. Learn from one another, yes, but a grudge, no. Definitely, no," Mr. Griffin recalled.
"How about Frederick?" Tricia pushed a little further, and ever so slightly harder, careful not to broach his trust.
Again, both Tricia and Halmand caught a glimmer of something in his eye, as the man recalled a situation that seemed to stand out.
"Frederick and I... we go way back..." Mr. Griffin considered speaking about his business partner of more than forty years.
Almost as long as he'd been married, and when it came to business, having a business partner for that long was almost the same thing.
"Mr. Griffin, we're not trying to throw a wedge between you and any of your employees, but you have to consider that this is a serious matter. Someone has died, and we're here to find out what we can that might help us. We're going to start like this and I hope that given the rapport we've built so far, that you'll trust us enough not to use anything you tell us to drive a spike between you and your business partner. We're not here to undermine your business or your legacy. We're here to find out what happened in the last moments of life of a man you cared for enough to liken to your own son," Tricia reminded Mr. Griffin, relying both on her experience as an investigator, and her sense of empathy as a woman.
Mr. Griffin looked from left to right ever so slightly, and then back again. He then looked up and when he returned his gaze to theirs, he spoke once again.
"Business... especially the competive world of engineering and technology... it takes a special breed of people to succeed in this business, and that's exactly what it is. A business, but it has its roots in science. And so you tend to end up with a cast of unlikely characters when you start out. I don't know how Frederick and I hit it off as friends in the first place, but he was always the shark. He had a soft spot too, but I always knew better than to get my hand near his teeth, because if you did, he was sure as heck to take a bite, in a metaphorical sense," Mr. Griffin recalled about the early days with his best friend and business partner.
Mr. Griffin paused, and then continued.
"He's fiercely protective of his friends, once he knows you and better yet, likes you. So early on, we agreed that I'd be the soft guy with the slide-rule in his pocket. The nerd that everyone likes, and that he'd be the shark. The guy that often few people like, but the guy you need to have to protect a business. Especially like ours," Mr. Griffin explained to them.
Tricia nodded, without affirming yes or no, to let Mr. Griffin know that they were listening.
"Frederick kept a lot under his own lock and key. That was our deal. When it came to the science stuff, he always trusted me, though Frederick is an engineer too, and a damned good one, but he still always prefers to be the shark. Its just the way he is. Stubborn as can be, but the one you want on your side when all heck breaks loose," Mr. Griffin continued.
"What was the chemistry between the deceased and Frederick?" asked Tricia.
"It started out great, but as time went on, it got worse, until finally they came to an agreement not to deal with each other on certain issues. Frederick wouldn't back down, and most often neither would... our absent friend... and so they eventually just stayed clear of each other, only speaking about trivial matters, or issues that had already been resolved..." Mr. Griffin explained to them.
"As engineers, how often did the deceased and Frederick deal with each other, and outside parties with regard to your company projects?" asked Tricia, as Halmand busily wrote, struggling at times to keep up despite his great shorthand.
"As the shark, when it came to negotiations, Frederick was always our frontrunner, unless we wanted to show a soft side, then I'd take the stage. When it came to projects involving many engineering and architecture companies, and there are projects like that very frequently, because every engineering firm has its own specializations, Frederick was often our frontline. He was hard to sway and looked after us. He's a great engineer, so he can deal with the best of them, and he knows our strengths almost as well as I do, so he knows our direction. Most outside deals with our company occurred through Frederick's capable negotiations, but him and I agreed that at some point, we wanted someone to do what he does, and with the same passion for our company as does he..." Mr. Griffin explained to them.
"And that person was..." Tricia began.
"One of our best engineers... The very person we lost..." Mr. Griffin spoke sadly.
"In terms of your most recent work, what project was the last one that your lost employee worked on?" asked Tricia.
"Our biggest to date. The Trifuse Fusion Reactor Project," Mr. Griffin responded, as there was a tap at the door.
"Enter please..." Mr. Griffin spoke with authority.
"Mr. Griffin, Mr. Archer is here for a meeting scheduled in another twenty minutes...?" Gracie peeked into the room, waving at Mr. Griffin before she spoke.
"Take him to the cafeteria and get him a coffee and anything else he'd like. Let him know that we'll start promptly at the prearranged time in my office..." Mr. Griffin smiled to Gracie, who batted her eyelashes at Halmand.
Halmand kept his eyes on his notes.
"Thank you very much for your time Mr. Griffin. You've been an immense help," Tricia wheeled her chair back as Halmand stood, bundling his notebook into the inner breast pocket of his suit jacket.
Mr. Griffin stood as did Tricia, and they each in turn shook hands.
"I'm glad to have spoken with you. Such a weight to have this on my shoulders and nobody with whom to speak. Therapeutic in a sense..." Mr. Griffin responded gratefully.
"I'm not surprised, we get that alot," Tricia smiled to him sincerely, though still maintaining a professional distance.
Halmand smiled but didn't speak.
"We'll be in touch," Tricia said to him as he led them out of the boardroom and back to the reception area.
"If you have any more questions about our lost friend, please feel free to drop by any time," Mr. Griffin offered his soft, ever so slightly calloused hands one last time and they both took the time to shake before they left.
Gracie waved to them too, but she gave a little extra attention to Halmand, who played it safe and returned a disconcerted smile.
"Did you get the feeling that we really hit something when he was speaking about Frederick?" asked Halmand of Tricia.
"Yes, but it crescendoed when he mentioned Trifuse Fusion..." Tricia observed.
"Good. I don't feel so guilty about keeping this then..." Halmand handed Tricia the Engineering Today issue from which she'd read the information about Stan Leeski.
"So you're a shoplifter now?" asked Tricia of her partner.
"First and last time... Don't tell... please?" Halmand got in the passenger seat.
Stanton pulled into the compact parking lot alongside Norman Jewison Park, just off of Isabella Street. He drove the length of the small parking space and by some miracle of early afternoon luck, he found a spot tucked away near the south end.
He quickly backed in, and about half-way into the spot, the truck switched over to the gasoline engine, causing Stanton to check his battery level.
"Damn. Forgot to plug it in again last night..." Stanton said as he pressed the accelerator, carefully finishing his parking job, shaking his head as he did.
He then shut the truck down, and grabbed the bouquet of flowers on the seat beside him, quickly filling in the card and then tucking it into a red envelope along with a pair of gift theatre tickets. He then placed the envelope in the bouquet amongst the mixture of orchids, carnations and hydrangea, whose natural colours paled that of the envelope by itself.
The walk to the restaurant was fairly short, and was along one of Toronto's busiest downtown streets, especially during the day. Yonge Street (the longest street in the world) pedestrians that day as any weekday, packed the afternoon sidewalks, mostly a mixture of daytime workers out for their lunch, and students between classes.
He crossed Yonge Street, westbound on Gloucester Street (on foot), and then picked up his pace as he spied his watch. He was already ten minutes late.
He walked along Irwin Street and then north onto St. Nicholas Street until he saw the tiny sign on the front door of the restaurant.
"A little more quaint than I thought it would be for a first meeting..." Stanton said aloud as he walked up to the front door and opened it, letting himself in.
After stepping through the narrow front hall foyer, he found a door that led directly to the dining area. It was compact and cosy, and yet somehow despite the small space the restaurant occupied, it was spacious.
"Dad!" Jennifer waved, standing for her father.
As she did, an awkwardly gentle man in his early thirties smiled cautiously, getting quickly to his feet as Jennifer rose to her's.
She opened her arms as he arrived, quickly handing off the flowers to the unnamed man, who accepted them.
"For me? Why thank you..." he smiled, laughing as he accepted them.
Stanton wrapped his arms around his daughter's back and she his. They held each other for a moment, as Jennifer's date stood awkwardly beside them trying not to appear imposing. Beside Stanton's burly and muscular frame, he appeared anything but.
"I'm sorry I'm late honey. You probably thought that your old man isn't going to show again..." he said to, speaking into her ear.
"Oh dad. I knew you'd come when you were ready... I just wish mom could be here with us too..." Jennifer sniffled, her tears already starting.
"Me too honey. Me too," Stanton said to her quietly enough so that nobody else could hear him speaking.
They parted from their hug, Jennifer stepping back to take a good look at her father.
"Looks like you're keeping busy... Good to see you're keeping that senior gut at bay..." Jennifer referred to his perfect frame.
"You too honey. Looks like you've been clocking the hours at the store... Are you still up on Warden and Eglinton?" Stanton asked her.
"Why don't we talk about this over lunch. I have someone I've been wanting you to meet for a very long time, dad. This is Anthony Thareau. We're living together..." Jennifer announced to her father.
Stanton seemed a bit caught off guard. He looked over to Anthony, who smiled uneasily, still holding the flowers. Stanton then looked back to Jennifer, looking her over up and down and then back to Anthony.
"So things are moving quickly I take it...?" Stanton seemed taken aback by her statement.
"Look! Why don't we just sit down, relax and have a talk..." Jennifer urged her father to be seated and then looked over to Anthony, who smiled back at her, nodding as if some invisible communication had gone on between the two of them.
"Are those...?" Jennifer asked from her seat, looking to the packaged bouquet still in Anthony's hand, and then back over to her dad questioningly.
"Yes... they're for you. You should open them. Oh, I almost forgot..." Stanton stood slightly leaning over from his chair, offering his hand to Anthony for a shake.
After Anthony had given the flowers over to Jennifer, he took Stanton's caloused, vein bulging muscular hand and gave his best shake.
Stanton didn't hold back, doing so purposely to let the man know that Jennifer was still his daughter.
"That's uhhhhh quite the grip you've got there. Jennifer tells me that you're a tradesman?" asked Anthony, as Jennifer removed the wrapping paper from the bouquet.
"Ooohhh! You shouldn't have!!!" Jennifer gasped at the colours of the bouqet, all three of her favourite flowers, for each flower represented one of the three members of their family.
The hydrangea represented her father. The carnations represented her deceased mother and the orchids represented her. She admired them for a moment and then carefully took the envelope from the amongst the flowers and opened it.
"Yes... I'm a trademan. I work for a living. So what is that you do, Anthony?" Stanton's eyes glared piercingly at Anthony, who despite being intimidated, managed an uneasy smile.
"Ohh, I'm sure that you do... work hard for a living. I can tell just by the way Jennifer is. She's a multitasker... great manager and a real go getter too. You must have really rubbed off onto her..." Anthony stepped carefully in conversation as he chose his words.
"Moulin Rouge?!!! You didn't?" Jennifer examined the tickets Stanton had inserted into the envelope, still bound together for Moulin Rouge at the Ed Mirvish Theatre.
"You kept asking me about it... so I did something about it," Stanton said to his daughter, confidently.
"This is great! We were talking about this the other day... about how we'd love to go... Thank you! I'm sure we'll have a great time!" Anthony added, nuzzling over closer to Jennifer on the bench seating across from Stanton.
Stanton gave him a terrifying glare.
"...Of course unless you two were planning on going...? I'm very busy with work related projects so chances are I wouldn't be able to make time... Oh, look at this, they're for next week too. I'm already booked on a big project so why don't you two...go?" Anthony responded nervously, his voice gentle, soft and unimposing.
"I believe you were going to tell me what you do do for a living?" Stanton kept his gaze on Anthony.
"I'm a Live Built Architect..." Anthony smiled, thinking that Stanton would be impressed with the title.
He wasn't.
"What exactly does a Live Built Architect do, Anthony?" asked Stanton accusingly.
"Oh dad. Lay off, would you? He's a designer. He designs renovations and revitalized interiors, using living plants and trees as part of the structural make up. The building materials alone are incredible and its all biodegradable. Some of it is even living and integrated with the plumbing," Jennifer nudged over closer to Anthony, who blushed at the attention from her.
Stanton's glare hardened for a moment, his eyes really looking into Anthony, before a smile eventually crept onto his face.
"Living trees and stuff for walls and building interiors? That sounds pretty cutting edge to me. You work alot I take it?" asked Stanton of Anthony.
"Yes... but I make time for Jennifer. She's a priority for me. Our time together is important and we make the best of it," Anthony explained to Stanton, who nodded as he listened.
"I take it that she calls the shots?" asked Stanton.
"Yep. She's definitely your daughter. She takes care of everything at her work, and everything to keep our home running smoothly. She says and I do. I manage my own business affairs and finances, and we're currently building a joint savings for our future," Anthony admitted to him.
"What can I get for you? A tray of fried eggplant, chickpea and sesame pockets? Something to start you off from the bar?" asked the waiter as he handed Stanton the menu.
"Stanton accepted it and began perusing it carefully, a look of shock on his face as his journey through the menu progressed.
"Ohhhh... good taste. I'd have gone for the Rumours Of Fleetwood Mac myself..." the waiter remarked as he saw the Moulin Rouge tickets on the table after he'd handed menus to Jennifer and Anthony.
"Yeah, they were a good band in their time... So I'll just cut to the chase and order myself a sauteed Chicken Sandwich on a Kaiser, with some onions and black olives, thank you very much," Stanton said firmly, handing the menu back to the waiter.
"Uhhhh... dad? This place is a vegan bar..." Jennifer informed her father.
"Did you convert my daughter to vegan or something?" Stanton asked Anthony uneasily.
"Anthony is a strict vegan. He doesn't eat any meat, dairy products or eggs. I've been eating the same as him for the last three months and I'm loving it," Jennifer responded defensively of her man.
"So that means no chicken either?" Stanton looked to Anthony, and then back to the waiter.
"Nope," the waiter shook his head firmly at Stanton.
"I see. I'll have the... Kimchi Crackers and the Cheeseboard. I've gotta get my protein in there somehow," Stanton said firmly, yet somehow feeling very much in unfamiliar territory.
"Anything to drink?" asked the waiter.
"No thanks, I'm driving," Stanton responded.
"We'll have the Fritti Funghi and the Empanada, please with a side of flatbread, and I'll have the Violette Beauregard," Jennifer ordered for her and Anthony.
Stanton looked to the two of them, back and forth twice before Anthony spoke.
"I'm driving. She's done for the day today so she's going to have a few drinks to celebrate. We decided that after our lunch with you, that we'd go home and relax in the hot tub with a bottle and couple of masks," Anthony smiled, looking once more over to Jennifer.
"Well, I have to say that this is definitely not what I expected, but it sounds like you have your stuff together and a future, and as long as you do well by my daughter, I'm happy to have you as our friend. Of our tiny family," Stanton shook hands once again with Anthony, this time with a much more relaxed grip.
"So what are you celebrating?" asked Stanton, now curious about their day.
"We just got back from opening a brand new store location on Queen Street, just inside of the south end of the Eaton's Centre. That's where I'll be working as the new manager!" Jennifer announced to her father.
"I'm so proud of you honey, and if your mother were here too, I know she'd be as well," Stanton said to Jennifer as the first bit of food and her drink arrived.
"Did they give you an increase?" asked Stanton, waiting for his lunch guests to dip into their food before he tried some from the Fritti Funghi plate.
"They assured me that when I start, that I'll be a getting an increase. One percent over the regular yearly increase, but I haven't been given anything in writing yet that confirms that, but I trust them," Jennifer said confidently, taking a sip of her drink.
"You make sure that you do. Get that in writing I mean. You don't have to turn them into toads or anything, but at least make sure that if they're starting with a big investment like that to setup shop at one of the highest traffick areas in the downtown core, that you're getting your cut. With the kind of pedestrian traffic there is there, you're probably going to earn every cent of it. Don't let yourself get short changed," Stanton responded, taking a scoop of his Kimchi Crackers, and dunking it into the Miso.
At that moment, Stanton's phone began ringing. He pulled it from his pocket and answered.
"How are you today?" asked Dina in a friendly voice.
"Good. I'm just busy here having lunch..." Stanton told Dina, preferring to keep certain aspects of his life away from the woman on the other end of the phone.
"Oh... Uh. Did I interrupt, because if I did, then we can just meet another time and pay a visit to Entertrinsic together when its more convenient for you. I figured it would certainly save time if I had a qualified engineer with me when I visited them today," Dina said to him, laying the bait.
"You mean for the...?" Stanton began, preferring to keep the details from his daughter and Anthony.
"That same one. Their new fusion reactor, which is state of the art from what I've heard," Dina continued pushing the bait home.
"Where do you need me to be?" asked Stanton.
"Yonge Street, just north of Steeles Avenue, at the Entertrinsic Hangar. About an hour from now. I'll be waiting," Stanton could hear Dina's devious smile from the other end of the phone.
"Alright. If its an emergency, I'll be there soon," Stanton hung up the phone.
"Work...?" asked Jennifer of her dad.
"I'm sorry honey. My job is sometimes like that," Stanton ate a few more crackers with Kimchi and Miso, following it up with a slice of cheese.
"Its alright dad. I'm just glad that you made some time for me, and that you finally got to meet my other man," Jennifer leaned across the table, and gave him a gentle kiss on his cheek.
"The next time we do this, it'll be at my place, with a few more friends, a few more drinks, a real barbecue with real meat..." Stanton paused for effect before continuing.
"...and any vegan dishes you two want for the night," Stanton stood and got himself together.
"We'll be there dad!" Jennifer stood and wrapped her arms around him.
"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Anthony agreed standing beside them.
"I'll get mine. You two have fun tonight. Anthony, have a few drinks with her and take a cab home together. I'll call you soon and we'll have our barbecue party, justs like old times. Next weekend or the weekend after," Stanton turned to face Anthony, giving him a firm shake once again.
"Its nice to finally meet you. You treat her right, you hear?" Stanton glared briefly, and then finished with a sincere smile.
"Loud and clear," Anthony reponded confidently, no longer feeling the threat of protective scrutiny.
With that Stanton, left. He went to the cash and paid for the entire meal, leaving two hundred extra dollars for their tab.
"Good food, but get some real meat..." Stanton said sarcastically as he passed their waiter, winking once to him on the way out the door.
"Thanks for coming. Oh and about the meat... Bite Me!" the waiter responded, getting a small applause from some of the restaurant patrons.
By that time Stanton was out the door and returning to his truck on Gloucester from where he began the drive to northern Toronto to meet with Dina at Enertrinsic International.
A Return And A Requiem
The Radiology department was currently alive with activity as the special care facility tended to one of their most prominent patients in some time, though their facility and role was for the care of all.
However, due to mandate enacted as part of a program of counterinsurgency against a growing threat, the facility had been retasked, effectively dividing the hospital in two. One side were working with regular run of the mill patients, who'd arrive by the usual means. Either from the street or in an ambulance, from where they'd be cycled through the didactic process of diagnosis, prognosis and then treatment under the guidance of medical professionals.
Another wing of the hospital, that had been built as an extension, an extensive walkway connecting the two buildings, was entirely run for another secretive program. It was within these walls that a certain patient got up under his own power, and walked via his own locomotion (carefully) from the waiting room into the office of Doctor Singh-Charan, who currently was examining a series of x-ray images on a large screen LED monitor.
"Hey! Who said you could go through my family album without me?!" Gabe Asnon joked with the Doctor as he arrived to take a seat beside the man who'd treated him for his entire stay at the facility.
"They did, when they first arrived. They were in crying need of help back then, but they look much better now," Doctor Singh-Charan wheeled his chair over to take in the images on the far end of the monitor.
