Deacon Loves Penny

 

                                    

~ 1 ~

His name was Deacon Blue Fredericks. He was named after the title of a Steely Dan song. Deacon was the child of two drug-addicted parents in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They were forced, by the Wisconsin Department of Child Welfare, to give Deacon up at the tender age of three. 

From there, Deacon’s journey began through a series of foster homes, some abusive, some loving, and some downright dangerous. Here he learned the one simple truth that governed his existence into early adulthood; that he was alone in this world and needed to make his own way.

Deacon was not a bad kid. But his solitary nature made him sullen and distant and not exactly easy to get along with, especially in foster homes where everybody had their issues. He never cared much for school but was bright, curious and intuitive and his teachers respected that. 

When he was sixteen, he had already made up his mind that after completing high school he would enlist in the Marine Corps, and do whatever he could to become a Special Forces soldier. It had been a dream of his for as long as he could remember. For the next two years, he established an exercise routine that included free weights, pushups, sit-ups, crunches and running. He would religiously spend two to three hours a day on this routine, and fortunately for him, the foster home he was in at the time belonged to his high school’s track coach and his wife, who were good people and encouraged his training routine.

By the time he was 18, Deacon had graduated high school with a B+ average. He was six foot one, tall and lean, a cut 180 pounds of mostly muscle. He enlisted in the Marines on the morning of his 18th birthday. At the recruitment centre in Milwaukee where he was living, he was informed that he would be called in two weeks and told where and when to report for basic training. 

That afternoon he celebrated his 18th birthday with his most recent and, far and away, best foster parents and their two other children, both of whom were younger than Deacon.

Later that day he received a call from a lawyer in Chicago named Charles Franklin. He was the executor of the estate and family lawyer for Deacon’s grandmother, Evelyn Cantrell. He informed Deacon that his grandmother had recently passed away and had bequeathed her entire estate to him. Mr. Franklin was also quick to point out that under no circumstances were Deacon’s natural parents to be informed about this. Deacon assured him that he had no relationship with them, nor did he even have any curiosity about them. 

He was also told that the estate would be held in trust until his 23rd birthday. In the meantime, Mr. Franklin needed power of attorney to invest the Cantrell family capital and manage the Cantrell estate. When Deacon asked how much the estate was worth, he was told it was currently valued, including assets, stocks, and properties at more than seven million dollars.

Deacon was floored by this number. He was also delighted that one of the provisions of the will was that he was to receive a monthly stipend of five thousand dollars until he was to take control of the estate, after which he would inherit the entire fortune. Charles Franklin told Deacon that he would be happy to discuss a financial management plan with Deacon at his earliest convenience.

The next day, Deacon took a bus down to Chicago and met with Charles Franklin at the downtown offices of Franklin, Davies & Klein. Franklin explained the power of attorney document that Deacon was about to sign and went into quite a bit of detail about the estate, which was comprised of real estate holdings, conservative stock and bond investments and a trust fund.

Deacon informed Charles Franklin that he was about to enter the Marine Corps for four years and they worked out a plan for Deacon’s stipend to be deposited in an account at a BankAmerica branch close to the office, where Deacon could obtain a credit card and bank card.

After the meeting with Franklin, Deacon then went down to the bank in question and met with a man named David Pierce. He told Pierce the details of his status and that he would not be touching the money for at least four years. Pierce suggested having a portion of his money, say 75% placed into an investment account, which was, in the current market, yielding approximately 3.7 times the rate of a conventional savings account. Pierce did the math and showed Deacon how much he could be making over four years, by doing things this way and though Deacon didn’t know much about the workings of the financial world, it sounded pretty good so he authorized it.

It took another few hours to get Deacon a BankAmerica MasterCard and a bank card. He headed home with $5,000 in his checking account, and five years to wait to become a ‘small m’ millionaire.

At home in Milwaukee, Deacon sat down with his foster parents, Jared and Myra Singleton after the kids had gone downstairs to watch TV and told them the whole story. They were overjoyed for him. Deacon told them the first thing he would do when he got control of the estate was pay off their mortgage and set up a college fund for the kids who were just starting high school. They protested fairly vigorously but Deacon told them they were the first actual parents he ever felt he had, and he wanted to do this for them.

The next two weeks flew by and before he knew it, Deacon was reporting for training at Parris Island South Carolina.

While the training was gruelling, Deacon’s conditioning got him through with a minimum of wear and tear. He kept pretty much to himself as some recruits did, in an almost subconscious effort to conserve energy for the new hell that each day presented.

One day toward the end of his basic training he was called into the camp commander’s office, where he was subjected to an elaborate psychological examination. The objective, although it was never announced to him at the time, was to determine if he would be a good candidate for sniper training. He had already demonstrated stellar physical capabilities and good shooting skills. The real question was whether or not he had the mindset for it.

He was quizzed for two hours on three separate occasions, after which it was determined that he did indeed possess the qualities required to withstand the rigours and life-and-death decisions that could be required of him. 

To qualify for special forces sniper training, it helped to have a sociopathic bent in your personality. This didn’t mean you were certifiably insane or anything even close. It was really about the ability to compartmentalize and separate the killing from the other areas of your life. Because killing is the central purpose that a sniper serves. But the taking of human lives is a heavy burden, and not many people who aren’t at least a bit sociopathic can live with the stresses and especially the guilt that arises from a wrong decision. And the killing of humans was a world apart from shooting at targets and dummies, at which Deacon excelled.

But Deacon didn’t have any of those issues. In fact, once the reasons for and the results of his psych testing and marksmanship were revealed to him, he was overjoyed. Because now, for the first time in his solitary life, it was like a door had been opened and he was finally starting to understand himself.

Once he was through basic training, they sat him down again and asked him about his plan for the corps. Deacon was honest with them and told them exactly what his situation was. He had originally planned a career in the armed forces, but because of the amount of money he would have, he had since revised his plans. He would serve out his hitch and then leave, knowing he had done his patriotic duty for his country, and then see if he could put his wealth to good use.

His commanding officer commended him and explained to him that the program they wanted to put him in was quite extensive and that they could only consider long-term candidates, preferably those with combat experience. They saw training Deacon as an experiment to determine if they could put new recruits into the field as snipers, but because of the cost of training and the fact that many budgets were being scrutinized six ways from Sunday, they could only do this with men who were prepared to put in at least eight years of service.

They did commend Deacon on his aptitude and his other physical attributes, but they did not try and convince him to commit. The money Deacon was talking about was simply too big a carrot dangling in front of him.

~ 2 ~

Deacon never actually made it overseas. He had joined at a time when US military involvement around the world was contracting. Instead, because of his excellent conditioning, he was assigned to the Parris Island Marine base where he helped supervise and lead the physical training of recruits. The work was physically demanding, but Deacon didn’t mind. The more gruelling it was the better he slept and the faster the time went.

Four years later, with close to $64,000 in his BankAmerica account and more than $230,000 in his investment account, he took a bus to Chicago. The first thing he did was buy himself a set of wheels. He chose a used Toyota Corolla Cross which he felt comfortable sitting in and knew would be a reliable vehicle. 

The next two days, while waiting for his insurance to be approved, were spent meeting with both David Pierce at BankAmerica and Charles Franklin. At the bank, Deacon had the investment account money transferred to his savings account and also instructed Pierce to have all of his $5000 monthly stipend deposited into his savings account. In his meeting with Franklin, Deacon expressed his wish to liquidate all his holdings and have the cash value deposited in his savings account at BankAmerica. Franklin strongly advised against it, but Deacon was adamant and, at the end of the day, it was his money to do with as he pleased. 

Franklin was quick to point out that there would be penalties and fees to the tune of close to 20%. Deacon just shrugged. To him, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of difference between the nine million and that the estate’s value had grown to and the seven-plus million after penalties, taxes and admin fees. For a man who had lived on a marine grunt’s income for the previous four years, this seemed like an astronomical amount of money.

In Milwaukee, the next morning there was a little homecoming celebration at the Singletons and before he left Deacon wrote a cheque for $43,200, which would eliminate their mortgage. He also told them that he would open the trust fund for the kids, as soon as he was in control of his finances. Later that day, he left Milwaukee and headed back down through Chicago. It was about dinner time when he arrived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, about 70 miles south and east of Chicago. He ate a junk food dinner at Popeye’s and then checked into a suites hotel that offered free wifi and breakfast. 

His plan was simple. He aimed to find something on the Atlantic coast, just far enough south that winters wouldn’t be a pain in the ass and summers would not be hellishly hot. 

His other objective was to teach himself as much as he could about the ins and outs of his finances, which, a year from now, would be considerable. On paper, he figured it would cost about twenty-five hundred a month for decent accommodation and another fifteen hundred or so for food, gas and other expenses. At the end of the year, he would have a pretty good write-off and probably have to pay no taxes, and still be left with some money in the bank.

But after doing all that ballpark math in his head, he was still left with the question of what he would do with his life. But Deacon was an optimist and a warrior and he figured something would happen. All he had to do was be open to the possibilities that presented themselves.

The next day, Deacon went to an Apple store and bought himself a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. He had been taught how to use these devices by his young foster siblings Julia and Ronnie Singleton.  

That night, he opened the computer, got himself hooked up to the Internet and enrolled in an online series of tutorials on financial management.

He also mulled over the idea of keeping a journal of his activities, mostly because he had found himself with a lot of time to kill and he had never really taken to TV or movies. Instead, he read books. He preferred anything to do with law enforcement, outlaws and espionage, which led him to become a fan of writers like Elmore Leonard, David Baldacci, Daniel Silva, Lee Child and Michael Connelly. He often thought it might be cool to try and write something like that. But at just over twenty-two years of age, he knew he needed a bit more life experience to be able to write anything remotely close to what these guys did.

Two days later, he took off from Fort Wayne heading east and south. The first night, he stayed in Charleston, West Virginia. On the second day, he had made it to the coast and rolled into Virginia Beach. He had been there on several of his weekend excursions from Parris Island and liked the feel of the place. He then took Sandbridge Road down to the ocean. He drove up and down a few times and saw several signs offering houses for lease. He finally pulled into the Hampton Inn and registered. He unpacked and headed out to find a nice place to eat. There was no shortage of those along Pacific Avenue. 

The next day he drove around the town and saw where the shops and the malls were. There were more hotels along Atlantic Avenue than he could count. But south of the hotel area was a long strip of various-sized homes that backed onto the Atlantic. In the afternoon he went for a walk on the beach, looking at the houses he saw for lease along Sandfiddler Road.

On the third day, he started calling real estate agents to set up viewings.

On the fourth day, he saw several of the houses for lease they were all going for anywhere from $2000 to $3200, which when he factored in his food costs, was kind of a wash with what he would pay for staying in a hotel. Later that day he signed a one-year lease and that night was ensconced in a beautiful, fully furnished three-bedroom house with an almost total glass wall facing the ocean. At $2600, it wasn’t the most expensive property he looked at, but it had central air and wifi as part of the package, as well as the most comfortable furniture and the best back deck.

On the fifth day, Deacon woke up to the sound of gulls screeching and waves rolling, and he thought this could definitely be his home base. When his money was all in one place, he would make a cash offer for the house, which the agent he dealt with told him would be about eight hundred thousand, but the owners would take seven hundred and fifty in cash. All that was left was figuring out what exactly he wanted to do with his life.

~ 3 ~

The days, such as they were, came and went. He took his financial learning seriously and did a lot of thinking while he was running up and down the long stretch of beach that was his backyard. He met his neighbours, but they were so much older than him that they had very little interest in chumming around, which was fine with him. 

