The Brilliant Boy Billionaire - 78. The Way Forward

“You know, there’s a reason I’m no longer with Allied Semiconductor,” Gideon responded when I related a bit of what had happened in Michigan. Of course, I couldn’t tell them everything, but I told them enough for them to understand why I was as conflicted as I was. “I just wasn’t cut out for the corporate culture any more than you are, J.J.”

We were sitting in the living room in our apartment. Henry was by my side, and our now best friends were across from us. I’d spent the night pouring out my heart to my baby as I explained every detail of what had happened in Michigan. He was shocked by the fact that it had been a nudist retreat and equally shocked that not one of us had been black or female. When I got to the part about the political discussion, however, he wasn’t shocked. He was livid.

“You and I can’t work for a company like that,” he’d responded in anger. “Lindsey Graham? Are you serious?”

“It’s not just their support of Lindsey Graham for President, but that they’re intent on supporting Republican majorities in Congress,” I’d gone on to explain. “They’re going to target specific candidates. They see Amy Klobuchar as a mortal threat and plan to pull out all the stops to unseat her in the coming election.”

“Amy Klobuchar?” Henry had asked. “Why? She’s so…tame.”

“She’s actually pretty aggressive behind the scenes, and she’s the chair of the Judiciary subcommittee that deals with antitrust restrictions. She hasn’t exactly been subtle in calling for Big Tech to be broken up. She even wrote a book on it,” I’d related.

“Oh, I guess that makes sense, but I kinda like her,” Henry had replied. “She’s a fellow Midwesterner with Midwestern sensibilities. She’s a moderate, and America could use more moderates these days.” He’d been right about that. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had made a serious challenge to Chuck Schumer for his Senate seat during the last election, and had she won the primary, I thought the likely outcome would have been to hand the seat to the Republicans. Upstate New York was pretty conservative and would never vote for AOC. 80% of all Democrats viewed themselves as moderates, yet the progressives struck fear in the heart of every candidate. I wished I could say the same for moderates in the Republican party, but thanks to Trump, most moderates had left the party to become independents or left politics altogether. AOC was a force to be reckoned with, for sure, but why did she take a chance on handing a seat to the Republicans? Why give up the majority leadership in the Senate? The only logical answer was that she was blinded by her own ambition.

“Whatever you decide to do,” Max interjected, bringing me out of my reverie and back to the present, “you know Gideon and I will support you.”

“We appreciate it, guys,” I responded.

“We have enough to live off of for the rest of our lives,” Henry added. “We don’t need Applazon anymore. We could start our own company and maybe buy out our patents. I’m sure we could get unlimited venture capital, and anything we invented would be profitable.”

“I fear that’s just a pipe dream,” I countered. “We’d be trading one corporate entity for one of our own making and still be subject to the whims of our Wall Street investors. Henry and I have pretty much agreed that we can’t stay at Applazon, not with some of what happened during the retreat. I certainly can’t have anything to do with a company that would choose to support the likes of Lindsey Graham for President.”

“Lindsey Graham?” Gideon asked. “Are you serious?”

Laughing, I replied, “Those were Henry’s exact words.”

“You know, Gideon, I just assumed you still worked in the tech sector, but the two of you seem to be home most of the time,” Henry asked, piquing my curiosity as well. “What is it exactly that you guys do?”

Laughing, Gideon replied, “Well, I continued to work in solid-state physics and integrated-circuit design for a while, but I’d already started out with a major invention, and my boss resented that I was much richer than he’d ever be. He made it intolerable, so, believe it or not, I moved on to a position at Applazon in Cupertino, but I ran into much the same thing. My boss thought I was after his job, so we left Silicon Valley, and I tried a position in San Antonio, this time in management. Max had gotten his MBA at Stanford and tried his luck in corporate Silicon Valley and then in San Antonio during our time there. In case you didn’t know, Texas is hot and not all that accepting of gays. San Antonio is liberal up to a point, but there are enough rednecks that we never felt safe.”