"Ahhhh, well that tibia relative of mine has always been a bit of a nuisance, confabulating situations way beyond their extremity... and that femur, don't get me started there Doctor..." Gabe started their meeting with his usual run of humour, something that had helped to speed his healing process along.
"Well they seem to be speaking a much different story today. No sudden pains as you walked here from the waiting room?" asked the Doctor, turning to face Gabe.
"Not so much as a peep," Gabe responded.
"How about any twitching of your legs as you slept?" the Doctor continued.
"Not a one, though I did watch some twitch... streams that is," Gabe responded with a smile.
"Any cramps?" Doctor Singh-Charan continued.
"Just from the food here, Doc. Just from the food..." Gabe replied.
"Then I'd have to say that I completely support your leaving our care and resuming your life," Doctor Singh-Charan showed Gabe an image of the signed documentation on his tablet.
"That's wonderful news Doc! So like... are you waiting for a hug or something? When do we get this started?" Gabe remarked sarcastically, sparking a bit of laughter from Doctor Singh-Charan.
"It has been a pleasure Mr. Asnon. In the future, I suggest that you stay away from any strange looking bombs, and that you refrain from crawling under tons of concrete wreckage in the interests of maintaining your good health and diet," the Doctor proved that he had a sense of humour too.
"Strange bombs...? Ha! That's funny. Good advice Doc. Good advice. I'll see you around," Gabe laughed uneasily as he stood.
"Not too soon I'm hoping. I don't think I could handle another complaint from the orderlies about your pranks. Have a good day Mr. Asnon," Doctor Singh-Charan walked Gabe to the door, opening it for him and allowing him to leave.
Gabe walked until he found his way out of Radiology, where his security detachment met him and guided him to the parking facility. From there, they got into the limousine that had been waiting for him and began their drive to downtown Toronto.
...
Inside of a boardroom, a group of business professionals, some younger, some older, some leaning forward in their chairs while others leaned back, debated the claims of legitimacy of those who sought leadership of their company.
A company who had tragically lost their CEO to a terrorist bombing that had targeted the special projects division of one of the largest tech corporations in the world. A company that had since the tragedy, been under attack from many different angles and most of all, from a secretive enemy whose motivations had remained hidden under the radar for years. An enemy that in recent years had emerged from their hiding, in a bid to overtake the entire world. An goal whose realization was growing closer and closer with every passing day.
Many large companies, especially those in the tech sector had experienced the onslaught of this hidden enemy. There had been numerous transitions for such companies, as their employee base were weeded out one by one, strategically by the enemy, until most companies had become divided in a civil war. The original employees were now competing against an organized onslaught that systematically removed the old employees to replace them with those who were allied with this hidden enemy, whose creed was that of divide and conquer.
Many CEOs of smaller companies had fallen, most of them replaced by members of the enemy's own eidos. And yet, the largest of companies and their respective CEOs held on to the reigns, as they struggled regain control of a ship whose crew was changing beneath their feet.
Many such business leaders quickly realized that they were no longer running companies of free employees unified by a common goal and purpose. By cooperation and prosperity and the ambition of a future their children would be safe from the threats that the coming generations would be sure to face.
They were now running companies as the troops of war fought a battle beneath their very feet. In the IT rooms, offices and boardrooms of their towering skyscrapers and online in the battlefield of social media and news. This was a war that was being fought everywhere, and yet nowhere, for it was a war without a name and their enemy was a clever one indeed.
It had divided them along all lines of weakness that people could be as such. Any divisions along which one people could be divided from another, the lines of this war eventually found. Those embattled would grow to distrust the other side, while the enemy used either side to further its own ends. Not towards the ends of competition, but rather to clear the battlefield of combatants, and then to move in a easily take what was left and mostly undefended. This was a battlefield that had not started with a single shot, as so many other wars had.
It had started entirely with nothing more than concepts, which had then become ideology and then expanded from there to become methods of action, and then finally a full fledged strategic take-over of the entire world, seemingly from anywhere and everywhere.
By the time it had arrived at the front doors of MindSpice, it was already too late.
The bomb, which had utilized a transformer station as both a detonator and the device had quickly leveled the special projects building of MindSpice, even killing its CEO and founder: Gabriel Asnon.
Or so the new and media were told. Only a small handful of people knew the truth, and that was that Gabe Asnon had lived, just barely, thanks to the quick action and response of the Butterfly Dragon, Night Style, Eclipse, Kyra and Dragon Butterfly and of course the emergency crews that had arrived on the scene a short time later to assist the women in rescuing the survivors.
A couple of months later, after the dust had barely settled and the world had almost forgotten about one of its many prolific and charismatic leaders, the board had finally settled in to make the biggest decision of their lives.
And yet amongst them, some (not all) of the faces that had joined the upper ranks of one of the largest companies in the world, represented their secret enemy. Each of them trying to ensure that they were not detected and that their chosen one took the reigns of power in MindSpice.
Assuming such a success occurred, Artifex Oculo Mentis (now a collective more so than an individual) would have control of one of, if not the largest tech company in the world. The remainder of the board, all those who were not of Artifex Oculo Mentis would be indoctrinated or ejected, as would every single employee throughout the company, but that was not the greatest risk of all, for it was exceedingly small when compared to Mentis' actual goal.
"I think that the board should know that I spoke with Helmut Werner on this very matter. That transitioning the leadership of a billion - if not trillion dollar company, carries with it repercussions that go well beyond its own borders..." Mr. Tinders explained to the board members before he was interrupted.
"...Rory for crying out loud! He's not even one of us and you're taking our decision to an old man for advice?" Crenler interjected, clearly already frustrated and trying to exploit the division between them to push his own team ahead.
"...I'm for hearing out Mr. Tinders..." Sally Davis, an older woman herself backed up Mr. Tinders.
"...Me too. I'd like to hear what Mr. Tinders and Mr. Werner have to say on the matter," Jill Bishop added, herself a much younger woman, and perhaps one of the youngest on the board.
Two of the other women raised their hands in support of Mr. Tinders, and Crenler backed down.
"Fine..." Crenler held his hands up, clearly withdrawing.
"The board recognizes Mr. Tinders. Please do continue," the temporary Chair addressed Mr. Tinders.
"Thank you Mrs. Chairman. As you know, between Future Tangent Industries and MindSpice Global, any speculation that arises over this change of leadership is going to have repercussions for the entire world market, and that will be occurring while we're in the middle of a leadership crisis. If the markets bail on us, we stand to lose a lot as a result. Werner projected in the neighbourhood of thirty to forty billion dollars in company value overnight. Now I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend the next ten years signing layoff packages for three million employees while our company liquidates our holdings to shore up the losses. Every signature on one of those damned forms is another piece of my soul gone!" Mr. Tinders kept his gaze firm, shifting it to each member.
"Werner was the first one to bring this up, and that was long before the news got a hold of the story and ran with it. He told me that Walton Norler was intrigued by the idea of running MindSpice..." Mr. Tinders paused as there was a knock on the door.
"This is a closed meeting. Return at 4PM if you need to speak with one of us..." Crenler responded professionally.
The door then suddenly opened, and two large security operators dressed in thousand dollar suits stepped into the boardroom.
"What is the interruption here!" Crenler stood to confront the security operators.
"I'm sorry, I don't remember you... But I do remember Tinders... How are you buddy?!!!" Gabe Asnon walked into the boardroom carefully as the security operators cleared a path for him.
"That's an actor! A look alike! Somebody call security!" Crenler went for his phone and dialled the security department.
"Hi, its Crenler here in corporate. Get me Lamdin quickly!" Crenler asked for his security contact, a man who was operating on behalf of Mentis.
"I'm sorry but Lamdin no longer works with us..." the operator replied.
"Who am I speaking with!??? I need a security team up on corporate headquarters here on the fortieth floor... We've got a Gabe Asnon impostor here trespassing on the premises!" Crenler became frantic.
"That's not an impostor Sir. That's the real deal," the operator reported to Crenler.
"Good to see you Sally... Gillian... Corthers..." one of the security operators pulled up a chair for Gabe at the head of the table.
"The Chair recognizes Gabriel Asnon, Chief Executive Officer of MindSpice Global," the Chairman addressed the boardroom.
"Thank you Mrs. Chairman. I'm a bit tired right now, as its been a long day and I didn't get much sleep last night but I'm healthy and of sound mind. The Doctors and the insurance companies have signed off on this already, so no need to get lawyers involved. Obviously as most of you already know, we need to take some decisive steps to get this company back on track in the aftermath of the tragedy that took the lives of two of our finest software engineers. First of all, I'm going to state that we are in the midst of a security crisis that has been effective since the bombing. Therefore the current state of operation of our company is effective immediately and retroactively. As a result, I'm going to have to ask all board members appointed after the bombing to immediately leave this meeting, and to resume your normal day's work from your desks until you are contacted and we can determine your future here at the company," Gabe started shoring up the holes in his company.
There was a moment as some of the newer board members looked to one another, a look of dread on their faces. A quiet message was exchanged between them and their eyes alone as they each got up and left the boardroom. As they stepped into the halls, they passed another group of security operators who each escorted them back to their desks.
"Now that we have a bit of privacy. We can deal with the current crisis. I want a press release sent out immediately, letting the public know that the company is effectively resuming its original leadership, at the hands of the original board members prior to the bombing. That I have returned and am undertaking extensive measures to get us back on course. We will be conducting a thorough security audit throughout the entire company and that this process will cost us a bit of our former marketshare, but that in the long run, doing so will solidify a positive yield of growth for the future and our expanding special projects division, isn't that right MAZ?" asked Gabe aloud.
"Yes Gabe. That's correct. According to your earlier assertion and my projections, the security audit will effectively help to re-establish employee confidence and assuredness while helping us to fix the leaks that have been plaguing us since the tragic bombing," MAZ explained to the board members through the boardroom speakers.
"Now, one final thing that we need to address, and that is... how much did these new board members ask you about special projects and what kind of access privileges were they given?" Gabe looked to his remaining board members and they each began to recall what had happened in the aftermath of the MindSpice Special Projects Facility bombing.
...
In the front foyer of one of the largest and most advanced business tower complexes in downtown Toronto, a huge group of videographers and journalists stood preparing for the impromptu press conference that had been called by the board of MindSpice Global.
Rumours had quickly leaked and made their way throughout the news as the press closed in on the lobby of Commerce Court. Many had already started their broadcasts, playing stories related to MindSpice and the bombing months earlier that had killed Gabe Asnon, CEO and two of their software engineers, whose names were kept in order to protect their families.
The commotion suddenly died down as MindSpice's own press representative approached the podium.
"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the press, and to all the fine Police Officers and Security Personnel here with us today. I'd like to start this conference by thanking you all for coming on such short notice. In a moment or two, you'll completely understand why it was entirely worth your time..." their press representative began, backing away from the microphone momentarily.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this press conference will be divided into three parts. This short introduction which will be followed by our main attraction, and finally with our questions and answers period. We ask that the noise between questions is minimal so as to give every member of the press equal opportunity to record this event and cover the story. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr. Gabe Asnon... Survivor of the MindSpice bombing..." the applause started quickly and became overwhelming as Gabe stepped out in front of the podium.
He waited for two minutes until the applause and camera flashes died down.
"It has been a long road to recovery for me. From that fateful night when some first responders and several women whom you know as Butterfly Dragon, Night Style, Eclipse, Kyra and Dragon Butterfly removed the tons of building wreckage that had trapped me, and safely extracted me to the emergency room of nearby Scarborough General Hospital. It was Dragon Butterfly who got me safely to the Hospital if I recall the story from one of the orderlies correctly. Apparently I died several times on the gurney, but the medics managed to revive me every time. When I made it to the hospital, I was unconscious again and when I woke up twenty seven hours later, I was wrapped from head to toe and in traction. I was on a respirator and dialysis, and could not move or speak. Over the course of two months, I was treated and watched carefully by a team of specialists, who if not for them, I would not be standing here today," Gabe spoke solemnly and yet confidently as the applause rose for those who'd rescued him and many others from the depths of darkness in the aftermath of the bombing.
Gabe waited for another thirty seconds until the applause died down before continuing.
"After conferring with our security specialists a week ago, it was agreed given the state of the company that I should be released from victim protection and resume my duties and responsibilities as CEO of MindSpice. That my return would be kept secret until the last possible moment so that Federal Investigators from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police could capitalize on the information they'd gain by my sudden appearance. They essentially had a week to setup for that moment, a team of over two hundred network specialists had setup monitoring features in our headquarters for the very moment I walked into the building. I learned moments before this press conference that they accumulated a mountain of data through which they'll be going over with a fine tooth comb. I can't say any more than that on the subject," Gabe paused, allowing himself to breath unfettered so as not to hyperventilate.
"My arrival began with laying down a number of measures and priorities for our board members and the rest of the MindSpice team that will solidify our growth potential. The ambitions that we've been unable to achieve due to quirks in the machine so to speak. We will be taking major steps forward in rebuilding the Special Projects Facility, in the same location it was before the bombing. As most of you already know, the actual storage and computing hardware is in offshore facilities at secret locations, hence, the main session containing MAZ's Microlinguistic Accumulating Differentiation Engine based memory architecture and Classical/Quantum Processor Octree* has been preserved. Over the course of my recovery, I was greatly helped by MAZ's friendship. I think that sums up everything I have to say. We have ten minutes for questions and answers..." Gabe started the circus rolling and was not disappointed by the show of hands for the first question.
...
An hour later, on many televisions around the world, the broadcasts had begun as news agencies all over released the news stories detailing Gabe Asnon's miraculous recovery in the aftermath of the MindSpice bombing.
"...let me say that we'll be working with many environmental agencies to guarantee progress in that arena and to ensure that their cry for help is heard. They are not the radicals associated with the bombing, and we support their cause whole-heartedly. Furthermore, our work in the field of AI will also be made available to such agencies for use in their evaluations, case studies and projections, alerting us early in the event of crises affecting the various biomes of our planet. We will not withdraw any of our Special Projects Division technologies from active development and will proceed accordingly, ever mindful and vigilant of our hidden enemies," Gabe Asnon's final words of the press conference echoed throughout the televisions of the world, as they watched one of the many leaders of technology and industry pave a safe way into a potentially perilous future.
At Enertrinsic
Stanton pulled up into the parking facility outside of one of the largest manufacturing facilities he'd ever seen. He got out of his truck and looked on at the hangar in awe of it.
The Enertrinsic manufacturing and testing hangar had been built onsite and was one of the largest such facilities in the world, rivaled only by those operated by NASA, ROSCOSMOS and CNSA. Having clearance from Enertrinsic International to observe the facilities was a big privilege and one that he did not want to miss.
He began the walk to the local shuttle stop (the Enertrinsic facility had its own micro transit system). The buggy arrived shortly thereafter, resembling a luggage cart from the airport, albeit with twelve seats facing outward from its chassis. A human driver sat at the wheel at the front of the electric vehicle. Stanton took a seat near the front, just behind the driver.
"I thought these things would be driven by computer by now..." Stanton remarked to the driver.
"So did we. They're usually run by AI. This one has a connection problem, so in this case, the AI was replaced by a human driver but only for the day. However, I still get paid the same whether I'm driving or not, so its hard to tell if I actually won or lost..." the driver joked, causing Stanton to chuckle over the irony.
The shuttle trip took about five minutes before they arrived at a central hub just outside of the tremendous hangar. There, Stanton saw Dina waiting for him in a nicely fitting purple summer dress.
"Hope you didn't have to wait too long?" Stanton asked her.
"No. Not at all. I just got here on one of the other shuttles. Its a big place, isn't it?" Dina marveled at the hangar, still two football fields away from them.
"You're looking good for a day like today. So are you going to tell me how you finagled this?" asked Stanton as they walked towards the bay of one of the other shuttle lines.
"How its usually done. My boss called theirs, and the rest is history as they say..." Dina smiled.
"Thank your boss for me. I've been looking for a way to get a look at Enertrinsic's stuff for quite some time," Stanton responded gratefully.
"...and mine no doubt... I saw the way you looked at me when you got here..." Dina remarked, trying to get at the details he was keeping hidden.
"Well isn't this a surprise?" they both heard a familiar voice from behind them.
They turned around and to their surprise, there standing before them was Linda Delmore.
Linda was looking squarely at Dina, who momentarily smirked in response, neither Linda nor Stanton catching it.
"Its been a while," Dina responded to Linda's approach.
"That it has. I see you brought along protection?" Linda asked, referring to Stanton, who remained unassuming.
"How'd you fare at the wedding reception? Did you manage to find your date?" asked Stanton, referring to her target.
"Funny you should ask... No. Apparently he left early with someone else," Linda responded, ever so slightly glaring at Stanton.
"He must have been tired then, couldn't keep up with you I take it. I bet somebody got him home safely and tucked him in for the night," Stanton smiled knowingly.
"I bet. So what brings the two of you to Enertrinsic?" asked Linda, now a little less receptive than she initially was, which is exactly how Stanton wanted it.
This was due to the complexity of three-way social dynamics. Especially when all three had secrets they preferred to keep. All three of them knew that it was better to keep each other at an arm's length, and yet sometimes the dynamics of attraction would win. It was just a question of who was using those dynamics to their advantage and whether they were willing to share or not.
"The tour. We're on the guest list," Dina spoke confidently, knowing that their invitation came directly from the CEO of the company.
"I must be on the same list then. I suppose it makes sense for us to get comfy together as we're obviously on the same tour," Linda approached the bay as the shuttle (driverless) arrived.
"But without the front door treatment..." Stanton observed correctly, cooling the situation down substantially.
It was obvious that they had access, but they were far from being given VIP treatment, for they were using the same shuttle system that the employees used and that would eventually handle the public tours of the facility on the weekends. There was no proverbial or metaphorical kissing of one's posterior going on here. They were clearly being treated not as dignitaries, but as clerical representatives of their respective bureaucracies. Perhaps better for their cover.
They boarded the shuttle, the only passengers onboard. Thirty seconds later, the shuttle beeped three times and then exclaimed: Departing for - FRONT FOYER. Please keep your hands and feet in at all times.
"Maybe we're getting the front door treatment after all?" Linda responded to Stanton's earlier statement, now endearing herself to Dina.
With those words, the shuttle sped off on its six battery powered wheels and there was little conversation between the three of them, though Dina and Linda managed a friendly conversation for the entire trip.
Stanton did his best to look around with a boyish innocence, as if in awe, but really he was piecing a mystery together in his head. Why had two of the world's Nuclear armed powers sent operatives to the same location at the same time, for a tour of Enertrinsic? Why had Dina arrived to meet Stanton in his own cover workplace of the Nuclear Power Plant and shortly after a hybrid fusion upgrade had been installed? What was Dina's interest in Deuterium, the heavy water hydrogen isotope? Most of all, in the midst of this situation, why had he not been contacted and briefed by JSOC?
Definitely Needs Alibi
Tricia and Halmand's car pulled up out front of a small unassuming semi-attached home in an older community near the downtown core of the city. The street itself which ran north off of Queen Street East and extended down as far as King Street, was tightly packed with post-war homes, many of which had seen numerous upgrades and renovations over the years.
Having found suitable parking, they got out of their car and walked up the front steps to the front door.
"Generally a quiet community. Usually tight nit neighbours in these ones," Halmand remarked, having spent much time of his post-teen years not from from the community.
"Care to do the honours?" asked Tricia, playing discrete.
