Off The Grid (2 page)

Chapter 2

A large female security guard named Frankie waved Luke through the metal detectors at MassEnergy after directing him to place his briefcase on a conveyer belt to be scanned. A few dozen people stood in line behind him in the main lobby of Building 1. She leafed through his bag mindlessly.

“Looking for anything in particular?” Luke asked.

“Sweetie, there’s nothing we’re not looking for,” she said. “With all you newbie’s crawling around in here today, I’m never going to get a break.”

A sign posted at the security desk listed prohibited materials. No phones, laptops, tablets, pocket computers, flash drives, scanners, cameras or recordable discs were allowed inside. Behind the desk was a room with a set of shelves full of devices from people who obviously didn’t read the sign first.

Luke flashed her a knowing smile, noting that he understood her pain if only for the 35 seconds he was expected to interact with her.

“I’m not a newbie yet, but I hope to be soon.”

She looked up from the bag and gave him a quick once-over and then went back to her tasks and didn’t look up again.

Luke and 40 or so others were ushered into a small auditorium. He took a seat in the back. A man Luke recognized from Human Resources mounted the stage.

“Thank you all for coming for your third interview. I know this isn’t the quickest process, but we think it works. You’re going to be divided into groups of eight and will be talking to a member of our executive team one at a time. You’ll all get the same set of questions and will be evaluated on your previous skill tests and how you answer today’s inquiries. Any questions? No? Good.”

He then called out the names of the first group.

To Luke’s left was a dark-skinned man, who looked to be of Middle Eastern descent. He pulled out a set of headphones and fumbled with a device in his jacket and started to tap a rhythm on the chair in front of him. The tapping became more animated as the man waved both arms above and around his head banging on the seats around him. The commotion started to draw the attention of others in the room who turned around and stared at the man, who had his eyes closed. He waved his arms as if he was playing a set of air drums – symbols and all. He was completely oblivious to those around him.

Quickly all eyes went to Luke, who was sitting directly next to him. The collective stares asked – are you going to do something about that? Again, not wanting to call attention to
himself, Luke placed a hand on the man’s arm to get his attention and possibly calm him down. The movement, which stopped the impromptu air-drum show, caused the man to violently twitch in his chair and flail his arms as if being awoken from a bad dream.

Luke tapped his ears indicating the man’s headphones.

“Oh, yeah,” the man said without a breath, ”Sorry about that. I tend to do that when I’m bored or nervous or bored and antsy and nervous.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Once the show in the back row was over, those remaining in the room went back to studying their papers or staring at the back of the head of the person in front of them.

“How’d you get those in here, anyway,” Luke asked, pointing to the music player the man had pulled out of his jacket. “Security seems pretty tight around here.”

“No secret. Did that big security guard frisk you too?”

Luke nodded.

“No sneaking anything past her,” the man said. “Let’s just say that according to her I’m probably the only deaf engineer in the room today. Every security system has its flaws. Most of the time, it’s the humans that run them. I think she likes me anyway.”

“I got the same feeling.”

“Name’s Amir,” he stuck out his hand. Luke grasped it and introduced himself.

“Must have been a good song,” Luke said.

“The what? Yeah it was. Helps keep me calm.”

The man’s leg began bouncing up and down, vibrating the row of seats. Droplets of sweat were forming on his forehead and he quickly wiped it away with his shirtsleeve.

“Maybe you should turn it back on. You seem pretty nervous.”

“Nah, I’m not nervous. I’ve got a job. Don’t need another job. Two jobs? Man, that’s rough. One job will be just fine. Well maybe I am. Nervous, I mean.” 

“What’s your specialty? I like to size up my competition.”

“Mechanical engineering. Jet engine fabrication mostly. Working aerospace now. High Earth atmosphere flights.”

This guy needs to lay off the caffeine, Luke thought. But his particular set of skills might come in handy for a team of engineers when social skills weren’t a requirement. In fact most of the candidates he’d spoken to over the past several weeks had a wide range of skills very different from his own.

The HR rep was back, calling for more interviews, “Luke Kincaid, Elizabeth
Caton, Amir Ghorbani. . . “

Suddenly questioning his own abilities, Luke stood, brushed the wrinkles out of his suit pants and followed the group down the hall.

***

James Beckman,
MassEnergy’s VP of Development was a pointy-headed bald man who carried a spare tire around his middle, which flopped over his belt. His secondhand tie rested comfortably on his massive mid-section. He leaned on the front of his desk, nearly toppling over a potted plant on its corner. He rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt, opened a blue file folder and began to read.

