Effected Intent

by Alan Ross

  Chapter 13

  Robert and Steve Make Progress

  Robert had turned one wall of his office into a scenario plot, showing chatter that had been intercepted by NSA and Homeland Security in one section, a map of the Asia Pacific rim that extended to the Western United States on another part of the wall and then some high level summary of the CDC data in another part. He was working to connect the dots and make sense of it all. Steve was sitting in the chair, watching the old bird work, thinking that he looked like an angry vulture, stalking back and forth along the wall. Once in a while Robert would stop and scan the room with his beady little black eyes, trying to put the missing pieces together.

  Steve was validating that his formula will work for the quantities required to disperse the vaccine over a period of several weeks. The interesting thing was that the actual vaccine only took a few grains per dose so the contents of the sphere could be made quite small, not much bigger than a ball in a typical ball point pen. It made more sense to keep the spheres small if possible and then just increase the number of spheres that were carried in an injection. The tough part now was going to be balancing the number of spheres and being able to pick up the spheres with the syringe. Steve was working on the correct level of dispersants required to keep the spheres elevated in the saline solution that would carry the sphere into the muscle of each person being inoculated.

  He had been experimenting with a number of different spheres of the same size that could fill the role of delivering stages of the virus at different times; an equal amount of spheres that would break down in one week, two weeks, three and four weeks but were the same size instead of using single spheres. Being in this research project had given Steve a level of single minded thought and clarity that he couldn’t have achieved in a year at Foundation with all of the distractions. It reminded him of graduate school, when he was focused on a single task and project. He hoped that some of the behaviors from the project could be carried back to the job when he got there.

  Robert used push pins and connected chatter to the sources and to the derived destinations, using string to show the path. It definitely appeared that there were people involved in the plot in North Korea and the United States, communicating in multiple ways, from instant messenger and forums and using some asynchronous means like anonymous email accounts where information was never transmitted across the internet but instead each collaborator used email draft messages to talk, minimizing the risk that information would be captured in transit. What they didn’t understand was that when they were looking at the messages or contributing to them, the data still traversed across the web from their system to the central mail server and could be captured. This also meant that many people were sharing the same email account so if any of their computers were compromised an attacker would know the password that many were using.

  “We still have a few missing pieces, I’m going to D.C. for a few days. I want you to meet me there so we can start testing. Bring some spheres and I’ll work out getting the right medical people to assist us with our testing. Are you sure that the material used for the spheres is safe?”

  “Yes, it is based on the materials used for artificial hips and knees except that it is broken down at a faster rate. I’ve been ingesting the spheres for the past few weeks and running some experiments. I now know how long it takes for my body to digest food based on coloration of my stool. I used some strong dyes in the spheres and set them for different periods in terms of hours.”

  “That’s very creative of you but I don’t think I need to know that much about your digestive system. What else do you have to do in the next few days?”

  “We need to determine how we’re going to safely test the dispersal system so I’m working on what we can include in the spheres since I don’t want to go straight to smallpox. What do you think of the dyes? I can focus on ones that will show up in our urine and be inert every other way.”

  “That’s a good idea, what else?”

  “I have shortened the polymer development cycle by creating multiple small spheres that have different release periods. This will help with injection and makes the manufacturing process a lot less complicated. The next step is to work on dispersants that will make the spheres easy to pick up by the syringe and insure that they’re all not lost on the walls and bottom of the bottle.”

  “Ok, let’s go with the dye, work out the rest over the next few days. Might be best if you drive down to D.C., don’t want to raise suspicion by shipping or carrying the material on an aircraft.”

  “I can do that, should I find a hotel to stay in there?”

  “You can stay in the guest room at my townhouse if that suits you or you can rent a room and I’ll take care of the expenses.”

  “I’ll probably take a hotel, where should I stay?”

  “You can stay right in the city if you can find a place you like. All of the big ones are there but sometimes they’re booked up for conferences or conventions. My flight leaves in a couple of hours, I’m going to get ready to go to the airport. Keep in touch via email and I’ll see you early next week.”

