The Science Of Love: A Billionaire BWWM Romance (13 page)

The
group slowly filed out of the conference room back into the warehouse
direction. They hardly glanced at the three new-comers who had
entered the room. Jada thought she saw one of the young women at the
point of tears when she left.

“
Chief,”
Jason began, “these are the people you had me bring from the
motel, Mr. and Mrs. David and Jada Smith.”

The
three of them shook hands, but Jada had the distinct feeling the
older scientist was not enthused at touching her palm. Simmons
motioned to the chairs around the table and asked them to sit down.
Once seated, he began talking.

“
I’m
sorry you had to see me in such a mood,” he told them, “but
my investors are clamoring for results. It’s not been easy
keeping them on board, although I send them all weekly progress
reports. This isn’t a software start-up, such as you might be
familiar with, where you can code something specifically to do a
particular job. I have to have things built from scratch which have
never been tested. If something fails, we are back to ground zero. My
investors don’t understand what we have to do to get the first
watt of power out of the reactor and they seem to think I’ll
have something to sell to Pennsylvania Electric next week. I wish it
was that simple. How was your flight?”

“
Good,
Dr. Simmons,” Jada answered for David. “Your driver
brought us directly here after you didn’t answer the emails we
had been sending. We took a chance coming down here not knowing if we
would even be able to see the reactor or not.”

“
Oh
you can see the reactor,” he told them, “but it’s
not operational. I have another two months before the final test.”

“
Have
you been able to get the Tokamak running at all?” she asked
him.

“
Not
until we get all the superconductors operational,” he told her.
“And then there is the problem of controlling the reaction
itself. If we don’t tackle the cooling issue, the wall of the
reactor will melt and shut it all down.”

David
let Jada do the talking at this point as it was something she
understood much better than he did. Jada was in her environment the
same way she was on the dance floor, spinning the talk of high energy
particles as she did in her movements. David felt he was watching a
game of Go with his wife trying to out maneuver the older scientist
at every turn. He brought up the new design of the reactor on a large
screen with a projector showing her how they planned to contain the
fusion temperatures and where the high energy neutrons would be
utilized. It was in a realm of which he had little understanding, but
Jada seemed to know what he was talking about and that was all David
cared about.

“
I
suppose you want to see it all,” Simmons said to them. “I’ll
get you some protective gear; you don’t want to bang your head
on anything.”

“
My
wife is pregnant,” David announced. “Shouldn’t she
stay away from all that radiation?”

“
There
is no radioactivity out there,” Simmons stammered, trying to
contain his anger. “There is more radiation from the sun than
you will find in this place. I’m not working with nuclear
weapons or fission reactors.”

“
My
husband’s field is computers and the internet,” Jada told
Simmons. “I feel safe enough to go out there with what you have
told me so long as nothing is starting up.”

“
We
won’t even try to activate the Tokamak until next month,”
Simmons replied. “I am nowhere near the go or no go point.”

They
left the conference room and went into the warehouse, walking past
all kinds of partially assembled devices on skids. Simmons explained
he’d been able to salvage most of what he was using from older
parts. This had kept the cost of building the pilot unit under
control, but there were parts he couldn’t salvage from anything
out there and had to be built from scratch and shipped to the island.
It was one of the constant frustrations he felt in trying to make the
pilot plant operational.

They
crossed over from the concrete block building to the hut. Inside, a
team of local men were working with Simmons’ acolytes to fit a
key part into the experimental Tokamak reactor. A crane was in
operation and lowering some piece of heavy electronic equipment into
the central unit. Four of the group who had been inside the
conference room were pouring over their tablets and plans, making
sure it was being inserted just the right way. They were relaxed
until they saw Simmons enter the room and tried to look as busy as
possible. Simmons walked over to one of them and took the tablet from
the young man, glanced at it, nodded and handed it back. He returned
to Jada and David while the intern let out a sigh of relief.

“
Impressive,”
Jada said to him. “It can be operated from inside this room?”

“
We’ll
have a control center on the second floor during the test,”
Simmons told them, pocketing a screw he discovered on the floor in
his shop coat. “I don’t take chances.”

They
spent the afternoon in Simmons’ office discussing the
possibilities of thermonuclear power. Jada felt an operation pilot
plant had a good chance of convincing the public in using fusion to
create electricity. David tried to follow the arguments, but did
understand the amount of money the process stood to make if it was
operational and the sums were staggering. The environmental benefits
alone were worth getting the pilot plant up and running. But Simmons
was far from what he needed to do.

They
thanked him for his time and told Simmons a decision would need to be
made with the corporation’s board of directors. He told them
any money at this stage would help and looked forward to hearing from
them. Simmons had Jason drive them back to the motel.

“
I’m
a little surprised you stayed at this motel,” Jason told them
on the way back. “Wouldn’t a big place in the city been
better for you. This motel isn’t the most exclusive place
around.”

“
Yes,”
David told him, “but it is close to the project and we wanted
to have a look as quickly as possible.”

They
spent the rest of the day at the motel, planning on what to do when
they got back. Jada was still trying to decide how the house should
be decorated and where the nursery would go. The beach was open and
they went down to it. Not having been near salt water in years, David
found swimming in the ocean to be a lot different from the lakes and
inside pools was used to. They relaxed on the shore, watching the sun
go down. The people strolling by had no idea two of the wealthiest
people on the planet were sitting there and that was the way they
wanted it.

“
So
what did you think of his operation?” Jada asked David as they
sat on the shore.

