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Neeson knew he was right. “OK,” he declared, “we’ll do this. We’ll take the test only up to 110 and tell him that was the objective. If, for some reason, he wants to see us push the limits, we’ll bring it up to 130. But I want you to install a manual failsafe, independent of OPUS, that will kick in at 115. WindSkin shuts down, all panels close automatically, everything powers down.”

“Isn’t that cheating?” Jason asked. Neeson cringed at his young engineer’s completely
naïve
view of the world.

“Why? It’s close to what WindSkin should be doing anyway. Going up to 110 will be a completely satisfactory test. And Haj is only here to inspect. A successful test will buy us time. It might even buy us a substantial sale with money up front, which will allow us to get it right. This is the way it has to be. Can you do it?” Neeson stood with his hands on his hips. He imagined that talking to Jason was like talking to a teenaged son.

“Yup.” Jason hung up. Neeson ripped his headset off and began to pace the room.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

At 1:02 PM, a car arrived at the front entrance of WindSkin. A sharply dressed man emerged from the back seat with a thin briefcase.

“Welcome,” Neeson smiled widely, showing no sign that he
had been waiting outside for t
en minutes. He escorted Haj to the golf cart that would take them to the wind tunnel facility. On the way down, he pointed out the more interesting sites of Chlorophyll Valley
while
trying not to think about worst case scenarios. Haj made the task easy—as they drove up, he took special interest in the architecture of different testing facilities and quizzed Neeson on the bizarre specializations required by the surrounding energy research buildings. Neeson felt himself relaxing. Haj was already impressed with the corporate splendor. Everything would be fine.

Jason met them just inside the door and shook hands with the architect. As Haj entered the control room, Neeson glanced back at Jason with questioning eyes. Thumbs-up.
We’re good.

The techs were busy setting up and checking off protocols. None of them had a friendly look for the evil boss who was making them do panic work on Saturday. Neeson did nothing to placate them.

Haj entered the wind tunnel itself and circled around the tower with his hands clasped contemplatively behind him.

“Have you ever been in a wind tunnel before?” Neeson asked.

“Yes, I have used them to test models for some skyscrapers I designed in Indonesia. But those weren’t as impressive as this.” Haj looked around at the curved walls and the giant fan assemblies on either end. “You wouldn’t allow me to be in the tunnel for the test, would you?” he asked, only half-joking.

“Sorry,” Neeson smiled, “but this isn’t our facility. We’ve been asked to keep people out of the tunnel for safety reasons. The room is designed to produce very high win
d speeds that are consistent everywhere throughout
the tunnel, so no matter where you stood, it would feel like a hurricane. It simply isn’t safe. But you should come back here in August when we get the real thing outside.”

Haj nodded his amused compliance. When all was ready, everyone left the floor, and the tunnel was sealed off. The tower of
panels stood alone in perfect repose. Neeson took a deep breath as the fans began their turns. Full strength simulation #17. He looked over at Jason again for some redundant encouragement, but Jason just shrugged and crossed his fingers.

Panels began to open as the wind speed topped the 50 mph mark. Everything was progressing normally. Neeson noticed one or two panels that didn’t seem to be opening quite right, but he didn’t think that it was obvious enough to be noticed by someone seeing them from the first time. In fact, Haj seemed intrigued. As speeds topped 80, then 90, Haj stood closer to the window, peering intently in. Neeson began to get a good feeling.
We’ve got him
, he realized.

Suddenly, everything went
dark
. With the exception of blinking red indicators, every light inside the tunnel and control room turned off and left them in
total darkness. A minute later,
they were re
-
illuminated in the dull orange of emergency
back-up
lights.

“What happened?” Neeson yelled angrily, forgetting his VIP voice. No one had any idea. The computers were rebooting. No data was available.

“I’ll go down to the basement,” Jason said.
“Call the facilities guy,” he commanded over his shoulder to a technician. Neeson turned to Haj, who hadn’t moved.

“I’m afraid we may have to wait a moment, Haj. I don’t know what…”

“It’s fine,” Haj said, “I understand technical difficulties. You go find out what is wrong.”

Neeson left the control room, making sure to close the door calmly behind him, then jogged furiously down to the basement as he flashed through possible people to blame. How much were they paying to lease this place? And the owners couldn’t even ensure that the power supply could handle the specifications of their trials. Or the techs—had they taken short-cuts during the set-up because it was a Saturday morning and they were feeling sorry for themselves? Whatever the cause, what happened was unacceptable. Anything that didn’t go according to plan was unacceptable.

The facilities manager, an old man with old
er
tastes in professional fashion, was already talking with Jason by the time Neeson found them. Bouncing his flashlight beam over pipes and cable bundles, the manager guided them to the main power control
center. The flashlight slowly made its way over the system until it settled on a breaker box. It was immediately obvious to Neeson why he’d stopped there. The bottom of the metal box was charred and partially broken, and as the manager carefully opened it up, they saw that the entire lower portion, including the wires protruding from it, was completely destroyed. The three men glanced at each other.

“What do you think? Some kind of overload?” asked the manager with a grim expression.

“Maybe,” said Jason. “We were pretty lucky there wasn’t a fire.”

Neeson, who knew enough about electrical engineering to
understand
the seriousness of the damage, asked, “Is there any way to fix this today?”

The manager answered with a slow, pessimistic exhal
e. Jason didn’t offer any hope
either. Neeson looked up at the ceiling in frustration and considered his options.

