“All of them?”
Cate Volk nods. “Every single one.”
David Applegate, primetime anchor for Orange, Kentucky’s local news station and Cate’s former colleague, sits back and looks down at the documents through his reading glasses. They’re at Cate’s dining room table, which is covered in stacks and stacks of papers, envelopes, and folders. “I suppose it’s not surprising that defense contractors would be contributing to a study as… paradigm-shifting as this one.” He looks at the names at the top of “the interstice report,” as it’s come to be known.
“It’s nothing illegal,” says Cate. “But it’s a lot of money, especially going to little labs like the ones that published this. And it’s weird that little labs like these are making this kind of announcement. Right?”
“Maybe. I don’t see why it matters yet, but you wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t think it mattered.” David smiles at his protege. “Take me through it from the beginning.”
Cate feels like she’s standing in front of a wall full of newspaper clippings with yarn, strung between thumbtacks, showing connections. But she knows she’s right. She has to be. “Weeks, months, really, before any of this was happening, I was researching Okada-Eku. I’d gotten a tip that they might have been connected to my incident, so I thought I’d brush up on their history. It’s self-billed as a ‘successor’ of a defense contractor called Yamaguchi, which was founded back in the sixties and got split up in ’98 for legal reasons. There’s not much on it but it comes up in the budget again and again. So that got me wondering — if it was split up, where did the other parts go?”
“So you looked for other companies in defense and aerospace and manufacturing spaces that were founded around the same time.”
Cate nods. “Yup. But, I only found one — Halberd, founded in 1998, and I only found it because two of the board members’ profiles mention Yamaguchi. So it was a dead end.” Her eyes flicker toward the report in David’s hands. “Until it wasn’t.”
“Board members?”
“Board members. Recognized a couple of names n the report’s donor page. Followed the rabbit hole to see where they went.”
“And that gave you a list of half a dozen small defense contractors sponsoring this project.”
“All founded within three years of Yamaguchi’s dissolution, all competing in the same fairly narrow space — and none having much to show for it, I’ll add — and all sponsoring this particular project in a big way. A millions of dollars kind of way.”
“Sure, of course.” David’s voice betrays his disappointment at the mundanity of this truth. “That’s just how the contracting and research world works.”
“A group of rivals funding the same project that just happens to threaten to change everything about how we view reality?”
David shakes his head, holding up his hands helplessly. “Yes? Somebody in the know tipped them all off. They decided to cooperate.”
Cate purses her lips. “Is that the only option?”
“That holds any water? Yes, I think so.” He looks at her and relents. “Okay, fine. What’s the other option?”
“They’ve known.” When he doesn’t respond, Cate continues. “They’ve known about the interstice, or whatever all this is, this whole time. They’ve been working on it. Trying to understand it. Trying to build tech that uses it without getting found out. Making connections. Trying to get as far ahead of each other as they can. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yamaguchi’s ‘break-up’ was orchestrated.”
“Okay, but —” The senior anchor looks down at the report again. “Why now? What’s their motive for the sudden publicity? Even if it is through proxies.”
“That’s where I hit a dead end,” says Cate. “I just don’t know. Public-facing science certainly hasn’t caught up. Time was ripe? Government said it was okay? I —”
“PR,” David interrupts, realizing the answer to his own question. “Same as the oil companies when a tanker spills and wipes out a coral reef. They start tooting their own horns as soon as they know they’ve screwed up, promoting goodwill and promising improvement.”
“And they’re all doing it.”
“They’re all doing it. They all screwed up. They overlooked some critical detail, or they made somebody mad, or —” He stops. “Something’s about to happen.”
“That’s crazy,” says Cate, “and I’m the crazy one here.”
“You said that all these companies would have literally been founded with the knowledge that this exists with the express purpose of working on it. Their entire existence is wrapped up in the problem.” David stares at the report. “What kind of screw-up is bad enough to make you give away the only thing that made you valuable?”
The two journalists sit in silence for a few moments.
“Well,” David eventually says, slowly, wiggling the interstice report. “They were obviously trying to keep things quiet and stay out of the spotlight, and thought it would take longer, but they had to know it’d get out sooner or later. They know what they’ve committed to.”
“Hmm.” Cate ponders. “Think they’d talk to me?”
“You’re a reporter,” says David. “You’ve certainly got personal brand recognition. You might even have a personal connection. It’s certainly worth a try. Everyone deserves a chance to tell their own story when faced with the facts. And you’ve got your facts.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“I had a good learner.” The anchor grins. “Give them a choice first. Even if you already know what the answer will be.”
Cate returns her mentor’s smile. “And when they say no, don’t give them a choice.”
She’s absolutely stunned, the next day, when Dale Okada returns her call and asks if he can sit for an interview.
Hello hello!
It’s a new year, already, apparently, and here we are. Funny how that happens. What happens next?
See ya!
:: Jaer