NovelWay Proto Shop

Chapter 10: Monkeywrench in the Envisioning Rail to Space

In 1988 the beginnings of an application of the Pull-Band technology's centrifugal force structural support capability was envisioned being developed to extend entirely around the planet, along an Orbital Transfer Trajectory shape extending from the equatorial surface around the planet up to GeoStationary Earth Orbit, 20,300 miles above the equator on above the opposite side of the planet. Initial purpose was to lift construction materials to build the 1960's-envisioned Satellite Solar Power Stations, finally, direct access to power of the Sun up there, converted to beam down to Rectennas on the ground, to be converted and sent to commercial power grids to every country choosing the clean energy source. The idea began to flesh itself out, and NovelWay Prototype shop was enlisted to create the technology for the energy supported structure that would lift vehicles along itself up and down between ground and GEO.

Since the pull-band technology used magnetic bearings, electromagnetic drag coupling to vehicles, and centrifugal force to arch over obstacles, it was relatively simple to extend it for the space access task.

Convergence of nanomachine development and micromachine advances, enabled such pull-band tubeways built of a few tens of millimeters diameter, so a warehouse sized structure could house the entire structure coiled on the ground, ready for a dynamic lifting through reaction principles. And so it was envisioned by Jero.

Yet, it was not a finest hour for humanity; as it is said, life in the trenches is not well suited for lofty visions.

The year was Alternate-1988, when Jero took the conceptual pieces of the earlier thinker's Launchloop circulating ground to ground belt to above atmosphere, vertical electromagnetic fountain, and iron belt between Texas and GEO, and discarded the parts which probably caused their rejection by industry in the past, and got enough of the remaining concept fragments to pattern together, adding his own electronics and physics knowledge, to make a new kind of large scale economical space access concept that looked like it would provide a key to a new way to open up space to civilization in a huge way, solving lots of big problems otherwise to perhaps disastrously plague humanity soon.

Jero had enough resources to buy an old computer that could access a computer network used by space activists like himself. Jero's Asperger extreme social naiveté still made him believe that invent a better gadget and world would come to him and take it up, dealing fairly with him in return, for the new wealth possibilities he had provided them. By Alt-1989, he had fleshed out the initial insight, and made changes to fix the problems he had noticed. Each new idea he wrote up in text form and put it on the space activists science library for all to be able to read on the computer network.

But the world had not come to his door with thanks and cash in hand for him, saying let us do it. In fact, he got no response from others even on the network, although the log showed that some others had accessed his files OK. Apparently people were unable to take the key he had provided, and use it to open up the worlds it made possible. So Jero set about to flesh in more integrated technical details, and showed how its existence would enable the emplacement of all the SPS into GEO to provide cheap clean electrical power for the whole world, provide a high beachhead spaceport for rocket launches to the moon and other solar system places, and to build a ring of man-made Stanford-Torus rotating passive shielded space cities in GEO, of similar design to the earlier designs created for use at L-5. There was room enough to build 1.5 million of them in GEO per ring, at 10,000 people each, that was almost 3 times the present whole world population. Surely with those goals in mind, people would accept his concept, and get going in a hurry, species were going extinct every week due to man;s pressure on the earth, and Jero's concept would make that unnecessary for an abundant life for billions of people... in GEO.

There was another player in this game: Krindahl, who was no Asperger, instead was a powerful and clever businessman. Part of his fortune had been made by pirating one of Jero's earlier ideas; Jero did not even know about it, though eventually became aware of vindication of one more of his concepts thereby. Krindahl had claimed it was his own idea, since he did the work of taking the concept and running with it to make it a moneymaker, but never mentioned Jero; when the products took hold and made him a fortune, he began to worry that Jero might want compensation, even require declaration that it was Jero's idea in the first place. Krindahl was a shrewd and ruthless bully, and no way was that wimp Jero going to make him look bad, or get a penny from him in payment for what Jero had created. To Krindahl, it was all great sport, showing who was "better"; and the business principle of "buy low and sell high" was optimum when the "buy low" price paid was zero, it could not get any better than that.