Halmand pressed the doorbell, and they immediately heard a small dog barking from behind the door.
Halmand smiled, and opened his jacket, exposing a cannister of pepper spray. He then made a comicly mean looking face, as if his intention were to spray the little dog with the pepper spray.
Tricia quickly smirked at him and gestured for him to close his jacket as a woman in her mid thirties opened the door. Halmand quickly recomposed himself, obviously of no ill intent towards the woman or the dog.
"You must be here about...?" she began, bags under her eyes, as if she'd recently been crying.
"Yes. We're here about the deceased. This is Inspector Halmand and I'm Inspector Camden of the RCMP. Would it be alright if we spoke for a moment about the deceased?" asked Tricia of the woman.
"Are you alergic to dogs? She doesn't bite, but she barks up a pretty mean appearance," the woman said to them, brushing her long brown hair away from her face.
"We should be fine. You're Delila right?" asked Tricia of the woman.
"Yes. Delila Hohner, I go by my maiden name now," she picked up the dog and kissed it on the head, then opening the door for the Inspectors to let them in.
Delila took the dog and closed it in a bathroom, where it continued to bark for another minute until it had tired itself out and lay down on the floor. By that point, Delila and both Inspectors were already seated in the living room. Delila on her favourite overstuffed chair, and the Inpectors on the sofa.
Halmand had his notes with him and was already starting to write before they began.
"I understand that you and the deceased were married at one time?" Tricia asked the first question, suddenly recalling her conversation with Ron Forseth's wife almost a year ago for some reason.
"Yes. We divorced two years ago though. Actually that's when the paperwork was finally approved and the Justice stamped and double-stamped it as they say," Delila explained to Tricia, who realized that Delila was likely experiencing stress induced depression as a result of the deceased's passing.
"Were there any difficulties between you?" asked Tricia, being purposely vague.
"Of what kind?" asked Delila, obviously wanting her to narrow her question down.
"Did you argue... were there ever heated discussions between you...?" Tricia asked her calmly.
"No... he was a perfect gentleman... that spent most of his time ignoring me. Spent most of his time at the office," Delila explained to Tricia as Halmand took notes.
"So it would be alright to say that you had a peaceful coexistence?" Tricia repeated her questioning along the same line of inquiry.
"Yes... but towards the end... we began to argue. Our differences had by that point become obvious enough that they came to the surface. There was never any violence though, and at that point I already had another lover, and I suspect that he did too. It wasn't too long after that I packed my things and left and never returned," Delila leaned forward in her chair.
"Did you ever discuss anything related to the deceased with your new lover?" asked Tricia.
"One of the reasons that I found him so attractive was because he paid attention to me. I was always on his mind in some way. He'd call me from work, he'd spend time with me at home. We'd go out and do stuff together like everyone else. I felt like I meant something to him. To my husband, I was just another piece of furniture..." Delila folded her hands and looked down.
Tricia waited, hearing Delila's sniffles start.
"He never asked me about my husband and we never talked about him. For me, it was a total escape to heaven... despite the fact that it felt wrong... but what could be so wrong about being happy with someone?" Delila's tears fell silently for a moment, and then she began to cry.
"Did your arguments, even once, escalate to the point of violence or near violence?" Tricia asked the question she had to ask.
"Have you ever been married?" asked Delila of Tricia.
"Delila. We're here to talk about your relationship with the deceased, and so I ask you again, did your arguments even once escalate to the point of violence?" Tricia repeated the question, knowing she had to establish as to whether the signs of guilt Delila was exhibiting were related to her sense of betrayal with regard to her lover, or a sense of wrong doing in terms of violence.
It was a difficult line to tread, and an even more difficult experience for someone who'd been close with a victim of murder to distinguish their outstanding issues of conscience from those associated with the crime itself. However, Tricia and Halmand were there to determine a path through the maze of evidence. Questioning those associated with the victim was an important part of defining the walls and the path of that maze. It sometimes required them to be firm in circumstances where compassion might have been better called for.
"We yelled at each other once... had a yelling match. He had gotten home late and I'd just gotten back from a night out with my lover. I was drunk. He was sober. And our tempers flared. We yelled at one another for about three minutes and then never spoke to each other in person again. The last words I had with him were: I'm leaving. It's in the lawyer's hands now. His to me were: Fine. Try to come back and pickup your stuff while I'm at work, because I don't want to see you anymore," Delila's tears flowed heavily as she recalled that night, while Tricia felt that she'd peered beyond the obstruction in Delila's psyche to see what it was on the other side.
Tricia's phone began ringing, prompting them both to stand.
"Tricia speaking," the Inpector answered the phone.
"Good day Inspector, James here. We've got some news for you. Are you good to speak for a moment?" asked James.
"Sure," Tricia held her hand over her phone.
"Delila, we're done here. Thank you for your time and we'll be in touch. Please feel free to call us if you recall any details or anything that stands out to you that you feel might assist us in our investigation," Tricia told Delila.
"Please, let yourselves out. And for the sake of my sanity please don't come back..." Delila requested of them.
"Thank you for your time," Tricia said and quickly made her way to the front door and onto the front veranda.
Behind her, Halmand had closed the door and was following her down to the car.
"So what have got for me James," Tricia said aloud as they got into the car.
"I've got some fingerprints and some genetic evidence, but you're not going to like this..." James told Tricia.
"Don't play coy James. I'm an adult here. I can take it," Tricia asserted her seniority to James.
"We've got prints and other evidence indicating to us that after a search through the local RCMP databases, they came up negative. However, we immediately opted for a search on Interpol's dataset and came up with two matches, but its complicated. You see, one of the files is locked, requiring a level 1 access which is the highest. The second belongs to an American. A woman listed as having taken part in numerous insurgent actions as a mercenary during the later half of the 1990s. She's listed as being wanted in three countries, all three however lack extradition treaties with Canada," James explained to Tricia.
"Enough with the drama. Send both file numbers to our car's terminal. I'll take it from there..." Tricia had barely finished when James continued.
"Well you're definitely going to be speaking with the state department because both of these targets are international and both are women," James stated as Tricia waited for the file numbers to arrive in their car's mail queue.
"Policy is that we call the state department after we've apprehended the suspects, not before, but thank you for the advice. You're a great Forensic Scientist, but a lousy Inspector. Call us if anything new comes up," Tricia hung up the phone and immediately tended to the file numbers in the mail queue.
"What'd they find?" asked Halmand.
"A rabbit hole, from the sounds of it," Tricia quickly entered her clearance code with the car's built-in keyboard.
"We're looking up a level 1?" Halmand confirmed.
"I can't believe this. We dropped her off at that reception party a few weeks ago!" Tricia remarked as they eyed Linda's face on the computer screen.
"Linda's fingerprints?" confirmed Halmand.
"Not just her's but her's as well..." Tricia turned the screen to better face Halmand.
"Linda Delmore and Dina Shalhevet are our suspects? They're both internationals, not to mention one of them works for the company... that company," Halmand explained.
"Murder case on our soil and we've got a job to do. Call intelligence and get a current twenty on our suspects, assuming they're traveling with their own passports," Tricia ordered Halmand, who immediately called the National Intelligence Unit to gather the information Tricia had requested.
"One thing's for sure. They got DNA evidence. You know what that means?" Tricia added, to underline the severity of the situation.
"Deoxyribonucleic acid, or so I thought?" asked Halmand, looking to Tricia inquisitively.
"Not quite. It means: Definitely Needs Alibi, and they're definitely going to need an alibi..." Tricia responded as they put the car in gear in the direction of the nearest highway.
Con Fusion
Dina and Linda stepped first through the automatic front lobby doors and through into the foyer, Stanton not far behind them.
The lobby itself was part of the office complex and had been built into a self contained building within the hangar, complete with its own heating, cooling, ventilation and sprinkler system. It was intended as the administration center for the facility and as a public relations tarting point from which Enertrinsic could greet its guests
They arrived at the front reception and were directed to the Corporate Tours Group, which was basically the high level sales aparatus for the Trifuse Fusion Reactor System. They offered two tours: the first one was a virtual tour of the facility, accomplished through the technologies of Virtual and Augmented Reality, either one would suffice though the tour experience itself for each was vastly different. Enertrinsic's customer base was almost entirely composed of the Governments of countries throughout the world, big and small and every economic size between.
Those customers of course had their own engineering expertise and as such, had the resources for technologies like advanced industrial and military grade VR and AR, all of which was connected to the wide area network of the internet by one means or another. Most companies offering modern industrialization technology products to the rest of the globe had setup their own similar tours of their product base, so VR and AR was not out of the ordinary, especially when one was considering spending billions of dollars on reactor complexes that would provide clean power to their entire population.
What Enertrinsic and many other similar industrialization firms had found, was that VR and AR was frequently used as a first step in evaluating large scale industrialization and architectual technology. Applicability and feasibility had to be evaluated, and those tour technologies provided a robust means as a low cost first step, when compared to the cost of transporting an entire team of consultants to the company site to evaluate the applicability of the technology for their specific purposes. A lot of time and research goes into an expenditure of billions.
Their VR and AR tours were often used every single day by the various Governments from around the world, and even prevented Governments whose standing treaties or lack thereof prevented the sale or use of Enertrinsic industrial scale technology by way of advanced region locking, which could even detect the use of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) or IP Address spoofing to obscure a connection's real point of presence.
Another positive side effect of the VR/AR tours was that they had easily adapted the tours to allow schools (from the approved regions) to use scaled down versions of the industrial tour as a source of eduation, and this was scaled by grade for students starting from a grade three level and up. This of course had endeared them to those who participated in the in-person corporate tours, many of whom had their own children, and this would compound the likelihood of a purchase. Marketing was a vast area of means by which a company could attract customers, but public relations that endeared the company to the customer was the most effective of all. However, it also entailed the greatest corporate responsibility to those it had endeared, which was something that Walton Norler had founded in stone with his Mandate Of Corporate Responsibility at Tynan And Associates during his tenure as CEO, but that's another story.
Enertrinsic's tour groups were the front door to their sales and as Dina, Linda and Stanton approached the Corporate Tours meet and greet, it became clear that they entirely understood that formula.
An attractive lady in her late thirties in business attire approached the trio with an ear to ear smile.
"Good afternoon! You're here for the corporate tour I take it?" she asked them.
"That we are... Nancy," Linda responded, reading Nancy's name tag shortly before arriving at the need for it.
"If you could just tell me your names, I'll give you your ID and security tag. Just a reminder that you don't want to lose these, unless you enjoy being chased by robot security dogs with tazers for ears," Nancy somehow managed to make the notion sound somehow pleasant.
"I think I'll pass on the tazer armed security robot dogs. I'm Linda Delmore plus one guest consultant," Linda provided her name and introduced Stanton as her consultant, which drew a possessive smirk from Dina.
"Here you go Linda. I'd suggest that you put this on right away and make sure that it's securely fastened to your blouse. Woof woof!" Nancy handed Linda her security tag, emulating the sound of a robot dog at the end of her sentence.
Linda was not amused, but it did draw a smile from Dina.
"I'm Dina Shalhevet, plus one guest consultant..." Dina took possession of Stanton, Linda already figuring out how she could secretly remove Dina's security tag without her knowing.
"Here you go Dina. Don't lose it unless..." Nancy began before Dina cut her off.
"...I won't! Trust me!" Dina said quickly.
"And you my burly friend are?" asked Nancy of Stanton, drawing the attention of both Dina and Linda.
"Alex. Alex Burman, plus two guest consultants whom you've already met," Stanton responded, giving an unused name from his list of official aliases.
"Here you go Alex. Keep this on or..." she began.
"I don't suppose an stainless steel bone would throw them off our scent?" he came back before she could finish.
"That's a good question. I'll have to ask the engineers the answer to that one," Nancy joked as Dina and Linda recovered.
With their ID tags now firmly on their tops, the three of them joined the rest of the corporate tour group.
There were several others, most of them in full business attire themselves and from a variety of different places around the world. There were another trio, all from Southeast Asia, one woman and two men whose language Linda recognized as Japanese, from the Tokyo prefecture. There was a Sheik, who spoke Arabic with his two consultants, one of whom was definitely acting as personal security. Dina knew their dialect to originate from United Arab Emirates. There was another well dressed man in business attire, with a younger female assistant, both of whom Stanton recognized as speaking German, but definitely with a Swiss dialect, likely from the Frauenfeld region just outside of Zürich. Between the three of them, Dina, Linda and Stanton, they were able to quickly find their place in the meet and greet area before the corporate tour began.
Dina and Linda, both being a social butterflies quickly made the rounds, introducing themselves to the other parties as Stanton followed, staying somewhat in the background and letting them do their thing. They were as much diplomats as they were operatives, and quickly took up the responsibility of being as such.
Meanwhile, the personal security of the Sheik had made his way inconspicuously over to stand near Stanton. The Sheik's security was much larger than Stanton, who knew much of their security paradigm to be based upon ideas that promoted a show of force rather than discretion.
[We're being watched. Closely.] "Nahn nuraqibu. Bieinayatin," the personal security specialist spoke quietly to Stanton, trying not to draw any attention.
Stanton had a bit of familiarity with the Arabic language, enough so to understand what the man had said to him.
"I hadn't noticed," Stanton responded.
"There, you see? Those three cameras are all on an automated sweep. Left to right like a pendulum. However, those two are manually following us..." he replied to Stanton, who interjected quietly.
"...or they're digitally targeted to one of us. A specific person through a visual biometric signature," Stanton surmised.
"Maybe. If you notice anything of the like, I share with you. Could you please share?" the personal security asked him.
"That you did. Fair enough. I'll do what I can," Stanton responded honestly and ambiguously enough so as to give himself leeway and a choice to do the right thing in the right situation.
In some cases, working as an operative was as simple as the dynamics of a fair trade, though sometimes a gift could be an intentional debt more than it was a favour. Stanton would have to play secret diplomat with this man to know for sure.
"You can call me Asad," the personal security specialist introduced himself.
"Alex will work with me," Stanton replied.
Asad slowly made his way back to the Sheik's side, while Stanton checked the rest of the area for any other unusual activity. That's when he noticed that one of the robot security dogs that Nancy had referred to was trained in the direction of Dina and Linda.
Stanton walked calmly to a point where he interposed himself between the robot dog's camera, and Dina and Linda. The robot dog did nothing for a moment, but then suddenly came to life, quickly side stepping several feet to keep its quarry in view.
Stanton began whistling a cheerful tune and quite skillfully, getting Asad's attention. When he was certain that Asad was looking his way, he gestured in the direction of the robot dog. Asad nodded once to Stanton, and then gestured himself to another one of the robot dogs, who was similarly fixed on them.
Stanton immediately walked over to Dina first, waiting for a suitable opening to address her.
"Dina, sorry to interrupt. We need to speak. Now," Stanton urged her, then stepping over to Linda.
[Have you been to Tokyo prefecture?] "Tōkyōto ni itta koto ga arimasu ka?" asked one of the Japanese representatives from Tokyo of Linda.
[Not quite that far east yet. I have been to Hanoi however. I'd love to see Tokyo in person, especially in the spring.] "Mada soko made azuma ni wa itte imasen. Demo Hanoi ni wa okonatta koto ga arimasu. Tokuni haru ni Tōkyō o jissai ni mite mitaidesu." Linda responded, speaking Japanese surprisingly well for someone who'd never been.
[I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have need of my friend Linda, please.] "Jama shite mōshiwakenai nodesuga, yūjin no Rinda ga hitsuyōna ndesu." Stanton interrupted.
The Japanese representatives smiled, bowing in response and very joyed by Linda's and Stanton's diplomatic accuity.
When Dina and Linda were a distance away, Stanton explained the situation to them.
"We're being watched very closely. It turns out that Nancy was trying to secretly tell us something. Asad too, the Sheik's security specialist. He was kind enough to point out the cameras, two of them are algorithmically fixated on you two. I then noticed that two of the robot dogs are also trained on you," Stanton told them, careful to keep his mouth out of the view of any of the cameras.
"That's strange... Why would we be the center of attention when as far as they're concerned we're here to evaluate buying a Fusion reactor for our respective countries?" asked Linda of the two of them.
"This is definitely a security concern and one our consultant is more likely qualified to deal with," Dina suggested.
"I'm letting the two of you know that something is amiss, unless there's something that you two aren't telling me," Stanton tried the direct approach.
"There's nothing to tell except that we're obviously being stalked by strange robot security dogs..." Dina looked to Linda, who then both looked back to Stanton.
Stanton however wasn't satisfied and something simply wasn't adding up.
...
Tricia and Halmand stood outside of a hotel room on the eighteenth floor of the Toronto Sheraton Center. Tricia had the master keycard for the hotel, the desk manager stood a few meters away behind the cover of a large ice making machine, waiting for them to finish.
Halmand had his service pistol in hand and was stacked on the other side of the door, awaiting entry.
Tricia nodded to him from the opposite side, and he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialled the number the desk manager had given him. Inside the hotel room, the phone began to ring rather loudly.
As it started ringing, Halmand immediately pocketed his phone and Tricia quietly unlocked the door simultaneously. Halmand then opened it slowly and entered, his service pistol in front of him as he searched his path and corners. Tricia followed closely, by his side covering his right flank as they got to the bathroom door.
Halmand checked left, stepping into the bathroom, ensuring it was clear. He then signalled Tricia, who proceeded taking point this time as the phone continued to ring.
She rounded the final corner into the main living space and room of the hotel residence. She checked ahead and then a sharp left, finding it to be unoccupied.
"Clear. She's not here..." Tricia said to Halmand, who holstered his service pistol much like she had already.
Halmand walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver and then hung it up again, and the phone immediately stopped ringing.
"She didn't call anyone from her own cellphone..." Halmand told Tricia.
"I know. Just a second... I've got an idea," Tricia stepped over to the phone and hit redial.
A number was quickly dialled and then it began ringing on the other end.
"City Taxi And Luxury Transport. Pam speaking, how may I help you?" a voice answered.
"Hi Pam. My roommate left an hour ago without giving me directions to where I was supposed to meet her. Perhaps you could tell me what the destination was for this number, the number I'm calling from?" Tricia asked, looking to Stanton and crossing her fingers.
"Sure, I can help with that. Just let me look it up here... and... her destination was the Enertrinsic Manufacturing Center at Steeles Avenue and Yonge Street. Would you like me to send a car to your location to pick you up?" asked Pam.
"No thank you Pam, you've already been an immense help. You have a great afternoon," Tricia bid Pam goodbye and hung up the phone.
"You got it?" Halmand asked her.
"Enertrinsic. Up at Steeles Avenue and Yonge. If we leave now we'll be there in about thirty minutes..." Tricia said as she quickly headed towards the hotel room door.
"That's a big place. She's not going to be easy to find here there," Halmand reminded Tricia.
"That's why you're going to be calling them to find out which department she's visiting while I drive," Tricia said as Halmand closed the door behind both of them.
As they passed the desk manager, Tricia handed her the master keycard for the hotel.
"Thank you very much for your cooperation. We left the room exactly like it was. Thanks again," Tricia headed for the elevators after bidding the desk manager farewell.
A few minutes later and they were back in their unmarked car and on their way north to Steeles Avenue and Yonge Street: The Enertrinsic Manufacturing Facility.
