Vaz

by Laurence Dahners

They watched it too. It was much the same except that a different minion from the financial office talked to Gettnor.

  Anbala sat forward and drummed her fingers on her desk, “I certainly hope they aren’t really claiming that constitutes a contract. That would be laughable in court.”

  “I have a feeling that someone decided that Gettnor would never think to object. So far they’ve been right. If I hadn’t thumbnail calculated that I thought he should have more than a hundred million dollars from his inventions he wouldn’t have thought there was a problem.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “Is it a lot of money?”

  Smint nodded, “As I said, over a hundred million, probably nearly two hundred million.”

  She grinned, “Have Dr. Gettnor ask them for copies of his employment contract and any modifications, supplements or addendums. If that’s all they’ve got, they are just going to shit.”

  “What if they refuse?”

  “They can’t legally do that. If they do, we’ll take them to court.”

  ***

  Dante lowered himself to the “down position” for the second round of his match. As he lifted his eyes he noticed his father sitting in the stands. He felt frustrated because he’d expected to pin this guy in the first round but the guy had successfully sprawled out of Dante’s takedown attempts. Dante thought he had won the round on points but he wanted to feel dominant. Dominant wins were what he thought he needed to get a scholarship.

  The ref started the match and Dante “sat out,” explosively scoring an escape. He turned to his opponent and decided to let the guy attempt a takedown instead of shooting his own. They circled a bit and finally the guy shot an attempt at a double leg takedown. Dante successfully sprawled on him, and then pivoted to a dominant position.

  When the match was over Dante had won but was disappointed that he hadn’t managed to pin the guy. When he was declared the winner he saw his dad turn and leave without showing any emotion. He sighed, thinking, what did I expect, that my Dad would suddenly get all weepy and run over to high five me?

  When Dante opened the door and stepped into his home he was surprised to see his dad sitting in the family room. His dad looked up at him and Dante worried that he’d done something wrong. “Hi Dad,” he said giving a little wave.

  Vaz said, “Hi,” then as an afterthought waved. As if he had suddenly remembered that he should return a wave. So typical of his dad.

  Dante looked up at the wall screen his dad had been looking at. It had esoteric diagrams all over it. “What ‘cha workin’ on?”

  “Trying to design a better iteration of my new project.”

  “Wow, you’re sure doing a lot of work at home. Do they pay you overtime when you do this stuff here instead of at Querx?”

  Vaz stared unblinking at Dante without saying anything for a while, then abruptly said, “I don’t work at Querx anymore.”

  Dante’s eyebrows climbed, “Where do you work?”

  “At home.”

  “Damn,” Dante breathed, seeing his college chances shrinking. “Will you be able to get another job?”

  “I’d rather work for myself.”

  “Yeah, but…” Dante felt his throat work a little. He felt surprised to find this hitting him so hard. Suddenly, he found himself angry, “You’re just going to let Mom support the family by herself?”

  Vaz blinked, “No.”

  Dante rolled his eyes, “You’re going to make money in the basement?”

  Vaz stared at him another moment, then without addressing Dante’s question said, “I have a wrestling ‘pointer’ for you.”

  Dante felt torn between wanting to tell him to shove his pointer because Dante was pissed that his dad had quit his job, and feeling that after a lifetime without fatherly advice, he desperately wanted some. This, despite realizing that most of his friends hated the advice they got from their parents. Finally he said, “What?” with a little surliness.

  Vaz didn’t appear to notice his tone, “You never seem to use a ‘switch’ when you’re below. Since you almost always seem to be stronger, it should work pretty well.”

  “I’ve tried it, works in practice, not in competition, at least for me.”

  Vaz blinked a couple of times, “Can I show you how I think you should do it?”

  Startled, Dante shrugged and dropped to his knees on the carpet. “So, I’ll be on your left…?”

  Vaz rose from the couch and stepped to Dante’s right, kneeling in front of him in the down position. “Slow speed, OK?”

