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Chapter 56 - Energy Device Rollout

Kevin and his group arrived at Emma’s estate at 5:45 p.m.; they had taken the M11 and beaten the evening rush hour out of London. Kevin was driving one of the embassy vehicles, courtesy of Warren Porter, and since he had some experience with driving in England, Japan, and Indonesia, he was familiar with left-hand traffic.

Emma had returned from her office a few minutes earlier and met them as they pulled up.

“This is quite a spread,” Kevin remarked to her as they walked to the front door. “The grounds are like a park.”

“It is. I’m so happy the trustees decided not to sell it when Grandma died. They folded it into the real estate operation and set it up to hold events and small conferences. The university uses it a fair amount for housing for visiting faculty too. That’s why there’s a staff, and I decided to keep them and continue the leasing when I’m not in residence—I keep one wing for my exclusive use and it’s self-contained too; it’s private from the rest of the main building. Now go freshen up and put on your dressy togs like I told you to bring; we’re going to a great restaurant for dinner and they require jacket and tie, semi-formal for the gals.”

At the restaurant, they were shown to a private room; several people were already there. Emma introduced them.

“Tamara and Andrew, you’ve already met our dinner guests. You other ladies and gents, gather ‘round. Dr Sir Henry Stafford, Dr Nils Thomassan, Dr Beverly Norris, and Mrs Wilma Carter. It’s my pleasure to introduce you to Mr Kevin Coris GBE and Miss Denise Roberts GBE, to Dame Amelia Hadad and Sir Jeremy Porter, and to Mr Peter Winsberg, my guests for tomorrow’s event. My friends, Dr Stafford is our president and CEO; Dr Thomassan is our chief technology officer; Dr Norris is our director of research, and Mrs Carter is our chief financial officer. Sir Gregory Hodges, who’s the vice chair of EEC Energy, is in Scotland and couldn’t be here this evening, and our manufacturing operations director also couldn’t be here—he’s making the last-minute preparations for tomorrow.

“My company executives, I wanted you to meet these very special people whom I only met last week but have already become quite dear to me, and as well, apparently to Tamara. She’s told me that she feels that somehow our futures are linked, very likely through our energy business and my friends’ ties to projects to improve conditions in third-world countries. So I wanted you all to get to know each other.”

They had a pleasant meal and had a far-ranging discussion about the company’s plans, Kevin’s foundation, and all of their education plans. Emma told them that she would be giving them a tour in the morning and that Andrew would be joining them after a morning meeting he had at the university’s Economics Department.

They parted after promising to chat after Friday’s event.

~~~~

Tamara and Peter woke up early the next morning and got ready to meet the others for breakfast.

While they were getting ready, Peter remarked to Tamara, “Damn, sweetie, I don’t know what’s the matter with me... I feel jumpy and unsettled. Felt it all night and didn’t sleep very well.”

“Yeah, me too,” she replied. “So that’s another ability you’ve gained, you know. Dad has it too; it’s not quite precognition where you know what’s gonna happen. It’s a premonition ability. Something’s gonna happen today; I feel it too. It could be either good or bad, you know, but my feeling leans to bad right now. I don’t have any idea what will happen, though. When I get this feeling, I just stay alert. You should do that too, and if some thought pops into your head suddenly, pay attention. It could be a message from a lwa.”

“Damn, really? That’s crazy. Okay, I’ll keep alert. This is such weird shit.”

They met the others for breakfast. Emma had gone to the facility earlier, the housekeeper told them, and that she would be meeting them to give them a brief tour before the unveiling event. Andrew would be joining them from his meeting at some time this morning.

They left Emma’s estate at 8:45 a.m. in the estate’s limousine. It was just a short ride to the EEC Energy Solutions facility which was located on the River Cam in Grantchester Meadows, just inside the Cambridge city limits.

As the limousine carrying Tamara’s group drove down the lane leading into the facility, they could see a number of buildings of varying height on the site, dominated by a modern six-story office building, and between the buildings were several large parking areas, nicely landscaped and arranged to fit into the terrain. One of the parking areas had a large tent set up at one side of it.