Solutions And Problems
In the mid-afternoon, Gracie's hand had wandered once again to the calendar on her desk, where she began another masterpiece of doodle art on another date a few weeks into the future from where she'd rendered another such fine work of art for her birthday a week and a half earlier.
As she kept her mind busy during the mid-afternoon doldrums, the reception phone at Vector Engine Dynamics rang.
"Vector Engine Dynamics, Gracie speaking, how may I assist you," Gracie answered, knowing that the caller had already navigated the voice mail system to arrive at the reception phone line.
"Well hello Gracie. How are you today?" a man with a deep, raspy voice greeted her in a friendly manner, seemingly hiding something in a practiced manner.
"Mr. Berman? What a pleasant surprise. How can I help you?" asked Gracie, already eager to transfer the call to another associate.
"I was wondering if maybe you couldn't help me with something. You see, I have a question and that is, who visited your offices earlier this morning?" asked Mr. Berman, his voice wavering slightly.
"It was a pretty quiet morning actually. There were a few impromptu meetings but that's about it," Gracie responded, not wanting to get involved.
"Oh my dear Gracie. Such a shame. I have it on good authority that somebody visited your offices this morning. A man and a woman in their mid to late thirties? Does that ring a bell?" Mr. Berman pushed her a little.
"Oh, yes. I think that was a random sales call. I think they spoke with someone with purchasing authority and then left," Gracie responded, now too frazzled to continue her masterpiece.
"Oh dear Gracie. You mean you can't recall any more for a staunch ally of Vector Engine Dynamics like myself?" asked Mr. Berman, leaning back in his own chair.
"There's nothing to tell. Besides, I thought I told you that I don't want to be involved in this..." Gracie responded.
"Involved in what? The strategic business alliance of our two companies? Why Gracie, you're an essential part of their team, and as our ally, that makes you a part of our team as well. Now why don't you start playing like a team player and tell me what you know?" Mr. Berman pushed her harder this time.
"Mr. Berman, I know that I don't want you to call into question my role or my job. I have a responsibility to my company here as receptionist and I'm going to live up to that responsibility. Now I can transfer you to Frederick Milton who is more capable of handling calls like yours or I can bid you a good day, the choice is yours," Gracie stood up to the discretely and expertly menacing man, suddenly appreciating Frederick Milton and having him on their team.
"Now Gracie, there's no need to get flustered. I was just trying to keep up with the facts, because as you know, if I'm going to protect you, all of you, I need to be in the know," Mr. Berman responded.
"That's an issue you should take up with Frederick... would you like me to transfer you?" asked Gracie, eager to toss him into the shark pit.
"Now, now, that's quite alright. You have yourself a good... safe day, Gracie. You hear?" Mr. Berman said to her in an ever so menacing tone.
"Goodbye Mr. Berman," Gracie terminated the call.
...
Mr. Berman turned around his chair and stood, donning his suit jacket and readying himself for an errand.
"Where are you going? We're not done here," asked the man who'd been sitting across his desk from him.
"I'm a problem solver, so I'm going to go out and solve some problems. I mean that's why you pay me," Mr. Berman asserted to the man on the other side of his desk.
"No! I pay you so that we don't acquire problems," the man responded.
"And when you do, I suppose its you that's going to solve them, is it?" asked Mr. Berman, overshadowing the man across from him.
There was a moment of silence, but it was only one of the two men who'd become uncomfortable.
"If they get past you, then its up to you to solve them," the man confronted Mr. Berman.
"In this life, I have but two choices. I can be the solution, or I can be the problem. I'd prefer to be the solution. Don't force me to have to be the problem. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some problems to solve. Let yourself out. Oh, wanna hear a story?" Mr. Berman asked the man.
"We don't have time for this!" the man responded nervously.
"...A parking ticket leads to a phone call, leads to a tow truck, leads to a compounded vehicle, leads to a paper trail that puts you here to visit me on this date at this time. Next time, don't park in the tow away zone," Mr. Berman then donned a pair of thin latex fire resistant powderless gloves and then opened his jacket and pulled a 9mm handgun from his shoulder holster and placed it on the desk.
The man sitting across from him was about to get up.
"Wait! I haven't told you the rest of my story! There was a time I thought that the man I trained would be working with your company. Working with you like I am right now. Doing exactly what I do for you, but unfortunately, he became a problem and the one thing you never do as a problem solver is become the problem. His life from that point on took a very different path than did mine..." Mr. Berman opened his right desk drawer and pulled from it, a stack of documents atop which was a single photo.
"He's long gone... and that is precisely why I'm the one working with you today. Now don't make the mistake of becoming the problem, because I do so ever like working with you. It'd be a shame to have to solve you," Mr. Berman took a moment to examine the photo, which in fact was a picture of Greg Warley in his early twenties.
Mr. Berman put the photo back on top of the stack of papers, and then unlocked another desk drawer and pulled a second similar firearm from the locked drawer, along with a tungsten carbide drill bit.
He put the one from his shoulder holster into the drawer and locked it again, effectively switching the guns. He then pocketed the drill bit after which he began feeding the documents from his desk into a paper shredder.
As he did that and the shredder hungrily ate the documents, the man who'd been sitting across from him checked the window and saw that his car was in fact being towed. A large husky tow truck driver was prepping the sedan as he watched from the window.
"Damn you! How are we going to fix that!" the man turned around and ran out of the office, heading for the nearby elevator in the lowrise office building.
By that time, Mr. Berman had replaced the empty shoulder holster with the 9mm he'd taken from the drawer, making sure that it was loaded and that there was a round chambered and ready to fire. He then placed the photograph of Greg Warley into the shredder and watched as the machine quickly consumed it and the last photographic evidence of Greg Warley's existence. Mr. Berman then removed the shredder's hood from the bin and tied the bag of shredded documents closed. He checked the office one last time, for he'd no longer be using it from that point forward and then when he was satisfied he'd thoroughly cleaned it, he left through the office door and locked it, taking the bag off shredded documents with him.
"Will you hurry up! That guy's going to tow my car!" the man urged Mr. Berman from the elevator.
"I guess that's another problem I'm going to have to solve..." Mr. Berman said as he left the office and headed for elevator.
Toured Fusion
"As you've seen thus far, the process is accomplished via state of the art Programmable Logic Controller technology, and yet we still employ a vast number of human workers in our assembly plant who use technology as the tool it was intended to be," Mr. Verant led the corporate tour group through the plant, keeping them in the zone of safety as they watched the assembly of the various parts of the Trifuse Fusion Reactor.
"Is it legit?" asked Dina of Stanton, who carefully measured every part with his eyes, evaluating the feasibility of what he saw being produced actually operating as one cohesive machine.
"Seems to be. The manufacturing process anyway. Hard to say if it would all work when assembled though. It's missing one important..." Stanton was cut off partway by Mr. Verant.
"If you'd direct your attention to this screen for a moment, I'd like to introduce you to a guest that we hired to explain how our fusion reactors work, pre-recorded of course. Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Bryce Maxwell," Mr. Verant gestured and the recognition system detected his hand motion and began playback of Bryce's educational lecture on how fusion reactors operate.
"Welcome to the part of this tour I'm sure you all have been waiting for. I'm Bryce Maxwell and I'm going to give you a quick education on the wonderful topic of fusion. Fusion is something that is a part of our daily lives and has been a part of Earth's four point five billion year history right from its birth from the scattered debris leftover from the formation of our home star Sol, right until this very moment. You see, Sol is made up almost entirely of the element hydrogen. In fact, there's so much hydrogen that makes up the mass of the Sun that its gravity pulls it all closer together, until its packed so tightly together in the center that atoms of hydrogen begin fusing together, to become helium. This is the process that powers our Sun and almost everything on Earth, from the smallest of microbial lifeforms to the biggest of trees whose leaves capture and havest all of that energy to survive. Fusion powers the vast majority of the weather systems on the planet and of course is responsible for the Aurora Borealis and Northern Lights," Bryce explained the physics of the Sun as an animated representation played out behind him to which he often referred.
"This section of the manufacturing plant is where the most important part of the reactor is fabricated, the Superconducting Magnet System. This part of the fusion reactor makes up the spherical shell which houses the reaction chamber, the high pressure container within the reactor where fusion actually takes place. This is actually very similar to the core of the Sun, in both shape and the kinds of pressures and temperatures that the instrument is managing. In order for fusion to occur, fuel in the form of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of the element hydrogen, are fed into the system via special condenser lines, magnetized compound alloy pipes whose diameter grows smaller and smaller as they approach the core's center, until finally the fuel is fed highly compressed into the core..." Bryce paused, pointing to the animation behind him.
"When it gets to this point, its highly compressed, but far from the kind of pressure we need in order for fusion to occur. For that, we need a much higher pressure and temperature. Actually, if you recall your high school physics class, pressure is temperature, and density of matter. When it reaches this critical threshold of pressure, the deuterium and the tritium will be so compressed that the force of pressure will overcome the weak and strong atomic forces keeping the atom together and fuse them, hence the term fusion. When this happens, it produces enormous amounts of energy, seventeen point six million electron volts, which is a lot, but not all by its lonesome," Bryce paused as an animation of a deuterium atom and a tritium atom were pushed so tightly together in a packed subway car, that they suddenly fused to become helium, which in animated form appeared like a bit of each.
The animation then went on with the subway car slowly coming to a stop and running out of energy because one fused hydrogen isotope pair simply wasn't enough to power the entire subway.
"Also, it produces no harmful exhaust except helium, which is harmless and can be harvested for other purposes like party balloons or making your voice funny. So, in essence, we need a lot of fusion to produce a lot of power. We want fusion to reach a critical mass, where it is triggered as a chain reaction, like when you're popping popcorn. When you hear the first kernal pop, that's usually the sign that your popcorn maker has reached critical temperature, and all the other kernals eventually pop as well in quick and chaotic succession as a result of the the temperature and their interaction with each other. With fusion, its very similar, but instead of popcorn we're working with fusing atoms together to create a new element from the fuel elements. In this case, we're fusing deuterium and tritium together. Deuterium and Tritium are isotopes of hydrogen which is the most abundant element in the universe and powers just about every star we've ever seen. We won't be running out of fuel for the reactor anytime soon as you can imagine..." Bryce said, drawing a small dry laughter from his audience for which he gave pause.
"Once the reactor reaches its critical mass, fusion is triggered as a chain reaction, with all of the deuterium and tritium quickly pairing up as they're compressed further and further, until the atomic forces binding their electrons in place is no longer strong enough to overcome the force of pressure. Thanks to what we know about Quantum Physics as well, these forces allow for certain geometries to be realized as this pressure increases, like marbles filling in the gaps as they're pushed tighter and tighter together, until the deuterium and tritium atoms, all of them are organized in such a way that fusion begins occuring very rapidly, almost as rapidly as the fuel is fed into the reaction chamber. When this critical mass is reached, the reactor is said to be in a continuous fusion cycle, and will continue as long as the fuel is fed into the reaction chamber and this delicate balance of pressure and magnetic field shape is maintained, while the helium is vented through a one way micro-valve exhaust port," Bryce showed them the animated exhaust, which looked like the exhaust from a hotrod, which began spewing out helium balloons which floated off into the air as the fusion reactor ran.
"This brings us to the point where you might be asking yourself, if there's no massive gravity to compress the deuterium and tritium, what's creating all the presure for fusion to occur? The Superconducting Magnet System is a system of artificial magnets composed of a new superconducting composite that is wound just like copper around specially shaped insulators. By the number of times we wrap each of these parts, we know the total capacitance possible when a electrical current is run through the electromagnet. From that value, we know the field strength of the magnetic field. Because the Superconducting Magnet System is shaped fractally, that is, made up of larger magnets and ever smaller copies of that same magnet, we can direct with great precision and force, the magnetic field in the reaction chamber. In fact, its so quick and precise, that a series of specially crafted computers run software that is designed maintain an even pressure according to the Quantum geometry yielded by the current pressure compressing the fuel. This software carefully increases the pressure by altering the magnetic field in the exact right shape to trigger and maintain fusion," Bryce, stepped aside and the entire cutaway animation of the fusion reactor could be seen as it produced enormous amounts of power, running many cities from one such reactor.
"Well, I hope you all enjoyed this presentation and that you've come to understand how fusion could provide a cleaner and safer tomorrow. I'm Bryce Maxwell, Thanks for stopping by," Bryce waved as the screen faded to black.
There was a small applause again, and then the tour continued. As they followed Mr. Verant through the rest of the manufactory, Dina, Linda and Stanton had a mini-conference.
"So what did you think?" asked Dina once again.
"Its hard to say. It looks good in theory, but as any engineer will tell, its a long journey between theory and practical," Stanton said to them.
"So its not a bait and switch?" asked Linda.
"What? You mean like a sold as a fusion reactor, but inside its a fission reactor? No. Definitely not. That system of electromagnets is way beyond anything I've ever seen. It would definitely need a specialized controller, especially if they're talking about creating a compressed bubble using magnetic forces alone. My guess is that the key to their reactor is this magnet system. This is the key to their ability to create a sustained fusion reaction," Stanton explained to them.
"No apparent way to weaponize it either?" asked Linda of Stanton.
"Short of detonating the reaction chamber, no but that would be a pretty crude dirty bomb and not a nuclear weapon. The resulting explosion would be only pressure based. No further fusion would take place and the fusion occurring inside of the chamber would immediately cease, mind you, it would be one hell of an explosion," Stanton thought about it carefully.
Dina and Linda looked to each other as if something had been verified that they'd discussed earlier and this fact caught Stanton's eye.
"Would you two mind telling me what's going on here?" asked Stanton of Dina and Lina.
"Nothing. We're just trying to get our heads around this, that's all," Linda spoke up quickly.
"I don't think so. I think you two are hiding something..." Stanton accused them.
At the moment he finished his statement, a message came over the loudspeakers in the plant.
"Would Dina Shalhevet and Linda Delmore please come to the front foyer immediately," a voice requested the presence of the two women, who looked to each other and then to Stanton.
"...if you're lost, we can have a couple of security dogs lead you there..." Mr. Verant offered.
"Its alright. We're fine. We'll follow the yellow line. That's the one that goes back to the foyer, isn't it?" asked Dina of Mr. Verant.
"At least you were paying attention. You can catch up once you're done," Mr. Verant gestured in the direction of the yellow dotted line that went back to the front foyer.
The three of them began their walk back to the front foyer when they noticed that the same two security robot dogs fell in with them, one of them behind and the other leading them.
"That's just a little bit too creepy," Linda said as she watched the one ahead of them and then looked back to the one behind them, its camera turning to take in her face, the tazers precariously aimed at her.
"Agreed. Maybe we'll deal with that directly with management when we get to the front," Stanton suggested.
Dina and Linda looked to one another once again, and then nodded.
"Stanton, there's something we've been meaning to tell you... I'll let Dina tell you since you're closer," Linda finally opened up for the two of them.
Dina's And Linda's Disclosure
Dina, Linda and Stanton followed the yellow dotted line through the Enertrinsic manufactory for the Trifuse Fusion Reactor. Behind them a robotic security dog followed, keeping its targeting camera focused on its two subjects: Dina and Linda.
In front of them, another robotic security dog led the way, its posterior camera maintaining vigil upon them from ahead. Dina looked nervously to the seemingly innocent robotic dog, knowing full well that anthropomorphizing such a device was foolhardy indeed. She knew that in a security command center somewhere in the building or even several kilometers away, a team of security station operators were likely peering through this innocent dog's cameras, watching them closely as they proceeded.
Linda's mind had been elsewhere, for her concerns were more founded in the current legal politics of the situation rather than the immediacy of the concern of robotic spy camera touting dogs (with tazer-guns for ears).
Stanton meanwhile kept his pace as he watched for a specific line that extended away from the yellow dotted line. When he spied the coloured line for which he was looking, he quickly grabbed hold of Dina and Linda, pulling them in that direction.
"A detour?" asked Linda.
"Not an escape...?" Dina peered back at the dogs, who'd both turned and began following them in pursuit.
"Neither. We need to talk and we need some cover to do so..." Stanton assured them as they followed him into the tool machining area.
When they passed through the warehouse doors into the tooling section, the difference in noise grew from tolerable to very loud. Too loud in fact for advanced audio processing hardware to filter the noise and extract the human voice.
Stanton then leaned in towards Dina and Linda.
"The dogs would have heard us if we'd spoken out there. They won't hear us in here, but we're going to have to get close to speak," Stanton told both Dina and Lina.
"Good idea. Where should we start...?" Dina said, looking in the direction of the approaching robotic dogs.
"Don't look at them or any camera if you can. Facial motion recognition could reconstruct what you say based upon the movement of your lips and jaw. Now what was it that you were trying to tell me?" asked Stanton, interposing himself between the robotic dogs and the women, giving their cameras his back.
"Six months ago, we were contacted by an employee from a local engineering firm who were working with Enertrinsic on the final phases of stress testing of the fusion reactor," Dina began.
"Actually, the company... that company...the one I work for... was contacted by intelligence analysts who'd received intelligence from your analysts operating under counterinsurgency operations tasking regarding a threat involving the distribution of a particular fusion reactor..." Linda smirked at Dina momentarily, Dina retreating slightly.
"Alright. So the company I work for intercepted their intelligence... sorry. That happens in our business. The actual tip came from an employee of a company called Vector Engine Dynamics..." Dina began.
"So my company intercepted the same intel from her company and made arrangements for us to speak and meet in person, with this person from Vector Engine Dynamics..." Linda continued until she was interrupted by Dina.
"And so during their meeting, which was setup to look like a dinner date, I crashed their dinner and it turned into a dîner a trois... so to speak," Dina's interruption was cut off again by Linda.
"...Mr. W, the man who provided us with this intelligence, explained to us that the reactor program was being used as a channel through which to provide advanced equipment to facilitate the acceleration of..." Linda was once again interrupted by Dina.
"...nuclear armament programs throughout the Middle East... hence the interest of my company. Nudge nudge wink wink..." Dina explained.
"...and that this same program targeted several other third world economies in hopes of equipping them with tactical field nuclear weapons," Linda finished.
"We lost contact with Mr. W. two days ago. It turns out that he... died... suddenly... under questionable circumstances," Dina explained to Stanton.
"A professional hit," Stanton agreed.
"However, the same night that he died, was the same night that we paid a visit to his home for a final meeting, in which he was to disclose all of the technical details of the equipment and materials being offered as part of that illicit program. When we got to his place, there was no answer," Linda told Stanton, who considered their revelations very carefully.
"So you did the only thing you could do in such circumstances..." Stanton realized the severity of the situation.
"Yes. We entered his house through questionable means. After we found his body and that we couldn't revive him, we searched high and low for the detailed package he was supposed to provide us..." Dina told him, a look of serious concern on her face.
"...and it wasn't there..." Stanton asserted.
"But it wasn't necessarily taken by the murderer. Mr. W. was a pretty smart guy. An engineer at the top of his game," Linda stated, having spoken in depth with Mr. W. many times up to that point.
"After we vacated the premises, we met and discussed the possibilities. We came to the conclusion that the murderer likely was unable to obtain the package Mr. W. had prepared for us. We believe its hidden somewhere, that only someone like Mr. W. would know. Someone like an engineer. Someone like you," Dina confided in her long time professional peer.
