Innovation

By Everett Stephenson, Jr

Is the United States losing its creative edge and unrivaled position in producing and commercializing big ideas for over a century? These stories explore contemporary issues where innovation is a central theme and characters push the envelope.

* A retired college professor in Savannah's Historic District is swept into a super-secret program designed to prevent autonomous machines from running amok.
* Returning home, a disabled vet helps hold a young family together, energizes a floundering business, and refuses to succumb to living as a broken man doing odd jobs and cleaning up behind the able-bodied people he fought for.
* Frustrated by escalating college costs and a lackluster job market, three students team up at a Homecoming party to develop and sell a radical military surveillance technology.
* Bored and unchallenged, a single working mother risks raising the National Security Threat Level to escape her humdrum life and re-kindle the competitive spirit of her youth.
* An idea from an incomplete item discarded during a garage sale could pay off big.
* If Henry Ford and Thomas Edison had allied Ford and GE, built electric cars, and relocated from Detroit to a mega-site in the South that Ford was promoting after WWI, how would history have been written?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462061273

Everett Stephenson, Jr

Ev Stephenson continues writing from his home on Talahi, a barrier island near Savannah, GA. His appetite for exploring technology, and fascination with creative people who apply it elegantly, are evident in this selected collection of stories.

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Copyright © 2011 by Everett Stephenson, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-6128-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-6127-3 (e)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 10/20/2011

Contents

Robots in the Palace

Heart of Coal

Mirage à Trois

Tractor Pull

The Last Garage Sale

Police Report

Robots in the Palace

Bobbie wondered who could be at the front door on this rainy Friday morning. The peephole revealed only the familiar UPS delivery man standing on the parlor floor stoop in brown shorts and a yellow slicker, beneath his dripping umbrella. Far more puzzling was why the NSA would have sent this overnight letter that she was now signing for. Strange things, both real and surreal, seem to happen around here, for little rhyme or reason. After all, in Savannah’s quaint old Historic District people have been known to walk an imaginary dog on a leash daily. On one memorable morning a few years ago, several rooms of furniture belonging to an apartment tenant who was behind on rent, were found neatly arranged in theatrical style, in Forsythe Park. On a nearby bench, a little old lady once found out that her new acquaintance wasn’t telling a fishy story, he was in reality the owner of the fictitious Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. Drama happens.

Bobbie Faye Sanford had taken early retirement from Armstrong Atlantic State University faculty over two years ago. She’d taught upper level and graduate courses in Technical Writing and Composition in the School of Business, cross-listed in the English Department. This was before her divorce from a commercial realtor, and after their only son transferred to Athens as a junior at UGA. Now kicked back comfortably in her State Street townhouse, she’d occasionally been tutoring students who contacted her through referrals and coaching a few nursing students in required courses for becoming LPN’s. Her name also came up in social circles from pro bono work helping small business candidates with grants and proposals, plus writing an occasional jacket blurb or book review at an author’s request. She’d recently written a program critique of the annual Savannah Book Festival and a book review of the 4th edition of Elements of Style, a classic reference for penmanship in business writing and the social sciences. No spring chicken, Bobbie didn’t actually recall what the acronym NSA even stood for until she read the letterhead, National Security Agency. Wikipedia quickly told her more than she wanted to know in the first two paragraphs that she scanned on the website, it’s a part of the DOD involved in encryption and information defense programs, whatever that amounts to.

She groaned aloud as she reluctantly opened the envelope, Why me? Did somebody steal my identity or something? Good luck with that.

The letter was short. Thank you for accepting our letter and considering our proposition. An Agreement form will be posted to your e-mail address as soon as we receive confirmation of receipt from the courier’s data logger. It explains our purpose and terms under which we are soliciting your participation in a new program. If you agree to the terms, you’ll immediately receive an instruction for obtaining your initial retainer fee and how to proceed.

Within seconds, the familiar bing announced activity on the laptop. Bobbie sat down and opened the message and an attachment that had just shown up in her Inbox.

Good grief, she thought, as she began to read. "An interdisciplinary team is being formed to monitor worldwide development of artificial intelligence and robotic systems. Your skills set from work in academia and in the private arena has been identified as a critical element of this team’s mission. Your participation will not be disclosed in any way to anyone and your assignment will not place you in any danger. Team members will not know the identity of others. The individual units which we will monitor and analyze among our world-wide collective of participants, which we call our farm, will be identified only by a PIN. All communications will be secure, no personal names, addresses, contacts, or photos will be permitted, and the network will operate with a micro-second delay utilizing a filter to prevent overt or unintentional disclosure. From this point on, if you or the NSA elect to abort your participation at any time, it can be accomplished instantly by typing our acronym NSA, then OUT, then NSA again, as one word, all caps with no spaces, in any message. If you choose to continue at this point and learn more, click on Agree, below, and Send."