One of the advantages of a shitty early life was that you learned how to be alone. He was his own best friend and happy with that arrangement. 

Through trial and error, he found the best places to eat. Like most of the locals, he learned that all-you-can-eat buffets were to be avoided at all costs and the smaller independently owned places were the friendliest and had the best food and coffee. He also laid in a supply of basic groceries, coffee, cream, bread, which he kept in the freezer, some bagels and cream cheese, and any vegetables he could eat raw, like carrots and celery. He was not about to teach himself how to cook, at least not right away, when he could afford to eat out and support the local economy in that way.

Because Deacon didn’t drink all that much and didn’t particularly relate to the kind of people who did, the bar scene in the town held no interest for him. There were a lot of females around but he had no real experience with women and had no idea how to approach them. He did splurge on red wine which he quite enjoyed and developed a taste for several different French brands.

Deacon was cruising along. He was living in a nice house. He had the ocean. He had lots of books to read and a bit of wine to drink. His civilian life had become as regular as his military life had been. He thought about looking for a job, but still couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out what he wanted to do. 

Then, one day, things started to change. 

~ 4 ~

The Pocahontas Pancake House was the restaurant he went to regularly because everybody knew that pancake houses always had the best coffee. They had just hired a new waitress. She was about five foot four and looked to be about 23. She had long wavy light brown hair, just the hint of freckles on either side of her nose and bright blue eyes. She wore a name tag that just said, Penny.

She walked to his table. He looked up at her and smiled. She smiled back. “You’re new…Penny,” he said squinting at her name tag.

“Yeah, just started yesterday.”

The restaurant was sparsely populated so she didn’t feel much pressure to sprint away. Maybe she liked what she saw too. “I take it you’re a regular….?” she asked.

“Deacon. It’s really Deacon Fredericks. Actually, it’s Deacon Blue. I was named after a Steely Dan song.” he said, wondering why he was blathering.

Penny extended her hand and Deacon shook it. It was one of the softest sensations he’d ever felt. “Glad to meet you Deacon.”

“Penny? Is that short for Penelope? Deacon asked.

“Yes it is.” Penny said. “But please don’t call me Penelope. I really believe my folks made a mistake with that name.”

“So is this your first job, Penny?”

“Yeah. I just graduated from Virginia Tech. Computer Science.”

“Wow, I would have never guessed that about you.” 

“The market was booming when I started there four years ago and by the time I graduated, it was in recession. I needed a job, so my uncle Frank came to the rescue. He owns this restaurant. So I’m waiting it out by waiting on tables. 

“Yeah, I noticed the shrinkage in the tech business. Feels like a huge market correction.”

“What about you, Deacon? What’s your thing?”

“I’m kinda in between things at the moment. Just got out of the Marines. Had a bit of an inheritance, so I decided to spend a year looking at the ocean.”

“Well, there’s a whole lot of that around here. So what can I get you, Deacon?”

Deacon ordered some waffles, crisp bacon and coffee. Penny hustled off to make it happen. 

Deacon left Penny a big enough tip to make himself memorable. And over the course of the next two weeks, he made more than a few trips to the waffle place, and had short chats with Penny. Finally, Deacon got up the nerve to ask Penny out for dinner, which she gladly accepted. She gave Deacon her address and phone number and two days later he was picking her up and driving her down the coast to a place called the Baja Restaurant, which was just down the street a few miles from his house.

While they were eating, Deacon asked Penny some questions about her education, and what got her interested in computer science in the first place. 

“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “Curiosity, I guess. I have always just wanted to know how things work. I also thought, and this is gonna sound political, that women were underrepresented in the tech business.”

“I agree. It's the same way in the armed forces. Women are treated like second-class citizens, even though I’ve known a couple of lady Marines that you wouldn’t want to mess with.”

“But to answer your question.,” Penny said, “I guess I got into it because I had an idea and needed to know a lot more about the technology I would need to develop it.”

“Is it a good idea?”

“I think so. And after four years of messing around with it, I got it to the point where it actually was a thing. And it was a good enough thing to get me my Master's degree. But there’s still a long way to go.”

Deacon was listening carefully because he had an idea of his own. After he had taught himself the basics of how to manage his money, he started to look around at investment opportunities with better potential than bonds and bank interest.

For some strange reason, mostly out of curiosity, and to create some mystique about himself that this beautiful lady might find intriguing, he said. “So suppose, hypothetically, that someone came to you and said they were looking for the best ways to make an investment grow through technology. What would you say to that?”

“Hypothetically?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, first of all, I wouldn’t say anything right away. The market is in a downturn and volatility is high. What I’d want to do is do a lot of research and see what kind of niches there are that are bucking the trends and that have the best opportunity of blossoming as the industry starts to pivot back. 

“Hmmm…that’s an interesting answer. You think this pivot will happen soon?” 

“It’s hard to say. Some areas are showing more potential than others. ”

“You know this tells me a lot about you.”

“Oh yeah…like for example?”

“Like for example, that you’re someone who subscribes to the measure twice, cut once principle.”

“Is that a real principle, or just something you just pulled out of the air?”

“Somebody I know told me that a few years ago. It stuck with me. In fact, it came in very handy in the Corps, because you’re always solving logistical puzzles or one kind or another.”

“Yeah, well I guess I do think that way.”

“Suppose I told you that the guy with the investment capital was me.”

“You have investment capital?”

“Not at the moment. But it’s on the way. The inheritance I told you about. I get it on my 23rd birthday. It’s being held in trust in Chicago and I have instructed them to liquidate the entire estate. I’ll end up with about six or seven million.”

Penny was speechless. She stared at him for a long time. Then she smiled. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Nope. One hundred percent for real. And believe it or not, you are the first person I’ve ever actually told.”

“So I guess you’ll be paying for dinner, huh?”

They both had a good laugh about that, and Penny was hiding her shock as well as she could.

“So the question,” Deacon said, “Is not a hypothetical. The question is very real. I have been thinking a lot about it over the past few months and I think the tech business will bounce back bigger than ever. But that’s just an amateur’s view. I still have a lot more thinking to do about it.” 

Penny stared at Deacon for quite some time. He felt a little self-conscious, so he dug into his fish while he waited for her to say something, which she finally did.

“AI.” Penny said, “Artificial Intelligence is leading the resurgence in the tech industry.”

“And how do you know this?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I just know it. Maybe it’s the way things work in my head. How I process data. I read a lot about tech. And that’s what it all says to me. Think about it. Surf the Internet, there are a million and one things going on or starting up and it’s all driven by AI. My idea falls into that area.”

“So maybe we could start something, you know, together. I’ll provide the capital, you provide the brains.”

“Are you serious?” Penny asked.

“Well, I don’t know. I guess it would depend on the idea, how good it was and how much it would cost to get it out there.”

Deacon wasn’t sure exactly why he said that to Penny and he also wasn’t sure that Penny believed him. But it was out there now and he really did want to find out more about her idea. He had a lot of trouble believing that this could have all fallen into his lap the way it did, but then again, there it was. And here he was playing a hunch.

 After dinner, Deacon drove her to his house. She walked around looking at everything, especially the ocean view.

“I’m thinking about buying this, but right now I’m leasing it.”

“How much, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Twenty-six a month.”

“Two thousand six hundred?”

“Yeah.” 

“Okay,’ Penny said, as she stared out the back window. “So you’re from the Midwest. How did you end up here?”

“In the Marines, I was stationed at Parris Island, so on the weekends I would rent a car and drive around, up and down the coast mostly. I kind of settled on this area. But I had to wait until my hitch was done, then I had a bunch of stuff to do at home and now here I am. Ten months more or less, to go. I get a monthly allowance that pays all the bills, and the big tips I leave for a certain waitress.”

Deacon poured some wine for both of them, then they went out to sit on the back deck. The air was warm and blowing across the water making good-sized waves.

“So are you serious about starting something? I mean, you’re set for life. Why would you want to work if you didn’t have to?”

“Ohh, I’ve thought about that more than you can imagine. But the Marine Corps, it gives you a sense of purpose, and without that, who knows what your life could turn into? I want to do something useful with this money. I also want to make more money with it so I can keep on doing whatever that thing turns out to be. Right now, what’s interesting to me is that I ran into you. And, money aside, we have the same basic goal in mind for our lives. Why else would you have gone through all that education?” 

“To be honest, I was just following my heart. I always liked the idea of being in an industry where just about everything that happens is new. And that’s what led me to computer science and right into AI.”

They spent the rest of the evening talking about technology. Mostly, it was Penny talking and Deacon taking it all in. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Penny started to reveal the idea that she had been developing. 

“You have a basic understanding of how computers work?” Penny asked.

Deacon nodded.

“What if I told you I could accelerate the processing speed of your computer by a factor of 8 to 10 times? Now that wouldn’t mean much to you as an individual user because you’re most probably just using it for simple communication. But suppose you’re a big company and you could up the speed of your business processes to that degree without any overheating, which has been the biggest challenge to date. I think you’d be very interested in that and would pay a hell of a lot for it.”

“Does that technology even exist right now?”

“No, but the idea for it does because I created it in my second year and Virginia Tech and fine-tuned it for two years after that. I have copyrighted the process and done all the math on making it work. I was going to use it as bait to get into a good development position at Intel or one of the other biggies. But then the bottom fell out of the market and here I am waiting tables at The Pocahontas Pancake House.”

The next half hour or so was spent with Deacon listening to a fairly detailed explanation of how Penny’s AI-powered process accelerator worked. He admitted that he didn’t understand all of it, something about chip configuration and temperature variance but Penny was more than patient with his questions. The bottom line was, according to Penny, that once they had the process in an operational prototype form, then they could take it to a big industry trade show and either lease the technology to individual businesses or partner with one of the larger companies like Intel, IBM, Apple or Microsoft.

The biggest single expense would be developing the chip that powered the hardware. But Penny was confident that she could find the right person or group to help her create the chip and integrate it into a high-end mainframe and then use the revenue from that to develop new processors for laptops and desktops, which would change the whole industry. She was convinced that IMB or Apple would, by far, be the most interested.

But even though he was just twenty-three years old, Deacon knew that nothing in life that would make you a lot of money is ever a straight line from A to B. Still in all, Penny was a girl with an idea, and if nothing else, she had the strength of her conviction. 

“So what’s your plan B?” Deacon asked.

Penny looked at him with her head tilted slightly. It was obvious that nobody had ever asked her that.

“Ummm. There is no plan B per se. What it is is a two-part process. The part I just explained is the hardware component and the chip that makes everything go exponentially faster without burning up. The other part is an AI interface that lets the users tell the machinery what to do and then coughs up the solutions. This is a software component that can run independently of any special hardware requirements. So companies can buy the AI product and we can program it to interface with their current business systems and give them way more efficiency and speed than human beings doing the same thing. And once the chip technology gets developed, they can buy into the hardware and get even more processing speed, efficiency and capability. 

“The program architecture to do everything I just told you about is solid. It’s how I got my degree. In fact, the Dean of the college asked me if I would like to stay on and develop it there as a Ph.D. project. That was a dead giveaway that it would be ten to twenty times more valuable if I put it on the open market.”

“So when you talk about an AI interface, are you talking about something like Siri?”

“Sort of. I mean it would have an audio/video face and voice, but it would be able to work with all the business software and systems the company already uses. We just program each application separately. And it isn’t just the interface AI we’re selling. It’s the business of programming it, keeping it current with updates, training and expanding to provide additional functionality for other business processes. It’s like we become the AI department of the companies we work for and eventually phase ourselves out once we have trained their people to run it. So we will need to have a training program in place, which I have almost finished writing. It’s like we’re creating a whole little industry to support the AI.”

