“Shaun!” I exclaimed as I opened the door to see my long-lost ex-boyfriend. He was older now, as was I, but he looked so much as he did when I knew him that it was as if no time had passed at all. His features were a bit more rugged now, and his hair had darkened, almost to the point of being what I’d call an ebony brown. At first, I wondered if perhaps he’d colored it, but then I remembered the unique way his hair lightened almost to a blond in the summer but was a dark brown the rest of the year. I also noticed how his expression was much more serious than I’d remembered it, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of what had happened with the explosion, losing his father and the difficulties that followed, or because of the nature of his work now.
Opening the screen door, I grabbed Shaun and engulfed him in hug, one that he eagerly seemed to return. Releasing Shaun, I noticed a couple of people behind him: a rather short, stocky man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties with a stubbly beard that was in style perhaps a decade ago, and a petite, red-headed young woman who appeared to be in her late teens but was probably closer to my age.
“J.J., this is my husband, Jacob Stein,” Shaun introduced us as we shook hands. “Jake’s specialty is family law, with expertise in child abductions and adoption. He’s not only my husband and one of the senior partners, but he’s one of the top people in the country. He practically begged me to take the case, but he really is one of the absolute best, and that’s not my biased opinion, either, as you’ll find if you ask around.”
“My pop told me as much.”
“Next to Jake is Cheryl Lightfoot, one of our associates. She graduated at the top of her class at Stanford, clerked for Justice Benson in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was offered positions in some of the most prestigious firms in the nation. However, she chose us.”
Ushering all three of them inside, I made introductions, as well. “Shaun, you remember my husband, Henry, don’t you?”
“Hi, Henry,” Shaun greeted my husband as he shook hands and then pulled him into a hug. “You know, I never mentioned this when J.J. and I were boyfriends, but even then, I could tell that you were infatuated with J.J., and I was insanely jealous at the time. I think that I recognized that you were a much better match for J.J. than I could ever be. You two were clearly meant for each other, and J.J. and I were never meant to be. It didn’t help that I was an arrogant kid back then, too, and I blamed J.J. for my dad’s death even though J.J. tried to prevent the accident. I took after my dad, and it was his overconfidence that caused the explosion. That was a real wakeup call. I had some real tough times after that, and then I went to school, clerked for your father and met the love of my life.”
“And you moved back to Seattle. After what happened with your mom and your sister, I’m a bit surprised.”
“I’m not sure how much you know about my past since I never told you the whole story.”
“I wondered why you never even mentioned your sister, and then just days before the explosion, Henry and I talked about it. We discussed the double standard society has regarding siblings fooling around when it involves two boys versus two girls or a boy and a girl. He thought that maybe something had happened between the two of you, and that maybe your sister had even gotten pregnant. When I returned to the States after all my globetrotting, Jitendra inadvertently confirmed it,” I continued in a whisper. “He told me about how your mother sent you away to boarding school, but it didn’t work out, and then Lauren took you in.”
“Lauren was more like a mother to me than my own mother ever was. Her death hit me even harder than my dad’s did, I think.”
“What happened?” I asked in shock. Even though I’d never met her, I felt a tremendous sense of loss.
“She was struck by a drunk driver,” Shaun said. “At least, it was quick.”
As the kids joined us in the entryway, it wasn’t possible to talk any further about what happened with Shaun and his family, so I said, “We’ll catch up later on what’s been going on in our lives.” Introducing the three attorneys to the Moorthy children and their boyfriends and to our own son, who’d thankfully thrown on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, I led the entourage to the study.
“Guys, we’re undoubtedly going to have a flood of guests later on,” Henry said, addressing the kids. “Trina, do you guys have a housekeeper?”
Rolling her eyes, she replied, “We have a whole freakin’ agency on the payroll. They provide groundskeepers, cleaning staff, food preparation and security. The only thing we lack is live-in help, ’cause Dad valued our privacy. They usually start at ten, so they should be here any time now.”
Nodding his head, Henry said, “Good. In the meantime, why don’t you five get dressed in nicer clothes? Nothing formal but definitely not t-shirts and shorts. Button-up shirts and khakis for the boys, and a blouse and skirt or dress for you, Trina. And shoes — sneakers or sandals are fine but not flip-flops or barefoot.”
After the kids had left, Shaun asked, “Can I ask when’s the funeral?”
