Balance of Power Shifted Read online

  Bill looked at me with a puzzled and said, “Why do we need to keep it secret? This is huge news and publicity could help us get moving and round up investors if needed.” “Bill, Bill you silly little boy” I said, in my best motherly impersonation, “what do you think will happen when the people who produce oil from the ground, refine oil and sell oil and gas to run the world, see their livelihood go down the drain with our solution replacing theirs because it is cheaper and cleaner to use? We could become targets and before we become targets I want to make sure we have everything lined up including security.” As I was talking, I could see that Bill was realizing that what I said could literally happen. I think the enormity of everything finally hit him because he got very quiet and remained so the rest of the ride.

  We stopped at a little cantina on the outskirts of town that I had discovered on one of my weekend jaunts. The food was fabulous and we both ate piles of beans and rice, flautas, and large camerones in a variety of dishes. The dark haired waitress was dressed in a black skirt and white blouse and her hair was pitch black. She seemed to like Bill and spent most of dinner pampering him. Bill had that easy gift a gab that women seemed to latch onto. I have to admit I was a little jealous of the attention he was getting. We finished a bottle of very good California white wine and paid our bill, and with Bill’s urging left a more generous tip than I would normally have. We got in the car, drove to the more active downtown district, and parked the Camaro in a guarded parking facility since car theft was very common. For the rest of the night we walked around and visited some shops and quite a few bars. One bar had a very good Mariachi band playing and we hung out there the longest. I made myself the designated driver, because it was obvious early on that Billy boy was going to pound a few cold ones. I shared one shot of Herradura Tequila with a side of sangrita, but that was the extent of my drinking. At this same bar, I did have to rescue Bill from the grasp of two people dressed as women who to me had questionable gender issues. They were trying to lift his wallet from him as he came out of the bathroom so I had to intervene, resulting in a couple of words thrown my way that escaped my understanding. I am not sure what they called me, but I am positive they were not calling me handsome. My drunken companion was very cheerful and spreading his charm with the senoritas so it was hard to get him out the door and back to the car.

  It was a quiet car ride back, since my passenger had fallen asleep 30-seconds after getting into the car. We did have situation about 20 minutes into the drive that necessitated the quick opening of the passenger window so Bill could exercise some demons. Lucky for me his window could be controlled from my side or it might have got ugly…and smelly.

  Bill was trying to comprehend where he was and thought damn, who was making freakin that racket outside, Bill’s fuzzy brain tried to comprehend the noise and why his mouth tasted like crap. Bill sat up even as he was grasping to answer those questions and realized that he was in his room, fully dressed and did not remember squat about how he got there. Glancing at the clock, he was shocked to see that it was just after eleven in the morning. It was dark outside for eleven so he gingerly got off the bed feeling somewhat queasy, wandered over to the window and saw that there was a rare rainy day outside. He also saw the garbage men toss the cans back into the bin, which provided another cacophony of sounds to Bill’s sensitive ears. While looking out the window he espied an old style quilt hanging off the back porch of an apartment a couple of buildings over. At first, he was not sure what drew his attention to it, but then it began to dawn on him why it piqued his interest. With renewed vigor, he stripped out of his clothes, which smelled strongly of smoke and jumped into the welcoming shower.

  Boy that felt good Bill said to himself as the hot water cascaded over his head. His thoughts drifted back to the issue at hand. How to design a prototype that would provide the proper voltage and wattage needed to run the average household. Based on the results Rico had finalized yesterday, it was as simple as the math that would determine the ultimate design. We know the steady output of the specimen and we know how much liquid is needed to produce the amount of amperage needed, so using those assumptions I can create a design similar to the quilting in which the quilt was just the sum of stitched in squares of the same size. Each square, rectangle or whatever geometric shape, will hold the same amount of liquid. The quilted panels, so to speak, are wired with positive and negative leads and will be linked in parallel or in serial with other panels to achieve the voltage or amperage levels need. Somehow, the wiring connects back to a central console.

  Getting out of the shower, he continued to work the puzzle in his head. Since the organism needed light to function, the sun-facing surface of the electrical quilt had to be transparent, durable and flexible enough it could be used anywhere. Keeping with the quilt concept, he concluded that a rigid design similar to a solar panel would be too inflexible for the applications in his mind. He pictured a quilt or a series of quilts laid across the average rooftop that were tied back, using a direct current to an alternating current or AC converter to a home’s electrical panel similar to how emergency generators are installed. Another concept he considered was that excess electrical output, channeled back into the electrical company’s power grid allowed for use by others. A snowy rooftop flashed in his thoughts typical to a New Jersey winter. Hmmm, he thought and moved onto the next obstacle as he concluded that a simple imbedded heating coil could keep snow and ice melted. Not sure of where to go with batteries, he assumed that some instances required them if not for anything else but to allow for maintenance functions. Theoretically, unless there was a complete absence of any kind of light, the organisms would continue to generate electricity but at an amperage correlating to the lumens of light available.