Krindahl's guiding vision was the ideal of legendary mobster "Al" Capone and considered that if that ideal hero to him had had more governmental influence, he would have continued to be a free a kingpin; so Krindahl was making sure he did not make that mistake too. That, added to his lifelong fascination with the movie characterization power of appearance's mutability, which he had studied in every Disney movie made and had found how to take on the power of energy of that ability to himself, even charismatic image projection such as of "The Lion King" despite his boxer's physique, and martial arts training. He was going to become the most powerful man in the world, doing one small step at a time, fun game all the way for him, genious bully galore.

Krindahl knew people, and how to make them do his bidding; that was his love, the sport of forcing others. Leverage, is all that it took, and knowledge of others often provided that leverage. His were the genes of a long line of high class bullies, and he was passing those genes on quite a bit, that was the ancient game. Meanwhile, the sport at hand. Leverage.

He knew what made people tick, even those wimpy brainy Asperger types, to some extent. Bullies rule not by assaulting into submission continually, but by occasional demonstration of how destructive he could be to someone. To be continually assaulting everybody, even one at a time, even if he had biceps as big as an elephant's, he would eventually become exhausted; so bullies rule by the imagination of those others, that he would ruin them horribly should they defy the bully. It was the appearance of power to harm, and perhaps the benifits of helping, that made others comply. Continual watching was part of the bully way, to know who might be plotting, and who had a goodie the bully might want; and of course, to find out when the females were ready to conceive. Data about others was therefore of prime importance, intimate, personal data about everyone. He chose well his private detectives, checking up on his competitors, and especially on Jero. Keep Jero marginally employed so that he could not buy more than essentials, but afraid to go for a higher paying job. Bug his communications to learn who knew him. If chat started online re Jero's ideas, have goofus inane comments immediately put up, through which no competent person would wade. And so every idea Jero put online, or even wrote down where the snoops could find them when Jero was gone from home, the hired snoops, even sometimes Krindahl himself just to stay in shape, to bring copies of those ideas to Krindahl; even sometimes all written evidence was expertly removed from Jero's files, if the idea was being kept secret and could be of use to Krindahl in the future. Blocking all communications to Jero, such as by buying up the mailbox stores where Jero had his postal mail, routing phone through filters to shortstop ones to key people or which had key ideas in them, other mail went and phone messages went through fine. People who might have helpte Jero, or were in a position to really discover Jero's honesty and creative capacity, got routed to an impersonator or a "wrong number/address" response.

Not one to leave anything to chance, Krindahl worried that some competitor company might spot Jero for his real skills and ideas, and bring him in as partner; that had to be nipped in the bud. And in the future, when aging Jero was gone, he did not want some kid to pipe up and say that Krindahl's latest product actually was same as had been seen from old Jero way back when. All these were delightful challenges for Krindahl, whose love was the playing of the game. All he had to know were the foibles of each of the others, and use them through a buttering of deceit; a false statement dec lared to enough people became truth as far at courts were concerned, and the courts were all that could defeat him someday, so he played the game with envisioned law cases of all kinds in mind, like chess games galore. Only he got to set them up years in advance, what powerful fun.

Much younger than Jero, all he had to do was outlive Jero while effectively hiding Jero's big projects, particularly the KESTS to GEO and Applications one, which were then going to be claimed by Kirdahl and were going to make him the richest and most powerful man on the planet. Meantime, he used some of Jero's smaller ideas in bits and pieces for a few small projects for Krindahl's subsidiaries. It all had to be untraceable to Kirdahl in the future, that made it a so much more satisfying game to play, more proof even if only to himself, of his superiority to his opponent Jero. That Jero did not know he was an opponent, made it an even more interesting game to Kirdahl. Only in Jero's dying moments would Kirdahl show himself to his opponent to cause both understanding of who beat him, as was the way of the bullies who were his forefathers, so successful at breeding by defeating the other options women had.

