Kyle and Jessie walked past the wooden door with the inset glass rectangles at the entry to Emily Hollander's Madacorp office and encountered her secretary, Tiffany, a tall thin blonde woman.
Tiffany said, "Good afternoon Mr. Trager, Ms. Taylor. You can go right in, they're waiting for you."
"Thank, you, Tiffany," Kyle acknowledged and they walked through the door into Emily's office. As they did, Emily and Mike Kasperson rose from the small table at one side of her office and came to greet them.
"Kyle, Jessi, It's good to see you again," Emily said, "Mike wanted to be here for our meeting today."
"It wasn't really necessary," Mike smiled. "Emily is perfectly capable of handling this; I just didn't want to get left out of the fun."
They shook hands and then sat around the table. Emily said, "How did your session go with the technical staff?"
Kyle smiled, "It's going slowly. They're having a hard time believing the assembly system will work. They're struggling with the concepts involved."
Emily looked concerned, "They are building the first assembly systems aren't they? You gave them plans. They don't actually have to understand all the concepts at this stage. They do have to build and test them."
"They are building them," Kyle assured her. "They just want to understand what they are doing."
"I don't blame them," Mike said. "These are highly respected PhD's with quite a few patents among them. They expect to know what they are doing."
"They will probably have more confidence in the design after they start producing quantum batteries themselves," Kyle admitted. "We brought two more of them from Kesdet for your testing program. We're going to keep making them there until you can make your own."
"What's their reaction to those?" Mike asked. "They've had a chance to test them extensively by now."
"They are still spending a lot of time trying to figure out what the trick is," Kyle smiled.
"Do you think they'll figure them out?" Mike said. "You said you didn't know precisely what was going on at the atomic level that you had to design them at the metaphor level."
"You misunderstand me," Kyle explained. "They're trying to figure out how we are pulling off the fraud. Some of them don't believe it really works. They assume there must be an external power source. The currently favored theory is beamed power. They have been testing them in shielded containers. Of course, they still work."
"How could they doubt that they work?" Emily frowned. "They can see them in operation."
"Emily, this technology is so advanced that it's like alien technology to them," Mike said. "I'm not surprised that there is a degree of skepticism."
"That's the other popular theory," Jessi said with a smile. "They think we are taking them out of a flying saucer."
"Really?" Emily asked, amazed.
"I don't know if they're serious or just joking," Kyle said. "Sometimes people imagine aliens when they are dealing with something they don't understand."
I remembered how Josh had been convinced I was an alien when I first arrived at the Trager house, keeping of book of all of the unusual things I did as his 'evidence' that I was of alien origin. In some ways, the scientists who were trying to understand the quantum battery were acting just as Josh had done.
"Well, as long as they're building the assembly systems, they can imagine it's from an alien space ship if they want to," Emily laughed. Then she became more businesslike, "My job is to get this business off the ground as soon as possible." She opened her folder and pulled out a document, "Here's the contract for the joint venture between Madacorp and Kesdet that you drew up, Kyle. Our lawyers have looked it over and have approved it – they actually said it was very well written. I have the approval of my board," she nodded at Mike who nodded back, "to commit Madacorp to the project. If you're still in agreement we can get this signed and I can start the process of building the joint venture."
"We're ready," Kyle said. He looked at Jessi and she nodded.
"Good," Emily said. She flipped to the signature page and signed and dated it, then passed it across to Kyle, saying, "Who's going to sign for Kesdet?"
"We both will," Kyle said. He quickly flipped through the pages and then signed it and passed it to Jessi who also signed. She passed the signed document back to Emily.
Emily put the document back into her folder, "Good, we all agree that speed is essential. I've been doing the work here using some of my miscellaneous research and development funds. I am going to fund the new company and get it started. The board authorized an initial ten million dollar fund. We're going to continue to do the pilot development here at Madacorp with the new company renting space. We're also going to build up a sales and marketing staff and start to reach out to potential customers on a nondisclosure basis." She smiled at Kyle and Jessi and said, "We not only have to make them, we have to sell them."
"That was why we came to you," Kyle said. "We didn't want to have to do all of that ourselves."
Emily turned to Mike and asked, "Is there anything you want to add?"
"No, everything is moving ahead," Mike said. "This is going to change the world. I just wanted to be here to watch it happen."