Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2) (23 page)

Johnson shook his head. “We’ve been doing some research on a paper she wrote, but it hasn’t been going well. I can’t believe that it has anything to do with that.”

“Wasn’t Symonds, that grad student from your lab who claimed to have made an invention, working on stuff based on Donsaii’s theory?”

“Yeah, but how would Donsaii have heard about it? And that wouldn’t have anything to do with a donation to the University anyway.”

The door opened and Mindy let a slender young reddish blond woman in. When Donsaii turned toward them they were startled to see how young she looked. She wore black slacks over long slender legs and a simple grey jacket over a cream blouse with a pearl necklace. The simple elegance, in combination with her effortless, cosmetic free beauty was stunning. Johnson stepped over, thinking that she seemed somehow familiar, probably from seeing her at the Olympics, “Hello, Ms. Donsaii, I’m Al Johnson from the University Physics department,” he turned, “and this is Wayne Stillman from the Technology Development Office.”

Without speaking, Donsaii shook both their hands, then another door opened and the Chancellor stepped in. She stepped over and said, “Hello, Ms. Donsaii, I’m Chancellor Overhart. It appears you’ve already met Dr. Johnson and Mr. Stillman?”

“Yes Ma’am.” she said in a very polite tone. “Thank you for meeting with me.”

“Oh, well, we’re always pleased to meet with someone of your stature.” the chancellor said graciously, while also thinking that Ell looked unbelievably young for someone so famous. “How can we help you?”

Dr. Johnson interrupted, “I for one, am pleased to have the opportunity to meet you, not because of your status as an Olympian, but because of the paper you wrote on ‘Quantum Entanglement through an Unperceived Dimension.’ It’s certainly stirred up the world of Physics!”

Donsaii flashed Johnson an enigmatic smile, then turned back to the Chancellor. “It’s more a matter of how we can help each other, Ma’am. But I have to give you a bit of background first. May we sit?”

Once everyone had taken a chair, Ell said, “This summer when I graduated from the Academy-”

Stillman said, “You’ve graduated? I thought you were a rising sophomore at the Olympics a summer ago?”

“Yes, well, I completed all the requirements for graduation in two years so they let me go early.”

“Oh.” The other three people in the room looked at her musingly with even greater respect.

“But this summer I was kidnapped by a group, probably associated with the Chinese government, who stated that they wanted me to work on quantum physics for them.”

Eyes widened around the room and the Chancellor said, “My goodness! How were you rescued?”

“Well that’s a long story, perhaps for another time, but the important thing was that it was suspected they would make more attempts, and in fact they have.”

“That’s terrible! Do you have guards or something?”

“No Ma’am. The witness protection program fitted me with a disguise so that I could hide from the Chinese.”

The Chancellor said, “Oh.”

But a cold clammy sensation came over Johnson as he suddenly looked hard at Donsaii.

“So I entered your graduate program in physics using an alias.”

Chancellor Overhart looked over at Dr. Johnson and saw his gaze fiercely focused on Donsaii’s face. “An alias?”

“Yes Ma’am, I worked in Dr. Johnson’s lab though, unfortunately, we didn’t get along.”

“You!” Johnson exclaimed. “Are you trying to buy your way back into the program with some kind of donation?”

Donsaii turned to fix him with a gaze like a laser. Then calmly said, “No.”

The Chancellor interrupted, “You recognize her Al? She worked with you?”

“Yes,” he ground out, “Though I wouldn’t have recognized her without hearing that she’d been in disguise. She was enrolled as ‘Ellen Symonds’ on the recommendation of a friend of mine without even taking the GRE exam, to my regret. She was uppity, difficult and could not stay on task. She kept wanting to work on some crazy theories put forth by Donsaii...” His train of thought derailed as he suddenly realized that he was accusing her of wanting to work on her own theories.

Ell spoke into the awkward silence, “As I said, I and Dr. Johnson did not get along. But on nights and weekends I worked on my own project and it eventually bore fruit in the form of a quantum device useful for telecommunications.”

“Not that again!” Johnson exclaimed. He turned to the Chancellor, “I reviewed her notes and reconstructed her ‘devices,’ they
do not
work. I’m sorry you’ve had to waste your time on this, Chancellor.” He started to rise.