  “Uh huh,” Dante grinned as he reached around his dad’s waist with his right arm and grabbed Vaz’s left wrist with his left hand. This could be fun, he thought, showing the old man what a real wrestler could do. For a moment his eyebrows rose as he gripped his dad’s stone hard waist. He’d forgotten how ripped his dad had looked at the MMA fight. Still, the guy was old, “OK, go.”

  Dante felt his dad’s left hand reaching up for Dante’s right wrist where it gripped Vaz’s waist. Dante tried to hold it back, which should be easy to do at low speed since his dad couldn’t jerk it loose or otherwise violently twist it out of his grip. Instead his dad’s wrist relentlessly towed his hand with it as it moved deliberately up to grip his own right wrist where it wrapped his dad’s waist. Once he had captured Dante’s wrist, Vaz rolled slowly to the right pulling Dante over his body despite Dante’s strongest attempts to resist. Eventually Dante flopped wide eyed over onto his back. Vaz straightened, “Now I know you could have stopped me at any point there since we were working at low speed, but it’s a lot harder to resist when it’s done quickly.”

  Dante stared wide eyed at his dad. The irresistible power his father had just demonstrated flabbergasted him. Dante’d become used to being the stronger wrestler in virtually all of his matches. Despite knowing that his father appeared muscular and had won his MMA bout with one punch, Dante had thought of it as a fluke, a lucky punch, an overrated opponent. He’d been thinking that Jack Alexander wasn’t as tough as he thought he was. Now his dad had just easily overpowered Dante’s best efforts and apparently didn’t even realize he’d been trying as hard as he could! Vaz seemed to be assuming that Dante had only given 50% effort to allow the demonstration to flow to its natural conclusion.

  Someone cleared their throat and they turned to see Lisanne standing on the stairs in her robe. She raised an eyebrow, “What are you guys doing?”

  Vaz just stared unblinkingly at her so Dante said, “Uh, Dad was just showing me a wrestling move.”

  She snorted, “Well, at least you didn’t break any furniture.”

  Vaz said, “We were going half speed, half power, in full control the whole time.”

  Lisanne snorted again and turned to go back up the stairs. “Men!”

  ***

  Vangester stepped into Phil Dennis’ office. Without waiting for a greeting he said, “Fire that son of a bitch Milton.”

  Phil rocked back a little theatrically, “Why?”

  Vangester quirked the corner of his mouth, then pointedly reached up to switch off his AI headgear. He waited until Phil switched his off too. “‘Cause I said so should be good enough. But, in any case, because he pissed me off. I asked him for help with Smint and Gettnor and he refused.”

  Phil’s forehead furrowed, “What kind of help?”

  “We need to know what those bastards are patenting and we’re his biggest customer, he owes us.”

  Phil stared, “He’d be… he couldn’t violate their confidence like that!”

  “Oh, come Phil. Grow up and play with the big boys.”

  “Jesus, boss,” Phil breathed, “I hope you didn’t say anything like that to him where it could be recorded, that kind of stuff is ‘discoverable’ in court.”

  Vangester looked a little uncomfortable, “I’d turned mine off but I couldn’t very well ask him to turn off his AI.”

  Phil closed his eyes, “So you asked him to do something unethical and illegal ‘on the recor
d’?” He opened them again and reached up to rub his temples.

  Vangester shrugged. “Fire him anyway. He needs to be taught a lesson.”

  ***

  James Milton stood up from inspecting the fusion device in Gettnor’s basement. He looked at Smint and Gettnor, “So the actual device is this little thing, the reason it would be hard to take up to the patent office is all the shielding?”

  “Yeah,” Smint shrugged, “we could break down the tank and reconstruct it near the patent office, and then fill it with water there, but it would be cheaper to pay for a couple of plane tickets to fly them down here.”

  “OK, on to another issue. The CEO of Querx showed up at my office to ask me what you’re patenting.”

