The God Patent

by Ransom Stephens

  Dodge handed out copies of three patent cases he’d researched. Then he addressed Blair. “How would you like to handle this?”

  Blair spoke softly, “This meeting is premature. No income has been derived from the intellectual property.”

  Jeb said, “Your threats are nothing but extortion.”

  The word extortion seemed to broaden Dodge’s smile.

  “There is another aspect to the problem,” Dodge said, nodding to Emmy.

  In her lecture voice, she started reviewing the patents almost line by line, describing every point that was inconsistent with “the established laws of nature.”

  Ryan stared across the table at her. When she kicked on that lecture voice, there was an authority to her. The first time he’d heard that tone, she’d been in Dodge’s office drawing Feynman diagrams on the desk blotter. Now, when she flipped on the lecture voice, Ryan recognized it as a wall that she erected between the roles she embodied—the warm, caring woman and the cool, rational physicist.

  Foster thumbed through his copies of the patents with his head cocked. Ryan recognized it as the Foster equivalent of a game face. But as Emmy continued, Foster’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t look pissed off though; no, this was a look that Ryan didn’t recognize. Halfway into her argument, Jeb interrupted, saying that nothing she said mattered, that the Lord’s work would be done. Other than raising her voice, Emmy ignored him. Blair tried to interrupt too by addressing Dodge, but Dodge didn’t waver from pretending that he was listening to Emmy. Then Jeb interrupted again. This time, Emmy spoke softly, though with no less authority, so that Foster had to lean in close to hear.

  Emmy concluded, “To summarize, in the descriptions of the preferred embodiments, neither patent meets the minimal requirement of demonstrable viability. Further, the first patent, Application of Fundamental Uncertainty to the Generation of Energy, violates federal patent law—it is against the law to submit a perpetual motion machine for patent.”

  Foster pushed his chair out and stood. With his hands on the table and arms propping him up, he spoke slowly. “No, ma’am. I’m afraid you misunderstood. It’s not a perpetual motion machine. We’ve made a lot of progress since submitting the patents.” He pulled a copy of The Cosmology of Creation from his briefcase. “The patents themselves are incomplete. You should read my later work.” He waved his book at her. Ryan knew that she still hadn’t read it. Foster continued, “The technology is a power generator more or less like any other.” His head bobbed down to that smug angle. “Not exactly like any other, of course. The fuel source is hardly conventional, but the technology is based on laws of symmetry like any other physical law, and that’s what makes our work innovative.”

  Emmy didn’t even look at him.

  Blair cleared his throat. “Interesting that you’d introduce an expert witness to demonstrate the lack of value inherent in Mr. McNear’s alleged intellectual property. Why are you weakening your case?”

  “Oh, my mistake,” Dodge said, smiling at Blair. “I should have reserved Dr. Nutter’s commentary for National Engineering or, even better, the US Patent Office and the Departments of Energy and Defense.”

  Jeb Schonders started to speak, but Blair leaned forward, brushing him off with a wave. Blair said, “I understand.”

  “Excellent,” Dodge said, rising from his seat and sliding sheets of paper across the table to each person. “In addition to the points that Dr. Nutter has raised, there are a few other, um, oddities surrounding these two patents: both were examined by the same patent officer, an officer who is generally charged with reviewing patents of biological systems. These were the first and only patents that this officer has examined involving either energy generation or artificial intelligence. We find that very odd. We also found it odd that this patent officer was once in the employ of you, sir.” Dodge smiled at Blair again. “In fact, it seems he was once engaged to your daughter.” Dodge turned to Foster, his eyes narrowed, and after a short but poignant pause, he said, “who is now Mrs. Foster Reed.”

  Foster’s head had been stuck at that smug angle, but now it straightened and slowly drooped until he was staring into his briefcase. Ryan understood how Foster felt about his “angel,” Rachel. Add this to Emmy’s step-by-step conviction of the patents, and Ryan’s old buddy was clearly shaken. Ryan scribbled on his notepad “Dodge is full of shit.” But Foster didn’t look at it.

  Then Ryan wondered about something else. Emmy still hadn’t read Foster’s book. The symmetry argument—the physical and spiritual, Heisenberg’s mirror—was not included in the patents. As soon as the thought came to him, though, he realized that Emmy would immediately reject the symmetry argument anyway. Just as Foster wouldn’t consider anything inconsistent with the Bible, Emmy wouldn’t so much as ponder anything beyond the purely physical. Every time Ryan entertained the possibility that Foster might be onto something, two things came to mind: first, the lingering question of matter and consciousness; and second, Katarina’s proof of principle argument, that energy must have originated somewhere. The engineer in Ryan thought the resolution was obvious: build the thing and see if it works.

  Dodge spread his hands out as though embracing everyone at the table. “We can all agree that the mission of Creation Energy could be in serious peril if the patents are withdrawn and the various improprieties exposed to investors.”

