Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2) (16 page)

They grinned at each other for a few moments, then he said. “I’ve got to know how this works. Can we make a non disclosure agreement, i.e. that I hereby agree not to reveal the means or mechanisms of your device to anyone, nor to attempt to exploit it for commercial gain in any form and you tell me how it works? MIT has a standard legal form for non disclosure that I can have my AI modify to suit our situation. Since the form is written to protect MIT when we disclose our tech to others, you can be pretty sure it is written on the side of protecting you adequately.”

“Sure.”

He glanced upward, “Bert? Please modify the standard MIT nondisclosure agreement to wit, that ‘Ms. Ell Donsaii is revealing to me,’ and let her look at it.”

A moment later Ell was studying the form on her slate. “OK.”

“Oh, I’d advise you to take your time to completely read and fully understand it before you agree. You can take a couple of hours. Meanwhile I can talk to Kevin and do a couple other things.”

“Um, sorry, I read very fast. I do understand and agree. Taking more time won’t help me.”

Smythe rocked back, “Damn, I keep forgetting that I’m talking to the ‘Wunderkind.’ OK, I agree on my part, though I obviously can’t agree for MIT. But I promise to keep it to myself and not even let MIT know anything for now. With our agreement to this contract recorded by both of our AIs, the legal bases are covered so you can go ahead and explain.”

Ell and he spent a half an hour going over the design of the device, how it worked and how it fit with her equations. Smythe sat up and said. “That is going to revolutionize the world! First you have to patent, then you have to publish and commercialize. Tell me about your relationship with Johnson and NC State?”

“Well I love the ‘U’ but Johnson, not so much.” Ell went over her relationship with Johnson and showed Smythe the audio-video clip she’d compiled from her AI record of Johnson telling her to stop working on her project and demanding that if she did work on it, it be on her own time and with her own resources. She also showed him their final meeting when Johnson had demanded to be let back in and told him that he was apparently trying to understand her apparatus at present.

Smythe leaned back in his chair, “Amazing, and he seems like such a nice guy at the Society meetings.” He sat back up, “Well, I agree that he has no rights to any part of your invention, perhaps the University has a small claim. Why don’t you go ahead and submit a patent while you’re waiting for their decision, you don’t want to take a chance he’ll figure it out himself and beat you to a patent. He may be a jerk, but he’s a very, very smart jerk. Unfortunately, there is no physical law that ensures that brilliant people are nice people.”

Ell looked worried, “I hadn’t thought about how important it might be to get a patent quickly. I’ve got a serious problem because currently I’m nearly broke with virtually no collateral for a loan. I can re-up with the Air Force, in fact I have to, if I’m not in grad school. But it would be quite a while before I got a paycheck. I was hoping that it would be possible to interest a company in the technology without disclosing the mechanism, and then get them to pay for a patent?”

“Normally, that’s exactly what I’d advise you to do. However, that could take many months, and if Johnson submitted a patent before you successfully arranged it, it would be a serious problem. Would you take me on as an investor?”

“Uh, sure! How would that work?”

“You’d promise me, say 1% of your royalty stream, in return for which I would promise to personally fully fund the patent application process, arrange meetings with industry and advise you on industry negotiations. Essentially, as an interested party, I would do anything and everything I could think of to make sure you successfully commercialized this product. I would pay you $100,000 now for that 1% interest, so that you wouldn’t be ‘broke.’ And, so you’d be sure I’m continuing to work to make it happen quickly, $50,000 every six months until you receive more money than that from the commercial entity we deal with.”

“Surely you’d want more than 1%?”

He laughed, “Surely I would, but I’d consider myself very, very lucky to get that. I don’t think you have any idea how much this is worth. One percent will make me very, very wealthy.”

“What if the patent fails, or NCSU beats us to the patent, or something else happens? I don’t have collateral for a $100,000 loan.”

“It’s not a loan. It’s an investment. If you lose, I lose. That fact alone guarantees that I’ll bust my ass to make it happen and happen quickly so no one beats us to it.”

“Wow, that’d be great! Thanks. But, I think we should agree that, in case it doesn’t make it big, we should split the income 50-50 until you’ve gotten double your money back.”