  Steve sensed the dismissal and went over to his office and caught up on his Foundation email. Having the laptop with cellular card was great, he could blend personal and work into the same machine. He hadn’t been using his desktop machine at home since he got the laptop and Claire joked that he had finally joined the twenty first century. It was especially funny coming from her, she still hated using the computer for anything and only did so when forced to for school related information. Steve really liked using the remote connection option to get to Foundation’s systems from wherever he was.

  His mail was relatively boring so he deleted ninety five percent of it and spent about an hour replying to the ones that needed his attention. Overall things were going good with the U.S. patent office but they wanted some additional information. Steve told the outside patent attorney that he would make copies of all his lab notes, which were always dated, signed and co-signed by one of the other workers in the lab for this very reason. There were some status update requests from Rob, who wanted to know more details about what Steve was working on. He ignored the first few requests, found the most recent one and provided him a brief update without disclosing anything that could jeopardize the project. Rob wouldn’t be happy but Steve didn’t care and was beginning to hope that this project could continue for the next year or so, it was turning into such a nice break from all the company bureaucracy.

  Steve left work early, called Claire and told her to be ready to go out to eat and stopped by the florist to pick up some roses. She had been great over the past couple of months and he wanted to take a break to show her how much he appreciated it. Claire loved Morton’s steakhouse, which was a downtown Cleveland institution. She was surprised by the flowers but was also wondering where they were going. They used to love the New York Spaghetti House and had been sad when it closed down but Morton’s was every bit as special to them. Claire put on a dress and Steve a coat and tie and they took the drive downtown. It was clear and the humidity was down, a very nice June evening. The restaurant was crowded and they had to wait a while but neither minded as they caught up on things. Claire was in her last week of school and looking forward to the summer break. He told her that he was making progress and how much he was enjoying being so focused and uninterrupted by the overhead that comes with a company.

  “Sounds like a sabbatical where you can really focus on one thing and not be bogged down. Would be good if Foundation provided those, I’m not sure how many companies are doing that anymore.”

  “I hear that some of the tech giants like Intel do it but mostly because they burn their people up if they don’t have an opportunity to release the pressure that builds up every seven years. One of my friends from college works there and talks about the frenetic pace and the value that a sabbatical brings, both personally and professionally.”

  “It’s too bad we can’t have a more open
system like they have across Europe, especially like Germany, where they get a very large amount of time off every summer, much like we get as teachers.”

  “We can hope but I don’t see how it’s going to get better any time soon, with the current economy situation it seems that everyone who’s left in a company will have to work that much harder to keep a job. This housing market and all the government bailouts are going to be with the country for the next few generations.”

  “Even the kids are talking about the economy, that’s the first time I can remember that happening in my career. It’s funny how open the kids are with the internet and all of the media coverage that’s geared to them on television. They are worried and I’m hopeful that they’ll become a very active generation in helping to get America turned around. They are environmentally conscious and now they’re becoming quite economically conscious as well. It’s a bit interesting that they’re not overly opinionated on the war, it seems that it’s not really on their mind.”

  Steve flashed back to his return from Vietnam and the challenges that he faced. He hoped that if this generation wasn’t overly opinionated on the war they would not hurt the troops when they came home. It’s one thing to hate the government, Steve knew about that, but leave the soldiers alone or help them get back into life. “The government of this country has been out to lunch for the past forty plus years Claire. I can’t believe how bad they’ve compounded the problems this decade, it really sickens me. There’s nothing but incompetence and sycophants on Capital Hill. To think that I’m lucky enough to have to go there next week. Maybe I’ll accidently put the whole government out of commission.” Steve was starting to get wound up now.

  “Can you come back to tonight please? I know how you feel about the government and I’m sorry that the conversation ended up going there. Let’s enjoy the night and this great surprise.” She kissed him on the cheek and rubbed his back for the next few minutes and their name was called. Steve relaxed with the first glass of wine and the conversation became much lighter and more related to the meal. The food was wonderful and afterwards they went for a walk around Public Square, which was jumping a bit because the Indians were home that night. It was fun to see a revitalized downtown Cleveland, both Claire and Steve reminiscing about the days when you wouldn’t venture downtown after dark. The ride home was nice, both of them sated from the night and the meal. Claire was even able to coax Steven into bed, where she lay lightly snoring, a combination of the wine and the love making.