One of his office walls was completely covered, floor to ceiling, in beige filing cabinets. Several lower drawers remained open, revealing densely packed paper files with colored tabs. The mass of cabinets seemed out of place for a large corporation on the forefront of the digital world.

Luke sat in a small chair in front of Beckman’s desk, just feet from the man.

“You’ve got quite the resume, young man,” Beckman said, still reading from the file. “First Team All-Pac 12 in soccer. You run marathons as a hobby. Of course this isn’t an athletic club, so those aren’t very practical here. Stanford grad with honors, commendations from several professors.
Wireless Network Technician at StuTech. How long were you there?”

“Five years. I took a position there right after my college graduation. I worked on residential network design.”

“I see. And you were fired?”

Luke shifted uncomfortably in his chair. While he knew this question would come up – as it had during his previous two interviews, he had yet to come up with a satisfactory answer for why he left one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world to take a job at a tiny start-up in California the previous year. Nothing ever seemed to satisfy his questioners, but he needed his cover story to be clean.

“No. I simply didn’t find the work challenging any longer. It was time for a change,” Luke said confidently.

Beckman didn’t look up from the file.

“And you’ve been with Millennium Optics in California for just 11 months now. I suspect you’ve found this work beneath you as well?”

“No sir, its actually very interesting work, but our VC funding is nearly up and I’d like to find something with a bit longer time horizon.”

“This company was launched with venture capital dollars as well. Have you no faith in your leadership?”

Luke flashed back to his prep materials. Saying anything disparaging about your current employer was a big red flag for potential employers. Beckman was obviously baiting him.

“Actually, I’m hopeful that Millennium Optics’ new system design software will hit the market by next fall, as we’ve announced publically, but I expect by then we’ll be competing with large firms, possibly even this one, for market share.”

“So, you’re bored easily and like to job hop. Tell me, why is
MassEnergy interesting to you - at least this week?”

Luke knew
MassEnergy was founded just six years prior and had yet to produce or sell anything of value, but rumors were the company was on the verge of a game-changing wireless breakthrough, thus the hiring spree.

“I think there is great potential in offering products to fill the gaps created by the current state of our electric delivery web. As you know, never before has one company been given such monopolistic powers over the transmission of energy.
StuTech shouldn’t be the only game in town. Tailoring operating services that can enhance electric reliability, such as MassEnergy’s Neighborhood Repeater concept goes a long way to real competition with StuTech.”   

“And you think that’s what you’ll be doing here? Taking on
StuTech?”

“I believe so, yes.”

Beckman scrawled something on a form and handed it to Luke.

“Take that to HR. If you want in, you start tomorrow. Welcome to
MassEnergy.”

Chapter 3

11 months earlier

Seattle, Washington

Warren Evans’ estate sat on the misty waters of Washington’s Puget Sound. Another recipient of the nation’s technological migration west was the city of Seattle and the surrounding area, which had nearly doubled in population in the last 20 years. The region was not new to billionaires in residence, but with an estimated net worth of more than $7 billion and sole control of StuTech, one of the most powerful companies in the world, Evans was the big dog by anyone’s measurement.

The compound was surrounded by a private nine-hole golf course, a Japanese garden, amphitheater for holding charity events and all forms of athletic courts. The main house was located about a half-mile from the public access road that was guarded night and day by a private security firm. The 13-bedroom, 15-bath home had just one permanent resident, 70-year-old Warren Evans, who padded around the marble-floored hallways in slippers and a bathrobe. He only used his cane on the bad days.

Evans had always been an inventor. As a professor at Cornell University, he would go weeks without attending his own scheduled lectures while he was in the middle of some side project. His passion for science and experimentation led him to develop the world’s first efficient wireless electricity-delivery system.

The concept of wireless transmission was not a recent discovery. In the early days Evans used to compare wireless to a simple magnetic field. He said if a small building is wired for electricity, but not properly grounded, the electricity can jump – wirelessly – to a nearby chain-link fence, causing a slight shock or burn to anyone who touches the fence. It was a rather slimmed-down explanation.

Evans had solved the key problem with wireless transmission – efficiency. In the early 1900s Nikola Tesla tested wireless transmission, illuminating a bulb miles away, but the amount of power needed to send a signal was absurd. Simply throwing waves of electricity in the air, like a broadcast radio tower, didn’t do enough to power anything. Tesla’s experiments were a waste. Evans experimented with thousands of combinations of elements and minerals that would effectively conduct electricity over greater and greater distances. An avid traveler and adventurer – in his hay day at least – Evans would collect mineral and plant samples from exotic locations around the globe. His collections became the basis for his wireless research.