“So, we made a decision,” Max continued. “We had more than enough money to live on comfortably the rest of our lives even if we lived in Manhattan. We really wanted to return to New York. We grew up here; New York was our home. Not only did we have enough to live on, but we were getting royalties on Gideon’s patents, and with the falling prices and widespread adoption of his technology, that would only accelerate until the patents expired after twenty years. The earliest ones already have and the last will expire in about a dozen years. By then we’ll have built up enough of an endowment to last indefinitely.”

“We certainly weren’t ready to retire, so we borrowed a page from the past, when the truly wealthy practiced philanthropy,” Gideon went on. “We set up a foundation to promote technology in classrooms that can’t afford it. I found I love teaching every bit as Max did when he tutored me. The foundation gives me the opportunity to go into the neediest classrooms throughout the city and introduce tech to kids whose only other exposure is from the smartphones the city gives their mothers. Few of them have held a tablet, let alone seen a laptop, and none have ever thought about what goes into coding. We provide laptops and a curriculum in basic tech. I then go into the classrooms to give the teachers hands-on training with their students. While I’m at it, I give the kids exposure to what a career in tech can look like.”

“That’s admirable,” I responded, “but Henry’s not quite seventeen, and my eighteenth birthday is this November. Aren’t we just a bit too young to retire? I’m all for philanthropy, but I’m still very much an inventor at heart. I can’t help but get ideas and could never be happy unless I could pursue them.”

“I’m the same way,” my boyfriend chimed in. “Fuck, I’m about to defend my dissertation. I should be thinking about starting my career, not ending it. J.J. and I are synergetic, bouncing ideas off of each other and contributing to each other’s designs. I hate to sound conceited or to exaggerate our importance, but the world really needs us right now. When it comes to climate change, we’re not out of the woods just yet. Not by a long shot.”

“But isn’t that the idea behind your Center for Environmental Studies and Energy on Governors Island?” Max asked. “You put a billion of your own money into it, as did Nithya Ramamurthy and Elon Musk. With two-billion-dollar donations from Barlow and Gates, if you can get the state to kick in some infrastructure improvements and get control of your patents, you’ll have the makings of a superb place to continue your work full time. You’re going to need an executive director, a chief technology officer, a science director and a financial director. I can’t think of better minds to fill those positions than you, Nithya, Henry and Jack.”

What Max was suggesting was intriguing for sure, but it was so unlikely. “Those positions will be filled by a national search conducted by the board of directors,” I pointed out, “and it’s unlikely Jeff Barlow would let any of us go without a non-compete clause. And as far as the patents are concerned, they’re a major source of revenue for Applazon. Why would Jeff give them away?”

“You said he would work out the terms of separation by the end of the year. He has a strong reason to divest in research to avoid antitrust action against the corporation. You can negotiate an arrangement giving Applazon rights of first refusal to develop the technology you invented while working there. You’d still earn royalties from each Applazon sale, and for Barlow, it would be a win-win scenario. He’d retain exclusive first access to what you invented but couldn’t be seen as monopolizing it since the period of exclusive access would be limited – typically to about five years. In the meantime, you’d work as a consultant for Applazon, bringing each of your current projects to completion and training your eventual replacements. That alone would provide a steady source of income for at least the next decade.

“As far as the patents themselves are concerned, you might want to buy them from Applazon, and that could cost you much, if not most, of your fortune, but owning them, subject to Applazon’s first-refusal rights, would free you to license the technology to other partners after the first-use period runs out. Undoubtedly, they’d generate enough revenue to fund you guys the rest of your days.”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “It’s a lot to think about.”

“What’s to think about?” Henry asked. “If we could negotiate favorable terms, and especially if we could bring Nithya and Jack and maybe Robin with us, wouldn’t those be our dream jobs? It’d be well worth using what’s left of our money to buy out our patents. Already they generate enough revenue to support us indefinitely, and that will only increase as the technology spreads. Let’s open a dialogue and see what’s possible.”

