The Locke Cipher

by Gabriel Kron

  This system has had many names over the decades: ECHELON, STAR, PRISM, but all essentially perform the same task, and the super-computers that monitor and filter all the communications are called The Dictionaries.

  Science Museum, London. Thursday 9:00pm Day 7.

  Clive entered the Science Museum through one of the few internal doors that linked the museum to the Imperial College. He made his way through the many exhibits and displays, mostly lit by emergency lights, towards one of the main ground floor galleries.

  After the museum closes to the general public, the museum can be used for events such as dinners, galas, conferences and parties. Tonight was an important event — the Inventions Charity Dinner — to help raise money for a new business enterprise initiative aimed at providing support for new, up and coming inventors. The event invitations went to important business leaders with deep pockets who were used to fine dining and parting with their hard earned money.

  Clive arrived at the Making the Modern World gallery just as the meal was finishing. Amongst the exhibits that included Robert Stephenson’s innovative steam locomotive, and the Apollo 10 command module, were large round dinner tables, being cleared by silver service waiters after the three course meal. The host of the evening was the museum’s director, Professor Timothy Langley, who addressed the congregation of rich London business socialites. Langley stood at the lectern that was dwarfed by his rake like figure.

  “Ladies and gentleman, I hope you had an excellent meal. The evening is far from over, and before we allow you to roam the galleries, we are very fortunate to have with us a distinguished speaker from the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is a leading light in the world of innovation and a champion for British Engineering Excellence...”

  Behind the lectern, stood a twelve-foot structure with a large silver torus at the top. Clive immediately recognised it as a Tesla coil and knew that the guests this evening were in for a dazzling display of high voltage electricity.

  “...He has agreed to come and talk this evening and hopes to part you from your hard earned cash so British innovation can stay at the coal face of science and industry. Please welcome, twice winner of the IFC’s Innovation award, Doctor Lee Gregson.”

  The lights around the gallery dimmed to darkness and the gallery hushed itself to silence.

  The silence hung for a few seconds, long enough for some to think that perhaps there had been a power-cut when suddenly — there was an explosion of lightning from the Tesla coil behind the stage. Tree-like filaments of bright white arcs flicked from the torus into the air around it. Extending many yards, the arcs jumped to various objects near it. There were gasps of amazement from the audience and even a few worried shuffles of chairs from those at the front. When the display finished, standing at the lectern, lit by a single spot was Doctor Lee Gregson.

  Although they had spoken many times, Clive had never met Lee, who was another unlikely member of the OTG group considering his qualifications and position. He was however, an avid believer in self-sufficiency and strived towards taking his family home, back in Wales, totally off the grid. He was one of the first to take advantage of the government tie-in tariff scheme for his PV solar panel array, realising that the return over twenty-five years was better than any savings account. He lived with his young wife Wendy and their two teenage daughters.

  “Thank you all for coming this evening and thank you Tim, who is one of the luckiest men alive being the curator of one of the world’s most magnificent science museums. As inventors and innovators we are often called nerds or geeks by those very same people who use our discoveries and inventions every single day, and tonight I’d like to tell you about the biggest geek of all....”

  Clive stood at the back of the gallery, next to the world’s oldest atmospheric engine that dated back to 1791.

  As Lee delivered his speech, a large screen displayed a multi-media slide show:

  “...Us geeks are obsessed with fixing the world around us. We stay up all night disassembling the world and finding new ways of putting it back together.

  “Over one hundred and twenty years ago a Serbian-American inventor started building the world in an entirely new way.

  “The world was still powered by steam and lit by candle-light, when an electrical system known as alternating current, or A.C. was invented and to this day powers every home and business worldwide.

  “Who do we have to thank for this magical invention that ushered humanity into a second industrial revolution?”

  “Harry Potter!” a voice from the audience called out.

  “Edison,” someone else said as the laughter died down.

  Lee waited for the next slide to appear on the large screen beside him. “Yes a lot of people think that Thomas Edison was the father of the electric age!

  “But no. It was Nikola Tesla.

  “When most people think of Thomas Edison, they think of the man who invented the light bulb. But Edison didn’t invent the light bulb, he took the ideas of twenty-two other men who pioneered it before him and improved it, figuring out how to sell it and make money.

  “Tesla actually worked for Edison early in his career. He was offered fifty thousand dollars, the equivalent of a million dollars today, to fix the problems Edison was having with his existing Direct Current, DC, dynamos.

  “Tesla fixed Edison’s machines and when he asked for the money he had been promised, Edison laughed at him and said, ‘Tesla, you don’t understand our American humour.’

  “Edison is a good example of what innovation doesn’t need..

  “He believed the success of his inventions could be gauged by their profitability. He was neither a mathematician, nor a scientist. He believed he could just hire people to do that for him.

  “Edison was not a geek, he was a CEO. He would fit right into today’s capitalist world of mega-profit driven business practices.

  “Tesla was known for discovering amazing things and then forgetting to write them down.