His genius and his wealth came from self-financing his research, thus owning the process, scope and proprietary nature of its inner-workings. So when it came time to market his wireless devices to the world, he became ridiculously wealthy. The device that came to represent wireless transmission he called a stub – a 24-inch cylinder, with a narrow shaft that sat atop a building to receive electricity from large towers nearby. Evans named his company
StuTech after its quintessential component, the stub. His placement of 250-foot StuTech towers around the country allowed electricity to flow efficiently to homes and businesses with stubs.

On the flat screen tablet at the granite slab table of his kitchen, Evans swiped his finger through the pages of the financial publications he so valued. He remembered the days when his fingers would turn black from holding and folding his daily paper. Printed pages - resource hogs he called them. The energy required to make ink, paper, print plates and then deliver a product that only one person would use before discarding, was an outrage. Of course, if he could benefit from selling energy for the process, then maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

The markets were up in North America and Asia this morning. What a great way to start the day.

A member of his kitchen staff delivered a plate of egg whites and toast to the table. She set a small cup of espresso next to the plate and left the room as quietly as she’d entered. He quickly drank the coffee, savoring the caffeine kick, one of his few vices.

Evans rarely left his estate. He preferred the solitude that it afforded him. He rarely saw anyone he’d prefer not to. Yet he held court every weekday in his oversized kitchen with select members of StuTech’s leadership. Most of them were ungrateful idiots who didn’t know their thumbs from a hole in the ground. Yet, the alternatives weren’t much better – and yes – he’d looked. 

No sooner than he’d given up on his bland meal and downed his second cup of espresso, did his first guest arrive. Steve Lunsford was a hulking mass of a man with a protruding brow and perpetual scowl. His thinning and speckled gray hair was crisply parted to the side. An unfortunate amount of white spittle residue formed at the corners of his mouth as he spoke.

Lunsford was StuTech’s Security Chief and had the unique distinction of being the only member of its senior leadership to not hold the title of president or vice president. Evans claimed that he chose to keep his friend’s title understated, so as not to show favoritism. Lunsford for his part never asked for any further recognition. His actions spoke for themselves, though he often encountered resistance among his peers due to his informal, albeit elevated status.

“What’s the word from the front?” Evans asked.

Lunsford touched a small square object, roughly the size of a matchbook, to the sensor on Evan’s touch screen, syncing the day’s security reports to the device.

“Nothing significant to report in the last week,” Lunsford said. “We’re watching an archeological dig in France conducted by the University of Munich, but so far its pretty quiet.”

“What are they looking for?”

“It’s an expedition uncovering artifacts from the First World War. The site was a camp for the German Army for some period of time. The depth isn’t a concern. Surface work, but it’s along the same longitude parallels we’re watching.”

“Might it be in our interests to persuade the university to search elsewhere?”

“I could have a team in place by the weekend. Make it look like vandals. Scare them off.”

Evans grimaced at the suggestion.

“That’s not exactly what I meant. These are academics. Sending in your goons to rough them up may halt the expedition for a short while, but they would just resume work with added security.”

“So, what do you have in mind?”

“Let’s not forget about the power of financial enticement.”

“Pay them off?”

Evans wondered about his old friend’s capacity to think beyond violence and bribes. The men had known each other since Vietnam when Lunsford commanded their platoon. They’d lived through the most deplorable conditions together and come out strong men, but even stronger friends.

“I’m thinking a sizable donation to the university to start another dig elsewhere immediately, might be enough to keep them occupied for significant length of time. Let’s say $10 million.”

“They would just start up again at a later date.”

“But in the meantime we ensure that their dig posed no threat to us.”

“That works,” Lunsford said. “Consider it done.”

“What can you tell me about Millennium Optics?” Evans asked.

Millennium Optics was the shell company Lunsford oversaw, but had no official connection to
StuTech. The independent company worked on “energy related issues,” according to tax records. Publically the company was a think tank that employed academics and bright young engineers. Its products were always in development, but never released.

“We’re fully staffed and we’ve slowly let it slip that our VC funding is drying up.”

“That’s good to hear. I need you to make room for one more.”

“Who?”

“Luke Kincaid.”

Lunsford looked at his friend thoughtfully, “You sure? Rachel’s not going to be happy.”

“It’s not really up to her, now is it?”

