Johan Birch

Chels reached under the table and pulled two levers to lock the table jack into place. "Locked. Beginning tests."

Hillary came over to me. "That panel is so light. Are you sure it won't blow away?"

"We haven't lost one yet," I shrugged.

"Hmm." Hillary went back to join her assistant. They fiddled with their equipment, even adjusting the angles of the panel a few times. They got more excited as the minutes passed.

Hillary finally got up and approached me. "Mister Birch, it seems you have been fibbing to me. That panel is producing a steady four hundred watts of electricity, above what you told me."

"Well, the sun's a bit more finnicky in Germany," I countered. "Are you peaking it out or running nominal?"

"We're peaking it," Hillary admitted. "I predict nominal at three-fifty, over the period of the day."

I smiled. "Good enough for you?"

"You've never tested them anywhere else?"

"No."

"Is there any way I can test a production panel?"

Greedy. "All the panels I have with me are prototypes," I admitted.

"How much for it all?" Hillary asked.

"What?"

"How much for it all? Your research, patents, prototypes, etching tables?"

I called my assistant Nora and told her to bring me the binder for the solar project. Five minutes later, she strolled into the testing lab. "Here you go, sir."

"Thank you, Nora," I said. Nora beamed at me, she always beamed when our eyes met. I paged through the binder to the final R&D page and handed it to Hillary.

"You're shitting me. One hundred seventy million dollars?"

"And some change," I added. It had been very hard to come up with the technological equivalent to the metal-blackening spell. I couldn't perform the spell myself, and even if I could, I didn't have the tools to convert it to technology. Artemis and Gemma had those tools, but I didn't want to reach out to him because it might put his life in danger.

After a months' worth of failures, Petra tried to contact Atremis. That is when I found out that his lab had been attacked and his wife, Helena, killed. Artemis had vanished, but Gemma was still in Los Angeles.

Gemma had been hesitant at first, only allowing Petra and Aysun to fold into her lab after Grace was present. I missed that, the ability to cross hundreds or even thousands of kilometers with a thought. Gemma, given Grace's assurances that Birch RDaP was now not evil, turned over the equipment we needed. I wanted to detect and replicate the energy wave we needed to convert the three-oh-four stainless to the nine-nine-nine stainless we needed.

When we finally succeeded, Petra and I immediately set about to securing that technology. We had my company make a system with a physical and biometric lock. This system was so secure that if someone who was not in the memory tried to initialize it three times, the machine would immediately self-destruct. There was also a physical pass-key that locked each etcher, a second layer of authentication. If the key was pulled and not reinserted within five minutes, the machine would self-destruct. We weren't taking any chances. That was what the high cost was from, that research. Etching the solar cells was easy compared to that.

"That's more than I can afford," Hillary admitted. "And you probably wouldn't just hand over that technology anyway."

I shook my head. "No, I'm sorry. I'll be more than happy to deliver five percent of our production once we get to full capacity."

"Aren't you afraid I'll reverse-engineer it?" Hillary asked. "I'm pretty good at that."

"No, Hillary. I'm not," I said.

"Then why are you using my land?" Hillary asked. "If you can scale your production like you say, you could easily wipe me out."

"I can guarantee you that we won't, Hillary. There is more than enough demand for us both. I won't be selling too many panels anyway, I have other projects that will require that output."

"I don't understand," Hillary shook her head.

"Let's go take a walk," I smiled.

We went further out into the desert, Hillary still confused.

"Hillary, who's your biggest competitor?"

"Probably AgolSol. They dump a lot of cells on the market for cheap, but mine are better by a kilometer."

"Think bigger," I prodded.

"Hopefully not you."

"How about...Bingham Hydro?" I offered. That was the company tied into the four hydroelectric plants within five hundred kilometers of us.

"You're fucking kidding, right?" Hillary laughed. "They've got a hundred gigawatts pumping into SoCal. I can't compete with that!"

"That's the idea. They don't bother you because they don't think you are a threat," I explained. "That's why I want to hide out here."

"Okay. How would you threaten them?"

