Chapter 5

After the two championship football games were over I received quite windfall of profit from my bets. My bookies weren't entirely enthused over the situation, but they paid off without too much griping.

I wanted to get a research lab and manufacturing facility established. The real estate agent I had selected to locate a suitable property had found three properties that sounded like they might be worth looking at. After visiting each one I settled on one that was about twenty minutes south east of the house on Grand Avenue.

The property consisted of four buildings situated on two acres. The laboratory was just a fairly large brick building with a few offices and a conference room at the front and a large open area that could be segmented off as needed. The factory had been used to produce paints and other types of liquid based chemical products. There was an empty ten acre parcel of land adjacent to my two acre lot and I bought that up as well in case I needed to expand.

My first project required quite a bit of chemical synthesis since most of the chemical compounds I needed had not yet been developed. The basic concept was to create a light generating paint that could be sprayed on to walls, ceilings, and floors. When just a very low current was applied the paint would convert the electricity into lumens of light. The higher the current the brighter the light emitted. I intended to develop a complementary set of modular electronic components to simplify powering and controlling lighting systems based on the new paint.

I had a huge advantage in bringing implementing technologies new to this era and I intended to capitalize on it. With the sum total of Earth's technical and scientific knowledge as of the year 2005, I should be able to bring my products through the stages of research, development, and production with few missteps.

I intended to keep track of each child I sired and where possible to employ them in the companies I would be starting. After all, they would possess the same scientific and technical know how that I have and I would be willing to fund the projects they came up with.

By mid April of 1964 I had already succeeded in developing a durable, semi-gloss paint that produced low to high lumen output in proportion to the current applied with little to no heat generated. I was also nearly done designing a system of modular electronics. The design of the electronic components called for materials or processes that also required development on my part. This was somewhat frustrating to me at first, but I realized that it gave me the opportunity to guarantee re-usability. By keeping a broad focus relative to how each component might be used in future projects I was more readily able to avoid over customizing the component to my current application; in other words I avoided painting myself into a corner by only thinking of my current project.

On the weekends I was still focusing on the mission Krezan Six had tasked me with — siring many offspring. I had already impregnated one hundred and thirty six women and still found the sex to be more of a pleasure than a chore.

Although I worked fairly hard on the weekdays I didn't often skip the pleasant company of Juanita and Hattie and found that I truly missed them on days where I worked late into the evening. I decided that it was time for a bit of a change in this regard so in the afternoon, if I found that I might have to work late, I called Hattie and asked her to cater our meal at the lab. Juanita and Hattie would drive over, set things up on the round conference table in my office and then the three of us would eat dinner together. This really helped improve my morale any day I needed to stay late.

By June I was ready to hire employees. I had formed a parent corporation, Stanhope Development Group, and one subsidiary corporation, Lumos Technologies, which actually would own the lab and factory as well as hold the patents I had applied for. Now that Lumos was actively applying for patents I felt I needed to protect my work against industrial espionage. So the first group of employees Lumos hired focused on security.

The twelve acre "complex" as my security team took to calling it was soon surrounded by 16 foot high electric fences with razor wire running along the top. At night guards and guard dogs watched over the property to keep out any potential intruders. At the security teams request a fireproof vault was built in the lab to house all of my important papers. It was built by a team that regularly did the same job for banks and was supposed to be as secure as it was possible to make it. At this time I also authorized the construction of a large warehouse to store an inventory of product manufactured by Lumos Technologies.

It was much more difficult to determine what to do about hiring other employees since the level of scientific and technical knowledge I was working with far outpaced that of any potential hire. Still, I was more interested in this point at people who could follow directions than people who could perform raw research. Eventually I did in fact find a good group of people to work in the factory. The Lumos lab staff consisted of chemists, electrical engineers, and fabricators.

With no other company currently engaged in the same types of research, the Lumos patent submissions were readily granted and by September of 1964 we began hiring for the factory. The Lumos factory's org chart contained the same positions as the lab plus specialists in inventory control, shipping, receiving, project management, maintenance, and a myriad of other professional and blue collar workers the company needed to function.

I telepathically programmed any employee to keep their silence regarding the formulas for the various types of light generating paints as well as the electronics in the control mechanisms. They could talk about the capabilities as much as they wanted and in fact were encouraged to do so.

Once we had an adequate supply of products ready for shipping and were just about ready to kick off a nationwide advertising campaign I was approached by a three star army general. General Buckman did his best to try to convince me to sell the Lumos patents to the military. He stated that the technology we were trying to bring to the market could be used against us by the Soviets. Boy did he squirm when I asked him to detail how the communists could hurt us with Lumos Paint! I did a little probing of his thoughts and discovered he was there on behalf of a rather large corporation that didn't want our products infringing on their sales.

I politely refused to submit to General Buckman's request and informed him that we would be going forward with our product launch despite National Electric's concerns. When he heard me mention the name of the firm who had asked him to pressure me the General seemed to lose a bit of his composure. He probably wondered who had ratted him out and what I was going to do about it.