“So the program actually is a phase-two thing.” Deacon said.

Penny thought about it for a bit. “Yeah. I guess it is. Because the chip is the thing that would cost big bucks and maybe take a year or two to develop.”

“By big bucks, what do you mean?”      

“I don't know for sure. There are all kinds of ways to go about it. This is why I want to develop the AI interface. Hopefully, I can sell enough of those to be able to afford to partner with one of the biggies on chip development. I know how to do it, or at least I’m pretty sure I do, but it’s a very big developmental process.”

“Where do you get the people to train for the implementation of the AI program?”

“Oh, that’s the easy part. I can cherry-pick, because there are hundreds of them floating around at any given time, regardless of the state of the economy. We just make them sign their lives away to discourage them from pirating the idea. They will only be doing the program implementation. If they have any ideas for new programming, we will partner with them. The programming, business systems integration and training is about 80% of the work. The interface development, about 10% and the maintenance is another 10%.”

“OK. I get it. So you really do have two products. One is a super fast computer chip, the other is an AI business assistant.”

“Yeah. I guess you could look at it that way.”

 Deacon and Penny sat there for a long time looking out at the ocean, as the moon peeked through gaps in the moving clouds. Deacon could not believe his luck that he had stumbled upon a true genius who could put some of his money to work for him. He was careful not to sound too excited about all of this.

“So, I would need to know what you would need in terms of capital investment to get this thing moving.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, I think I am. It sounds like a pretty incredible idea. My only concern would be that if you sit on this for too long, somebody else will come up with it and beat you to the punch.”

“That’s always a possibility.”

“Deacon looked out at the sky. “How much do you make at the waffle house?”

“Not much, maybe four hundred a week if I have a lot of big tippers like you.”

“So what if I said I would pay you, say six hundred a week, to carry on your development full-time.”

“Ummm. You would do that based on a half hour of conversation?”

“Not totally. I would do that based on my ability to analyze a situation and formulate a battle plan. Marine, remember?”

“I’d need an office. Right now I’m back at home.”

“I’ve got a whole house.”

“Are you asking me to move in with you?”

“No, I’m saying there’s space here and it’s already being paid for.”

“But I could live here if I wanted?”

“Of course. It’s not a hustle, Penny. It’s a business proposition. If, once we get to know each other it turns into something, well that’s even better. Right now, I’m interested in your idea and what you could do with it with some financing.”

“You say your capital will be available in ten months.”

“Yep.”

“Well, I can get a lot of the groundwork laid in that time. But sooner or later we’re gonna need more than what I can do.” 

“And that’s what I want you to think about.” 

Penny turned in her chair and stared at Deacon for a good thirty seconds. Then she stuck out her hand. “Okay, Deacon, you’re on.”

 They shook hands and the deal was made.”

~ 5 ~

Early the following week, Penny moved in with her bags and her computer equipment. At Deacon’s insistence, she set up in the dining area at the back of the house, so she could have good light for the better part of the day. They were both up each morning at the crack of dawn, Deacon, because of his Marine training, Penny because she was a workaholic who was used to working very long hours. 

Deacon didn’t bother her during the day. He used the time to read and run the beach and, despite his former plan to eat out as often as he could, teach himself how to cook. In the evenings they had dinner together and talked out on the deck until they were both too tired to stay awake. 

As their routines became more entrenched, they both started to feel warmer about each other. About three weeks later, Deacon was asleep in his bed in the master bedroom. After a while, he became aware of a presence next to him in the shape of a warm body in the person of Penny. He didn’t say anything just put his arm around her and brought her closer, at some point towards dawn they made love for the first of many times in their lives.

~ 6 ~

Nine months later they had fallen into a pretty consistent domestic routine. Penny slaved away doing all the stuff she had to do to get the program up to snuff and Deacon just basically did whatever he felt like. He didn’t think too much about what he wanted to do because he had begun to understand that Penny’s work would be the real driver in the relationship.

Then one day, almost ten months later, Deacon announced that it was time to go to Chicago and claim his estate. Penny packed up her backup hard drives where she kept the programs, and locked her big computer with a 28-character passcode and off they went. 

In Chicago, Charles Franklin was very happy to see them, mostly because he had, as per Deacon’s instructions, drawn up the Articles of Incorporation for the company F&J Cyber Enterprises, and Deacon made Franklin the chief administrative officer and legal counsel. Franklin indicated that he would only initiate a monthly retainer when the business of F&J Cyber started to develop a revenue stream. Franklin had also liquidated all the financial assets and explained that they had all been deposited in a high-yield savings account at Bank America. The total was just a shade over seven million clear. Finally, Franklin handed Deacon a safety deposit key at a CitiBank location in North Chicago.

After all that was done, they went down the street to BankAmerica and met with David Pearson, opened two trust accounts in the names of the Singleton kids in the amounts of one hundred thousand dollars each.

They then drove to the north side and went to the CitiBank, where an attendant got out the safety deposit box and left them in a viewing room. The box contained only two items; one was a small box of beautiful jewelry, which included a large diamond solitaire ring.

The second was an envelope with his name on it. He opened the letter.

My dear grandson:

We have never met, but I am your maternal grandmother. The reasons we have never met are complex and not very pleasant, but then again, nothing in life is perfect. I have left you my entire estate because I fear that if I had left it to your mother, it would have eventually killed her. She is a hopeless addict and I say that because I tried to move heaven and earth to get her clean, but nothing worked. 

It’s my fervent hope that you will do something good with this money. If your grandfather and I were still alive and healthy, we would have started looking at environmental causes, because the future of our planet depends to a great extent on the greening of our world. But the last few years, when I could have done something, I was too ill to go through the process. I hope you are happy and healthy and will put this money to good use.

Love, 

Your grandmother

Deacon folded the letter back up and stuck it in his bag, along with the jewelry. He didn’t say anything.

“Well, this kind of explains why you never really talk about your family.” Penny said.

“My family is the Singletons. You’ll meet them tomorrow.”

That night, they stayed at the Hilton in downtown Chicago, had room service steaks and drank a whole bottle of expensive wine  After dinner, Deacon got out the small jewel case and opened it up. There was a beautiful diamond necklace several gold bracelets and a white gold diamond engagement ring. Deacon picked up the ring and put it on Penny’s finger. It fit perfectly.

“I’m not asking you to marry me,” Deacon said. “But I want you to have this, just because I love you. If we get married someday, great. Let’s just see how it goes.”

“Fair enough.” Penny said. 

About twenty minutes later they fell into bed and slept the sleep of the dead.

~ 7 ~ 

Two days later they were heading back to the east coast, They weren’t married in the traditional sense but they were 50/50 partners in their corporation. All the way back home, they talked about what they would need to do to get Penny’s product actualized and marketed.

The very first step was to find the right AI development company to work with. Before they left for Chicago Penny had shortlisted three companies. Two were in New York and one was in Asbury Park, New Jersey. They agreed that they would try the New Jersey company first mainly because they both liked the name which was Anchor 44.

Two days later they left Virginia Beach and headed north to New Jersey. The first leg of their trip took them through the Chesapeake Bay tunnel and all the way north to Wilmington Delaware. After crossing over into New Jersey, they found a Holiday Inn near a decent-looking restaurant, had dinner then crashed. The next morning they pulled into Asbury Park and arrived at a large frame house overlooking the beach.

There was a man, who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, sitting on the porch with a mug in his hand. He got to his feet and introduced himself as Damon Drake. He invited Penny and Deacon into the house. He led them down the hall to a kitchen where he offered them some coffee, then showed them into a large room at the back of the house.

There was a meeting table in the middle and a bank of computer equipment along the side wall. There were also five large flat-screen monitors. In each of four of them, there were people, three men and a woman, facing away from the camera that was on them. Penny and Damon sat down on chairs in the centre of the array. Deacon took a seat at the table behind them.

“Okay, guys.” Damon said and everybody turned around.

“So this is the core of our company.” Damon said. “Tina Marshall is in Toronto. Dimitri Yelovich, Istanbul. Joseph Lee is in Tokyo. And finally, Ray Conlin is our legal counsel. He’s in New York. He’s a technology patent attorney and a pretty shrewd financial guy. He will mostly just listen. And I am here with you in person. Guys, this is Penny Jones and her partner, Deacon Fredericks from Virginia Beach. Deacon waved from the background.

“Well, you’re quite an international group.” Penny said

“We are indeed.” Damon replied. “So, Penny, you obviously know all about us or you wouldn’t be here. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell us about yourself and the project you have in mind.”

“Ummm OK,” Penny said. “A year ago I received a Master's from Virginia Tech. My Master's project was an AI assistant program, but not like SIRI or ALEXA  This is much, much more sophisticated. Her operational name is Lilli. I want to program her to be able to do pretty high-end financial analysis, predictive forecasting and a whole range of other AI-based business functions. 

“I have already mapped out and patented the source code for it, as part of my degree project. I have also created a detailed project description or vision, which I will share with the company we decide to go with after the non-disclosure agreement has been signed. Our decision will be based on both cost parameters and cultural fit. In other words, we have to like each other and we have to be able to afford you. Deacon is my partner and the principal investor.”

Penny continued “We’re looking for a team to work with and help me pull this all together. This is the AI information end of a much larger idea which is an AI-based computer system that I have also developed and copyrighted the coding formulae for. But that’s for later, and I would like to use part of the profit from this project to finance the larger one. Deacon is financing the development and marketing of this project. One of the additional things I want to do with this AI product is to create a specific version for environmental businesses, which we will donate to groups around the world, to help them run more effectively and efficiently in terms of awareness building, forecasting and fundraising.”

Penny stopped and took a sip of her coffee. “So that’s all I can tell you right now. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them.”

The questions came from everywhere. Penny revealed no secrets but just enough detail for this team to understand what would be required of them. Deacon just sat and watched while Penny answered them and they debated certain points. This went on for the better part of an hour, at which time everybody seemed satisfied that they had enough information to develop a costing and a proposal.

As soon as everybody signed off and disappeared into the ether, Damon turned to Penny and smiled. “This is a hell of a project, Penny. Are you sure you’re only twenty-three?”

They all laughed at that. “I don’t know much about computer technology, but your people seem to be quite well-equipped to handle this project.” Deacon said. “I was impressed with the quality of thinking you all did just off the cuff.”

“Well, thanks,” Damon said. 

“I agree,” Penny said. “I like everybody a lot.”

“I’m curious,” Deacon said. “How did you all get together in the first place?”

“We’re all from MIT. Met there as freshmen. Formed a project team and kept it together all the way through, created a company, then found a good lawyer. We hold two dozen patents that provide enough income for us to pick and choose the projects we want to work on and also invest in them. After today, yours has made it to the top of both lists.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Penny said. “When you work on your own, you never know with any certainty that you’re really onto something.”

“Oh, we know that feeling all too well,” Damon said. “In any case, we have enough info to map this out and give you a pretty solid price and a critical path.”

They went out the front door and stood on the porch.  Then Deacon asked, “I’m curious about your company name, Anchor 44.” 

“Yeah…in numerology, the number 44 represents the inexhaustible potential that we all have.” Damon said, “But the danger is that this can become an obsession. So we added the anchor to it, to remind ourselves to always stay grounded and in control. We’ve been together for seven years now, and it’s working just fine. We’re all pretty well set for life and really interested in innovative and challenging ideas, like the one you just told us about. 

“ Wow. I thought it was just something you all came up with after a couple bottles of wine.” Deacon said.

Damon laughed. “There probably was some wine involved.”

