Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2) (21 page)

Ell smiled at him and said, “So can I. If you like, you can redemonstrate this phenomenon with your own representative in Australia, after you have completed your local testing this afternoon.” She turned back to the screen, “Mr. Allison. Can you tell us what the other device in the FedEx package was?”

He reached behind him and picked something up off a small table. He peered at it. “It is labeled ‘Bensen Atomic Clock.’ Below that it says ‘picosecond accurate.’”

“Ell turned back to the room, “That clock is a pair to this one.” She held it up. “They were synchronized prior to shipping that one to Australia.” She turned back to the screen, “Mr. Allison, please unplug the PGR from the video cable and plug it into the clock output.” Ell picked up a PGR that had lain, plugged into a cable on a side table to this point. The left video image behind Ell disappeared when she did, though Allison was still unwrapping the foil on the right screen. She plugged her PGR into the clock and held the clock up so they could see the its display counting hours, minutes, seconds and blurs of numbers in the frames to the right of the “seconds” frame. On screen Allison plugged the PGR into his clock. When he did a display below the time appeared on Ell’s clock, saying “-29ns.” Ell looked out over the room, “There is a 29 nanosecond difference in these previously synchronized clocks. That is much less than the 40 millisecond light-speed delay between here and Australia—if you could transmit light directly through the center of the Earth. The 29 nanosecond difference results from a relativity induced time dilation as the Australian clock was shipped around the earth on a FedEx jetliner.”

The blond man said, “Oh come on! Are you trying to claim transmission is instantaneous?!”

“Yes.” Ell said, pausing a moment. “It is.”

“That is
not
possible! I can’t believe you called us in here to witness petty chicanery!”

Ell smiled at him. “You are, of course, free to leave. We are, however, demonstrating facts which you will be able to check for yourself later this morning. I would suggest that, if you have factors available to your company in Perth, you ask them to proceed to Jones and Allison, 410 West Hay Street so that they can verify what you have witnessed on the video. Checking our claim of instantaneous transmission might need to wait until you can send one member of a pair of your own clocks to Australia.

“Next, let me tell you a little more about the devices. They use quantum entangled molecules to transmit instantaneous signals from one molecule to the other using phenomena predicted in the equations published by Donsaii in Nature last year. The signal travels from one entangled molecule to the other through the 5th dimension she postulated. The power required is only to excite the molecules; transmission does not require any energy.

“Distance between PGRs, as predicted by the equations, does not matter.

“Data transmission cannot be interfered with, short of destroying one of the two PGRs.

“Data rates are essentially the same as fiberoptic transmission, but likely with significantly higher reliability because repeater stations are not required for long distance transmission.

“Because they depend on an entangled pair of molecules, each device is wedded in a pair to another.

“Transmissions cannot be intercepted by any other device, so data encryption is not necessary.

“In short, tomorrow you will have the opportunity to bid on a low cost technology, offering instantaneous, fault free, high rate, uninterceptable data transmission across apparently unlimited distances without infrastructure.”

Stunned silence greeted this statement. Several of the people in the room looked at each other with raised eyebrows, then the blond man said, “But they can only communicate with one another, like walkie talkies? Not like our current net structure where you can connect to anyone? That’s kind of limiting.”

Ell raised an eyebrow, then said patiently, “They are not a broadcast media. Neither is the ‘phone’ function in your AI. A company commercializing this technology would presumably establish switching centers that would take in signals via PGR and reroute them to a PGR paired with whomever the caller wanted to communicate to. Current phone and data transmissions are routed in just such a fashion. Thus, you could connect to the net at optical data rates, much higher than current radio based cell transmission - from anywhere, to anywhere, without worrying about getting too far from a ‘cell.’ The cost of such a system would be enormously reduced over cellular systems due to the lack of need for transmission infrastructure. It would also be more reliable and instantly worldwide. Undersea cables would no longer need to be laid at great cost, nor fiberoptic trunks, nor wire or fiberoptic connections to households, nor cell towers, nor wireless routers.”

