by Mia Newberry
And he reached his decision. He would throw his money into the pilot plant Dr. Simmons was building on the island of St. Matthews.
Chapter 10
David told Jada of his decision the next day. He was kissing her good-bye as she left to teach her final week of dance instruction. The studio owner and she had agreed it would be wise for Jada to take some time off until she had the baby. With her studies at the college becoming more intense, Jada had wanted to focus on her degree. David supported her in every way he could and was quietly over-joyed she was quitting the dance school so they could spend more time together. He was depressed enough as they were forced to drastically curtail their love-making, but not even seeing her on some days was more than he could take. All he wanted to do was spend his off hours with her in his arms.
“I’m glad you are doing it,” she told him. “We both know the company could end tomorrow; it’s the way the business cycles run these days. If you have the cash to invest, put it into something everyone is going to need. Energy is the best option you have. And don’t do it for me, do it for our children.” She closed the door and walked across the same parking lot where David had seen her for the first time in years. He watched her backside encased in the skin-tight dancer clothes she wore bounce along until she opened the door and went inside the studio.
He picked her up from the studio and helped Jada carry out all the gifts she had received from the staff and students. She was loved by everyone where she worked, something David could not understand. He’d been at too many places where nice people were turned into asphalt. The first job he’d had out of college involved a supervisor who delighted in making the employees come in and work on weekends just to get the weekly production ready. Jada’s world was so much different than his. He stood inside the door, trying not to interfere with her going away party. She finally took out the ultrasound pictures and showed everyone on her smart phone which resulted in cries of delight from the other instructors and dancers.
He tried to think of a way to present his reasons for investing in the Simmons project to the other board members at his company. He controlled most of the stock, so David could pretty much do what he wanted. However, if he took the gamble alone and it failed, he would never get anyone to loan him money again. So unless he had the full backing from the board of directors, he couldn’t do it. All he needed was a way to convince them. David knew this was the direction to take the company; he just lacked the powers of persuasion.
It was late one night when he was in bed with Jada that he finally hit on the way to get them to see the logic in putting money into the Tokamak reactor. Jada was naked and sleeping quietly in his arms. She had felt the baby move and he wanted her to get some rest, so they went to bed early. She was showing a lot now, her lithe figure no longer able to hide the advancing pregnancy. David was naked as well, although it was for closeness to his wife more than anything else. He’d taken a bath with her that evening in the new whirlpool and helped her with some course work. He ebony body was resting peacefully on his alabaster chest. David ran one hand down her head as careful as he could. He’d braided her hair once again, an act which made him feel especially close to his wife. And when he looked at her hand on his chest and saw the glitter of diamonds in her wedding ring, he knew what he had to do.
Her breasts were starting to expand with the hormone change. David had loved his wife’s body, now he was going to have even more to love. She had gone to sleep early and he could feel the warmth from her legs next to his. He leaned over, kissed Jada’s lips and went back to thinking about what he wanted to do.
He wanted Jada to make the presentation to the board of directors in favor of pumping the money into Simmons’ pilot plant. She had the charm, the charisma and the features to hold he board captivated and get them to agree. All she would need to do would be to take the scientific concepts needed to describe how the Simmons’ reactor worked and bring it down to the board’s level. The people she would be talking to were computer and internet mavens, not nuclear physics experts and they had very little understanding of the generation of electric power. But they all could be persuaded once they saw the money involved.
David watched Jada turn over and heard the beads in her braids make a slight sound as they collided with each other. He had spent extra time decorating her hair with beads and went on the internet earlier in the day to find out how to do it. He’d done it several times before she was pregnant and would love the sound they made when she was on top of him. Her hair would clink in sequence to her orgasms. He had wanted to record the sound the beads made while they were making love, but she wouldn’t let him. It was enough to know they were there and he had spent loving hours putting them in place. Jada wouldn’t even allow him to take nude photographs of her, much to his disappointment. He had wanted to put a tasteful semi-nude one of her over his desk at work, but she canceled that idea in a hurry.
“I love your body,” he had told her while kissing her nipples one evening before she was with child. “I just want something to always remind me of you. I’d even pay to have someone paint your portrait lying on a shag rug. I just want to always capture the moment we first made love.”
“I’ll always have those memories, David,” she told him. “You should too. A picture or a painting would share it with too many people. The only person I want to know how intense our bedtime love is ourselves. No one else needs to know.”Time was growing close to finish the funding of Simmons’ reactor. He had informed everyone interested in it that without any further support, it would be scuttled. There wasn’t any nuclear waste to be concerned about so the project could be halted at any time. It was crucial they bring the investment issue to the board. The money the dating sites were bringing in had built the company into one of the largest ones in the world, but David could see the new rivals popping up and finding a better way to deliver the same service he did.