  Steve quietly got up and went to the family room, computer on his lap and plugged in to the outside world. He had swallowed the bile that filled his throat earlier as he thought of the current situation and the way the government had handled it. Letting New Orleans drown and suffer after Katrina was nothing to the way the government had been mismanaging money, the war in the Middle East and everything else. They had failed Steve in Vietnam, when he came home, and every year since. He logged on to a discussion forum that discussed just how messed up America was and it was amazing to see how much activity had come to the forum since the recent election. There was general fear in the forum that putting a democrat back in office was going to cause additional anti-war sentiment and cause the economy to further spiral down the tubes.

  Steve entered a live discussion room and found much of the same rhetoric being spewed around, apparently mostly from opinionated but inexperienced college students. Steve remembered back to college in the early seventies, when the anti-war sentiment mixed so well with an airheaded generation who hadn’t seen what he had. It sickened him and he was surprised he had finished school in the face of all that. The situation today was reminiscent of back then, with an up-and-coming generation with a different set of values and expectations than the ones before them. Generation X had been unlike previous ones but still was grounded in rational thought. The new generation appeared completely disconnected from history or reality to Steve. He started pecking back at some of the people in the chat room and was immediately attacked. Anger rising, he mentioned the fact that people shouldn’t talk about war unless they’ve served their country in some capacity other than sitting on their asses and bitching about it.

  Someone named fckthewrld asked Steve if he was in Desert Storm and Steve answered that he was in Vietnam, to which most of the people in the room immediately started calling bullshit. Steve and the kid got into an argument and by the end of it Steve was as wound up as he could remember, blood rising to a boil at the ignorance of this guy. Once people started believing he was in Vietnam they started slamming the war and the government, to which Steve agreed. He mentioned what it was like to come home and have no support from the people and a government that gave up on a generation of men, thousands who had given their lives in Asia.

  He tried to steer the conversation to the current economic situation and how the American government and people needed to be turned on their head in order to make a difference, even going so far as to say that a depression would put the country on a better track than an irresponsible bailout but the idiots kept bringing up the past, the war and saying that Obama was going to fix the economy and make sure everyone got free education and health care.

  Steve ended up closing the browser and slamming the lid on the laptop, realizing that while the theme of the website was anti-American government, most people in there were just anti-war and not smart enough to figure out that the United States was no longer the economic power it once was and hadn’t been since we decided that ‘guns and butter’ was a good idea. He stewed for another hour or two in the dark before going back to bed and falling asleep for a few hours.

  Robert was still up at that hour but was busy with another task. He had gone back to the same strip club and found that Chandi was willing to help him out again. He always went back to the same place to see how the last girl would behave and this was the first time that one had come up and asked if she could go again. This made him nervous because he had really worked her over and knew that she suffered for the money he’d paid her. Maybe she had a pimp that was going to mess him up but he decided to play along anyway because if she took it last time he could push it further this time. He took her to the VIP room for one set but only to feed her drugs, four pills this time, along with a stern warning. “If this is some kind of trick I will make everybody’s life a living hell.”

  “It’s not a trick, I could really use the money and with the pills I don’t remember a whole lot about what happened. I was in pain but it was worth it. Times are tough and guys aren’t coming in here dropping hundreds of dollars a night anymore.”

  Robert bought it and paid off the manager. He took Chandi to a different house this time, one that was out of the city and away from any neighbors. He didn’t want to take chances that anyone would hear the screaming that was going to happen for the next few hours. She was all over him in the car and he really enjoyed the ride out to the house. In the garage of the house was a tool bag that he grabbed on their way in. He lit candles for multiple purposes; sight, smell and wax. Chandi’s energy peaked in the first hour before the drugs started to weigh her down and she was extremely aggressive, giving Robert what he wanted. She hit him and choked him and he returned the favor before cuffing her to the bed and using the candle wax. She screamed a few times, which only made Robert want her more. This time he let her spend the night, not wanting to venture back to the city. He wouldn’t bring her back this way again so it didn’t really matter if she could remember where she’d been. He gave her another roofie so she wouldn’t feel too bad until later and slept for a couple of hours. He dropped her off, went home to clean up and started digging for more information.