“Jitendra died just yesterday, and because his kids were raised Jewish, he ought to be buried today for their sake. Because he died at home, however, an autopsy is mandatory, so the body won’t be released until tomorrow at the earliest. However, Jeff Barlow took it upon himself to make the arrangements, so the funeral’s scheduled for Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, which isn’t kosher when it comes to Jewish funerals. With so many people coming, however, it’s not practical to change it.
“It’s going to be an interesting ceremony,” I added. “Jitendra wasn’t a practicing Hindu, but he wanted to be cremated. He requested cremation using a traditional funeral pyre, but that isn’t legal in the U.S. outside of a small town in Colorado, and we weren’t about to hold the funeral of such a prominent man in such a remote location. He’ll have a Jewish funeral — held in a crematorium. It’ll be different.”
“Jews don’t do cremation,” Jake interjected. “Traditionally, we bury our dead in nothing more than a burial shroud, which is legal in Washington State but not in most of the U.S. and certainly not in Maryland, where my dad was buried in a simple pine box, and because the law required it, a concrete vault. The vault had to be open underneath to permit decomposition, though. That’s per Jewish law — to dust we must return. I’m just surprised you could find a rabbi who’s willing to participate in a cremation.”
“I can’t claim credit for that. The family’s rabbi will be officiating. She’s a Reform rabbi and apparently has done this sort of thing before.” Then, remembering my manners, I asked, “Would any of you like coffee or tea? Is anyone hungry?”
“Coffee would be excellent,” Shaun replied.
“I’ll be right back,” I proclaimed as I exited the library and walked to the kitchen, expecting to find one or more of the kids. Instead, there was a properly dressed woman who was already in the process of preparing coffee as well as setting up serving trays in anticipation of having guests. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I was planning to prepare some coffee.”
“We’ll take care of that for you, Dr. Jeffries,” the woman responded. “Is there anyone who wants tea?”
“No, just coffee,” I replied. “Deadman’s Reach, if you have it.”
“That’s all we’re allowed to serve in this household. I’ll bring you and your guests their coffee in a few minutes.”
Returning to the library, I explained, “It seems the hired help has arrived. Our coffee will be here shortly. So, what’s the plan for dealing with the emergency petition?”
Laughing, Shaun replied, “Nothing like getting down to business. There’s a hearing this afternoon at 4:30. The family’s attorney, Winston, has already received notice of it, and we’ve been in touch with him, which is why he didn’t contact you himself. As the late Dr. Moorthy’s attorney of record, he signed a contract with our firm and will submit the necessary documents to allow us to represent him in court this afternoon.
“We’re going to be proactive on this, not allowing the family any wiggle room. Since they shot the opening salvo, we’ll make it clear that any attempt at peaceful negotiations ended when they opened with the nuclear option. I don’t need to tell you that freezing Jitendra’s assets would have a devastating effect on Pegasus’ stock price. The Moorthy family may have thought they could use the freeze to devalue the stock, giving themselves more leverage to negotiate what would amount to a takeover, but we’ll stop them in their tracks.”
“But wouldn’t a negotiated settlement be preferable over taking a chance they might actually win custody of the children?” Henry asked.
“I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be willing to extend an olive branch and give them a token share of the assets if they’re willing to give up all rights to anything more in both American and Indian courts. I’m very doubtful that they’ll acquiesce easily. I think they’ll try to open the door a crack and then use dynamite once again to get inside. We’re not going to give them a chance to even get near the door.
“The first thing we’re going to do is to file a countermotion to require the family to produce their bogus will before the justices even consider a petition to freeze Jitendra’s assets. I doubt their attorneys will even have a copy of the will just yet, but even if they do, they won’t have the documentation to prove its authenticity,” Shaun continued.
“Speaking of which, you can bet their so-called will is a professional forgery, most likely produced by ex-KGB in the Russian mafia. Even the paper it’s printed on will be traceable to the Pacific Northwest. The typeface will be from a standard package used by attorneys in the U.S., and the print itself will be traceable to the same brand of toner cartridge used in his attorney’s office. Jitendra’s signature will be an exact match to that on other documents, but not a duplicate, and using an ink that can be shown to be identical to that used to sign other professional documents.”
“How the fuck will we ever prove it’s a fake?” Henry asked.