The limousine stopped in front of the office building and as they climbed out of it, Peter remarked to Tamara, “You’re not taking that backpack of yours with you, are you, sweetie?”

Tamara grinned at him. “Peter, you know that I go just about everywhere with it, so why do you bother asking? This time there’s no electronics lab in there—instead I’ve got your Harry Potter cloak and stuff there.”

He just shrugged, “Oh, right.”

They walked into the lobby of the building and stopped at the security desk.

The guard was watching them enter and as they approached, asked, “Hello, Tamara; this is your Coris, Roberts, Porter, et al, group?”

She answered, “Yes, sir; that’s us.”

“Excellent,” the guard responded. “Tamara’s already all set. You others, sign in here, please. I’ll need to see your IDs and then I’ll call Dr Clarke.”

After the guard gave them their facility ID cards on lanyards, he made a call, and a minute later, a woman came out of the office area entrance.

“I’m Helene Steward, Dr Clarke’s admin assistant. Hello, Tamara. She sent me to fetch you lot. She’s been on the bell all morning getting important news. We need to take the lift here.”

Steward led them to a conference room on the top floor and a minute later, Emma came in.

“‘Morning,” she greeted them. “I’ve been busy—Sir George rang me last night and told me that earlier in the day, there was a huge explosion in a building in Bedford, about 25 miles west of here. The building used to be a warehouse and distribution center but was unoccupied until about a year ago but no one knew how it was being used then—no cargo lorries were arriving. The blast leveled the building and the debris closed the road out in front. The surrounding structures only had minor damage, fortunately; it was a big open building and the explosion just popped the walls open like a balloon. There were eleven people inside, all Russians, and they all died. There was a lot of electronics equipment in there too. One of the deceased was our missing former engineering aide, so we now know where those stolen polymer sheets went.

“Sir George told me that MI5 was involved with our industrial espionage case now and told me that I should ring the inspector in charge this morning; they’ll be visiting here later today.”

“What’s MI5?” Kevin asked. “I heard of MI6, that’s like the CIA, right?”

“Right. MI5 is internal U.K. domestic security and MI6 is the foreign intelligence service,” Emma told him. “I’ve spent much of the past hour talking to the MI5 inspector and a detective. They’ve been aware that there are Russian agents in the country who were sent here to try to learn about our energy device. They have info that the Russian government is worried about how the device will impact their export of oil and natural gas to Europe. About a quarter of the EU’s natural gas comes from Russia now, down from 40 percent, and it seems that the Russians are worried that our energy-storage device will cut into that number even more.

“The MI5 agency people are fairly certain now that the Russian government is behind the spying here. They think that their objective is to learn about the device, how it works, and perhaps if it’s vulnerable to sabotage or other kinds of tampering. I asked him if there’s anything we should change about our security here and he told me that he’s been told that we have excellent physical security in place. They will be giving us some further advice about operational security. He said we need to be alert for any overt attempts to break in here or other direct action against the company. I told him that we had increased our security staff following the theft of the parts and he said that was good, but to stay alert. As well, they are working on some other leads they have on our spying case. Well, that’s all he would tell me.

“So let’s go look at our facilities now. Tamara’s seen everything earlier, obviously. You can view the labs but we can’t enter the manufacturing area itself, although I have photos I can show you. Then I’ll show you a video of the manufacturing process. We have about ninety minutes before we’ll go to that big tent outside where you’ll get a close look at the unit. The show starts in a little more than two hours from now.”

Emma took them through the labs and they noticed that there seemed to be many uniformed security people present.

Kevin asked Emma, “You really do have lots of security here. Is that all because of the espionage or for the event today?”

“After discovering that those device components went missing, we did add a few more personnel to cover the area, especially the lab buildings, yes,” she answered. “And a few more when we found out about the explosion last week.”

“But they’re not armed...” Kevin went on.

