The Quick Brown Fox

by Stan Mason

  They went down the stairs and left the building to enter the house next door. It was very similar in style to the one where Sinclair lived and they climbed a set of stairs to a very large room. This one was extremely clean and tidy with an open area in the centre, Mai Wan was occupied doing isometric exercises as they entered and she stopped immediately when she saw them.

  ‘Nee haa!’ greeted the doctor facing the woman.

  Don stared at her in awe. His mind went blank and he quickly became tongue-tied. She was a beautiful slim woman dressed in a smart black outfit which seemed to cling tightly to her body. Her jet black hair was stunning as well as her lovely almond-shaped black eyes while her high cheek-bones enhanced her beauty. The scientist had presumed that she would be a middle-aged lady of some proportion, with a podgy face and possibly a wart on her nose, but he was completely taken aback at the sight of her loveliness.

  ‘This is Don Wise,’ Dr. Sinclair informed her. ‘He’s very raw and I have a lot of work to do on him. I’ve told him he needs to have total commitment and he has agreed. I also advised him that he has to come here every evening for instruction so its up to you what you do with him. I’ll leave him in your good hands.’

  With that he turned on his heel and disappeared down the stairs leaving the scientist alone with his instructor.

  ‘Take a seat, Mr. Wise and tell me all about yourself,’ she began, pointing towards a chair.

  Don sat down, stared directly into Mai Wan’s eyes and his mind went blank. He sat looking at her in silence until she decided to break the ice and venture further.

  ‘Is there nothing you wish to tell me? Something about yourself, your past, your parents, your work, your interests?’

  He continued to gaze into her eyes and then began to burble. ‘I’m not marr... marr... married,’ he stuttered.

  ‘Well that’s something you might consider in the future. Tell me, what do you think when you see me?’ she went on, sitting opposite him.

  ‘Beaut... beaut... beaut... lovely... prett... prett... pretty woman.’

  ‘Why are you stuttering? I’m simply another human-being like yourself. Why do you blockade your mind with the matter of sex. You don’t need to impress any woman in that way.’

  He stared at her with a dull expression on his face. ‘I d... don’t know,’ he stuttered unhappily.

  ‘Your problem is that you are trying too hard to impress and by doing that you overpower your mind with advance situations. Sex will come naturally in time. You don’t need to rush it. Simply think of women as your casual friends. You can even think of them as men. It might help you to remove that blockage.’

  As far as the scientist was concerned, it was like talking to the wall. What was the woman saying to him? What blockage in his mind? He certainly wasn’t thinking of sex and he felt that it was up to him to make a stand and tell her.’

  ‘I d... don’t think of s-sex,’ he managed to say.

  ‘Don’t fool yourself!’ she chided sharply. ‘You think you have control of your sub-conscious mind but you’re wrong. That’s where the blockage lies... in your sub-conscious mind. You can’t understand it because it’s hidden but if we can unlock it we’ll have you in good form in no time.’

  ‘How long... g is ‘no time?’

  ‘How long is a piece of string, Mr. Wise?’ she countered smartly. ‘You will have to start from square one and motivate yourself onwards and upwards until you reach the pinnacle. When we’ve finished with you, you’ll be a changed man. Of that I promise you.’

  He continued to stare at her without talking, listening to all the things she told him about the programme she had set for him. The task seemed to grow to monumental proportions as time went on. How was he going to do all those things in six months... the time scheduled for his reconstruction, reshaping and mental improvement? Indeed, the thought of it all became almost claustrophobic! However there was one thing in his favour... people were willing to help him and he was there ready and available for the change!

  Chapter Ten

  David Coleman had a lot to answer for as he was the person responsible for wiping the computer clean in the laboratory and stealing the papers from Robert Harris’s desk drawer. He was a well-educated man who had attended Maudlin College at Oxford University reading literature and antiquities. He was purely academic which soon became abundantly clear to all and sundry at Universal Energy. quite unlike his father who was an entrepreneur running a successful import business of high-class motor vehicles. The older man earnestly wanted his son to join him in his activities but Coleman graciously declined and went into industry on his own account even though he recognised that it would be a disaster. He was a shirker... not a worker! In truth, he knew nothing about motor vehicles and it did not suit him to work alongside his father despite all the benefits it offered him. His mother had died at childbirth and, as his father had never remarried, he was the only child, capable of inheriting a small fortune plus the business when his father passed away. Not that it was his intention to continue the motor vehicle business for himself as he had no organisational ability. No... he would sell it immediately it passed into his hands.

