the man onto the roadside grass. He was breathing slowly but steadily. Galen put his head against the man’s chest and tried to listen.
He looked up at Edison then jumped back in surprise when the man’s body started to arch and twitch, then lay still. Galen put his head on the chest once more: no heartbeat. He remembered something Agnelli had told him about a way to restart a person’s heart by shocking it and pounding on the chest.
“Edison, we need electricity!”
The big kid started hitting the injured man’s chest.
Edison was almost tempted to laugh, whether out of astonishment or at the juxtaposition of his name and electricity, or both. Then his mind kicked into overdrive. They couldn’t tap the power pole. The only electricity available was from the car battery. He ran to the open hood and saw that the battery had been jarred out of its holder. He yanked with all his strength and it came loose with the wires attached. It was heavy, but he managed to get it over to where Galen was still pounding away.
By then Edison had worked out the procedure.
“I’ll hold one wire, you hold the other, and when I say ‘go,’ we touch the two wires to his chest. Ready? Go!”
The contact from the wires caused the body to convulse suddenly then fall still again.
Galen put his ear to the chest and smiled.
“It’s beating!”
They stayed by the man, debating whether one of them should go for help when they saw a car coming up the normally deserted road. They ran toward it, waving their hands. The driver slowed then stopped as he saw what had happened. Edison went up to the car and quickly explained that the guy was still alive.
Twenty minutes later the police ambulance pulled up.
“Don’t tell them, Edison,” Galen whispered as the ambulance driver and his partner approached. “We’ll probably get into trouble if they find out what we did.”
“Won’t they reward us?”
“That’s not the way it works, Little Brother. No good deed goes unpunished.”
...
Edison stared into the mirror. Taller now, still slender, zits still marking his maturing face, he knew himself better now and what he could do. Time, hormones, and the gym had done their job. He was no longer the scrawny runt he had been; the kid who had once hated PE found he had a natural talent for gymnastics, and he had grown to love it almost as much as he did electronics.
He was about to graduate. No more Mickey Mouse routines for him. Now, headed for Tech, he was finally going to be able to sink his teeth into electronics and radio.
He picked up and admired the little Crosley battery-powered set he had repaired.
“Boy, won’t Betty be surprised when I give her this! Bet she’ll like it better than some old corsage!”
“Edison, the transmitter is on the fritz again. Want to give it a try?”
The senior in charge of the university’s FM radio station had spotted the geeky underclassman awhile back hanging around the broadcast studio, peering at the equipment with curious eyes. When he’d approached the kid, thinking he might have found another aspiring announcer, he was floored to learn he already had his Class A commercial radio license. Not even the technician from the company that maintained the equipment had achieved such an advanced certification.
From then on the transmitter was Edison’s baby. He tuned it so well it had never sounded better—and he even did some subbing as an announcer when he set up the first remote broadcasts by the school station.
Edison felt like he was in heaven, but he was also aware that there was nothing eternal about it. He was amazed at how time was speeding by. Before he knew it, he had left undergrad studies for graduate school and his research thesis, then a doctoral dissertation.
His reputation was such that even before he earned his doctorate, various tech firms across the country were pitching job offers. The winner: Ma Bell.
“Edison, your dissertation can’t be published.”
“What’s wrong with it, Dr. Baker? Isn’t it good enough?”
Baker didn’t respond.
“I can prove every point and substantiate everything. You assigned me the topic, for heaven’s sake! Do the other members of the doctoral committee agree with you?”
Baker looked at the strangely intense young man, who suddenly made him feel old and tired of the game. The boy had achieved more in his short time at school than most of his colleagues had in a full career. His only drawback was not understanding how things worked in the real world. This kid should have been born in the Middle Ages, where he could have spent his whole life safely tucked away in some monastery scrawling his manuscripts, hoping that someday they would be discovered by future generations.
He was too honest to survive the piranhas out there.
The professor rubbed his bald spot as he thought things through. What he said next probably would determine the boy’s entire future.
“Mr. Edison, there’s nothing wrong with your dissertation. You’ve made a persuasive case for a worldwide information and communications system that would link every person and every bit of data available for research. Your encryption programs and algorithms are the most elegant I have ever seen. The committee and I fully agree with your conclusions.”
He paused and sighed.
“Don’t worry about your degree. Your work has already guaranteed you that. I can, in all honesty, say that you have been the most brilliant student I have ever dealt with.”
“What’s wrong, then? Why can’t it be published?”
Somewhere in Baker’s memory the question triggered another time and another young man standing in front of a professor, incredulous at what he was hearing. Was it that long ago? He had once been such an altruist, wanting to help humanity with his work.
“Edison, I work here at the university as a full professor of electronics and communications. But I also do consulting work on the side. With what they pay us here it’s been necessary, but it’s also an ego builder to know someone out there considers my opinions worthwhile.
“I consult for the government in certain areas, and because of that I am obligated to bring specific types of research to the attention of those involved in national security. Congress passed a law in 1951 called The Invention Secrecy Act that gives the government the right to suppress any invention or research considered dangerous to the national defense. Your paper falls into that category.”
Edison laughed at the implication.
“All my paper does is describe a network of individualized communications and exchange of knowledge bases. The programs I’ve designed protect it from interference. There’s nothing seditious in that, is there?”
Such a brilliant young man, Baker thought, how could he be so naïve? He looked at the sandy-haired, crew-cut, scarecrow-thin figure standing before him in worn khaki pants and
