“Yeah she’s fine and he didn’t get hurt very badly. She took us all out to brunch this morning and was very nice to everyone. Even one of the policemen. She’s just a really sweet person. Oh, and I told her about your research! She was very interested.”
“Really?”
“Yep, you really should call her and talk to her about what you found on both your studies. I told her just a little about my project and she immediately made some great suggestions that I can’t wait to try out. That woman is really, really smart!”
“Hey, what am I, chopped liver?”
“Oh no, you’re brilliant too, but I don’t think anyone is in Donsaii’s class. She’s really amazing.”
Simultaneously complimented, and mildly “put down,” Ell snickered at herself for the confusion percolating up through her brain. “Well OK. Hey, I’m going to be out of town for a few days but should be back by Friday. Maybe I can get by to hang out with you guys at West 87 Friday night?”
“Great! See you then.”
Chapter Eleven
She spent the flight musing about her romantic life. After spending most of her teenage years without a single amorous connection, first because of her shyness in high school and then because of the rules at the Academy, she now had two somewhat romantic relationships. Almost three, if you counted the relationships between Roger and Ellen and between Roger and Ell twice. She wondered if she should feel guilty that she seemed to have a borderline boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with both Phil and Roger? But, she thought, she loved the fun she had with both of them and neither had spoken to her about committed or monogamous relationships. The kissing had been pretty nice too! Different with each but thrilling with both, she mused, rubbing her lips gently. She decided she would just do her best to enjoy this part of life, a part of life that most kids had a lot more experience with by the time they reached her age.
Back in Boston, Ell met with Smythe and their two attorneys, Miller and Exeter. Miller had investigated the Air Force’s rights to any invention by Ell and determined that they would be able to claim royalty free use of the invention but none of the royalty stream since she had been detached when she’d made the invention. The patent had been submitted, both in the US and world wide. Though it would be months to years before patents would be approved, they had established priority and could define the invention as “patent pending.” Exeter had incorporated “PGR Tech” and had arranged a meeting the next day with seven large companies or venture capital groups, all of whom were bound by non-disclosure agreements. All the companies knew so far was that they were being offered an opportunity to examine and bid on a new communications technology that did not depend on wired, fiberoptic or radio connectivity. They didn’t know who the tech had been invented by, though Dr. Smythe’s name had been liberally used to entice them, so at present they probably assumed that he had invented it. The companies had been instructed to bring whatever test equipment they might need to be able to evaluate PGR Tech’s claims as well as their own data files to transmit in order to confirm transmission and accuracy.
Ell only had the six prototypes, one original and five of the newer smaller ones. One pair went to Australia and another to the lab computer at NCSU to provide an unbreakable connection to the net for Ell’s AI, so there were only four PGR pairs available for evaluation tomorrow. Therefore four of the groups would evaluate the technology in the morning and three in the afternoon, each of the groups closely watched by one of the four of them. They carefully discussed how the prototypes should never leave their sight.
Bidding would be the morning following the testing and would follow an auction format.
Ell said, “I’d like to go look at the rooms we’ll be using and retest the prototypes. Also, I want whatever information we have on the groups that are bidding. I assume that I have the right to reject groups at auction?”
Exeter said, “Well sure, but why would you reject a group? Surely we want to accept the best offer?”
Eyes flashing, Ell said, “A group of Asians, probably associated with the Chinese government, has kidnapped me two times in the past six months! If I sniff anything suggesting that those SOBs might be bidding, I do not want them to have access.”
Exeter swallowed at the transformation of the usually pleasant young woman’s demeanor from mild mannered to frightening. “Oh well, then you may want to cancel Lenovo’s invitation. They’re a Chinese corporation – though they do have very deep pockets.”
Ell’s eyes narrowed, “Lenovo!” she hissed, blatantly displaying her dislike. “What I’d like to do is show it to them, and then tell them that they can’t have it.”
“What reason would we give, if they’re the high bidder?”
“That the inventor doesn’t like them?” She sighed and leaned back. “Actually, I don’t know that Lenovo was actually involved, just that the kidnappers used the Lenovo name to entice me the first time. But, I do not want a Chinese corporation to have access, so please uninvite them.”
***
The next morning Ell appeared at the hotel with her hair moussed dark but, instead of her “Ellen” spiky do, it was plastered down to her head. She was wearing a tight sports bra, a man’s white shirt, loose around the waist and men’s Levi’s. No “fat pants.” Her hourglass figure was practically invisible and her look quite androgynous. She wore pale makeup and brown contacts. Smythe, Miller and Exeter didn’t recognize her when she walked in and Exeter, looking up, said, “Excuse me. This room is reserved for a confidential meeting?”