“Better yet, having control over the patents would ensure that those who can’t afford them won’t have to pay,” I pointed out. “That, in and of itself, would be a gift to the planet. Saving the world shouldn’t be contingent on a healthy profit margin. As it was with vaccinations during the pandemic, taking care of the developed nations first isn’t nearly enough.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Henry responded.

“You could do something similar to what we did,” Gideon suggested. “If you gift the patents to a charitable trust, you won’t owe taxes on the royalties, and you can dictate the terms for fair use by those who can’t afford to pay. The trust can then provide you with a stipend in perpetuity that provides for a comfortable, if not extravagant, lifestyle.”

“I can live with that,” I responded as Henry nodded his head in agreement. Then laughing, I added, “Shit, I can probably buy out my patents using my Applazon stock. I was planning to dump it anyway, and that way, I can save on paying capital gains. Besides which, once Justice starts taking a knife to Applazon, the stock is sure to tank. Our Applazon stock’ll never be worth more than it is right now.”

“Trust me, negotiating terms with Barlow will be the easy part. It’s negotiating with the state that will be tough. Take it from someone who’s been there,” Max observed.

“Do I detect an offer of assistance with that?” I asked Max.

“Of course, and we’ll even waive our usual consulting fees,” he replied.

<> <> <>

“Mr. Secretary, I want to thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

“Dr. Jeffries, the pleasure’s mine,” the young man responded as we shook hands. I was meeting with Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, in his office on New Jersey Avenue in Washington, D.C. “Congratulations on your upcoming wedding. It was difficult enough getting married in my thirties. It’s hard to imagine getting married in your teens.”

Smiling, I responded, “If that’s a subtle way of asking how the hell I know what I’m doing when I’m not even eighteen, let’s just say I’ve been through a lifetime’s worth of experiences already, and when you meet my soon-to-be husband, you’ll understand why he can be so certain at barely age seventeen. He’s a military brat, having been all over the world, and he has a much more worldly outlook than most American teens.”

“Yes, I read your interview with The Times and the spread in The New Yorker,” the secretary replied. “My life was simple by comparison even with the realization that I was gay. I can’t imagine going through half the stuff you went through.”

“The realization I was gay almost was incidental,” I responded. “When you’re suffering daily sexual abuse by the man you think is your father, realizing you like boys isn’t such a big deal. I read up on it and realized it had nothing to do with the abuse. It was no different with being left-handed, and I’d been dealing with that since I started learning to read and write when I was three. Believe me, being placed in high school when I was supposedly eleven, but actually ten, was much more traumatic.”

Shaking his head, the secretary replied, “I was a top student, but I can’t imagine what it was like to be that far ahead of my peers.”

“It has allowed me to do some amazing things and given me the ability to invent technologies that will hopefully save the planet. It has even given me the opportunity to meet with the Secretary of Transportation,” I said with a laugh.

“There is that,” the secretary agreed. “I understand you’ve met with Granholm.”

“Yes, we discussed the rollout of our wind turbines and our plans for carbon capture,” I replied.

“You’ve developed carbon-capture technology?” the secretary responded in obvious surprise.

“Yes, and we can even put the captured carbon to use,” I answered. “Converting CO₂ to an organic form is energy-intensive and expensive. Planting more trees is the obvious strategy, but that takes time. Our approach is, of course, a temporary fix, not a way to allow industry to continue the use of fossil fuels. Our initial thought was to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere by freezing it. We planned to dig huge trenches using strip-mining equipment and bury it, but one of our top engineers has developed a ceramic foam that traps CO₂ and that can be 3-D printed at a reasonable cost. It’s stronger than concrete yet weighs less than balsa wood and can sequester carbon for thousands of years.”