All Krindahl had to do was ruin the reputation of Jero, in the most effective way for each of the possible places. He knew that Jero needed a loving woman desperately, not just as mate and helper, but to cope with the social world which was not functional to Jero's Asperger ability. So Krindahl used the security systems that were being built in small businesses, department stores, increasingly wherever, all private run and so was easy to stage some events and actors to add to it, and the word was out that Jero was a stalker of women, rapist and slasher; he grabbed little children from their mothers and sexually molested them, he stole ideas from his employers and tried to peddle them as if his own. He portrayed Jero as clever, hard to catch, so asked everybody to watch for various wrongdoing Jero might do, and report it to the system. Soon they would catch Jero doing some horrid thing and put him away so he would not harm any more women,, children, and would not steal from stores or corporations, it they would all help. Ah, so clever Krindahl was, a true master of people's imaginations and opinions, a "spinmaster".

From his invisible position, Krindahl occasionally allowed himself to relish the sight of how powerful he was, as seen thorough the reports about Jero's doings and lifestyle. Jero was really hurting, no woman would have him as mate; even one who had known Jero long before Krindahl's appearance, began to back off, thinking there must be something to that which everybody knew about Jero, maybe he really was given to dangerous sudden violence, a thief, child molester, homosexual. So Jero became more and more without a support system, the thing well known to crush someone with Asperger Syndrome. His finances were ever inadequate, he was on foot more and more, and the streets and public transit were great places for Krindahl's operators and actors to play the game. No technical company would hire Jero as the bad references spread made him effectively blackballed for any technical work where his skill might become really known. And increasingly deeper into poverty level, he had not chance to build inventions on his own and get them patented. Krindahl watched every move Jero made, and like in chess there was an obstacle to be found by the unwitting Jero. Yes, what fun to Krindahl, like a clawed cat playing with a doomed mouse, as he watched Jero's misery amplify in mateless nights, days filled by increasingly hostile neighbors. Jero assumed that the neighbors, employers would come to know him for who he really was and could do, had done; but Krindahl knew that the reality was that people's first impressions of Jero were contrived by Krindahl before they met Jero. Attractive women glared at Jero, little children screamed in terror at Jero's sight, prospective employers narrowly viewed that fake of a Jero who had no degree, claiming such achievements, get him out of here. Store's video security companies quickly identified the Jero-like image, so always had their security people follow Jero around to make sure he did not steal food in groceries, or harm other customers and their children.

Jero focused in on both the space access field and the healing field, both were fringe technology aspects where new things could be found. Jero naively believed that the health industries were there to keep people in best of health; Krindahl knew better: sickness was what provided urge for people to fork out money to pay for doctors and medicines and hospital stays: sickness, not desire for health, was what provided the power that moved the conventional health industry. And similarly, Jero naively believed that space access was there to enable civilization to expand for the betterment of all including the other creatures of the ecosystem; but Krindahl knew much better: space was there for profit, nothing whatsoever else. Profit and power. and if people benefitted in the process, it was of no concern to Krindahl.

And so when Jero began to publicly describe to the computer network world, assuming the concept carried its own validity and integrity for all to see, Krindahl was there to have the first word with possible finders of Jero's files. Those in the know got the word.

The world of Academics, and intellectuals in general, were a potential problem, if they learned by their own understanding, the feasability of Jero;s concepts, and his Asperger's ways. They had to be also tricked into staying away from Jero and his concepts. So when the internet was making it so ordinary people could get the answers at their keyboard, answers that people hired degreed people to know. Would that not eventually make the college degrees worthless? The few "self educated" people had always been a novelty; as it usually was just easier to get knowledge in the educational system's schools and colleges. But the worry now re the internet maybe obsoleting the college system and its graduates, an uneasy though in the back of may a mind of a person whose fine job was built on the diploma. When politics began to put in conservative judges enough, a case was planned against Jero, that he was largely self-educated. Squash him, and intellectuals jobs would all be safe. Thus Krindahl brought into the quiet fray that group of intellectual people, who might otherwise have seen the validity of Jero's concepts and sided with him.