  After leaving university, he had been readily employed by a cardboard box manufacturers who had high hopes of a bright young graduate improving the business with new and fresh ideas. Sadly, it took them much less than a year to discover that they had made an awful error in employing the man. The inadequacies eventually became evident and Coleman remained an academic as his managerial skills proved to be absolutely appalling. He had no idea of business or of the need for organisation within it and he failed to satisfy his employer in every possible way. One day, when the factory was filled with all the wrong-sized boxes that no one wanted, he was asked to leave and the management sighed with relief that they hadn’t forced him to sign a contract of employment. Nonetheless, they gave him a glowing reference on his departure to sweeten the pill hoping that he would soon find alternative employment and not trouble them any further. His next managerial role took place in a plastic extrusion company but after a further year they realised how impotent he was, and his lack of organisation or dealing with staff, so they sent him packing. This time the reference was not quite so glowing. At that time, Universal Energy Inc. were seeking a manager for their armoured vehicle division and, relying on the fact that he had been to Oxford University, they recruited him for that purpose. However disaster struck under his control as one system after another fell apart. Orders were confused, serious clerical errors were made, long delays occurred, and customers often received the wrong goods or no goods at all. When all this came to light, he was removed from the division and relegated to the brainstorming unit. Once there, he spent all his time reading books on literature and antiquities, hardly ever seeing Robert Harris or Don Wise. His monthly report to his senior manager was an anthology of gobbledy-gook embracing a plethora of prose with very little substance. However, no one seemed troubled by the situation and nothing ever came to the fore until Robert Harris submitted his theory on hydrogenetics.

  When he received that information, it stimulated Coleman’s mind. He sat for a while thinking about it, not knowing what to do, and then he became overcome by greed. He realised suddenly that he was faced with a remarkable opportunity to make a lot of money. The fact that the idea actually belonged to Universal Energy Inc. did not affect his intent or his conscience in the slightest. He was going to make it his own idea come what may! He readily recognised the value of contacts, which his father had taught him to secure in the past, and he had made many of them stemming from his days at university. Those who had been with him were all well set in industry, as managers, lawyers, architects and entrepreneurs, and, in particular, they had many contacts of their own. After some thought, he decided to operate the system similar to a the pyramid scheme but manage it by options of the new process even though there was not certainty tha
t it actually worked. By this means, he would arranged to pass the formula and the accompanying papers to a number of people, asking for a minor payment at that stage calling it an option. When the test results emerged and it proved to be positive, as he expected them to be, he would provide his contacts with the amendments or additional work on the theory ask for further payment. By then the initial contacts would have passed the information down the line to other people, also taking a minor payment for the option each time and it would continue in that way onwards to others. In due course, after the tests proved positive, every contact would have to start paying more money to the person from whom they received the information. It was an illegal chain of operation but one that would work in this particular case. He knew, without doubt, that as they were old colleagues none of them would cheat him. That was all he had to do... get his contacts and sit back to wait for the test results. If he managed to find twelve contacts, his reward in due course would be twelve-fold. It was all so simple... so easy!

  Indeed, he soon found twelve disciples who were willing to take on the option, each one offering him a minor payment at the inception with a promise to pay him twenty-five per cent of anything they made in deals in the future. Coleman considered it was a far better mission than selling high-class motor vehicles manufactured abroad in his father’s business

  There was no remorse on leaving Universal Energy. He reckoned that his day there were numbered anyway and he left without telling anyone of his intention to leave. However the strange fact was that he was very supernumerary in the organisation which meant that he left no void left on his absence, To his advantage, he had signed a five-year contract so they couldn’t really sack him but the fact that he had left of his own accord delighted his seniors. David Coleman, by his failure to reappear would mean that he would never darken their doors again!

  Coleman was not concerned about leaving months before the test result was known, There would be a flurry of excitement if they proved to be successful and he would be able to pick up the threads when that happened, Therefore leaving the organisation at this particular time was no hardship and he was free to continue his academic studies.

  Without delay, he returned home to his father’s house in the Midlands. It was somewhere he could stay without having to pay, enjoying the luxury of borrowing a fast car whenever he needed one, and having all his food paid for by his father, He could sit all day reading books on literature and antiquities without having to write a monthly report about a brainstorming unit which produced nothing at all and, in his opinion, was totally ineffective. It was a matter of waiting patiently for a few months to pass and then he would rake in the money from his contacts. It would be the crowning glory of his days with Universal Energy. He would have no conscience with regard to stealing the documents and wiping the computer clean. He assured himself that the organisation would not lose anything from his actions for they would gain contracts from governments all over the world from the process. Coleman’s contacts would serve other clients, such as local authorities, like the function of a pyramid scheme with all the top people involved earning money, leaving those to whom they passed on the information to gain very little. Such was the way of life... it was always unfair!

  ***

  After Jake had passed the copy of the formula and accompanying notes to Mr. G. he felt on top of the world. He was paid handsomely for his work but he was even more satisfied to have completed his mission. Inevitably there had been a few pitfalls on the way, and he regretted that Robert Harris had been killed in the process, but there were certain situations in life that could not be avoided. He was still unable to get over the obstinacy of the scientist when faced with a fortune enabling him to relax comfortably for the rest of his life somewhere in the sun. It was incredible that the man had turned down an offer which anyone else would have jumped at the chance to accept. However the ex-convict always followed the theory that you could trust horses but you couldn’t trust people.