“We employ some of the best forensic experts in the world for this sort of thing, but it takes time, which is why we need to get our hands on the original document as soon as possible. There are always clues. For example, toner cartridges have traces of ink patterns from previous documents printed. It’s not likely the forgers would have been stupid enough to print Cyrillic characters using the same toner cartridge, but stranger things have happened, and we’ll look for them. At the minimum, we can use algorithms to compare the usage pattern of the cartridge used to print the fake will with actual usage patterns in his attorney’s office.
“We’ll compare the grammar usage in the fake will to that of other wills produced in the office. Even slight differences in the fonts will be examined. The software’s pretty standard, but fonts change depending on the version, and most printers use cached versions rather than downloading them from scratch each time they’re used. Even with a counterfeit of the notary seal used in his attorney’s office, slight differences in the applied pressure may leave telltale signs, or subtle differences in the corners of the letters may be evident, or sometimes we can even detect plastic residue from a 3-D printer. In the end, we’ll produce a detailed report assessing the probability the will was prepared in Jitendra’s attorney’s office.”
“What if the family claims Jitendra went to a different lawyer to prepare the fake will, that he had a reason to go elsewhere for fear of his wishes wouldn’t be honored, for example?”
“We don’t need access to the attorney’s office, only to other documents prepared by them,” Shaun explained. “Short of Jitendra preparing the document himself, there should be thousands of similar documents on file with the courts to which it can be compared.”
“But knowing all of this, what if the forger is particularly good at the deep fake?” I asked. “Shit, I could do it, Shaun. Give me a will or any document, for that matter, and I’ll change it to say whatever I fuckin’ want it to say. I can deconstruct the printed page into all the individual letters, ligatures, spacing and so on, and then reconstruct it to appear exactly as it would with completely different content.”
“Damn, you could make a lot of money doing that — not that you need it,” Shaun replied. “Fortunately, I’ve yet to run into a forgery I couldn’t detect as a fake.”
“I think we’d better be prepared for the possibility of a perfect forgery,” I replied. “After all, the family might not know what they’re up against, but if they’re any good at it, the forgers undoubtedly do. We need to have a Plan B.” I then outlined the strategy for purchasing the Gannet news organization and the Washington Herald. “The beauty of it is that with ownership of an American media empire, the family won’t be able to take ownership of Pegasus, nor to act as trustees on the children’s behalf. It would be a true poison pill.”
“The Herald is chickenfeed compared to Gannet, but there might be an even more compelling reason to involve Jeff Barlow,” Cheryl Lightfoot suggested. “The rules regarding foreign involvement in defense contracts are even more stringent than for involvement in American media, and New Horizons gets over half its revenue from the launch of military satellites. Rumor has it that they’re also involved with the development and deployment of the infrastructure that will support the U.S. Space Force. If true, not only is New Horizons beyond the reach of foreign investors, but it’s worth significantly more than its market cap.”
“So if Gannet is like a poison pill made of arsenic, by way of analogy, New Horizons would be a poison pill made of cyanide?” Henry surmised.
“What makes you think Barlow would be willing to sell New Horizons,” I asked. “With him, it’s personal. Barlow established New Horizons as part of his long-running feud with Elon Musk. New Horizons is his counter to SpaceX.”
“He’d still be the CEO,” Cheryl pointed out, “and perhaps he’d consider its acquisition by Pegasus to be vindication from the Big Tech Breakup.”
“If anything, that could be a sore subject,” Henry countered. “The Big Tech Breakup was a vindication of J.J.’s ideas. With Pegasus effectively under our control, it might be a bitter pill for him to swallow.”
“Not if he thinks it’s his idea,” I suggested. “Not if he effectively ends up with control of Pegasus. Each kid has a twenty percent interest in Pegasus, as we will once the will’s settled. However, we’re not interested in running the company…”
“We could donate our shares to our nonprofit foundation,” Henry interrupted.
“Now that’s a thought… It would save us owing any taxes on Jitendra’s shares of the Pegasus stock and the family would be hard-pressed to get their hands on those shares once the transfer’s complete. By designating the foundation’s shares as non-voting, we’d help Jeff shore up his control of Pegasus. Yeah, we should plan on doing that.”
“Nonprofits rarely play a voting role,” Cheryl interjected. “One way of doing that is to designate a proxy for the foundation’s shares, and that could be Barlow.” My eyes widened on hearing that. “You’d still have the right to usurp his proxy if an issue arose in which there was strong disagreement, but otherwise he’d control your shares.