  Bill finally found his way out of his room to find Mike gaming in his chair. Screw you, Rico thought to himself, I am going to blast your ass as soon as you show your face in that building. He had been playing Call of Duty for about an hour and one particular antagonist seemed focused on taking him out. This time I took it more careful and was very patient. Scanning my backside a few times, I kept my eye on the window across the street, which appeared to be the asshole’s favorite sniper vantage point. Just then, a form slid into the window frame and I immediately took the shot. Bingo, he was down and out. With some slight vindication on my poor performance, I looked up as Bill came out of his room whistling. I was a bit surprised that he was so chirper after the night he had. “Hey dude, how ya feeling,” I taunted. “Let me grab some cereal first, but I need to run something by you” he said. Logging out of the game I came over and sat next to him while grabbing a banana from the bowl of fruit I had bought earlier in the morning.

  Chapter 9: Design Progress

  While Bill munched on his Cheerios, I reminded him that the MMA group was coming over around six tonight for some light sparring. “Cool” Bill said. “Is Jenny coming to spar? Bill knew I had the hot’s for Jenny, and who wouldn’t. She was pretty but not beautiful, which made her even more attractive and about six foot in height, which was tall for a woman. She had subtle shade of red hair and a light sprinkling of freckles. She was also a bit of a comedian and could hold her own in a group of macho guys. She was a good boxer, but her kicking ability was fantastic.

  We had been working out as a group for about 6-months and I had not hit on her since I knew she had a steady. I heard recently through the grapevine that the relationship was over. The other reason that Bill asked, was that her best friend Emily sometimes came to hang out and enjoy the sparring and camaraderie afterwards. Emily had no interest in doing any form of MMA. Bill had briefly met her when he was around a few months ago and had commented on how nice he thought she was. “Bill,” I said, “Jenny will be here but I don’t know about Emily,” then I laughed at him telling him he was transparent as hell.

  Bill just shrugged off my comments, grabbed a pad of paper off the counter, and dove right into whatever he wanted to talk to me about. “You know those ol
d-fashioned quilts that you see around that mostly older folks tend to favor.” “Yeah,” I said with a skeptical look since I did not see where this was going. “Picture this,” he said. “What if those squares in the quilt were not made of cloth material, but some kind of strong pliable transparent plastic or vinyl and each square was sealed with the same amount of fluid in it.” “Yeah,” I said again, with a vague picture forming in my head. “What would happen if each square was electrically wired together in serial or parallel” he continued. “Damn,” I said as I caught onto the gist of what he was getting at. “We would now have a power source that could be configured to meet almost any power demand,” I excitedly commented. “You got it” Bill said, “I think we can build this with a little ingenuity and get us our first prototype”. “We should design and build it to power this building,” I added. “I was thinking the same thing,” Bill said, as he slid a pad of paper over to me. While we had been talking, he had drawn up a simplistic diagram that showed a quilt like compartmentalized panel, a DC to AC power converter and a building circuit breaker panel.

  For the next couple of hours we argued about how to construct our flexible panel. We traded ideas back and forth and spent most of another hour or two on the Internet to see if off-the-shelf parts are available to help us with the design. We ended up ordering two 55 square yard rolls of 40-mil vinyl. One roll was in blue and the other roll was transparent or mostly transparent. We got this material from a pool company that makes vinyl pool liners. The individual pouches that equated to the square on a quilt were a little harder to pick out and we decided just to go with 8-ounce polypropylene bags that had a double zip lock seal. We found 20-mil bags that we thought could support the insertion of wires and not break down when applying a sealant.

  Our plan was to insert wires into the bottom of the 8-ounce bags, then wire for our negative polarity connections. We would make the connection watertight by using a special adhesive to bond it all together and then wire the top of the bag for the positive flow. We would then hang the bag vertically and fill the 8-ounce bags with the electric generating fluid. We would cover the top with a clear vinyl panel and seal the edges with the heat-sealing tool we had purchased. The only output of the mat would be a bundle of wires for connection to a power panel of sorts.

  To help shape the DC output, convert to alternating current and store the power, we purchased a couple of uninterruptable power supplies or UPS as most people called them. The application for these is to supply battery power and a clean power signal to sensitive gear such as a computer. 1000-watt power inverters converted Direct Current or DC into alternating current where AC power was needed. Lastly, we purchased 1000 feet spools of red and black solid conductor wire and a wide array of wire connectors. We paid a premium for shipping and hoped everything would be in by the end of next week. Bill had been fooling around with Microsoft Visio graphics as we were designing our power panel. He showed me a very professional initial schematic based on our discussion. Using a function called layers in Visio, he was able to show the whole construction process in sequence just be enabling a layer at a time to be shown on the screen. He printed a couple of copies so that we could refine it and hand draw on it as ideas came.