“I need you to talk to the board,” he told her one night. Jada was wearing a loose nightshirt and David was in bed with her, massaging her back. She was in the sixth month of the pregnancy and he was doing everything he could to ease her through the process. David had spent an entire hour rubbing her down while she sat upright to relieve the tension on her back. He looked down and saw her stomach move from the inside.
“You see,” he said, “Jadin Lee agrees with me.”
“Or maybe Davada Simpson is trying to tell me it’s not a good idea,” she responded. They hadn’t been able to come up with a good name for a boy or girl, so Jada had suggested a blend of both names. David liked the idea and came up with one for a boy while she created the girl’s name. Although the doctor told them it was possible to know the sex of the baby, nether wanted to know until the child was born. All they wanted to know was that their child was healthy. So far, Jada hadn’t suffered any problems.
“I need you to make the presentation,” he told her. “They’ve seen me too often. They don’t want to see me anymore. You are a fresh face they won’t mind looking at. Everyone loves you, dear. Maybe not as much as I do, but they’ll listen if you do the speaking.”
“I’m really not in the best shape for making presentations,” she told him.
“You don’t have to stay up there long and you can sit down when you get tired,” he explained. David pulled off her nightshirt to have access to the rest of her body. He took off his robe so he could have all the contact he wanted with Jada and tossed it on the floor. Massaging her shoulders with some oil, he kissed her neck and put his lips on her ear lobe. She moaned when he nipped it. He was erect, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now.
“David,” she told him, “you are so hard and I want to help you.”
Jada moved her hand back slightly and took him in her grasp. She squeezed just a bit and heard him let out a sigh. She’d taken care of him several times before this way, but this was the first time she’d done it while she was carrying the child. She loved him and wanted to give him a little ease. But
she couldn’t do it the way which was her favorite: in the SUV outside a movie theater at night. He’d taken her to a late show after her evening classes were over where there were no people in the audience and had her leave her panties in the vehicle. They had sat in the back row and she’d use a bucket of popcorn to hide his hand between her legs. No one had come into the theater, but the smirks they caught from the ushers made them wonder about security cameras. They’d never tried that again and she’d finished him in the SUV. After that evening they always made sure to have paper towels in the glove compartment.
Jada took care of him again with her hand that evening and she told him when to climax in his ear. Knowing the mother of his child could be dominant when she wanted was exciting and all it took for him it reach orbit. Lying in the bed with her, he finally convinced Jada to make the presentation to the board of directors.
“But you could do it anyway,” she told him, rubbing his chest with the hand she’d used to stroke him.
“And what happens if nothing goes according to plan?” he said to her. “I need their confidence. I have yours and you have mine, but one negative attitude could ruin everything. We don’t need someone grumbling to the media if the test doesn’t go one hundred percent. They need to understand we’re in this project for the long term.”
David spent the next few weeks working on the presentation with Jada when he wasn’t at the office working on the company. He hired a full-time nurse to come stay with her. Jada was out of school, having just finished her current term. She was planning on taking some time off to be with her baby and her professors understood. A few of them offered to help her name the baby, but she told them her child would not be named Quark, Strangeness or Charm.
Jada and David finally finished the presentation she would give the board of directors the night before she was to make it. They loaded David’s laptop computer with all the necessary data and chart presentations. Just to be on the safe side, they backed the presentation up on both a flash drive and a cloud server on the internet. She was nervous and still adjusting to her first pregnancy. He helped her go to sleep that night by rubbing her feet.
They took the nurse with them to the board meeting but had her take the SUV and park it while waiting on stand-by. Neither David nor Jada anticipated any problems with her delivery, but they wanted to have it just to be safe. They would have had her inside the conference room with them, but both were afraid the appearance of a nurse would detract from her presentation.
The air was warmer that day and she walked up to the podium wearing a long dress which gathered beneath her breasts and hung down loose to conceal her tummy. It was similar to a nineteen century empire dress from the regency period in England. She wore open sandals Jada could slip in an out off since her legs had started to swell. She ended up giving most of the presentation barefoot anyway.
Jada began with a chart showing the projected energy demands on the world broken down by continent. She moved onto the current needs and projected outputs of all world’s energy production. She showed how every system in use was costly and produced too much pollution or was inefficient. And then she moved onto thermonuclear power. She noted a few members of the board wince at the word “nuclear”, but quickly explained the difference between nuclear fission in use which created radioactive waste as a by-product and nuclear fusion, the method use by the sun to produce heat which had no radioactive waste. Jada talked about the problems which had plagued every attempt to achieve and contain nuclear fusion temperatures and showed how Dr. Simmons was on the verge of creating the first nuclear fusion pilot plant to produce electricity.
If he did not get the funding he needed to take the project to the next step, the plant would have to be terminated. All the work accomplished so far would be wasted until someone else took the torch and ran with it. Yes, there were projects underway to build a successful Tokamak reactor, but they were financed by governments and wouldn’t produce any useable nuclear plasma for years. Simmons’ pilot plant was close to operational. If he achieved a controlled thermonuclear reaction, they would have the most advanced method of electrical power production ever created. And the most efficient. But, best of all, it was non-polluting.