The went out the front door and stood on the porch. “I’m sure you know,” Damon said, “That there’s a lot of debate about the viability of AI as a predictive tool for business, as But even from the little you’ve told us about your implementation, I think you have probably the best chance of cracking that nut that we’ve seen.”

“You have no idea how reassuring that is coming from you.” Penny said. 

They all shook hands and Penny and Deacon climbed into the Toyota.

“So?” Deacon asked, already sensing what Penny’s answer would be.

“So, I think we don’t have to go anywhere else.”

“But what about measuring twice and cut once?”

“Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut. Is that something a Marine would do?”

“Yeah, it is. Let’s go home.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

And off they went, feeling pretty good about the day they’d had so far.

~ 8 ~

On the way back to Virginia Beach, they talked about a lot of things. First and foremost in Penny’s mind was security. They needed to build a pretty massive firewall around Penny’s computer system. She had researched that carefully and was planning to call a guy named Elmore Taggart, whom she had met at Virginia Tech when he came to do a guest lecture on cybersecurity. He was located in Richmond, about 70 miles from Virginia Beach. 

They would also need to find a good graphic designer who could handle the communications material that would ultimately need to be created and the website for the product itself. If they found all that skill in one person so much the better, but they might also need a writer to edit the website and do the blogs that would be required to give the site some organic reach. 

Deacon didn’t know what organic reach was, but he liked the phrase. Penny was confident that all the necessary system installation information would be done by the Anchor 44 people. After the product was ready, Penny would talk to them about developing and managing an installer network. If they didn’t want to do it, they would certainly know someone who could put that together. 

Deacon took this all in until he got the feeling his brain was turning to jelly. “I had no idea how much work this would turn into.” he told Penny.

“I minored in marketing at VT. So I came out of there with a pretty good sense of what it would take to actualize my ideas. And I’m really glad I did. Because I can see this all very clearly. I would also like to make sure we hire as many women as we can to work on this project. Women are more empathetic and generally much better organized than men. No offence.”

“None taken. Let me tell you one thing, right from the get-go. All of this is unknown territory for me. I’m happy to support you in any way I can. But anything to do with the product itself and its marketing has to be your decision. The best I can do is tell you if I think you are making a blatant tactical business error. And more often than not, I wouldn’t know if you were.”

“How is it you always manage to say the right thing at the right time? I was really worried that you might be thinking I was excluding you from all of this.”

“I got the gist of what went on back there in New Jersey, but I was only looking at it from the point of view of how comfortable you felt with those people. They’re your people and I could feel you were right at home with them. Beyond that, I got a bit about what was going on, but for the most part, it was, um, quite incomprehensible.” 

Penny reached over and stroked him on the cheek. “By the time we’re ready to launch you will be a geek, my darling. Maybe not a capital ‘G’ geek, but geekish for sure.”

They talked and talked down through the farmland of Delaware and hit the Chesapeake Tunnel at around nine that night. Penny had called ahead for a pizza from the ShoreBreak, so they picked it up on the way home, ate dinner, had showers, and flopped into bed at about midnight.

The next day was a Sunday, so they just goofed around, went into town for lunch and watched a couple of movies in the afternoon. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot they could do until they knew what hiring the Anchors would cost them. They went to bed early Sunday night and got an early start on Monday. 

Penny opened her big Mac, which was offline, and the external hard drive that housed all the coding and documents for the Lilli program. She wasn’t about to let anyone hack into her system from the Internet. If they wanted to do it they had to physically go through her, and now Deacon too. A formidable challenge for anyone, Penny figured. 

Her communication and online research were done on a separate +MacBook Pro. All in all, she had pretty close to $20,000 worth of computing power and data storage, which she was able to afford because her parents had put a good chunk of money aside for her Virginia Tech tuition, which she didn’t need because she had won a scholarship.

Penny called around to a couple of the people she went to school with to see if they knew of a good design company in the area. She had not thought much about that part of the business because there was way too much else to think about, and it seemed quite a ways down the road, until she met up with Deacon, and then suddenly, it was all right there.

She also sent a message to Damon Drake, informing him that, pending the arrival of his estimate, they would make their decision quickly. She also included a copy of the non-disclosure agreement for their lawyer to review. After that, she turned her attention to the program’s identity and the website that would promote the actual product and the drafting of a service manual for the subcontractors who would do most of the setting up and customization.

Damon got back to her within half an hour. He also told her that the non-disclosure was being reviewed by Ray Conlin and as soon as he OKed it, he would send it back to her. He also told her that he would have a rough cost breakdown and would send it along with the signed-off NDA.

Penny made herself a coffee and by the time she got back to her computer, there was a message from a lady named Tessa Ryder who said she was a designer who was referred to her by one of Penny’s classmates, Paul Soames. Penny called her and was delighted to find that she was in Chesapeake, which was really no more than the other side of town. They arranged to get together the next day. 

Penny then took her coffee out to the back deck and sat down on the steps as Deacon approached having just finished his run. He sat down beside her, and she updated him on everything. 

Penny also told him that she was thinking about names for the program and they bandied that about a bit. Deacon wasn’t a lot of help in that regard but he did say something that got Penny thinking. 

“So what have you been calling the program up to now?” Deacon asked.

“I just call it Lilli. It had to be a female name because I was using my own voice.”

“So what’s wrong with that? Most of the people who will be using it will be kind of nerdish. She could be their girlfriend.”

Penny thought about that for a while then she said. “I know you meant it as a bit of a joke, but you may be on to something there.”

“Glad to be of service. Nice to know I’m appreciated for more than my money.”

“Well of course you are. You cook a mean dinner too.”

Deacon got to his feet. “Speaking of which I have to go shopping.”  

“You’re gonna make somebody a great wife one day.”

“I thought I already was.”

~ 9 ~

Elmore Taggart, the cybersecurity guy who showed up precisely at 3 PM to meet with Penny and Deacon, was a man with more than one name. Taggart was the owner and operator of ETC, which was short for Elmore Taggart Cybersecurity. 

One of his other names was Bryce Fennamore, who was one of the foremost cyber criminals in America. His specialty was building security systems for businesses with little trap doors in them where he could, completely unbeknownst to the users, sneak in and download virtually anything he wanted. 

Cybersecurity was his above-ground business, piracy was his underground business and there was no shortage of people in either of his customer bases. The underground stuff was all done anonymously through disposable email accounts, ads on the dark web and direct deposits into an account in the Cayman Islands, where Bryce Fennamore was a valued client. 

Taggart was in his mid-forties. He had started in the cybersecurity business out of MIT, working for one of the large security companies, Cisco Systems. There, he quickly realized that being a cybersecurity drone was just a notch or two above watching paint dry. 

But he laboured away in the salt mines for the mandatory five years, studied a lot of systems and customized a lot of protection. He also realized that cybersecurity guys can easily wangle complete access to any of the systems they worked on without anybody ever actually knowing about it. And because he had what an old associate referred to as a ‘lizard brain’, he saw that there was opportunity aplenty in the business of stealing the very things he was being hired to protect. 

One immutable fact of business life in America was that larger corporations would pay a lot of money to have upstart companies with big ideas nipped in the bud so to speak. This, in turn, led him to start contacting all the tech universities and offering to guest lecture. He eventually became one of the go-to guys for young grads with big ideas. He offered them state-of-the-art and fully customized cybersecurity systems at very reasonable prices and solid protection from almost anyone who would try and hack them. 

Anyone but him.

Originally from Baltimore, he had, about five years earlier, relocated to Richmond, Virginia, where he was close enough to the action but far enough removed to allow him to enjoy life. The last ten years or so had made Elmore a rich man. He could have packed it in at any time, found himself a wife and had a family. But there was something about the game that he found addictive. And here he was a great-looking twenty-three-year-old genius with an idea that simply floored him. Once he got that out onto the open market, he would be set for life. 

But after his initial handshake with the boyfriend, Deacon, he knew he would have to be very careful going forward. This guy was made of steel and he had a powerful presence. He was there to protect the girl so that made him a force to be reckoned with. Taggart, after all, was nothing more than an older nerd with a devious mind. In a straight-up fight with this Deacon fellow, he wouldn’t stand a chance. So he would just have to outsmart them.

Taggart and Penny had a half-hour chat, after which Taggart agreed to write up an estimate for fire-walling her program and her website. He left with a cordial nod to Deacon, who just sat there watching with a stoicism and stillness that made Taggart feel quite uncomfortable. He was glad to get out of the house and into his car. As he drove away, some pretty serious second thoughts came creeping into his mind. But they eventually faded the further he drove. By the time he got home, he was back to his old larcenous self again.

After Taggart left, Deacon made himself a coffee and went out to sit on the back steps while Penny started to do some of the writing she had to do for the website.

Deacon didn’t say anything to Penny about how he was feeling about Taggart. It was just a kind of discomfort he felt. But if there was one thing the Marines did for him, it was to sharpen his situational awareness. He learned to read body language and the tics that people had. There wasn’t a whole lot of that going on with Taggart, but there was enough to make Deacon suspicious. So he decided to find out more about him. 

Later that day, over dinner, he suggested to Penny that perhaps she should talk to another security company. But Penny assured him that Elmore Taggart was the man when it came to cybersecurity for independent businesses. They had a little discussion, and the long and short of it was that Penny agreed not to let Taggart anywhere near her system or any of her programming until Deacon was satisfied that he was the real deal. 

Deacon, of course, had no idea how he would verify this, but was happy that Penny would not do anything until he gave her the thumbs up.

That night, while Penny was wrapped up with glitch repair, Deacon went online and had a look at the ETC website. The site itself was pretty innocuous. In fact, it said almost nothing other than that they offered a range of custom cybersecurity tools. Deacon found it strange that there was no mention of his clients or what he had done for them or any testimonials of any kind. He then did a Google search looking for clients of ETC. This led him to, among other places, a chat room devoted to business failures. As he read through he started to see a thread that several people whose businesses failed mentioned ETC, mostly just in passing. 

As he read more of the conversations, the pattern indicated to him that after these people had hired ETC to safeguard their programs or websites, they were eventually beaten to the punch by another larger company with pretty much the same idea that they were trying to actualize. Many of them wrote it off to the nature of their marketplace and the statistical reality that eight out of every ten startup businesses fail. 

It took a while for all the stories he was reading to finally sink in. But when it did, it landed with a resounding thud. He now believed that Elmore Taggart was stealing ideas from the very people who were paying him to protect them. 

Sadly, any evidence he had was circumstantial in the extreme and certainly nothing he’d want to share with Penny right away. But it did explain the feeling he had when he first met Taggart. 

The next day, while Penny was having her initial meeting with Tessa Ryder. Deacon went into a Starbucks in town, grabbed a coffee, found a table outside and called Damon Drake. 

“Deacon  Good to hear from you. We’re working away on your pricing as we speak.”

“That’s great,” Deacon said. ‘But I’m calling for a different reason. This might require a bit of your time which I will happily pay for.”

“OK, sounds mysterious.”

“Well, it sort of is. Penny talked to a cybersecurity guy yesterday, his name is Elmore Taggart.”

“Oh yeah. We know Taggart. ETC.”

“Okay so, before we hire him, I wanted to check him out. Just wondering if any of you ever do that.” 

“What’s the issue, Deacon ?”

Deacon hesitated. “I don’t know. Right now, it’s just a feeling. I did some research on the guy and it turns out that a lot of the businesses he did security for failed, mostly because a larger competitor got their product out first.”

“Mostly digital tech-based stuff, right?”  

“Yeah, a good chunk of it.”

Well, this is a highly competitive field. And there are way more failures than successes.”

“Yeah, I know. Like I said, right now it’s just a feeling. But I don’t want anybody scooping this idea out from under us. This means a lot to Penny.”

