Chapter 3: There and Back Again

Halfway through the month on Mars, Rob would have been happy to have been going a bit stir crazy. An endless series of minor accidents, lost scientists, overdue parties and everything else, clear down to dead batteries kept him pretty busy.

Those who had long speculated that the canyons of Mars might contain the Martian life that had long been speculated had to be disappointed. The deep and mysterious Valles Marineris canyons were mostly full of dust, eons and eons of slippery, dangerous dust. Perhaps there was life buried underneath the rivers of dust there, but it appeared that no one was going to be finding it on this trip.

Wendy and the other scientists with reason to be looking at rocks and digging in the dirt were still going strong, but Rob was growing a little tired of being a babysitter. Playing the tourist only did it for him for a while. Mons Olympus was awesome, the great Valles Marineris canyon system made for some incredible sightseeing opportunities. They even went and checked out 'the face', which people had been tweaking over since the pictures came back from Viking in the 1970's.

Rob imagined Andy sitting in front of Senator Montgomery again after their return, testifying to the mundane and unremarkable nature of the small hill. Still, the sides of the canyons, the walls and outcroppings within it were prime locations for some of the diggers, and he spent quite a bit of time hovering near or on them, watching happy scientists digging in the dirt.

Thankfully, Wendy's Martian rock bug was finally satisfied! Her interests were mostly metallurgical, and even that was only a marginal side interest. A 'hobbyist with a degree' was how she identified herself. Rob would have been less antsy about her prolonged absences if Jocelin Walsh wasn't still being somewhat over-friendly.

Wendy was an engineer at heart, despite her nano-metallurgical specialty, but still an engineer. The rock sampling let her get some fulfillment on an aspect of her education that she had not been able to on Earth, but now that her sample allotment was stored and ready for the return trip, she suddenly remembered a few things, Rob included, and suddenly his life was looking good again!

When the decision came down that the two portable drilling platforms were going to last, the third unit was unpacked and Rob got to take two side trips to Phobos and Deimos. Since Wendy was an experienced hand at operating the drill, she went along to take some samples. Both moons are pretty sad samples of their kind.

Phobos in particular is sad because it is definitely doomed. It orbits too low, too close to Mars, closer than any other satellite to its primary in the solar system at less than 6000 kilometers, and shrinking. In fifty million years or so, it will be gone, either crashed into Mars or broken up into a ring.

Deimos is in no danger of crashing into Mars, but it is incredibly small, the smallest moon in the solar system. Theories abound that suggest both moons are actually captured asteroids, and with their samples taken, perhaps someone would have a chance to make some comparisons in the future!

The explorers did find definite signs of water, both on Mars and on Phobos, but nothing that could be called 'free' water. Nothing flowing, though we saw signs that could have been interpreted as recent flows. Some people were suggesting a sort of hoarfrost that deposited on the sides of craters and then when the light from the sun hit them just right, the light got lensed into a focal point on the hoarfrost's interior, causing the internal temperature to hit a flash point, and suddenly and briefly, the water was liquid just long enough to run down the steep crater wall before finally flashing into vapor or sinking below the surface.

One thing Wendy was keeping track of was the number of moons and planets on which she and Rob had made love. Adding Phobos and Deimos brought the count up to five. Wendy felt slightly naughty just thinking about her keeping a running tally, and her thoughts strayed back to her favorite so far, when they managed to find the time while they were doing the OPEE training on the Moon. She wondered yet again about the identify of the poor UN engineer who stumbled upon them. 'I'm not sure he'll be good for much detail though, ' Wendy thought to herself. 'I think the sight of Rob's naked ass in the air left him pretty traumatized.'

The final fifteen days went very quickly for Rob. With the increased operational familiarity planet side, he got bumped 'up' off babysitter duties and back to full time shipboard duties. He spent those two weeks divvying up his time pretty equally between the bridge and the lab. Fred Wassermann had come up with a way to get multiple readings, with some automatic offsets and variances based in part on trends they'd seen in the data captured on the way out. It would in all likelihood at least triple the volume and double the 'quality' of the data they captured on the way back in.

