Bubble Energy Taken by Force

Prep

 After everyone gathered inside the smoky room, Corin said, "I'm adding a new company benefit–free satellite phones for everyone. Audrey, please rebuild the terminal while I drive to town to alert the police. On second thought, maybe a ballistic missile would be better."

After Corin exited, Audrey paced across the room touching each person, "You, bring over the spare monitor and PC. Dear, please find a working outlet and network connection. We may need extensions; bring them all up with the monitor and PC."

"What's the use trying to fix the computer? It's a total loss."

Jack replied, "What they destroyed aren't real computers. Corin installed these empty metal cabinets with flashing diodes for decoration and inspiration. The real supercomputer resides inside a special room downstairs, chilled by air conditioners to ten degrees Celsius. Nobody can hear themselves think from its high-speed fans and hard drives. Consequently, we prefer working in this far more comfortable office. What bozos! They probably don't know the difference between a simple NAND, AND logic gate. Everybody knows that system administrators are the only people who work in the same room as the mainframe. Nobody entered that room since Corin installed the last SSD array. With the Internet and server monitor tools, we can access our supercomputer from another state just as easily as from a directly connected terminal."

Jack began coughing. "Where's the air filter machine? I really regret taking up smoking when I was a teenager. Thank goodness I found the good sense to quit before I ended up tethered to an oxygen bottle. Ah, here it is." He flipped the red switch to 'ON'. A fan whirled, spewing out choking air pollution from the vents.

As more people coughed, Jim commented, "Unfortunately, these things are no good when covered with dust. Here, I'll open the doors and vents. The cross-breeze should clear the air quickly enough."

Once started, they labored like mad to give the room a sense of order. Unfortunately, Corin returned too soon. "The only place our cars can go is to Jone's repair shop, towed. Good thing we remove Stephen's key or they would have an extra car to drive." He dropped the large cardboard box on a table. As he pulled out wires and crystal disks, he commented, "Thank you for the heroic effort in repairing my workstation. You worked fast."

The dusty monitor was a 19-inch job, like the others, but the screen quality was much poorer. It probably sat in storage for years. "Robo-Mentor, are you ready to give our friendly visitor a demonstration of Bubble Energy?" Corin asked while clicking on an icon and several checkboxes in rapid motions.

The face, a little blurred from the motion, nodded. "Proceed in assembling Superjet."

Jack added, "They can run, but they will have difficulties hiding the disk with a high power tracer built in. We will get them. I will not have my endless years of toil turned into a tool for evil."

Corin agreed, "Nothing on this planet can out-run our Superjet once it takes flight, nothing. Our brave pilot can hop to the nearest police station within a minute or two to alert proper authorities. They can then capture the bad guys before they have the chance to reach the main road." He frowned in thought before continuing, "I wish Stephen to have the honor of being the first man to fly our machine powered by Bubble Energy. Jim, you got the sensors ready?"

Jim held up a headband blazing from thousands of quartz grits refracting sunshine into breathtakingly gorgeous rainbow patterns. At the bottom of the heavy and well-polished necklace chain draped over his left hand was a flat piece of shining glass shaped like a giant snowflake. It shimmered with colors reflected by hundreds of delicate wires. "Stephen? Stephen? Where are you hiding?" He glanced around the ravaged room.

"I think I know where he is." Audrey walked past the opened burnished brass doors to the roof topped with native grass. Even though the strength of the early afternoon sun began to lessen, scorching heat still flowed through the smoky lab. "I expected you to be sitting on the bench overlooking our garden of Arden. We planted that so our workers can relax after a frustrating day in the lab. We all love this spot; it offers an excellent view of the endless forest far below."