"Thank you for not keeping me in the dark about this, but we have some more pressing problems right now related to self preservation. Like why have you been summoned to the front foyer again with an armed escort?" Stanton asked them to consider hypothetically.
"Only one way to find that out," Linda offered.
"Are you armed?" Stanton asked them.
"Yes," Dina responded.
"Me too," Linda replied.
"PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE FRONT FOYER - YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO COMPLY," the loudspeakers on one of the dogs came to life with a synthetic voice, ordering them to continue their journey to the front foyer.
"Stay back, I'll take point. Those dogs don't seem interested in me, which has even scarier implications for you two. Try not to think about that too much," Stanton told Dina and Linda, who then followed him back to the yellow dotted line.
"We'll try, no thanks to you," Linda responded sarcastically as they made their way back to the front foyer of the Enertrinsic Manufactory.
Justice Has Two Sides
Stanton walked the better part of ten meters ahead of Dina and Linda, who despite the trying circumstances seemed to be keen and on their toes. When Stanton rounded a corner, passing between the transition from one section of the manufactory to another, he observed the doorway into the front foyer across the space, several machines around him whirring as they produced the hi-tech tensile plastic parts of the reactor assembly.
Through the doorway walked a woman and a man, both clad head to toe in business attire, though he could tell right away that they were not business people at all. They were Federal Agents. Mounties most likely.
Without missing a beat, Stanton reached over to a nearby wall and grabbed a hard-hat, quickly donning it as he detoured, straying from the yellow dotted line. Meanwhile, the Mounties continued along it, passing him as they setup an ambush at the same corner he'd just passed.
His ruse worked, for they didn't notice him nor did they regard him as being relevant to the reason for their being on site at Enertrinsic. He continued with his ruse until he was a good distance away in the same space, inspecting one of the Programmable Logic Controllers to make it look good.
...
"Can't be that much further..." Dina remarked to Linda.
"Certainly didn't feel this far when we were taking the tour. Maybe this is the long way...?" Linda replied.
As they followed the lead robotic security dog around the corner, they were confronted by a pair of familiar faces, at least as much to Linda.
"Hands in the air, both of you! No sudden movements!" Tricia yelled at the two women as they rounded the corner.
"Tricia? Halmand?" Linda responded, not quite having raised her hands yet.
"I said raise those hands!!! Now! Both of them!!! Do it!!!" Tricia yelled, somehow finding a little more aggression in herself to back it up.
"Easy..." Linda quickly raised both her hands.
"You know them?" asked Dina.
"Tell your friend here that this isn't playtime!!! No talking between you or to us!" Tricia confirmed that they were in charge.
"What's with these robot dogs?" asked Halmand.
"They're really creeping us out... could you please..." Dina began pleading with Halmand, throwing in a bit of charm.
"I said no talking! Linda Delmore and Dina Shalhevet?" Tricia reaffirmed her authority.
"I'm Linda Delmore, but you already know that. My passport is in my right jacket pocket," Linda responded.
"I'm Dina Shalhevet as you stated. My passport is in my purse," Dina responded.
Both women dared not to look in Stanton's direction.
"Do the honours, would you Inspector?" asked Tricia.
Halmand smirked at Tricia and then walked first over to Linda, frisking her thoroughly from head to toe. He stopped when he found her shoulder holster and relieved her of her nine millimeter pistol.
"Wow. I haven't seen a piece this nice on a suspect for quite some time. Hiding any extra clips?" Halmand remarked, pocketing the weapon.
"Two in a side pocket in my purse," Linda responded.
"Fighting your own little war are you?" asked Halmand.
"Don't encourage her," Tricia told Halmand.
Halmand then searched Dina, finding her pistol in a cleverly designed holster which lay across her lower back on the outside of her blouse.
"A SIG Sauer P226. That's a fine piece of hardware. You won't find these on run of the mill perps. Is it a knock-off? Let's see... whoa, look at that. Its the real deal," Halmand remarked, putting it in his other pocket.
"Just get the ammunition, their purses and their passports, Inspector," Tricia urged him to follow procedure.
"Just trying to stoke things up a bit, in case they want to come clean before interrogation," Halmand explained to Tricia.
"They're professionals. It won't make a difference. Just finish the search so we can inform them of their charges and take them in for processing," Tricia ordered Halmand.
"Whaddaya think? Is it me?" Halmand did as he was ordered, slinging both of their purses over his left shoulder.
"Linda Delmore? Dina Shalhevet? You are formally being charged with murder in the first degree for the contract killing of..." Tricia began the aural process of their arrest while Stanton kept himself busy at the logic controller, paying close attention to the charges and the behaviour of the arresting officers. He then made his way out of the building.
Stanton quickly found one of the shuttles waiting at a nearby terminal and boarded the driver's seat, keeping his newly acquired hard-hat on.
He then drove the shuttle to the part of the massive parking lot where he'd parked his pickup truck, all of which took about seven minutes. By the time ten minutes had passed since he'd left the building, he'd driven his pickup truck around to the front foyer and stopped as he watched Linda and Dina led out of the manufactory in handcuffs.
They were both loaded into the back of Tricia and Halmand's car, who then got in the front and drove towards the exit. Stanton did his best to follow from a distance, trying desperately not to alert the Mounties as to the fact that they were being followed.
"I thought that you two knew me well enough to know that I'd never do something like that..." Linda pleaded with Halmand, trying purposely not to address Tricia.
"That's not what INTERPOL have to say..." Tricia responded.
"I'm not talking about INTERPOL. I'm talking about us. I thought we had a rapport as professionals?" asked Linda.
"Don't compare us to you Linda. We're not of the same stuff. You're a killer..." Tricia challenged Linda.
"Allegedly... This country does operate under an onus system of law does it not?" Linda responded aptly.
"Alright. You're a killer, allegedly. I'll give you that. A professional killer, who kills for money, while my partner and I are professionals that protect the country and our allies whose ideals and sense of justice matches our own as orchestrated by way of treaty. You and I, we're not cut from the same bough," Tricia responded, firmly resolute on her stance and ideals.
"Just such a treaty as you have with my country, correct?" Linda pressed the issue.
"Two way legal extradition by way of ruling of a Justice of the Peace? Correct," Tricia confirmed.
"Then listen to what I'm saying to you because there is more at stake than you know, and time is of the essence," Linda once again pleaded with Tricia.
There was a pause, and Halmand looked to Tricia, who momentarily returned his glance before returning her attention to her driving.
"If there's anything of that nature at the level of national security connected to your case, we'll look into that when we've processed the two of you. I'm sure that your respective governments will contact our Global Affairs department, and we'll take it from there. Not before. Now I don't want to hear another word about this, do you understand?" Tricia asserted herself firmly.
"Understood, but for the record, not agreed," Linda replied.
"I'll second that," Dina added.
"Not to be an alarmist or anything, but I think that we're being followed," Halmand told Tricia, who checked her center mirror.
"I had the same suspicion. Let me check it out," Tricia said, quickly making left hand turn onto Centre Avenue.
She then slowed the car and kept a close eye on her mirror.
The same black pickup truck that she'd seen earlier then turned to follow them.
Tricia then pulled the car over to the side of the road.
"I want the two of you in the back to get down," Tricia ordered her detainees.
"More humiliation?" Linda responded.
"Just do it!" Tricia ordered them.
...
As Stanton turned the corner onto Centre Avenue, he suddenly realized that he'd been made.
"Damn!" he said, careful not to look at their car as he passed.
Instead, he simply kept driving as if he intended to make the turn, keeping his eyes on them in the rearview mirror as he passed.
When he was a hundred meters past them, the Mounties' car did a U-turn and returned to Yonge Street, where it waited at the intersection for an opening to make a left turn.
Stanton continued driving away from them, waiting until he'd put a considerable distance between them and himself before turning around again to pursue them.
He couldn't allow himself to be spotted again.
...
Tricia and Halmand sat at a Centre Avenue intersection waiting for an opening to make their turn onto Yonge Street when Halmand noticed that the women in back were still huddled down.
"You can get up now. The coast is clear..." Halmand said as Tricia's opening in traffic appeared.
She accelerated the car making the left turn most of the way when something slammed into their car from the right hand side.
Tricia's head hit the side window, stunning her into a stupor as their car slid for ten meters before coming to a stop. Halmand's side of the car was bent inward, some of the metal pressing through the interior of the car, but that was the least of their worries.
The van that had impacted them (a heavily crafted crash bar across the front) now pulled up beside the car and several men poured out of the back, each armed with 9mm submachine guns and body armour and balaclavas to cover their faces.
"Get them out of there. The driver's side. Don't forget our ever so pretty prizes in the back," ordered one of the men.
One of the men pulled a crowbar from his gear and used it to pry the front door open. He then grabbed Tricia and dragged her over to the van, throwing her into the back without any apparent concern for her well being. They did the same thing with Halmand, reaching across the driver's seat and pulling him over it barely conscious and then into the back of the van.
Finally, one the man who'd given the orders hit a button on the dash of the car, and the back doors unlocked. Linda was out and on her feet, attempting to run but was tackled by one of the men. Dina on the other hand feigned being stunned, and when they grabbed her and got her onto her feet, she kicked one of the men squarely between the legs, then elbowing another before the third man managed to club her with the armstock of his SMG.
They dragged Linda and Dina into the back of the van and then piled in, speeding away northward back up to Steeles Avenue.
...
When Stanton saw from a distance that a collision had occurred, he floored his truck, driving as fast as he could for the intersection but by the time he'd arrived, the van was already gone and speeding north.
He once again put the gas pedal to the metal, speeding as quickly as the vehicle would accelerate in pursuit of the van, though it was already half a kilometer ahead of him.
The Farm
Stanton had been following the van for the better part of forty minutes as it proceeded north along Yonge Street, though he'd kept a sizeable distance between the two. They were in the boonies now, mostly farmland and the occasional fishing hole were the only sights to be had. Much of the land was developed up this far, and there were many amenities, but the further they crept north, the more scarce that sentiment was.
Stanton was roused from his thoughts when the van suddenly turned left nearly a kilometer ahead of him. He checked his GPS unit and quickly figured out the street as being Line 9, which he turned onto once he'd arrived at the intersection. When he was facing west, he once again found the van, the late afternoon sun still high in in the sky and beating down on both drivers.
They continued in this direction for about fifteen minutes and then the van once again turned, but this time right to resume traveling north for a short stint. By the time Stanton had followed with his own right turn, he was just in time to see the van turning left again, onto Line 10.
After Stanton had followed around the same corner, some two minutes later, he spied the van turning into what he assumed to be a long driveway. Stanton hit a button on his touchscreen panel and the phone began dialing. It rang twice, and after the second ring, there was a single beep.
"Stanton, Bradley Alexander, Unit 54109621EF. Haven't heard from you in a while, and I'm in a bit of a situation. Refer to my GPS location, where I'll be parked for some time while I reconnoiter the situation. 54109621EF out," Stanton spoke and the answering service recorded his message.
Along both sides of Line 10, ran dense pockets of deciduous trees of various species, providing coverage for what lay on the property beyond. When Stanton was a hundred meters away from the driveway where he'd seen the van turn, he pulled off of the road in the opposite direction, right into the brush. He quickly drove between a group of trees and behind a bush that effectively concealed his truck from the road and any passsersby.
He then got out of the truck and immediately went to his utility box at the front of the flat bed and opened it, retrieving several devices. The first was his specialized multimeter, which was akin to an Android phone, having everything but the phone. The second was a optical condenser microphone, which was essentially a laser interferometer affixed to a gyroscope and shock absorbing platform with a stepper motor. When pointed at any solid surface of a house, such as the brick siding or preferably a window, it would reproduce the audio going on inside. The third was a pair of rather expensive night vision and thermal optics system, that would allow him to peer directly through walls. An onboard computer would then reconstruct the thermal imaging data in real-time to reproduce a photorealistic image with even lighting, as if Stanton was standing right in the room next to them. The fourth device was a compact satellite dish, and a battery powered receiver and amplifier and the last was an array of high luminosity LED work lights.
He prepped these devices, laying them all along the end of the flatbed, inspecting each of them and then fed them one by one into a military backpack. After slinging the backpack over his shoulders, he closed the gate on the back of the truck and spent about five minutes covering the truck with brush and branches to better conceal it.
He then carefully crossed the road, and made his way into the brush on the property into which the van had earlier turned. After a short bit pushing his way through dense brush, he arrived in a small patch of forest. When he turned to his left, he saw a house in the distance through the trees, the unmistakable smell of diesel.
He quickly ducked down and moved forward, half prone keeping close to the brush but not so much as to make a ruckus. When he arrived at the edge of the trees, he lay down on his belly and carefully examined the premises.
It was a small house given the apparent size of the lot, with a decidedly derelict appearance, as if it hadn't been tended to for some time. There were a variety of discarded construction materials outside, apparently left to rot by whomever ran out of steam in the middle of their effort. Stanton assumed that it was probably the previous resident. This property was clearly a place to operate quietly, and obviously given its isolation, the perfect place for an interrogation.
These kidnappers were likely not operating under any rules of engagement, nor would they observe the Geneva Convention when it came to their prisoners. Stanton knew that when the torture started, that it would be callously destructive and without regard for human life. From his perspective and given the evidence, he had to work quickly if he was going to find a way to get them out of there.
The Dialog Of Transformative Architects
Curt Fenmar swung the driver as hard as his fifty-two year old body would allow from the four hundred and seventy-one yard tee on The Pines hole four. The only par five at Caledon Country Club just north or Toronto.
He watched as the ball hooked a tad bit too far to the left, landing him just off of the rough, but still on the inside of the hole's bend.
He squinted as he watched the ball come to an abrupt stop.
"There's a bit of wind today, Mr. Fenmar. You usually get that drive right in the dead center of the fairway, so its probably a bit blustery just above the canopy," Duncan remarked, doing his best to save grace for his employer.
"Duncan? Could you be a sport and get me my phone?" asked Mr. Fenmar as he started walking the distance to his ball with his tall, lanky frame.
"Right away Sir!" Duncan didn't even look to Mr. Fenmar until he'd arrived back at the golf cart.
"We do have a ride, Sir. Your membership pays for this you know?" Duncan reminded the recent arrival into the fraternity of gray hair.
"Duncan. Some days are meant for the cart, and some days are meant for the feet. Now be a champ and bring me my phone and continue on to where my ball dropped. I'm going to walk it, get some fresh air and make a personal call while I'm at it," Mr. Fenmar responded to Duncan, insinuating that he needed some privacy.
"Alright. Here you go. I'm thinking your five iron should get you back onto the fairway..." Duncan handed Mr. Fenmar his phone.
"Duncan, prep my three iron. No sense losing distance for this shot, but the five was a good suggestion for playing it safe," Mr. Fenmar accepted his phone as he addressed Duncan.
Mr. Fenmar walked slowly in the direction of his one hundred and ninety-two yard drive and when Duncan was a good distance away as he drove the cart to the drop, he dialed a number and held the phone to his ear as he enjoyed the late afternoon/early evening sun.
"Hello. How are you today?" asked a man on the other end.
"Its a great day, just working through hole four in Caledon. Shot at least a two hundred on a hook, just missed the rough so I'm still in the eagle zone at least. How about you buddy?" asked Mr. Fenmar of Richard Milton.
"In a chair in my backyard. Just had a great swim, cooking a couple of two inch steaks on the grill as we speak. Deborah is just on her way home from the spa so I'm enjoying my peace of mind if you know what I mean. Is it that time again already?" Richard replied, then returning a question.
"Look, just get our contact on the line, would you? Let's get this out of the way so we can see things through," Mr. Fenmar confronted Richard.
"Like its my fault? Is that how its going to be? This is bigger than any one of us, and your seniority at Enertrinsic has nothing to do with this now. Now you're a friend, and I don't want this conversation to end up where its going. Am I making myself clear?!!!" Richard responded.
"Look, since we got the news, its been a bit tough keeping things together, but we're still on track so don't you go messing this up with your linebacker - plough through everyone - attitude. Just get Mr. W. on the line and we'll deal with this right now. We knew there'd be rough times when we started this, so don't start using the speed bumps in life as an excuse to bail on us," Mr. Fenmar confronted Richard, who responded by putting him on hold.
"Its that linebacker attitude that got us this far. Don't forget that," the line momentarily went dead as Richard started a conference call with Mr. W.
A short moment later, Richard returned to the line along with the sound of the line ringing for the third party of their call.
"Is it just you or both of you?" asked Mr. W., careful not to reveal any extra information in case their call was tapped.
"We're both here. How are things on your end?" asked Mr. Fenmar.
"We've acquired the source of our problems..." Mr. W. started.
"Both?" asked Mr. Fenmar.
"...that and a couple of extra problems that are going to complicate our efforts to patch this up," Mr. W. explained to Richard and Mr. Fenmar.
"On a scale of one to ten, how complicated?" asked Mr. Fenmar.
"Nine. Maybe ten. We're definitely going to have to pull some strings in the eventuality that someone realizes they can't be replaced..." Mr. W. as did Richard and Mr. Fenmar kept all of their communication in the context of engineering, so that any investigative efforts against them would have difficulty twisting the context of their conversations for the purposes of courtroom evidence.
"The question is, are they going to have to be replaced?" asked Richard, an engineer himself.
"No. We're going to have to ditch those parts entirely, but if we do it right, we won't have to start from the first milestone again. If we solve our initial two problems, we should be in a position to overcome any other threats arising from stress testing. Once that's done, we can actually replace the problem parts with stand-ins, that will keep everything in place structurally, but without the actual functionality of the ones we remove, or the cost," Mr. W. spoke his metaphor expertly and elaborately.
"How much extra work will it take to extract data?" asked Mr. Fenmar.
"The first stage is already under way and that involves observation. No up close inspection or scrutiny. Just watch and learn. That'll go on for about three more hours, at which point we'll move to phase two. Active stress injection to the parts involved, hoping that we get the data we need to solve the problem. If not, two hours later we move to phase three, which involves aggressive physical alteration of the parts themselves, and upon the extraction of the correct data, we proceed to a solution," Mr. W. explained to them.
"What if phase three fails?" asked Richard, ever the engineer.
"It won't," Mr. W. responded.
"It better not, or we're out of business. We need a solution before the twenty four hour mark. If not, we're going to have to move towards engineering crisis management," Mr. Fenmar reminded both of them.
"Alright. I think we're dong here," asked Richard of his friend and professional peer.
"Good job. We'll be in touch when you reach the six hour milestone of your troubleshooting efforts. Keep it up and our solution just might be ready for the world market," Mr. Fenmar dismissed Mr. W.
"Very well gentlemen. We'll speak soon," Mr. W. hung up, leaving Richard and Mr. Fenmar alone on the line.
"What if he fails" asked Mr. Fenmar.
"We wind it all up and hang it around his neck. We hire our own specialist troubleshooter and fade back into obscurity. Simple as that. The best move from a marketing standpoint," Richard suggested.
"Alright. Enjoy your evening, and your peace - that is until your wife gets home. I'll touch bases with you in five hours and forty-five minutes. Hopefully by then we'll have some answers and a solution. Have a great evening," Mr. Fenmar bid his friend and competitor farewell.
"Duncan, I'm thinking I'll take your advice. That five iron sounds good about now. I didn't realize how difficult a shot it was until I saw the lay..." Mr. Fenmar approached his ball as Duncan went through the golf bag in the back of the cart and found the five iron.
