Page 61 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

Operation KNEECAP

Cyril Kornfleck blinked blankly behind bifocals, as if in
semaphore with another vessel flying the same flag in treacherous
waters.
“I have a slightly unmanageable garden of weeds to prune here,”
he began. “Its forking paths right now resemble a labyrinth
constructed by a mindless Minotaur. Perhaps you can help me find
the best way out of it. Maybe I should give it up as a story, and let
the luxuriant undergrowth strangle itself into a novel with heaps of
characters and subplots. Choices, choices!”
“We’ll take up a collection and buy you a bottle of crocodile
tears,” said Rutger. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Right. Now, what is the panacea for these troubled times? Free,
clean energy. We’re stuck with dirty, expensive energy. Disruption
has been the name of the game for fledgling tech industries; now
they are part of the problem, allied with big coal, gas and oil to keep
the fires burning around the clock, generating profitable power for
every sector of the global economy. Renewable sources turn out to
require industrial production offsetting gains in pollution and
greenhouse gas reduction. This dilemma is apparent to enough
people without their heads in the sand that a large and growing
audience now exists for both feasible and fantastic solutions to the
energy crisis: to wit, most of our potential readership.”
“The science blends into fiction when we talk about pulling
electricity out of thin air. Atmospheric energy, or plasma, lies at the
edge of space, potentially available to any system able to exploit it.
Scientists are working on it, overtly and covertly. Inevitably, the
entrenched interests in fossil fuels are motivated either to suppress
such technology or co-opt it for themselves. Thus anyone seeking
to loosen the grip of those plutocrats and oligarchs faces a
formidable adversary. Is it David and Goliath? That is one way to
write it, and it may work as the tale of a lone genius struggling
against heavy odds to save humanity.”
“But I prefer a contest of titans: rogue trillionaires whose goal is
the destruction of all terrestrial energy industries for the benefit of
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