Dark Ray of Sunshine
By Kevin McGuinness
Prologue
“I can bring her back. I can bring them all back.”
Kieran Vaughn looked at the eight people assembled before him in the meeting room of the hospital. This day was important. It would set the tone going forward and determine whether they had even a chance of bringing back Serena and the others.
“For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Kieran. Six months ago, I lost my wife, Serena. Like all of you, I came to a grief counseling group to make sense of the loss. The loss of someone who was taken from me way too soon.”
The men and women in the room nodded. All of them had come to one grief group or another at the hospital. All with a conviction that there must have been some mistake. That their loved ones couldn’t be gone.
In all of the conversations in their individual groups, these men and women had marked time the same way in recent years. There was what happened before their loved ones had died and then there was what had happened after.
So, when this man had come around to their groups, pulled them aside afterwards and said he had a solution to ending their grief, they listened.
“We have something else in common. We are all people of science. Of technology. And this has left us ill-equipped to deal with the loss of our loved ones. Our lost ones. That which usually provides us with answers has given us no answers here.”
Kieran gestured to the man sitting at his right. “But that handicap is about to become our greatest advantage. My friend here, Joseph, not only shares in our collective grief but also has access to knowledge that can bring our lost ones back to us.”
Sensing the doubt that was beginning to form in the room, Kieran forged on, using all of his charisma to convince these people. “I had the same reaction as you. I said that I didn’t believe in magic or superstition. But that’s not what Joseph showed me. What he showed me was science. Technology that can breach the divide between life and death, not only allowing us to talk with our lost ones, but to bring them back to us, as whole and as vital as ever.”
Kieran was silent for a moment, letting these people absorb what he had just told them.
“I am not saying it will be an easy path. It will not. Much of the technology that makes this possible has been lost and finding it will be no small task. And there will be those who stand against us, saying that it is wrong to even think of doing this. That it upsets the natural order of things.”
Once again, Kieran paused. “So the question you have to ask yourselves is this. How badly do you want to see your lost ones again? And what are you willing to do to make that reunion a reality?”
The members of the group were glancing at one another and at Kieran.
“I cannot force any of you down this path. I cannot tell you what to do. I can only speak for myself.”
Kieran stood and one by one, looked each person in the eye as he spoke.
“I am willing to do whatever is necessary to have my dear Serena, and all of our lost ones, stand before us again.”
Kieran took a breath.
“Now, who is with me?”
Chapter 1: Forest of Patent Paperwork
Drew Parker looked at the pile of papers on the table and asked himself for the twentieth time this week why on earth he had thought being a patent researcher was a good idea.
Intellectual property analyst, he told himself. It sounded much more impressive on a resume than it actually was. In an age where so much of researching was digital and therefore paperless, Drew was always getting the assignments from the firm that required wading through musty piles of paper.
It was his gift. Or curse, depending on how you looked at it, he thought. Drew had a knack for being able to follow a trail through the forest of patent paperwork, seeing patterns that others missed and locating information of benefit to his employer, Dyal Toen, a growing force in the mobile communications industry. The attitude of the firm was to let others deal with inventing the next generation of smartphones and other devices. Their bailiwick was to focus on the infrastructure that supported them.
To that end, the firm had him down in Alexandria, Virginia, again. Their research and development people were working on a new generation of wireless technology, codenamed “Few Moving Parts,” which promised to transmit voice and data packets over greater distances with less signal degradation. It could be game changer, requiring fewer relay towers or hand-offs to satellites. Management anticipated that carriers would love it just for the fact that fewer towers meant lower costs for the co-location rental fees to use these towers.
The firm’s legal department had red-flagged some potential issues though. Apparently there were a few patents dealing with “wireless transmission of electrical energy” filed between 1891 and 1902. While those in R&D claimed these patents weren’t a direct correlation to their work, management wanted all i’s dotted and t’s crossed, considering the money at stake, which was literally billions.
Drew shook his head, cracked his knuckles and went back to work.
His research was entering its third week. During the first two, he’d been able to track down the paperwork for the first dozen patents on the list. He’d sent copies of all of it to legal back up in New York. His evaluation was that the technology was dissimilar enough from their FMP system that the firm didn’t have to worry about patent infringement. But it was up to the ladies and gentlemen in legal to make a final judgment.
The last three patents on the list were presenting the biggest challenge. They had been filed by none other than Nikola Tesla, famed inventor and eccentric. The first patent was from 1897 and had to do with the technology that would eventually become radio. Fortunately, court cases over the last few decades had examined this area in detail, so Drew was able to track down the relevant paperwork and determine it was not a threat to the FMP system. The next, an 1892 filing on the Tesla coil, also proved to be dissimilar to FMP.