“How much building material would you need to generate to sequester all of the excess CO₂ in the atmosphere, and how much would that cost?” the secretary asked.

“The cost isn’t necessarily what’s relevant,” I replied. “What matters is the cost relative to that of conventional concrete and how long it would take to use it up at current rates of concrete use. If the goal is to remove all of the excess CO₂ from the atmosphere since the start of industrialization, that amounts to 300-billion metric tons of CO₂. Incorporated into ceramic foam with a density of 85.5 kilograms per cubic meter, of which 1.1 kilograms is CO₂, you’d need to produce 273 cubic kilometers of ceramic foam. At the current rate of concrete production, that’s 45-thousand years’ worth.”

“Good Lord, we can’t wait 45 thousand years to fix climate change,” the secretary exclaimed.

“No, we can’t,” I replied, “which is why I asked Dr. Ramamurthy to go back to the drawing board and come up with a way to sequester more carbon within the ceramic foam. I asked what would happen if she cooled the foam below the freezing point of CO₂, as we’d initially proposed, and she responded that when warmed to room temperature, the foam would probably explode. However, I had my fiancé run some simulations and our analysis suggested that if warmed slowly, the CO₂ would form a polymer as it warmed, with physical properties that were pretty hard to believe. So, I showed Dr. Ramamurthy the simulation data and asked her to try it, anyway. It turns out that the simulations were right. The result is a solid foam with the hardness of diamond, tensile strength an order of magnitude greater than that of steel, the ability to withstand temperatures of thousands of degrees, its weight is similar to that of magnesium, and it’s transparent.

“Not only is it an excellent substitute for concrete, but its properties make it outstanding for use as a substitute for nearly any structural materials in use today. We can use it to replace brick, steel, aluminum, fiberglass, carbon-fiber composites, most solid plastics, wood, glass and perhaps even things like asphalt and automotive tires when it’s embedded in a flexible matrix. By using a liquid nitrogen-cooled print head, it can even be 3-D printed. We can find enough uses for the material to sequester all of the excess atmospheric CO₂ in about three hundred years. After we’ve used all of it, presumably we’ll figure out how to recycle it, and we’ll develop the technology to obtain CO₂ from other sources.”

“That’s still a hell of a long time,” the secretary responded.

“Yes, but do we really need to remove all of the global excess CO₂? Perhaps removing half of it, in conjunction with the switch to renewable energy, would be sufficient,” I replied. “My fiancé is just getting started with the application of quantum computing to atmospheric modeling, but the preliminary results suggest that may well be the case. The question is, can we produce enough foam cheaply enough to remove enough atmospheric carbon to reverse climate change, and can we find a way to store it for future use as a building material? If so, can we recycle it, and if so, how will that affect use of the stored material over time?”

“With an up-front investment of about a billion dollars, I can build a factory powered by wind turbines that can churn out five cubic meters of ceramic foam per minute, or 300 per hour. That comes to 2.6 million cubic meters per year and 2.8 million tons of CO₂. At that rate, it would take sixty-thousand years. Build a thousand plants like it at a cost of a trillion dollars, and you can sequester half of all the post-industrial CO₂ in the world in just 60 years. That’s not only doable, but it’s pretty damn cheap, especially when compared to the cost of dealing with climate change. It’s also a sustainable rate in which up to fifty percent is used for building materials and the remainder is stored for future use.”

“Does that include the cost of the raw materials?” the secretary asked.

“No, the carbon comes from the atmosphere, and the energy comes from the wind or the sun, but the silicate comes from sand or sandstone, which has to be mined. Still, when you factor in the value of the building materials that results, the initial investment will pay for itself in under twenty years – or perhaps less if we embark on an accelerated infrastructure program to take advantage of the plentiful supply, which then wouldn’t have to be stored. You could go on a building spree and use the excess to rebuild the infrastructure and bring the entire planet up to first-world standards. You could use it to build a space elevator or two. The foam is one of the few materials capable of supporting its own weight to the height of geosynchronous orbit, and the costs saved in launching satellites and people into orbit would more than pay back the construction costs.”

