hurt or killed. Don’t do this. Let’s put the telemetric mannequin in place the way we originally planned.”
“Helen, you crazy kid, you’re really concerned about me,” Masters said as he slipped into the seat, smiling his maddening, cocky grin. “I’m touched.”
“You
are
touched, Jon—touched in the
head!”
Kaddiri retorted, upset that he appeared to be making fun of her anxiety for him.
Jon Masters was closing in on his fortieth birthday, but in many ways he really was still a teenager—probably because he had bypassed most of his adolescence and teen years and pursued his studies rather than girls. He was a savant, a boy genius. He received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College at age thirteen; by age eighteen he had a Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and by age twenty he held over a hundred patents as a NASA engineer, doing work for the National Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and the Department of Defense.
And today, with billions in government contracts and licenses in the works, Jon Masters now had a little time to kick back and do what he really enjoyed doing—tinkering, experimenting, lab work—and it was as if he had regressed to his childhood when he played with transistors and drew detailed blueprints for rockets instead of playing baseball and drawing pictures of superheroes. But he never lost the cocky attitude he had developed when, as a superintelligent teenager going after his doctorate, he felt he had to break down his professors’ amused, smirking self-righteousness about awarding an advanced degree to a kid.
After all the years Kaddiri and Jon had worked together, it was still impossible for her to determine what that punk genius was thinking or feeling. Helen Kaddiri, the American-born daughter of Indian scientist-professor parents, had followed much the same path as Jon, but at a more conventional age and taking a more conventional route getting there—she was eight years older than he was. She started an aerospace company, Sky Sciences Inc., in Tennessee, after being rejected several times for senior-level positions at other companies where she felt her talents were being overlooked because ofher gender. Her company was not large or hugely profitable, but it was hers and it was her pride and joy.
But in a surprise move, her own handpicked board of directors voted a young, cocky engineer from NASA onto the board, feeling he would surely help take the little company into the big leagues. The smart little brat took generous stock options instead of a salary, pledging to get rich or go broke along with them, a move that made him even more popular with the board. Jon Masters did indeed take Kaddiri’s little company to a higher level—and in the process took over almost all of the company’s outstanding stock, then control of her board of directors, then Helen’s position, then her authority, and eventually even the company name. Kaddiri made one unsuccessful attempt to wrest back control; her failure made Masters even more popular, even cockier.
She still enjoyed significant wealth, prestige, and authority as chairman of the board and corporate vice president of Sky Masters, Inc. But Helen Kaddiri could not count the times she had resolved to gladly trade it all in and go back to the bad old days as president and chief bottle washer of a company, no matter how dinky, that didn’t include Jonathan Colin Masters, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., CEO, RPITA—Royal Pain In The Ass.
Kaddiri clicked open the commlink again and said sternly, “Jon, you know about the instability problems, those power surges that we couldn’t control. The power surges could set off those explosives. Now put the dummy, the
other
dummy, in the seat and get out of there.”
“We did a test with explosives before, Helen …”
“But not with three separate chambers spaced soclosely together, and not with the amount you’ve got loaded in there,” Kaddiri argued.
“Helen, you crazy kid, you’re really concerned about me,” Masters said as he slipped into the seat, smiling his maddening, cocky grin. “I’m touched.”
“You
are
touched, Jon—touched in the
head!”
Kaddiri retorted, upset that he appeared to be making fun of her anxiety for him.
Jon Masters was closing in on his fortieth birthday, but in many ways he really was still a teenager—probably because he had bypassed most of his adolescence and teen years and pursued his studies rather than girls. He was a savant, a boy genius. He received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College at age thirteen; by age eighteen he had a Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and by age twenty he held over a hundred patents as a NASA engineer, doing work for the National Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and the Department of Defense.
And today, with billions in government contracts and licenses in the works, Jon Masters now had a little time to kick back and do what he really enjoyed doing—tinkering, experimenting, lab work—and it was as if he had regressed to his childhood when he played with transistors and drew detailed blueprints for rockets instead of playing baseball and drawing pictures of superheroes. But he never lost the cocky attitude he had developed when, as a superintelligent teenager going after his doctorate, he felt he had to break down his professors’ amused, smirking self-righteousness about awarding an advanced degree to a kid.
After all the years Kaddiri and Jon had worked together, it was still impossible for her to determine what that punk genius was thinking or feeling. Helen Kaddiri, the American-born daughter of Indian scientist-professor parents, had followed much the same path as Jon, but at a more conventional age and taking a more conventional route getting there—she was eight years older than he was. She started an aerospace company, Sky Sciences Inc., in Tennessee, after being rejected several times for senior-level positions at other companies where she felt her talents were being overlooked because ofher gender. Her company was not large or hugely profitable, but it was hers and it was her pride and joy.
But in a surprise move, her own handpicked board of directors voted a young, cocky engineer from NASA onto the board, feeling he would surely help take the little company into the big leagues. The smart little brat took generous stock options instead of a salary, pledging to get rich or go broke along with them, a move that made him even more popular with the board. Jon Masters did indeed take Kaddiri’s little company to a higher level—and in the process took over almost all of the company’s outstanding stock, then control of her board of directors, then Helen’s position, then her authority, and eventually even the company name. Kaddiri made one unsuccessful attempt to wrest back control; her failure made Masters even more popular, even cockier.
She still enjoyed significant wealth, prestige, and authority as chairman of the board and corporate vice president of Sky Masters, Inc. But Helen Kaddiri could not count the times she had resolved to gladly trade it all in and go back to the bad old days as president and chief bottle washer of a company, no matter how dinky, that didn’t include Jonathan Colin Masters, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., CEO, RPITA—Royal Pain In The Ass.
Kaddiri clicked open the commlink again and said sternly, “Jon, you know about the instability problems, those power surges that we couldn’t control. The power surges could set off those explosives. Now put the dummy, the
other
dummy, in the seat and get out of there.”
“We did a test with explosives before, Helen …”
“But not with three separate chambers spaced soclosely together, and not with the amount you’ve got loaded in there,” Kaddiri argued.
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