“Look,” he finally said, “you work on this for the next hour. I’m going to take Haj out to the town center for some lunch. Try and get things back running, but if not, we have to cancel the demonstration. It should go without saying that I would rather not do that.” Once his meaning was clear, he went back upstairs, wondering if it were possible that Haj hadn’t eaten lunch before 1:00.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

In the center of Chlorophyll Valley, several enterprising real estate developers had constructed a cobblestone plaza surrounded by shops, restaurants, and entertainment facilities catering to the newly affluent, up-and-coming innovators and their clients and lackeys. Neeson escorted Haj to the patio seating of Club Kabob and placed his phone where he could see any updates as soon as they arrived.

“I’m sorry again for the disappointment,” Neeson said, his VIP voice fully restored now. “The building isn’t ours, and even though we gave them our load requirements upfront, it looks like their wiring just couldn’t handle it. We were just getting to the exciting part, too.”

“It is OK, Neeson. You do not have to keep apologizing. I have dealt with many testing glitches in my time, it’s simply part of the process. At least I can report to Mr. Reynolds ab
out the first part of the test.
” Neeson didn’t want to pursue the subject of Lance
Reynolds just then, so the approaching waiter was a welcome distraction.

“The sampler plate, extra hummus on the side,” Neeson ordered. Haj pointed at a building across the way.

“You have a KM Center here?”

Neeson nodded. “You know Kaah Mukul?”

“I helped them with some designs when Myung-Ki Noh was first starting it up several years ago. I’ve never been to one of the centers, however. If I’d been a smarter business man,” Haj gave a courteous nod toward Neeson, “I would have invested in the company early on. I thought his ideas were clever, but I did not see how profitable they would be and now I feel very foolish. Do you
visit
Kaah Mukul?”

“It’s popular with a lot of the younger programmers around here. They’ll go to play Ullamaball or something to blow off some steam during lunch or after work. Jason, who you met, takes his staff down there every so often as a group geek team-building exercise. That’s how he justifies charging it to the corporate account, at least. Of course, it helps that there’s a bar next door.”

“But you don’t play?”

“Oh, no,” Neeson sipped his water. “I have an interest in it, but it’s business related. Have you heard about their executive centers? They’re only in the really big KM centers near corporate hubs like this. Anyone who has an interest in placing some marketing or design strategy in the Kaah Mukul world goes to these offices and can interface with Kaah Mukul
business contacts
directly using their private network. I was just there a few weeks ago to submit a proposal for installing a virtual WindSkin system on one of their skyscrapers.”

“Really? What did they say?”

“Haven’t heard back yet. If you know Mr. Noh, maybe you can put in a good word for us. It would sure help with our PR.”

Haj shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I do not have a close connection with him. He is a very unusual and very distant man, and I only worked with him a short time. I cannot help you there.”

Neeson shrugged it off. “Worth a shot.” The waiter brought out their kabobs and pita
on a platter, and Haj attacked his food with gusto. Neeson cast him a calculating look and put his own fork
down.

“We are great admirers of your work over at WindSkin,” Neeson said. “Corazon Resort is truly superb from an architectural standpoint—from all standpoints. It sets the new gold standard. I think I can say without exaggeration that Corazon Resort and WindSkin are the perfect match in terms of
cutting-
edge technology and leadership in their respective fields.”

Neeson’s phone vibrated with an update from Jason:
Need more time. Not pretty over here.
He put the phone aside as Haj continued to eat.

“Once we finish at the tunnel, I can take you back to
our office and review our three-
year plan, our budget and profit pr
ojections
, and of course we can go over the grid schematics in more detail…”

Haj leaned back and laughed.

“You don’t need to sell to me. The truth is that I am in your corner. I think what you have here is a very interesting innovation. I do have concerns about how well we could implement WindSkin over the whole façade of the hotel, as you have suggested. There are weight issues, aesthetic issues, issues of surface drag.” Haj paused to sip his drink and waved his other hand in the air. “But these are all engineering issues, and engineering issues can be solved. I would very much like to sit down with you and your engineers
to
work through these issues once Lance gives the initial approval for exploratory design. And if all goes well, I may be able to think of some other properties internationally that would be even better suited for a WindSkin conversion.”

“That would be greatly appreciated,” said Neeson, his pulse quickening with both excitement and relief. He made sure to end the
discussion about the Corazon
on that note. “So tell me what you’re working on now. Anything you can talk about?”

“I’m afraid that no, I cannot talk about it. Sorry.” Haj was calm but cryptic. “I am interested in your work here. How did all of this start?”

Neeson responded easily, having told the story many times. “I was working as a project manager for a company that designed private, unmanned aerial drones up in North Carolina.
Nothing you would have heard of; i
t tanked a few years after we left. While I was
there, I went on vacation to the Outer Banks, not far from Kitt
y Hawk where the Wright b
rothers tested their plane. I happened to stop at this little old gas station with its own wind generator, and it just kind of hit me that larger buildings could have their own wind generators
as well
. I worked on the problem
on my own time
, came up with the basic concept of WindSkin, and decided to start my own company. At the same time, Jason was
one of my engineers working
on flight control systems, and he had some really interesting ideas about software design. I realized that his programming abilities would be valuable to the overall design of WindSkin. It took some time to persuade him, but he finally came on board as chief engineer. The energy
tech
boom was just heating up down here, so we relocated to Florida, worked up a prototype
,
and tested some panels in a small wind tunnel that we leased from the University of Florida. Then we applied for one of the Green Gov Grants and got one. That’s brought us to this point. We have some venture capital interest going forward; they have already provided some supplemental funding and have a more substantial investment available upon completion of our testing. And that, combined with our profits, should propel us forward for the next decade. So, here’s to Mr. Reynolds coming along at just the right time.”