Paperwork for the final item on the list, a system for transmitting electrical energy via the atmosphere, was proving the most elusive. Drew had tracked down patent applications by Tesla dated 1897 and 1898, as well as a refiling in 1902. But frustratingly, there were gaps in the paperwork, both on Tesla’s part and, surprisingly, on the part of the Patent Office.
The more Drew thought about it, the more he realized how unusual that was. Those in the Patent Office had always operated on the assumption that no matter how outlandish a patent seemed on its face, the technology contained therein could potentially come to fruition. And that this could be accomplished by multiple individuals or companies working simultaneously and in ignorance of each other. Therefore, the Patent Office made it a rule to get documentation on every portion of the invention process, just in case litigation was initiated later.
Inventors were usually good when it came to documenting the creation process of their inventions, due to their extreme narcissism, wanting the details for their memoirs, or just an obsessive-compulsive packrat mentality.
I’ve looked everywhere the papers should be, Drew thought. Now I need to start looking where they wouldn’t be.
To that end, he packed up his laptop and left the building in search of a Starbucks.
* * * * *
Drew sat in an overstuffed chair, sipping his fruit juice concoction. For all the time he spent at Starbucks, ironically, he did not like coffee.
His smartphone issued the ring tone that sounded like a soft but persistent chainsaw. Drew didn’t need to look at the display to know it was his boss up in New York.
He tapped the phone and answered. “Hello Jeremy.”
“Drew, any progress on the last patent? Legal is crawling up my ass about it every hour on the hour.” Jeremy had a way of painting a very foul picture with his words, especially when he was stressed.
“I’ve looked everywhere it should be and now I’m formulating a plan to find where it actually is.”
“Meaning you’re sitting at Starbucks right now, right?”
Drew smiled. “Jeremy, you know my process so well. Keep calm, I’ll have an idea soon of where to start looking. I’ll call you tomorrow morning and give you an update.”
From anybody else, this would’ve provoked a more colorful response from Jeremy but Drew’s track record with finding paperwork that had seemed to be lost forever earned him some leeway.
No sooner had he hung up with Jeremy, than his phone rang again, the ringtone a song about being happy when it rains.
“Vidy, hey. What’s up?”
A female voice with a touch of London in it said, “Does Busy Signal still have you stuck down around DC?” That was her sarcastic nickname for his employer.
“I’m almost done here. Just need to track down a few more papers.”
“So we’re still on for dinner tomorrow night?”
“If I don’t finish up by tomorrow, I’ll be out of here first thing the next morning.”
“I don’t mind if you miss dinner, but you’d better not miss what comes after dinner if you know what’s good for you.”
Drew laughed. “I’ll give you a call when I get back to the hotel.”
“Good enough. Bye.”
Drew smiled as he hung up, then pulled out a spiral notebook from his laptop case and examined his scribblings from earlier. Part of his gift for finding things was to make connections from seemingly disparate elements. Patterns that other people didn’t see.
First on his list of connections was the phrase “Transmission of electricity equals power systems?” followed by “Terrestrial power grid” and “AC – Tesla, DC – Edison”.
Letting his mind wander, Drew recalled there had been a heated rivalry between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison in developing the infrastructure for the electric power industry. During the late nineteenth century, Edison had pushed for his direct current system to become the standard for the fledgling industry. This despite shortcomings such as the intensity of current fading with distance. Tesla’s alternating current system soon won out as the standard precisely because it didn’t suffer from this drawback.
Drew also recalled reading that despite Edison’s portrayal by the popular media of the day as a grandfatherly figure toiling away in his workshop, fellow inventors of the time painted a far less flattering image of Edison.
If he remembered correctly, a book on Tesla published about a decade ago mentioned rumors that Edison had employed private detectives to obtain copies of his competitors’ design specifications and patent paperwork, including Tesla’s.
What if these rumors were true and Tesla was aware of them? Drew recalled that Tesla was renowned for planning ten steps ahead. What if he had anticipated Edison’s efforts to steal his patent paperwork and countered by hiding it somewhere?
But where?
Drew sat there, sipping his berry juice, when his mind suddenly made a connection that caused him to laugh out loud.
Given what a disaster direct current had been as a large-scale power system and how much money it had ultimately cost him and his backers, Edison would never have wanted to set eyes again on anything related to. Including the patent paperwork.
Drew pulled out his smartphone and speed-dialed his contact at the Patent Office, one part of his mind marveling at Tesla’s sense of humor. If Drew was right, Tesla had hidden his important papers in the very last place that Edison would ever think to look.
“Hello?” answered a woman with a bit of Georgia twang to her voice.
“Natalie, can I look at one more set of papers before you close for the day?”
“Anything for you, darlin’. What did you have in mind?” she asked with just a hint of subtext.
Tapping his pen against the notebook, Drew replied, “How about Thomas Edison’s patent application for a direct current power distribution system?”