Chapter 12

Six weeks after Stone’s teams began working, on a day that Stone, Summa, and Long were meeting in Stone’s office to review some of the technical specifications of the brain wave capture, news reporter Jill Miller showed up at the Nelson Corp. She didn’t have an appointment; Sai Jain stuck her head in to see if Stone wanted to meet with her.

“What does she want?” he asked.

“She says she’s doing a story on cutting-edge technologies, and was hoping for some of your time. There’s a camerawoman with her.”

Stone deliberated.

“I suppose I can give her some time. Get Gary in here please, and tell Ms. Miller I can meet with her in five minutes.”

Once Danders was up to speed, Stone said, “I think that if we don’t talk to her, we will give her the impression that we’re hiding something, or something negative.”

Danders agreed.

“All right, please tell her that we can give her about ten minutes,” Stone said.

Showing the young, slender, attractive Miller and the equally slender and pretty camerawoman into Stone’s office, Jain closed the door behind them. After quick introductions and pleasantries, they sat.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Stone offered.

“We would like some water, please,” Miller replied. She continued, “First, let me thank you for seeing us without an appointment. Do you mind if Andie films our discussion? I want to put the highlights on air as part of a story we’re doing on the companies like yours that are in the forefront of the dramatic changes we see through the use of technology. I want to showcase the various types of businesses like yours and the impact you have on our local economy. I don’t think that most of our viewers realize how close to their homes some of these businesses are.”

“Ms. Miller, I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of time today for an interview. Perhaps we can schedule a meeting for some day next month.”

“I need only five minutes, time for a couple of questions. Is that okay?”

Checking the others with a glance, Stone said,

“Five minutes is all we can give you.”

She counted on her pretty face and smile to get her the time she needed beyond that.

“According to your website, your company performs interrogation of large databases and provides your clients with information critical for them to understand their client’s needs and thereby gain an advantage over their competitors. Are you developing other technological tools that you believe will make everything you have done thus far seem like child’s play?”

Everyone in the business of providing a service is always evaluating their products and trying to anticipate what clients need tomorrow, Stone thought, but this question was asking much more than that. He frowned. Before he was able to respond, Miller spoke again.

“Specifically, Mr. Stone, what is this hush-hush project that you are working on?”

Stone, Long, and Danders wore feigned puzzled expressions in response to the question. Summa’s face showed no emotion.

“Hush-hush project, Ms. Miller? We don’t understand,” said Stone.

“I understand that work on reading people’s thoughts is being done in these offices, and furthermore, that you have made a lot of progress on making this a reality. I think most people don’t even know that research like this is going on, so for you to be closer to making it happen than anyone in the world is astounding. Please, tell me how you have done it.”

“That’s quite a story, Ms. Miller,” Stone answered with a light-hearted laugh, which he hoped didn’t sound forced.

“I can assure you that we are not working on anything like that. Besides, we don’t have anywhere near the resources to be doing a project of that magnitude even if we were contemplating it, which we’re not. We’re not Amazon, or Google, or a government with unlimited resources. What we do here, as you mentioned, is provide our clients with information that they need to be competitive. Reading people’s thoughts is, from what I understand, a desire, and a hope that some people have. It is speculative; indeed, it may be impossible to do. But I am curious. Where, may I ask, did you hear such a story?”

“I cannot disclose my source, Mr. Stone, but I can assure you that the information I have been given is credible—as well as incredible, I might add.”

Stone tried again to assure Miller that there was no thought-reading project being worked on at his company, but she refused to accept his response and proceeded to discuss in detail a recent experiment Stone purportedly conducted in which a person’s thoughts were interpreted by a computer, without electrodes being attached to the brain’s neurons. While there was, according to Miller, a thirty-four percent rate of accurate interpretations of decoded neuronal firings, low compared to an almost fifty percent accuracy rate of direct attachment of electrons to neurons, it was an astounding success, putting the idea of remotely reading thoughts closer to reality than anyone thought possible.

“This story is going to be published, Mr. Stone. Do you want to comment on it?”

“Ms. Miller, if you publish such an article it will be without comment from anyone in this company. Then, I imagine, other reporters will be contacting me for a response, at which time I will say that we are not working on anything like that. I think that if someone has achieved the results you mentioned, then that would indeed be an astounding accomplishment, albeit a disquieting one if used for the wrong purposes. Off the top of my head I can think of only two benign uses of such technology, one being to help “locked-in syndrome” patients, people who have had brain hemorrhages and are quadriplegic, with normal intelligence, but are unable to communicate, and people with other neurological issues such as epilepsy. I suppose we are flattered that someone thinks we are capable of achieving such results, but we are not. There’s nothing else to say. Why will you not disclose the source of this rumor? It is so outlandish that it causes me concern. I don’t want our clients thinking that this company is off on some wild goose chase.”

“Mr. Stone, what I said is not rumor. The information I have received is from an unimpeachable source. Even cures for cancer, COVID, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s cannot match what you have achieved. This story needs to be told.”

Stone stood up, still smiling but now concerned, and said that there was nothing he could add to his comments. He asked for her business card and told her that he would contact her if he became aware of any company that was working on thought-reading.