***

Rachel Evans wore only an oversize sweatshirt that extended to just above her trim and tanned thighs. She paced in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of her penthouse condo overlooking Lake Washington in Bellevue. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Luke marveled at how effortless his fiancée’s beauty was even when she was rather upset with him.

“Of course you told him no,” she said. “You’re not a spy. You’re an engineer. I’ve never heard of Double-O-Engineer, with a license to chart and graph. The nerve of that man for even asking.”

“You make it sound like you don’t think I could do it,” Luke said.

“Yes, you could do it, I’m sure you would be great, I guess, but why would you? You have a perfectly nice career going right here. You’re talented - everyone knows that. You’d be throwing it all away.”

Earlier in the week Steve Lunsford had made an appointment to meet with Luke. Being a Saturday, Luke knew it was unusual, but you don’t turn down a private meeting with one of the power players at the company, no matter the time or place.

The gig was simple. Get a job at
MassEnergy and report anything interesting back to Lunsford. Rumor had it that MassEnergy was working a project to boost the distance of wireless transmission signals. This technology was called a Neighborhood Repeater. If it existed, it was a direct threat to StuTech’s future, Lunsford had told him. StuTech had a strict monopoly in the field that had yet to be challenged by anyone - yet.

“Doing this isn’t throwing away anything,” Luke told Rachel. “This is a huge opportunity to finally make a name for myself. I’ve been here five years and what have I accomplished that’s significant? Nothing. I’ve submitted papers to
StuTech’s Advanced Analytics team every year and gotten nowhere.”

“You just expect that you’ll be welcomed back with open arms?” Rachel asked. “I’ve got some pull, but not that much.”

And that was the heart of it. As the lone daughter of Warren Evans, Rachel didn’t have to work – ever. But instead of sitting on her trust fund and living the life of a debutante, she earned Advanced Accounting and Finance degrees from New York University. Post college, she was in high demand, but only from companies that wanted to be in her father’s good graces. Instead of taking insincere offers, she returned home. She didn’t trade on her name and demand a high-ranking position at StuTech as some expected she might. She accepted a position that was fitting for her abilities and rose quickly through the ranks.

Despite her desire to be just another
StuTech employee, the simple fact remained that she wasn’t just any other employee. Her father founded and still controlled the direction of the company. Telling Rachel no, meant telling her father no, and nobody wanted to do that.

She and Luke had been a couple for three and half years. He moved into her place six months earlier after they got engaged. They loved each other, there was no question about that, but Luke also didn’t want to be her sidekick for the rest of his life. The money Lunsford offered when the job was complete was insane – ten times what he made in a year. It didn’t come close to what Rachel had in her bank account, but it provided some peace of mind.

The money was security that Luke hadn’t had in some time. All throughout her life, Rachel was accustomed to being served meals by waiters in black ties. Luke was more familiar with holding the silver tray. One of his many making-ends-meet jobs at Stanford was as a server for a catering company. The tips were good and the hours allowed him to hold other jobs at the same time. The downside came when the star soccer player at the university had to serve tapas to his wealthy friends and their families. It’s tough to go back to a level playing field after the party ended.

“I need to do this for me. It’s a chance I can’t pass up,” he said.

StuTech would finally trust him after this, he thought. He could finally learn its secrets and learn how to dismantle them, something he’d failed to do over the last five years.

“It’s one year tops,” he said. “After that, I’ll be right back here with you with a nice fat raise.”

Rachel knew that whether Luke admitted it or not, he was forcefully claiming his independence from her and she understood why. Growing up a rich girl had its benefits, but it was also lonely. Private schools housed other rich kids who had similar problems that only other kids of significant means understood.

Her mother was a 21-year-old secretary at a real estate firm when she met her father, who was 20 years her senior. A fierce love affair ensued – ending Warren Evans’ first marriage and resulting in a little bundle of joy named Rachel. Her mother died of cancer when Rachel was just 10 years old and right about the time her father became rich. She was raised by the estate’s staff and rarely saw her father. When it came time for college, she bolted for the other side of the country.

“And besides,” Luke said. “Portland is only a few hours away.”

“Assuming they hire you.”

“Have you no faith in me at all?” Luke asked.

“I do,” she said. “I’m just curious as to why someone would leave
StuTech for MassEnergy. Seems like a step in the wrong direction. Wouldn’t they see through that?”

“Turns out I’m about to receive an offer from Millennium Optics that’s just too good to refuse,” he said. “California sun. Sandy beaches.
Maybe a little surfing. Perfect reason to take a step backward if you ask me.”

“So you’ve already made your mind up then.”