“Who is that?” she asked. “You don’t look happy to see them.”
“I am not,” he affirmed. “That is someone from work, Olga, so if you do not mind, I really do not want him to meet you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Just, please,” he got a little frantic again, “trust me. I do not want you to know these people. Let me share a secret with you. I really, really like you.”
She smiled warmly. “I feel the same.”
Normally, Kasper would be flushing in ecstasy at this, but the urgency of the trouble he was dealing with, out-weighed the pleasant. “So, then you will understand that I do not want to mix someone who makes me smile with someone I detest.”
To his surprise, she grasped his predicament entirely. “Of course. I will drive off to the shop after you get out. I need some olive oil for my Ciabatta anyway.”
“Thank you for understanding, Olga. I will come call on you when all this is sorted out, alright?” he promised, squeezing her arm gently. Olga leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, but she said nothing. Kasper got out of the car and heard it drive away behind him. There was no sign of Karen, and he hoped that Olga would remember the half-jack she asked for as reward for the baking all morning.
Kasper tried to look nonchalant as he walked up the driveway, but the fact that he had to round the exorbitant vehicle parking his in, scratched like sandpaper at his composure. Seated on Kasper’s stoop chair, as if he owned the place, was the reprehensible Clifton Tuft. In his hand he cradled a bunch of Greek grapes, plucking them off one by one and popping them between his equally oversized teeth.
“Aren’t you supposed to be back in the United States already?” Kasper sneered, keeping his tone between mockery and misplaced humor.
Clifton cackled, believing the latter. “Sorry to encroach on you like this, Kasper, but I believe you and I have business to discuss.”
“That is rich, coming from you,” Kasper replied, unlocking his door. He intended to make it to his laptop before Tuft could see that he had been trying to find David Purdue.
“Now, now. There is no rule book that says we cannot rekindle our former partnership, is there?” Tuft twanged in his trail, simply assuming he was invited in.
Kasper quickly minimized the window and closed the lid of his laptop. “Partnership?” Kasper scoffed with a chuckle. “Did you partnership with Zelda Bessler not yield the results you hoped for? I believe I was merely the surrogate, the foolish mastermind, to the two of you. What is the matter? Does she not know how to apply the intricate mathematics or has she run out of outsourcing ideas?”
Clifton Tuft nodded with a bitter smile. “Take all the low blows you want, my friend. I will not disagree that you earned that resentment. After all, you are correct in all those assumptions. She does not have a clue how to proceed.”
“Proceed?” Kasper frowned. “On what?”
“Your previous work, of course. Is that not the work you believed she stole from you to her own credit?” Tuft asked.
“Well, yes,” the physicist affirmed, yet he still looked a bit flabbergasted. “I just… thought… I thought you scrapped that failure.”
Clifton Tuft grinned and placed his hands in his sides. He tried to swallow his pride gracefully, but it meant nothing, coming across as just awkward. “That was not a failure, not completely. Um, we never told you this after you left the project, Dr. Jacobs, but,” Tuft hesitated, looking for the softest way to break the news, “we never ceased the project.”
“What? Are you all out of your fucking minds?” Kasper seethed. “Do you even realize the repercussions of the experiment?”
“We do!” Tuft assured him earnestly.
“Really?” Kasper called his bluff. “Even after what happened to George Masters, you still believe you can involve biological components into the experiment? You are as insane as you are stupid.”
“Hey now,” Tuft warned, but Kasper Jacobs was too deep into his sermon to care what he said and to whom it was offensive.
“No. You listen to me,” the usually introverted and modest physicist grunted. “Admit it. You are just the money here. Cliff, you don’t know what the difference is between a variable and a cow’s udder and we all know it! So please, stop inferring that you understand what you are really funding here!”
“Do you realize what kind of money we could make if this project is successful, Kasper?” Tuft insisted. “It will render all nuclear weapons, all nuclear energy sources obsolete. It will invalidate all current fossil fuels and their mining. We will spare the earth more drilling and fracking. Don’t you see? If this project is successful, there will be no wars over oil or resources. We will be the sole provider of inexhaustible energy.”
“And who will be buying it from us? You mean, you and your court of nobles will benefit from it all, and those of us who made it happen will be kept on to manage the generating of this energy,” Kasper set it out for the American billionaire. Tuft could not really debunk any of it as hogwash, so he just shrugged.
“We need you to make this happen, regardless of Masters. What happened there was human error,” Tuft coaxed the reluctant genius.
“Yes, it was!” Kasper gasped. “Yours! You and your high and mighty lapdogs with white coats. It was your error that almost killed that scientist. What did you do after I left? Did you pay him off?”
“Forget about him. He has what he needs to live out his life,” Tuft informed Kasper. “I will quadruple your salary if you come back to the facility just once more to see if you can mend Einstein’s equation for us. I will make you head physicist. You will have full control of the project, as long as you can assimilate it into the current project by October 25th.”
Kasper threw his head back and laughed. “You are fucking kidding me, right?”
“No,” Tuft replied. “You make this happen, Dr. Jacobs, and you will go down in the history books as the man who usurped Einstein’s genius and surpassed it.”
Kasper soaked up the oblivious magnate’s words and tried to understand how such an articulate person could have such trouble fathoming catastrophe. He deemed it necessary to take a simpler, calmer tone to try one last time.
“Cliff, we know what will be the result of a successful project, right? Now, tell me, what happens if that experiment goes wrong again? Another thing I need to know up front is who you plan to use as guinea pig this time?” Kasper asked. He made sure that he sounded sold on the idea to ascertain the rotten details of the plan Tuft was hatching with the Order.
“Not to worry. You just make the equation apply,” Tuft said secretively.
“Good luck, then,” Kasper sneered. “I am not part of any project unless I know the bare bone facts around which I am to facilitate chaos.”
“Oh, please,” Tuft scoffed. “Chaos. You are so dramatic.”
“The last time we tried to apply the Einstein Equation, our test subject got fried. This proves that we cannot successfully launch this project without human casualties. It works, in theory, Cliff,” Kasper explained. “But in practice, generating the intra-dimensional energy will cause a backdraft into our dimension, frying every human being on this planet. Any paradigm including a biological component into this experiment will lead to extinction. All the money in the world cannot pay that ransom, buddy.”
“Again, that negativity has never been the foundation of progress and breakthrough, Kasper. Jesus Christ! Do you think Einstein thought this impossible?” Tuft tried to convince Dr. Jacobs.
“No, he knew it was possible,” Kasper countered, “and that is the very reason he tried to destroy the Dire Serpent. You fucking imbecile!”