“We have a whole department that can do an in-depth market analysis if you wish to pursue it,” Cheryl added. “Pegasus is highly overvalued and New Horizons is significantly undervalued, and I’m certain Barlow knows it. My best guess is that if each company were valued more appropriately based on assets and potential for growth, Gannet would be worth perhaps five percent of the value of Pegasus, and New Horizons would be worth as much as thirty percent.”
Shocked, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why that much? You’re talking close to a trillion dollars!”
“Like I said, Pegasus is overvalued, which is why the acquisitions make a lot of sense. New Horizons, however, has major defense contracts and if we can confirm classified contracts for the development of space infrastructure, we’re probably looking at value closer to a half-trillion dollars. I’m not going to get into the specifics until I have more data, but if you throw in the purchase of Boeing and based on Jeff’s shares, he’d likely end up owning a bit over forty percent of the combined company. Giving him proxy rights to your shares would be enough to put him over the fifty percent threshold needed for him to take control, yet you’d have the ability to revoke the proxy, should the need arise.”
“Even so, you’d be giving up your controlling interest,” Shaun pointed out. “Do you really trust either of them that much?”
“Of course not, but I can’t think of anyone I’d distrust less. Either one of them is capable of running Pegasus efficiently and making money hand over fist. It’s only when it comes to politics that they’re blind as bats. The bottom line is that Pegasus will be in good hands with either of them at the helm. Lord knows, I don’t have any interest in running the company anyway, so I’d likely be delegating my authority to someone else, and I can’t think of better people to delegate it to. The key is to make Jeff think it’s his idea.”
“So, assuming you can talk Barlow and Jenkins into it, we may well have our Plan B,” Shaun agreed. Then shifting in his chair, he continued, “What will happen today is that I’ll go to court and show the judge our copy of the will, and I’ll make a motion demanding we see the original forgery before the judge can consider a motion to freeze assets. If by some miracle, the plaintiff’s attorneys produce the document, we’ll ask for more time to have it analyzed for authenticity. We can throw out 99 percent of all forgeries within a few days, but theirs is likely to be in the top one percent and appear to be legitimate on first pass. We’ll be ready for them, in any case.
“In the event that they produce the original forgery, once we request the delay, it’s likely the plaintiffs will ask for a temporary freeze and injunction, at least until the will has been verified. We’ll counter with an offer to place all of Jitendra’s assets into a blind trust, administered by a neutral third party. We’d still be able to have use of the house and to access funds as necessary, subject to the approval of the trustee. The family would be hard-pressed to object, but they almost certainly will.”
“What about protecting the children from being taken out of the country?” I asked.
“If you can agree to remain in Seattle until the matter is resolved, there should be no reason the court wouldn’t award temporary custody to you two. We could even agree to surrender the children’s passports — and yours — for that matter.”
“If the family decided to kidnap the kids, they’d use Indian passports that they’d bring with them. They wouldn’t need the kids’ American passports.” Actually, I didn’t want to surrender anyone’s passports if I could help it — not with the opportunity of fleeing to Canada, such a short distance away, but I wasn’t about to tell Shaun that, just in case. “Besides which, I sometimes need to leave the country on a moment’s notice to meet with a potential donor.”
“Understood,” Shaun replied. “We’ll try to do it without surrendering any passports.”
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It was mid-afternoon, and there had been a steady stream of well-wishers throughout the day. Winston was busily trying to pin down members of the Pegasus board for an impromptu meeting, but unfortunately, the lead attorney for the Pegasus office of counsel and his assistant were in China, involved in sensitive negotiations. They were going to be hard-pressed to return in time for the funeral as it was, let alone respond to the imminent threat to Pegasus’ future.
Shaun and his team had already left for the Federal District Courthouse, located in downtown Seattle just a block away from the glass spheres that once served as the public face of Applazon’s corporate headquarters. The spheres now served as the centerpiece of a public park. I’d been expecting to go with Shaun and his crew, but when I mentioned getting dressed up to go, he told me in no uncertain terms that it would be best if Henry and I weren’t seen anywhere near the courthouse at this stage in the litigation. As significant beneficiaries in the will, we could hardly be considered neutral third parties. The last thing we wanted was to be seen as self-serving. The likelihood was that we’d almost certainly be granted temporary custody of the kids, just not stewardship of their inheritance. Unfortunately, custody wasn’t as robust as guardianship, for which we were going have to go to family court.