"Here you go Mr. Fenmar. Better to get centered on the fairway than in the rough near the green," Duncan responded with wisdom well beyond his age.
...
Mr. W. stepped out of the only carpeted room in the unfinished bungalow, closing the door behind him and approached a computer workstation that had been setup with all of the monitoring hardware and software installed in the prisoner's room.
"Anything new?" he asked Vilder, the technician seated at the desk.
"They're mostly ranting about the lack of food, water and air conditioning. One of them, the Mountie red head tried a thorough examination of the walls for any weak points and air leakage. She hasn't said or done much since then. The other Mountie tried his phone a few times, calling an unlisted number whose information we haven't been able to find with third party private intelligence services. Must be their handler's number," Vilder responded.
"Alright. Keep the Stringray active until they figure it out. Even if they do, it won't matter, especially when that whole room is a Faraday cage. Nobody's calling in. Nobody's calling out," Mr. W. responded.
"As you know, any good pair of shoulders need a head. How'd it go with our head?" asked Vilder, referring to Richard and Mr. Fenmar.
"They're planning to ditch us if we fail. They'll probably try to pin the whole thing on us, so if we want to avoid any trouble, we'd better get what we need to wrap this whole thing up. If not, we bury our prisoners, and head for Pearson International. I've got a flight booked for us just in case. We lay low with the money they've already paid us and drown in women and tequila. We'll surface a few years from now to get payback," Mr. W. asserted to Vilder.
"You've got it all figured out, Chief. Glad I'm on this side of the camera," Vilder responded as he watched the screen and camera signal directed on their prisoners.
"That's how we used to do it in the old days. Back when the company was feared. Now its just an office full of bureaucrats, string puppets and social rejects that couldn't work anywhere else, even if they wanted," Mr. W. responded.
"I thought you left the CIA?" Vilder confirmed with Mr. W.
"I did. A long time ago. But, as the saying goes, you can take the agent out of the central, but you can't take the intelligence from an agent. I'm not CIA anymore, but I'll always be an operative. Its written in everything I say and do," Mr. W. responded as he pushed his thick rimmed glasses up on his face to make room for his ear to ear Alabama smile.
Unwinding The Copper Coil
Stanton had setup the equipment as the evening light dimmed and within a window of twenty minutes, he'd already breached the interior of the farmhouse with the use of the AI integrated thermal imaging camera and the optical microphone. Six minutes after he'd run the first round of tests, he'd mapped the entire farmhouse from a computer generated cross-section that combined the output from the thermal camera with the density sensor.
Knowing that they were in a concrete room with only the security camera that Mr. W. had installed to keep an eye on them, he had to figure out a way to communicate with the prisoners. He used his own thermal camera to get a close-up of their security camera, eventually able to deem who manufactured the circuit board, and from that, the actual manufacturer's part number for the camera. With that information, he quickly found a vulnerability in the camera whereby he could use signal emission intrusion techniques to trigger the two sequence red and green LEDs on the exterior of the camera. This had taken him an additional fifteen minutes before he was actively testing his hypothesis. He disabled the camera feedback mechanisms so that the kidnappers would get no warning that the camera's LEDs were active.
He ensured that there was nobody else in the room with the prisoners before he tried, and when he did, he went simple with it. He used the green LED to send Morse code, listening in on the room with the optical microphone to hear if anyone responded to it.
His first message was:
START HELP IS HERE - GOING FOR THE BALL - BE BACK TO GET YOU - STAY SAFE STOP
He set this message up in a buffer and kept repeating it waiting for a response in his headset.
The equipment he'd setup could remain in operation unattended for up to twelve hours. It was concealed very well, covered in a camouflage net, with only the lenses and optical microphone exposed, but even they were coated in a compound that prevented specular reflections, making them very difficult to detect visually.
Now confident that he could leave everything unattended, he made his way back to his truck, listening for any response from the prisoners about his Morse code message.
When he got to his truck, he switched the truck to electrical mode, it having charged enough from the gas engine for three hour's worth of stop and go city driving. When he was certain there was no traffic, he pulled the truck out and returned to Yonge Street and south towards Toronto. He had four hours to find the package that the murder victim had prepared for Dina and Linda, and being a fellow engineer, he would be the most qualified to unwind that copper coil, as he'd have put it himself.
"Is it just me, or do these guys seem a little perverted with the camera and all?" Tricia turned to face Halmand, winking at him while the camera couldn't see her eyes.
Halmand looked to the camera, as did Dina and Linda. That's when it clicked for Dina.
Tricia had called them perverts, which could be broken down into two parts, the second of which was the word vert, which was French for green. Dina took a second glancing look at the camera, and noticed that the camera's green LED was blinking in a semi-chaotic pattern.
"Reminds me of the early traffic cameras in Tel Aviv from the late nineteen nineties, where we used to play ball," Dina responded.
Stanton immediately knew that two of them were aware. As he drove south on Yonge Street, he keyed another message for them:
START COPY THAT - ON WAY TO SOL VED - WILL ADVISE STOP
Tricia failed to understand the context of the response, but she was unsure if anyone else had. She did understand that whoever it was had confirmed their previous message as being heard and recognized, and yet she wasn't sure which of them had responded. That had big implications seeing as Dina and Linda were still suspects in their investigation.
Dina had by that point assumed the second message to be a typographic error. ON WAY TO SOLVED simply didn't make sense to her, but by that time, Linda had caught on to the secret.
"You know, I never figured out what the confusion was with Vector Engine Dynamics and us..." Linda spoke bluntly, looking to Dina, who suddenly caught on.
SOL was another name for the Sun, which ran on fusion. VED was the initials of Vector Engine Dynamics. So that meant that Stanton was on his way to Vector Engine Dynamics.
"There's no confusion from our perspective. You allegedly killed the victim and that would create a lot of confusion between you and any friends of the victim!" Tricia responded to Linda's statement, and their discord quickly became apparent.
Stanton slammed his steering wheel in frustration. He knew they were innocent, but the Feds didn't know. The prisoners were essentially divided, working against each other and that would complicate significantly his job in communicating with them. He had to get them working together without revealing anything that might compromise the advantage they currently had, despite the fact that he knew his opposition already had the advantage.
Grace's Date
Stanton's truck pulled into the same parking space Tricia and Halmand had parked seven hours earlier. He got out of his truck and headed for the front door with a look of determination and purpose, just enough so that Grace had suddenly (and instinctually) noticed him. He rolled up the sleeves on his blazer and undid the buttons of his golf shirt.
He then pushed through the front door, confidently and noticeably to Grace.
"Can I help you?" she responded, suddenly finding herself admiring a long forgotten boy of summer on the doorstep of his retirement years.
In a matter of one moment, she'd figured his entire life out. He was athletic in school, not having had strong enough grades to pursue a career of the cerebral variety. Charismatic and physical, he was the beach bum that every one of his friends liked. He surfed the waves of life on the good will of his friends, most of whom were entrepreneurs and self-starters that admired his freedom.
Most of his employment was the result of these friends, all of whom wanted him as part of their sales team to benefit from his charisma and instantly likeable nature. Time had kept him well enough in appearances that he still bedded women in their twenties, never staying with any one of them for too long. Grace entertained the fantasy that she'd be his next.
"Please tell me that the reason you're working late is because you're still looking for Mr. Right?" Stanton spoke without missing a beat.
"I have bills to pay, and being here earning at my overtime rate certainly beats sitting on the couch at home with a container of Hagen-Das watching Bachlorette," Grace responded to him, already liking where the conversation was going.
"Next to your oh so fortunate fiancé I hope. Someone who probably appreciates your Mediterranean tan lines as much as myself?" Stanton responded, playing the part very well.
"You're good, but my tan lines are courtesy of the Ash Bridges Bay beaches and my Norwegian parents. Besides, maybe I'm looking for Mr. Wrong?" Grace replied, getting right to the point.
"Well in that case, what are you doing after I speak with the CEO?" Stanton asked her.
"He's currently unavailable, but if you'd like I can setup a meeting for you as early as... next week? Thursday? 1 PM?" Grace confirmed with him.
"I'm sorry but I'll be out of town by then..." Stanton responded, immediately seeing a man in his late thirties approaching the reception from the offices.
"Could you excuse us for a moment?" Stan Leeski addressed Stanton cordially and with the edge of jealousy.
"Certainly," Stanton responded politely, not giving any hint that he'd noticed the dynamics at play.
He turned to take in the reception area art, noting the two cameras focused firmly on his position.
"Who is that guy? Do you know him?" asked Stan of Grace.
"I don't, but I'd like to," Grace responded to Stan.
"What about us? I thought we discussed this?" Stan responded, clinging to Grace.
"Stan, you only want me at your convenience, never mine. I'm your go to girl on those nights you can't get the time of day with your ex," Grace responded, raising her voice just enough to let Stanton know that she wasn't having it.
"I thought that's what you wanted? No strings attached," responded Stan.
"Your behaviour sounds a lot like there's some strings on your end. You only want me when you're worried that you won't be able to have me, but when I need you, you're always unavailable. I think I deserve better than to be treated that way," once again, she raised her voice.
"Its not a good time to begin making new friends, Grace. Especially so soon after his death. There's things going on that we need to keep between us, for our own safety. That's why we need each other. I'm just trying to look after you. Protect you," Stan assured Grace, who smirked at him.
"Its over Stan. You had your chance when I really needed you, and you blew it. If you need a pretty face to keep all of your crap safe, find someone else," Grace said to him, returning to her desk.
Stan quickly checked his watch, and then followed her, standing just behind her as she took her seat.
"Stan Leeski, Engineer QC/QA," Stan introduced himself to Stanton, who returned a firm yet restrained handshake.
"Alex Burman. Territory sales for Induction Geothermal Works. You've heard our motto before? We're in charge of the planet, that's what we do," Stanton looked to each of them in turn.
"Mr. Stanton here was looking to meet with Vander or Richard?" Grace told Stan, who nodded.
"They've gone home for the evening, but I can help you as one of their veteran engineers," Stan told Stanton, who looked briefly to Grace and then back to Stan.
"I travel a lot, hence why I'm late. We're building a strong network of business allegiances and you certainly meet our criteria as a strong player in the world energy market. Could we talk somewhere?" asked Stanton, purposely playing into Stan's court.
"Sure, we could talk in my office. Grace, if anyone calls could you forward them to the answering service?" Stan addressed Grace with authority.
"Certainly, unless its Vander or Richard themselves, then I'm sure they'd want to speak to you directly," Grace responded, wresting power away from Stan.
"Yes. Certainly. You do that, Grace. Mr. Stanton, if you'd like to follow me..." Stan led Stanton down the hall and past the boardroom to his office, where Stan seated himself behind his desk, and Stanton sat in the guest chair.
"So, how can I help you, Alex?" asked Stan.
"Well, actually this is about how we can help each other. You see, due to the unique nature of our reactors and their environmentally friendly footprint, we can get through a lot of red tape that would otherwise tie up other power generation projects that would hit a dead-end when it comes to treaty limitations," Stanton began.
"We're only dealing in Deuterium and Tritium based fusion, and as you likely know already, though both substances are monitored by the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission), there are no treaty limitations preventing the distribution or sales of either, unless forbade by the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. However, I might remind you that both substances are absolutely harmless and have been of immense benefit to humankind for decades. What can your geothermal reactors and your distribution network bring to the table that we haven't already got?" Stan explained to Stanton, who knew otherwise.
"Access to certain states barred from receiving centrifuges sold by first world nations. We're not even dealing in any materials monitored by the AEC, which means our marketshare and reach goes a lot farther, and from what I understand, those are markets you're looking to get to, one way or another," Stanton improvised based upon the intelligence that both Linda and Dina had shared with him, coming up with a hypothetical scenario that might be the basis for their motives of selling to states barred from such purchases by way of treaty.
The phone suddenly rang, making Stan jump in his chair. He then answered it, quickly composing himself.
"Stan Leeski speaking," Stan answered.
"I'm calling about our guest there Stan. Its Richard. Look, I want you to get up as if you have to check up on a matter in another office. When you're out of our guest's earshot, we'll talk," Richard advised Stan.
"Certainly, I can check the production schedule for you if you'll give me a moment..." Stan replied to Richard.
"Alex, I've just got to schedule a delivery for a client. I'll be back in a minute," Stan stood from his desk and left Stanton alone in his office as he ventured down the hall and into Richard's office.
"Alright Richard, I'm in the clear here. What's up?" asked Stan.
"Our guest there, what's your take on him?" asked Richard about Stanton.
"Looks kind of like an over the hill surfer. Chiseled features. Athletic, with a slight tan. Older, maybe in his late forties. He's a player too. Wasted no time in flirting with Grace. Definitely Public Relations or Sales, though he's got a working man's hands," Stan explained to Richard.
"Does he look dangerous to you?" asked Richard.
"No. Not really. He's a pretty boy for sure. Very professional. Seems to be interested in a similar market segment," Stan continued.
"Does he seem too good to be true?" asked Richard.
"What kind of question is that? I mean Vander is too good to be true, but you and I know he's as true as they come," Stan seemed suddenly uncomfortable by Richard's question.
"How did Grace take to him?" Richard asked him, purposely pressing his buttons.
"She's... I don't know. She likes every guy she thinks has a six figure salary," Stan responded, very uncomfortably.
"Like you?" confirmed Richard.
"Look Richard, I tried to get her a couple of times, but she left me out in the cold," Stan responded protectively of her.
"Induction Geothermal Works? They're a big outfit. The biggest in geothermal energy," Richard brought up the company name Stanton had used.
"He checks out, right?" asked Stan.
"He certainly does. You know, years ago I used to know their senior Engineer. He was a real proponent of pushing forward. Just like us. However, and I can forgive a man for this, but I'll never understand it: he wasn't in it for the money. Time changes companies in many ways, but people often don't change that easily. If he was still with us today, I bet he'd still be doing it out of his sense of right. Keep an eye on this Alex fellow, but lets not throw away this opportunity either. Until we get the big boys out of the way, nothing's going to change, and none of us are going to get rich in the way we deserve to be. Give this Alex fellow my private sales number. Let's see how real his deal is. Now get back to him and bring it home for us, and make sure neither Grace nor Vander get wind of this. Its never a good idea to let the dolphins into the shark pen," Richard advised Stan, who upon hearing the click of Richard's termination of the call, breathed a sigh of relief.
A moment later Stan returned to his seat in his office and addressed Stanton.
"I've got good news for you. I just spoke with the man directly in charge of... our special sales projects, and he'd like you to give him a call. Seems we might be on the same page," Stan told Stanton, sliding a QR coded business card across the desk at him.
"You like whiskey?" asked Stanton of Stan.
"Single malt," Stan responded.
"If we close this deal, your next bottle's on me," Stanton stood from his chair.
"Fair enough. Just one thing?" Stan added.
"How can I help ya?" asked Stanton.
"Stay away from Grace," Stan advised Stanton.
"We'll see you soon," Stanton left Stan's office, making his way back to the receptionist's desk.
"Sooo... is it a date?" asked Grace of Stanton.
"It sure is, but with someone who really cares about you. I think you know who that is. Just don't be too hard on him," Stanton winked at her as he left through the reception doors.
When Stanton arrived back at his truck, he pulled a notepad from his pocket and opened it to the top leaf, where he'd written an address he'd obtained from Stan Leeski's computer while he was speaking to Richard. He entered the address from the notepad into his GPS unit and pulled out of the Mississauga parking lot and began on his way to the home of the murder victim: Mr. W.
Scene Of The Crime
Stanton parked his truck a block away, on the end of the street and in the parking lot of a local market. He sat in his truck, watching the output from the satellite rigged monitoring system he'd setup outside of the kidnappers' house, where they were keeping Linda, Dina and the two Federal Agents. He adjusted his dash keyboard and typed a new message for the prisoners:
START - READING A COMIC BOOK BY A WRITER WHO LIKED SKIING - LISTENING TO TOCCATA AND FUGUE - CENTERED - EAST - OFF TO A PLACE WHERE A BROKEN TRAIN NEEDS AN EAR - VACATION SOON - STOP
...
In the room of their confinement, Linda suddenly noticed the LED on the camera flicking once again.
"I could really use a salad right about now..." Linda remarked, hoping it might get Dina's attention.
"Yeah, with peppers..." Dina responded, indicating that she got Linda's cue.
They both watched, but not too closely as the Morse code message came in through the flicking green LED, but by the time the message had repeated, the two of them were thoroughly confused.
"You ever read comic books when you were a kid?" asked Dina of Halmand, who by that time had also caught onto the communications medium that was secretly being used by someone to coordinate with them from the outside.
"Yeah, but I more enjoyed Archie and Jughead. I had a huge crush on Veronica," Halmand admitted.
"Who wrote that comic?" asked Linda.
"Robert Montana and John L. Goldwater. Their names are practically burned into my retina from Archie comics," Halmand continued.
When Halmand started talking, another name jumped into Tricia's head, perhaps reminded by Halmand's reminiscing. That name was Stan Lee, though she couldn't recall why it felt like deja vu.
When she caught Stanton's message on its third playthrough, she spied the part about the skiing comic book writer and immediately caught on. Stan Lee Skiing. Stan Lee Ski. Stan Leeski!
She immediately wondered if Linda and Dina knew about Stan, because at that moment, the message could have been specifically for her and Halmand.
When she read the second part of the message, about Toccata and Fugue, she became confused again. Like being stumped on a really good puzzle. Fortunately though, it resembled something enough with which both Linda and Dina had recent experience.
Both her and Linda had been steered onto their current investigations by transactions that either involved or mentioned centrifuges. Albeit, these ones were not quite industrial sized as would have been required for the purposes that had alerted investigative authorities, and were more intended for the production of pharmaceuticals, perhaps as part of a factory line. Regardless, the resemblance of the word Fugue and the proximity of the word centered in the message was too much of a coincidence to ignore.
Ironically, Tricia and Halmand got something completely different from that part. Toccata and Fugue was a hallmark gothic piece of music (something Dina also knew given her background in music), often associated with Rome, given its connection to Johannes Sebastien Bach and the Church. Tricia interpreted that connection in a regional sense, which put her and Halmand right on track for deciphering the next part: centered - east which they immediately figured referred to the Middle East. The second and third part of the message were as far as they were concerned, references to regions connected with their investigation.
"Obviously something about about our morning?" Halmand remarked.
"Glaringly. Like we should have taken our time enjoying our coffee..." Tricia covered for them both, by making his remark sound as if he was referring to the fate of their situation rather than pondering a puzzle.
As she spoke, she caught the tail end of the message on its fourth playthrough. Linda, Dina and Halmand could all see Tricia's gears churning.
"I'm thinking we definitely should get more training for dealing with situations like this..." Tricia alluded to the context of the word train that had her attention.
"You know, its not so much how well oiled the subway car is, as much so as it is the health of its motor?" Halmand responded, indicating the context of train from his perspective as being related to a motor.
From there, Tricia, Linda and Dina all got the rest of the message at the same time as they played it back in their heads:
OFF TO A PLACE WHERE A BROKEN TRAIN NEEDS AN EAR
Off to a place where a broken MOTOR in a train needs an EAR
Off to a place where the broken ENGINE in a train needs an EAR
Off to a place where the broken ENGINE needs an EAR
Off to the place of a broken ENGINE EAR
Off to the place of a dead engineer
As they closed in on the last part of the message, they all realized that their two sides each had different pieces of the same puzzle. If they were going to get through this, they had to start working together.