“There are stories that show up every now and then about unscrupulous activity. And I’ll tell you, if I were bent that way, cybersecurity would be the way to go about it. You have to get right into the system to build those safeguards. A cyber guy could tell you anything he wanted and you’d believe him because you wouldn’t have any reason to think otherwise or the skills to verify it. So if you’ve got a bad feeling about this, don’t do it. I don’t know you very well, but I do know that you’re no dummy, even if you’re not some sort of geek.’

“So how would they do something like this?” Deacon asked

“The most common way would be to build something called a trap door. This is a little bit of coding that only they know about that would give them access to the entire system. Like a secret password into the computer. Once they were in, they could download whatever’s there and then either close the door up or delete it altogether.”

“That’s pretty fucking devious.”

“Yeah, it is. But, you know with AI ideas, the value can be way up in the tens of millions. So you really do have to keep your eyes on your fries.”

“So what do you suggest we do?”

“Well, I’ll talk to Tina. She handles our cybersecurity and keeps up to speed on the entire industry. I’m sure she can recommend a safe alternative to anyone you’re uncomfortable with. And there’s always the option of hiring your own guy and letting Tina train him.”

Deacon took a deep breath. “That would be a huge relief. And please, keep track of the time you spend. I’m not asking for a favour here.”

“Understood. I’ll get back to you.”

“OK. I appreciate the advice, Damon.”

“My pleasure, Deacon. We’ll be ready to send you the costings tomorrow in the AM.

“That’s great. Thanks again.” 

Deacon disconnected. He took a sip of his coffee. He sat at the table for quite a while and wondered about what kind of world it has become when there is an ever-present risk of having your ideas stolen right out from under you.

Finally, he got into the Toyota and drove to the Richmond address on Elmore Taggart’s business card. 

When he got there he wasn’t surprised to see that it was a small mansion. A good-sized colonial-style house with a beautifully landscaped front lawn. He knocked on the front door and there was no answer. So he took a walk around the outside of the house and into the backyard. There he found Taggart sitting by a large pool, staring at the screen of a laptop.

“Mr.Taggart. Sorry, I knocked, but there was no answer.”

Taggart turned and was a bit surprised to see Deacon walking toward him.

“Hello, Deacon. What can I do for you?”

Deacon came to the table, pulled up a chair and sat down. “Nice place you’ve got here. The Cybersecurity business must be quite profitable.”

“I do alright. So what exactly do you want?” Taggart said working hard not to sound too annoyed.

“Oh, I came to tell you that we won’t be working with you. I thought I’d tell you in person and explain why that is the case.”

Taggart leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Deacon. I was looking forward to the project.”

“Yeah, well. Since I am the principal investor in Penny’s idea. I did some, I guess you’d call it, due diligence. Since you had no references on your website, I nosed around a bit and found a couple of chat rooms where you were quite the topic of conversation.” Deacon was exaggerating, of course, but he was interested in Taggart’s reaction. Deacon was watching Taggart closely. Looking for any signs that this might be making him nervous. Taggart scratched his ear. 

“So what did you conclude from all of that?” 

“I didn’t conclude anything other than that your name is associated with a lot of startup failures.”

“Well, it is dog-eat-dog out there, Deacon. Especially in the AI field that your lady is entering.”

Deacon just stared a little more. And again he watched Taggart’s hand go to his ear and scratch it. He was nervous. 

“We have several other options and a bit of time since the actual development of this program is going to be done by another company. I’m a cautious person, Mr. Taggart. I never get involved with people who make me nervous, and you sir, make me nervous. So thank you for your time.” Deacon got to his feet. “ And just so you know, I have a friend, another marine, who is now working with the Cybercrimes unit of the FBI in DC. If I see that your name keeps on getting associated with any more startup failures, I may just drive up there and take my friend out to lunch.”

“Is that a threat?” Taggart said, scratching his ear for a third time.

“No, not really. But it’s definitely something that could happen. Thanks for coming to see us, but’s just not gonna be a good fit.” 

Taggart had nothing to say. He just stared after Deacon as he went back the way he had come.

~ 10 ~

When Deacon got back to Virginia Beach, he suggested that he and Penny go out for dinner somewhere. He wanted to be in a restaurant when he told her about Elmore Taggert. That way he could be at least reasonably certain she wouldn’t throw anything.

They walked up the beach to the Surf Club Grill and got a table outside on the patio. A nice breeze was blowing in off the ocean and the heat of the day had abated. They had a long chat about what Penny did with her day, then it was Deacon’s turn. 

He took a deep breath. “I did something today that I probably should have talked to you about. But I didn’t because you probably would have tried to talk me out of it.”

“Sounds serious.” 

“Well, it kinda is. I drove over to Richmond and told Mr. Taggart that we wouldn’t be working with him.” 

The sight of a powerfully constructed ex-Marine cringing slightly as he spoke somehow struck Penny as really funny. She laughed, but just a little and then reined herself in.

“So I’m sure you had a good reason for doing this.”

“I did. I do.”

“So, are you gonna tell me or do you want me to guess?”

“You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would.”

“That may have to do with the fact that you haven’t told me anything about it yet.”

“Alright. I got a bad feeling about the guy. He seemed, you know, kinda sleazy.”

“Kinda sleazy?” 

“Yeah. So this morning I did a little looking around, did a computer search and came across a chat room where his name showed up, a lot more than I thought it should. The, uh, chatting, I guess you’d call it, was all about people who had ideas, not the same as yours, but AI stuff, and were beaten to the punch by larger companies. Some of the chat was about cyber security and that’s where the ETC company name and Elmore Taggart’s name kept popping up.”

Penny said nothing but took a long sip of her wine. 

“So,” Deacon continued, “I got hold of Damon Drake and I talked to him about it. He told me that there have been cases he knew about where cybersecurity people would build in something he called a trap door, which would allow them to enter the computer that was hosting whatever the protection program was and download or upload, I don’t know what you call it, whatever they wanted. Then they sell it to someone else.” 

“What you call it is stealing,” Penny said. “So what else did Damon tell you?”

“He, uh, told me he would talk to Tina, their partner in Canada. She has a lot of experience in this area and can steer us toward someone we can trust.”

Penny was silent for a long time. But she was thinking and looked like she was trying to solve a complex math problem in her head.

“So you brought me here thinking that I wouldn’t freak out about this in a public place and that I would be all cooled out by the time we got home and not freak out then either?”

“Yeah, that occurred to me.”

Penny smiled and shook her head. “As I recall, you’re the money guy in this deal. And it seems to me that you were just looking out for the money because if this bastard had stolen my idea it would cost you a fortune.”

“Mmmm, you need to flip that around. I was thinking about what it would do to you if you had your beautiful idea stolen because I had a bad feeling about a guy who might steal it from you and I didn’t act on that feeling. So yeah, I went behind your back, but it didn’t have anything to do with the money. Maybe it would have later on. But no. This was about you, Penny.”

“And how did Mr. Taggart react when you confronted him about all of this?”

“He was squirming. He has a tell, which is scratching his ear. He did that a lot while we were talking. I also gave him a bullshit story about knowing someone who worked in cybercrimes and that I would let that guy know about him if I saw about any more bad shit with his name attached to it, and he squirmed some more.”

Penny took Deacon’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you.” she said.

“You’re welcome.” Deacon replied, not knowing what else to say. 

Deacon leaned back in his chair, totally relieved.

“You know,” Penny said. “I probably would have gone along with you if you’d told me in the beginning.”

“Yeah, well that might have been a tactical error on my part.”

Just then the waiter showed up and that was the end of it. But somewhere in the back of his mind, Deacon knew he had made an enemy of Taggart, and that he would have to keep up his guard.

After they got home, they sat out on the back steps with a glass of wine, and Penny said, “You really are looking out for me, aren’t you?”

“Yes ma'am, that would be correct.” 

And Penny just leaned into Deacon and knew things were gonna be just fine. Deacon just put his arm around her and drew her close. But all the time he was thinking… ‘man, I’m gonna have to get a gun.’

The next morning, Deacon drove over to a place called Freedom Outdoor, which was the biggest gun shop in Virginia Beach. Here he purchased a 9 mm Beretta, a small box of 9 mm loads, an extra clip and a cleaning kit. They filled out his license application right there and, since there was no waiting period in Virginia, half an hour later he was able to walk out with all his gear.

He also purchased a 21″ Expandable Law Enforcement Baton online through a site called Slash2Gash. This was something he would prefer over a gun because the kind of people he worried about weren’t likely to be armed. But then again, this was America, and you could never be too careful. 

Deacon decided to keep the gun purchase from Penny because he didn’t want to alarm her. But the simple fact was that he was worried about this Taggart fellow. Penny had told him just enough about the Lilli program to allow him to put a costing together, but it was also enough to let him know it was interesting tech to steal and re-sell. And even though he was just twenty-three, Deacon knew that greed made people do strange things.

~ 11 ~

Taggart was pissed after Deacon’s visit and that feeling just kept growing. He was a bit of an obsessive-compulsive character and really couldn’t help himself. So, the day after his conversation with Deacon he called up his friend, Riley Tillis. That afternoon Tillis showed up at Taggart’s house. 

Riley Tillis was only about five foot eight. He was thin and wiry and had a bit of a crazy glint in his eye. He was a professional thief and there wasn’t a lock or alarm system he couldn’t pick or short-circuit. Tillis specialized in jewelry and cash and was not bothered by the fact that unloading the trinkets he stole would entail longish drives to different fences in Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia. 

Tillis and Taggart had met many years earlier at, of all places, the bar in the opera house in Baltimore. Taggart was a big opera lover and Tillis liked to attend to check out the jewelry on the ladies. After the performance, Tillis would pick up a likely candidate couple and follow them home. Then he would, through his contact at the DMV, find out their names and, through the Internet, how the woman came to be as extravagantly bejewelled. Then he would sit on the house until he was sure nobody was home, break in, and take whatever he could find that might be worthwhile stealing. He was constantly amazed at how little protection so many rich people had in place.

Tillis and Taggart hit it off right away and one day, after Tillis had told Taggart how he made his money, over coffee at Starbucks. Tillis asked him if he ever considered taking the ideas he was being paid to protect and selling them to larger companies. This lit the spark in Taggart’s lizard brain. And that’s when Taggart’s legitimate business became a criminal enterprise.

The trap door idea worked most of the time, but there were occasions when that wasn’t going to be possible, and this is when he would summon his friend Riley.

“So a few days ago, I met up with this lady named Penny Jones over in Virginia Beach,” Taggart said, as he pulled a beer out of his cooler and handed it to Tillis. “She’s got a piece of AI that she’s invented, and though she didn’t show it to me, I could tell from the way she described it that it was the real deal. I didn’t get the gig, but the idea she has is a big one.”

Tillis took a sip of his beer. “House or office?”

“House. Right on the beach. But it’s a little more complex than that.”

“Complex how?”

“A couple of things. One is that I don’t know what the file looks like. She keeps it all on a remote hard drive. Normally I’d have gotten to see it. The other thing is the partner slash boyfriend and he’s a piece of work. Ex-marine. Tough as nails and smart too. Did a bunch of research and connected me to several business failures. Who knew all these people got together online to bitch and moan?”

“Well, that’s what the Internet is for, ain't it?” Tillis said.

“I guess. Long and short of it is he came by and kissed me off. So we gotta get this stuff the Riley way.”

“So what’s your plan?” Tillis asked.

“She had a couple of external hard drives on her desk. If they were smart, which these people are, they’d been keeping all the nuts and bolts program stuff on those, most likely one drive backing up the other.”