Since Fred had the team inspired, and Alexandra had them all preparing for the new setup, Rob got to do some puttering around on his own. He worked on the small subset of research sensors that he had been capturing those anomalous blips and glitches on. The Sensor system was both notoriously non-directional, and infamously direction-sensitive. The contradiction is due to the multiple input sources the sensors are designed to capture. Some, such as light, are very, very directional. Some, such as radio waves, are not. Some, such as gravity, have overlapping sources that make it difficult to isolate discrete sources. Rob had to step back from the 'array' part of our sensor setup and develop a new system, almost from scratch. A system that was more about isolating and identifying the sources, no matter which type they were. That meant rewriting a lot of the code that he had originally developed, as well as the stuff that had been added and/or modified since the lab team had come together.

A lot of work had been done in giving the Gravy Geeks, and those who preceded them in the field of gravitics, the tools with which to manage, manipulate and study gravity fields. Rob went back to those and began studying them and how they worked. He had been only peripherally involved in the science of gravitics and the technology that had come out of it. It was time to take a look under the hood and get a better understanding of it. He hoped that maybe it would help him make better sense of the stray readings he continued to get as well.

My name is Wendy Fellowes, and I am a Geek. I am happy to have found someone to love, and who I can clearly see loves me as well. I wouldn't say I was exactly a wallflower, but I was used to being 'the brain' in school, until I got to Cal Tech. There I was either 'one of the brains', or 'the brain with the great ass', depending on who you talked to. Because I finally could, I took advantage of that ass and got myself some more experience. The guys who used the great ass modifier became tutors, though not all of them had the brains to realize their true roles. None of them even had the sense to feel objectified and cheapened by my use of them. Thank God that period in my life was over!

I was glad I had the experience I did when I met Rob. It allowed me to hold back and wait for something beyond the physical to happen, and amazingly, it did. Jocelin had confided in me a willingness to share him, since he seemed to be interested in us both, and while a part of me was at least curious about where that might have gone, I'm glad I acted as I did. Don't tell him, but Rob Young flips my switch in bed as much as he does out of it!

Being romantically involved with a genius, and I mean a scary smart, inspired, going-where-no-man-has-gone-before kinda genius, is its own punishment and reward at the same time. I've already had to deal with Rob being off in the zone, unaware of what's going on around him.

Personally, I think he needs me.

Well, he needs someone like me, and since I'm already here, no others need apply. He calls me Princess Nuts & Bolts, because I'm good at details, good at putting things together and good with the run of the mill stuff that life requires, like remembering to pay the phone bill or shut off the TV on the way out the door for the weekend. Rob is never good at those things unless it involves groups, and then suddenly he becomes detail oriented. Go figure!

I guess I'd been letting my recent life flash in front of my eyes, because suddenly there was a commotion in the room, breaking me from my reverie. Rob was at least half the reason for the commotion.

For a while, Earth had been one big party, with us all as the guests of honor. The celebrations, parades, parties and presentations did give way after a couple weeks to meetings and discussions. The big question was apparently what to do with the Pai Lung, and whether we would be involved.

This had been one of those meetings, a rare one with most of the build teams present; Power, Propulsion, Electronics, Hull, Sensors, all the original teams that had been gathered on Nauru and guided through the process of building the ship, as well as the two guys from the MIT Gravy Geeks who had come up with the design. In fact we were meeting at Andy and Cor's place in Somerville, and this was where Arne and Yuri's original plans for the Pai Lung had been revealed.

The ruckus started when Andy announced that he was technically the sole owner of the Pai Lung as well as the Zephyr and Sirocco. He wanted to know who would buy it from him, and Rob raised his hand immediately.

"Okay, lets say you've just bought my ship. What would you do with it?" Andy asked.

"First thing? I think maybe it would have to be The moons of Jupiter. Europa, Io and Ganymede." Rob answered. "Maybe play around in the asteroid belt on the way back."