The people in the room appeared somewhat stunned and glanced at one another again.

Ell continued, “Allow me to point out a few other uses for this tech.

“People, companies and military services who want completely uninterruptible, uninterceptable, undetectable communications could use direct PGR pairs for communication that did not pass through anyone else’s switching centers. Banks and unmanned military vehicles, at the very least, would want such communication links.

“Current control of satellites and remote manipulators on the moon, to say nothing of the robotic equipment on Mars, suffers tremendously from light speed transmission delays. If we had instantaneous transmission via PGR, a great deal of work could be done by telemanipulation. Surgery currently can be done in remote areas by remote manipulation but is troubled by transmission delays and reliability in these life threatening situations. PGR can resolve those difficulties.

“Systems that depend on extremely exact clock coordination, such as GPS could be significantly improved by being PGR connected to the NIST atomic clock.

“The Navy could communicate at high rates with its submarines even while they are deep underwater…

“I will now take questions.”

Another stunned silence followed as the people in the room tried to grasp the magnitude of the changes to their world that would result from the simple little device laying on the table before them. The room suddenly broke into excited conversations with multiple hands going up with questions. Ell coolly and calmly answered all of their questions except for the ones about “when could they speak with the inventor?”

Ell, Smythe and the two attorneys spent the day carefully watching while the potential investors subjected the prototype PGRs to every test they could think of, including many tests that the investors had to send people out to purchase equipment for. It was, as predicted, impossible to keep Ell’s name a secret because none of the companies would be willing to invest without looking at the patent application, which of course had her name on it. They had to be able to see the claims of the patent and compare them to existing technology to be sure that they would have a lock on devices made with PGR. Of course, with the PGR principle being described for the first time in that patent, no one else could have a preexisting patent on the technology, but they needed to evaluate the quality of the patent claim to determine how likely it would be that someone else could “work around” the patent. When they found out that the patent belonged to Ell Donsaii there were many exclamations by those who could not believe that someone that young could have developed this intellectual property by herself. They had to be shown the audio-video record of the release of all but 5% of the technology by NCSU. Several of the investors demanded a meeting with “Ms. Donsaii” but when asked “what purpose that would serve?” they relented. The important thing, after all, was the working technology and the patent that protected it.

That evening Smythe took Ell out to dinner with Miller and Exeter. There they discussed strategies for the auction the next day and whether to let the Liqx Venture Capital group bid at all after McIntyre, the blond man who worked for Liqx, had tried to leave with one of the PRG prototypes in his pocket. They decided to require a minimum 10% royalty stream, significantly more than the typical 5-8% and to require an initial “buy in” deposit with the same amount due each year until the 10% royalty was greater than that annual minimum. Ell asked about the annual minimum and why not just go with the royalty alone?

Exeter said, “We want them to be motivated to develop the technology as quickly as they can. If they didn’t have a minimum annual fee, they could take their time while the 20 year time course of your patent is running out.”

Smythe raised his glass to Ell, “To the only bona fide genius I have ever had the privilege to know personally.”

Miller and Exeter raised theirs too, “Hear, hear.”

Ell blushed, “Hey guys, I just got lucky. And I really appreciate your help doing this part. I surely don’t have the business skills or connections to make this happen without you!”

That night as Ell was getting ready for bed in her motel room her “Allan” AI said, “You have a call from Roger Emmerit.”

“Put him on. Hi Roger!” she said, carefully remembering to use her ‘Donsaii” accent.

“Hello Ms. Donsaii. I’m just calling to thank you for the insights you offered on my research Saturday night. You were absolutely right! The data I’ve been getting
does
fit your equations. After struggling with this for ages, I’m finally able to make sense of my results and start writing it up for my PhD! I’m going to have trouble because my advisor, Dr. Johnson, is so sure your equations are wrong. But, I’ll wear him down eventually and get it published. And I have you to thank for it. I just can’t express my gratitude sufficiently.”

