Chapter 20: Twists and Turns

“Mr. Prentiss, this is your friend from Houston. I’m calling to tell you to be alert. Our two friends just entered Florida. They’re still checking out VA hospitals and rehab centers. They’ll find nothing, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have other information to act on.”

Dave muttered, “Thank you, I guess.”

The line went dead. The conversation, if you could call it that, took all of fifteen seconds. Dave erased the number on his cell phone after reassigning it to a fictitious battery distributor that would look like a remnant of his CEO work at EneRG. He was sure that information would appear to the mysterious caller.

Out of curiosity, Dave looked up VA hospitals and rehab centers in Florida. There were seven rehab centers: Pensacola, Ocala, Miami, Zephyrhills, St. Petersburg, Jacksonville, and even one in Sarasota. There were hospitals in Jupiter, Miami, and the main location just outside Tampa. A few outpatient clinics were scattered around. If they knew the extent of Dev’s injuries, they’d discount the outpatient clinics.

The reported fact that their potential opponents were in Florida put the Circle Security Committee on alert. Dale called it the equivalent of going from DEFCON 4, which they’d been on since Dev’s mission had resulted in his injuries, to DEFCON 3 – a heightened state of readiness with some serious mobilization of resources.

Several things happened that day. First, the guards at the main and back gates were relieved of their normal duty, and the posts were taken over by Circle members who’d been well rehearsed in how to respond to questions about the presence of a Connor Family on the premises. The shifts were initially two hours on and two hours off, with overnight four-hour shifts.

Frequently, one of the members of the security committee would drive up to the guard house and ask the Circle member-on-duty a leading question about Dev, Wendy, the family, or any other oblique attempts to locate them or their friends. At first the responses had come across as either inept or overly rehearsed. After so much practice and analysis, they now came across as sincere and accurate, with solid eye contact to frustrate attempts to identify lying. The role playing was paying off.

Concurrent with Circle members manning the guard houses, one or two hidden snipers covered the guard house from different angles with high powered rifles with telescopic sights. All transactions with the guards were also videoed in high resolution from multiple cameras around the guard shack, some visible and some not.

A further alert system was automatically initiated by either guard station or the AI system whenever a vehicle approached that they didn’t recognize. To facilitate recognition of member cars, a small front bumper decal with a two-inch round circle was placed on all cars belonging to members and pledges. The decal could be spotted several hundred feet away, even at night because of its luminosity.

That additional alert went to an additional sniper at the top of the Access Road or at the start of Perimeter Road. In case of a breakthrough by someone ramming the gate, they would provide a large amount of fire power to stop the vehicle and its occupants from any further breach.

Dave had guardhouse duty from six p.m. that evening to eight p.m. when he turned things over the Dale. Dave then took up sniper duty overlooking the same guardhouse he’d just spent two hours in, welcoming home many Circle members and deflecting two cars of the curious who’d seen the television series and read Cricket’s book.

Jim Hotch had been wired into the preparedness routine. As a license plate was recited to him, he could almost instantly assess the veracity of the occupants when they claimed they were fans of the reality TV show and curious about the Circle.

By the end of Dale’s shift at ten p.m., Ty took over – in uniform from Harnett Security. No cars approached or left the compound after that until about six-thirty the next morning as people started to leave to go to work. Ty and Sean had traded off the graveyard shift, at least that night.

The rest of the week proved rather routine and boring from a security point of view.

Tuesday, Dave flew the Citation up to Macon, got a rental car, and drove to an industrial park just off Interstate 75 in Forsyth, Georgia. He found the building he needed, a one-story, high roof affair that looked to be about half office space and half small manufacturing or lab space.

He pulled in and parked, and strolled into the office area. The office was a wide-open bull pen of desks and a couple of drafting tables. He counted eight people in the area. One man looked up, stood, and came over, “Can I help you? We don’t get many visitors.”

“My name is Dave Prentiss. I didn’t see a sign out front, only the street number on the building. I’m looking for Bright Systems Company.”

The man smiled, “That’s us. What can I do you for?”

“We’ll Mark Worthington sent me up to check out what was going on up here, to meet all of you, and maybe give you some money to continue whatever it is you’re doing.”

“OH! Yes! Heck, I’m sorry. We expected someone, but I didn’t think that would be until next week. I’m Gene Kanter. I’m sort of the elected head here, but things are pretty relaxed about jobs and positions. We all just work together. There’s no corporate structure except my desk is nearer the front door.”

He gestured around the office. Some of the other men and women were now paying attention, particularly after Gene’s loud exclamation and then his deference to Dave as they stood talking.

Fifteen minutes later, Dave had met the other seven people working in the office area: four men and three women besides Gene. Most had been affiliated with Georgia Tech in some way, several as engineering faculty and the rest as students and grad students. All seemed mature, sharp witted, and oozing creativity and brain power that would boggle Mensa members.

Dave then asked a crucial question, “What are you all working on?”