“Can’t be,” she told him. “In the U.K., even the routine police patrols aren’t armed. Carrying any kind of weapon, except by special police units, is illegal here, even batons, knives, and defensive agents like pepper spray aren’t allowed.”

She brought them into a room set up like a classroom lecture hall.

“We do our presentations here. Our facility has a sizable scientific and engineering staff and we do a lot of basic research too,” she told the group proudly. “I’ll show you the photos and videos of the manufacturing area now. Please remember that this information is proprietary; you signed those NDAs that bind you from spilling our secrets, didn’t you.”

They all acknowledged that they understood and Emma began the show. Then it was time to go to the tent where the device would be unveiled. Emma led the group out of a side door of the building. To the right, they saw a series of single and two-story buildings surrounded by a four-foot concrete wall topped by a chain-link fence, which in turn was topped by a concertina wire coil.

“Looks like a high-security area, almost like a prison, over there,” Kevin remarked.

“Exactly,” Emma told him. “The manufacturing area there is very high security. That area is just like a military-grade security installation. The concrete walls deter a vehicle crash-through. That’s where the clean rooms are located and where the energy-storage units are manufactured.”

To the left was a large parking area and a tent had been set up at one side of it.

“The unveiling of the unit will be out there,” Emma told them. “We’ll get our private peek now.”

Several people were already walking over to the tent from a far parking lot. A uniformed security guard approached them, holding a cell phone, and calling Emma’s name. Both Tamara and Peter had noticed him and were watching him using a cell phone; that looked unusual since they had noticed that the guards carried radios. When the guard looked at Emma and called her name, they both stiffened.

“Emma!” Tamara called urgently as Peter stepped between her and the guard as the guard started to run toward the group. “He’s an imposter! Get back to the building!”

Suddenly a van roared up the nearby drive, about a hundred feet away, jumped the curb, and stopped about twenty feet away. Five men started to get out, two were carrying what appeared to be pistols. The approaching guard, now within arm’s reach of the group, reached to grab Amelia, who was closest to him. She twisted in his grip, grabbed his arm, and holding onto it, twisted her body and pulled him around into a shoulder throw and they all could hear the muted crack of a breaking bone just before the sharp thud of the guy landing on the concrete walk sounded as he screamed in pain. Then Amelia took off, running after Tamara and Emma, who had reached the building door, while Peter turned and ran to intercept the men from the van.

Amelia looked around, expecting to see Jeremy and the others following, but they had turned toward the van and were closing on it, trying to get there before the men could get themselves oriented. They had all seen that the men from the van had been distracted by the screaming of the ersatz guard, who was lying on the ground, and one of the men from the van had moved toward him but another called him back. Kevin and the others had stopped, however, when several men quickly recovered, pulled two AK47s out of the van, and began pointing the weapons at them, shouting that they were to walk ahead of them toward the building door where Emma had re-entered the building.

Emma, now inside the building, pulled out her mobile phone and began dialing, but Tamara turned away from her and Amelia and opened her backpack. Shielding her actions from the others, she reached into a compartment and pulled out three two-inch-diameter silvery rods and quickly fitted them together to form a ten-inch-long tube.

“What can we do?” cried Amelia, watching through the door. “Denise—Jeremy—they’re in trouble!”

“I’m on it,” Tamara grunted. “Wait here,” she said as she hid what she was doing.

She quickly pulled on a tab on the side of the middle cylinder and a silvery mesh web unfolded like a little parasol umbrella from its side. Then she slipped out through the building door, pointing the concave side of the umbrella-shaped tube toward the armed men, who were standing ten feet away from Kevin’s group, one of whom was shouting at them to move toward the building while Kevin was shouting back in Japanese, pretending that he didn’t understand, and the armed men were looking at each other in confusion.

Damn, that’s clever thinking, Kevin, Tamara thought as she activated the device she had assembled, her Mod 5 maser, now powered by an internal high-output accumulator. The maser’s excitation chamber wasn’t air this time; it was a mixture of nitrogen, argon, and helium that she had developed, and the maser energy that it produced would heat metals and other dense solids very rapidly. This device was an offshoot of her latest attempt to build a collimated microwave beam power transmitter and this device produced a relatively efficiently focused beam.