  He was soon employed elsewhere as his services were always readily required. A number of shark lending companies regularly had people on their books who either fell behind with their payments or refused to pay back the money which they had borrowed. The reasons for such non-payment were legion and the shark loan companies had heard, at one time or another, every single excuse under the sun. When such situations arose, they knew it was pointless to send a letter to the debtor threatening Court action if they failed to pay. For their part, most of them didn’t have any savings or collateral so the effort would have been pointless. At the same time, to take Court action and send in the bailiffs to covet their goods was equally a non-event. Not only did it incur Court fees but most of the debtors lived in poverty. On such occasions when debtors failed to pay, it was necessary to send a representative to influence then to find an amount of money, however small, and to instil the threat of danger into their minds if the situation continued in the same fashion. Physical violence was really the only way to settle such matters. Jake would go to the defaulter’s house with his henchman and he would take with him two small blocks of wood with the centre curved out. If the debtor refused to pay, and his excuse for not doing so was arrant nonsensical, the ex-convict would place the two wooden blocks on a table about six inches apart. His henchman would then take the person’s arm and place it into the curved areas of the blocks before raising a cudgel and threatening to bring it down, breaking the debtors arm. It was the first warning for non-payment. On the second occasion, there were no further chances; the cudgel was brought down sharply and the arm was broken. It was the only way to focus the minds of debtors to make certain that payments would have to be made in the future... and, true to form, the system worked like magic. After the first threat, borrowers somehow found a way to make savings so that they could pay some money towards their debts. The problem was that the penalties and interest charges for non-payment increased the debt far beyond normal proportions. A loan of a thousand pounds could extend easily to twenty-five thousand pounds or even more for delinquent borrowers and they often spent sleepless nights worrying about how to reduce the sum because, if they didn’t, it was clearly going to live with them for ever.

  Mr. G. was delighted with the intellectual property. At last it was under his control and he could do with it whatever he wished. It was a completely new adventure for him as he realised the enormous potential of the project... but who could take it and develop it, that was the question? It could only be sold to a major power for they were the only ones who would have the capacity and the finance to develop it further for their own purposes. He picked up a pen and started jotting down a note. The first thing he wrote was the acronym BRIC. It stood for the four major developing nations... Brazil, Russia, India and China. He didn’t need go any further. At least one of them would be willing to buy the idea for the development themselves. He sat back, lit a large Cuban cigar and blew the smoke to the ceiling. Then he poured himself a Jack Daniels and sipped it slowly. His strategy and tactics had to be concise and effective otherwise he knew that he would fail. He looked at the first letter... B for Brazil. It didn’t bring a overwhelming feeling of confidence in him. Brazil’s economy was on the rise but it was happening very slowly. They had a mountain of international debt which had accumulated from the many years of recession and bad management in the past. If he went into discussion with them, it was likely that they would accept the idea but hedge the payment for as long as they could. Consequently, he dismissed the South America country and passed on to the next one. India... a gradually developing economy but also doing so on a slower scale. The problem there was somewhat different to Brazil. India was ruled by the caste system and there were numerous ethnic groups in the country. He would be dealing with committees who were often at each other’s throats, or groups of people who might be very much against such development. Subsequently, he dismissed India as his main target. He puffed at his cigar as his mind drifted the China. Now there was an de
veloping power. It was emerging from the dark ages and the burden of political drawback from the Communist era and it was currently moving like a steam train at full pelt. They were definitely worth a second thought. However, contracts with the Chinese were never to the true satisfaction of those businesses dealing with them in the Western world. There were often clauses in the small print which identified that payment would be made one year or five years hence. One had to be ultra careful to be certain of the payment date and, in this case, with six months for the test results, he would almost certainly have to wait some considerable time to be paid. That left Russia as the last country on the list. He was fully aware of the stark Russian attitude to any Western offers. They were always highly suspicious believing that there was some secret motive behind them. The Russians were on the upgrade having discovered the world’s largest oil reserve in Siberia and they currently served the Western world with a large amount of gas that was found there.

  Mr. G. had been to Russia many years earlier and he had befriended a man who was now working in the Russian embassy in London. It would be a good opportunity for him to re-acquaint himself with him to achieve his aim. He searched through his business card folder with his single arm and found the one he was looking for... Igor Strongonoff! He mused at the pranks they had played on each other in an era of cold war nonsense. Strangely enough, the Russian trusted him, probably because he had only one arm and felt a high degree of sympathy. They had wined and dined, travelled to St. Petersberg from Moscow, played chess together, and were pretty much in each other’s pockets for a while. Strogonoff was only a junior official at that time but he had climbed up the ranks of the Russian hierarchy to become a renowned figure in Government and he had been appointed to a senior post in London for two years.