  Ryan looked at each person at the table. Jeb frowned, Blair calculated a response, Foster struggled to remain silent, and Emmy—well, Emmy was looking back at him. Ryan smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back.

  Dodge continued, “My client has no interest in causing any harm to your endeavor, and, just between the six of us, I think he hopes that you’ll succeed.”

  Emmy’s eyes locked on Ryan’s in a cold stare.

  “We are willing to settle for a modest fraction of the moneys Creation Energy can reasonably expect from the subcontracts it will receive from NEG and will be quite happy to divest any and all future interest.”

  Emmy turned her glare on Dodge.

  Ryan’s stomach felt hollow.

  Foster nudged him and whispered, “It’s not too late, Ryan. Have faith.”

  Foster then took a deep breath and said, “This lady’s arguments demonstrate the gulf that has formed between elite academics and hardworking scientists and engineers—people whose minds are open enough to make things happen. I’ll stand by the viability of our work on any field, in court, at a conference, in the press, any day, any time. I would love to expose the scientific establishment for the closed-minded bigots they have become.”

  Ryan watched Emmy fume when Foster referred to her without addressing her. Dodge’s eyes kept going back to her too. She was dangerous, and Ryan realized for the first but certainly not the last time that he was firmly entrenched in the crossfire. He felt his tongue run along his teeth. He wanted to disarm the situation and started to interrupt, but Emmy beat him to it with one word spoken very quietly.

  In a southern gentleman’s drawl, Blair said, “What was that, ma’am?”

  Emmy looked at him. “I said please.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, Mr. Reed—”

  “Doctor Reed.”

  “Yes, well.” Emmy cleared her throat. “He said he would like to expose the scientific establishment. My response is, please. Let’s discuss this in public. Let’s compare experimental results. The problem, Mister Reed—your work is so weak, so divorced from the scientific method, that I couldn’t imagine”—she looked at Jeb—“an accredited university awarding you a doctorate.”

  Blair began assembling documents into his briefcase. Jeb followed his example. Dodge watched the two of them, his eyes squinted, but a trace of a smile lingered on his lips.

  Blair shut his briefcase with a snap and looked across at Dodge. “What sort of number are you considering?”

  “We believe that, at this point, ten million should appropriately compensate Mr. McNear for his contribution. Ri
ght now, that’s a small fraction of the contracts you must anticipate from National Engineering. You could wait, but in a few years, maybe a hundred million will be more appropriate.”

  Jeb’s false laughter drowned out Dodge. “Millions? You got quite an imagination there, Nutter. Tell you what, I’ll pretend to use it as a starting point. See, I was thinking a few thousand.” He looked at Blair, as if for support, but Blair looked away. Jeb said, “I reckon extortion is what you get in this town for trying to do the Lord’s work.”

  Dodge closed his briefcase and dropped the kind demeanor he’d been masquerading. He released an extra-long version of his raspy chuckle. “I prefer the term blackmail myself, but as long as the check doesn’t bounce, we can call it whatever you like.”

  “You lied to me,” Emmy said.

  Ryan stammered.

  Dodge had just led Foster and the others to the elevator. Emmy had stayed in the conference room and was looking out the window. Ryan stood in the hallway, caught between them.

  “Dodge is a liar. I expect him to lie to me, but I trusted you.”

  “It wasn’t a lie,” Ryan said, though he didn’t believe it. “You were here to set them straight, and you did.”

  “I told him that everything I said had to be in the open, and here I am in a smoke-filled room.”

  “There’s no smoke in this room.”

  She turned and glared at him.

  His heart sunk. “I’m sorry. Emmy. I needed your help and—”

  “And you got it!” She marched out of the room, past Ryan. “You used me.”

  “Wait a second,” Ryan said. “I appreciate your help—you know how much I appreciate your help. I didn’t know what Dodge planned. No one knows what Dodge plans. Come on, Emmy, I—”

  “Ryan, just leave me alone, okay?” She stopped several feet away from him. “I’m angry, so just let me figure this out, okay? I’ll call you.”

  She walked away.

  At the airport, Foster quietly changed his seat assignment for the flight home. On the way out he’d sat between his father-in-law and his boss. But right now, he was fighting the impulse to get in their faces. They were politicians, not warriors. If Foster questioned them, Blair would list their losses again, from the Scopes trial to Roe v. Wade to the defeat of intelligent design in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, right up to the most recent, Lawrence v. Texas. To Foster, the last was the worst—the courts openly embraced sodomy.

  Yes, the Christian soldiers were racking up defeats, but this was a battle they could win. He took a breath and leaned against the window. He could see their wisdom; they needed time to develop the Creation Energy Generator. Settling with Ryan would give them that time. Soon enough, Foster would open Heisenberg’s window, and the power of God would be unleashed. That’s when the battle should begin, but not yet.