“If we all divided the initial trillion among the G7 nations plus China proportionally to GDP, our cost would only be about $400 billion,” the secretary noted. “Not that it wouldn’t be a lot of money, but as a one-shot deal, it’s quite reasonable, and it would have an indirect stimulus effect in providing cheap building materials for infrastructure projects.” Then, after a pause, he asked, “Playing devil’s advocate, why bother completely eliminating the burning of fossil fuels if we have a way of mitigating its effect? Might we not need all that carbon for future building projects – in space perhaps?”

“We’ll run out of fossil fuels anyway, but renewables are considerably less expensive in the long run,” I answered. “The bottom line, however, is that the burning of fossil fuels is poisoning the environment and degrading the very ecosystem on which we all depend. I would hope we’ll figure out how to recycle the ceramic foam so that it can be reused. That, I think, is inevitable. Eventually, we might need to mine the moon or the asteroid belt for raw materials, and when it comes to carbon, there’s still a substantial fossilized supply in the ground that can be exploited in an environmentally responsible way. Besides which, carbon’s actually quite plentiful in space. There’s a virtually limitless supply in the atmosphere of the gas giants, for example.”

“That’s a good answer,” the secretary replied, “and with the introduction of your electric motor, we’ll no longer have transportation accounting for half the CO₂ emissions in the U.S. I presume that has something to do with why you’re meeting with me, so tell me how the Department of Transportation can help you with your mission?”

“I really appreciate all that the Biden Administration is doing to set up a network of fast-charging stations to accommodate battery-powered cars,” I responded. “That’s much less of an issue with the motors we’ve developed, which can easily go a thousand miles on a single charge.”

“I didn’t realize that,” the secretary said. “Are we going to need all those charging stations?”

“If you want people to have the freedom to take road trips wherever they want, then you’ll still want to have charging be as ubiquitous as possible, and you need to remember that it takes a bit longer to recharge an electric car than to refill a gas tank. On the other hand, you probably weren’t counting on having eighteen-wheelers that can go a thousand miles on a charge, but it can take over four hours to recharge an eighteen-wheeler. You’ll still need a fair number of truck stops for the nation’s network of trucks to recharge, and you’ll need those charging stations soon.

“I’ve been working with GM and Culver to build plants to manufacture our motors as quickly as possible, but retooling assembly lines to manufacture entirely new vehicles is going to take time. The fact that I can fit an electric motor capable of storing its own power within the wheel of any tire, however, means that we can retrofit virtually any gas- or diesel-powered vehicle with electric power. Given the economy of scale and the profound reduction in energy costs, I expect the trucking industry to switch to electric power as quickly as Culver can make the conversion kits. We’ve barely inked the deal with Culver, and already we’re getting inquiries from all over the world.

“However, even if we make conversion kits for the most popular cars, most people won’t bother because of the cost. It’s not just a matter of replacing the wheels, but the brakes, the climate-control system, the power steering, the generator and the onboard computer; all have to be replaced. We’re looking into designing generic, under-the-hood modules with adapter kits for each make and model as a way to keep the cost reasonable. I don’t need to tell you that the average car on the road today is thirteen years old. Replacing the auto fleet with electric vehicles by attrition would likely take twenty years or more. The government can change all that by providing a subsidy for electric retrofits. That by itself would be a game-changer.”

“Yes, it would,” the secretary agreed. “I doubt we’d get bipartisan support for an outright subsidy program, but we could probably issue an executive order that would allow retrofits to qualify for the existing subsidies we already provide for new electric vehicles. Get me the info and I’ll make it a high priority to discuss it with the President.”