“So I slip in and take one of the drives. Just out of curiosity, what’s something like this worth?” Tillis asked.

“Well, that would depend on exactly what it was, but I suspect from the way she was talking and the fact that the people she’s in the process of hiring to develop it are pretty heavy duty, I’d say it’s a substantial AI business application, could easily be worth tens, maybe hundreds of millions.”

“And how old did you say this gal was?”

“Early twenties.”

“OK. They’re in Virginia Beach, you said.” 

“Yeah, right on the water. Livin’ pretty large for a couple of kids.” Taggart said.

“Gimme the address, I’ll head over and scope it out.”

“According to the boyfriend, they’re just about ready to award the development contract. So the quicker I get the data the better.”

“Tillis finished off his beer and got to his feet. “Roger that, Elmore. I’ll head over there right now and see what’s what.”

Taggart gave Tillis a slip of paper with the address on it and then reached into a bag beside his chair and pulled out a box containing a remote hard drive identical to Penny’s. He handed it to Tillis. “Just swap this out for whatever’s there on her desk. That’ll confuse her for a while.”

Tillis took the drive, finished off his beer and got to his feet. 

“I’ll be in touch.” Tillis said, and he started walking toward the front of the house.

~ 12 ~

The next morning, the quote from Anchor 44 arrived by email in Penny’s MacBook. She looked it over and then showed it to Deacon, who scanned down the long list of line items to the total, which was just a hair over four million three hundred thousand. He looked at Penny.

“Is this all?” he said.

“Hard to say. It’s just an estimate. But if we give them two million up front as per their request, that will get them going. In all fairness to them, they haven’t seen the actual coding. Once they do get to look at it they can quickly finalize a costing. I’ll be working with them so I don’t see it going over their initial quote. These guys have also given us a six-week timeline, which is great.”

Deacon thought about it for a long while. This was really where the rubber met the road, so to speak. Then he looked at Penny. “You know, when I suggested this partnership, I also accepted the fact that there were things you knew a lot about that I knew nothing about. So if you feel this is a fair price, then there we are.”

“I do. In fact, it’s less than I thought it would be.”

“It’s not about the money, Pen. It’s about the value these people will bring to the table.” 

“Oh, well if that’s the case, then we’re golden because these people are gods to me.”

“Okay then, let’s get this show on the road. Today’s Friday. Why don’t we head up there on Monday?”

“I’ll get back to Damon right away.” She leaned over and hugged Deacon. 

“Thank you.” She said in a low voice. Deacon just smiled. He was a happy camper at the moment.

~ 13 ~

In the afternoon, after Penny had backed everything up. She came out to the back deck where Deacon was reading and sipping a Diet Coke.

Penny had a glass of wine in her hand as she sat down. Deacon put down the book and looked over at her. “What do you know about tracking software.” he asked. 

“Penny looked at him a bit oddly. “What kind of tracking are you talking about?”

Deacon took a sip of his drink. “I’m more than a little concerned that this Taggart fellow is going to try and break in and steal the coding from one of your backup devices. Or steal the device itself. Obviously, we don’t want that to happen. So I was thinking about setting a little trap for him.”

“Wow, you really didn’t like him, did you?” 

“No, I didn’t. He makes a lot of money stealing other people’s ideas, and I believe he wants to steal yours. From your meeting with him, he knows that you don’t store your source codes online, so the only choice he has is to physically break in here and steal them. My idea is to let him do just that and be able to track the hard drive back to him. Then have him arrested and put in jail for a while, hopefully until your Lilli program is out in the world and being used. Then it will be of no use to him.”

“Wow.” Penny said and she smiled. “That’s devious. You’d make a great criminal.”

“We all have our strengths. Mine is strategy. Anyway, what I have done is gone and got another twelve-terabyte external drive like yours. So when we go up to New Jersey next week, we can leave it hooked up and that’s, well…that’s as far as I got. I know there are ways to track it, I just don’t know that much about them.”

Penny chuckled. “Well, aren’t you glad you have a girlfriend who knows all about this stuff?”

Penny jumped up and went into the house. A few seconds later she came out with her phone. She opened up an app called Zebruski. When she did, a short list of items came up, along with their GPS coordinates. She showed it to Deacon. “This is a list of all my stuff, three Macs, my two and yours, our iPads, phones and two external hard drives and my phone. The coordinates are all the same because they are all in this house. Once we hook up the new drive, I can add it to the list and we’ll know exactly where it is.”

“Wow.” 

“I do have a Master's in computer science, Deacon.” Penny said. “This was a second-year course in security. Guess who was the guest lecturer?”

Deacon laughed because he got the irony. 

“How far away do you have to be before it stops working?”

Penny nodded. “It’s got a one-hundred-mile range.”

“Alright.”

“You think would try and steal one of my hard drives?” Penny asked.

“He could do. Guy lives in a nice house in Richmond. Or he could be in cahoots with some kind of thief who could break in while we’re away. Would he have assumed you would have a tracker?”

“I don’t think so. I explained how I’m working, and he saw the two remote drives. Probably figured that’s all I have in the way of security, otherwise, why would I be talking to him.”

“Makes sense. So this can work.”

“I think so. It’s just…” Penny’s voice trailed off.

“What?” Deacon asked.

“Is this gonna be part of our lives now? Figuring out ways to protect ourselves from thieves?”

“I don’t know. I think that you have to work your way into a position where you’re well enough protected to make it a non-issue.”

They sat on the steps, not talking for a while. Several people were out walking along the beach including Tillis, who waved at them as he walked by, trying to look as casual as he could.

“Hmmm,” Deacon said. 

“What?” Penny asked.

“That guy who just walked by, the short guy. He’s new. Or at least I’ve never seen him before.”

“I’m sure there are a few people you haven’t seen before. There are about a dozen hotels just a mile up the beach.”

“Yeah, but you can tell the locals from the tourists. He doesn’t look like either one. Tell you what. Let’s go pack. We’ll leave early.”

“Okay.” Penny said, but it was more like a question.

“I need to try something, and it involves you being in a safe place.”

“You’re a very suspicious guy, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

A couple of hours later, they were packed and ready to leave. Deacon took the bags out to the car while Penny disconnected her remote hard drives and installed the new one.

Outside, Tillis sat parked with a good view of the driveway and when he saw Deacon loading the suitcases in the car he called Taggart and let him know that he could probably go in that night.

Deacon took a quick glance around and spotted a car he wasn’t familiar with parked about a hundred yards down the street. Ten minutes later, he and Penny got into the Lexis and headed up the street to Highway 60. Tillis followed them to the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel, where they continued north.

Tillis turned back and headed south again to his hotel, where he spent the rest of the afternoon in the bar watching baseball and nursing a couple of beers. 

At the Welcome Centre, about two miles north of the Chesapeake Tunnel, Deacon turned around and headed back into Virginia Beach. They checked into the Delta Hotel on Shore Drive. They fooled around for a while and then went and had dinner at a Japanese place called Sakura. 

Just after dark, Deacon left Penny at the hotel and headed back to his house. He cruised up and down the street, saw nothing unusual, then found a side street to park on and walked back to the house, entering through the side door. He quietly crept through the house. He checked to see that the drive was still there. Then got his Beretta and his baton and hid in a closet by the front door of the house and waited. He sat on the floor of the closet, got out his Kindle and continued reading his Jack Reacher book. 

The plan was not to accost the thief, but instead, let the thief lead him back to Taggart. He knew he was playing a rather huge hunch here, but sure enough, an hour and a half later, he heard the lock on the front door being picked. Tillis entered the house wearing dark leather gloves and dressed in tight black clothing.

Tillis knew right where to go and using a small penlight he switched the external drives. He was in and out of the house in less than a minute Deacon waited a full five minutes then got out of the closet. He took out Penny’s phone and opened the Zebruski app. The hard drive that Tillis took was blinking as the coordinates changed constantly He sat down at Penny’s desk and watched the phone. A few minutes later the coordinates stabilized. He got out his laptop and typed the coordinates into Google Maps.  It showed him the location of one of the hotels along the beach.

He waited another half hour to see if the thief would check out and leave the hotel. But there was no movement, so he assumed that the thief would head back to Richmond in the morning.

The next day Penny and Deacon drove to Richmond, Penny tracked the hard drive which hadn’t moved out of Virginia Beach.

They found a restaurant close to Taggart’s house and about halfway through their lunch the signal on Penny’s phone started to beep. 

They finished their lunch and drove to Taggart’s house. They parked down the street and waited until Tillis pulled into the driveway. Tillis only stayed for a few minutes and then left. As soon as he had turned off onto a main street, Deacon took his baton and walked around to the back of Taggart’s house. He found Taggart standing at his kitchen counter hooking the hard drive up to his laptop.

Taggart turned and stared at Deacon for a few seconds. Deacon moved closer and flipped open the baton. 

“You know what this is?”

“No. But I have a pretty good idea.”

“It’s pain. Pain that lasts a long time. Pain that you don’t quickly forget you suffered.”

“And you’re gonna use that one me, I assume?”

Deacon lashed out and struck Taggart on the thigh. He cried out and almost collapsed, eventually steadying himself on the counter.

“You stole something from Penny and me, and well, we weren’t sure what to do about that. But the Marine Corps taught me a lot about strategic thinking, and so I’ve been thinking about the best way to get you off our case?”

 “Yeah, and what is that?” Taggart was really pissed but in a lot of pain.

“Let’s go to your office.”

“It’s upstairs. I’m not sure I can make it.”

“Oh, you’ll make it, and by the way, I’m glad you’re still standing. Means I never tore anything. But you’ll be feeling it for weeks and I’ll give you another one in the same spot if you don’t get your ass in gear. Then you’re gonna need crutches to get around.”

Taggart hobbled to the stairs and started to slowly climb them. Deacon opened the door and signalled for Penny to come to the house.

A few seconds later, Penny and Deacon were walking up the stairs behind the hobbling Taggart. They all went into his office, and Penny sat down at his desk. Taggart flopped down on a small couch. Penny messed around with the computer a bit. “It’s already open.” she said. “And there’s a remote drive as well.”

“Good, then copy everything on the hard drive onto the remote drive.”

Penny did that. There were only a few files that weren’t duplicated of the files on the remote drive.

“Good. unhook the remote drive. We’ll take that.” 

Penny unhooked the remote drive. “Then go into his hard drive and delete all the business files there.”

“Everything?”

“Yeah.”

Taggart was livid. He tried getting to his feet, but Deacon just smacked the baton down on his hand. He fell back down onto the couch. “You’re ruining me.” he screamed.

“Yes sir, we are. That’s the whole point. You tried to ruin us. So we ruin you. I believe it’s called retribution.”

Deacon turned to Penny. “Darlin’, write this man out a confession and print out a couple of copies.”

They waited while Penny wrote out a brief confession then printed out two copies and handed them to Deacon. He pulled a book from Taggart's shelf and a pen from a Mason jar on his desk and handed it to him. 

“Just put your John Henry there and we’ll be on our way.” Deacon said. “We’ll leave you a copy as a reminder of your misdeeds. Hopefully, it will steer you away from a life of crime. If it doesn’t then, I assume there’s enough on that remote drive to send you to prison for quite a few years.”

Taggart couldn’t do much. The pain he was feeling in his leg and his hand was almost unbearable.

“We’ll be leaving this hard drive and the letter with our lawyer, so if anything should happen to us, it will be sent to the police here in Richmond. And of course, we’ll be sending your confession here to the media. They’ll eat this stuff up.”

Taggart signed the confession, which Deacon took and folded into a business envelope and handed to Penny. 

“Go on downstairs, get the remote drive and delete all the files on his laptop.” he said.