That statement was what made Rob's half of the ruckus, and it raised a clamor in the room! Even the Power and Gravity folks, who had little incentive to poke around the solar system, could get excited at the thought of getting some hands on time on those three moons!

Frederick Wasserman was not the stereotypical dour Germanic type, he was in fact the lab staffs most committed and inventive practical joker. At this moment though, he chose to be the voice of doubt.

"Jupiter is a lot further away than Mars. It will take much longer. Maybe even a whole year away from Earth."

Yes, it threw a little cold water on the collective buzz. Maybe it was my nuts & bolts side showing, but we needed the dose of reality right now.

"Fred is right." I said. "There will be more room for error, and help will be much, much further away."

"We would not be able to use the two orbital transport ships as our emergency escape vessels." Brian Conroy, one of the power team added. "They would not be able to hold enough supplies for that long a trip."

In the end, it was decided that nothing needed to be decided immediately. Andy invited us all to meet him again in two week's time at the McKesson Group offices in San Francisco. Rob and I got invited to show up a couple of days early and spend them at his grandparent's house in Angel's Camp, California.

We stayed at the Somerville condo for an extra couple of days while Rob, Ike Dunham and Mickey Brooks dealt with a ton of paperwork involved with their invention of the Q-net and the Q-tap. Several McKesson Group lawyers had a huge stack of papers that needed signing, some decisions were left to be made on several optional pieces of the whole deal and some of the financial situations discussed. As much of the Princess Nuts & Bolts that I was for day to day things, I wasn't much interested in the money aspect of things, so when Cor invited DeeDee Ponders, Janet Dearing and I to spend a couple of days at a spa on Cape Cod, I said yes of course!

We went to a place called the Cape Codder Resort, and we were indulged with their 'Girls Bonding Time' package. Except Cor said she had 'enhanced the package a bit'.

Two days of facials and massages and hot oil baths, fine dining and walking through the landscaped courtyard, what was not to love? We were a little too late in the season for some of the in-season activities, but they still had a midnight bonfire every night, and live jazz in the wine bar the second night. Cor seemed to not like the wines, and stuck pretty much to the sparkling wine.

We played tennis the second day, something I'd been good at in high school, but too busy for in college. Cor was quite the physical specimen, and after sharing the spa and sauna with her, I suspected she had a level of fitness reserved for world class athletes. I was no slouch myself normally, but she was in a different class than me. Even all the work running the coring rig on Mars hadn't toned me up enough to compare to Cor.

We played doubles, and thanks to my high school experience, DeeDee and I managed to win both times. Cor and Janet ran us ragged both times though!

Cor had an ulterior motive in bringing us here, I discovered. Janet and her fiancé Ryan Ardmore were looking for a place for their wedding, and this one was high on the list of candidates. Both of them were from the Midwest, and had gone to college in Illinois, but they weren't tied to the area as far as their wedding plans went.

Still, number one on their list was a resort in Galena, Illinois called the Eagle Ridge Resort, and since Janet's parents were doing their parental duty, it would be convenient to do something relatively local. Janet herself had only a few friends from home she was interested in sharing this event with, and those friends she would gladly make sure could get to wherever she decided to be. All I knew was I'd be happy to help Cor test out any other resorts they were considering!

When we got back from our two days of luxury, Rob was wearing a very noticeable grin. A very wide, noticeable grin. DeeDee noticed Ike was wearing a similar expression, and since we hadn't been around to put those grins on our boyfriend's faces, we had to ask what had caused them.

Rob showed me his brand new credit card. McKesson Technologies had made a pre-payment, based on anticipated quarterly revenues from royalties, itself based on the current level of bidding by the existing telecommunications companies for access to the new communication technologies. This didn't even include governmental licensing, which they couldn't do prepayments for.

Doctor Fylakas had arranged a team of McKesson Group investment advisors to assist, but bottom line was that for all intents and purposes, that credit card had no effective upper limit. Rob could have actually paid for the Pai Lung if Andy had sold it for its real cost.