Ell said with her best English accent, “I believe I’m invited?”
“Oh, whom do you represent?”
“The inventor.”
“Huh, Oh! Ell?”
“Yup, I’ve decided I don’t want them to know who I am. I’d like to be here though. Can you guys call me ‘Terry’? It seems suitably androgynous.”
“But, I thought you were giving the initial introduction to the tech before they break up to eval it in the separate rooms?”
“I’m still up for that.”
When the potential buyers had all arrived and taken chairs, Exeter introduced Ell as “Terry,” an “expert” on the technology. Ell stepped to the front of the room and began to speak. “Good morning. We are presenting you the opportunity to purchase exclusive rights to a new communications technology. Today we will tell you about its capabilities and allow you to verify them. Tomorrow you will have the opportunity to bid for purchase in an auction format.”
She reached in her pocket and pulled out two of the PGR prototypes. Holding them up she said, “These are functional prototypes constructed in a fab lab. We estimate that commercially constructed devices could be reduced in size by a factor of at least ten and constructed in quantity for a cost below five dollars each. They will transmit data from one PGR to the other, and back, at rates similar to current fiber optic data channels but without the fiber or any other physical connection.”
A young blond man in the front row tsked, “So is this just some new way to multiplex a cell signal so that it provides high data rates? Because, if it is, I have to tell you we have something like that in development ourselves. We would not want to listen to any more of your presentation for fear that when we release our new system you may claim that we developed it from your presentation.”
“No, as the solicitation stated, and as you will be allowed to test, it does not use radio.”
“Laser then?”
“No.” Ell stared at him, clearly waiting for him to interrupt again.
“Inductance or something? What’s its range?”
“Thank you for asking, we have a small demonstration.” She had her AI open a window on the big screen at the front of the room. The screen was divided, one side showing an image of a redheaded man standing before a desk “Mr. Allison?”
“Yes?”
“Please state your location.”
“Uh, 410 West Hay Street.”
“Hay Street where?”
“Uh, Perth.”
“Country?” Ell felt like she was pulling teeth, perhaps she should have told him exactly what she wanted before the presentation.
“Australia.”
“You are an officer of Jones and Allison, patent Attorneys in Perth?”
“Yes.”
“And you are being captured by two video cameras, correct?”
“Uh, yes.”
“And the signal from one is being sent in the standard fashion over the net?”
“Yes.”
“And what is being done with the signal from the other camera?”
“Um, nothing, the output cord from it is in my hand.” He held his hand up with the end of a white cord in it.
“What’s on the desk in front of you?”
“One of the two devices you FedExed to us and had me open this evening.” He gestured at a small object isolated on the plain table in front of him.
“Thank you Mr. Allison. I realize that it is late there in Australia and we appreciate you coming in at night for this call. Do you know what the device is?”
“Uh, no.”
“And have you done any investigation of it?”
“No.”
“Is it connected to anything?”
“No.” he said, nudging it so that it slid across the table, thus demonstrating that it was un-connected.
“Please plug it in to the output of the second video camera, sir.”
He picked up the PGR, fumbled with it and the cable a moment. Another video image of him suddenly appeared on the left side of the video screen behind Ell as he took his hand away showing the PGR plugged into the jack. “There you go.” He said quizzically.
“And how much power is being supplied to the device?”
“Uh, whatever is usually delivered over a USB 5.0 cable? I think it’s 5 volts?”
Ell turned to the room, “Gentlemen and Ladies, the PGR device he has jacked into his camera is sending a video signal from Australia using only a 5 volt power source to this PGR here,” she pointed to the paired PGR device, plugged into a USB 5.0 cable on the table behind her.
I’m sure you can think of ways that it might instead be sending an RF signal to the net, then over the net to our screen here. So, though it will be difficult to prove to your satisfaction that that is not the case, we have asked Mr. Allison to have several cans of various sizes available. Mr. Allison, could you drop the PGR unit into one of your small cans and put the lid on it now.”
He did so but the video image wasn’t disturbed.
Ell said, “And now wrap, can and all, in the copper foil.”
The man turned and picked up a sheet of copper foil, then wrapped it around the can and wire. The video image remained completely stable.
The blond man in the front row had his arms crossed over his chest. He snorted, “That cannot be possible, but I can think of a lot of different ways to fake it.”
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 t
hrough 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.
Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2) Page 16