Page 15 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Black Pinhole Nanofurnace

A flashlight illumined my guileless countenance and the fake ID I
held at cheek level. I still felt no danger; nothing in Aitkens’ past
indicated violent tendencies, nor did he own any registered firearms.
“Stay there. I’m going to check this out.”
My ad hoc support staff was ready for that, of course. Ishtar
Investments was in the phone directory and any online search would
confirm that Boone Sellers was indeed a member in good standing of
the fraternity of Wall Street shills. No doubt I’d fail a retinal scan, but
Aitkens couldn’t afford to indulge his paranoia to that extent.
After a few minutes he noisily unlocked and unbolted the door. I
entered the inner sanctum of a crazy inventor. Apart from a long
workbench piled with apparatus and the meager furnishings and
appurtenances of impoverished housekeeping, the room looked as
blasted, barren and rubbish-strewn as an abandoned bunker. My eyes
adjusted to the gloom slowly. I knew the sun was shining somewhere
else.
Aitkens pointed at the lone chair in his lodgings, a chipped and
scarred stool next to the bench. “Sit down, Sellers. My time is
precious. Why are you here?” He paced before me wild-eyed,
straining to extrude my intentions by sheer force of will. Now that I
was in, I took my time, studying him just as carefully.
The latest photograph of Lalo Aitkens we could find showed a tall
man in a lab coat in front of his gleaming laboratory at Delenda. Still
boyish at thirty-five, with hair falling over his eyes and a pocket
protector full of pens, he was then the very model of an absent-
minded professor, ready to entertain or exasperate at the drop of an
algorithm. All of that was gone. He was stooped from bending over
close work in poor light, pot-bellied from cheap food and lack of
exercise. His skin was sagging and sallow. He wore rumpled
sweatpants, an elbow-patched sweater from a charity shop and shoes
long past their tread life. And he was obviously bald beneath a moth-
eaten watch cap.
Not a man to beat about the bush, he answered his own question.
“So they’ve come to their senses, eh? Saw how much was to be
made if cold fusion hadn’t fizzled out. Maybe did the math. I did.
Well, this will turn the world’s dross to gold. And I won’t be cheated

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