"I'm not planning on that. My company is developing solar for another use," I replied. "But I want to keep my solar company off the radar of the legacy power companies."

"What other use?"

"What do you see out here, Hillary?" I waved my arm around, the arc including the sky.

"Sand, dirt, sky," she replied. "Not much else."

"Exactly. We are experimenting with so many things," I said. "But we need a quiet place to manufacture our cells."

"You know, I didn't even think of that," Hillary admitted. "Can you let me in anything else?"

I sighed. "You know those scientists to the west? I own that company. We're going to be switching over to my new cells as soon as I can get mass-production started. No offense, but we need higher capacity with a lower footprint."

"I'm not upset," Hillary shrugged. "They were good customers. Secretive and somewhat loony with their weird specifications, but they paid their bill. What was with the domes?"

"Closed-loop system. We're looking at how well a system can be self-contained...for scientific reasons."

The light came in her eyes. "Outer space, colonies. Another good reason for secrecy. I understand now."

She was smart, I had to give her that. "Well, we should get to Vegas to iron out our agreement. Where's your attorney's office?"

My driver, Erica, delivered us to a delightful restaurant at eleven hours plus thirty. I enjoyed VIP treatment pretty much anywhere as Johan, one of the few things that I was glad I didn't have to give up. Hillary was impressed at the service, saying that she didn't rate VIP status anywhere. I told her that was sometimes a good thing, and she agreed.

***

When we were on our way again, Nora told me that we had been watched in the restaurant. She couldn't tell what their intentions were, only saying that they were dressed like 'family men.' When I questioned her further, she answered that they had been paying more attention to Hillary than to me.

Great.

Erica took a few extra minutes to clear our tail, and we arrived at the offices the same time as Arthur and his team. Hillary's attorney seemed a bit overwhelmed when a full squad of lawyers entered the conference room, so I had Arthur dismiss the rest of his team so that it would be just the four of us.

I gave the details of the agreement between me and Hillary, and there wasn't any haggling about the prices and so on. Hillary's attorney did have a problem with including full autonomy in the contract. That basically meant that the land was essentially Mine for the next twenty years, and I could do pretty much anything I wanted.

Hillary didn't think that sinister. I hadn't been joking when I mentioned building another warehouse, and she didn't have a problem with that. As long as I didn't go outside of the established boundary, I could do what I wanted. When her attorney pushed for a proviso that I wouldn't open a toxic waste dump on her property, I cast a look at Hillary and we both had a good laugh. I told him to go ahead and add it to the contract if it made him feel better.

When the contracts were printed, signed, and stamped, we called it a day. Arthur, in this case his name was really Cecil, asked me what the joke was between me and Hillary. I told him we were trying to save the world, and there was absolutely no way that we would damage it further to do so. He seemed to understand that, chastising himself for forgetting what my company was all about.

***

Six weeks later, almost to the hour, I presented Hillary with her first solar panel. From then on, I wouldn't be giving them to her one at a time, it was just that the first one was significant.

Erin was in the warehouse the next day to take delivery of her thirty percent. Those were the panels specifically designed for the geodesic domes, triangle and diamond-shaped as opposed to the rectangular panels we normally crafted.

My next shipment would go to another place, a place where we would make the cloth we needed to make potential astronauts and Mars colonists comfortable. First we would have to start with pieces of the machines we would need, then use those pieces to make even more machines, then use those machines to make the cloth.

Twenty kilometers north of Wavecrest was a little town called Sprout. Five years before, a plant had closed, leaving behind five hectares of land and manufacturing buildings. I hoped that this particular plant would already hold the equipment I needed.

When the realtor and the former plant manager gave me the tour, I couldn't believe my luck. Inside one of the buildings was a huge machining area. I hoped that with this equipment we could machine the parts we needed for just about everything we needed.

Graham had explained the chain to me: To make the cloth I needed for the so-called 'astronaut fabric,' I had to have specialized machinery. This machinery would have to be composed of pieces with millimeter tolerances.