Although we’d had a number of visitors, including more than a few representatives of the news media, I didn’t expect the lion’s share of visitors to come until the evening. It was a workday, and few people could get away in the afternoon. Thus, I was shocked when Jeff and Andy made an appearance together to pay their respects. Later, I’d realize that they came specifically at that time to avoid having to mingle with a crowd of strangers, but I couldn’t help but appear surprised by the timing of their arrival.
“Jeff, Andy, I didn’t expect you to come here so early,” I exclaimed as I greeted them at the door.
“You look well, J.J.,” Jeff responded. “Although I’ll never understand it, the nonprofit sector seems to agree well with you.”
“It’s where Henry and I belong,” I acknowledged just as Henry came up to us and slipped his arm around my waist.
“It’s good to see you as well, Henry,” Jeff added. “Did Nithya come with you?”
Shaking his head, Henry answered, “She’s in the midst of a site visit in Calgary. It would be a great location for a ceramic-foam plant, and with the vast reserves of untapped methane and shale oil in Alberta, they could potentially continue to make foam even after we’ve extracted as much atmospheric CO2 as we dare. Anyway, she’ll arrive in time for the funeral.”
“How are the kids holding up?” Jeff asked.
“Let’s go inside and you can see them,” Henry suggested. “Losing a parent is a lot to go through at any age, but I think the worst time is in the teens. I know that from personal experience.”
“In addition, they both have boyfriends and we’re going to have to uproot them from everything they’ve ever known in order to give them a new home,” I added. “On top of that, there’s all the uncertainty from their grandparents attempts to get custody of them and whisk them away to India. That would totally wreck their lives.”
“What do you mean? Is there a custody battle?” Jeff asked.
“Let’s go inside. You can pay your respects to the kids. I’ll get you both something to drink, fix you plates of food, and we can go sit down in the library and talk about it.”
Actually, we never made it to the library as Will asked Andy and Jeff right away if they were going to do the stock swap. That, of course, raised far more questions than it answered, and it was obvious that the kids needed to be a part of the discussion, so we wound up sitting as a group at the kitchen table in the breakfast nook while we chowed down on an amazing spread of gourmet snack foods and fine wine. I even let the kids have a little wine.
As we ate and drank, I filled Jeff and Andy in on all that we’d been going through since our arrival and what Jitendra and his kids had been going through for months.
“So, getting back to Will’s comment about a stock swap,” Jeff began, “I take it you’d like to propose Andy and I swap some of our shares of ACR and Boeing for Pegasus stock?”
“Not exactly,” I replied. “Federal regulations prohibit foreign ownership of American media outlets. What I’d like to propose is that Pegasus buy the Gannet News organization and the Washington Herald in return for shares of Pegasus stock. Acquiring those two media outlets would serve as a poison pill. It’s not foolproof, but it would tie the family up in court for years.”
“Come to think of it, doesn’t ACR have a major defense contract?” Henry asked, as planned. “That might be even better, you know, as a kind of poison pill.”
“Several, but they’re walled off in a separate division that’s excluded from foreign investment,” Andy answered. “Jeff does the same thing with Boeing’s defense contracts…”
“But not with New Horizons,” Jeff interrupted. “I’m not willing to part with the Herald in any case, but New Horizons is heavily involved with defense contracts, and some of them are highly classified and involve long-term commitments. There aren’t many things that could get me to sell New Horizons, but I’d sell my soul for control of Pegasus.”
Laughing, I replied, “I doubt that the market cap on your soul would be sufficient, but Henry and I have no interest in running Pegasus and we’re even thinking of donating Jitendra’s shares to our nonprofit foundation. I can’t think of anyone better qualified for the roles of CEO and Director of the Board than the two of you. Perhaps with the purchase of ACR, Gannet, New Horizons and Boeing, we might be able to kill two birds with one stone. Jitendra’s family couldn’t gain control of Pegasus and we could assure the future of Pegasus by putting a competent leadership team in place.”
“Probably better to leave ACR out of it, rather than raise anti-trust concerns,” Andy interjected, as I expected he would. “I’m open to selling Gannet, particularly if I could have a major leadership role in Pegasus.”
