by Gabriel Kron
I explained to Jack that if such a device existed and was rediscovered then it could be what was termed open source technology. Making it impossible for anyone to patent it. Corporations weren’t interested in technology that couldn’t be patented as it meant that anyone could produce it and therefore diminish their profits.
“The powers that be have got too much invested in research and development and oil exploration to allow a device that makes oil obsolete. Governments feel they would lose tax revenues from fuel duty. Even the banks would fight it.”
I could have ranted on and on to Jack about why the discovery of real free energy would cause a storm, but I wanted him to tell me more about the device he knew about.
There was a knock at the door. Jack checked his watch. “Looks like visiting hours are over.”
I couldn’t believe it. Rebecca did tell me about the visiting hours, but I didn’t realise that the time had gone so fast. I needed to ask Jack more questions, but there was one question in particular I wanted an answer to.
Jack had already crossed his small room and had opened the door to let the nurse in.
“Jack, you’ve been brilliant, can we talk again soon? I really need to ask you more.” I said as the nurse, who I was hoping would be Rebecca and might let me have a few more minutes, came in. It wasn’t Rebecca. Instead a younger nurse in her mid-twenties strode into Jack’s room.
“No more time now Mister Bateman,” she said in a heavy Polish accent. “It is time to go. Right now.”
“This one,” Jack said pointing to the nurse, “thinks she can boss me around.” He turned to the nurse and pointed. “And you shouldn’t talk to my guest like that.”
Jack agreed to meet with me again, but as I was leaving, he held my arm and pulled me close.
“Daniel, I know what you want to ask, and the answer is yes, I do know where you might find one.” Jack put a postcard in my hand. “I gave one to Kaspar Locke, my brother-in-law.”
“Mister Bateman, please, it is time to go!” The nurse was sounding more irritated than before.
“Find that town Daniel. He owns an antiques place there,” Jack said as I was being ushered out of the room.
As I walked up the corridor through the care home, I looked at the postcard Jack had given me. The front was a black and white photo of a picturesque country lane with a farm shop. The back had a short message in German, and more importantly, at the bottom was printed what looked like the name of the shop:
Anitiquitäten Locke Emporium
Stuttgart.
Stuttgart Airport. Saturday 8:15am Day 2.
I collected my rucksack from the carousel and made my way through the terminal. The roof of the building was supported by large tree-like structures made of steel and painted grey. This airport always made me feel as though I was stepping back in time to the cold war years. At Christmas they would decorate the grey steel structures with fairy lights, but the rest of the year they looked like dead trees.
I got into a taxi outside the terminal entrance. The driver, a short fat man in his fifties, mumbled something in German which I didn’t understand, so I reeled off the one line in German I knew would get me to the hotel.
“Guten Morgen, Hotel Wartburg, Stuttgart Zentrale, bitte,” I said knowing my pronunciation was off. The driver didn’t reply, instead he pulled away and entered the morning traffic leaving the airport.
Hotel Wartburg was only a few hundred yards from the very centre of Stuttgart. There was no way I would normally have been able to afford such a hotel. In fact, there was nothing cheaper than the Wartburg, because the manager, Dominik Becker, was a good friend and always insisted I accept his hospitality.
The taxi arrived as it started to rain so I quickly paid the driver and ran inside the marble clad entrance.
“Guten Morgen, Herr Bateman,” the doorman said as he opened the door for me. Thanking him, I crossed to the reception desk, handed the receptionist my passport, signed the guest book and asked when Dominik was back on duty.
The receptionist, Hilda, a young girl with long blonde hair and glasses, checked the staff rota, and informed me that Herr Becker would be back on duty later that afternoon.
Time was precious and I wanted to get out and start the hunt as soon as possible. I had researched as best I could the area between Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg, scouring the local business listings and even using on-line maps and satellite images from Google.
Trying to locate the shop was a long shot. The image was black and white and the year on the stamp frank either 1961 or 67. It was very possible that the building didn’t even exist anymore.
It would have been useful if Dominik had been on duty. He may have been able to help me locate the shop, or at least narrow the search down. I would catch up with him later and drink German beer, eat sausage, play chess and generally put the world to rights.
Hilda, spoke good English, so I showed her the postcard and asked if she recognised the shop. Unsurprisingly she didn’t. I was on my own until later that afternoon at least.
Ludwigsburg was about a twenty minute drive away. It wasn’t a particularly big area, but too big to go driving around in a taxi on the off chance we might discover the Anitiquitäten Locke Emporium.
I had planned for this and knew that the hotel could arrange a hire car. I made the relevant arrangement with Hilda who said she would ring when the car was ready.
Central London, Saturday 8:45am Day 2.
Mark Stacey waited outside the Railway Tavern across from Liverpool Street Station. He had been waiting less than two minutes before Colin Mundy appeared on the pavement outside the station entrance. Colin crossed the busy road and told Mark to follow him.
They had arranged to meet in the Railway Tavern, but Mark had learned now that Colin always changed the location at the last minute.