“You can expect to have the details by the end of next week,” I replied before pivoting to the net topic. “As you know, Jeff Barlow has bought Boeing, and we’ve developed a class of battery-powered jet aircraft that can cruise at supersonic speeds without generating a sonic boom. They can take off and land vertically, too, eliminating the need for long runways. The technology is so much more efficient than conventional-jet technology that he’s cancelling existing orders for airplanes on which construction hasn’t been started, and he’s offering a sizable discount on new planes, once they’re available. The shape is radically different though – more like the shape of a winged, flat-bottomed blimp, or perhaps an elongated stingray – with an underlying ceramic fuselage that will have to be 3-D printed, so we’re going to need to build completely new assembly lines to produce them, and they’ll need to be thoroughly tested. We’re probably a good three years away from delivering the first models.

“In the meantime, I’ve designed a series of retrofits that can be adapted to any existing airplane. They aren’t capable of supersonic speeds, and they aren’t nearly as efficient, but they’ll help to bridge the gap until existing planes are taken out of service and replaced. We’d like the FAA to fast-track the retrofits as a group once we demonstrate that they perform similarly to conventional jets.”

“You know I’m going to have to leave that to the leadership at the FAA,” the secretary replied. “The first time there’s a crash, your new design will come under fire. We need to be sure we investigate it the right way, so the whole fleet doesn’t end up being grounded. I’m sure you can see the wisdom in that.”

“Which is exactly what I told Jeff when he asked about bypassing FAA review entirely,” I added.

“Amazing how corporate minds work,” the secretary replied as he shook his head.

“The main reason I’m here has to do with high-speed rail,” I announced. “I have a design on the drawing boards for a supersonic, electrically powered train using magnetic levitation and propulsion. In addition to the improved speed and efficiency, the infrastructure can be built far more cheaply than with conventional train tracks. For example, rather than condemning properties along the rights of way, I can use a mid-rail design not unlike that in Star Wars: Solo, if your familiar with that movie, but with a much wider, toroidal, train-car design to maximize speed and minimize drag. I can build it a hundred feet or more off the ground such that it passes silently over entire neighborhoods. The rails would be made from super­conducting ceramics and supported by ceramic-foam columns. I can build it over existing rail rights of way where the path is sufficiently straight for supersonic travel. We’ll need to enlarge or replace all the tunnels and build new ones in some places, though, because of the larger rail-car design. What I’m asking for is a streamlined process to allow us to build over people’s heads without going through an endless review process.”

“That probably won’t fly, no pun intended,” the secretary responded.

“Which is what I told Jeff,” I replied, “but I had to ask. We’re planning to build a demonstration route directly over the I-5 corridor between Portland and Sacramento. If it proves to be successful, as we hope it will, we’ll be getting in touch with your office again.”

“Something tells me there will be someone else in this office by then,” the secretary responded.

“Perhaps I’ll see you in the White House by then.”

“Much as I might like that,” the secretary chuckled, “I think it would be pretty sad if it takes that long to build your supersonic train.” Then shifting in his chair, he said, “Rumor has it that you’re going to be leaving Applazon.”

Stunned, I responded, “Wow, it’s amazing that no matter how tightly we try to control information, news always leaks out. I’m still trying to work out the details, but I’ll be leaving Applazon at the end of the year, just after the wedding. I’m hoping to become the executive director of the Center for Environmental and Energy Studies on Governors Island.”

“There wouldn’t be anyone more qualified for the job,” the secretary observed. “Could I ask if there’s a reason for leaving Applazon, or is it personal?”

“I can’t go into details without violating the terms of the separation agreement,” I replied.

“Obviously, someone violated the terms of their employment or there wouldn’t be nudes of your retreat all over the internet.”

Blushing deeply, I responded, “I should have figured you saw them.”

“Not personally, but I heard about them. Everyone has.”

Nodding my head, I replied, “I didn’t mean to imply that you saw them yourself,” and then we both laughed. “Jeff should have known that there was no way to have kept the retreat secure short of bringing in our own staff. There was just too much money in play, and it was worth the risk of getting caught and maybe going to prison. As small as they are, it isn’t hard to sneak in a few hidden cameras.