Penny left the room. Deacon sat down on Taggart’s office chair. “So I trust we understand each other, Mr. Taggart?”

Taggart nodded through his pain. Deacon leaned forward smacked and the baton into the palm of his free hand. “You know, I could beat you some more with this stick. I’m not gonna do that, but I want you to know this. If anything happens to that girl of mine, anything at all, I will be back and I will beat you so hard you will beg me to kill you. Then I will beat you some more till there’s nothing left of you but coyote food.”

Deacon slapped his baton on the cushion beside Taggart, who flinched. Then he got up and left the room. As he closed the front door behind him he could hear Taggart let out a scream. He smiled to himself and shook his head, then he headed for the car. As they drove away, Penny said. “Well, I’m glad that’s over.” 

Deacon dropped the car into gear. “In the eternal words of Yogi Berra the great Yankees catcher….It’s never over ’til it’s over.”

Penny thought about that for a while. “You think he’ll keep coming?” 

“I don’t know. ‘People are crazy and times are strange’ ….Bob Dylan.”

“Wow, you’re full of quotes today.” 

“Yeah I guess I am.”

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Sure enough can.”

 ~ 14 ~

When they got home, Deacon called a home security company and had a high-end system installed in the house by the following Monday. It consisted of six interior cameras and a sensor array around each of the entranceways and first floor windows. Penny got hold of Damon Drake and moved their Monday meeting to Wednesday. By Monday afternoon the security system was installed and operational. So they left. Penny brought the security manual and read it on the way up through Delaware to New Jersey. 

~ 15 ~

The next six weeks were a blur. 

The first four were spent at home, with Penny fielding questions from the Anchors as they put everything together for the basic demo model. Penny had to acquire licenses for more than two dozen business programs and send along the passwords so the Anchors could upload them into the Lilli program. 

Penny and Deacon also met with Tessa Ryder, the designer. She had no problem with the NDA and offered all kinds of good advice on structuring the website. Deacon was impressed with her ability to think on her feet and her grasp of the Lilli program and what it could do. She read a lot of the material that Penny had created and suggested they would not need to hire a writer because she could easily edit Penny's raw content. 

One of the jobs Deacon did have was keeping track of the expenditures. He found a local accountant named Sterling James, who was half Chinese and liked to be called ‘Ling’. He said it kept him in touch with his Chinese roots. In addition to being a crackerjack accountant, he had an uncanny knack for making money in the market. He took a look at Deacon’s small fortune of just over seven million, and added up the expenses which came to something like five and a half million, which included the Anchors, the house that Deacon wanted to purchase for cash, a couple of extras for the house, the security system, food, gas and utilities, Tessa and a PR company called Childs Play that was just coming on board to help Penny get out there into the business world. 

Deacon wasn’t concerned about the money he was spending, but he was quite concerned about how little he would have left after it was all spent. He expressed this sentiment to Ling while they were having coffee one day, and Ling simply said. “You’ll have a little over million and about a half left after all the expenditures.” If you put that into high-yield savings account it will pay you maybe 4% over the year which is about sixty grand, which is five grand a month, which isn’t too shabby considering you own your own house and car. It’s not living large, but if your partner’s idea is all you say it is, all you need is to stay afloat for about a year. But…” Ling paused for dramatic effect. “But if you cut loose say, two hundred grand and let me play with it, I can double it in probably six weeks.”

Deacon looked at him like he was from Mars. “Oh yeah. And how are you gonna do that?” 

What followed was Ling's three-minute explanation of the wonderful world of bitcoin. And even though it was just the nickel tour of that world, Ling made it sound like it was a dream come true for the smart financial mind.

“And you guarantee that I won’t lose money on this?”

“I’ll put it in writing. Give me a month, six weeks tops, and I will double your money less 10% for me.”

“And if you don’t?” 

“And if I don’t I will pay you back plus 10%. It’s way more than you will make at the bank or in the market these days.”

Deacon didn’t know much about the market. He’d been spending almost all of his time trying to understand the AI world. But he was, if nothing else, a pretty good judge of character and Ling struck him as a straight-up guy.

“OK. Give me the deal in writing and I’ll give you a cheque.” 

“You won’t regret this, my friend.”

“Famous last words.”

~ 16 ~

While his money was making interest, Deacon, for the most part, just ran, read, and swam in the ocean. Once he had purchased the house, he had a small sauna built in the basement and bought Penny a rowing machine, which was a great way for her to unwind, listen to music and get some exercise. 

One of the last two weeks was spent in New Jersey as Penny worked with the Anchors to fine-tune the demo, and Penny did all the voice modelling needed to be the voice of Lilli. Deacon had very little to do, so he drove around visiting smaller coastal towns. 

One day, for reasons only he would have understood, he started taking pictures, with his iPhone, of some of the places he visited on his day trips. Mostly they were snapshots and not very well composed, but it gave him something to do and he made a note to himself to show them to Tessa Ryder when they got back to Virginia Beach and see what advice she could offer.

Most of the next week involved Penny online with the Anchors and approving every aspect of the demo. Deacon drove over to Tessa’s studio and she uploaded a bunch of the shots he had taken so that they could discuss them. 

Tessa took some of what she considered to be the better shots and adjusted the compositions, framing the interesting parts of the images and adjusting the horizons to a 90-degree angle to the outside edges of the shots.

As Deacon watched her reconfigure and crop the shots, he started to see just how the shots were improved, and because he had a fairly formidable mind, it all went in and got computed. 

After a couple of hours of discussion and messing around with his shots in Photoshop, Tessa copied the finished shots onto a memory key and gave it to Deacon He thanked her and implored her to add the time she had spent to her invoice. Tessa just chuckled. She told him he had great instincts and to get out there and look for more shots. 

On his way home, Deacon stopped at a camera shop called Cardinal Camera and after a brief discussion with one of the kids in the store, he walked out with a Nikon Coolpix with a good optical zoom. He didn’t spend a lot of money on it, just enough so that he could fool around and see how much he liked taking pictures.

Deacon knew he needed to have several different things to do during the day because at the moment and for the foreseeable future, Penny was going to be pre-occupied with getting LilliWorx, which was a name that Tessa suggested and everybody seemed to like. 

A couple of days later, Deacon flopped down on the back steps after his morning run and the thought popped into his head it was a bit ironic that the fates should have brought him to this point where he was turning into one of the idle rich that so much of America seemed to despise. 

But then again, he thought, maybe he was just meant to be part sentinel, part lover, part bodyguard and part financier for his genius girlfriend. He had thought a lot about what he could do from a business perspective, but he simply hadn’t hit on anything that he figured he could manage. The sum total of his work experience to date had been flipping burgers at McDonald’s in high school and the Marines, neither of which qualified him for much. But by the same token, he thought, he was only twenty-three although he felt a lot older than that, and he was sure that something would present itself in much the same way as Penny had. 

He concluded that this was not the kind of stuff you could go looking for. It had to find you. That conclusion, no matter how flimsy he thought it to be, was enough to placate him for the moment. 

~ 17 ~

Elmore Taggart was nothing if not a resourceful criminal mind. He had moved into a small suburban town called Aberdeen, Maryland, which was an easy drive from Philadelphia and Baltimore/Washington DC. 

He also switched to an alternative identity that people who live lucratively outside the law are always advised to have. He was now called Lyndon Phelps. And this time, he decided to offer his services to legitimate businesses, demonstrating their vulnerabilities by hacking into their servers and then sending the CEOs detailed messages about just how easy it was to do. This, as it turned out, was a surprisingly effective sales tactic and it wasn’t long at all before he was back in business and billing big bucks

While he still harboured a good deal of residual anger for Deacon, Taggart realized that he also owed him a debt of gratitude. By forcing him out of the piracy trade, he was now in a much more lucrative place. 

He was reasonably certain that the young man with the very painful baton would not be able to track him down. But somewhere in the back of his mind, in a tiny little dark corner, there was a seed of anger. He felt it glow every time he inadvertently rubbed his hand or his thigh which were both still on the tender side from a couple of well-placed whacks he received almost two months ago now.

He visited several online sites where any news of young Penny’s AI program would show up sooner or later. After a while, this became more of a way to satisfy his curiosity than to plot revenge.

~ 18 ~

Two weeks later the entire LilliWorx demo program was given to Penny at a meeting in New Jersey. Deacon had another one million, four hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars transferred out of his BankAmerica account. This was a whole million dollars less than Deacon and Penny had anticipated. The Anchors explained that the saved million was for Penny’s hands-on contribution to the entire process.

Deacon said nothing but inside he was breathing a huge sigh of relief.

 The master of the program would reside in the Anchor 44 secure vault as they had agreed to be responsible for training and program implementation, as well as a certain amount of marketing. Ray Conlin had drafted a contract whereby Anchor 44 would get 30% of all sales generated and be responsible for all sales management and training. 

 They also agreed that 25% of all revenues generated would go into salaries for the installers and program maintenance staff, so the Anchor’s profit would be apart from any expenditures. This left Deacon and Penny with 45% of all revenues.

Finally, there was a group discussion on how to price the programs. The Anchor 44 point of view was that there should be a basic fee of $500,000 for the licence to run the program, renewable at $150,000 annually and an additional $500,000 for customized programming and training over the course of the first year. 

The business plan was to have each of the Anchor 44 group do the initial installs and training. Then, as the business grew, each of them would hire two interns who would work with them, learning the ropes. Once the interns were trained, two more would be hired. And so on, as the business volume grew. 

It was also agreed that Penny would be the public face of the project and that her PR person should book appearances for Penny on all the relevant podcasts, TV and radio shows. The Anchors further agreed that they would start looking at licensing agreements in other markets, especially in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. 

The Anchor group had all migrated to New Jersey, where they could be hands-on to develop the US market. Ray Conlin told them he would look after expansion and would draw up a separate agreement, but that was a little further down the road. 

Damon gave Penny a copy of the contract on a memory key and advised them to have it reviewed by their lawyer.

While all this was going on, Deacon sat there totally mesmerized, especially at the numbers that were being discussed. He had to admit that he had never thought about how much the program would be worth. He simply did not have enough knowledge to even begin to figure that out. His investment of close to three and a half million seemed kind of small considering that even with as few as fifteen companies signing on he would recoup his investment and then some.

As the meeting started to wind down, Ray Conlin said. “You know Penny, we have all been at this for more than a few years, and to be honest, we have never seen anything quite like this, and yet the idea is beautifully simple. So I speak for everybody here when I say, we are pleased as punch that you chose us to work with on this. This is a game changer, and we will make sure that we hold up our end.”

“Wow. Thank you Ray.” Penny said. “As you might well have guessed, I have been living in a state of fear ever since we started this project. But now that I see it, I’m pretty much convinced of three things. One is that my idea actually is a thing. Two is that I picked the right people to work with. And a third thing is sitting right behind me, like he has had my back from the start, my sweet Deacon, without whom none of this would have happened.”

Deacon reached out and put his arm around Penny, and kissed her on the cheek. 

 Ten minutes later they were on their way south again. And on their way to who knew where? What they did know for sure was that they were a small army out to conquer the AI world and at the moment, had a pretty damn good start on it.

~ 19 ~

Once the website was up and running, Penny contacted the PR lady that Tessa had recommended, Sarah Childs, They met and hit it off. Sarah almost immediately started getting her booked on different podcasts, after which she was flooded with extremely well-qualified people who wanted to work for LilliWorx. Penny referred them all to Anchor 44. 

For the next three or four months, Penny and Deacon spent a lot of time on the road, visiting video podcasts and doing interviews for various publications as far north as Boston and New York and as far south as Miami.