  “Hey fish boy,” I said getting Bill’s attention. “I have to run out and pick up some wine and beer before everyone gets here, but before I go I think it is time to come up with some kind a name for our organism. While we’re at it, pick a company name since we are getting real close to making this adventure serious. I looked online, and you probably know this better than I do, but it is a pain in the ass to name something in Latin the way scientists and universities do. The taxonomy that those brainiacs have come up with numbed my brain. Why don’t we call it whatever we want and let someone else figure it out once we go public?” Bill laughed and said he had come to the same conclusion since his professor and he had actually been trading emails about the same topic regarding the specimen he had sent back east. “Let’s come up with names tomorrow,” Bill suggested.

  Bill helped me set up the rinky-dink wanna be ring posts and ropes. I was not set up to do anything more substantial with stanchions and used large red construction cones to hold up my makeshift ring ropes. Even though the ropes would give in with very little force, they did provide a boundary for an actual ring or cage size. I had water near the ring and a larger cooler of beer and white wine for afterwards. A couple of tables around the mats sported an assortment of salty snacks. Bill agreed to video tape the sparring part of the evening. Traditionally everyone spent a half hour warming up on the mats, treadmill or using the assortment of punching bags and those dummies with half a body for kicking. In actual sparring, we rarely did anything at full power and there was always one person nominated to make sure nobody got hurt. There were times, however when the participants agreed to go at it as if it was a real match. A little blood and minor injuries were a regular occurrence and unavoidable.

  Jenny and Emily were the first to arrive just after six and both gave us quick kisses on our cheeks as they carried in supplies. They brought a spectacular salad to complement the pizza that had fresh strawberries mixed in, as well as their own bottle of Chardonnay. Emily was dressed casually in workout clothes you typically see in upscale health clubs and Jenny was dressed in her fighting clothes, which were typical of the Muay Thai fighters. The shorts were very high and showed the entire length of her legs, which by the way were pretty damn nice. It always amazed me how those legs and knees could be so painful when she used them on you. She had a matching green and yellow body-hugging top that showed off the rest of her attributes as well as a lightweight hoody. The only thing she was missing was the traditional Muay Thai headpiece called a Mongkol.

  A couple of minutes later Jeremy, showed up with his wife Mary and sauntering in behind them were Miguel and Ty. Miguel was about 2 inches taller than Ty, but Ty was the heavier of the two and mostly muscle. Jeremy told everyone to expect the pizzas at 7:30. Miguel and Ty said hello to everyone, and having been here a few times, walked right over to the workout area. They were both nice guys and tremendous athletes that worked for Jeremy’s company. What they did for him, I was not sure, but they spent much of their time in the field. Both were from Jeremy’s old Cyber Security Army unit and had joined him shortly after Jeremy formed the company. Mary came over, gave me a hug, and said thanks for having us. She was a very attractive woman maybe about five feet 6 or so with long blonde hair and blue eyes. Mary was fit and appeared capable of handling herself on the mats, but was never a participant. I think she came because she liked to watch her husband get all-macho. While she was standing there, I called Bill over to introduce them since she had not been here the last time Bill had camped out. “Nice to meet you” she said and headed over to hook up with the other women.

  While waiting for one or two others to show up, Jeremy came up to Bill and me and said, “Missed you at work this week.” He then quickly slipped in “so how is your secret project working out,” he said with a smile. He was very observant and proceeded to point out our new additions in our make shift lab. Lucky Bill and I had put away a lot of stuff or Jeremy would have had many other questions. “Well” I said, and hesitated for the right words, “our project has been very promising so far, but we will be down to the wire next week to see if we have a viable option.” He laughed at that and said, “I wish you both luck, however I won’t be too disappointed if it doesn’t work out since I really don’t want to lose you.” At that point, Donny, who I assumed was our last guest, interrupted us.

  I had met Donny and Jenny at a local boxing club, which also trained people for MMA. Unfortunately, the owner lost his lease and had to shut down, which is how we ended up at my place. I knew Donny and Jen from the gym, and we happened to be hanging at the gym door one night trying to figure out why we couldn’t get into the club when one of the employees came out and told us what happened. Donny was a 6 foot 1 skinny dude with gangly arms and legs. He looked like as if strong
wind could blow him over. His appearance was also very misleading. He was lightening quick, and an accomplished boxer. When he smelled blood, he went quickly in for the kill. I saw many of his opponents freeze since they never expected someone who looked like him to be so quick and lethal.

  Donny was a gregarious person and when he walked into a room, everyone knew he was there. Within seconds, he is yelling “hi” to everyone and everyone is yelling “hi” back. With fist bumps all around, we were all set to get the evening going. Everyone participating had signed a legal waiver that I had drawn up and house rules required that they wear headgear, mouthpieces, open gloves and a protective cup for the men at all times on the mat. I had extra gear if anyone forgot something, and had a good assortment of pads when working with a partner. The actual sparring session pairings work themselves out. Somehow or other people paired up and worked out an order for going on the mats as well as who would be the safety judge.