Bobbie clicked the box beside Agree, out of curiosity. Out of common sense, she saved the file, closed it, hit Bookmark, re-entered the website shown as the sender, attached the file to a blank message, and sent it. So far, this could easily be a scam, just about anyone could mail a registered letter and send a few e-mails full of garbage.

When she returned from taking a shower brushing her hair, she dropped the brush into her robe pocket and opened a new message, also supposedly from NSA. They were looking more legit all the time. A dialog box opened.

She responded immediately, red flags flying.

Bobbie would never be caught dead buying lottery game cards. Whoever these people are, if they’d done a very good job of vetting her, they’d at least know that. Sounds like they just might be privy to her though, after she refused, they snapped up her counter offer as if they’d expected it. If they have somehow rigged the lottery as well, they may even know how far she’ll go, what her tolerance for risk is, or where she’ll throw in the towel. As she hit the speed dial on her old 1990’s vintage cordless phone, she jotted the lottery numbers down on an ATM receipt from her wallet. Pick me up at five-thirty, Robert? We’ve got a board meeting at the Jepson.

Robert was a gentle six-foot five Nam vet, a black fellow of talent in everything from selecting red wine to origami with dinner napkins, who nevertheless drifted from rooming house to seedy motel, nursing his addictions to liquor and women. Driving periodically for Yellow Cab when he was in the mood, he was a trusted confidante and conversationalist for a long list of locals who were perpetually amazed at his endless knowledge of events, people, and history. Visitors to Savannah who lucked into riding with Robert generally got out at their destination feeling as if they’d been run through an inverted episode of Cash Cab Savannah, where the driver answers all the questions they didn’t know to ask.

Robert was punctual as always. As he finished his usual small talk, Bobbie began her spiel, I’m feeling lucky today, Robert. Take me by Parker’s market on the way, I want to buy myself one Mega Millions ticket, and I’ll buy you a few as a tip. Make sure that you get individual playslips, now, in case you want to re-gift some of them. She handed him a twenty along with the ATM receipt where she’d written the designated number combinations, as they pulled into a space at Parker’s. Robert soon returned and handed her the stack of tickets, with her change and the ATM receipt on top. While he was busy scanning the rearview mirrors and backing out, Bobbie sneaked a look at the cards. As she suspected, the numbers on the bottom one appeared identical to hers. She discretely tucked the receipt and both cards away in her purse, handed him the remaining cards across the seat back, and thanked him for the short ride. Mission accomplished.

In a powder room at the Jepson Center For The Arts, Bobbie pulled out the two tickets. Robert had changed the last digit from a 2 to a 3 on the doctored playslip at the bottom that he intended to keep. He’d known she was up to something and tried to cop a freebie, but she’d seen enough of the other cards to know she’d foiled his only attempt. She had to giggle, imagining his consternation, now sitting somewhere at a red light, frantically flipping through the cards, and cursing. He’d be thinking that it wouldn’t have cost her anything to give me a break, dammit, but now she knows I’ve tried a sleight-of-hand move on her. Not good. For some reason, women are always a pain in my ass, if it isn’t this one, it’s that one… or another one. He turned down the volume of chatter on the dispatch radio, losing interest in the rest of the evening. He’d been so close to a windfall, but blew his only chance at gravy today. Clumsy is as clumsy does, he thought glumly.

The Jepson crowd was sparse and the agenda included nothing in her area of interest or expertise. She left early and caught a ride to 17Hundred90 with Amy Lancaster, a residential real estate salesperson. The bar was refreshingly quiet, a few familiar faces and couples paying up, migrating to the dining room for the second seating of the evening. Over a glass of Chardonnay, Amy was glum. Sales were zilch, and she was living off of credit cards and a home equity loan, both soon to be maxed out. I’ll be walking dogs for subsistence soon. Know anybody with a pooch that’s home alone, crossing its legs? This is getting totally crazy. Nobody is buying anything anymore except the FDIC, sweeping up failing banks and foreclosures.

Funny you mention it. I’ve just gotten an off-the-wall business proposal, first a letter and now e-mails and on-line chats. It’s not like any of the Nigerian scams or anything else I’ve read about, it could even be legit. I probably shouldn’t even be talking about it, it’ll probably just end up being some embarrassment and I’ll wish I’d told them where to get off immediately. Call the cops if I show up missing.

Back home and dry on State Street, Bobbie fidgeted about, waiting for the lottery website to update the Winners. During a commercial break in local TV news, she clicked on Today’s Winning Mega Millions. Five of the six number pairs matched on both tickets. She’d just won $20,000. Holy mother! These guys are for real, and I’m in over my head even before I start. Shakily, she poured herself a shot of Maker’s Mark with a splash of water. In a town of Scotch drinkers, Bobbie was the rare bourbon sipper.

On Monday, when she’d made a cup of instant coffee and gathered enough nerve to open the NSA chat room, their latest message was waiting in the dialog box:

nasty, not the other cartoonist Thomas or the publisher Condé.