“I’m sure we could negotiate a deal that would be favorable to all of us,” Jeff replied.
Turning to face the children, I explained, “You’d be giving up any possibility of keeping Pegasus in the family. It would effectively lock your dad’s family out of controlling Pegasus. That said, it couldn’t stop them from trying to contest the will with the aim of selling the company and keeping the assets for themselves, but we could tie them up in court for years.”
“Will and I have discussed it, and neither of us has an interest in running Pegasus,” Trina replied.
“The truth is, I can’t think of anything more boring,” Will chimed in. “I’d like to be a xenobiologist and maybe a mission specialist on one of the first manned missions to Mars.”
“A xenobiologist?” Randy asked.
“It’s a specialist in extraterrestrial life,” I explained, “not that we know of any extraterrestrial life, but the search for life would be one of the primary purposes of any manned mission to Mars. No amount of A.I. or robotics can match the versatility of one expert human. A xenobiologist would know where and what to look for. There’s also evidence that life on earth may have originated elsewhere and been brought here on a meteor, an asteroid or a comet in much the way that the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs caused tons of organic debris to be spewed into space.”
“Most of which ended up back on earth or in solar orbit,” Henry added, “but it’s possible that a comet passing through the solar system could’ve carried the remnants of life on Jurassic Earth far and wide into space. The probability of it then being captured by the gravity well of an earth-like planet is pretty slim though, and the same would be true in reverse for life being brought here from elsewhere in the universe.”
“In any case, a xenobiologist would study things like that.”
“Randy, your dads never cease to amaze me,” Jeff commented.
Putting his finger in front of his mouth, Randy stage-whispered, “Shh, don’t let them hear you. They have big enough heads as it is,” which got a chuckle from all of us.
<> <> <>
The lawyers representing Jitendra’s family didn’t even bother to present evidence of an actual will. They only brought their word that one existed and would be presented soon. In contrast, we not only presented a notarized copy of a valid and verified will but a recorded video of Jitendra explaining what he wished for the future of his company and for his children. The judge had little choice but to throw out the petition for an emergency injunction. Shaun then countersued to keep the family from taking the children out of the country. Somehow, he managed to get copies of the applications for Indian passports for Trina and Will but with Indian names. There was no proof of the identities of the children listed on the applications, but the birthdates matched exactly with those of Jitendra’s kids, plus the photographs submitted were quite obviously copied from the kids’ social-media posts. It was a slam-dunk exposure of the family’s maneuver.
The judge granted our petition on the spot and notified the State Department to be sure that any request for repatriation visas would be denied. Jake then asked the judge to grant Henry and me temporary custody of the children, noting that we had an outstanding track record of foster care and adoption. The judge didn’t even hesitate. After reminding our attorneys that the Federal courts didn’t have jurisdiction over guardianship, he granted us temporary custody, not only over the children, but also over their trusts. We would still need to go through the proper channels via CPS and family court to be appointed as guardians, and thanks to Jake, that process was already underway.
Although the initial salvo fired by Jitendra’s family had been thoroughly rebuffed, I knew we were still in for the fight of our lives. The family would be back, next time with a believable forgery and enough evidence to call the provisions of Jitendra’s will into question. My biggest fear was that they’d sneak into the U.S. and spirit Trina and Will out of the country using their Indian passports without anyone being the wiser. Once repatriated to India, even if under false pretenses, our temporary custody over the trusts would cease, and the Indian courts could invalidate them, giving the family full access to the children’s funds. Nothing short of the family signing away all their rights to the children in an Indian high court would prevent them from doing so. The need to implement our ‘Plan B’ was therefore urgent.
With the funeral looming and negotiations for corporate merger not likely to begin until after the holidays, not to mention any opportunity to make our custody over the children’s trusts permanent, I formulated a plan. It wasn’t entirely legal, so our attorneys couldn’t be involved with it. If the family re-petitioned the court with a forged will, Henry and I would simply take a little trip across the border with the kids in tow and check into a hotel in Vancouver. We’d stay in Canada as long as necessary, establishing permanent residence for the next four years, if need be, until William turned eighteen. The Canadian courts wouldn’t have jurisdiction over children with American citizenship, yet the American courts would be powerless to force us to return to the States. The fly in the ointment was that the family might still try to kidnap the kids, and for that reason, we’d need to keep our true location in Canada a secret. There were plenty of places one could disappear to in Canada.