Ell slid a PGR unit across the table to him. “Here’s a working prototype Dr. Johnson.” She said pleasantly. “Because photon-gluon resonance or PGR units work through quantum entanglement they come in pairs. You’ll find the pair to that device plugged into the back of your lab server. You’ll find it works very well, that pair saved my life when I was kidnapped for the second time last Saturday. They work well enough that a venture capital firm purchased rights to the technology.”

Johnson stared at the PGR like it was a snake. Chancellor Overhart said, “Is all this true, Al?” He didn’t respond. She looked at Stillman and realized he was also staring wide eyed at the small device on the table. She turned back to Ell, who alone appeared calm. “Ms. Donsaii, this is all very dramatic, but I assume you have a point?”

Ell calmly said, “Yes Ma’am. I reported the invention to Mr. Stillman in the Office of Technology Transfer. He accepted Dr. Johnson’s assessment that it was vaporware and so the University refused to assist me in commercialization of the devices. The University did claim 5% of any royalty stream that might eventuate if I were able to commercialize it myself.”

“Wait, you’re saying you showed Mr. Stillman a working model and he didn’t believe his own eyes, or, did you not have a working model?”

“Um, no, I did have a working model but Mr. Stillman didn’t ask to see it or attempt to assess my invention in any way beyond asking Dr. Johnson about it.”

“And you never showed a working model to Dr. Johnson either?”

“No Ma’am. At first Dr. Johnson refused to allow me to work on my experiment and then when I was successful, while working on it on my own time, I tried to tell him about it, but he refused to listen during any of my attempts to discuss my experiment. After I had reported it as an invention he did demand that I tell him about it, but at that point I had succeeded in building functioning prototypes and could not bear the thought of working in his lab any longer. I also did not want to disclose how they functioned to anyone who might want to undermine my IP. At that point I had already determined that I was leaving the University.”

“But, working under his supervision he would have some claim to the IP.”

“No Ma’am. My AI has just sent yours a file of my life while working in Dr. Johnson’s lab. Not only recordings of all the times he told me to stop working on this project and refused to assist me with it, but a record of every hour of my every day in order to document that I, in fact, never did work on
my
project except on
my own
time. There were some periods during the day, such as when I had my discussion with Mr. Stillman, but I worked on Johnson approved projects during the night hours prior, in order to compensate for any daylight hours spent on my project. I’ve reviewed this with my legal advisors and they assure me that Dr. Johnson, having no participation whatsoever in the development of this IP, has no claim on it. They also assure me that the University has, at best, a weak claim to any part of this IP since I worked on it only on my own time and using my own funds, even though I did work on it in the University labs and did use some University equipment.”

“Oh,
really
?” the Chancellor said in mildly unpleasant tone, but then she paused for a moment, took a deep breath and said, “Before we get our underwear in a bundle about who owns what, how much have you sold this technology for? It may not be worth the lawyer fees to argue over it. Mindy said something about 10.5 million, can that be right?”

“Ten and a half million would be NCSU’s 5% share of the first payment I’ve received, which was...”

“Five percent? So you sold it for... two hundred ten million?!?!”

“That was the initial payment.”

“Initial?”

“Yes.”

“How much total?!” the Chancellor asked weakly.

“I don’t know what the total will be. The annual minimum is two point one billion dollars.”

A dead silence descended on the room. Johnson sagged back in his chair. Ell noted that Stillman was sweating profusely.

The Chancellor cleared her throat, “And you are arguing that the University has no claim?”

Ell calmly said, “My legal advisors say that it would be extremely difficult for the University to enforce such a claim. However, it is my intent to deliver 5% anyway.”

Another pause followed during which the Chancellor calculated to herself that that 5% amounted to 105 million dollars a year. “I... see. And we are meeting today because?”

“Well because of several things. First, the patent is in my real name, not as Ellen Symonds. I have submitted a scientific paper on PGR, also in my real name. So I could have just assumed that you might not ever realize who Ellen Symonds was or realize that she might owe you money. However, that wouldn’t be honest, and when the paper and the product became public, you might wonder about the PGR that ‘Ellen’ reported.