They realized that their messenger was on their way to the home of the only other person that connected all four of them that had been kidnapped: the murder victim, Mr. W.
...
When Stanton confirmed that they had most of the message, he ceased playback in order to prevent their hidden communications medium from being discovered.
With a five minute trek ahead of him, he left his truck, walking the distance at a brisk pace under the growing darkness of evening.
The victim's home was still barricaded off with crime scene tape, while the doors were bolted shut with police exterior door locks. Similar to those used to lock a steering wheel when they impounded vehicles.
He went to the backdoor, where there was the least light and attention upon him. He donned a pair of particle-free rubber gloves and then a pair of highly advanced light weight FLIR goggles.
Finding the key he'd need to allow himself entry, he unlocked the police lock. He then opened the back door and stepped into the dark house, viewing it as if it were illuminated by daylight.
After closing the door behind himself, he quickly made his way in, passing a utility room with an attached laundry facility, not very different from Stanton's own home. A basket of folded laundry still sat on the counter space, while several of his button-down shirts hung perfectly wrinkle-free beside a large automated steam cleaner.
"The poor guy must have just done his laundry that evening..." Stanton said as he paused just outside of the door.
He continued down the hall and came upon what appeared to be a home office, the door still opened and chalk lines indicating where the door had been when the crime scene was initially setup. Stanton stayed clear of the chalk and any other chemistry he observed that forensics had used to scrape the scene for evidence.
He got around to the other side of the desk and sat in the victim's own chair, from where he began examining the contents of the desk drawers.
They were kept clean and well ordered. The bottom left-hand drawer contained files relating to first, his licensing as an Engineer, and then beyond that section of eleven years of files, all the paperwork for his legal correspondence.
For most Engineers, this was often a big aspect of their work, for everything they did had some form of implied responsibility. This was the basis for their licensing as Engineers, and often their work was steeped in complex legal issues, those pertaining to liability and structural failure.
In essence, Engineers wagered their own skill and ability to face these risks to their designs, and in this sense, both science and the law were their best friends. Meanwhile, their best work often saved countless lives, despite being unsung for it. The only time they were recognized, was when their designs failed, possibly costing those lives.
This was something that Stanton faced every day of his life, and not just as an Engineer. Upon perusing the victim's files, Stanton felt a strong bond between himself and the deceased, realizing that when he was himself finally gone, that his own daughter, Jennifer, and perhaps her fiancé Anthony, would one day be doing the very same thing with his home office and files. However, Stanton knew that what he sought of Mr. W. wouldn't likely be found amidst the predictable order of an Engineer's life. It would be found amidst whatever chaos he'd strived to stave off.
Stanton checked the drawers on the right-hand side of the desk, finding years of time and billing schedules and Autodesk software licensing receipts for his work as part of Vector Engine Dynamics. In the top drawer, Stanton found a covered hard disk caddy, which was populated with thirty, four terabyte solid state drives. Each of them was labeled with a coded series of six capital letters, followed by a date and time based versioning system. He examined the labels of all of the drives, stopping when he found one that had an extra set of numbers postfixed to the version number.
"356.7?" Stanton spoke aloud, knowing that number had some significance.
He grabbed the drive from the caddy and plugged it into a drive bay that sat tidily on the desk beside the enormous computer monitor.
As soon as he did, the monitor came to life as the computer powered up, apparently having been in sleep mode since the night of the murder. Stanton was presented with a Microsoft Windows login screen, beside which was an Apple logo and trademark: Apple DE®.
"That's something I've not seen. A Windows login screen with an Apple networking technology licence?" Stanton realized that he did not have the tools he'd need to get past the login screen without the correct password, given the added proprietary network layer.
He opened the top drawer once again, and felt around on the inside of the desk at the top. When he felt a sticky note stuck to the top of the drawer, he pulled it off and examined it, lifting the FLIR goggles from his face.
"FERMATSLASTTHEOREM" Stanton read the contents of the note aloud.
He then tried typing the phrase in all lowercase letters into the password field and then pressed enter.
"Nothing..." he remarked aloud, then trying the same with the caps lock on.
When he pressed enter key this time, the desktop loaded and he was presented with the Vector Engine Dynamics logo as the backdrop.
Stanton opened the start menu and found an icon with the same logo, and the name VED3. He double clicked the icon and a moment later he was presented with a custom Autocad interface, asking him to select a project drive for the profiling test suite. He browsed the various drives, looking for the one he'd selected from the caddy, eventually finding it mixed up amongst the numerous drives connected via the Apple DE distributed computing network.
The project loaded, a runtime 2D graph appearing which represented the simulation, with the x-axis representing time in weeks (one hundred and sixty-eight hours), and the y-axis representing gigawatt hours as the main series. Other series of different colours represented data channels like material heat exposure, heat entropy, material fractal decomposure (which measured a material's ability to withstand heat and electricity for long periods of time without becoming structurally compromised). Running simulations like the one for this project was essentially what the victim did for Vector Engine Dynamics before his death. He integrated the formulas for the test suite, that would simulate, in this particular case, a fusion reactor running for several decades under constant load in order to ensure that the materials used didn't break down, or that the reactor itself succumbed to an unstable waveform resulting from the compensation speed of the magnetic containment field itself and the actual timing of fusion. However, nothing Stanton saw was connected to what Linda and Dina had indicated to him.
Not to mention, what was 356.7 and why did it seem so familiar to him?
That's when he noticed that this project had other sub-projects. That is, projects run under similar conditions that had altered parameters, such as the sum pressure of deuterium and tritium, or the containment field strength. He searched through these sub-projects until he found one labeled 356.7.
He double-clicked the sub-project and was presented with a much different layout than the test suite for the fusion reactor. This suite presented several different graphs, and a containment chamber of a much different design. It was perfectly spherical, and contained a system of electro-magnets, similar but much less elaborate than the one used for the Trifuse Fusion system.
On the exterior of the sphere, were rectangular boxes, all of the exact same size, and precisely equidistant from one another. Stanton clicked on one of the packages and noted that it represented an explosive compound.
That's when he realized that he wasn't looking at a fusion reactor at all.
He was looking at a highly advanced atomic weapon.
Suddenly it all came back to him. His two years between the age of twenty four and twenty six, studying in a class with other operatives like himself, tasked with recognizing and identifying improvised atomic ordnance as part of their NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) Detection Team. Weapons smuggled into a country, or built by another for the express purpose of employing a dirty bomb, or in the worst case scenario, a full fledged atomic weapon.
He'd trained for two years, studying every detail needed to facilitate production on a variety of different scales, from simple one man teams trying to build a dirty bomb, to full resource intensive automated production lines spitting out Multiple Impact Return Vehicles (MIRV) warheads.
One such area of his studies involved examining the use of mercury as an enrichment isotope for readying civil engineering grade uranium or plutonium for use in fission/fusion based atomic weapons. During that study, he recalled that the boiling point of mercury was 356.7 degrees celsius. However, from what he'd seen thus far, this was actually the least of the issues involved, for this was the design for a ready to build weapon. This project could be given directly to another Engineer with CNC/PLC experience, and used to create an automated production line that would require little manpower to run. All of the files to machine the parts were contained in the same project file.
As if it wasn't enough, something else caught Stanton's eye. It was the fact that tritium was present in this design and not as a fuel component for a fusion reactor but for a fully functioning atomic weapon. Stanton checked the points along which the tritium was introduced into the spherical containment package, and realized that this design incorporated weapon doping. A small amount of tritium used within the fissile chamber of the bomb would elevate its potency substantially. Meaning even a small weapon could be used to level a large city.
All of this capability was contained in a single project solid state drive, under the cover of being the parts of a fusion reactor. Even the tritium itself would seem harmless, for it was simply touted as one of the fuel materials, and not a weapon doping agent.
Stanton checked the other sub-projects, and found twenty six others marked with the same 356.7 serial number. When he opened them each, one at a time, he similarly found other weapons, all atomic but each distinctly its own design. Some large enough to employ in an ICBM, while with others, the warhead could easily fit inside of a tactical weapon such as an anti-tank weapon like the TOW Missile system or the Hellfire weapons platform.
He closed the VED3 software and logged off of the computer, pulling the drive from the bay and putting it in the combat webbing he'd donned earlier. He then took the note with the password and stuck it to the inside of the drawer where he'd found it, but in doing so, he found another sticky note. He quickly pulled it and found a note with a phone number:
Mr. W. DFA-424-AXKL
"Why would he keep a phone number on a slip of paper with his own code name?" asked Stanton to himself.
He pocketed the note carefully, ensuring he didn't lose it and then got up, slipping the FLIR goggles on again as he proceeded back the way he'd come in.
By the time he'd arrived back at his truck, he noted that it was now less than three hours before they'd start interrogating, more likely torturing Linda, Dina, Tricia and Halmand. He had less than three hours to investigate and then incapacitate the operation at Vector Engine Dynamics, while Linda, Dina, Tricia and Halmand were liberated, presumably by another team. There was one problem however.
His handlers hadn't contacted him for nearly two weeks, even after his many attempts to contact them.
As it currently stood, he was alone and operating on his own, without any support.
"Only one thing I can do..." Stanton said as he picked up the phone and reluctantly made a call.
Entry Point
Stanton sat at a table inside of the donut shop, enjoying his coffee. By this point he'd been up since five in the morning and it was now getting on towards nine at night. He had one hour remaining before the kidnappers would give up on collecting intel via observation, and start phase two of their gathering activities: full spectrum interrogation, which would likely include torture as well.
The little bit of audio he'd caught of the man leading the kidnappers indicated they were dealing with someone trained. Possibly an operative. Given the nature of the crime, it was very likely that this man had gone rogue and was now acting without direction, except that of his own. Part of an agenda that seemed intent on arming emerging economies in the Middle East region with strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.
So far, this effort seemed connected to several others locally, and a number of hidden supporters throughout the world, though this early in the investigation, Stanton had very little intelligence to back any theories as to who or what it might be.
To further compound the situation, he too himself had lost contact with his own handlers, which was very troubling. So much so that he had to turn to the only man he could trust when the foundation beneath his feet had began to crumble.
That very man walked in the front door of the donut shop and walked over to the counter, to order his coffee.
"Hmmmm... what time is it now? Better make this one an extra-large triple triple," Foller said to the woman behind the counter.
After she'd given him his coffee and he'd paid for it, he turned and walked directly at Stanton's table, grabbing a seat across from him.
"So what gives? I was on leave by the way, not to mention that the last time I saw you, I ended up in a holding cell with a good measure of trouble in there too. Eventually, those guys in the holding cell that didn't see things the way I do, came around to my way of thinking... Thank you very much for asking...!" Foller sat down across from Stanton, peeling the lid back on his coffee and taking a sip.
"Waaaa," Stanton made a sound like that of a crying baby.
"I should have expected as much. So what gives, calling me up and having me meet you in the boondocks here?" asked Foller.
"Did you bring that old hunk of junk car I asked you to bring?" confirmed Stanton.
"Its a miracle that its still running, but yeah. I drove it here," Foller responded, taking another sip.
"Let's go. We'll talk outside," Stanton stood and led them out of the donut shop, where they both approached Stanton's truck.
"Get in. I've got something to show you," Stanton unlocked the truck and got in the driver's side while Foller got in the passenger side.
Stanton hit the fingerprint scanner with the middle finger on his right hand and the dashboard screen came to life. He then navigated through the interface and brought up the live satellite image from the thermal camera system he'd installed at the site of the kidnappers.
"What are we looking at here?" asked Foller.
"Its an old house, unfinished renovations a few clicks from here. No basement, no upper floors. Six rooms in the interior, one of them completely enclosed in cement and under camera surveillance. That's the one we're looking at now..." Stanton explained.
"They're detained? What'd they do?" asked Foller.
"They stumbled onto the wrong information under the scrutiny of the wrong people. People who want to keep this information hidden at all costs," Stanton told Foller.
"Why are they still alive then?" Foller asked observantly.
"Because someone else, an Engineer who wasn't on the same page as the kidnappers, tried to blow the whistle. He was a clever fellow, so he put together an intel package detailing everything about the plan of the kidnappers, and he hid it somewhere that only another Engineer would be able to find it. Unfortunately they killed him before he was able to deliver that intel to the investigating authorities, who you're looking at right now detained in that makeshift bunker," Stanton exposed the trail he'd uncovered to get to this point.
"Is that... Linda Delmore?" asked Foller, having already had a history with Linda from years earlier.
"One and the same. Her partner in crime is another investigator, from Tel Aviv. Apparently the murder victim was able to make contact without disclosing details, so they sent Linda and Dina to recover the intel and liberate the whistleblower. Unfortunately he was murdered on the same night of their planned EXFIL," Stanton told Foller.
"Who are the other two?" asked Foller.
"I was just getting to that. They're Feds. They were investigating the murder, and stumbled upon evidence connecting our two girls there to the murder scene, implicating them in the assassination given the fact that both Linda and Dina have records with INTERPOL," Stanton tapped at the screen to indicate Tricia and Halmand.
"Most operatives do. Its political manouvering by officials looking to get a diplomatic advantage in negotations. Ie: give us a better trade deal and we'll give you back your outted agent etcetera..." Foller defended Linda and Dina.
"We're on the same page on that matter, but you and I both know that sometimes we're required to remove problems, and that can make waves for regular hunters and collectors who are out there intel fishing. So we're going to do what's right, and get them out of there. All of them," Stanton explained to Foller, waiting for his questions.
"Where's JSOC on this?" asked Foller, curious as to why there wasn't a whole team working on this situation.
"You tell me," Stanton responded, watching Foller carefully for any body language.
"Don't look at me like that. Its been two weeks for me as well, but as I stated, I was on leave. I had another week before you drafted me. So what's the plan?" asked Foller, taking another sip of his coffee as if it was merely another day on the job.
"Here's the plan..." Stanton began.
...
Halmand sat on the cold concrete floor, leaning against the wall when he noticed the green LED on the camera start flickering in a seemingly random pattern again.
"I was hoping one of you might want to start a conversation. Looks like this is my lucky day," Halmand remarked.
By the time he'd finished his sentence, Tricia was already part way through decoding the message.
START - EYES OFF FIRST - BE ON FEET - THREE ONE TWO - STOP
"I got it!" Tricia exclaimed.
"Same here!" Linda added.
"Me too," Dina finished.
"For the first time in my life, three women in a row actually get my sense of humour," Halmand winked as he spoke, covering for their statements.
...
Mr. W walked into the security room to check up on the cameras, and Jason, the security operator.
"Anything yet?" asked Mr. W, checking the monitor displaying the camera feed from their improvised bunker/prison.
"A lot of strange jokes, but no information," Jason responded.
"I guess they don't have any idea how serious their situation is. Could be training too," Mr. W noted to himself.
"We'll find out when it starts..." Jason responded.
"We certainly will. I'm going to check up on Nick, Arlo and Jerome, and then we'll get started," Mr. W stepped out of the security room and towards the front door.
When he opened the door, he found Arlo and Jerome each with a bottle of beer in their hands.
"I thought we discussed this, that there'd be no drinking until after we'd disposed of them?" Mr. W addressed the two offending men.
"One beer. How's that going to hurt?" Arlo responded.
Mr. W moved far too quickly for any of them to see, and by the time he'd stopped, he'd disarmed Arlo, holding his previously holstered gun and directing it at Jerome, while in the other hand, he'd a knife to Arlo's throat.
"Half of your one bottle of beer just bought me enough time to take the two of you out. You see, alcohol reduces your response time by a whopping thirty to fifty percent. Multiply that times two, because there's two of you, and that gave me, an older fella at that, enough time to do away with you both. This isn't the atoms or pee-wee league, boys. This is the real deal. You're in the big leagues, and I need all of you to be ready for anything. Not seventy to fifty percent of you. That little bit of time was enough to kill you both," Mr. W stepped away from them, pulling the slide back on the 9mm hand gun he'd obtained from Arlo and checking the chamber.
"At least you had one in the chamber, but in that case, it would have worked out against you. Lose the beer until after the show," Mr. W handed Arlo his 9mm.
Arlo accepted it and holstered it, standing up and placing his half-full beer in the case.
Jerome as much did the same.
"How long were you in?" asked Jerome.
"What? The Agency?" asked Mr W.
"Yeah?" Jerome continued.
"Always," Mr W responded.
Out on the rural road Line 10, which was about a hundred feet (thirty-three meters) away from the front door, they heard a skidding car, screeching and then the sound of an impact.
"Jerome, go check that out. Stay out of sight and don't get involved. Just tell me what you see. Use the radios," Mr. W ordered Jerome.
...
Jerome walked along the driveway, which was covered in trees and brush on either side. When he arrived at the rural road Line 10, he saw a burning car which had impacted a tree about ten car lengths away on the other side of the street.
"Alpha Bear? Its an accident. It was a car, slammed into a tree. Its on fire..." Jerome reported back to Mr. W.
At that point, in the distance they heard the sound of sirens.
"Alright, get back here and we'll lock the front door up and keep the lights off until they've got it cleaned up. Delta, go check up on our guests," Mr. W ordered.
"On it sir," Arlo responded, heading inside to the center of the house to the cement bunker and its enormous metal door.
...
"Back away from the door! Keep yourselves facing the far wall, and don't look when I enter or I'll shoot!" Arlo ordered the prisoners.
Tricia and Halmand immediately stood up when they heard the bolt on the door sliding.
"Torture time?" asked Halmand.
"Maybe. Hold tight and do what he says," Tricia suggested.
Linda and Dina both got to their feet and did as Arlo instructed.
He opened the big door and examined the room carefully.
"Alpha Bear? Everything's in order in here," Arlo reported to Mr. W.
"Alright. Get back to security and we'll wait it out until the emergency crews are gone," Mr. W ordered Arlo.
"You too Nick. I'll wait for Jerome," Mr. W ordered Nick, who was standing beside him as the light from the burning car became visible in the darkness.
...
Arlo made his way to the back of the house and the security room, bumping into Nick along the way.
"Could see the fire from the front door. Its going to be a while before they're gone," Nick said to Arlo.
"Looks like our prisoners just got a reprieve from their interrogation. At least for a while," Arlo responded as they continued along the hall towards the security room.
As Nick entered the room first, he noticed that Jason was gone.
"Where'd Jason go?" asked Nick.
"Must have gone for a leak," Arlo responded as a large arm enveloped his neck from behind.
Arlo tried to scream, but no air, not even the slightest sound escaped from his lungs or mouth. Stanton dragged him struggling around the corner, where he punched the man in the face several times until he no longer moved.
"Arlo?" Nick peeked out of the security room just in time to see a large fist.
It hit him squarely in the face, his head immediately bouncing off of the doorframe, rending him unconscious.
Stanton fished a few restraining ties from his combat webbing and secured the hands and feet of both men, disarming them in the process. He then dragged them both out of the back door, leaving them outside in the night air with Jason, who was already similarly dispatched.
...
Mr. W stood waiting for Jerome to return as the sirens grew closer and closer to their location. By the time he saw Jerome's silhouette approaching along the driveway, the sirens were already speeding along Line 10 towards the site of the accident.
"Did anyone see you?" Mr. W asked Jerome.