Within fifteen to twenty seconds, the attackers began shouting in alarm and began dropping their weapons as they were becoming too hot to hold and one man was screaming and slapping at his waist. Seeing this, Kevin, Jeremy, and Peter, followed by Denise, moved in on the men and, in a very rapid series of moves, had them all down on the ground. Tamara quickly disassembled her device and stowed it back in her backpack as Amelia came flying out of the door. She ran out to Jeremy as Andrew came running out the door with Emma.

“What the hell, Emma?” Andrew asked as he looked at the carnage.

“Some miracle work by Tamara,” Emma told him. “That girl is bloomin’ deadly. She’s definitely very much like her dad. Tell you later, honey.”

Several minutes later, in addition to the small crowd gathering around the screaming, writhing men on the ground, several police units arrived. Some of them had already been enroute to the facility to prepare to set up traffic control for the upcoming event. Emma had also phoned her security supervisor, who had come running from the tent, to tell him to get the crowd to stay away. Then the police took over, called for medical aid, and began asking questions, only to be stopped by two plainclothes officials who had arrived and identified themselves as MI5 officers. They had already been enroute to interview Emma about the warehouse explosion.

The MI5 officials told Emma and the others with Kevin to stand by and then began examining the area, noting the weapons and the attackers’ burned hands.

Meanwhile, Tamara had whispered to Emma. “Quick! Is there anyone in the tent that you can trust who can operate the storage unit?”

Emma nodded. “Dr Thomassan should be there.”

“Call him and let me talk, okay?”

Emma made the call and told Thomassan to do whatever Tamara said to do, then handed the phone to Tamara.

Tamara got on the phone. “Listen, it’s Tamara. Yes, it’s me; we’re all okay. Point the unit’s microwave broadcast antenna at the commotion near the west building door; that’s where we’re at. Do that now.”

“...”

“We’re okay, tell you later what happened, okay? Listen, when the police ask, if they ask, tell them that Emma called you and said to turn on the broadcast power to max. You know the settings?”

“...”

“Right. Then she told you to turn it off after twenty seconds. Don’t change what I told you and don’t ask why. Just remember what I said.”

“...”

Tamara whispered to Emma, “That should explain how the guns got hot. Tell the cops you had a wild idea; that they were just in the right place to point the beam at and that microwave power feature is still experimental. It heats metal quickly but it’s not harmful to people in small doses. Ad lib as needed.”

Emma smiled at her. “Again, you saved the day and saved all of us too.”

Tamara grinned mirthlessly. “Had a premonition this morning and it got very strong as we went out to the tent. The fake guard? When I first saw him, I could sense his evil but he wasn’t acting right. He also had a bulge under his arm. You said that guards can’t be armed but he was packing a gun. Shit, did you see the move Amelia put on him?”

Emma nodded. “She’s a real firecracker, isn’t she? And damn dangerous herself, as well.”

The police were primarily questioning the others—Kevin, Jeremy, Peter, and Denise, since they had been identified as the people who were being held at gunpoint. Only after further questioning did they learn about Amelia’s role. Since Emma and Tamara were inside the building at the door, the police and the MI5 officials were treating them as just witnesses.

“Ma’am, I’m Officer Bixby and this is Officer McDougal, MI5. Can we go to a quiet location?” Bixby asked Emma. “I understand you’re in charge?”

“Not operationally; I’m the chairperson of the directors,” Emma told him. “The CEO is in charge and he’s probably still with the device in the tent, getting things ready to begin the unveiling. How long shall I ask him to delay it?”

“Perhaps a half hour? We need to get some final details sorted.”

“I’ll ring him and let him know. Are the others all right? Those talking to the officers over there.”

“Excellent shape, no injuries. We’ll tell you their details after your interview,” Bixby said.