Smythe laughed, “OK, but it won’t be an issue, I promise. I agree to such a contract as witnessed by our AIs, do you?”

“Sure.”

“Great. Bert,” he said to his AI, “contact Aaron Miller, tell them it’s an emergency.” Smythe turned to Ell, “He’s a patent attorney who worked with me on a couple of my earlier patents. He’ll be great for this.”

Chapter Nine

By the end of the day Ell’s head was whirling. Smythe had transferred $100,000 to her and she’d sent $5,000 to her mother. Smythe had demanded to see the patent attorney that day and paid $2,000 to have the attorney cancel his other appointment that afternoon. They were submitting the patent under her Ell Donsaii persona which had meant Ell had to rent a room where she could remove her nose prosthesis and wash off her bronzer, dark mousse and makeup. Smythe waited in her hotel room while she did this, making calls to start arranging corporate meetings. When she came out of the bathroom as “Ell,” Smythe looked up with a startled expression. “Forgotten what I looked like?” Ell grinned.

“No, I’d just forgotten how stunning you are. It must be an odd experience having people react to you so differently as beautiful Ell and plain Ellen, huh?”

Ell flushed. “I don’t think I’m
all
that
beautiful. But people sure do react differently to the two versions of me. But I think that’s mostly because I’m kind of famous as Ell, don’t you?”

He laughed, “Sure, that too. But you
are
truly beautiful and it’s hard not staring when you’re in the room. Just slap me if you see me gaping OK?”

Ell laughed. Somehow his honest admission made his intent gaze less creepy.

They went to the patent attorney’s office and went over the device with Miller until he understood it pretty well. Then they worked out a patent strategy. Smythe paid the usual patent fees plus an extra $10,000 if the attorney had it fully submitted by the close of business the next day. Between meetings they strategized their disclosure to possible existing corporations and to some venture capitalists. On Miller’s advice, Smythe hired a full time attorney named Exeter who specialized in IPOs to arrange and negotiate with possible corporate partners. The next morning Smythe cancelled a class so that they could meet with Miller again, who’d worked until late at night on the patent application. They went over it carefully to make sure it covered all possible uses.

After the patent had been electronically submitted, Ell flew back to Raleigh as Ellen Symonds with their plan established to meet with possible corporate partners the week after Thanksgiving.

Since her mother wouldn’t be able to send her broken car for Ell as usual, Ell rented a car for a week at the RDU airport. Then she went out shopping for some business clothing to wear at the negotiations to come. She had to take off her “fat pants” in the dressing rooms to try stuff on, which felt kinda weird. She also bought some other new clothes for her Ell Donsaii persona because that persona hadn’t worn much besides uniforms for a couple of years now. Then, since it was Friday, she dropped by West 87 before heading back to Morehead City.

When she walked in, none of the gang was there and she wondered if they had some other event that night. She went to the bar and ordered a Coke then went over to watch some of the pool players. “Care for a game?” a low voice rumbled beside her.

Ell looked up. It was Silent Joe! She saw Bill standing, holding a pool cue at a table across the room. Silent slowly winked at her. Bemused that Silent Joe seemed to be the only man who ever noticed her as “Ellen,” Ell shrugged and said “OK.”

They walked over to the table that Bill had racked up and Bill said, “Sorry I acted like such an ass the last time we met. I’m an obnoxious drunk and Silent here is trying to make me cut back.” He lifted a Coke and nodded to her.

“How do we play with three of us?” Ell asked.

Bill snorted, “Oh, no! You’re not going to try to give us that, ‘I’m a beginner who doesn’t know anything about pool,’ crap are you? Remember,
we’ve
seen you play.”

Ell shrugged, “Sorry, I really am a beginner who just happened to get really lucky that night. Hasn’t that ever happened to anyone else?” She looked up at them innocently.

Bill and Silent looked at each other, then Bill shrugged in turn and said “OK, you play cutthroat like this…”

After the explanation they played a couple of games, Ell carefully putting in one ball each time her turn came up and losing badly because the two bikers were actually quite good. She bought a round of drinks after each game, but everyone stuck with soda, even Silent, who true to his moniker rarely said anything. Then she saw Jerry across the room, staring at her wide eyed. She broke off the pool game and went over to him. “Hey, Jerry. Where’s the rest of the gang?”

