Kyle and Jessi entered the glass atrium of Madacorp and went through the metal detectors, waving their 'UNRESTRICTED' badges at the security guards. They passed under the displays announcing 'Technology, Science, Art, only one company integrates all three for the benefit of mankind, Madacorp, building foundations for tomorrow', and went directly to the private elevator off to one side of the main elevator bank. Kyle leaned over for the retinal scan.

While we waited for the elevator, I thought about the first time I had come here. Madacorp had been a hostile organization, my enemy. Now, there were just friends here, people really working for the betterment of mankind. Jessi and I had been very successful at converting old enemies to new friends. There had been costs, though, and we were still saddened by them. Foss had been with me on that first encounter.

When the elevator arrived at the executive floor, Kyle and Jessi went directly to Emily Hollander's office, by now a familiar place. As they entered the outer office, Tiffani smiled at them, "Mr. Trager, Ms. Taylor, go right on in. They're waiting for you."

"Thank you, Tiffani," Kyle said. They went through the wooden door with the rectangular glass windows inset into Emily Hollander's office. As Tiffany had said, Emily and Mike Kasperson were seated at the coffee table near the windows of Emily's office. As Kyle and Jessi entered the room they both stood up to greet them.

Emily said, "Kyle, Jessi, it's good to see you again." She shook hands with each of them as did Mike Kasperson.

Mike said, "I haven't seen the two of you since the board meeting. Congratulations on your new positions, both of you. I'm really happy with the direction you are taking Latnok."

"It's the direction we all wanted," Kyle said. "What Latnok was supposed to be."

"Shall we sit down?" Emily suggested. "Mike and I were just going over the latest production figures on the quantum battery project."

As they sat down, Kyle pulled a DVD out of his pocket and handed it to Emily. "Here's our review of the latest Madacorp financial data that you sent us. We didn't find as many problems as we did last time."

Emily took the disk. "My staff will be relieved," She chuckled. "They're still working on some of the insights you gave us last time. We're certainly getting our money's worth from our consulting contract."

"We're glad to help," Kyle said.

Mike smiled, "That was definitely one of my better ideas."

Emily passed them each a stack of pages, "Here's the latest report on the Quantum Battery project."

Mike and Emily watched in amusement as Kyle and Jessi quickly flipped through the pages. Jessi finished a second before Kyle and looked at him triumphantly. When he finished, Kyle smiled at her, "Is everything a competition?"

Jessi just smiled in response.

Emily summarized, "As you can see, we're expanding our production capacity as fast as we can. We have people working twenty-four seven on this. All of the major auto manufacturers have purchased samples for their research and development and want more." She smiled, "They are desperate for everything we can give them."

"You are charging twenty thousand dollars for each of them?" Kyle asked. "I thought we were going to charge less."

"I know you want to keep the price down," Emily acknowledged. "And we've been telling them that our production prices will be much lower, but we might as well recoup some of our startup costs. It's certainly not inhibiting their interest."

"As long as the mass production price is in the range we talked about," Kyle agreed. "Jessi and I want this to be something that everyone can afford."

"It will be," Emily assured him, "But it's going to be a long time before we can begin to make enough of them to go around. They're happy to pay whatever we ask for the sample quantities they're getting."

"It looks like it's going well, then," Kyle nodded. He looked at both of them and then began a new topic, "Jessi and I have been looking at other things that can be done with the new technology. Not only with the barriers formed by the interweaving of the electron waves of the atoms in the lattice, but also the construction techniques that we designed to build the structures.

"Do you have something else?" Mike leaned forward.

"We think so," Kyle said. "We believe that we've been able to design a structure utilizing these techniques which can be used to overcome the repulsion between hydrogen atoms and allow fusion to take place at low energy levels."

"Cold fusion?" Mike raised his eyebrows.

"We think so," Kyle agreed.

"The potential for that would dwarf the quantum battery," Mike said.

"They go together," Kyle said. "Our design would require a significant amount of shielding. Hydrogen fusion would generate a dangerous neutron flux, so it's not suitable for transportation."

"You actually have a design?" Mike said.

Kyle pulled a disk from his pocket and set it down on the table. "We have a design, but we haven't tested it, except by computer simulation."

Jessi explained, "The necessary shielding as well as the rest of the supporting hardware makes it too large to do at our Kesdet offices."

"So we were thinking that our joint subsidiary could handle the testing," Kyle said. He tapped the disk. "Those are the plans for the necessary mechanisms."

"We are already building the first reaction core at our Kesdet offices," Jessi said. "It uses the same technology as the battery, just different programming to construct a different structure."

"It sounds like you're pretty confident it will work," Mike said.

"Our modeling indicates it will," Kyle assured him. "But we can't be sure until we actually test it."

"I lack your engineering background, Mike," Emily said, "But I do know people and if I'm reading you right, you're more excited about this than you were about the battery."

"Absolutely," Mike agreed. "It's the potential for virtually unlimited power. And Kyle is right, you put the two together and you can generate power to charge the batteries and use the batteries anywhere."

Emily looked at Kyle, "What type of financial arrangements are you considering."

"We want to add it to the mission of the subsidiary on the same basis as the battery," Kyle said. "It's really just an expansion into another part of the energy sector and it uses the same basic technology. There's a lot of synergy between the two inventions."

"Would we be willing to go along with this, Mike?" Emily asked.

Mike nodded, "Absolutely. It will increase our investment, but we're already generating a revenue stream from the battery so it will just push back the break even point. We can certainly look at their design and start putting together the plans to test this idea." He looked at Jessi, "You said you're building the reaction core already?"

"Yes," Jessi said. "It's very similar to the battery in size and construction."

"Then let's get started," Emily said.