He followed Colin across the street again and into the reception of the United Bank of Switzerland. Colin signed in at the desk and gave Mark a guest ID badge. They walked through reception past the lifts and entered a side door that led through the post rooms to a room with just a single heavy-duty table. Everything about the room was stark. Mark imagined that this was what an interrogation room might look like, even though he knew it was for secure deliveries and suspect packages. The fact that Colin had brought him here for one of their “lunches” put a new perspective on the surroundings.
“Sorry about all the cloak and dagger stuff. Force of habit really, but better that no-one knows of these meetings,” Colin said. It was Colin’s usual practice to never correspond electronically regarding this contract. By keeping all meetings as face-to-face verbal exchanges, the risks were minimised.
“Mark, the Office likes what you’re doing. None of them know exactly who you are, only that you exist and they want me to extend their gratitude. Check your balance tomorrow.” Colin reached into his pocket and took out a mobile phone and placed it on the table. “The Office wants to know if you can access more sensitive sites and perform certain more critical tasks?”
“You mean things like bank accounts, DVLC, HMRC?” Mark asked.
“Yes to all three, and more besides. Basically, they want to know if you can access and change without detection a person’s electronic online existence.”
“Undetected? Not with what I’ve got at the moment, but in theory yes, I can do it. But they want me to totally fuck up someone’s life,” Mark said. “Who is that someone and why?”
This was a big step up in the game-play of this contract, moving from causing major disruption to unquestionably illegal hacking.
“Well, there are some people that they can’t touch legally for whatever reason, but need to shut down their operations by effectively freezing their accounts.” Colin understood Mark’s concern, but didn’t share it. He had long since stopped questioning the justification behind each case. It made life a lot easier.
Mark contemplated what Colin just said and then as if suddenly convinced. “Okay — I’d need some new
software and a network packet analyser or sniffer, especially if you want it undetected,” Mark said knowing exactly what was needed.
“I thought you might,” Colin said and slid the phone across the table. “Here’s a package of software utilities you will find useful and as for the analyser, I think the Office’s gratitude in your balance tomorrow probably means you’ll be able to get one yourself.”
“And the phone?” Mark said holding up the old Nokia.
“Ditch it. It’s only the micro SD you need. It’s encrypted, so you’ll need these,” Colin said as he gave Mark a business card with two telephone length numbers hand written on the back. “Don’t lose it.”
Wartburg Hotel, Stuttgart. Saturday 10:35am Day 2.
Refreshed and ready to go I decided to check my emails whilst waiting for the hire car. The hotel had free broadband facilities and was faster than my own connection back home such were the poor broadband speeds available in the UK. As my laptop booted, the telephone rang.
“Hallo Herr, Bateman. Ihr Auto ist bereit, Sir,” said the receptionist.
“Danke, danke,” I thanked her but had to continue in English. “I will be down in about five minutes, thank you.”
I logged onto the internet and accessed my emails. My in-box was always busy, I only usually read about half unless the subject line was particularly interesting. There would be up to a dozen emails from a group of people who had become more like good friends than just faceless acquaintances.
We all belonged to an online group called the OTG – Off The Grid, and basically it labelled us accurately. We all wanted to be able to live life without the need for energy from the national grids of our countries. Gas and electricity price hikes were front page headlines on a regular basis, and there was good evidence to show that world events could easily create a perfect political storm and result in rolling power-cuts and limited supplies. So a group of us, from all over the world, were working towards being able to live life off the grid. Some of the group were already totally off the grid, already using solar PV, wind and biomass.
As a group we were also off the public internet grid as well. Our group was private and no-one joined unless there was overall agreement, which was not hard for only a couple of dozen members. We did this because the open memberships of public internet forums and groups attract all kinds of weirdos, freaks and trolls. One thing was certain, trying to have a proper scientific discussion on some of the groups, would make you the target of abuse, threats and even cyber-attacks.
So we stayed private. We built our machines and devices, tested them, discussed them and tried to find better ways of generating energy.
I logged onto the OTG and read a couple of posts Mario had posted about his latest experiments. The group was quieter than usual, possibly because of my impending trip to try and find an actual self-running generator. The holy grail of the free energy community. I had revealed the bare basics to the group so far, saying only that a friend knew of such a device in Germany and that this particular trip was to follow this lead.
To:[email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Lockridge, The hunt is on.
Hi Guys,
Well, the hunt is finally on. Clive dropped me off this morning (thanks Clive, much appreciated) and I am literally about to leave my hotel to start trying to find the Locke place. Obviously I hope to actually find the device, but even just getting further testimonial to it existing would be good.........hmm yeah OK I’d be disappointed if I don't find it.
Although I don’t quite believe in all the Illuminati Men In Black conspiracies around, please don’t disclose this to anyone yet, (I know I don’t need to say it).
Regards
Daniel
Road to Gaisburg. Saturday 10:45am Day 2.
The fully fuelled metallic grey VW Golf hire car, was freshly valeted and left hand drive. I was used to left hand drive, but I knew it would take a good twenty minutes or so to settle down into driving over here. Maybe a bit longer due to the rain. The windscreen wipers on full were only just clearing the screen.
