Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (5 page)

Amy shrugged, “I don’t know. They usually stalk movie stars and the like, but they might make an exception for you.”

Ell’s shoulders slumped and she headed out to talk to Steve.
Amy tagged along.
When
Steve
saw her he said, “I’ll be
t
Amy told you
about the
paparazzi
out at the road, huh?”

“Yeah
!
” Ell said, eyebrows raised, “If you knew about them, why didn’t
you
tell me?”

He shrugged, “Since you weren’t going anywhere I was hoping they’d get tired and leave. By law they aren’t allowed to come on your property
or
take pix with telephoto
lenses across the property line. I
t’s go
ing
to get pretty boring out there.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“Nothing. Lead a boring life
so
they get
tired of you
and leave.”

Ell grinned at him and said, “Boring it is. Have they been hassling you guys when you come and go?”

Steve shook his head, “They peered into the car
this morning
,
but once they saw it was a bunch of guys they backed off.”

Amy said, “They were pretty excited when I drove up and
I
had a lot of telephoto lenses pointed at me, but
they
turned away as soon as
they could
tell
I wasn’t you.”

“So, you think I could go out in my disguise?”

Steve said, “
Not in
your
car
! They’ve almost certainly pegged
the Focus
to you. They’d s
uspect, then follow you, then maybe even do some facial recognition stuff and your disguise strategy could be blown forever.”

“Maybe in my little truck? It’s not in my name.”

“Yeah,
we could probably work that out. B
ut if you don’t want them to get suspicious you’d better be going out as
“
you
”
in the Focus
most of the time
.”

***

Los Angles, California
—
Comedian Kelly Anspach included comet Hearth-Daster  in his routine last night, joking that Hearth-Daster could become “Earth-Disaster” if its close
st
approach of 100,000 miles has been miscalculated. Several, including Presidential Candidate Senator David Flood (R
-
Missouri)
,
have taken him to task for “scare mongering” and…

Ell stayed home the rest of Wednesday and all day Thursday but headed in to work with everyone else Friday. To her dismay there were seven cars outside the gate to
her little farm
. The count had gotten down to two Thursday afternoon and she’d hoped there may not be any after she’d stayed home all day. Word that work was resuming at D5R must have gotten out though
. T
hey were there shooting video as she drove out the driveway.

They waved vigorously for her to stop. She considered just driving by but
, thinking about how rude
Michael Fentis
had been to her at the Olympics she stopped. Rolling down her window she said, “Hi folks.”

“Ms. Donsaii, can we have a statement
about
…”

Ell shook her head, “Sorry, I really don’t have anything to say that I didn’t already say at the press conference in the airport Tuesday afternoon. I appreciate your interest and when we have something new to tell you I’ll be happy to do some interviews again.” She smiled broadly at them as
she
rolled up
the window
and pulled out onto the street.

Behind her the reporters scrambled for
their cars and soon she was lead
ing her own li
ttle “platoon” of cars to D5R.
When they arrived however
, t
he gate guard
stopped
her eager followers
and
so
she
was able to pull
into the parking lot alone.

Inside
D5R
,
Ell
went to her office for a while and dealt with a number of issues that had stacked up while she’d been gone.
At
nine o’clock
she headed out
to
the main room for their normal daily meeting.

Once everyone had gathered around one of the big tables, Ell smiled at them and said, “First, I’d like to congratulate all of you on a job ver
y well done.” She led a round o
f applause. “Next, we have some momentous changes about to happen. Brian, Vivian and Fred,” she nodded to the three, “have decided to break away from D5R to form their own company
‘
Portal Technology
’
that will commercially manufacture transfer ports. D5R’s major shareholders have agreed in principle to grant them
an
exclusive license to manufacture and distribute ports to end users all around the world.” Ell waited until another
large
burst of applause died down then waved at Braun and Stavos. “Rob and Ben here, have also decided to break away from D5R, forming a company
‘ET Resource
s
’
to explore the solar system
. They want to work on exploiting space resources, for instance the mining of asteroids for precious metals.” Again Ell waited for a burst of applause to die down. “Finally, Roger,” Ell waved his direction, “and I plan to
form a new research company ‘
Quantum Research
’ that will
continue doing research right here
in this building
, trying to determine what
other interesting things
we might be able to do with our new understanding of and access to the 5th dimension.”

