After discovering a possible link between this mysterious Solarr and a company called Cyberdyne Technologies, I was tasked with setting up a meeting with their CEO, a Doctor Adam Tinker.
My first call went through a complicated phone maze and ended up with me talking to someone in their Public Relations department, who took down the station’s address, promised to send me a bunch of fliers, and promptly hung up.
My second call did not care much better, as I wound up being disconnected before I got to talk to a human. It did give me some time to look into the past of this CEO, at least. At the age of fifteen, Adam Tinker had begun taking college level classes, and way paying for them with a series of prosthetic devices he designed - when he was twenty-one, he had a pre-Med degree, a Master of Business Administration, Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics, electrical and mechanical engineering, a Bachelor of Arts in computer programming, and a PhD in computer design and engineering. That was the year he started Cyberdyne, Limited, with a grant from his father's medical device firm. When he was twenty-four, he spun Cyberdyne, Limited out into its own company, now called Cyberdyne Technologies, and bought the three one seven Hawthorne Street building as his corporate office. When he was thirty-three, his father died, leaving Adam a third of his original company - and Adam used his profits from Cyberdyne to buy out the rest. I would have dug for more, but at this point I was disconnected. I decided to make one more attempt, and then just go over to Hawthorne in person if it did not work out this time.
After bouncing around for a full minute, I finally got a person: “Good morning, you have reached the office of Doctor Adam Tinker, Cyberdyne Technologies International. This is Karen Pohl, Assistant to the Executive, speaking.”
“Hello Miz Pohl,” I began, “This is detective Na…”
“If you are looking for a donation, I can connect you to Public Out…”
“No!” I said, perhaps a bit too forcefully. “Er, I am not calling for a donation. We were hoping to be able to set up a time to talk to Doctor Tinker about the explosion in one of his labs about a month ago.”
There was a brief pause and then: “Let me place you on hold and I will see what I can do for you.”. Before I could react, tedious piano music replaced her voice.
I resumed my research - next month Doctor Tinker will celebrate his fifty-fourth birthday; currently he is the nineteenth wealthiest man in the United States and roughly number fifty in the world, his company has two manufacturing sites in the US as well as three overseas, and corporate offices in three countries, plus two large research centers. Doctor Tinker was also recently diagnosed as having a degenerative tissue disorder and has already had to replace one leg with one of his own prosthetic devices. Just as I read that, Karen came back on the line. “Are you still there, Detective?”
“Still here Miz Pohl.”
“Miss Pohl,” she corrected, “Doctor Tinker will be in his office from three to five PM today but has to be out by a quarter past five. He can meet with you at any time in that range at our corporate office on Hawthorne Street, Three One Seven, East Tower, seventh floor. What names should I have ready for the ID badges?”
“Detectives Nathan Daniels and Dina Genovelli.”
“Oh! You are Dina’s new partner? We went to high school together! Have not seen her since Professor Moran’s funeral last month. Well, I’m sure you have other matters to attend to and I know I do, so, unless there is some other pressing detail I will let you go?” She asked.
“No, we should be there a little after three. Thank you,” I replied and ended the call.
Dina had found me while I was on hold and wrapped up in my research into Doctor Tinker. “Forgot that I knew his personal assistant. Probably should have done that call and left the other to you, as Mendel was a cagey one. But he’s willing to meet us at a coffee shop a block from his apartment in twenty minutes, so we need to get moving.”
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On the way to her car, I filled her in on how my calls went. She shook her head. “Man, she was terrified to talk to me at that funeral. She took my high school boyfriend from me and was worried I would still hold a grudge. Told her the truth - that I let her take him because I was realizing I was not interested in boys and had been trying to find a way to let him down easy anyway. We had a good laugh over that, and then she offered to introduce me to her apartment mate... Still have not answered her on that one.”
The area Mendel had us drive to was pretty rundown. It was near the waterfront, and consisted of a mix of buildings that had once been warehouses but were now converted into low-income housing units, and buildings that had been warehouses but were currently condemned. The coffee shop was the nicest - and newest - place in a five-block area.
Doctor Mendel stood out like a sore thumb in that coffee shop - he was a disheveled man, probably in his fifties. He had wavy, light auburn hair in desperate need of meeting a brush or comb, a slightly yellow complexion, bright blue eyes, and some massive scarring on the left side of his face. The way he held his left arm, I suspected the scarring continued down at least to his shoulder, and he was missing part of his index finger on that hand. He was, however, also dressed in a very nice suit, probably from a named designer, but I don’t follow such things, of a dark blue fabric. His white shirt was open at the collar, and he wore an old tie but had clearly made no effort to tie it, so it just draped around his neck like a limp red noodle.
The others in the shop were a mix of college students and down-and-outers who probably spent their time panhandling when not sitting in the coffee shop. As it had just started to rain as we parked, there were a lot of the latter inside, avoiding the downpour.
Mendel rose to greet us. He had a slight lisp, but otherwise his voice was strong and firm, as was his handshake. “You are the detectives? Sit. Can I order anything for you?”
“Small hot black coffee for me,” Dina said.
“Just a water,” I added.
With his uninjured hand, Doctor Mendel snapped his fingers and a pretty woman with dark skin and hair and shockingly pale eyes hurried up to the table: “A small hot black for the lady, a water for the gentleman and a small plate of scones for the table, please.”
“Right away sir,” the woman - Melanie, according to her name tag - replied and hurried off.
“You had some questions about August fifth?” He said, as soon as she was out of earshot.
“Why, yes that is correct,” Dina replied.
“May I see your badges?” Mendel asked.
Dina and I showed them, he nodded. “Definitely not with the press then,” he said and pulled a small device out of his pocket. As he turned it on, I felt an excruciating headache; it took most of my concentration to hide the pain and I am sure I missed a lot of what was said as a result
When Dina cast a questioning look at the device, he said: It is kind of a white noise generator. If anyone is trying to listen in electronically, all they will hear is a hissing and popping sound. Can’t do anything about manual snoops. Yet.”
Melanie came back and I downed my water in one gulp before she had served the others. “Sorry, thirsty,” I apologized.
“Can you get my partner a milkshake of some sort?” Dina said as she took her coffee. I gave her a grateful look.
Melanie handed Doctor Mendel his drink and said: “It will be right up.”
As she walked away, Mendel leaned in and said: “What do you know of the Human Genome Project?”
We both gave the same answer: “Not a lot, really.”
He just nodded, then took a moment to collect his thoughts. “That was an attempt to map out all of the details of human DNA. My division was involved in this at the start, but for a small research lab, until Tinker bought us up and added us to his portfolio.”
He seemed lost in thought for a moment, with a faint smile playing on his lips, before he became serious once more and resumed: “In those early days it was fun - using cutting edge tech to try and continue our little project. It did seem odd, sometimes, that he showed no interest in our little group turning a profit - he enjoyed working alongside us, it seemed, and he had enough other teams that pulled off the big-ticket items regularly that none of us were particularly concerned.
“At least, not until we had our first … well… breakthrough, about six months ago.”