Emma called Stafford to have him delay things if needed and then took the MI5 officers inside to a quiet room where she explained how they had been accosted as they were walking to the tent.

“Earlier today I was on the bell with an MI5 supervisor, Inspector McFadden and one of your detectives, didn’t get his name, and they told me that Russian agents were involved in trying to steal the details of our energy device,” Emma told them. “Apparently their covert attempts failed and they were trying for a direct approach.”

“It looks that way, ma’am,” Bixby said. “Somehow, amazingly, your people stopped them. But we don’t understand a number of things here. How did you happen to have a number of martial arts experts available? Those suspects are big blokes, there’re five of them, and three blokes and one gal totally wrecked them. And they’ve all got second- and third-degree burns on their hands and two of them on their bodies where they were carrying pistols. Your martial artists also insist that they have no knowledge of how the suspects got burnt.”

Emma smiled. “Sometimes coincidences do occur, Officer. Mr Coris is a taekwondo master and his fiancée and Mr Porter are his students. Mr Winsberg, I understand, studies judo. We’re together because six of our group here were knighted by the queen last week.”

“Blimey. You as well?”

Emma nodded.

“My congrats, ma’am. And the guard? That little girl...” he consulted his notes, “Miss Amelia Hadad...”

“Dame Amelia Hadad,” Emma corrected.

“Really then? Her as well? Well, the perp she accounted for has a compound fracture of the humerus and what appears to be a broken back—several fractured vertebrae.”

“Good for her. Jeremy—that’s Sir Jeremy—must have taught her. That fake guard—did you see that he was armed?”

Bixby nodded.

“That nit grabbed her, or tried to, but she put a move on him and slipped out of his grasp and then just threw him down. He must have weighed double her weight. Then she ran with us to safety, thinking that the others would get to safety too, but those berks pulled those weapons out of the van then.”

“And do you know where their burns came from then?”

“I made a lucky guess. An experimental feature of our energy storage unit is a high-energy beam transmitter. It’s not ready for prime time yet but it can heat metal that’s in the beam. When I saw the guns come out, I rang Dr Thomassan—our chief technology officer—and told him to point the antenna to where those berks were standing and turn the beam on. Their guns got too hot to hold.”

“Hmmm, that could be a powerful defensive...” Bixby started but Emma laughed.

“It could, if you could carry a three-tonne, two-and-a-half meter cube in your pocket. Sorry, an energy storage unit like that can’t be miniaturized either.”

“Well, it was a thought,” he sighed. “How to keep firearms out of the U.K. is a big issue.”

“Certainly. Oh, a thought. We have security cameras around this building pointing at the walkways. I should think that the driveway and walkway where that happened was in the field of view. Our security head should be able to get a copy for you.”

Bixby nodded. “That’s excellent; thanks.”

“Now, about the others?” Emma asked. “Are my four friends all right?”

“Oh yes,” McDougal responded to her. “Apart from their clothes being a bit rumpled. But the perps? Serious damage there. One was kicked in the throat and it crushed his larynx and shattered his jaw. And the medics say he was struck while he was standing upright; that must have been an impressive move.”

He looked at his notes. “Mr Coris called it an axe kick, a ... um, naeryeo chagi, he called it. Another was kicked in the sternum hard enough that most of his upper ribs appear to be broken. Both of those injuries could easily have been killing strikes but the two who admitted to doing those, Mr Coris and Mr Porter, said that they pulled back on a full strike.

“Another has a skull fracture and concussion from being thrown head-first into the side of their van; there’s a huge dent where his head hit. Apparently that was Mr Winsberg’s contribution. Miss Roberts kept herself busy too, it appears; she accounted for two down. One with two broken knees and the last one, a broken shin and a broken clavicle. And the suspects never even got a shot in themselves. And those are teens too? Late teens. You said that Mr Coris did their training, three of them? I’d like to know who trained him.”

