When she finally let him off the phone, he contacted her son, Dale, found out where he lived, asked some irrelevant questions, and sent him fifty bucks to establish that he was on the payroll. A phone call to an old associate in Houston returned more information on the chief financial officer, Blair Keene: a trial attorney who dumped money into right-wing Christian causes and was well connected in local government, especially high-tech regulation—i.e., the patent office.
Monitoring the company website turned out to be the easiest way to watch their progress. When something changed he’d call Mabel, flirt with her a little, listen, take notes, and then, after hanging up, send her a fifty.
His plan required two simple steps: wait until Creation Energy had attracted enough investment that it would be worthwhile to sue, and cultivate Ryan’s sense of greed and injustice to a frothy anger. Dodge rubbed his hands together, yearning for the day that Ryan would storm into his office demanding that they “sue the bastards.”
The excitement of escaping arrest in Texas, then zipping across the country and landing in Northern California’s wine country, left a reality hangover. Ryan was farther from his son than ever, and as hard as he tried to deny it, he even caught himself missing Tammi—the poison he’d fallen for in his weakest moment.
With the sun rising over the valley, Ryan booted up his tired old PC and put the kettle on. He was stirring sugar into a cup of tea when Nutter House awoke to the sound of Katarina’s stereo. Ryan combed through Internet job sites and listened to Katarina yelling at her mother. He had the same feeling he got on long airplane flights. Right after sitting down and buckling in, he’d wonder about the people sitting next to him, energized by the knowledge that they’d be friends by the end of the flight.
He polished off his second cup of tea, scrawled the addresses of some nearby tech companies onto a pad of paper, and headed for the door. As he started down the stairs, Katarina slid down the wide smooth banister behind him and almost bowled him over. In one seamless motion she descended the stairs, jumped out the door, and hopped onto her skateboard.
Ryan spent the day stuttering in front of impatient human resources officers. He had no answer to the first question they asked: Why have you been out of high tech for three years? When he got back to Nutter House, he surrendered to the desire to call home, what he thought of as home, anyway.
His ex-wife, Linda, answered but wouldn’t let him talk to Sean. She rubbed it in pretty well too. “Sean has a better daddy now. He’s finished with you, sperm donor.” Then she hung up.
Over the next few weeks, he tried phoning the house at different times. If Linda answered she hung up immediately. One time her new husband answered, a man twenty years older than Linda and Ryan, and said, “Sean is fine and the three of us are very happy. Don’t worry about him and please leave us alone.”
Early one Sunday morning, Sean answered. Ryan said what he’d always said, “How’s it goin’, buddy?” and Sean said, “Buddy? You calling me buddy? You’re no buddy—nobody to me.” That Sean’s voice was changing stretched the feeling of distance even farther than his words.
Ryan stopped calling. Instead, he found an old e-mail distribution list for the neighborhood. He sent a note asking if anyone would let him know how Sean was doing, kind of a desperate message, but someone actually replied. Ryan couldn’t quite place the guy, whose name was Ward. He replied every week with a single-sentence report: he’d seen Sean at a church fund-raiser or getting home from a football/baseball/soccer game. It was just enough information for Ryan to feel connected.
A month after Ryan moved in, Dodge invited him down to his office for a drink. Dodge sensed that something was missing, as though he needed to call a bet to see the next card. Dodge thought Ryan was an interesting case, outwardly calm and easygoing, but he couldn’t tell whether Ryan’s constantly tapping fingers were nerves or excess energy. There was a difference. So he poured them each a tumbler of whiskey and then waited.
Ryan swirled his drink in one hand and tapped his fingers in time with the reverberation of music from upstairs. Dodge set his fingertips together and pretended to stare at them but kept an eye on the revolver he left out on the desk.
Obviously not realizing what he was doing, Ryan started rubbing his fingers along the short barrel. Dodge tried not to laugh. The instant that Ryan realized he was touching the gun, he jerked his fingers away. Dodge couldn’t hold it any longer. His laughter finished in a cough.
He started asking questions about GoldCon, about Foster, and about the patents. Nothing triggered his intuition until he backed up and said, “Review for me how you were compensated for your patents. What did you sign? What were you paid and when? I need details.”
“Well, we had to sign the standard waiver. The same thing every engineer signs when they take a job: anything you invent is the intellectual property of your employer.”
“What about the money?”
“When the patents were granted, I got two checks for twenty-five hundred dollars because I’d coauthored two patents. Foster got two checks too. Get it? We split the five thousand for each patent.”
“But for submitting the patents, you each got checks for five hundred dollars?”
“Right.”
Dodge wasn’t one to draw on an inside straight, but every now and then, instinct or intuition or plain stupidity encouraged him to go for it. As Ryan spoke those words, Dodge knew he’d gotten the card he wanted. “Let me get this straight: they gave each of you the full award when the patents were submitted but split the awards between you when they were granted?”
Lines formed in Ryan’s brow, arcing up to the sharp widow’s peak of his dark auburn wire-bristle hair. “Yeah, but it was fair enough; two authors on each, after all. We were psyched that they didn’t split the submission bonus too.” His forehead relaxed. “We got our boat.”