Miller finally accepted the fact that the conversation was going no further. She handed Stone her card and told him that she understood that he was probably under pressure not to say anything due to the significance of the project. She offered to meet him for lunch the next day so that they could speak off the record. He pleasantly said no as he walked her and the camerawoman to the door and showed them out.

Afterwards, a stunned Stone began pacing. On the outside, Long and Summa looked the part of someone crushed by this news, but, unlike Stone, they were pleased. Danders was not. Stone grabbed his cell phone, motioned to Danders and Long to do the same. He told Summa to go back to work.

Ten minutes later, the three of them sat at a table in the back of a nearby coffee shop. Stone was about to speak when Long held up his hand. He scanned the room and the street before softly saying,

“I don’t know if our offices are bugged. Our project has been compromised, and I’m not sure that it can be finished. It’s scary.”

“Yeah, it is scary. We are compromised. The question is who is leaking the information, and to whom? One or more of the twelve of us working on the project is a traitor.” Stone looked first in Long’s eyes. “I hope you believe that it’s not me.”

“And you, me.”

“No, it’s not you. I know that.”

Neither Stone nor Long was certain that the other wasn’t guilty, in spite of having developed a friendship. Money and power can twist the goodness out of a person and leave them only their baser instincts.

Stone and Danders had a similar conversation. Neither Stone nor Danders thought the other would do such a thing, nor did they have any doubts.

“This project is so potentially transcendent that I have been caught up in the desire to see it come to fruition. The excitement pushes me forward when exhaustion takes possession of me. I’ve thought of this as a competition between the biggies and us. I have never considered the possibility that success might put us at risk. Since someone in our group is, I think, selling our secrets, then maybe the buyer will try to sabotage our efforts, especially if we continue our success apace,” said Long.

“I agree. Our success may be scaring people enough for them to want to delay or stop our progress altogether. One way to sabotage our work is to take one or all of us out of the picture, either by kidnapping us or killing us,” said Stone.

“I hate to admit it, but that’s possible,” replied Danders.

“Geez, I never considered that,” Long said. Truth was, he had.

When the invention was complete, who needed Stone?

No one spoke for the next few minutes. They started out this venture as three computer guys striving to succeed with a project that initially seemed impossible, not as power-hungry radicals looking to control the world.

“Earlier this morning our biggest concern was to be able to keep up our stamina so that our workload doesn’t kill us, and now, we are thinking that someone is trying to kill us because of the work we are doing? To go that quickly from being naïve to knowing about the threat is overwhelming,” Long said as convincingly as he could, considering he was a party to what was happening.

“Yeah, it is overwhelming,” agreed Stone. “Based on what the reporter knows, though, we’re not overreacting. Where is the leak?”

Another lapse of conversation ensued. Stone began rubbing his temples, partly to ease the tension in his head, partly to help divine what to do next. Suddenly feeling paranoid, Stone stood up and suggested they take the conversation outside.

For the next hour on this sunny day they wandered the streets of downtown Brassville, passing by more idle storefronts than open businesses, talking while being distracted by their new obsession with the occasional passersby. Were they being watched, followed, listened to by sophisticated microphones? Stone bemoaned their lack of attention to the actions of their team. What did we miss or ignore? Who has been acting strangely? Has anyone ever said anything that in retrospect seems out of place? One of his conclusions was that they obviously had to closely, but surreptitiously, watch everyone on the team for what poker players call ‘tells’—minor but noticeable changes to speech, eye and hand movements, nervous tics—anything to indicate an elevated level of stress or unusual behavior, to give a clue on what cards they held.

Stone wondered aloud what to tell to whom. Once the reporter’s story broke, no amount of denying it was going to help. Secrecy was gone, and now the tremendous progress that had been made was likely to be throttled due to the time Stone will now have to spend denying that the project doesn’t exist.

The biggest concern for them, however, was their safety. If their cat was already out of the bag, then they had to assume the responsibility of their safety.

“This whole thing is pissing me off,” Stone fumed. “Let’s resolve a couple of things. Do you think we need bodyguards? I don’t. Should we carry guns? Yes, we should. What do you think?”

Both Danders and Long said no to the bodyguards, feeling that they would be in the way. Long wanted no part of buying a gun.

“If someone comes after me with one, I don’t think I will be able to stop him. It’s not like he’s going to announce that he’s coming. I don’t like guns, and I don’t think I’d get used to handling one,” Long said.

“I’m going to start carrying my gun,” said Danders.

“Let’s head back to the office. We can decide what we’re going to tell the teams on the way,” Stone said.

That night, as she ate dinner, Barbie Cole watched TV hoping that her favorite newscaster would appear. She was happy to see Jill Miller’s interview with Jon Stone come on first. Miller’s facial expression looked like the cat that ate the canary as she started slow and then honed in on the purpose for the interview. Barbie loved how Miller’s fearlessness was evident as Stone’s face became etched in a frown as the interview went on. Barbie nearly choked on a piece of pasta when the camera shot widened out and Roy Summa appeared on the screen.

“Lena,” she said to her aide, “get over here and watch this. Bring some paper and a pen. I need to write down information on Mr. Stone.”