Emma chuckled. “Kevin Coris told me that he learned from a high-level grand master in Seoul. And as I mentioned, Sir Jeremy was Mr Coris’ student for a few years and Jeremy trained Dame Amelia. Mr Coris trained Miss Roberts. So go to South Korea and get your own training. Are we done then?”

McDougal laughed. “Yeah. Blimey, I’ll put my travel request in at the end of my shift.”

“You’ll be available to answer any further questions, should we have them?” Bixby asked.

“Certainly. I’d like to find out how that one berk got one of our security uniforms, though. If it weren’t for Miss Alexandre’s alert, they would have taken us by surprise.”

“I did question her about that,” McDougal replied. “She’s apparently very observant and noticed a bulge under his arm. She told me that you had mentioned that security guards can’t be armed so she knew something was amiss. Smart gal.”

Emma nodded. “She is smart. She’s the inventor of the energy unit we’re unveiling.”

“You don’t say. Impressive, innit,” McDougal replied.

“If your duties allow, you can stay for the roll-out,” Emma offered.

“Sorry, they don’t,” Bixby responded. “We’ve got to backtrack on these suspects, find out where they’ve been, and liaise with the interrogation team. Lots of things to get sorted now. Thanks, Dr Clarke, for your help.”

“And thank you for your quick response to our ... erm ... invasion,” Emma replied.

She led them back out of the building to where the police were finishing up. Tamara, Kevin, and the others were talking with Stafford while they were watching the police finishing up. The invaders had already been taken away by ambulance. Stafford went to the nearest police official.

“Are you finished with us, then?” he asked and the officer glanced at Bixby, who nodded.

“Yes, you can carry on, sir. We may need to ring you or visit if we need any details answered,” he commented.

“That will be fine; thank you.”

Meanwhile, people who had been heading to the event tent had become curious and wandered into the area while several reporters from recently arrived news vans had seen the police and came walking over. Bixby and McDougal were returning to their vehicle, but Bixby turned, caught Emma’s attention, nodded to the reporters, and shook his head. Emma nodded back.

A reporter approached the group. “Who’s in charge here? Why are the bobbies here?”

Emma whispered to Stafford, “The police said to say nothing.”

Stafford spoke up, “I’m the head of this facility. If you’re here for the unveiling of our new energy device, the event is over at that tent.”

“What about the bobbies?”

“They were called on an internal matter; nothing to do with the unveiling,” he responded.

“I heard a call for ambulances, why were they called?” another reporter asked.

Emma spoke up then. “They were called for a few people who had burns and it had nothing to do with the unveiling. Now if you’ll excuse us, we need to get over to the tent to begin.”

Looking disgruntled, the three reporters started off to the tent.

Emma turned to Tamara and the others. “We’ll need to talk about this afterward. Meanwhile, the police said we should say nothing about what happened here.”

They all nodded assent, and Tamara told her, “With all this going on, I just about forgot. Peter bought a Harry Potter robe and wand on his trip here from London. Do you or Dr Stafford want to wear it when you pull off the cover on the unit?”

Emma grinned at her. “Blimey, that’s ace. It’ll bring some humor into what’s been a dreadful day so far. But we’ll make a change then; you’ll be the one pulling the cord, my dear.”

“Me?” she squeaked.

“Of course. The speeches—brief ones—are by me, Stafford, and then Thomassan. Then instead of your doing your speech and me doing the honors, as we had planned, I’ll say something to introduce you. You’ll put on the robe out of sight behind the unit while Nils is talking and then pop out when I call you. You wave the wand, pull the cord, and the drape will get pulled off. Then that’s when you give your little speech. Got that?”

“Oh sure. Okay; this should be interesting.”

People were taking seats in the tent as they entered and walked over to a row of seats next to a podium facing the audience at one side of the front of the tent. Also at the front and centered on the tent side was an eight-foot tall boxy-shaped object covered with a drape. Emma, Stafford, and Thomassan took the seats at the front and Emma indicated to Tamara that she should take the seat closest to the unit. When it looked like the people in the audience had mostly settled, she rose and went to the podium. Smiling and looking out at the group, she began.

