“Why are we doing this?” Lederman askedafter glancing at Newton’s whiteboard and seeing his laptop running a wireframe animation of a sphere whose surface was covered with a checkerboard pattern of recesses, unable to contain his rising curiosity any longer, “I’m your X.O., right?”
Newton’s lanky six-foot-plus frame continued to pace in front of the white board and glared at it, oblivious to Lederman’s question. Lederman had grown accustomed to Bob Newton’s tendency to obsess over details without seeing the forest for the trees, and that personality trait had served him well when he worked alone without a timetable or any degree of urgency. Newton had the luxury of neither, and Lederman desperately needed to light a fire under the man’s ass. Something he couldn’t do while being kept in the dark about so much. “Bob.”
Bob Newton paused to erase a small portion of the equation, pulled out and uncapped a blue marker and inserted a different value then stepped back and tapped the marker against his chin. Lederman watched his old friend’s eyes dart around the board to assess the impact of the newer calculation, absently nodding in satisfaction. “Russ!” Newton shouted over his shoulder without looking away from the equation.
Lederman rose from his chair, took a step forward to stand directly behind Bob, “Right here, BOB!” Russ bellowed, which caused Bob to quickly tuck his head between his shoulders. A moment later, his shoulders lowered and he slowly turned around, a bright blue mark running from his chin to the base of his nose. Bob wasn’t smiling.
“Yes, Bob?” Lederman asked before returning to his seat, his face completely expressionless, his voice carrying no trace of irony. “I’m worried about you, Bob. I mean, how long have I been doing that to you? Something like twenty-five years, isn’t it?” Russ Lederman asked, shaking his head in what appeared to be genuine and utter amazement.
“Yeah, you’d think I’d learn, sooner or later, you little...” Newton muttered to himself while stepping to the industrial sink to scrub the blue line from his face. He pulled a clean washcloth from the cabinet over the sink, soaked it under steaming hot water. He then squirted dish soap onto the rag and worked it into a lather. He leaned toward the small mirror hanging over the sink, raised the cloth and scrubbed at the blue mark as he spoke, while stretching his lips away from his nostrils, causing his esses to whistle softly. “You want to know what all the secrecy’s about.”
Russ Lederman nods, “I think I have the right to know. Don’t you?”
“Absolutely, you have the right.” Bob Newton rinsed the pale blue suds from the washcloth and his chin, then draped the cloth over the sink’s lip. “The simple fact is we can’t risk letting anyone know what we’re up to. If anyone gets wind of this project, the government gets involved and fast-tracks the idea to the military. The instant that happens, we get boxed out. And I haven’t even gone into all the ways they can make us vanish without a trace if they decide we’re too much of a liability. It’s not like they answer to anybody.” It wasn’t unheard of - both Newton and Lederman had colleagues who had perished under suspicious circumstances in order to serve some unfathomably sinister political agenda.
Lederman was trying to mask his exasperation at Newton’s evasiveness, but it was becoming more and more of a challenge, “Okay, that’s why we’re keeping the project a secret. So far, all I know is you asked me to help you put a team together. So now we have a--” holding his fist out and extending each finger with each job title, “--materials expert, a microbiologist, a computer programmer, an AI specialist, and finally - the applied physics guru, yours truly - all furiously working to build….what? What is the secret we’re keeping from them, Bob?”
Newton held his palms out in a placating gesture, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. We’ve been running at full throttle ever since the meet ‘n greet at the resort - but I promise you, it wasn’t intentional.” He opened the cabinet over the sink and pulled out a pair of thick glass tumblers before walking to his desk - a dinosaur from fifty years ago - yanked at the top drawer on the side until it sprang open with a metallic shriek, a pint of some kind of amber-colored liquid with a fancy label sliding to the front of the drawer. He poured three fingers of booze into each tumbler and held one out for his colleague.
Lederman got up from his chair, which he carried to Newton’s desk. He took the glass, clinked it against Newton’s and reseated himself, his rotundness causing the springs in his chair to groan. Newton pulled his own from under the desktop and sat down heavily, his splayed legs looking almost spider-like.
With both hands cradling his drink, Bob Newton leaned forward and rested his forearms atop his knees. Then Bob explained to his old friend Russ the plan he had laid out, and any doubts Russ had about the project vanished by the time Bob had finished.