All That He Requires(14)

“Are you going to buy it from them?!”

“No. They wouldn’t sell. But I can rent it from them… which is what I’m in town to negotiate over the next couple of days. I’m meeting with the governor and key state representatives. I’ve already sealed the deal in D.C. with Nevada’s senators and representatives from the congressional districts. In exchange for a 99-year lease, my companies will provide free energy for the entire state of Nevada, an estimated 10,000 jobs, and a cut of all profits as we provide cheap, clean energy for California, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah.”

“Holy crap,” I whispered.

“Yep,” he said proudly.

I paused, thinking through the ramifications.

“Wait – I thought you said this amount of land could provide all the energy for the whole U.S.”

“It can… theoretically. But we need to start off small. People get freaked out when you say you’re going to change the world. Sometimes you need to hold their hand and change their backyard first.”

“They’ll let you do that? Rent the land, and all that other stuff you mentioned?”

“Yes. They will.”

“How do you know?”

Connor smiled. “I’ve figured out what they all want… and I’m prepared to give it to them.”

“But – if you do what you say you’re going to do… aren’t you going to totally screw all the coal plants?”

“Not just coal. Imagine a world where electricity costs less than a tenth of what it does now – not to mention it’s clean. Imagine you can pull your electric car into a charging station and fill up your car in under a minute, and for less money than a single gallon of gas. That’s what we’re talking about – and it’s only five, maybe ten years down the road.”

I stared at him. “You’d put Exxon and every other oil company out of business.”

“If they don’t adapt.”

“Holy shit, Connor! Can you actually do that?!”

“Yes. All the pieces are assembled. I have controlling blocks of stock in the major public utilities I need, plus a major automobile company that wants to dominate in the electric car market. I have a chain of gas stations ready to install all the necessary equipment for charging the cars, as long as I put up the seed money. I’ve assembled the funding necessary for the first five years. All I need now is the bureaucratic machinery behind me to make it legal.”

The realization hit me all at once: “They’re not going to let you do it,” I murmured.

“They’re not going to have a choice.”

“But – all the companies who make millions and billions of dollars off the way things are now – ”

“Will have to join in or get crushed.”

“But those companies pay huge amounts of money to politicians to make them vote the way they do!”

“I’ve taken care of that, too.”

“How?!”

“I shouldn’t say anything more, because I wouldn’t want you to ever have to testify in court… but let’s just say I’ve taken care of the situation.”

I sat there, mouth open, and tried to take it all in. It was a little much to absorb. After all, I’d been struggling to make rent last week, and now I was talking with a billionaire who was planning on changing the entire world. And who was entirely serious about doing it.

And who might just have a shot at it.

Then I remembered a conversation from earlier in the evening.

“Connor… your dad… does he have a lot of energy stocks?”

“That’s an understatement. I’d say over 40% of his net worth is in companies involved in fossil fuels and related industries, like the energy sector and automotive companies.”

“OH MY GOD!” I cried out as I jumped to my feet. “You’re doing this to screw over your dad?!”

He laughed. “No, that’s just a nice by-product.”

I started pacing back and forth.

I hadn’t exactly grasped what he meant earlier when he said he wanted to destroy his father’s empire, just to watch it burn.

Now I did.

And it was frightening me.

He walked over, stopped me from pacing, and put his hands on my shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“If your dad is as big an asshole as you say he is, there’s no way he’s going to let you get away with this!”

“I told you, all the pieces are already in place. It’s just a matter of tipping over the first domino now.”

He sounded supremely self-confident.

“But the fact that you want to do this just to screw over your dad? That’s messed up! You should really talk to somebody about this – like a psychiatrist!”

Connor looked at me a long moment… and then he asked, “Lily, do you know who Nikola Tesla was?”

If you’re a nerd girl, you must know who Nikola Tesla was. It’s like knowing who James Tiberius Kirk is, or who Anakin Skywalker became.

“Serbian-American inventor in the early 20th century,” I said. “Total genius. What’s he got to do with anything?”

“Tesla was quite possibly the greatest unsung inventor in the history of science. He was hired by Thomas Edison to fix his direct current electrical generators – and then Edison stiffed him out of his fee. Tesla turned around and basically invented alternating current – and Edison tried every dirty trick in the book to stop him. When Marconi invented radio, he was using over a dozen patents first registered by Tesla. He came up with the idea for radar in 1917, but Edison was the head of R&D for the U.S. Navy, and he nixed it because he hated Tesla. So it didn’t actually get invented until 1935 by someone else. And he devised things we still don’t understand to this day, and still can’t duplicate – like transmitting electricity wirelessly, or pulling it out of the atmosphere. An investor had him build a tower near New York City to do just that – pull electricity out of thin air. Tesla was going to give it away free to the entire planet, but when the investor realized he wouldn’t be able to control it or charge people for it, he had the tower torn down.”

“I know all this,” I said.

Connor gave me a look.

“Well… I know some of it,” I said grumpily. “What’s it got to do with you? Are you saying you’re a modern-day Nikola Tesla?”

“No. Not at all. But I am a businessman, and I’m in the position of being able to help guys who are modern-day Teslas. Imagine if that investor had never torn down that tower. What would the world be like today?”

“Different,” I admitted.

“Vastly different,” Connor said. “But my father? He’s like that investor who tore down the tower. He’s like Edison. Well… if Edison had never gotten famous for inventing anything. Edison might be credited with inventing the light bulb, but he didn’t. He sold the light bulb. He paid a laboratory of technicians to improve on an existing design, created by someone else, until it could be manufactured on a massive scale. That’s Edison – and my father – in a nutshell.”

“Edison was a genius,” I protested.

“Yes, he was. But his main gift was in self-promotion and business. Look at what he did to Tesla – cheated him, slandered him, fought against some of the potentially biggest advancements of the 20th century – because Edison wanted money, and fame, and power, and he couldn’t stand to be upstaged by someone else. My father’s like that. Hell, just about every CEO of every major corporation that controls the levers of the world is like that. They’re invested in the status quo, and they’ll do whatever they can to protect it – even if it means hindering progress that could benefit all of humanity. They convince themselves that the new kids on the block are just crackpots, flavors of the month. But even if they were presented with undeniable evidence, they wouldn’t care. They make decisions to benefit themselves and their rich cronies. They don’t give a damn about what could be. Not unless it directly lines their pockets, or gives them a return on their money in the very foreseeable future. And if they can see that a technology works, but they see it as a threat, then they’ll actively sabotage its development. Only when the genie’s out of the bottle, and it’s a choice of jumping on the train or getting run over, then they’ll finally sign on. But until that point, they’ll fight tooth and nail against progress – because all they care about is the almighty dollar. And in their eyes, a nickel in the hand is worth ten possible dollars in some distant, unproven future. No matter how amazing that future might be.”

Connor stepped away. He started pacing back and forth like a mad conductor in front of some unseen orchestra in the darkness.

“I don’t want to be that guy. I want to be the guy who changes the world for the better. And if I can’t be him, then I want to help the guy who’s going to change the world for the better. I want to be the man who enables geniuses to lift the world up. I want to be the person who helps make the world a better place, who helps usher humanity into the future. Because that’s what I’m good at – the game. The selling. The arm-twisting. The power plays behind the scenes. I can do that for the people who can’t do it for themselves. The dreamers, the scientists – the Nikola Teslas of the world.”