"I think you'd better take me home to show me off to your parents before the check bounces, don't you?" He said after we were alone.

"Really?" I said.

"Yes, and I think my parents should meet you as well. We've been sleeping in the same bunk in outer space for months after all, they probably know we're a couple."

My name is Wendy Fellowes, and I'm a Geek. But I'm not just a geek. Not anymore.

Rob's parents were closest, so after a couple more days in shuttling between Boston and New York, meeting a few people who were among the group that Doctor Fylakas promised would be making Rob filthy rich, they headed there first. Rob's dad had worked for the railroad most of his life, and still did, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, where Rob had grown up. They flew in aboard an Obsidian Research executive transport.

Perhaps its due to the highly regulated nature of the industries, but the move to grav cars for air travel and transport had seemed to happen overnight. Industry and government had both jumped in and quickly made changes to standards, both legal and technical, that encouraged and supported it. Still, the rapid change had caused a good deal of panic and pain in the transportation industry, and to those who worked in it. People like Rob's dad.

The rail industry had been one of the quickest to recover though, because they had all these centuries old right-of-ways that made perfect surface air car and grav transport corridors. They also had the infrastructure and people in place for tracking and managing the increased traffic. The old rails themselves gave the still developing air car auto piloting systems something to lock onto.

Bert and Katherine Young met them at the Fort Dodge Airport. Rob and Wendy's pilot Luke had instructions to keep his Q-Tap on and stay in the area. He could sleep, eat, play tourist or whatever until they were ready for him again. They had packed a small bag each, and the first thing they did was make a stop for lunch. The place they stopped, called the Community Orchard, was right next to the airport, and seemed to be have more of an emphasis on apples and ciders, but they served a nice light lunch, and their apple pie was delicious!

While they ate, they chatted.

The changes, good and bad, hit Rob and his family at the same time they had hit the rest of the people in the transportation sector. It had been the Young family's good fortune that Mrs. Young had a decent job, working as assistant principal at Fair Oaks middle school, when all the confusion hit the industry. They were able to live on her income for a couple of years while Bert 'got himself reeducated' as he liked to describe it. The Young's were very early adjusters, and Rob had been very young during those couple of transition years.

Over the next four days Wendy got the dime tour of all the places Rob grew up in, the barber shop, the burger joint, the swimming hole and the old high school. They met a few old acquaintances, but only a couple. After dinner the couple went for a drive, looking at some of the out of the way places Rob remembered, finishing it off with Fort Dodge's version of every American small town's lover's lane make out spot and they gave the high school kids a little competition, but only for a little while. Rob's room was at the complete opposite end of the house from his parent's, and Rob couldn't wait to fulfill a certain goal. Wendy didn't try to be quiet that night at all, and she thought Rob appreciated it, at least as much as she appreciated his efforts to make her be noisy. The resulting round of smiling and blushing faces at the breakfast table seemed to indicate success.

Over breakfast, Rob and Wendy gave them the news about potentially zooming off to the moons of Jupiter for a year or so. That news, coming so soon after our recent trip to Mars was hard to swallow, but we set them up with their own pair of Q-Taps, running off our pool of free addresses. It was still a bit complicated to tie into the existing phone system, but it was doable.

"With these, you could get in touch with us pretty reliably, even if we were playing around in Jupiter's orbit." they promised.

"Rob is one of the three official co-inventors of this new system, and he's probably going to be a billionaire by the time we get back from this trip." Wendy said with pride.

"don't tell anyone though, okay?" Rob asked. "You'll never get a moment of peace and quiet if people think you've got money."

The Q-Taps and a couple nicely printed and framed color pictures of the two of them together on Mars were what they left behind after their two day visit. Wendy got very nice hugs from both parents, and particularly Rob's mom.

"I'm so happy Rob has found someone nice." She whispered into Wendy's ear when they dropped the couple back off at the airport.