  “Edison was known for rushing to the patent office as soon as one of his employees had something.

  “After his falling out with Edison, Tesla went to work on his alternating current electrical system for Westinghouse and so began the Battle of the Currents. Tesla’s alternating versus Edison’s direct current

  “Edison’s DC system required a power station every square mile because his DC power couldn’t be transmitted very far. Tesla’s AC used thinner wires, had higher voltages, and could transmit electricity over long distances.

  “So what did Edison do in order to protect his profits from the DC patents? Strangely, families living in the neighbourhood near Edison’s laboratory began to notice that their pet dogs and cats were disappearing. This was because Edison had been paying schoolboys twenty-five cents a head for live cats and dogs.

  “He then put these cats and dogs on display and publicly electrocuted them using his own DC and then Tesla’s alternating current until they died. Edison wanted to publicly smear Tesla’s AC and convince the public that it was too dangerous for home use. He even managed to convince the powers that be to use Tesla’s AC in the first electric chair and tried to tarnish the Westinghouse name by labelling death by electrocution as being ‘Westinghoused.’

  “In short the only thing that Edison truly pioneered was, as our American friends say, douchebaggery.

  “Ever heard of a man by the name of Marconi? You were probably taught that he won a Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing Radio. Did you know that everything he did was based on work previously done by Tesla? After Marconi became world-famous for sending the first transatlantic message, Tesla said, ‘Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents.’ Tesla was quite simply the nicest inventor ever.”

  “What about Radar, X-rays, first hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls, cryogenic engineering, radio astronomy, the resonant frequency of the Earth, remote control, neon lighting, the modern electric motor, and wireless communications? All Tesla
, regardless of what our textbooks tell us.

  “Oh and here’s one. You know how when you need electricity around your home, it simply rains down from the earth’s ionosphere and charges everything wirelessly?” Lee paused as he gazed round his somewhat perplexed guests. “No?”

  “That’s because it was something Tesla invented but didn’t share because he was afraid of people like Edison stealing his patents.

  “Without a question, Tesla was a true genius.

  “He spoke Serbian, English, Czech, German, French, Hungarian, Italian and Latin.

  “He had a photographic memory and could memorise entire books and recite them at will. Most of us can’t even remember our passwords.

  “He could visualize devices entirely in his head and then build them without ever writing anything down.

  “And just as impressive, the man lived to be eighty-six and despite being six foot six and amazingly popular with the ladies, Tesla rebutted their flirtations because he believed it would interfere with his work. He was celibate his entire life.

  “So with this incredible mind and all these inventions behind him, Tesla should have been rich and famous, yes?

  “Unfortunately, no.

  “Tesla lived in a time when the world demanded results that were practical and profitable, just like today. We didn’t want radio astronomy or radar, we wanted light bulbs and toaster ovens.

  “Tesla’s contributions were not incremental, they were revolutionary. Ones that would change the world.

  “One of Tesla’s final gifts to the world was a tower near New York City that would have provided free wireless energy to the entire planet. The Wardenclyffe Tower facility was financed by J. P. Morgan who later shut it down when he heard that there would be no way to regulate and measure the electricity being used and therefore it wouldn’t make any money.

  “This capitalist greed plagued most of Tesla’s career and he spent the majority of it being broke. In addition, Tesla also suffered from a disorder we commonly refer to as being as nutty as fruitcake. This is probably somewhat of an understatement. Apart from having a germ phobia, Tesla was obsessed with the number three and counting, and before entering a building he would often walk around the block three times first.

  “Tesla suffered from hallucinations and often had a hard time differentiating between reality and his imagination, which is why he spent years alone in his laboratory working day and night. He often said that the only time he was truly happy was when he was cooped up in his lab.

  “Tesla died broke and alone in a New York City hotel room. He’d been living on milk and Nabisco crackers.

  “Living on crackers? That was Tesla’s reward for all the things he gave to humanity?

  “Let’s not let this happen to today’s Teslas.

  “Behind me, is one of Tesla’s more fun inventions, the magnifying transmitter or “Tesla coil.” You’ve seen a small demonstration so far, but now I would like to let it play out my speech for you.” Lee turned to face the Tesla coil and raised his arms in the air as the lights dimmed and the introduction to a famous orchestral number began to play.

  Clive knew what was coming. He had played with Tesla coils himself, although not one this size. The Tesla coil was designed to magnify electricity to high voltages of high frequencies and could be made to make the sound of a synthesizer as it produced its lightning display. The sound could be changed by the way it was driven and could therefore be programmed to play music, in a rough raspy kind of way.

  The gallery burst into applause when the raspy rendition of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor finished and Tim Langley returned to the stage and addressed the audience. The atmosphere in the room was electric, literally.

  “Wow, thank you Doctor Lee Gregson. That was incredible, and a few things I didn’t know about Tesla...” Langley continued as Lee made his way around the periphery of the gallery towards the back where Clive had told him where to meet.

