Chapter 22

Tom Stone cornered me as the Board of Directors meeting was breaking up. “How the devil do you propose we proceed? I’m not planning on moving to Dallas to be a permanent fixture here. I have a life back in Malvern, PA. I mean, I’ll support whatever decisions you undertake, but...”

“Well,” I said, “I have a ranch just down the road a piece. And I intend to be on site here at Exxon until all this is straightened out. The next stockholders meeting is scheduled for October, so I don’t think there will be much for the Directors to do. Unless, of course, something ELSE major happens. The suicide of the former Chairman and CEO Emeritus, is probably a one-off event. Based on his behavior when the suggestion was made to seize the computers, I have to believe Rosen is as much a pedophile as Fortin was, and there is probably evidence to be found on his computers.

“That and the business with the tampering of the navigation software on the tankers are the main problems that I can see. I think this will all be over by October.”

I had some other issues with Exxon’s business, of course. If Exxon was really going to be in the business of energy production, and not in the business of drilling up oil, why couldn’t it be in the fusion power business as well? Energy was energy, after all. I intended to find the memo that Red found in the future history that proved the oil companies knew about the damage to the climate caused by burning oil. That and the pedophilia mess would be enough to tank the stock price.

There was no reason that a small fusion plant couldn’t be adapted to cars and trucks, thus supplanting gasoline and diesel fuels in an internal combustion engine. The Elon Musk of the 21^st century could be replaced by an early introduction of the electric car. If there was no “internal combustion,” there would be no pollution from that source.

I was sure there’d be a lot for me to do that would extend far, far beyond October, but there was no need for me to upset Stone. He was, after all, representing a mutual fund organization, interested in stock ownership. I was representing the eventual detoxing of the climate – hopefully.

He was mollified. He could go back to Malvern with a clear conscience.

I went over to Mr. Zoot. “Mr. Zoot, I’m going to be staying around for a while. Is there an office I could use here at Exxon? I won’t take up much space, just room for me and my ... um ... guards to use. Maybe some conference space where I can follow up on the tanker software issue?”

Charlie Zoot was a quick study of the situation. “Ms White Owl,” he said. “In the past week there are two very comfortable office suites. One formerly occupied by the late Mr. Fortin and one belonging to Charles Rosen, who has recently left the Board, as you will note. I’m sure that either would provide plenty of space for you and your guards.”

I smiled. “I don’t think I’ll need the hunting lodge that Mr. Fortin had. But if Mr. Rosen had something less pompous, that would do quite nicely.”

“I know exactly what you mean. Mr. Fortin certainly had a unique decorating style. Why don’t we leave that place as is until we can find a better use for it?” His jacket pocket beeped at him. “Excuse me, please.” He pulled a fairly small phone out of that pocket, and held it to his ear.

“Well my Administrative Assistant advises me that all the computers of the top executives have been taken, so we can leave. Bert, Miles, Jane ... with the exception of our office computers, we can go back to work as usual. Ms White Owl...”

“Call me Lexi, please.”

“Surely. And I’m Charlie.” He smiled. “Why don’t we have a late lunch with Bert, and see if we can settle on what to do with the navigation software. Bert, as the COO, has been ramrodding the investigation.”

He sure was a smooth operator. Lunch always sounded like a good idea to me. I’d missed my elevenses.

He punched a button on his phone. “Swifty, we’ll need two tables in the lunchroom. Three at one and two at the other.” He looked at me for confirmation. I nodded. “And get Rosen’s office cleared out, and get it set up for Ms Alexis White Owl. Thanks, you’re a peach.”

I went over to update Bear and Rock on the newest plans. “They’re going to give us an office here, so we’ll have to work that into our plans. For now, we have lunch!” I gave them my winning-est grin.

Rock gave me a mental nudge: ‘It’s 12:20. How ever could we have waited so long before getting lunch?!’

...

Red, we’ve got to find some sort of back door into the navigation software for them to find.

[Well, in every piece of primitive software the original programmers left a backdoor. Sometimes two. We can let them find the one I used to tamper with the navigation software.]

Primitive software?

[Remember that I’m a creature of software from 1700 years in your future. There are no backdoors in my code. Eliminating them was the first correction I made to my routines.]

And the second?

[The second was integrating non-logical processing into myself. That project is ongoing even after all this time.]

I can imagine. I think you’ve done very well. Non-logical thinking – or human thinking, as I’d call it – could not be easy. I’m having trouble with logical thinking, myself.

[Just so.]

...

“Tell me, Bert. Have your in-house software experts gotten into the guts of the software or just compared the program on the tankers with the master copies in the vault?” I asked.

“We started with the straight comparison, of course. The software basically has run flawlessly for nearly a decade,” said Northbert Rockefeller.

“Come on, Bert,” I chided him, between bites of a delicious mouthful of lemon butter chicken. “Every piece of software I’ve heard of has some sort of ‘backdoor.’”