From the flatlands of Fort Dodge, they headed to Wendy's hometown of Port Angeles, Washington. In some ways it makes Fort Dodge seem like a large city. Nestled in the rain forests and mountains of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, it looks and feels small, but its actually more overpowered than anything else. It is overpowered by the sea, the trees and the mountains.

Luke dropped them off at the William R. Fairchild International Airport before heading over to Seattle himself for a couple of days of fun in the Emerald City. Rob and Wendy were met by Wendy's parents, Tom and Erica. Rob thought it a bit pretentious for such a small and seemingly out-of-the-way airport to call itself an 'international' airport, but with Vancouver Island and Canada just across the straits of Juan de Fuca, there was probably as much traffic in and out of Canada from Port Angeles as there was to Seattle.

They didn't do the stop for lunch routine here, they did the drive-through for lunch routine, cruising through a place called Frugals to pick up burgers, fries and milkshakes — a local institution Rob was told, and always Wendy's first stop whenever she got home.

"I used to work there at the pick up window when I was in high school." Wendy said as they went through.

"It's where I learned the advantages of showing a little cleavage." Wendy whispered into Rob's ear. "The tips were much better on the days I didn't wear a bra."

Rob filed that little tidbit away. Perhaps it could come in handy when the boredom set in during the long journey to Jupiter.

Home was just a short drive away from this stop. The Fellowes lived on Park Avenue. No Really! East Park Avenue, about halfway between the Olympic National Park Visitors Center and the Peninsula Golf Club.

The four of them sat at the kitchen table and ate their burgers and had a chat that had familiar echoes of the one conducted over lunch just a few days ago in Fort Dodge. Rob found out very quickly that Tom was not Wendy's biological father. Erica and Wendy's biological father had divorced when she was three, and Erica had met and married Tom a few years later. Biological or not, Wendy obviously worshiped Tom, and proved that she was a genuine 'daddy's girl' multiple times during their stay there.

Having grown up in Fort Dodge, Rob found the scenery breathtaking. It was quite a bit cooler here than it had been in Iowa, and the breeze, while seemingly as unending as the ones he was familiar with on the Iowa plains, was coming off the ocean and had a bite to it that he wasn't used to as well.

"Windbreakers and sweaters are more than a fashion statement around here." Wendy told him.

Rob took her advice, following her example, and for the next few days hiked, boated, fished and explored. Mr. Fellowes didn't have a boat, but he had a couple friends who did, so they got to go salt water fishing one day, freshwater fishing the last day, and threw in a little kayaking in between.

While in Port Angeles they met Wendy's high school science teacher, her old boss at Frugals, two of her best friends from grade school, one of whom was now teaching at the school they had gone to, and several other locals of various levels of significance in her life. Wendy seemed to have deep roots in her home town, much deeper than the roots he had put down in Fort Dodge, Rob thought. He chalked it up to her more outgoing personality.

When they left Port Angeles even their Obsidian pilot said he'd had fun in the pacific northwest! Rob 'tapped' Andy through the Q-net and let him know they were on their way. Once again it seemed they were scheduled to arrive around lunch time.

The Calavaras County airport had turned into what people referred to as a 'hop and go'. A small, municipal airport that was almost exclusively devoted to small private and charter grav car traffic that used the road systems for local traffic and then hit a hop and go to make the transition to city-to-city or longer range medium and high altitude air corridors. Our transport wasn't designed for surface roads, so Andy and Cor met them there in an old minivan that was still using rubber tires!

"It does have a fusion engine." Andy told me when I remarked on the tires. "Its not a total antique, but my grandparents bought it for doing just this sort of thing. Back in the day, my parents and their friends used to require a lot of hauling around, and then as the first few moves towards what would become Obsidian Research were happening, my Mom and Dad hauled a lot of people in and out of town. Wait until you see their 'normal' cars."

The McKesson house was almost what you would call rustic. It actually sat on some farm acreage, though it didn't look like there was any farming going on. There was a two story wooden house with a wooden picket fence in the front and a garden and patio in the back.

