Balance of Power Shifted (23 page)

I noticed a very severe looking taller woman and an older powerfully built man
heading for me from across the floor.  The woman introduced herself as Giselle Brinkerhoff and introduced the man as her father and owner of Brinkerhoff Builders, Max Brinkerhoff.  “Mr. Carter” Giselle said, but before she could continue, I said, “Please call me Mike.”  “Mike,” she continued, “we are flabbergasted at Electricus.  If it does what you say it can do and is as simple as we see here, we would be excited to use your technology in the future.  We have two specialty areas.  We build housing developments typically in newer open spaces as well as low-income housing.  My father, years ago felt that he could make an affordable house for those less fortunate by using optimized building practices.  Electricus can help us meet that agenda.  At that point, Max smiled at his daughter and said, “If I don’t insert myself, I don’t think Giselle will ever let me speak for myself.”

Max continued by saying,”
Mike, if you want to put your product in play with a working environment we would be willing to allow you to use our new development as model homes.  We have a 100-unit track starting in about a month and if possible, I would like to build them using your technology.”  “Max thank you for your interest, we are very interested in ideas such as yours, but we will be reviewing feedback from this event to determine next steps.  I think you will find information in your handouts that will allow you to submit your ideas for consideration.  I am not saying no, however we have a process and a committee to review all options.”  “Good enough” Max said, “We will submit the forms and hopefully we can work together.”  They headed for the doors for their car ride in one of the Camry’s.  The rest of the evening was very busy and as soon as one person or group left my side, another sauntered up.  An AP reporter cornered me for about 10 minutes and asked a slew of questions including sensitive ones such as the impact on organizations that make money off of oil.  For this question, Bill and I had a canned response with stated, “Electricus is in its infancy and we have a long way to go before this technology is embraced and adapted.  Ask me the same question in about 2 years and maybe we will have a better understanding of the impact of Electricus.”  The AP reporter would not let that comment slide easily and it was scary how quickly he had focused in on Bill and my concerns on how Electricus would affect the world economies.  Eventually I wore him out and he walked away with a quick congratulation on an interesting evening and with a pointed look said, “This could be a monster change to the world as we know it.”

As the last guest got on the bus to headquarters
, Bill and I gathered the team and had a quick debrief.  Bill started the discussion and said, “In my opinion it was an unqualified success.”  He based this on the genuine excitement by the participants and the absence of any skepticism that smoke and mirrors were involved.  He then admitted that he had directed many of the tougher attendees my way and said “Mike what was your take on the evening?”  I started by echoing Bill’s sentiments, but then talked about some of the interest from builders and investors, which met with some clapping of hands from the assembled.  I also mentioned the persistence of the AP reporter and their quick connection to the potential impact we will have on the world’s economic stage.  Then I reminded everyone of what to expect which was that the legitimate press would most likely publish articles on what transpired tonight, which most likely would set off a hectic chain of events.  With a final thank you from Bill and me, we all headed home.  I think Fiona was still wound up and was chatting away non-stop about the people she met tonight and their comments.  We got into her car and headed home where she proceeded to ‘jump my bones’ so to speak, before we even got to the bedroom.  I have to say, I did save my strength and gave as well as I got.  Those rug burns I will feel tomorrow, but for now no pain…

F
iona and I were on a five mile run down the Oak tree lined streets of Summit when she reminded me that she was going to California to make some updates on our systems out there on Monday.  I thought about it for a minute, before I asked her if she wanted company and added, “I don’t know if you are aware that Bill and Steve will be here in Jersey working to outfit the cars we are giving out to the management team.  The only ones at Chez Rico are the Clavis people.” Fiona without any breathing effort at all for having already run four miles said that she had not known that.  She then added, “It’s a date.”  “Perfect” I said, I could also work with Clavis to ship our stock of Electricus while I’m there.  We decided to go out there on Sunday to have a little time together and we made the reservations as soon as we got back to the house.

Before we knew it we were landing in California. 
With the time zone change, we got there early in the afternoon.  Fiona dropped me off and took the rental car to go to the market for supplies and tonight’s dinner, which she was to cook.  Using the new biometric keypad to open the side door, I walked into the darkened cool area of the lab expecting to see one of the two Clavis guards sitting at the desk near the doors.  Not seeing anyone, I was not concerned about it and figured they were upstairs.  I started to navigate through the darkened space, which was darker now that a special film coated the windows to block viewing of the interior as well as block radio signals from passing.  As I was walking past where the Clavis guard should have been, I noticed a form on the floor. 

Two things happened simultaneously
, I realized it was one of the Clavis guards lying there just as powerful arms wrapped themselves around my chest and lifted me off the ground.  Another form moved in front of me and drove a fist into my gut.  I had tightened up just as the punch was thrown and my abs absorbed the blow with only a grunt from me.  That is when my training kicked in and I drove my head back into the nose of the assailant holding me crushing his nose with an audible crunch.  This in itself was not enough for him to release me so with a kick to the face of the assailant in front of me, I used the slight relaxation by the giant holding me from behind and managed to slip down out of his grasp.  Before he could react I kicked him on the inside joint of his knee with a short kick.  He was not able to react quickly enough, his leg buckled, and he tumbled over to his side.

I turned back to the second
adversary, which was a mistake on my part because a third intruder blindsided me from my right side with a tackle, which drove both of us over the table.  I was the first one up and drove a knee right up through his jaw, which sent him flying backwards.  I had turned my attention back to the second intruder and barely avoided his roundhouse punch directed to my jaw. I stepped inside his punch and landed a combination to his draw to drop him. 