“
If
the numbers are right,” he said, “This pilot plant will
change everything. I don’t have a clue how he’s going to
control the technology. Once the news gets out about how he did it,
everyone is going to try and find a way to duplicate it.”

“
Which
is why we have to be the first,” she said. “We need to
make sure it gets used to help the world, not enslave it. There are
plenty of people out there who would do all they could to keep it
from ever being used unless they controlled it.”

Holding
hands, they walked along the shore line, just another interracial
couple from North America. David and she reflected on how their very
marriage would have been forbidden in many places a few decades ago.
They still drew a shocked look from some people. Jada was stunning on
the shore, turning quite a few heads and getting admiring glances
from the men.

They
returned to the motel and slept soundly until being awoke the next
morning for the flight back to Pittsburgh. A cab took them to the
airport and they caught another prop plane to Miami where a passenger
jet took them back to the city they had come from. It was a dull
flight, but it gave them the chance to talk about funding the pilot
plant.

“
Did
you know Bob Guiccone tried to have one built in the early eighties?”
he asked her as they were flying home.

“
Bob
who?” she asked.

“
The
man who founded and published
Penthouse
magazine, which used to be a big rival to
Playboy
.
He had this plan to build a casino in Atlantic City and use the
profits to finance a thermonuclear reactor.”

“
What
happened?”

“
Never
got the funding he claimed he needed. The project died on the vine.
Then he and his wife passed away years later, so we’ll never
know what could have happened.”

By the
time the plane touched down in Pittsburgh, they were still trying to
decide whether or not to put any money into Simmons’ project.
Jada thought it was worth buying some of the stock in his corporation
because the principles behind it were fundamentally sound. David felt
it was too big of a gamble. He might get it going, and then he might
not.

At home,
David sat and watched TV in between looking at some reports from his
company. There were other computer companies out there interested in
what they were doing and would be closing in on their demographic
before long. As much money as he had made from it, there was nothing
guaranteed about his company being around even in a year.

He
turned on the TV again and watched some news reports. Gas prices were
rising again. Economic refugees swarming across the globe in search
of a better life. The poor of the world knew there had to be a pot of
gold across the rainbow and were determined to reach it. And who
could blame them? A life on a dirt floor was enough to make anyone
take a chance sailing across the ocean on a leaking boat. Perhaps the
entire world was one big leaking boat.

But what
about the stars? What had happened to all those old dreams of
reaching out there, expanding into the solar system and beyond. Not
enough fuel to do it and too costly. Mass drivers would have to be
built at an enormous cost. If there was only a way to make fuel
cheaper. If there was only a way to make the future cheaper.

David
glanced over to the nursery where Jada was studying color patterns.
She had been working for days on it, even before they left for St.
Matthews. What kind of world would their children inherit? The stars
or living in a fortress while the rest of humanity waited for scraps
to be tossed out the window.

And he
reached his decision. He would throw his money into the pilot plant
Dr. Simmons was building on the island of St. Matthews.

David
told Jada of his decision the next day. He was kissing her good-bye
as she left to teach her final week of dance instruction. The studio
owner and she had agreed it would be wise for Jada to take some time
off until she had the baby. With her studies at the college becoming
more intense, Jada had wanted to focus on her degree. David supported
her in every way he could and was quietly over-joyed she was quitting
the dance school so they could spend more time together. He was
depressed enough as they were forced to drastically curtail their
love-making, but not even seeing her on some days was more than he
could take. All he wanted to do was spend his off hours with her in
his arms.

“
I’m
glad you are doing it,” she told him. “We both know the
company could end tomorrow; it’s the way the business cycles
run these days. If you have the cash to invest, put it into something
everyone is going to need. Energy is the best option you have. And
don’t do it for me, do it for our children.” She closed
the door and walked across the same parking lot where David had seen
her for the first time in years. He watched her backside encased in
the skin-tight dancer clothes she wore bounce along until she opened
the door and went inside the studio.

He
picked her up from the studio and helped Jada carry out all the gifts
she had received from the staff and students. She was loved by
everyone where she worked, something David could not understand. He’d
been at too many places where nice people were turned into asphalt.
The first job he’d had out of college involved a supervisor who
delighted in making the employees come in and work on weekends just
to get the weekly production ready. Jada’s world was so much
different than his. He stood inside the door, trying not to interfere
with her going away party. She finally took out the ultrasound
pictures and showed everyone on her smart phone which resulted in
cries of delight from the other instructors and dancers.

He tried
to think of a way to present his reasons for investing in the Simmons
project to the other board members at his company. He controlled most
of the stock, so David could pretty much do what he wanted. However,
if he took the gamble alone and it failed, he would never get anyone
to loan him money again. So unless he had the full backing from the
board of directors, he couldn’t do it. All he needed was a way
to convince them. David knew this was the direction to take the
company; he just lacked the powers of persuasion.

It was
late one night when he was in bed with Jada that he finally hit on
the way to get them to see the logic in putting money into the
Tokamak reactor. Jada was naked and sleeping quietly in his arms. She
had felt the baby move and he wanted her to get some rest, so they
went to bed early. She was showing a lot now, her lithe figure no
longer able to hide the advancing pregnancy. David was naked as well,
although it was for closeness to his wife more than anything else.
He’d taken a bath with her that evening in the new whirlpool
and helped her with some course work. He ebony body was resting
peacefully on his alabaster chest. David ran one hand down her head
as careful as he could. He’d braided her hair once again, an
act which made him feel especially close to his wife. And when he
looked at her hand on his chest and saw the glitter of diamonds in
her wedding ring, he knew what he had to do.