<> <> <>
“Damn, four Nobel prizes between the two of you, and you’re not even thirty,” Shaun exclaimed much to my embarrassment.
“Three if you consider that one of them was shared,” I corrected him. Henry and I were having dinner with Shaun and Jake at Ray’s Boathouse, a high-end seafood restaurant located right on the water in Ballard.
“The discovery of room-temperature superconductors has been compared to the discovery of fire, and rightly so.”
“It was for the discovery of the mechanisms of superconductivity in metals and ceramics, actually,” I pointed out. “Those problems had been vexing physicists for years. Even I have to admit that that discovery was worthy of a Nobel in physics. I just wasn’t expecting to win it while I was barely out of my teens. Usually, the Nobel committee prioritizes awards to older individuals since the Nobel can’t be given posthumously, but then there were other worthy discoveries that the Nobel committee couldn’t recognize without first giving me that award.”
“You’re talking about the award to Henry and Nithya Ramamurthy for the invention of SCEMPER?”
“Exactly.”
“But why weren’t you a recipient of that award, too?” Jake asked.
“I was a mere bystander,” I countered. “That really was the combination of Henry’s mathematical modeling and Nithya’s engineering. Besides which, I already had my Nobel. They deserved the Nobel in physics for that one.”
“And the three of you earned a Nobel in chemistry for the invention of ceramic foams?”
“For the use of a ceramic-foam matrix to stabilize polymeric CO2,” I explained, “although that breakthrough was a matter of serendipity, as is often the case.”
“It’s ironic that we developed ceramic foam as a quick way to sequester atmospheric carbon,” Henry went on, “never dreaming it’d become a substitute for virtually all glass, plastics and steel. We thought that our foam might be used as a substitute for concrete in construction, but it turned out be so much stronger and lighter than any metal alloy. Steel production used to account for more atmospheric-carbon production than the entire transportation industry worldwide. Ceramic foams made steel obsolete overnight.”
“What’s crazy is that we may soon reach the point of having to burn fossil fuels to generate enough CO2 to meet the demand for the stuff,” I added. “We’ll use the energy it generates to power the fabrication process. Ultimately, we’ll have to extract CO2 from the atmosphere of Venus or by harvesting methane and ice from the gas giants in space, especially with space-based construction being on the horizon.”
Shaking his head, Shaun said, “Amazing.”
“So, we didn’t get a chance to talk about the circumstances around your move back to Seattle,” I interjected.
With a tear in his eye, Shaun began, “Telling people you got your sister pregnant isn’t exactly a conversation starter. You were my first boyfriend, and I was afraid of how you’d react. I was only nine and Katlyn had just turned seven when we started spending the summers with our dad. Tokyo was hot as hell, and we lived in a tiny apartment — a rabbit hutch, as the Japanese call them.”
“A lot of young Japanese families live that way,” I recalled. “There’s a tiny bedroom for the parents and a shared bathroom with a separate, little water closet for the toilet. The sink’s built into the tank, and the water used to wash your hands goes into flushing the toilet, which I thought was incredibly cool. There’s a large multipurpose room that serves as the living room and dining room, with a tiny kitchen at one end or in an alcove. At night, the kids sleep together on thin futons on the floor of the living room while the parents sleep in the bedroom, which is often the only room with air conditioning. If they’re lucky, the kids may have a small oscillating fan that not only swings from side to side but from low speed to high to simulate a ‘natural wind’.”
“That’s exactly how it was,” Shaun said. “You sound like you speak from experience.”
“I spent most of the summer of 2020 in Japan supervising the installation of new servers to bolster capacity in the midst of the pandemic.”
“You installed the new servers that quickly even after the explosion?” Shaun asked in surprise.
Shaking my head, I explained, “We didn’t even get our hands on the Dewar vessels until Wuhan exited lockdown, and then the mini-centers had to be thoroughly tested before customers would trust them. With everyone working and learning from home, we couldn’t wait, so I designed an adapter that allowed us to mount sixteen of the new server boards in our existing racks, which made it possible to expand capacity very quickly. That’s why corporate trusted a kid to supervise installations all over the world.”
Shaun chuckled, “Just when I think there’s nothing you could do that would amaze me more than you already have, you manage to do it anyway.”