“Second, until the Chinese stop trying to kidnap me, I would obviously like to keep the fact that I use a disguise a secret. So, selfishly, I wanted to meet with the three of you and reach an agreement wherein you three kept the ‘Ellen Symonds’ part of this a secret. In return I would agree to ‘donate’ money to the university, rather than it being a royalty which might lead to awkward questions. I would also like some control of how the money is spent.”

“You’re attaching strings?”

“Well four strings. The first is that if ‘Ellen’ leaks from here, it all goes away.  Second, at least 50% of the money shall be spent on Physics, from research, to scholarships, to equipment. The other 50% is to be spent on general university needs and construction, including the construction of any new physics buildings or facilities. Third, any Physics research projects to be funded by this donation would need to submit a one page ‘summary’ to me for approval. And, fourth, if I hear of abusive treatment, such as the yelling and belittling of students that Dr. Johnson regularly engages in, I will have the right to cancel that professor’s funding from this bequest.”

The Chancellor looked sharply at Johnson. “Abusive?”

Johnson interjected, “Just like anyone else, I get frustrated by incompetence and sometimes blow off a little steam. That is not ‘abuse,’ though some of these young people expect to be coddled even when they’ve screwed up!”

Ell had turned her head to focus on Johnson during this statement, now she tracked back to the Chancellor eyes flashing. “You have the audio video recordings of my interactions with Dr. Johnson. I posit that those interactions, where necessary, could have been handled in a polite fashion with similar, if not better results. I further submit that I am
not
incompetent and performed at
least
up to a level that might be expected of
any
first year grad student. If you disagree, please let me know.”

Johnson, purpling during this, exploded, “This is ridiculous!
I
know how to deal with grad students. And there is no way a jumped up undergraduate like her has any right to judge the merits of research submitted by our professors!”

The Chancellor tiredly said, “Al, you don’t have to apply for her funding, you can continue to apply to the NSF like you’ve always done.”

“While everyone else is getting easy funding from her?” He waved his hand in dismissal,” Ah well, she’d never fund
my
research anyway.”

Ell looked back at him, “Ah, but that is where you’re wrong Dr. Johnson. I’d be happy to fund your research. You are comprehensively knowledgeable and insightfully brilliant. You do need counseling in interpersonal relations but, I would love to free you up from the need to constantly spend time applying for funding so that you can actually focus on your research.”

Johnson looked at the Chancellor. “We deserve more than 5%, aren’t you going to fight for it?”

Chancellor Overhart stared at Johnson for a moment. “First Al, I’m not sure we have a good claim. Second,” she looked at Stillman, “we
said
we only wanted 5%, it would be hard to retroactively claim more. Third, 5% of this is a
lot
of money. Fourth, the girl has an income of 2.1 billion dollars a year. That is considerably larger than our entire budget and, if she wanted to, she could probably spend almost all of it just to tie us up in court. If we set our lance to tilt at windmills we should choose windmills where we have some chance of triumph.”

They stared at one another a bit longer, then Johnson’s shoulders slumped. The discussion went on for a while, but they agreed to keep Ell’s secret and accept her “donation,” strings and all.

Ell put her big coat back on and went back to her apartment, checking for “tails” a couple of times. She changed out of her dress clothes and into some snug new jeans that she had purchased on her shopping trip. A turtleneck, little denim jacket, the pearls and her new boots finished her outfit. She headed to West 87, even though it was a little early. She didn’t have anything else to do and she felt like letting off steam after talking to Johnson and the Chancellor.

Ell walked in, hung her big coat up and looked around the room to see if any of her friends were there. She didn’t see any of the physics grad students so she sat down in the booth they usually frequented, ordered a Coke and started thinking about interstellar communications using PGR. Nothing in her equations forbade communications over interstellar distances using photon-gluon resonance of entangled particles. However, you’d have to get one member of an entangled particle pair from one star to another before you could do it, which at current travel rates could take thousands of years! You could send an entangled photon from one star to another at the speed of light, which would only take four years to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, but would take a lot longer to some of the stars with earth-like planets. Even if you succeeded in sending an entangled photon, Ell’s equations didn’t predict a means for communication using a particle like a photon. She wondered if there might be some way to open a portal from one location to another through her postulated 5th dimension? Perhaps one just big enough to send a few macromolecules through?