"Yes," Jerome responded.
"Who?!!!" Mr. W approached Jerome as he arrived at the house.
"Me!" Foller responded, now wearing part of Jerome's kit.
Foller threw a punch at Mr. W, who dodged to the left surprisingly for a man his age. Mr. W caught Foller's arm and twisted it, sending him to the ground as he struggled to break the hold. Foller managed to quickly find an angle of motion which freed him from Mr. W's hold, pulling the man down to the ground where Foller suspected he'd be able to use his Jujitsu effectively against the older man.
Mr. W rather than collapse, rolled just over Foller's shoulders, retaining his hold on Foller's arm. Foller once again found himself joint-locked. He kicked at Mr. W's feet with a sweep, knocking the man down once again. This time however, Mr. W used his position close to Foller to grab Foller's 9mm, and then put it to his head.
"You're well trained, but you're not that fast. Don't make that mistake son," Mr. W got onto his feet, retaining his grip on Foller, whom he coaxed forward ahead of him into the house.
"How many of you are there?" asked Mr. W.
"I'm alone," Foller responded, relaxing his resistance slightly.
"Ha! That's a good one. If you really were alone, son, you'd have beat me," Mr. W responded.
"No. I'm alone and it sucks that I didn't beat you, 'cause your breath stinks," Foller responded.
...
Tricia tapped Halmand on the shoulder and then pointed to the camera.
Halmand squinted, looking for the LEDs, finding neither of them. They were both out and the camera was without power.
"I think we're alone now, there doesn't seem to be anyone around..." Halmand began singing.
"This might be bad a thing," added Dina.
"How?" asked Tricia.
"It might mean they've decided to do away with us, and want to ensure none of it ends up on camera," Dina suggested.
"Its possible. They'd probably do it in here rather than outside," Linda agreed.
"Quick ambush. You and blondie on the side with the hinge, Halmand and I will take the opening. If we fail, back us up," Tricia ordered them.
"Fair enough," Linda responded.
They waited for two minutes, when from the door they heard tapping:
TAP TAP TAP (PAUSE) TAP (PAUSE) TAP TAP
The enormous latch of the door began to slide, and finally the door opened and Stanton walked in.
"So you're the one who was using the camera LEDs?" asked Tricia.
Stanton handed them their kit, including their purses and armaments.
"There's one more. Go that way and you'll end up at the back door. Its cleared," Stanton responded to them.
The four of them did as Stanton instructed, heading down the hall to the back door, while he proceeded towards the front to rendezvous with Foller and deal with Mr. W.
Stanton stepped forward cautiously, his 9mm handgun in front of him as he looked down its sights.
He stopped as the three of them met just inside of the front foyer.
"I thought you said that you were alone?" Mr. W tightened his grip on Foller.
"I am! Who the hell is this guy?" Foller replied.
"Let him go. Its over," Stanton ordered the older man.
"No. Not quite. Drop your weapon and turn around with your hands up. We're just getting started here," Mr. W responded, keeping his gun on Foller's head.
Stanton kept his gun leveled at Mr. W, pulling a phone from his webbing with his other hand. He then hit the speed dial number he'd entered from the murder victim's desk drawer.
A few seconds later, a phone somewhere on Mr. W started ringing.
"This is over. You're guilty of murder in the first degree. You killed Wesley Donahue, Senior Engineer of Vector Engine Dynamics.
Behind Stanton - Linda, Dina, Tricia and Halmand joined him.
"I trained under this man in his fieldcraft program," Linda said to them.
"He's a spook? I got taken out by a spook? Whatever you do, don't tell anyone... I don't want this getting around..." Foller responded to their accusations.
"What would make a man like you change sides?" asked Stanton of Mr. W.
"Son, you don't know the half of it. You're all way in over your heads..." Mr. W responded to their accusations.
"We weren't the ones planning to provide strategic armaments to the emerging economies of the Middle East," Stanton challenged him.
"We're in the middle of a war, but you aren't seeing it. A global regime change that started two decades ago," Mr. W replied, maintining his focus on Foller.
"And how are strategic weapons going to solve that?" Stanton asked Mr. W.
"There is unfinished business left to be done. That's all that I'm going to say. You stopped a very small piece of something much larger than you know, that is trying to stop something even more sinister. Something of which you're unaware. Have you ever asked yourself why it is you haven't received tasking from your handlers for a few weeks now? The very agencies you work for are changing right under your feet," Mr. W explained to Stanton, who listened to what the older operative was saying, albeit from south of the border.
"You watch. When they finally do make contact with you again, it will be people you've never met or known, and you'll be doing missions against assets you used to protect, while protecting your former enemies!" Mr. W became passionate about what he was saying.
"The heroes your children used to watch on television and the internet, will suddenly take on a new agenda that reflects the requirements of this incoming regime. The good will become bad, and the bad will become good!" Mr. W said to them.
"In our business, that means that you'll be killing your former friends and allies, and chumming up to your former enemies afterwards! As you're doing this, you'll watch as your families are destroyed and dismantled while your enemies take over! That regime in the form of ideology, will use every medium they control to their advantage to paint everyone who opposes them as the enemy and everyone who supports them as a friend! They'll use colours and symbols in absolutely everything we see and watch to change society in their favour and as much so to gaslight those of us in society who are observant and experienced enough to be aware of all of this!" Mr. W's grip on Foller tightened.
"Are you going to kill him or not?" asked Foller of Stanton.
Mr. W suddenly tightened his grip on Foller.
"Wait! Don't rush things here! Let's just all be...calm...?" Foller suddenly tried to calm the situation.
Mr. W's face became filled with anger and fury, but in the end, he pulled the gun away from Foller's head and dropped it to the ground.
"There's already been enough death. Believe me, if we don't stop what's happening, there'll be lots and lots more. Lots of pain and lots of death," Mr. W put up his hands as Halmand and Tricia handcuffed him.
"How much different is that from our business?" Foller responded, brushing himself off.
"I find it somewhat unconvincing that this alleged killer so suddenly developed a conscience," Halmand noted aloud.
"Maybe he isn't the real killer?" Tricia suggested.
"I was thinking the same thing..." Stanton noted as Halmand and Tricia began their arrest process after which they prepped for the crime scene.
It was going to be a long night.
A Morning Round
Stanton pulled into the parking lot of Caledon Country Club at eight in the AM. He'd managed to grab two hours after dropping Foller off, stopping at a truck stop and parking there for time enough to rest. He'd woken up two hours later and grabbed himself a coffee and a small breakfast, which he ate in his truck before leaving for Caledon after quickly freshening himself up. After all, he had to look the part of an aging athletic and charismatic man, hanging on to his youth as long as he could, still dating women in their mid-twenties. The man Grace had seen (and figured out so quickly), was a fictitious man and one entirely crafted by Stanton. She only saw what he'd wanted her to see. He needed to be that same man during his round of golf that morning.
He opened his glove box and found a bottle of aftershave he'd stashed there, splashing a swath of it onto his face for effect, and for the cooling sensation which helped to wake him up. He got out of the truck and rolled up the sleeves on his blazer, grabbing his golf clubs from the back of his truck afterwards, which he'd borrowed from Foller.
After checking in, he found the cafe around the corner and saw two men in their early sixties seated there within.
"Gentlemen, I'm Alex Burman," Stanton introduced himself.
"Pleased to meet you Alex. Richard Milton," Richard stood and shook Stanton's hand firmly.
"Hi Richard. Good to meet you in person," Stanton responded.
"Marvin Fenmar. I'm from Global Power Initiative. I work with Richard on a lot of projects," Mr. Fenmar shook Stanton's hand firmly.
"You've got some big projects going on in Myanmar and Pakistan if my memory serves me well?" confirmed Stanton.
"That's correct. We've got a number of developments in both regions and thanks to some recent negotiations, we're expanding into the Middle East, but we'll talk about that later," Mr. Fenmar said with a deceptively candid smile on his face.
"Would you like a coffee? They've got quite a menu here. How about an Irish Coffee?" asked Richard.
"May I get you a coffee to start sir?" a waiter approached and addressed Stanton.
"Sure. Medium blend, double cream and a shot of Gran Marnier, thank you," Stanton ordered.
"Good choice. So why don't we grab your coffee and take it with us to the first hole. We've got a busy day ahead of us and I'd like to get this underway. Nothing like a walk in the grass on a nice summer day for a bit of negotiating," Mr. Fenmar chuckled after speaking.
"That sounds good. I'm looking forward to this, though I haven't played in some time," Stanton responded.
"We'll do our best to guide you," asked Mr. Fenmar.
"Will do Mr. Fenmar," the waiter responded.
"What do you two gentlemen say we get this game started?" Richard urged them.
"Don't mind Richard, he's just a little too eager to take our money. We usually play a hundred bucks a hole. On a tie, we decide by the closest to the putting green on the drive of the next hole. If its the last hole and we tie, we use our drive from the first hole to decide. Don't worry, its not as complicated as it sounds," Mr. Fenmar led them to carts, where their caddies met with them.
"I hope not. Don't want to miss out on any time we could use negotiating," Stanton responded, taking a seat in the golf cart.
They drove the short distance to the first pin of the first hole and when they arrived, they prepped their clubs for the first drive.
"So Richard tells me you're an OSR (outside sales rep) for Induction Geothermal Works?" Mr. Fenmar confirmed with Stanton.
"That's correct. The world leading developer of Geothermal, induction based reactors. We've got active projects at twenty-two sites around the world, with six in operation, providing seventy-six percent of their regional electrical draw," Stanton recalled the statistics he'd memorized earlier.
"Well, as Richard might have already told you, we're looking to capitalize on the markets presented by emerging economies in the Middle East region, but we have specific requirements that are unique to our industry. Very innovative, and somewhat revolutionary..." Mr. Fenmar alluded to their goals.
"Would you care to elaborate?" asked Stanton.
Mr. Fenmar took a look around to make sure they were alone.
"We're looking to empower certain regions. To give them the tools they'll need to step forward and onto the world stage. And as you already know, for these emerging economies, that's a big first step," Mr. Fenmar lined up his driving wood, raising his arm and swinging it hard, far harder than Stanton would have suspected a man of his slight frame could have.
They watched as the ball flew through the air, covering one hundred and thirty seven yards.
"Not bad for an amateur," Richard remarked.
Richard stepped up to the tee.
"So, as Marvin was saying, we're looking to create opportunities as it were. To give some of these growing powers the tools they'll need to take the next big step," Richard wound up and swung the driver.
The ball flew, hooking slightly before landing one hundred and forty-one yards away.
"You've been practicing at the driving range I see," Mr. Fenmar responded to Richard's shot.
"Let's see how our friend here does," Richard remarked as he stepped aside and let Stanton up to the tee.
"He looks like he should be alright for power. Lets see how he does with..." Mr. Fenmar commented as Stanton took the tee, winding up for his shot.
He drew his arm back and swung the club hard. Solid even, and the ball screamed out above the fairway, hooking before landing just into the rough, one hunded and fifty-nine yards from the tee.
"He's got the power, Richard. He just lacks control," Mr. Fenmar commented on Stanton's shot.
"Why don't we talk some more at Marvin's drop?" Richard suggested as he headed for the golf cart.
"Fair enough," Stanton agreed.
The three of them got in the cart, Richard driving the distance to Marvin's ball.
"So what we're looking for is a distribution channel through which we can work to bring some of our more ambitious projects to the region. In exchange, many of our projects have long term regional workforce contracts, technical expertise training and other requirements that we'd be willing to shop out to Geothermal Works," Mr. Fenmar said as they walked over to his ball.
"How ambitious are these projects?" asked Stanton.
"Let me ask you this, Alex. If you could have a hand in changing the world, for the better, in the biggest way possible, would you?" asked Mr. Fenmar Stanton, stopping to face him as he spoke, his body language apparent.
"That depends upon how ambitious," Stanton responded.
"What's the one thing that would make a difference throughout this entire world. End poverty and hunger. Break the disparity between first and third world countries? Create a better world for everyone?" Mr. Fenmar continued his expert delivery.
"John Lennon, but they shot him," Stanton responded.
"Very good. You're clever. But no, what I was talking about is the participation of every country in the global market. And with that, a seat at the big table with the big players," Mr. Fenmar elicited, spreading his hands as he did.
"Well, nobody gets to play part in the world market or a seat at the big table unless they're well founded," Stanton explained to Mr. Fenmar.
"Correction. It takes one of three things. Big oil. Big economy/population and finally, Big guns," Mr. Fenmar continued.
"Now we can't deliver on the first two, because those quite frankly are out of our hands. That's determined by access to resources, the lay of the land, infrastructure, the market system, the workforce etc. We can however deliver on the third. How many countries at the big table have nuclear capability?" asked Mr. Fenmar of Stanton.
"Strategic or tactical?" asked Stanton.
"Oh, a thinking man... Either or both," Mr. Fenmar responded.
"The five permament members of the Security Council: China, France, The Russian Federation, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and The United States. Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea as members but not on the security council, though in 2025, Pakistan will be a non-permanment member," Stanton recalled from his research.
"Yes, the five permanent members all have nuclear capability. If we gave those tools to emerging economies, we'd be giving them a voice in the United Nations. A voice on the world stage, that would be heard. You grew up during the last leg of the cold war, correct?" asked Mr. Fenmar.
"I did. There were some tense moments too as I recall," Stanton replied.
"We grew up under that constant threat, and yet look where we are today. There was no nuclear war. There was a lot of sabre rattling, but no thrust. If we started arming emerging economies, it would give them a voice that the world would listen to. For the first time, they'd have the world stage. They could form alliances with their neighbours and protect each other, without the need for terrorism or extremism to make bold statements. They would have negotiating power in the United Nations and in diplomacy with other nations that would help to solidify their economy and trade power. It takes one of those three big ticket items, and most emerging economies of the Middle East don't have them. Yet. We can give them the third, and the means to rapidly expand their arsenal. Think of the jobs it would create. Think of the boost to their economy. Think of the money we'd make," Mr. Fenmar itemized his statements for effect.
"Its a good idea, but there's one problem. They're going to need a supply of weapons grade uranium or plutonium," Stanton replied, appearing interest in what they were proposing.
"That's where we come in. You see, over the years we've been working up contacts through our various project sites globally, in search of ways to overcome that very problem without setting off the alarms the Atomic Energy Commission, the United Nations or any of the other intelligence agencies of the big five. We've come to a two-fold solution. The first involves a system of centrifuges for enrichment, but as we all know, purchasing industrial centrifuges will set off the aforementioned alarms. So we've designed a system whereby the centrifuge is sold as a completely different industrial machine, with completely different tasking. However, this tool can be assembled in two ways, first, as it was sold to the buyer, and secondly, as a centrifuge. The design is entirely malleable in that respect and undetectable as the item is sold as a completely different industrial machine for a completely different purpose. These centrifuges can be used to enrich uranium or plutonium over a three month schedule per batch, yielding weapons grade uranium or plutonium. The second solution involves a series of suppliers, about whom we'll remain secret for the time being, who are willing to ship weapons grade uranium or plutonium in small quantities to the location of our choosing," Richard explained to Stanton.
"What about the warheads themselves?" Stanton asked.
"We'll be shipping encrypted designs, ready for use in automated production using PLC/CNC technology. The CAD projects contain all the parts and machine tool designs needed for production. Skilled labour is used for assembly at certain points, but essentially we can keep ourselves out of this part, but we'll certainly charge for the designs, which have been proven thoroughly in simulation, at yields just below or matching current warheads employed by the United States nuclear arsenal," Richard elaborated on the plan.
"And all you want from me is to arrange for a meeting with our clients in these regions?" Stanton confirmed with them.
"Precisely. We'd be willing to negotiate a payment for your services and a lengthy list of contracts we'd give to Geothermal Works in the event that we succeed in landing the weapons deal with your client. It would be big money, Alex, though we do have to confer with our financiers first," Mr. Fenmar stepped in.
"And who are they. If I'm stepping into something with a risk like this, I'd like to know all the players," Stanton responded firmly.
"These ones are difficult to pin down. Lets just say that they're a group that have been making headway in North America for some time, and have accrued enormous assets as a result. They're in the process of building a global network, to bring their plan and means to every corner of the world. We're just facilitating the engineering needs of their plan, and making good money in the process," Mr. Fenmar assured Stanton.
"Let's play this through, and I'll tell you what I think after we're done," Stanton nodded to them.
"This is quite an opportunity, Alex, but I understand. You do know that if you speak about this with anyone else, you'll be putting yourself in grave danger. Work with us, and you'll retire filthy rich," Mr. Fenmar smiled that deceptive smile once again.
"Filthy. I bet." Thought Stanton.
Mr. Fenmar turned and wound up for his shot, using a five wood. He swung with determined force and the ball flew gracefully through the air, landing on the putting green three yards from the hole.
Contined in The Butterfly Dragon: We Who Stand On Guard - Episode 9
* Classical/Quantum Processor Octree - Hybrid classical quantum computing architecture is still a bit of a ways off, but in the world of Butterfly Draqon/Tales Of The Sanctum, the company MindSpice has effectively developed an entire cloud computing platform that integrates classical/quantum computing architectures into a series of server racks much the same way that cloud server architecture operates today.
Octree is actually a data structure/algorithm often used in graphics programming and specifically scene culling, that is, ways to organize or navigate the data of a 3D (or even 2D) scene so that the viewing camera only deals with what it can see, rather than what it can't see.
I've used the term Octree here in such a way that it sounds like it refers to hardware, but in fact the Octree abstraction refers to MindSpice's processor architecture utilizing Octrees to determine when and where processing should be accomplished with a regular classical processor or a quantum processor. Each kind of processor has its strengths for specific applications, though there are a special class of problems that classical processors could theoretically take a near infinity of time to calculate, while quantum processors could calculate the answers to the same problems in mere seconds.
MAZ's mind is built upon a single computing session (with several backup sessions) that are derived from traditional competing LLMs (large language models) using differential analysis and adversarial networks to deem the best approach to solutions, however what makes MAZ different is that MAZ isn't input dependent. MAZ can assert, without input being given. In other words, MAZ can come to conclusions with or without input. That is, without a human operator asking a question or providing a prompt. MAZ's mind is in constant operation, not just when it is prompted with a request or question. In a sense, MAZ's mind has already been set in motion, in a constant quest of questions and answers. The answer of the previous question leads to the next question and so on ad infinitum. In essence, MAZ's mind is always in operation.
What makes MAZ truly advanced and what experts believe is that when AI's computation is performed using a combination of classical and quantum processors, that AI will achieve a truly encompassing ability to think, however this notion isn't to be confused with the Penrose/Hameroff Orch Model of Consciousness (which I've supported since they first published) which refers to biological consciousness and the concept of mind in relation to biological brains.
AGI, artificial general intelligence will be arrived at long before the marriage of classical and quantum computing architectures. It will however, be significantly accelerated by it and other architectures that arrive in the future that alter our model of computing.
Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.
Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian):https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)
Special thanks to John Paul Young and the Cardboard Brains, whom you can now visit at https://www.ermiescub.com
Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.
Very Special Thanks to our Armed Forces and Federal and Provincial Police Services, who really do Stand On Guard, especially when it comes to the Charter of Rights And Freedoms and the Human Rights Act, and often without being self righteous zealots secretly protecting religious law. True keepers of the peace.
This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.
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