Ell looked around the group.
“Not only have the D5R shareholders granted technology licenses to our splinter groups, they have
agreed to
provide funding for the
se
‘
startups
’
and agreed to allow current D5R employees to join whichever groups they wish. All of you have some D5R shares which promise to be lucrative as licensing fees
for the ports
begin to
come in. You will be able to keep those shares and will
also
receive corresponding
new
shares in whichever of the three new companies you decide to join.
”

Ell took a deep breath. “
To eliminate confusion going forward
,
in the future
D5R will b
e
only a holding company for the collection of licensing revenues.
It will consist only of a few administrative personnel that ensure collections and
manage distribution of receipts. It
will no longer be involved in
either
production or research. For now
it will contin
ue to work out of this building
,
as will
the other groups
,
though ‘Portal
Technology’
will need to move
out
as soon as it can find a location in order to increase its manufacturing
space
and capacity
.
ET Resource
will need to move as soon as it is ready to begin importing materials from an asteroid. ‘
Quantum Research
’ will stay right here.
I suspect we’ll still use the term ‘D5R’ when we’re talking about all of us for a while.
”

S
he looked around at their faces, “Today and the weekend you should all think about what you
yourself
want to do as we move forward. Sheila’s working
with Nancy from HR on
an administrative plan
so that each of us will
be able to choose which
ever
of the new groups we want to join
,
or to opt out completely and move on to a different career. Good luck to you all!”

Ell
immediately
found herself besieged with questions
from D5R’s employees
anxious
about which group
they
should join. Surprised to have people
aged twenty five to fifty
asking her for advice
at age nineteen
,
nonetheless
she did her best to give them
an
honest appraisal
.
“John, both
‘
Portal Technology
’
and
‘
ET Resource
’
seem
to be
pretty sure bets
though you
can
never tell in high tech industries.
”

“Why?! W
hat could go wrong with them?”

“Well, I don’t know. It sure seems like there should be a good market for ports but what if the government steps in to limit licensing or control what they can be used for? And it might be a lot harder than we expect to extract metals from asteroids.” Ell shrugged, “On the other hand porting precious metals home from asteroids should be very profitable if they can work out the problems.”

She pointed out that
the future of “
Quantum Research
” was
obviously
uncertain
. The “investors” had promised 18 months of support but
its
future depended on further discoveries
which may or may not be forthcoming
.
She grinned, “It’s uncertain, but exciting, don’t you think?!” Ell raised her eyebrows.

Eventually she retreated to her office, not because she really had anything to do there, but because she wanted to get away from all the people
that were so worried
that they might make the wrong decision.
T
o her
it seemed like
all
three
choices were pretty good
and she wondered why they were agonizing so over the decision. After some thought she
decided
that
it was
just
human nature to worry that choice B might be a little better than A
,
even if both were good.
A
nd
to
be
terribly
disappointed
later
if you
hadn’t
cho
sen
the
very
best
option
for yourself.

Ell sat in her office staring without focus
out
into space and considering the math of her single ended ports
. She wanted to try sending some objects through ports that didn’t have the other end defin
ed. Though her first ports
back in
Las Vegas
had been single ended, s
he hadn’t worked on
anything but double ended ports
for nearly a year now. She’d never made
a single ended
one bigger than a few molecules in diameter. She
thought she
should be able to use
Brian’s entangled buckyball sprayer to make the actual ports
but
she realized that
the electronics would need to be modified substantially. She’d been thinking about the circuit for it but she’d only been able to come up with ones she thought were kind of clunky and clumsy. They also promised to be quite
energy
inefficient. She wanted to talk to Vivian about it
,
but now that Vivian was
going with Portal Tech
it seemed like she shouldn’t be expected to help with Ell’s new projects. On the other hand Vivian, Fred and Brian were still expecting Ell to help them with Portal Tech, maybe Ell
should
just go ask her for some help?

There was a knock on the door.
Ell turned, worr
y
i
ng
that it would be someone else seeking advice on which group to go with.
It was Roger. “Hey Rog!
Come, sit.
How’s it going?”