They met Andy's Grandmother Liz and Grandfather Gerald. The six of them ate lunch together on the patio, a seemingly simple salad with sun-dried tomatoes, cheese, bell peppers and homemade croûtons. It was accompanied by an amazing wine with an apparently antique and unreadable label that Grandma Liz called an 'imported Andy special'.

They sat on the patio and watched Grandma Liz tend her garden while Andy and his Grandpa talked to them about money and the Pai Lung.

"Rob, your piece of the Q-net is going to be huge, but your patents on the sensor technology are going to almost equal it in the long run." Andy said. "The entertainment and news industry are scrambling to adapt to the new technology, and it's also making waves in the search and rescue community. Especially in combination with Cor's new environment suits. Security firms and the military are gobbling the stuff up as well.

"As part of the development deal you signed with the McKesson Group, You gave us power of attorney to act in certain limited ways. One of these ways was in setting up an LLC and other corporate structures to facilitate creating a platform for your future financial and business dealings. One thing we've done is to create a corporation to take ownership of the ship and associated assets for you."

Mac, as Andy's grandfather preferred to be called, outlined the entire mechanism. The corporation was going to be jointly owned by McKesson Technologies and Rob Young. He would have 51% of the ownership equity. This allowed the ship and assets to be transferred to him without having to pay taxes on the literally billions of dollars of actual value. Over time Rob would buy more and more of the company, if I wanted to, until it was all his. The McKessons were willing to remain partners in it for as long as he wanted them. It was up to Rob to give it a name, and he chose something that would only make sense to Rob himself, calling it QuanTangle Research.

More papers were signed and then, symbolically, Rob handed Andy a dollar. He could practically feel the surge of energy that ran through him during that simple act!

Wendy was surprised when Rob's business talk was followed up with a little of her own. It turns out her power coupler ideas were a little more revolutionary than even she had guessed. Obsidian Technologies was licensing her coupler technology for use in all their fusion reactors, large and small. It was going to make for a nice steady income for her.

They got the money issues settled and moved on into operational concerns. The items were many and varied. Among them was word that Commander Brenneman would not be staying with the ship, preferring to move back into the previous position he had been holding

"It is pretty standard for the new owners of a commercial vessel to rename her." Mac told them. "Think about it."

Their second day in Angel's Camp they played golf in the morning while it was cool, and then went sailing on New Melones Lake in the afternoon. Wendy was quieter than normal, had been since the day before. Rob was thinking that she was finally letting the impact of what they were about to do hit her. The Moons of Jupiter! Rob liked the little sailboat, and the waters of the lake were great this time of year. They pulled into a quiet little finger of water and went for a swim.

They laid in the sun for a couple of hours, letting the warmth of the day soak in. Rob felt himself slip into that quiet, contemplative mode that he had found while he was in his space suit slowly letting the OPEE system bring him in to the moon base. Once again he was chasing tangled waveforms back and forth in his mind. These weren't really gravitic field structures though, but somehow he knew they contained them. They wrinkled and stretched and spun and coiled as he chased them through something he couldn't recognize.

As Rob and the little tangles spun off through the unknown something, little bits and pieces sparked off and fell away. He chased the sparks and saw them fall back along whatever invisible and unknown path they had been on. They were falling back into other tangles, more familiar ones. He reached out to grab a piece of tangled whatever.

Splash! He woke up with a wet face and the wind ruffling the sails.

"Looks like we're getting a bit of weather." Andy called. "Cor and I'll get the sails up for the run back to the dock."

"Have a nice nap?" Wendy asked as she kissed Rob's cheek and helped him sit up.

"Yeah." He answered, giving her a kiss in return.

Dinner in San Fransisco that night was at the Palio d'Asti. It was a favorite among the staff at the McKesson Group offices nearby. The top floor of the McKesson building was divided into suites for visiting staff, and they got a corner window right across the hall from Cor and Andy. That night Wendy took Rob in her arms and washed away the brightly colored tangles of his dream with a little tangling of their own.