  Smint frowned, “You didn’t tell him did you?”

  “No, of course not! But they obviously know you’re patenting something and are thinking that it might be something you were working on when you were there at Querx. Do we have any exposure there?”

  Smint turned to look at Gettnor who stared stone faced at Milton.

  “Come on guys, I’m on your side. Tell me about any problems there might be and let me be the judge of how significant they might be. You do not want me to be blindsided by them later.”

  Gettnor still said nothing so Smint turned back to him and said, “The first fusion reaction occurred at Querx.”

  “What!?”

  “Yeah, you know that this finding was mostly a freakish accident?”

  Milton nodded.

  “So Vaz was only trying to push more hydrogen into a new alloy he’d casted and the device melted down because it accidentally induced the fusion reaction we’re patenting. Combination of heat from the reaction and extreme currents in the apparatus generated by the alpha particles. It melted down in front of Stillman Davis, the guy who fired Vaz. It pissed Davis off because he thought Vaz had let an experiment get out of control. Probably a big factor in Vaz getting fired.”

  Milton narrowed his eyes, “But there had been no intent to induce fusion, nor any recognition that it had happened at that time?”

  Gettnor said, “Something bizarre had happened.”

  “But you didn’t know what?”

  Gettnor shook his head.

  “So you came here after you were fired and figured out what happened and improved it without any help or equipment from Querx. You never worked on it there because, after that meltdown, you were immediately fired?”

  Vaz nodded. Smint turned uncertainly to look at him.

  Milton sighed, “What else? You’ve got to tell me.”

  Smint said, “Vaz…”

  “Yes?”

  “Vaz took some of the disks he’d made up there at Querx.”

  “Oh Christ! Are those the same kind of disks that are in the fusion device?”

  Smint said, “The same ones in fact.”

  “Shit! And I suppose there were security cameras there that might have seen him taking them?”

  Smint slumped and said, “Yeah, and a security guard. How bad a problem is this?”

  “Not the end of the world, but Querx will have a strong argument that they own at least part of it. In fact, rather than getting into an expensive court battle, you’d be better off negotiating the size of the piece they’ll get with them.”

  “How big a piece should they get?!”

  Milton held up his fingers with a small space between them, “A little piece.”

  ***

  Tiona walked up to the front of the room and the man handed her back her AI. It had been weird to spend hours without it. As she put it on he said, “Very impressive, Mizz…” he glanced up at his HUD, “Gettnor. Very impressive indeed.”

  “What did I get?” she asked, looking up at her HUD. Electricity seemed to sparkle over her scalp as she saw that she’d gotten a perfect 800 on the math section and made the 86th percentile on the language section. “Oh!” she exclaimed in a small voice.”

  The man waggled his eyebrows, “You won’t have any difficulty getting accepted wherever you want to go.” He put out his hand and Tiona shook it.

  As she walked out of the testing center she skipped a step. She’d been worried about the SAT, even though she’d done well on some practice tests. She knew that Dante hadn’t gotten a great score and that had spooked her. He’d never told her exactly how he’d done, but she knew it wasn’t what he’d hoped for and that he worried that if he didn’t get a wrestling scholarship to help him in the door he might not get into the school he wanted.

  She took a deep breath, maybe now she’d be able to get a decent academic scholarship.

  ***

  Phil Dennis leaned into Vangester’s office, “Mr. Vangester, got a minute?”

  Vangester sighed. The board was putting enough pressure on him from above without his being constantly nagged by underlings that couldn’t decide what color tie to wear. “What now?”

  “I got a call from Reid Hapler in the HR office. It seems Dr. Gettnor has contacted them, asking for copies of his employment contract, specifically seeking any modifications or amendments. He seemed worried about it and said I should talk to you about it.”

  Vangester squeezed his eyes shut, “Shit!” he hissed.

  “I assume then, that you aren’t going to tell me that there’s nothing to worry about?”