“You know, my family was stationed in Tokyo for a time, but that was before I was born,” Henry interjected. “J.J. told me about how the kids in Japan are much more open about sex and how the boys read pornographic comic books and engage in sex play right out in the open.”
“If that’s your way of asking if we played around, of course we did,” Shaun responded. “Since it was so hot, we didn’t bother with pajamas or even underwear. We were naked, we were kids, and we were curious.
“We had a nanny, Tetsuro, a fourteen-year-old boy who lived with us during the week, and he slept with us, too. Katlyn and I both learned a lot that summer, more from what we did with Tetsuro than with each other. I never felt like he used us, though. It was just a matter of three kids learning about our bodies.”
“Didn’t you worry about your father catching you in the act?” I asked.
Laughing, Shaun replied, “We hardly saw him except on the weekends, when Tetsuro went home to be with his family. During the week, Dad stayed out drinking with his colleagues, and then he often crashed at a salaryman’s hotel.” I had plenty of experience with doing that when I was in Japan, so I nodded my head as Shaun continued. “But then Katlyn and I returned to Seattle, and the sex play came to a halt — until our next summer in Milan. At least Katlyn and I had our own room there, but we still shared a bed.”
“But you were ten years old!” I exclaimed.
“And Katlyn was eight. Truthfully, we were too old, even when we were nine and seven. Either Dad was incredibly naïve, or he didn’t care if we fooled around. Even putting that aside, boys and girls at that age need their privacy. As it was, Dad was lucky to get a three bedroom apartment. It wasn’t like we lived with him full time, so there really was no justification for anything larger — not on Applazon’s dime. Perhaps Dad still thought of us as toddlers. In retrospect, I should have slept on a cot in his room, or Katlyn should have slept in the other bedroom, with the nanny. For Katlyn and me, it was more a matter of learning about sex than about incest. Looking back on it, I never really thought of Katlyn as a girl. I had no interest in doing stuff with other girls.
“The following year it was Sydney during their winter, and the year after that, it was Singapore. Then we spent the summer in London, and at thirteen, Dad thought I was old enough to take care of Katlyn by myself, but not quite old enough for us to be out and about in the city. We were on our own, living in a three-bedroom townhouse, finally each with our own room but with nothing much to do. By then, I was well into puberty, but Katlyn hadn’t started her periods yet, so we thought we were safe. Katlyn was eleven, and girls at that age can and do ovulate before they start their periods, but we didn’t know that.
“It wasn’t until we were back in Seattle and Katlyn was throwing up every morning that we realized something was wrong. Her pediatrician did a pregnancy test, and when it was positive, he asked her who the father was; then the shit really hit the fan. Katlyn had to get an abortion, and CPS got involved and took me out of the house. I agreed to spend six months in Juvie in return for admitting to a lesser charge of juvenile assault rather than face a charge of sexual predation. I wouldn’t wish time in Juvenile Justice on my worst enemies…”
“Been there, done that,” I interjected.
“But if nothing else, the educational opportunities in Juvie were outstanding — amazingly so. For the first time in my life, I could learn at my own pace and managed to complete my entire freshman year of high school in just six months. When I got out, I went right into my sophomore year, which allowed me to graduate a year early. In the meantime, Mom and Dad had already split, so Dad requested a transfer to a job that didn’t involve so much travel, and then I moved in with him and we ended up moving to Omaha.
“It was rough going at first, and it took time to get over the feeling that I was dirty for having slept with my own sister. I went to court-ordered therapy sessions, and they did help, but for the longest time, I couldn’t even talk to Katlyn, let alone look her in the eye. You were the first person who made me feel comfortable having sex again, J.J. It wasn’t until Jake and I moved back to Seattle, however, that I made amends with my family. Now I see Katlyn and Jack just about every weekend, and I love spending time with my little niece, Elly.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I responded. “You could have told me, you know.”
“I know, just like you could have told me about shooting your father.”
“Touché.”
Raising his glass, Henry said, “I propose a toast: to forgiving the mistakes we made in childhood.”
“Hear, hear,” I responded, and then we all drank the wine.
The author gratefully acknowledges the invaluable assistance of David of Hope and vwl-rec in editing my stories, as well as Awesome Dude and Gay Authors for hosting them. © Altimexis 2022