Jada finished by sitting down on a chair, as she was feeling tired from carrying the baby and it had moved a few times while she was giving the lecture. She took a sip of water and looked at the board.
She finished by offering to answer any questions the board might have. Most of them were from a financial standpoint. What would happen if the plant didn’t do what it was supposed to do? When would they be able to get a return on their investment? Was there any liability involved with the plant? Did Simmons have a record they could all look into? Jada answered all the questions the best she could, although the technical questions were the best she could do. They seemed satisfied and then adjourned the room to discuss what she had presented to them.
David went over to his wife and comforted her. He also checked her pulse and, unknown to anyone else in the room, her blood pressure. She was fine and doing quite well, considering the barrage of questions she had just endured. They looked up to see the board filing back into the room after having been gone for a few minutes.
“You’ve convinced us,” and older man, who was the chief finance officer said to her. “We’ll back the investment. But we want some kind of guarantee.”
“What do you mean?” said David who was sitting next to his wife holding her hand.
“We want your guarantee that if this doesn’t work out, if he can’t generate enough electricity from this reactor to be profitable, you’ll sell your controlling interest in the company to us and step down.”
David looked at his wife, kissed her and agreed.
“I may have just signed away everything,” he told her on the way home, “but I’d gladly do it again for you.”
That night they slept soundly. David had begun listening to her at night to see if there was anything he needed to watch for, but her pregnancy was proceeding normally. The nurse would check on her every few hours then go back to her room. The doctor had held out the option of Jada having her baby by caesarian, but they both agreed it would be best for her to do it by natural childbirth.
The next day, David phoned his stockbroker and told him to contact Dr. Simmons’ wife on the island and find out how much they needed to finish the pilot plant. He was ready to put the full amount of his wealth behind the project. His broker was a little shocked, but new the pilot plant’s return on investment had the potential to be bigger than anything else he had on the table. Simmons’ called David personally to thank him for the vote of confidence.
Over the next two months, the investment money poured into the project on the island. David received daily progress reports. Simmons was able to hire more acolytes to his facility and the test date was moved up by a month. The final phone conversation David had with Simmons was hopeful in that the scientist felt they had more than an even chance to hold the plasma long enough in a magnetic bottle to create a thermonuclear reaction. But only a final test would let them know.
Jada became listless in the final weeks of her pregnancy. David would take days off just to be with her and walk around the neighborhood. The nurse was constantly managing her vitals and let David know his wife was doing just fine. Jada finished decorating the nursery and David’s parents offered to come over to his house and help out. David told them it was Okay, he would let them know if more help was needed.
He was awoken one night by Jada who told him the baby was ready. David had everything on standby and managed to get the nurse and her into the SUV to reach the hospital. He had no trouble reaching it and the doctor was already waiting. They had been waiting for this day for weeks.
David stayed in the delivery room with Jada as the baby was brought into the world. The doctor announced a daughter and David kissed his wife whose hand he had held all the way through the delivery. Davada Simpson Jones weighed a healthy eight pounds
and four ounces. Once the doctor made sure Jada was healthy, he brought the baby to her and let her hold their daughter. David took a picture of them both and sent it to everyone on his email list. By that afternoon the picture was all over the internet.
While his parents, who had just driven in to congratulate him, were talking to David outside Jada’s hospital room, an assistant of his came running up with a tablet to show him something. He was trying to get David’s attention with an image being sent over the internet.
It was the face of Dr. Simmons standing outside the pilot plant with his acolytes announcing the practical achievement of a contained thermonuclear reaction inside a magnetic bottle. The reaction had lasted long enough to be stable and produce one megawatt of power. They expected the next test to be even better now that they had the pilot plant fully operational. The older scientist appeared to have been staying up for the past three nights, which later turned out to be true. But he told the news crew interviewing him that none of it would have been possible without David’s investment.
*****
“The way is clear,” Jada said to the room full of the press corps, “we now have a clean and efficient way to make heat and electricity.” She still looked a little worn-out from the ordeal of delivering her first child. Davada was with the nanny and making baby noises which had kept her up last night. She watched her husband try to occupy his daughter’s attention with a rattle.
“I have seen two births this week. My daughter, who is in the back there with her father, and the first controlled generation of thermonuclear power ever in the world. I have given the world a daughter and Simmons has given birth to a new sun, kept alive by his reactor on the island of St. Matthew. The world will never want for electricity again if we make the right decisions.”
“But what we do with this gift to the world will determine if humanity is going to leave this place and head to the stars or remain on earth and fight over our diminishing resources. We can stay here and watch our future generations kill each other and starve. Or we can put aside the differences, quit trying to blame each other for the sins of the past and present. We can look to the future which has always been humanity’s destiny.”