‘You said you had a job,’ Stanley said. ‘How come the government hasn’t penalised you for avoiding taxes?’
‘Because I pay them,’ Jesse replied. ‘I don’t earn much from my job and it could hardly be called a career move, but what I do more than covers the cost of my food, travel and holidays should I want to take them. We actually live pretty normal lives here and we don’t need to earn a fortune in order to do so. I don’t have to pay rent, I don’t have a mortgage and thanks to Stanley here, my car costs almost nothing to run because it uses water for fuel. One of the guys living here is actually a lawyer in St Louis and pulls down a pretty respectable salary, which he uses to travel on his holidays rather than paying a mortgage on some enormous house that he doesn’t even need.’
Ethan looked about them and realised that were it not for the knowledge they were sitting ten feet underground, he wouldn’t really have known any different. The interior of the house looked pretty much as any home would except for the unusually open plan nature and slightly smaller size.
‘And you’re not worried about something coming through here and destroying everything?’ Lopez asked.
‘I suppose,’ Jesse answered, ‘but there’s not much to go wrong really. Forest fires are easily the greatest threat because of the damage they obviously cause, and if one of the big trees decided to come down it could cause a great deal of damage to any one of the homes, although it’s unlikely it would be unrepairable as they’re constructed from wood anyway. For me the greatest problem is the local state council deciding that such properties are illegal, which isn’t unheard of. They don’t like people having such complete independence. It seems that being a part of the grid, and I don’t mean just the National Grid but our interconnected digital society, means that they can keep an eye on everybody. Out here, short of my taxes, they don’t really know what I’m up to.’
‘Exactly as I’ve been saying,’ Stanley confirmed. ‘These things aren’t always about money. If Jesse here became successful enough from what he did, and others began emulating him as swiftly as possible, you could start a wave that would see thousands if not millions of families breaking away from the structure of normal society and becoming fully independent but for their food and emergency fuel supplies.’
‘That’s right,’ Jesse agreed. ‘The main opposition to communes like this is health and safety, especially for children who may not have been able to make the decision for themselves to come here, but it’s usually a veil for more base motives such as collectible taxes, profits for fuel companies and such like. They all earn their revenue from people’s dependence on the energy grid — take that away in big enough numbers and they’ll start to fight for their right to charge us for the right to be warm. To me, it’s like bottled water — nobody needs it because we have water coming out of our taps, or in our case here out of the sky, but still millions of people will go and buy bottled water just because they can. It’s insane, but it happens every day.’
Jesse looked at them all for a moment and then set his glass down. ‘I digress, as I often do. You said that you were looking for me. Why?’
Stanley leaned forward in his seat. ‘How would you like to be able to get rid of your generators and yet still have more power than you will ever need for free?’
Jesse raised an eyebrow.
‘You’d be amazed how many people come by here saying things like that,’ he replied. ‘I did my physics at high school, and I know that such things require either large wind turbines or major solar arrays to generate enough energy. Regrettably, the amount of land I own is not large enough to install either.’
‘You won’t need any more space than a boiler cupboard,’ Stanley said. ‘If you can get me the required components, I’ll build the damned thing right here. All you have to promise to do is build another one just like it and pass it on to another community like yours, with the promise that they will do the same.’
Jesse stared at Stanley for a long moment, apparently stunned into silence. Something about Stanley’s confidence and enthusiasm for his work compelled people to believe, so much so that even Ethan found himself hoping that he would be able to see the completed device in action soon.
‘Why would you do that, and how would you do it?’
It took Stanley no more than about ten minutes to give a brief explanation of what he intended to do. As the old inventor described what had happened, how he had achieved what he had and of how the government was attempting to prevent it from becoming commercialized, so Jesse leaned further forward in his seat until he looked as though he were about to fall forwards out of it.
‘How long?’ he asked finally, ‘to build one of these fusion cages?’
‘Once I’ve got the pieces, about three days plus a few extra days of testing to make sure it’s stable and performing as it should,’ Stanley replied. ‘A week, and you’ll never have to worry about energy ever again.’
Jesse stared at Ethan, his features alive with excitement and hope.
‘Do it,’ he said, ‘and if it works, I’ll build enough of the damned things with you to power half of the country.’
Stanley reached out for Jesse and the younger man shook his hand firmly.
‘Let’s change the world, for the better,’ Stanley said.
Ethan felt a surge of hope flicker into life like a pale flame within him as he realized that he might be witnessing a meeting that would herald the beginning of a new dawn for humanity, felt those high hopes thumping in his chest alongside his heart.
Lopez snapped him from his reverie.
‘You hear that?’
Ethan blinked and realized that the thumping in his chest was not his heartbeat but a building crescendo of helicopter blades battering the night air outside.
Jesse leaped out of his seat even as a voice from outside cried out for help. His eyes raged as he glared at Ethan.
‘Who have you brought here?! What is this?’
‘They’re onto us,’ Lopez said urgently. ‘How could they have found us out here?’
‘Damn it, it doesn’t matter,’ Ethan snapped. ‘Nicola, grab the shotgun. We’re leaving!’
XXIX
‘Move, now!’
Ethan bolted for the door of the home as the sound of helicopter blades thundered overhead. He hurled open the door and stepped out into the forest to see the trees billowing in the downdraft from half a dozen Sikorsky UH–60 Black Hawk helicopters that were hovering above the trees, one of them sufficiently close to the open door for the glow from the home’s interior to faintly illuminate its cockpit and nose.
‘Get out of the house!’ Ethan yelled.
Lopez rushed out with Stanley and Amber close behind as Jesse sprinted out and shouted at Ethan.
‘Why did you bring them here?!’ he demanded, the wind from the rotor’s downwash blustering through the commune. ‘What have you done?!’