  He was a paladin fighting for God, and always, hovering over him, was the angel Rachel. The accusation made by the shark, that Rachel had been engaged to the patent officer and had been deceiving him all these years, opened a wound. When Blair failed to deny it, a demon of self-doubt had flown into that wound, into his heart. He knew how to fight the self-doubt in his head—why had God chosen him, and what if he couldn’t do it?

  He fought those demons every day, but he had never had a doubt in his heart.

  The plane weaved through clouds over the Rockies, each a distinct thunderhead towering into the heavens. Foster could see flashes of lightning inside them, and shining between each great column were individual beams of sunlight. The possibility that Creation Energy could unleash enough power to initiate the Rapture seemed desirable right now. Purge the world of evil in one righteous slap.

  Would paying off Ryan be his sin or Jeb’s? He sighed. The man sitting next to him shifted his laptop away. Ryan’s collapse had started at the celebration of the end of Foster’s bachelorhood—his wound oozed doubt. Ryan had suffered for that night all these years. Maybe it was time that Foster suffered too.

  And, like so many other times, it came to him—how to exorcise the doubt from his heart.

  Ryan was the best friend he’d ever had, and the deeper Foster looked inside, the more obvious it was. He felt a pang of disgust that it had taken guilt and doubt to motivate him to do the right thing, but if that’s what it took…

  When Dodge unpacked his briefcase after the meeting, he discovered a legal-sized manila envelope. He opened it and let the contents slide onto the desk. There was a short note on Evangelical Word University stationery, several photographs, and two newspaper clippings. The note was an ancient threat: “Then Judas, which had betrayed Him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.—Matthew 27:3–5”

  He leaned back in his chair and flipped through the photos. Some were pictures of Dodge visiting with his clientele at Skate-n-Shred. He examined them with a magnifying glass. They must have been taken from across the street, probably from a second-story window with a telephoto lens. Two were much older. The first was a file photo from the Los Angeles Times with a teenage Dodge in shackles. Dodge chuckled and then wiped a line of spittle from the photo. A paperclip attached a newspaper clipping. He remembered what it said word for word. Tried as an adult, he’d been acquitted.

  The other picture came with newsprint too. It had been taken the day he’d gotten his nickname from the University of Michigan campus police: a college-aged Dodge standing in front of a cemetery. The clipping, from the Ann Arbor News, said that Dodge had been acquitted of manslaughter and grave robbing in the Zeta Sigma Chi “hazing suicides” trial. It also quoted the officer who had dubbed Wayne Nutter “Dodge,” saying that the police had closed the case for lack of evidence.

  The last piece was a short paragraph from the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s newsletter. Dated 1987, it described a case where Wayne Nutter, JD, had been held in contempt of court while representing a man who, during a bank robbery, had executed five tellers with single shots to the backs of their heads. Dodge had argued that the defendant was merely guilty of “assisted suicide.” The judge had not been amused when Dodge attempted to demonstrate that none of the tellers had had a life that was worth living.

  Dodge set the pictures on his desk in a straight line and stared at them. He leaned forward and picked up the revolver, spun the chamber, and held the gun to his head. He looked at the pictures and said out loud, “No. Not today,” and set the revolver back on the gavel pad.

  He took a sheet of monogrammed paper from his desk and wrote, “The Lord hath made all things for Himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.—Proverbs 16:4–5.” He sealed it in an envelope with a twenty-dollar bill and a short note that read, “Deliver to Jeb Schonders, EWU, by hand and with emphasis.” Dodge mailed it to the ranch outside of San Antonio, addressed to Dale Watson, the son of Foster’s secretary.

  Ryan’s faith in make-up sex was restored.

  He knew that Emmy had come to Petaluma that night to end their relationship. She’d been ignoring his e-mails and hadn’t answered his calls in almost a month, and then, finally, she invited herself over. She lit into him pretty good too, accusing him of misleading her, abusing her support, and perpetuating nonsense nonscience in the face of the truth. He admitted that he had known Dodge was manipulating her. She had glared at him, those warm blue eyes turned hot indigo, and he admitted what he thought would be the killing blow: “Yes, I misled you. It was selfish. Without your help, I could never fix my life, never see my son and”—he placed both hands on her
shoulders—“if I couldn’t fix my life, well, I didn’t want you to fall in love with a failed man.” Emmy glowered for a few seconds. Ryan felt her shoulders tense up, and when she looked away from him, he thought it was over.

  She turned back, though, and put her hands over his heart. “Ryan, I would have helped you anyway.” Then she relaxed and started to laugh. “For some reason, my grody brother cannot do anything in the open. He’s been lying to me all my life, and every time I get mixed up with him, I think it will be different.” Then she lightly punched his chest, and her eyes simmered to a warm glow. “Ryan, I’m falling in love…please be the man I think you are.”

  The sun’s first rays eased their way over the mountain, sneaked under dark rain clouds, and reflected pastels of pink and peach onto the ceiling. Emmy was asleep in his arms, and he buried his face in her currently jet-black hair. Ryan’s faith in the universe was renewed.