“Do you remember anything—anything—in the documentation describing the patent award bonus about splitting the award for multiple authors?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re not sure.”
Ryan shrugged.
Dodge said, “Was there any difference between the phrasing of the bonus for submitting the patents and the phrasing of the bonus for when the patents were granted?”
Ryan shook his head. “No. I’m sure of that. It definitely said the same thing for submitting as it did for granting.”
“Did you get the patent-submission bonus before you got the patent-granted bonus?”
“Yeah, it took over a year for the patents to go through.”
Dodge leaned back in his chair. Glee filled his stomach. If he played it right, there would be a quick settlement with just enough rancor to make it sporting. Nice.
Dodge said, “I don’t suppose you still have that document.” Ryan shook his head. Dodge continued, “They paid you in full for both patent submissions but only gave you half when they were granted. In legal terms, by giving you the full amount for the submission they defined an implied contract. The implied contract guaranteed you each the full amount when the patents were granted. They didn’t deliver. Bingo. Fraud marries mistake and gives birth to an implied contract. That patent rights waiver you signed is out the window. You still have rights to those patents. God, I love this.”
Ryan said, “What difference does it make?”
“Just leave it to me.”
Dodge flicked his wrist at Ryan, waving him out of the office.
“You think I have a case?”
“I think I’m monitoring my investments. Now go away. I have work to do.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to ask you to walk out that door.”
“Don’t they have to develop the patents and make a profit before my interest has any value?”
Dodge picked up the revolver. “Walk out that door or I am going to shoot you.”
Ryan walked upstairs to his apartment shaking his head. Every interaction with Dodge was m
ore complicated than the previous. For Ryan, the discussion had brought back bad memories. Last he had heard, Foster Reed was a graduate student at some podunk school in West Texas.
Ryan did a web search on Foster’s name, and it brought up Evangelical Word University, the place that bought rights to the patents from GoldCon. Two clicks later, he was staring at a list of the EWU Department of Earthly Science faculty. There he was: Foster Reed, PhD, Associate Professor of Physics and Cosmology. Along with his research interests—Creation-based energy generation and cosmology—it listed his e-mail address and phone number.
Ryan picked up the phone and dialed. Everything in this house, everything associated with Dodge, had to have some twist to it. Ryan hadn’t used a phone with a dial since his grandma died.
A woman with a vibrant Texas twang answered, “Dr. Reed’s office.” He had his own secretary? Not bad.
Ryan asked for Foster, told the lady he was an old friend, and sat on hold for a few seconds. There was a clicking sound, and then a familiar voice said, “Ryan?” There was another click on the line. “Ryan, oh my! Where are you, man? What are you doing?”
Ryan leaned back and grinned. Foster. The guy was always trying to sound cool but could never pull it off. The crazy thing was that, down deep, Foster wasn’t nearly as uptight as he seemed, and when you least expected it, he’d come up with an idea that would totally blow you away. Plus, he was loyal. Hound-dog loyal.
“Hey man, what kind of goofball school would make you a professor?”
“Ryan, I found it. It’s like I told you—we got laid off for a reason. I followed the path and here I am, a physics professor at the coolest, most righteous university in the world.” Foster rambled on about his wonderful wife, career, and religion. Ryan recognized jealousy and fought it by picturing his own path, the sun setting behind the Golden Gate.
Foster’s voice turned serious. “Ryan, are things getting better? Do you need help?”
“Things are starting to come together. I landed in California last month.”
“Why California?”
Ryan thought it was obvious—what better place to jump back on the high-tech gravy train—but couldn’t resist telling the more immediate truth. “Runnin’ from the law.”
Foster laughed. “Hold it, what’re you up to? Hacking code in Silicon Valley?”
“Well, I just got here, but that’s the idea. Actually, I’m a couple of hours north of Silicon Valley in the wine country—but the big question is, what are you doing, Professor?”
“Being the luckiest guy in the world,” Foster said. “After we got laid off, I came here to EWU and did my PhD in physics. I’m the world’s leading expert on the cosmology of Creation—the university published my dissertation as a book; you can download it from the website.” He waited a second before continuing, as though debating whether or not to fill Ryan in. “Ryan, I made an important discovery. Those two patents we did the first day at GoldCon fit together like a divine jigsaw puzzle. It’s amazing. It can save humanity. We can generate essentially free energy. No greenhouse gases and no waste. But when I say it can save humanity I mean that it can save our souls. By developing this technology, we’ll prove that God created man and earth and that there is eternal life. We’re building the power generator right now.”
Foster had always been both ridiculously enthusiastic about his work and a man of tremendous faith. The enthusiasm had always infected Ryan, but right now Ryan was uncomfortable. Minutes before, he had watched Dodge rub his hands together like a cartoon villain. Ryan felt like a spy. “Yeah, I heard that a university bought the rights to those patents—that’s why I called. Do you really think that—”
“I believe it to the very core of my spirit. Look, I spent the last few years studying relativistic quantum field theory. It’s amazing how our two patents fit together.”
Typical Foster: the enthusiasm freight train blew right by Ryan’s admission that he knew something was cooking. He tried to spell it out. “Do we have any rights to those patents?”