The four of them got to play tourist for the first half of the day. Riding the cable cars down to the Buena Vista Cafe for breakfast and then spent the rest of the morning wandering through Fisherman's Warf.

Ghirardelli Square was the most fascinating to Rob, mostly for the history of it, and the story of its rescue from being turned into an apartment complex back in the 1960's. The Maritime Museum was cool as well, but they didn't have the time to give it the attention that it deserved. Most of the Wharf area was a little too commercial anyway, Rob thought.

The rest of the crew met them for lunch at Alioto's, right on the docks. It was a well known landmark on its own, and Andy had reserved them a large table with a good view of the boats and the water. There was a little teasing from everyone when they found out that Rob and Wendy had spent their extra time visiting both sets of parents.

"Looking pretty serious there Rob." Ike teased. Rob looked at Wendy, letting thoughts of her run through his head. He smiled as he did it and Wendy smiled even brighter as he did.

"Yes, I think you're right." He told Ike. "You and DeeDee seem pretty cozy too, or am I wrong?"

That managed to spread the teasing a little, and everyone spent an enjoyable lunch eating fresh crab and pasta. They were in a small banquet room, which still had a nice view of the docks, but despite the privacy, didn't talk business at all during lunch. They did do some reminiscing over the Mars trip, and their days in the dock at Nauru. With Ike, Mickey and Rob all at the table, the talk had to turn eventually to the Q-tap and the Q-Node system.

"I can tell you that McKesson's various holdings, the McKesson Group, Obsidian Technologies, Guardian Gravitics, the entire spectrum of companies have adopted the Q-tap." Andy said. "From top to bottom they've switched completely. We are selling systems now that have already threatened to completely replace the two way radio for police, taxi, ambulance and other 'radio dispatch' systems across the world."

"Didn't I see something on MSNBC the other night about the European Union voting on moving to the new system throughout Europe?" Chester Magill asked.

"The phone system in most of the European countries is notoriously unreliable, though it has gotten better in the past twenty years or so as fusion reactors and fuel cells have made their power grids more stable." Fred Wassermann commented. "They would love to find a solution that doesn't have to take the old infrastructure into account, I'm sure."

"There will be a lot of resistance in some countries to this." Victor Emanoff said. "The Q-taps cannot be monitored. Every conversation is utterly private and undetectable. Governments that like to spy on their citizens, or who keep long lists of those foreign governments they want to listen in on will not be happy."

"Our government will not be happy, but it will not be as bad as it was when our grandparents were our age." Coretta Ramirez added.

"It will make the drug lords happy." Alexandra spat.

"Perhaps it will." Andy answered. "But Rob's other big invention, the Sensor array, is already being used to flush them out of hiding within the mountains and jungles where they brew their evil."

That idea was where they picked up the conversation after finishing lunch and moving themselves, en masse, to the McKesson building.

"There will be unintended and unanticipated consequences to your inventions, actions and discoveries." Andy told them. "Do not let concerns over consequences sway you. You are explorers, discoverers, inventors and builders. Do those things while you can and let good people back home worry about shepherding civilization past the rough spots that might result."

They were a room full of bright people, and they all had some spark of creativity to varying degrees, though Victor Emanoff might disagree with his being including in that assessment. The group could have tossed the philosophical side of life and living around for hours, but that's not why they were here, Rob thought, starting to chafe a little, tugging at the bit, so to speak.

"Folks, lets get down to business, shall we?" Andy announced suddenly.

Everyone settled down immediately. 'Maybe I wasn't the only one who'd been thinking it was time to get busy!' Rob thought.

"Since we all saw each other a few weeks ago, I have indeed sold the Pai Lung. It is now owned by QuanTangle Research, a Limited Liability Corporation whose majority owner is Rob Young."

Andy paused there for a second to sweep the room with an evil grin.

"I hear that Rob might be hiring. Anyone looking for an exciting job in outer space?"