“Welcome; most delighted you could be with us today. I’m Emma Clarke, one of the leaders of EEC Energy Solutions. We’ll keep this short; no point in dragging out your having to wait to see the biggest revolution in energy storage since the invention of the battery. About four years ago, when we created this company, our goal was to try to improve battery technology, but some unrelated discoveries led us to explore better ways of storing energy, as opposed to creating it or storing it chemically inside small packages—that’s basically what a battery does. Our new technology allows energy to be collected at a very high efficiency as it becomes available and stored for later use with virtually no losses over time. Think of a battery charged by a solar cell. It collects energy during the day, the energy chemically charges the battery, and that stored energy is used when the sun goes down. But there’s an energy loss in each step, isn’t there.

“Energy is also lost by batteries over time. Who hasn’t experienced a flat battery, even though the device hasn’t been used? Our device eliminates all of those losses and stores the energy without any chemical reactions involved, so there’s nothing to leak. It also gathers energy directly from the environment—think of all the energy present in a thunderstorm. This unit before you will not simply store generated electricity; it will also gather the energy that goes into making the lightning in those storms. Our company’s economists have calculated that when units like this one are fully deployed, your electricity costs will drop at least 40 percent. Now let me introduce Dr Sir Henry Stafford, our CEO, and he will talk more about those deployment plans. Dr Stafford?”

“Thanks, Dame Emma. Dr Emma Clarke is our distinguished founder and chairperson of the directors of EEC Energy Solutions...”

Stafford went on to briefly describe the deployment plans for the storage units. Then he introduced Thomassan, who spoke about how the unit differed from the industrial lithium-ion storage units used in conventional energy farms, and the company’s plans for developing wireless energy transmission. Then he called on Emma to return. She rose and smiled at the audience.

“It’s almost time now. When the process that resulted in the invention of this device was first developed, we physicists thought that it couldn’t possibly be real; some kind of magic must be involved. After all, if you throw a twig into a moving river, it shouldn’t start floating upstream, should it. But that’s precisely what the electron flow in our device does; it flows against the charge gradient. Physicists couldn’t figure out why. Must be magic, right? Well, let me introduce our magician; she’s the one who invented the process that our unit employs and which promises to revolutionize our understanding of electrodynamics. Here’s our magician, Miss Tamara Alexandre DBE.”

Tamara appeared from behind the cube decked out in the Gryffindor cloak and scarf, waving the wand, and wearing a big grin. The audience was quiet for an instant and then erupted in laughter, cheers, and applause.

Emma went on. “Miss Alexandre, although she’s been knighted, isn’t a subject of the queen so we can’t call her ‘Dame,’ and she hasn’t yet completed her doctoral work, but her inventions rival those of the world’s most accomplished scientists and engineers, haven’t they. As I said, a magician. Let me introduce to the world, EEC Energy Solutions’ ‘ElectroPowerCube’! Tamara, if you will?”

Tamara waved the wand at the cube; nothing happened. She shook the wand up and down, tapped it against her hand, and waved it again, to no effect, to the uproarious laughter of the audience. Then she grabbed the rope hanging next to the cube and pulled on it while waving the wand, and the drape was rapidly pulled up off of the cube to the cheers and laughter of the group. Then came their enthusiastic applause. Emma motioned to Tamara to came to the podium.

“Hello everyone. That was fun, thanks for letting me do that.” Applause again. “Seriously, about our magic, though—you know that science can be a lot like magic to those who don’t understand it. Robert Heinlein, the famous science fiction author, said it best: ‘One man’s magic is another man’s engineering.’ Or in my case, it’s ‘gal’ instead of ‘man.’”

Laughter.

“And there are lots of things that happen in the natural world that aren’t understood. Is that magic? No, those things are simply discoveries that are waiting to happen. I’m lucky to have a very active imagination and a large amount of curiosity, so perhaps I’ve had more than my fair share of discoveries. Since I was a child, I’ve always wanted to help people have better lives and I’m so glad that the ElectroPowerCube will be able to help do that.