“Rights? What do you mean?” Ryan thought he heard a suspicious edge in Foster’s voice.
“That’s sort of why I called. I signed this lease and—”
Foster made his confused tsk sound and said, “No, we have no rights—they’re owned by the university. We both signed the patent rights waiver, remember?”
“Yeah, I know, it’s just that I have this crazy landlord and—”
“But you know what?” Foster’s confusion converted back to enthusiasm. “We’re going to need a software director. Funding is kind of short right now, but we’re getting calls from investors all the time.”
“I just got here, signed a lease.” Part of him wanted to level with Foster and admit that he couldn’t go back to Texas because he’d go to jail, but pride got in the way. “I need to stand on my own two, you know?”
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Yeah, that’s what my stockbroker said when I bought WorldCom at fifty bucks a share.”
They both laughed.
“Ryan, God was watching over our shoulders that day.”
“Foster, listen.” Ryan took a breath. “I signed a lease that gave my landlord twenty-five percent of my rights to those patents—”
“You don’t have rights to them.”
“I thought so too, but this guy—”
“We’re going to get major funding, and I’m going to need your help.” Foster paused, and Ryan could practically hear him look at his watch. “I have to go to a meeting now, but keep it in mind. This is big, Ryan. I understand that you need to prove a few things to yourself, but remember, I’ll be praying for you.”
“Foster, wait—my landlord thinks that—”
“Ryan, I have to go. E-mail me your address. I’ll mail you my book.”
It took his computer almost a full minute to bring up an e-mail window, and by the time it got there, Ryan was scrolling through the patents. He’d always felt funny about them, and now he realized why. It wasn’t because he thought they were bogus—it was because he’d always had this niggling feeling that they might not be bogus.
In his office downstairs, Dodge hung up the phone. He picked up the revolver and tapped it on the gavel pad a few times.
He loved watching the cards being dealt. Two new ones: the ace, that Foster Reed thought the technology could actually be developed, could mean a lot more money; and the deuce, that Foster might offer Ryan a job, could blow the whole scam.
His sister, Emmy, was the wild card.
He twirled the pistol on his finger like a gunslinger. “Timing. Timing and patience. Wait until these bozos smell cash, show them the wild card, let them sweat, and then pull the trigger while the pot is full.
“Bang.”
Professor Foster Reed waited backstage, back-sanctuary really. This was the sixth huge church he’d been invited to. The ten-thousand-strong Greatest Good Christian Center in Alexandria, Virginia, had video screens showing the preacher from every angle, spotlights, and an acoustically tuned ceiling. Foster, like a paladin adjusting his armor before battle, tightened his tie and made sure his shirt was tucked in and his coat properly buttoned. The internal battle between faith in God and doubt in himself was a sure sign that he would be introduced soon. Every congregation he’d visited had been thrilled to welcome him, Foster Reed, a scientist defending Genesis on the atheists’ turf, but that initial excitement always dissolved into boredom, if not contempt, by the time he finished. At home, up in Evangelical Word University’s ivory tower, this sermon, more like a lecture really, seemed guaranteed to deliver the support he would need when the battle grew pitched.
The battle itself, though—that was a different problem. The project could survive but couldn’t move forward without substantial financial support. He knew better than to doubt that the right support would arrive at the right time. Not the time he thought was right, but at the time God made right. He would wait. Through Foster’s entire life, ev
ery seeming coincidence had pushed him farther along this path. It was this knowledge, so certain in his heart, that impaled him with shame when self-doubt tried to possess him.
The preacher, a man in his sixties with big eyes and a bigger smile, spoke softly. “We are under attack.” His voice got louder with each word. “The courts tear down the commandments, evolutionists and homosexuals demean the Bible, and the humanists silence prayer in the schools you pay for.” He paused between sentences to let the audience know it was time to yell a “Hallelujah!” or an “Amen!” And when that crowd responded, it was probably loud enough to be heard clear to Washington, DC. Foster hoped so, anyway.
The preacher paused, scanning every row of the stadium, and then spoke softly. “Today, I present to you the man who will return the Word of God to science…”
The word science brought Foster to his feet.
A few scattered Amens echoed up to the stage. “…Professor Foster Reed.” The preacher turned to face Foster and applauded.
The congregation joined in applause as Foster walked out. He shook hands with the preacher and, though he considered applause inappropriate in God’s House, beamed at the congregation. One woman who had sung loud enough for Foster to make out her voice among the thousands, looked content but determined, her jaw clenched so that her lips made a horizontal line. In a row behind her, a black man with a shaved head wearing a brown three-piece suit was scowling.
He waited for the woman to make eye contact. A thin older gentleman in the front row wearing a bow tie but looking as though he’d be more comfortable in coveralls returned a welcoming smile. Foster switched on the headset microphone. The lights, too bright to see past the first dozen rows, warmed his skin to a righteous glow. He took his time, glanced at his notes, and absorbed the congregation’s faith. He felt his jaw tighten and the muscles down his back grow rigid. The inspiration, like everything else in his life, was there, not when he wanted it but when he needed it.
The God Patent Page 5