  Clive walked over to meet Lee as the hundred or so guests started to wander around the gallery. Waiters served fine wine and several museum staff mingled to try and help loosen their guest’s wallets.

  “Clive?” Lee asked as Clive approached.

  “Hello Lee. Nice speech, and nice to finally meet you,” Clive said as they shook hands.

  “Yes, I’m surprised we haven’t met before considering your work up here.” They started to walk through the gallery to an area that was away from the other guests.

  “I’m only down here every now and then. Anyway, you’ve had some good news I understand, you and Daniel. I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to do much, in fact I haven’t been on the group for a couple of weeks now,” Lee said as they started climbing the stone steps to the next floor.

  “It’s not good news Lee, we need to talk.”

  Science Museum, Thursday, 10:05pm Day 7.

  Having made their way upstairs to the Telecommunications Gallery, they walked slowly as Clive went over what had happened in Stuttgart. It sounded unreal as Clive told it, but Lee could tell that he meant every word he said.

  “I’ve even been sacked,” he finished off.

  “What! No way. What for?”

  “Don’t really know, but it has something to do with Stuttgart and the Lockridge supposedly bringing the college into disrepute.”

  “Jesus. What now? What about everyone else on the group?” Lee asked.

  “The group’s been deleted,” Clive said.

  “They’ve deleted the group?”

  “It’s been gone a couple of days now. What if ‘they’, whoever ‘they’ are, start going after everyone on the group because they know what the truth is?”

  “Has anyone else had anything done to them yet?” Lee had stopped walking.

  “Not that I know of, but I only really know a few people off the group, like yourself.” Clive checked that they were still alone. “I’ve got something to show you. I’m wondering if whoever is trying to suppress this knows they even exist?” Clive withdrew from his briefcase one of the notebooks and handed it to Lee.

  Lee opened it and started flicking through the pages.

  “It’s in German. I can’t read German, can you?” Lee asked.

  “No, but it shouldn’t be hard to get them translated. I know Mario can read German, but he’s in Switzerland. There are two others. Daniel’s already copied them, but we need to get Daniel back home and safe,” Clive said taking back the notebook.

  “Okay, we need to get the police involved, surely they can help?”

  “But they believe Dan’s a serial killer. They’ll want to arrest him. We tried to get the British Embassy to help us, but instead it seems they sent someone to kill us all. If we tell the police, Daniel will have to face murder charges. But he can’t stay in Germany. We have to help him get back.”

  Some of the charity dinner guests had entered the gallery, so Clive took Lee up another level. They stood looking over the balcony down to where the dinner had been. It was an impressive sight, but not one they were enjoying right now, they were too busy looking for solutions to problems. What was Daniel supposed to do once he was back home? Where would he stay? Who could they trust?

  “You know what?” Clive said. “I’ve been shot at, had Dan nearly die on me, and I’ve lost my job. But strangely they’re not troubling me as much as losing my faith does.”

  “I didn’t know you were religious.”

  “I’m not. I meant faith in everything I was taught, practise and now teach. Everything in these galleries as well has been designed and built using a flawed theory, if the Lockridge device is real.”

  “We could look at it as the key to extending our precious theories,” Lee said.

  “Yes, that’s true and I can accept that, but think of how different our world would be now if this technology hadn’t been suppressed for the last sixty or seventy years.

  “You mean with free energy for heating, lighting, refrigeration?”

  “And decentralised cheap
electricity, electric cars that charge themselves and the production of food under lights,” Clive said and then added, “This discovery is going to be of major significance.”

  “Dangerous as well, someone out there doesn’t want this found. Trouble is, most of us so called experts have stringently argued against even the possibility,” Lee said as he checked his watch. “I need to show my face down there.”

  He had to return to the charity dinner, but agreed with Clive to meet as soon as they could to work out what to do.

  Just as Lee was about to walk back down to the ground floor, Clive handed him a business card. On the back of the card was taped a micro-SD memory card.

  “All the photos that Daniel took are on there, as well as his shots of every page of the notebooks. I’m the only one who knows you have these. Please keep it and yourself safe.”

  The Den. Day 8.

  Henry Grout was a little confused, or at least Mark Stacey was, logged onto the internet as Henry Grout, his internet legend.

  When Mark’s system had been targeted by other hackers, he had been scanning through the normally private posts on the OTG technical forum. These forums were notoriously easy to hack and were where the HITS report had highlighted a watched phrase: Lockridge Device. Lockridge on its own meant nothing, it was a common surname, location, school, and a Google search would result in over 2,500,000 hits.

  When the cloud of words around Lockridge included terms such as: energy, free energy, self-runner, Patch Barracks, Over Unity, OU, and a few select others, it would trigger a hit.

  There were several sites that had Lockridge hits, but only one that claimed to have found the device. It was whilst snooping around this group that the attack on Mark’s system had happened.

  What was confusing Mark was the disappearance of the OTG from the internet. There were various references to the group on a few other forums and a few YouTube videos, but no actual group. It looked as though it had been deleted.