The Anchors had found a large manufacturing company in Scranton Pennsylvania that agreed to incorporate the LilliWorx program as a field test. Damon supervised it himself, along with two interns for training. It took about a week to implement and another two weeks to train their IT manager and the office and sales staff. But they caught on very quickly and two weeks later were all wondering how they could have ever lived without it. Damon videoed interviews with the people who were trained to use LilliWorx and the management team leaders who were already noticing a definite uptick in efficiency. The video was released to the business news shows, and things started happening almost immediately.

Penny, as it turned out, was a great salesman for the company. And best of all she loved doing it. She would refer all the companies who were interested, and there were literally dozens, to the Anchors. Within three months, more than 60 LilliWorx programs were operating and it was big news in the AI community.  Over the next few months, the Anchors’ infrastructure filled the big house in New Jersey with salespeople, and also included ten remote installers/trainers and about a half dozen remote call centre troubleshooters. The net revenue was well in excess of eighty million for both Penny and Deacon and close to half that for the Anchors. And, as Damon mentioned in one of their conversations, they were just getting started.

In whatever spare time she had, Penny worked with two kids out of Virginia Tech to teach them the ins and outs of the environmental model the Anchors had spun off. They then databased two dozen of the most prominent groups and emailed them offering to set up their operations with a LilliWorx AI system. A few jumped on it right away, but the response to this free offer was not exactly overwhelming, since many of these organizations were a bit skeptical as to Penny’s motives. 

For those entities, she arranged Zoom chats where she introduced Deacon and he told them the story of his inheritance and his grandmother’s wishes. Deacon’s sincerity was something they found hard to argue with. They didn’t get everybody, but they did well enough to keep her two ‘greenies’, as Deacon called them, quite busy.

~ 20 ~

Elmore Taggart, aka Lyndon Phelps, continued to hold a grudge, against Deacon in particular, but for one reason or another never got up the gumption to do anything about it. He was living in one of the most densely populated areas of the US, and even if they did run into each other, there would be nothing to say.

Deacon had bullshitted Taggart about sending the files to his lawyer. But he held onto them all the same. After a year or so, his wariness faded, and the fact that there was no mention of Taggart in any of the chat rooms he checked on regularly allowed him to conclude that Taggart had simply moved on somehow. Deacon had bought a small safe and kept his gun, his baton and the files from Taggart’s computer in there, along with the contracts they had signed with the Anchors. He unlocked it every night before they went to bed, because you could never be too careful.

~ 21 ~

Within a year of launching LilliWorx, revenues had ballooned to close to half a billion. Penny spent a certain amount of time each week working on improvements and shipping them off to the Anchors, who were now running a remote network of 28 installers/trainers and troubleshooters. Thanks to the organic reach of the website and the PR junkets Penny did regularly, there was no need to do trade shows.

As far as the hardware product of which LilliWorx was the front end, Penny and Deacon, on Damon Drake’s recommendation, went to see a bleeding-edge computer systems development company called New Horizons. They were located on Long Island, so Penny and Deacon drove up to deliver the specs to them, along with an NDA. The man they met there, Derek Macklin, told them that it would take a few days for them to analyze Penny’s data. 

So they drove back to Manhattan and checked into the Pierre Hotel on Central Park and they wandered around New York for the next three days. As they were preparing to go back to Long Island, Deacon asked Penny if she could ever live in a city this big. Penny just shook her head. “I’d miss the ocean and the waves breaking on the beach.” Deacon agreed and that was the end of that conversation.

When they got back to New Horizons, Derek Macklin introduced them to the CEO and owner of the company, a man named Harrison Harlow. Double H, as he liked to be called. He was a tall man in his forties. He wore a denim shirt, with a string tie, a beautifully embroidered sports coat, and what looked to be hand-tooled cowboy boots. He had flown in from the company’s US headquarters in Austin Texas. 

He congratulated Penny on the design that supported the tech and told them that they needed to sign an NDA from New Horizon, which they happily did. 

Double H told them that they had been devoting a lot of time and capital to the coolant system that would keep a high-powered unit, not unlike the one Penny had envisioned, from overheating. 

When he saw that Penny had designed her chip in the shape of a three-dimensional W, their engineers automatically figured out that their coolant idea could be, at the very least, two to three times more effective. The W shape created more than twice as much edge area for the coolant to cool. It was just one of those things that nobody had thought of.

Penny explained that she believed the design of most chips was geared toward compactness. But she always thought that was just a bunch of ego-tripping. See who could make the smallest thing do the most work. It had never occurred to the industry to go the opposite way and spread the circuits out a little and leave room for a coolant system that simply wouldn’t have to work as hard. She also envisioned the chips themselves being built on a copper base, which was much more conductive. It sounded like a huge oversimplification,  but the fact was that every tech innovation since the development of the first hard drive had been based on some fairly simple principle. 

Double H then explained that they were working with both a copper chip and a liquid coolant encased in a micro-thin shell of silica, and Penny laughed out loud. “Damn.” 

“So, I would say you walked into the right place at the right time with the right thing in your pocket, missy.” Double H said. “‘Cause your chip architecture makes the whole thing work. So we will be happy to partner with you on this. There will be at least six months of testing that needs to be done, so we would like to, with your permission, of course, build a prototype here. We will send you a business proposal within a few days. Our lawyers are workin’ on it as we speak. And we would like to get started ASAP because I don’t need to tell you the business we’re in is always hyper time sensitive.”

Penny and Deacon thanked Double H and Derek Macklin. She felt confident leaving her product design with them since they had the signed NDAs and Deacon didn’t send up any danger flares. They then headed back home with a stop in New Jersey to take The Anchor 44 core crew out to dinner to celebrate, and let Damon know that there would be a hefty finder’s fee involved in putting them with New Horizon. 

~ 22 ~

Deacon’s investment with Ling paid off just as he said it would. So he just told Ling to let it ride. In fact, Deacon told him to bump it up to $500,000. But Ling advised against it, informing Deacon that that kind of money would create unnecessary havoc in a market that was touchy at best. So Deacon took his hundred and eighty thousand and left the other two hundred thousand with Ling to play with.

~ 23 ~

In the middle of the second year, the offers started coming. They came from Microsoft, IBM, and Apple. Penny and Deacon drove up to New Jersey and had a meeting with the group at Anchor 44. They decided that two years of sustained effort was more than enough to prove the viability of the product. Plus, they were all getting anxious to move on to other projects. So it was unilaterally agreed to take the Apple offer of $8 billion., and suggested that Apple take over the installer group that they had trained, which Apple was more than happy to do and run it out of their New York offices for the east and Cupertino for the west.

Ray Conlin and Charles Franklin both flew out to the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California and made the deal. A week later, Apple offered Penny the opportunity to manage further product development for LilliWorx/MacOS and some other AI projects Apple had in mind. Penny and Deacon went for a long walk on the beach and talked about it. Deacon told her he would be happy with whatever she decided. And she told Deacon that it was all a bit of a no-brainer because she was two months pregnant.

~ 24 ~

Deacon and Penny were not really able to process that they were now single-digit billionaires. They also had a pretty hefty ongoing income stream as the lawyers had negotiated a 10% share of all Apple revenues for LilliWorx which would be split between the Anchors and F&J Cyber, for the exclusive rights to the program and ongoing consultation.

There would also be a new income stream from the high-speed mainframe computer that New Horizon had created, incorporating her basic chip concept. This would be licensed to IBM for mass-market manufacture. And the New Horizon engineers were also, with the tech they had developed, working to build the same sort of architecture into PC laptop and desktop computers. 

Once that happened, governments and manufacturers around the world would be interested as well.

~ 25 ~

The amount of money they had accumulated from Penny’s ideas was something that concerned both of them. 

They talked about it for a couple of days. Then, about a week later, Deacon drove to Chicago and had a meeting with Charles Franklin. He instructed Franklin to open a trust called LilliFund. There were three main objectives:

1: To help veterans returning from overseas have their bills and mortgages paid until they had found employment and were back on their feet. Because military pensions were the pits.  

2: To bankroll startup tech companies like the ones that Elmore Taggart had been ripping off. These would be selected from proposals by a committee, composed of Penny, Damon Drake from Anchor 44 and Derek Macklin from New Horizons and… 

And 3: To create a grant initiative for people with ideas on how to lessen the impact of climate change in the world. 

He and Penny had already worked out the proposal details with Sarah Childs, whose company would administer all three projects. He then instructed Franklin to create a revenue stream that guaranteed himself, Penny, her parents, and the Singletons an income of one million dollars a year. Whatever capital remained would accumulate and, in the future, would be used to keep the three initiatives going.

~ 26 ~

Penny and Deacon got married that summer at their house. It wasn’t a big wedding, but there was lots of good wine and everybody who was part of their lives was there, including Penny’s parents Eva and Travis Jones, the Singletons, four of the five Anchors, and good old Sterling James, who was making Deacon about $180,000 a quarter in the bitcoin circus.

Through it all, and to their delight, their lives had not changed very much at all. Deacon got better at photography and bought himself a large-format printer and a better camera. He made prints of his shots and then had them framed to decorate the walls of the house.  He also enjoyed travelling around with Penny and seeing the country, or at least the eastern part of it. And of course, there were teleconferences with the lawyers, the Anchors, who were all in the US now, the New Horizon people, Sarah Childs, and Tessa Ryder.  

After a couple of years of watching all this business taking place, Deacon had become quite astute about it and was able to provide an interesting perspective on things.

Penny slowed down and devoted some of her time to getting other environmental groups equipped with the LilliWorx program, which was one of the conditions of sale she negotiated with Apple. It was a lot easier to persuade these people when the Apple name was mentioned.

~ 27 ~

One day, when Penny was about eight months pregnant and they had stopped travelling, a man by the name of Gilbert Ames knocked on their door. He was dressed in an expensive, well-tailored suit. Deacon showed him in and they all sat in Penny’s dining room office. Mr. Ames said he was a lawyer for a man they would have known as Elmore Taggart. He informed them that Mr. Taggart had recently passed away from a fatal heart attack. 

Deacon asked what this had to do with either of them, and Ames reached into his pocket and pulled out a small envelope addressed to the both of them. 

There was a note inside the envelope that read:

Hello: 

If you are reading this it’s because you’re sitting with my lawyer, Gilbert Ames, and I am no longer of this world, so to speak. This note is by way of a thank you. Our encounter taught me a great lesson, one which ultimately led me down a completely different path. I don’t know why I wanted you to know this. But one does not make many meaningful acquaintances in this life, and as weird as it sounds, my acquaintance with you was a life-altering one. I held a grudge for the longest time, but when my heart started acting up on me, I realized that I had to let go of a lot of things. My anger with you was at the top of the list.

So thank you. You were instrumental in making an honest man out of me.

Sincerely, Elmore Taggart

Once they had read the letter, Ames got to his feet and quietly left. Deacon turned to Penny and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Can you hear the fat lady singing?” And they both had a good laugh of relief.

~ 28 ~

One month later, Penny gave birth to beautiful, healthy baby girl they appropriately named Lilli and a twin brother they named Jacob.

A week later, Penny and the twins were home. This family slept a lot, which gave Deacon a good deal of free time. One day, he had a thought. So he took his good old MacBook Pro out onto the back deck, sat his ass down, cracked a can of Diet Coke and opened up a Pages file. He stared at the blank page for a good minute, pulling his thoughts together. Then he started typing.

Deacon Loves Penny

His name was Deacon Blue Fredericks. He was named after the title of a Steely Dan song. Deacon was the child of two drug-addicted parents in Green Bay, Wisconsin.…

FIN