Repairman Jack [02]-Legacies

Now they laughed and grinned and low-fived each other as they hurried off.

"All right," Jack said, pointing to Thomas. "Get to work."

Alicia looked around at the dark, empty, forbidding streets. But she didn't feel afraid. Jack seemed to be in his element, and in complete control.

"You're not listening to me," Thomas said. He'd been talking nonstop since they'd left his apartment.

"Start feeding the fire," Jack said. "And not too fast. We don't want to smother it."

Thomas finally got the idea. He reached into one of the boxes he'd carried here and pulled out a fistful of photos. Alicia watched them flutter into the can, curling and blackening as the hungry flames consumed them, destroying forever the hideous images they bore. She was in there, with Thomas, but other children were there as well… forced or duped like her into performing an obscene dance…

She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling almost giddy. She reminded herself that it was only a token, but still… now there would be one less set of prints in existence.

But Thomas didn't seem to care about the photos, seemed only half aware of what he was doing. All he cared about was the transmitter.

"The transmitter's the key, you know," he said, starting in again. "If you know its location, I can make us all wealthy beyond your wildest dreams."

Jack appeared uninterested. "If we have the transmitter, why do we need you?"

"Because your ownership of the technology will be challenged the instant you try to sell it."

"And yours won't?"

"Anybody trying to patent it will run into a wall. That's because…" He paused. "Let me back up and explain this. Then you'll know why you need me."

"This oughta be good," Jack said, glancing at her.

Alicia shrugged. "Just as long as you keep feeding the fire."

Broadcast power was all fine and good. But first she wanted to see those photos reduced to ash.

"I found out about Dad's invention when I stopped by to visit him one day."

"You stayed in touch?" she said. She found that hard to believe.

"Not really." He shrugged. "I was a little short, and he wasn't returning my calls. So I stopped by. Anyway, he left me cooling my heels while he talked on the phone, so I wandered around and noticed he'd left a couple of lamps burning here and there around the house. It being noon and all, and me being a good, ecologically minded son"—he grinned here, but Alicia wouldn't respond and Jack only stared at him—"I, uh, went to turn them off. But as I did, I noticed these little wires sticking up from the bases of their bulb sockets. I looked closer and realized that the damn lamps weren't plugged in. What was powering the bulbs? Had Dad developed some sort of battery-powered lamp? Out of curiosity, I began to tinker with one. By the time he finished his conference call, I'd figured it out."

"I'll bet he was thrilled," Alicia said.

"Hardly the word for it. Royally pissed was more like it. He started kicking me out, but then changed his mind. That mystified me then, but I understood why later. Dad wouldn't tell me anything about the technology itself, but he did explain why he didn't want word to get out about it just yet. You see, his invention isn't completely his. It utilizes a number of discoveries he made and technologies he developed while working for various universities and corporations over the years. Those organizations hold the patents on those technologies. They'd claim the lion's share—or possibly all—of the profits from his invention. So what he was doing was searching for a way to maintain ownership once he revealed it. He leant me the money I needed on the condition I kept mum."

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the other way around, Alicia thought. You promising to keep mum in exchange for cash.

"But I thought Dad's thinking was backward. If patent disputes were going to get in the way, he should come up with a way to make all those patents irrelevant. If going public with it meant losing all your profits, then find a way to profit from not bringing it to market. So I started asking myself: who stands to lose the most from broadcast power? And that gave me my answer: Sell the technology to OPEC."

His head swiveled back and forth, looking for approval. Alicia wasn't going to give him any, and Jack's face might as well have been cast in bronze.

"It's as brilliant as it is obvious, don't you think? I figured the Arabs'd be willing to pay billions to keep broadcast power off the market. So, without telling Dad, I 'borrowed' one of his lamps and booked a flight to Saudi Arabia. But I never got there. During the layover in Frankfurt, I discovered that the lamp didn't work. Panicked, I hurried back to the U.S.—where I found it did work. So there's a limit to how far the power can be broadcast."

Idly, Alicia wondered about the range, about what wave-form was used… but what she remembered from her one undergraduate physics course was woefully inadequate.