My discussions with Jack Welch over the last month about his brother-in-law and the whereabouts of his shop had narrowed down the search a little, but still accounted for a large area. Jack had said that all he could remember was that the shop was near a river between Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg. There was only one river between the two and a straight drive would have taken about twenty minutes, but it was pointless just using the main roads. The postcard showed a single track lane with no distinguishing markings or features, other than the shop. In comparison to the British, German roads had minimal markings. They were generally getting better, but there were still a lot of old scarred rural roads.
Trying to be as organised and efficient as I could, I had printed off as many maps as possible and was determined to log every road I searched.
Once the hunt had begun I decided to stop at any antiques shops I saw and ask if they knew about the Locke Emporium. Locke had been the maiden name of Jack’s first wife, Vanessa Locke. Jack had been posted to Germany after the war and married Vanessa in 1949.
Vanessa’s younger brother Kaspar Locke had set-up a second-hand store so that people could rebuild their lives and furnish their homes. Over the years it turned into an Antiques Emporium.
Sadly, Vanessa was killed in a car crash in the early sixties and Jack didn’t hear much from Kaspar afterwards. The postcard Jack gave me was the last correspondence between them.
Zigzagging across the countryside wasn’t a bad way to see a wide variety of German architecture, both modern and traditional. I especially liked the older towns where historic timber buildings and cobblestone streets made for picturesque settings. I was more interested in the older areas as they offered more of a chance of finding the barn-type building next to a minor road near the river.
It wasn’t that far from Stuttgart to Ludwigsburg. That was unless you needed to cover as much ground as possible. I had planned the route I was going to take previously and had a list to follow.
My basic strategy involved searching about a mile either side of the river, crossing it at every opportunity. This could all be over and done within an hour — or not at all.
From Stuttgart I headed west to Gaisburg, explored the old roads, lanes and tracks there before crossing the river to Wasen and continued up to Bad Cannstatt and across to Ostheim. There were quite a few housing estates with typical three, four and five floor apartment blocks with red tiled roofs and mustard yellow masonry paint I would always associate with post WWII European architecture. But these were pointless investigating.
In other circumstances I would have loved to explore the medieval towns, with their oak-framed buildings and cobbled streets. But they were unlikely to be hiding a 1940s farm barn conversion.
I had to refuel about midday and felt the need for a rest involving a strong coffee followed by a half hour nap with the seat folded right back. The coffee would be starting to kick in as I set off again towards Münster, still exploring every road and lane possible.
As I drove on, I thought about the ramifications of finding a Lockridge device and what it would mean. Just how would people react if it became common knowledge that it actually was possible to generate cheap clean electricity? Solar, wind and water could all provide free electricity. But the high purchase costs were prohibitive for most people.
Trouble is, the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow, and most people don’t have a running river or waterfall in their garden.
On a large scale, the set-up costs of wind farms and hydro-electric dams meant that the consumer still had to pay for what they used.
As I kept crossing the river and exploring the roads, red marker pen started to fill up the pages. Every now and then there would be a second-hand or antiques shop, or better yet a junk shop, although these were not common. They were an obvious break from driving and gave me the opportunity to check out any i
tems of interest and ask them about the Locke Emporium.
So far I had found and bought two old transistor radios. One in particular I was happy with, an original Grundig HEINZELMANN AM/FM Radio. It wasn’t working which didn’t bother me as I could probably fix it and also meant it cost only a few Euros.
Each time I asked about the Locke Emporium, but no-one had ever heard of it or them.
I was feeling tired, having driven many hours and covered over three hundred miles, it was hardly surprising. It was dusk and getting to be hard to see anything other than the road ahead.
Cutting across to the B27, I headed south back to Stuttgart, back to the comfort of a hot bath, food and sleep. I intended to start before sunrise the next morning to get back to Freiberg and continue the search.
Today wasn’t going to be the day of finding the Holy Grail.
Residence of Mark Stacey, Saturday Mid-day Day 2.
Since receiving the package of software utilities from Colin, Mark had been tweaking the source code to perform automated batch tasks. Aimed at a person’s account number, the utilities created a hole through the firewalls and levels of encryption to allow manipulation of the files at command line level. The utilities were unbranded, only the file-name used: Cappuccino.
Hacking was easy if you knew how and Mark had learned it the easy way, legally.
In the past he had been asked to test his client’s network security and this gave him the authority to try and break the system.
Utilities for hacking were readily available and most companies had an instant dismissal policy for anyone caught purchasing or downloading such software. These software utilities were designed to break the passwords or encryption of most systems. Most had a low level of security when compared to that of banks, government, the military and some large corporations, especially those Mark had worked for.
Opening the attachment to an email from one of Colin Mundy’s accounts regarding proofreading a new mission statement — which was real, just irrelevant to what was really hidden in the document — Mark zoomed in to the copyright symbol printed along the bottom of the page. Next to the circled c and half the height of the full-stop there was a ten digit number. Mark noted it in his diary, gave it a name and disguised it as a phone number by adding a zero to the front. Crude but effective.