There was silence and everyone looked at Gene. He said, “You really don’t know?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Dave responded. “Mark told me one of the women on staff had asked him for ten-million dollars, but beyond that he knew it had some kind of engineering application that involved lasers and digital signal processing, but he was a little vague. He liked the woman and the sound of the setup, but their discussion was short on details. I was running a little operation for him, and recently joined his corporate staff. This is one of my assignments.”

A pretty woman about forty stepped forward, “I’m the one that talked to Mark about a month or six weeks ago. I thought nothing was going to come of our talk.” Dave recalled from the introduction a moment earlier that the woman was Connie Vail.

Connie went on, “I tried to explain to Mark, but we were in a cocktail party and kept getting interrupted. We have a unique handle on using what’s called LADAR for all sorts of applications. I happen to be working on the medical applications.”

Dave gestured, “Go on. Presume I’m dumb as a stump and you need to educate me, because that’s exactly the situation.”

Connie gestured to a seat in front of a busy flip chart. She turned the sheet to a blank page and continued. A couple of the others went back to their desks.

She said, “I hope you understand RADAR – radio frequency amplification detection and ranging, at least fundamentally. Most aggressive digital signal processing leaves the radar user with large zones of uncertainty in all dimensions – say azimuth from the antenna, and distance from that antenna, although those depend on many complicating factors – distance, size of the target, frequency of the pulses, and so on. Further, there are zones of uncertainty about what we might call altitude.

“We are playing with three-dimensional LADAR – light amplification detection and ranging. The signal processing algorithms are similar to those for RADAR, but must operate at very high speeds to process the data coming in. When it all works right, we can map all kinds of things with tremendous accuracy. I’m sure you’ve read of some the wonders they’re doing with lasers; well, that’s the base technology for what we’re doing, but we put some very fancy proprietary signal processing on top of that, and ‘Bingo’ – we have innovations. The lasers are almost a commodity. The digital signal processing is not. That’s our schtick.

“In the medical arena, we can look into the human body, isolate tiny occlusions, for instance, and then use them to assist in micro-surgery to resolve the problem. Imagine being able to repair a potential aneurysm of the brain that might kill the person in seconds if left untreated.”

“So, you’re dealing with these lasers at a microscopic level, if you will?” Dave asked.

“I am. Curt is working on higher power versions that can assist in air traffic control, or even missile defense situations. We can potentially identify the track, source, size and dimensions, of an incoming missile, and with enough oomph, even destroy it in flight.”

“Do you have DOD funding?”

“None. We’re trying to work up some scenario we could do in a demonstration if we could get some of the right generals around to see it,” Gene said.

“What else?” Dave asked.

Joel Rippel is working at applying the technology to self-driving cars. The technology is more accurate than the LIDAR technology most of the companies are flirting with. The two are often thought of together, but there are some subtle differences. Further, our processors don’t require mechanical scanning – it’s all electronic and optical. In essence, we’re looking in all directions all the time. The output from our systems has superior accuracy and interpretation of the visual landscape, and that means better and faster assessments and judgments about vehicular steering, speed, and thus braking or other commands can be made that much faster.”

Mindy Calin is working on using LADAR in fire situations. We can look into high temperature flames, assess burning structures for instance, and see whether they are still safe enough to support search and rescue attempts, or we can change the strategy a fire department uses to fight certain types of fires if they know what’s actually going in inside the flames, so to speak.”

Dave posed, “So, you’re all using a common technology, more or less, but targeting different applications.”

Connie lit up like a Christmas tree, “Exactly, but all with our fancy signal processing.”

Gene nodded and added, “And we each have a few acolytes helping out. Some of them are still working on their degrees back at the college. We have sympathetic friends back there who enjoy having a real-world outlet for student talent.”

Dave sat back and thought about what he’d just heard. He could sure see the issue about focusing the talent. He had about a thousand questions.

Dave said, “I’d like to meet individually with each of the people managing one of the application areas for the technology. I’m thinking about maybe two hours with each person.” Dave looked at his watch, “I guess I could get in two or three today, and the rest tomorrow. Is that possible without upsetting anybody?”

Gene and Connie both nodded. “Sure. Either one of us can go now to lunch and the other afterwards. I’ll try to get Joel or Mindy to meet with you about three o’clock.”

Dave started to jot down a few questions he already had in his blank notebook.

Friday evening just prior to the cocktail hour, Jim Hotch gathered together Dave, Scarlett – who was home, Matt, Rose, and, to everyone’s surprise, Wan Suh, their martial arts teacher who’d driven down from St. Petersburg just for this meeting. Everyone seemed to question the purpose of the meeting.

Jim said, “Thanks for meeting. I hate to tell you all this, but we have a small problem that I think we will be able to resolve, but nonetheless it is a problem right now. I am sharing information I received because of my position as a Lieutenant in the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department and the person that filed Rose’s complaint about her potential rape perpetrators.

“That information is that three young men have filed a criminal complaint against an unknown young woman who they say assaulted them two-weeks ago last Thursday. Rose, we know that was you. Their injuries are consistent with what you told me. One with a damaged scrotum, so damaged that one testicle had to be removed. A second man suffered two broken wrists with attendant tendon damage that rated as severe by the attending doctor.