“But getting back to why I’m leaving Applazon, let’s just say there was a difference of opinion. The thought of someone like Lindsey Graham in the White House is enough to make me puke.”

“He wouldn’t be my first choice by a long shot,” the secretary agreed, “but I’m pretty confident the Democrats will hold the White House.”

“As am I,” I replied. “I fear that efforts to change the leadership in Congress may be more successful, particularly when it comes to unseating key players like Amy Klobuchar.”

“Applazon’s going to try to defeat Amy?” the secretary asked in obvious surprise.

“I didn’t say that,” I responded.

“That would be a shame,” the secretary replied. “Amy’s one of the finest people I know.”

“At least, I won’t have to sign on to a strategy that supports Applazon’s politics now.” I chimed in.

“Whatever you do, don’t burn your bridges with Barlow. You never know when you might need him in the future.”

Laughing, I replied, “Part of the price for being able to buy out our patents is that Henry and I are obligated to work for him as consultants for the next ten years. We’re still in charge of the factory in Cuba. Barlow needs us as much as we need him.”

“That’s true more than you know, Dr. Jeffries.”

“I just don’t understand why Jeff made me a CEO in the first place. I was far more useful to Applazon as a senior engineer. Why put me in a position where I was doomed to fail?”

“Actually, you can place the blame for that on the Biden administration,” the secretary explained, much to my shock. “A lot of things happened behind the scenes when you were in captivity, and you ended up being a political pawn in ways you could have never imagined.”

“I always wondered why the press kept my disappearance under wraps.”

“As I’m sure you already know, it was common practice in the old Soviet days for officials to simply disappear. We knew from the start that you were taken in a well-orchestrated Russian operation – we had the surveillance video of the whole thing – but if your kidnapping had become known, we had reason to fear you’d never have been seen again. We’d hoped for a quick, quiet resolution, but the Russians wanted nothing less than complete NATO withdrawal from the former Warsaw Pact —”

“What the fuck,” I whispered under my breath.

“Needless to say, that was never going to happen,” the secretary continued. “Putin has been increasingly brazen of late, but short of the use of third-party hackers, nothing so overt within our borders.”

“My captors were Chechen,” I interjected.

“Interesting… We didn’t know that, but it certainly fits Putin’s style. If things had gone south, he could’ve denied any involvement in the whole thing.”

”So my kidnapping had nothing to do with stealing the technology!” I realized in surprise.

“Let’s just say that the Russians came to appreciate the future potential of the technology, more than even we did. You were so young – you still are – and you were barely on our radar. Yes, they wanted access to the technology, but they were much quicker to recognize your true worth and they didn’t hesitate to leverage it. However, even they underestimated you. I’m sure your simple request for access to Applazon Plus seemed innocent enough.

“When Barlow notified us that someone in Havana had hacked into a test site for the Applazon Plus streaming service, and that there was only one person unaccounted for who knew of the back door that was used, it presented us with an unexpected opportunity to negotiate directly with the Cuban regime. You can’t imagine how much your little stunt threw a grenade into Cuba’s relations with Russia. You can be sure that heads in Moscow rolled as a result of it.

“Your position as CEO was part of an elaborate scheme that allowed Russia a way to exit Cuba without losing face. To have been seen as losing Cuba at the hands of a mere teenager would’ve been unacceptable. The end result was that, in return for massive investment by Applazon in Cuba, the Cubans kicked Russia out of their country. Our government in return gave tacit recognition to the legitimacy of the current regime, but tempered by a truly free press. Everything else was window dressing.”

“Wow!” I exclaimed, “I’d no idea.”

“Nor will history,” the secretary added. “Have a safe trip back to New York, Dr. Jeffries,” he relayed as we stood and shook hands.

“Thanks very much for your time, Mr. Secretary,” I replied before leaving his office.