I would have to possess a way to make small parts that would be put together to make bigger machines. Those machines were called 'winders.' Those 'winders' would help 'spin yarn.' That 'yarn' would in turn be 'knitted' into the cloth, which would comprise 'the fabric.'

On the second tour, I brought along my experts. They looked over the equipment and said that even though the machines were older, they could be updated with a minimum of fuss. Some of the parts would have to be replaced, the safety protocols and equipment brought up to code, but nothing with an unreasonable cost.

My interior decorators had plenty of things to say about the plant offices, not anything good. Pretty much everything would have to be redone to make it look like it belonged in the twenty-first century. I almost said that the offices could be staffed remotely, but changed my mind. We needed a human element to offset all the machines, especially places where people could get together and brainstorm. Also, we needed a brand-new break area or even a cafeteria depending on how many people we would employ.

Before I made my offer, I took a tour with Graham Sanderson. He was one of the few people who knew of my previous life. He had sensed something different about me the first time I had crossed the town's warding without an invitation. It didn't help that a Revenger named Juno was lurking around me playing bodyguard.

Even before Jaci had died, Graham had gotten the specifications of the machines he needed to manufacture the 'yarn' as he called it. The company had given him every technical drawing so we could make our own machines.

There was a proviso that came with those drawings: We would promise to make machines for our own use only. That was, of course, if we could make those machines at all, they joked. Every part had to be manufactured to tolerances of millimeters, metal alloys cast to the gram. America, at one time, had possessed the machining tables necessary to make such parts, but many of them had been destroyed to satisfy nuclear arms treaties. The remainder were closely guarded by the last companies to own them, and even they were failing because of a lack of spare parts.

We can make them.

Not only would we have the machine tools to help manufacture those 'winders,' we could power almost the entire plant with solar. Travis would bring us the raw copper for the solar manufacturing plant, most of the raw iron and nickel we needed to make our own stainless, but we'd have to come up with our own aluminum.

There were scrap yards around that could sell us some aluminum, but the market wouldn't support much. If we started buying it by tonnes, we would cause the prices to jump and people would be stealing aluminum from everywhere they could. No, we would have to buy raw bauxite, convert it into aluminum, and machine it ourselves.

I made my offer on the machining company, and it surprised the owners. They were expecting me to try and low-ball them, but I gave them what they wanted. One of the partners, named Norman, actually asked me if I was sure, and I told him I was completely sure.

Norman offered to help me recruit the machinists who had been laid off when that plant had closed. I told him that I would absolutely hire some of his people to run the machine tools once I got everything worked out. He admitted that he was actually a machinist before he bought a management seat on the board, and those guys and gals were 'his' people. I told him that I understood him more than he could possibly know.

Two months later, the machines started coming online. Petra, knowing my passions, had pointed me toward the programmers in my employ, and they helped with the computer-aided manufacturing, or CAM systems. Other programmers helped with the solar interfaces, load balancing with the AC power systems. Within the year we would be nine-five percent solar, and I was happy with that.

Step one of the cloth plan was getting the parts together for the machines, the 'winders' as Graham had called them. The prototypes came together well, so we started production runs. Graham then hit me with stage two, making the yarn. I was not happy when he laid out the processes that he used.

Since the yarn we were going to make was completely synthetic, we would have to use a form of plastic called nylon. That plastic was created from a super-refined oil base and it was in the same class as polyethylene and polypropylene.

While I wasn't happy with the fact that we would have to use an oil-based product, Graham gave me the good news. He told me that experiments were underway to recycle those polymers, both from production waste all the way down to trashed plastic drink bottles. I was ecstatic. I asked him for the details so that I could direct a research division at those experiments.

When I got everything where I wanted it, I pulled some people together and delegated my wants to them. I would inspect them every once in a while, and I would get reports on their progress, but they would manage the factory now.

***

One day when Petra and I were going to a restaurant in Vegas, we got hit with some horrendous news. Hillary's husband, his name was Marty, upset that she had been working so much, had attacked her, trying to cut off her breasts with a kitchen knife. He thought that she was having an affair, and had made it his mission to make her hurt as much as possible.

