The Dream Factory

Feeln' Good

Feeln' Good 

Max T. Northammer was feeling good, really good. In fact he felt great. He dropped his robe to the ground, ran along the diving board and duck dived into the cool glittering water. Rising to the surface half way along the pool he knocked off twenty lengths of front crawl. Pulling up breathlessly and resting his arms on the edge of the pool he checked his time on his Rolex Submariner. He'd bettered his personal best by eighteen seconds.

Disturbed by a movement in the sunlight he looked up and took in the pair of shapely tanned legs that had appeared in front of him. 

'Good time Mr Northammer?' 

He ducked down beneath the surface and swam underwater back down the length of the pool. 

Jeannette was waiting for him robe in hand. 

'Best ever.' He laughed as he shrugged on his robe.  

She passed him his morning paper. 'Northammer's stock's up twenty cents this morning. Your omelette and herbal tea is on the table. Oh, and you are on this month's cover of Forbes Magazine. Nice picture.' 

Max walked across to the breakfast table, picked the glossy magazine up and glanced at his picture then dropped it back onto the table. He looked down at his omelette before reflecting. 'I'm looking a bit paunchy in Forbes. Maybe I'll just have some orange juice and a piece of toast. Wholemeal.' 

'You could have the day off and do some more lengths.' Jeannette suggested pleasantly.' You know what they say -'too many hours in the lab can make a billionaire's brain turn to caviar.'' 

'Do they say that? Been doing it for the last twenty years. Too late to change my habits now and probably too late to save the paunch as well.' He patted his stomach and flashed his perfect white teeth.  

'I'll get the toast.' 

He slumped down in his chair, ran the towel over his hair and called after her. 'Could you ring the office and let them know I'm not coming in today. I've just kicked off an experiment in the lab.' 

'I'll cancel your helicopter,' she half turned and called back. 'You can do some more lengths at lunch time then.' 

'Don't temp me.' He flipped open the magazine to read the article while absent-mindedly playing with his omelette with his silver fork. Above him swallows ducked and dived over the tree lined gardens grabbing insects from the warm air. The silence ebbed and flowed with the slow swell of sea brushing up and down the wide arc of beach that curved around the house's grounds. 

Finishing the magazine Max grabbed a piece of wholemeal toast off the table and made his way back up the path to the sprawling neo Georgian mansion beyond the tennis courts. Detouring under the shade of the giant Myrtle trees he stopped to chat to a couple of the gardeners before ducking into the glass houses to check on his orchid collection. Satisfied that the ventilation was set correctly for the day he trotted up the wide steps to the patio doors and headed down into the property's expansive basements. 

Dressed in his pressed lab coat, tea in one hand, dry toast in the other he nudged the airlock release with the edge of his arm, waited for the familiar hiss of gas and stepped through the sliding door into his laboratory.  

In one of the testing bays he checked the reading on the bank of monitors mounted over the test chamber and made some brief notes in his journal. Gently he slipped his hands into the robotic arm sleeves and studying the high power microscope image on the screen above him carefully scored a microscopic line in the graphine surface of the nano-chip held on the delicate assembly in the test chamber. The whine from the electronic monitoring equipment alerted him to the fact that he'd damaged the surface irreparably. Using the robot's fingers he gently lifted a phial from a rack at the back of the chamber and tipped its contents over the chip. Freeing his hands and standing back he carefully adjusted the magnification on the electron microscope. Thrown into view on the surface of the chip he could pick out millions of tiny littlehammers scurrying over the graphine surface.