Having a moment of calm, I took it as my
cue and ran through the dark maze of my shop to the rear door, and ran outside.  As I was running, my mind flashed through the events that led to this intrusion and attack and knew what it was about and what had triggered the attack.  I then sprinted a couple of buildings  away and standing behind a large metal dumpster saw my new friends leaving hustling out of there while dragging the big dude who was limping badly and they all got into a large dark SUV.  I was able catch most of this and the vehicle on video my iPhone, but may have been too far away to capture any useful features.

Instead of calling the police
, I called Jeremy and told him he probably had two guys down in my building and included the rest of the details.  I also forwarded the pictures to him in a text message.  Even though he said not to go back inside, I could not stay out there without knowing how the Clavis people were.  This time I opened the large garage door bay to allow more light to shine inside for when I entered.  Thankfully, it appeared that the guards had no permanent injuries from the effects of tranquilizer darts. I was waiting by the door and Jeremy drove up at the same time Fiona arrived.  I motioned for Fiona to get out of the car and come over to where I was standing next to Jeremy so I could fill her in.  I told Jeremy about his people and the tranquilizer darts and my belief that I thought they would be fine.  As soon as I informed Jeremy of the situation, I caught Fiona up on the recent events much to her shock.  Within five minutes a few more members of Jeremy’s team showed up and we all walked through the entire building.  The guards came out of their stupor and provided a few limited details.  Apparently, the downstairs guard expecting Mike opened the door after viewing the outside camera.  Someone had done their homework and sent one person to the door with the same general build as myself.  As soon as the door opened, the intruder shot the guard with a tranquilizer dart and caught the second guard, upstairs unawares.

It was just pure luck on our part that we came in on Sunday instead of Monday and interrupted their plans.  According to the
downstairs guard, I must have entered only minutes after the intruders did.  Jeremy was extremely embarrassed regarding how things had gone down and apologized to me while Fiona was checking out the side of my head, which had a nice sized bump on it from hitting it on the floor or table when tackled.  “You’ll live” she said and I was a little disappointed because I guess I expected her to fuss over me after my narrow escape.  She then started talking to Jeremy about what other measures needed to be put in place and just that quickly, she became in charge of the situation.  I just accepted it, because when Fiona got involved in something it was never halfway and she has been like that for as long as I could remember.

By the time everyone left
, it was time to start dinner.  Fiona pushed me out of the kitchen and told me to find something to do while she prepared the meal.  We had sent to guards away with Jeremy since we were not leaving and made sure to enable the security system.  Without argument, I sat back in the recliner, sipped a cold beer while channel surfing and enjoyed the aroma of the cooking dinner.  Fiona was preparing Monkfish and fresh vegetables for roasting on the grill and the citrus marinade she made smelled out of this world.  One of the cable news channels was talking about the Middle East and the standoff between Israel and Iran.  Neither country seemed intent on escalating past the current status quo however, Iran was still postulating about blocking the Strait of Hormuz.  The announcer touched on the status of Venezuela regarding their leader’s poor health, which was affecting Venezuela’s oil export capability.  Already, dissidents were coming out in droves there to challenge the legality of his administration exacerbating the situation.  The combination of these events had speculators driving up the price of oil up and gas prices at the pumps were soaring to over $4.50 per gallon on average.  The commentator then said something that almost shocked me out of my chair. 

W
ith a stoic expression the announcer said, “There may be a White Knight in our future and that White Knight’s name is Efficio.”  The screen then showed our headquarters building and the announcer mentioned we were in Summit New Jersey.  He continued by saying, “Some exciting stuff was unveiled last Friday at an invitation only event where attendees were stunned at what they saw.”  The camera then panned our show room building from outside and the announcer stated that at this facility a small organism that has electrical characteristics that can continue to provide electricity even under low light situations is providing all the building power.  Peering into the camera to emphasize his next point the announcer said.  “This building has no electrical costs and is disconnected from the local power grid.  To make it more interesting, this 1997 Hummer H2 driven by an Efficio executive has no combustion engine in it, and if you can look closely at the hood and roof, you can make out something they call the Power Pad, which contains interconnected cells of an organism, they call Electricus.”  The camera, while focused on the car, clearly showed Fiona behind the wheel.  This elicited a squeal of laughter from Fiona since she looked kind of bug eyed with the camera lights shining in her face.  I was glad to see they did not capture the faces of any attendees, which was the only requirement we had insisted on for camera use.

I sat stunned in my chair and just
uttered, “can you believe this” in a rhetorical fashion.  Fiona just calmly accepted it saying, “What did you expect.”  Mike, talking to himself said, “I knew they would like it, but I thought there would be more skepticism and not the full-blown endorsements like the one we just saw.”  “Why don’t you grab the salad and stuff and meet me up on the deck. The fish will not take long,” she said.  As I was putting everything on a tray, including a couple of bottles of very good wine, my phone started to ring.  Of course Bill was the first to call and chattered excitedly about the positive coverage, however I burst his bubble by telling him about the intruders and told him it was good that we were going to move the Electricus inventory into a hardened storage facility and should have it on a truck by tomorrow afternoon.  Bill did not take the news well regarding our uninvited guests and kept asking if I was OK.  I said, “I am fine buddy and Fiona is cooking me dinner right now and if I don’t get there in 30 seconds she will finish what those goons started today.”  “Fly like the wind” Bill said and hung up.  While talking to Bill, I had three text messages come in and one voice mail and decided to turn my phone to vibrate.

  Dinner was out of this world and afterwards we watched the sun set sipping wine in our lounge chairs and holding hands.  I have to tell you I really had a moment there where my life clarifie
d in front of me and in that moment of clarity, I realized I wanted to marry Fiona.