  Vangester sighed, “Well there shouldn’t be. But…”

  Dennis sat down uninvited and pressed fingers to his temples. “Tell me.”

  “Well he’d only been here a year or two when some of those patents of his started bringing in a lot of money.”

  “That’s a good thing right?”

  Indignantly, Vangester said, “Yeah, but the way the employment contract is written in reference to royalties he was going to be taking home more money than anyone in the company!”

  Dennis took his fingers off his temples, “So?”

  “So, it was irritating to a lot of people that we’ve got this weird guy who can barely tie his own shoes and he’s making more money than they were. Plus, someone suggested that if he got too much money he might retire.”

  “So?”

  “So, we modified the contract. Now, after the first half million there is a reduction in the percentage the inventor gets and after a million it is reduced further.”

  Dennis narrowed his eyes, “You retroactively modified his contract?”

  “We changed it for new employees. Then we told him…”

  “Yesss?”

  “We told him we were going to pay him on that scale.”

  “He signed off on it?”

  “He didn’t object.”

  “You’re not going to claim that because you told him and he didn’t actually object that that constituted a contract?!”

  Vangester shrugged uncomfortably, “Doesn’t it?”

  “Crap! Let me track down the relevant record. I certainly hope it looks better than what you’re describing!” He turned to walk out of the office, then stopped. Without turning he said, “How much money are we talking about here? Maybe it’s not worth arguing about.”

  Vangester said, “Probably somewhere over a hundred fifty million. We don’t want to take a hit like that.”

  “Good God!” Dennis sighed as he left the office.

  An hour later Dennis was back. “I don’t think you can say that Gettnor ‘accepted’ a modification of his contract either time. He might not have objected but he did ask, ‘Is that what’s supposed to happen?’ as if he was casting doubt. Then he never said, ‘Yes, OK, or even nodded.’”

  “Yeah.” Vangester said disgustedly, “That’s just the way the SOB is, but I suppose that wouldn’t hold up in court?”

  With raised eyebrows Dennis shook his head.

  Vangester grunted, “Those women were supposed to say, ‘OK?’ or something at the end of their little speeches to him in order to have him confirm that he agreed, but both of them flubbed it. We even wrote them out scripts and put them up on their HUDs,” he shook his
head with dismay, “and they still couldn’t get it right.”

  “Well, whatever’s the right or wrong of how you tried to get him to accept a modification of his contract I don’t think it will hold up in court. You’d better start figuring out how you’re going to pay the man the money he didn’t get.”

  “Dennis! We didn’t hire you to tell me I have to pay the man. We’re paying you to figure out how we can get out of it!”

  Dennis stared at him for a while, then said, “I’ll search for precedents, but,” he said darkly, “I don’t think you can.” He turned on his heel and left.

  ***

  Tiona saw her brother walking out of the school ahead of her. “Don,” she called, feeling weird. She’d spoken to her brother at the school less than ten times during the three years she’d been in high school. Mostly they pretended that they didn’t see one another. He turned and waited for her, “Did they offer you a scholarship?”

  He nodded, “ECU did. I still haven’t heard from NCSU.”

  “Oh,” she knew he wanted to stay in Raleigh. “Good luck with State. When will you hear?”

  He shrugged, “Next couple of weeks. Did you know Dad quit working at Querx?”

  Horrified, Tiona found her hand over her mouth stifling a little squeak. “No! When?”

  “I don’t know. He told me last night.”

  “Oh no,” Tiona moaned, eyes glistening, “after he spent all that money on equipment too. Do you think he’ll be able to get another job?”

  “‘T’… he’s not even applying,” Dante said in a hushed tone.

  “Oh my God!” Tiona said feeling her world crumbling. “With just Mom’s salary they’ll be broke! There’s no way they’ll be able to help us in college; Mom’s already worried about money.” She wiped an eye and sniffed, “What’s wrong with him?”

  Dante snorted, “This the first time you’ve ever noticed your dad’s a little weird?”