“Uh, Roger, I thought we were friends?”

“Wha… I, uh, hope so too?”

“Why are you calling me Ms. Donsaii then? I’m younger than you are.”

“Well, uh, because you’re so brilliant! I should show you respect! I can’t believe how fast you saw what I was doing wrong.”

“Well, I think you’ll come to understand me when I say that it really wasn’t all that fast.” She said enigmatically, “But, anyway, I’m hoping you’ll call me Ell?”

“Sure! Ell. But, again, thanks for your help.”

“Roger, you probably saved my life there on Emerald Isle, I’m pretty sure I’m still in your debt. But I’m glad I could help.”

After they hung up, Ell climbed under the sheets, thinking about Roger and how much she liked him. Then her “Fred” AI came on, “Ms. Symonds, you have a call from Roger Emmerit.”

Bemused Ell put on her New York, ‘Ellen’ accent and said, “Put him on, Hi Roger.”

“Ellen! My experiment is working!”

“Really?”

“Yeah. The results I’ve been getting all along actually fit, if I use Donsaii’s equations to run predictions instead of classical theory. It’s amazing! I told you I explained my research to her when I met her Saturday and she immediately took a slate and worked out how my problems might be coming from using classical mechanics without taking her fifth dimension into account?”

Fighting to keep the amusement over this conversation from spilling over into her voice, Ell said, “Yes?”

“She was right! It is so hard to believe she’s only eighteen!”

“Are you going all moony eyed over this teenager?” Ell tried to say with a dangerous tone, “I thought
we
had something going.”

“Oh, Ellen, I
respect
her. I
like
you!”

Ell put a threatening tone in her voice, “You don’t
respect
me?”

“Women! You’re trying to drive me crazy aren’t you!? Nothing I say is going to make you happy, is it?”

Ell laughed, “Oh, Roger! Relax, I was just busting your chops a little is all.”

There was a long pause, Ell started to worry that his feelings were really hurt, but then he said, “There! Took me a bit, but I’ve relocated my chops. Hey, did you ever call Donsaii yourself?”

“Well… we have been… ‘communicating’ but I can’t tell you about it yet.”

“Really? Why not?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” She said mysteriously. “Night, night Roger.”

The next morning the Liqx issue solved itself when McIntyre showed up with a new group of investors that he had assembled overnight. He had separated from Liqx and his new group wanted permission to bid on the tech too. Ell as “Terry” fixed him with a baleful eye, “So you’re telling me that your new investors trust you so much that they are willing to invest in this technology without knowing anything about it, just on
your
say so that it has value?”

“Oh no! I
completely
explained its capabilities to them. Among this group I’ve assembled are people very experienced with bringing major new products like this to market. Here’s a brochure regarding what we have to offer in terms of expertise, experience and backing.”

“Does the brochure discuss honesty?”

“Huh?”

“You signed a nondisclosure agreement yesterday, specifically stating that you would disclose
absolutely nothing
about this technology, to anyone, without our approval for a minimum period of three years.”

“Oh! Well sure. But I only disclosed it in order to bring you this tremendous opportunity!”

“We will not deal with someone we cannot trust. We won’t be accepting bids from your new group. Nor from Liqx unless they agree that you will not be returning to their employ. Sorry.”

McIntyre reddened, stepped close and seethed, “Terry, you have
no
idea who you are dealing with do you?”

Ell looked at him innocently and shook her head with an enigmatic smile.

“You are going to regret this! I will make certain that Ms. Donsaii finds out that you blew a great opportunity. Even if she doesn’t care, I have the resources to make your life miserable. You, personally,” he hissed, “will be ruined in the venture capital world.”

Bemused, Ell wondered if he really thought she would back down? Instead she smiled pleasantly and said, “OKaaay. Now if you could excuse the rest of us?”

Once Ell had ushered McIntyre out, she had Exeter talk to Liqx and determine that McIntyre would not be returning to their employ if they were to bid on the tech.