“You’re playing pool with
those
guys?!” he said, staring across the room at Bill and Silent.

“Um, yeah, they’re pretty nice when they haven’t been drinking.”

“Humpf! Well the rest of the gang has been in Johnson’s lab all hours the past couple days, trying to figure out whether you really made your ‘spin bumping’ experiment work or not.”

Ell’s forehead wrinkled. “’Spin bumping’ never worked. What worked was photon-gluon resonance.”

“Yeah, whatever. They’ve been trying to get it to work. Thank God I never had anything to do with it. The way Johnson’s been riding Roger, you’d think that he expected Roger to have watched your every move, day in and day out.

“Ouch, but what about Emma?”

“Johnson remembered you saying something about Emma helping you with a circuit and when he found the two different circuit sets you’d had the fab lab make, he started grilling her about the one she helped you with.”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes. He’s been yelling nonstop. You’d think it was
their
fault!” He shrugged, “It doesn’t sound like they’ve made much progress though.”

Over Jerry’s shoulder, Ell saw the front door of the bar open and James come in, followed by Emma and Roger. She went over to them, “Oh man, guys! I am so sorry! Jerry’s been telling me that you’ve gotten dragged into this mess between Johnson and me?”

“Dragged kicking and screaming, damn right!” Emma said. “He is
such
an ass. And a hateful man to boot. He isn’t even my professor and he’s had me down in his lab all day today, working on stuff I know nothing about while my own research is going to hell.”  Her shoulders slumped. “But, Ellen?”

“Yes?”

“He had the fab lab build more copies of your circuits. Both the one you made that was so expensive, and the redesign I helped you with. They
don’t
actually do anything! Are you sure you’re OK?” Emma looked quizzically at her.

Ell looked at the others and realized they were all looking at her with concern on their faces. She realized they may wonder if she’d gone manic or otherwise deluded herself. “Um, yeah, I’m fine.” She didn’t want to tell Emma she’d intentionally had her build incomplete circuits. “The circuits need a couple of other components before they function.” Which was true, they needed their nanotubes, in addition to the two solder bridges. “But it’s fine with me if you tell him you just think I was crazy and making crap up.”

James said, “Oh believe you me, we’ve been telling him that. Sorry, but without you there to defend yourself and with you apparently not ever intending to come back, we’ve been letting your reputation slide right down the toilet. Well, not Roger here, he can’t seem to stop defending you—don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

Ell looked at Roger who had a sheepish look on his face. He looked down at his feet, then back into her eyes. “Hey, Ellen. I just can’t stand it when he says stuff about you.”

They sat down. Emma said, “It’s true, Roger has been risking life and limb; well at least sanity and eardrums, defending you. To hear him tell it we’ve been associating with a Saint. I’m expecting the Pope to call about your beatification any time.”

“Hey thanks,” Ell said and winked at Roger. “But you guys just go ahead and disparage my reputation with Johnson. I’d
prefer
it if he decided that my project was all in my imagination.”

“Really?” they chorused.

“Yeah. I’m hoping to be able to commercialize some devices from it, but even though Johnson should have no rights to the tech after telling me to drop it and making me work on it nights and weekends, I don’t want to have to fight him for the rights.”

“Really? But what commercial value would it have? Johnson says you claimed it can be used in communications?”

“Yeah. I think so. Though a lot of work would need to be done to make it viable.” Ell thought to herself that that statement was true. Work would have to be done to commercialize it. They would assume that, like most discoveries, it would need an incredible amount of engineering work done to make it into a viable and usable product. Most prototypes were marginally functional, look at the Wright brothers first airplanes. There was no reason to tell them that the prototypes she’d made were actually working great already.

“Well, you certainly didn’t put enough information in that invention disclosure form for us ordinary humans to figure it out.”

“Yeah, the IDFs really don’t ask for all the details and I didn’t think I should put them in before patent protection was underway.”