I felt helpless, and there was absolutely nothing I could do. Hillary was rushed to a hospital, but I couldn't send in any healers to help her. That lack of power came from The Laws of Man, because her husband had been arrested for said crime.

That same arrest held me back from asking a Revenger to go gnaw on him. Her husband was being held under that law, and would face a jury of his peers. Petra tried to comfort me, saying that I had to trust the very system that Ceres had begun.

The trial was a joke in my eyes, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, for aggravated assault. Five years, that was all he would get. Five years in prison for mauling his wife. The only way that I would have been able to do anything to that animal was if he had struck a deal with the prosecution for a lesser sentence.

Petra told me that I could help by hiring an Arthur, more than likely Stuart, to aid Hillary in the divorce. Hillary agreed, and I felt just a little, tiny better for it.

Whatever funk I was feeling, I was sure that Hillary's was a hundred times worse. She did come back to her plant, but it was like the fire had gone out in her eyes. Petra comforted her, it was a woman-to-woman thing. Three weeks after the end of the trial, Hillary asked me to take the reins to her company.

Not wanting to tax her spirit any more, I agreed to a few months of management. Petra explained to Hillary how uncomfortable it made me; taking over her dream, even momentarily.

Hillary, much to my dismay, called a meeting and said that she was taking a break from the company. She handed me a large brass key, a symbol of the command of her company. She did remind them that while I was basically an outsider, I did run a multi-billion dollar, multinational company and was really good at it.

As I watched Hillary drive off, I got a feeling that something bad was going to happen to her. Petra agreed to have a guardian look after Hillary, just in case.

***

When I was presented with the first security report on Hillary, I got upset. Almost every move that she made outside her house was monitored by men belonging to The Salucci Family. I told two of my guardians, Cara and Sameen, to make as much trouble for them as possible.

Pretty soon the wiseguys got wise. They abandoned following Hillary and started following me. Petra and Aysun had lots of fun with them, the 'bolt from the blue' hitting their vehicles being their favorite.

Correy and Mathis were unpleased when they found out. They came up to me at the end of my weekly staff meeting and asked what they could do to help. I told them that they needed to keep to what they were doing, managing their divisions. I had a team of guardians always looking out for me, and a very unpleasant Revenger who needed someone to eat. After that, I got a punch in the shoulder, and they folded back to their respective offices in Dubai and Lagos.

Strong joined me in the elevator going to the ground floor. "Begging your pardon, sir, but we're not really like that."

I turned to face Strong, I liked being eye-to-eye with him. "Strong, you should know better. I am giving them that impression so that they won't be distracted from the two thousand people each that they manage. They have their own lives to live, and I don't want them to worry. I feel bad enough that Aysun has appointed herself my guardian, I'd like to have a boyfriend of hers to terrorize, and maybe some more grandchildren."

"Sorry, sir. You should know, that these Salucci men, they have murder on their minds. If they take a shot at you, we can only act after the fact."

I chuckled. "That's just another thing for the guardians to worry about."

***

The helicopter ride from Los Angeles to Sprout gave me a chance to catch up on my report reading. My body couldn't perform linear folds or go through portals, but I still could fly, and fly in style. Everything under my control was going well, so I looked over the 'spy' reports from my people inside Brookstone Pointe.

It had been hard getting people past Marci's grilling, as she was both psychologist and magician. My spies were either extremely good, or they had been allowed past Marci because they weren't a threat to what had been Jaci's dream. I voted for the latter.

Those reports showed a middling picture of the company. After shedding the scientific and production divisions, their quarterlies had went up eight percent. The problem was that they were stuck there. I had a good idea of what they should do, but it wasn't my company. Not anymore.

The work at Sprout Machining was going really good. Part of my plant was dedicated to machining and casting the parts for the machines Graham needed for his textile mill. That was twenty percent of my output. Another twenty percent was making parts for Erin and her projects. We would spin up the rest of the machines soon, they wouldn't just sit idle.