“But there’s more to this device than this eight-foot cube. EEC Energy has under development small power cells which use the same technology—it’s where the idea for our big unit here came from. We will soon be introducing power packs which will be available in AAA battery size all the way up to the nine-volt package size and power packs to run electric vehicles are being developed right now—they will give electric vehicles the same range as petrol-fueled ones too. Another unique feature of these so-called ‘accumulators’ is that they actually can recharge themselves, even while they output energy, and they can last for many years, store power indefinitely, and never leak.”

There was applause.

“One of Dr Clarke’s initial ideas for the company was to produce tiny long-lasting batteries for use in things like watches, mobile phones, and even hearing aids. Our energy-storage technology can do that as well, so her goal was achieved. Is this all magic? I recall what the author Arthur C. Clarke, no relation to Dame Emma but there should be—she’s as creative as he was—once said, ‘Magic is just science that we don’t understand yet.’ So we definitely can say that EEC Energy Solutions is in the magic business,” Tamara said as she waved the wand to more laughter. “The magic of finding solutions to the world’s energy problems. Thanks so much for your time.”

Everyone in the tent rose to applaud her and Emma wrapped her in a hug.

“That was inspired, dear, and very moving,” she whispered in Tamara’s ear. “You did that on the fly, didn’t you?”

Tamara nodded. Then Emma took the microphone out of its holder and spoke, “Thanks, Tamara, that was not only entertaining but also inspiring...”

The group applauded again.

“... but now I want you to see the features of our ElectroPowerCube. To show you that, let’s get Dr Thomassan to show you its working parts. But first, let me say that everything in the tent and around it is currently being powered by the device.”

Applause.

“Nils? Come show us.”

As he rose to go to the unit, Tamara stood up and ceremoniously handed him the wand and the place broke up again. When he shook the wand and then complained that he hadn’t read the manual yet, the laughter redoubled and applause broke out.

“The secret inside here,” he tapped the unit’s side, “is that there are two blokes furiously peddling bikes connected to generators,” he joked, and that resulted in another burst of laughter.

“All right then,” he went on, “Let’s open it up. Here’s the control panel and you can see...”

Thomassan had popped a panel open, exposing a bank of controls and several meters. He briefly explained their function, and then took a few side panels off. He showed the banks of modules and how they just plugged into the unit and how they could be hot-swapped while the unit was running.

“We used a modular design, so these power packs could be swapped out to go into our various accumulator designs, as for instance, a mobile power unit.”

He pulled over a stepladder, climbed onto it, and pulled off an upper panel, pointing out the antenna receptors which could pull in free environmental electrons.

“Remember, static electricity is created when two surfaces move together and that action produces free electrons,” he told them. “So there are always free electrons circulating in the environment; a thunderstorm gathers enough of those static charges together to create a lightning flash. Our unit has a series of receiving antennas to capture and store those free electrons. These are the antennas.”

After some further explanation, he opened the floor for questions. Very few were technical and those were handled quickly. Most of the others were of the nature “When will we get cheaper power?” The answer was “As quickly as we can ramp up production and get the environmental approvals for the energy farm sites that these will occupy. Talk to your MPs. Get the government to speed the funding and site approval process.”

The event wound down and that’s when the press descended on Emma and the company officers to get their own reporting angles for publication and TV, and to get some sound bites too. After everyone had finally gone, Emma called the remaining people together—the technical staff who set up the tent and the displays, the security people, and the company’s officers. And Kevin and his group.

“This was blindin’ brilliant, you lot,” she told them. “You all did a crackin’ ace job. I’ll leave you tech wranglers to start breaking everything down; get the unit back to the fabrication building. Security, please police the site to be sure the public is all gone. Look for hidden photogs; you know how the paparazzi like to get shots of events when everyone’s guard is down. The rest of us, let’s go the main conference room—my friends too.”

They all began working on their assigned tasks as Emma’s group left for the conference room.

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