Jero's living situation could be made more miserable, and also alienate the Real Estate community against Jero, by making it look like he and his ideas could bring new competing real estate wild cards into the normally limited-resource commodity monopoly game that was "Real Estate". The ring of space habitats in GEO the new kind of transportation system would also enable, cheap commute for millions of people a day between the ground and GEO cities. What would happen to real estate values here on the ground? Money would be lost, The real estate system was brought into the simmering hostility fray against Jero, who had to live somewhere, even in near poverty.

Krindahl admired his own power, as he got the world to be slowly squeezing Jero like a python, Jero getting more paranoid as time went on, not able to comprehend what was happening. The Asperger weakness re understanding social situations was ever a problem for Jero, but the increasing odd responses from people to him, increasingly did not match up with the kinds of social thingsof the past.

Jero had no mechanism for success except to produce more innovations to help civilization. And so he continued that, with what little resources he still could get. even though people just "humored" him when told about the new possibilities... did they not know that Jero was crazy, claiming to have invented things himself? College dropouts were scum anyway, and Jero was one of those.

Krindahl's fortune continued to expand, as ideas stolen from Jero were farmed out to small businesses. Krindahl truly was a genius, just not the same kind as was Jero; his power to control people and events through appearance, took Krindahl into the movie business, and so produced a few movies, established a presence in the industry. It was a perfect cap to the Jero story, to make a movie about it, a new work of manipulative deceptive genius by Krindahl. Actors were hired to take the place of Jero, even in Jero's apartment, and the pseudo-Jero was filmed being all those things earlier spread by false reputation: homosexual, stalker and slasher of women, molester of children, thief in stores just for the sport of it, stealers of corporation's hard-earned engineering concepts, wife-stealer, college dropout claiming to be able to do some things even better than PhD's what a criminal, yet so clever he still had not been caught. Neighbors could not tell which was the real Jero, not knowing there was a false group of Jero-actors expertly scripted in everything. When the life was finally fully crushed out of the real Jero, the world would have a firmly entrenched belief about him; all made by Krindahl. Not just to ruin his opponent, but to crush the life slowly and make a new ugly reputation for the opponent. Yes, a master Krindahl was.

Yet in the meantime, Jero kept producing concepts for helping humanity. Why were not people using them? Why was not his concept for a centrifugally supported lifting structure between the equator and GEO been built and used to put solar electric power plants there, total recycling plants, spaceports to the solar system, homes and businesses for billions of happy people? Why was it not happening? shaking his head in lack of comprehension, he went on to figure out an even better way for mankind to do well through new technology... surely they would see the value in this new one and work with him to make it happen.

Increasing poverty drove Jero out onto the street to wait for the bus to go do volunteer work, still attempting to do something that others might appreciate. Krindahl's company became known as a public benefactor in the protection of people, such as by providing big grants to pay for police cars and school busses to drive women and children that had been victims of molestation, driving the victims past Jero as he waited on the street for a bus, while the woman or child in the bus or police car was asked to report if that molester standing over there ever bothered them or tried to touch them or talk them into something. Soon they would get that molester off the streets and people would be safe again.

Ever the people person and team organizer, Krindahl benevolently gave grants, done in the name of others, not his own of course. Grants that carried with them a side clause, to in one way or another help catch that Jero, even as a volunteer. More grants were there about to be approved, for those who found fault that went on record about Jero, as a small part of the grant, of course. Jero was almost certifiably paranoid at this point, people responding so strangely, even accounting for the Asperger problems he knew he had.

As part of his movie producing interests, Krindahl had discovered several tools used by some movie directors, such as heterodyning ultrasonics which were only audible by the mixing of sounds at the location of a given actor or stagehand, others could not hear it and thus was not perceived in the movie itself. The technology had originally been created to produce low power perfect audio for use at people's homes, as its bass quality was not a function of speaker power as in ordinary loudspeaker technology. But as often the case, when something can be used to gain power over others, more money is found for that purpose than for comfort purposes; and it was developed as a way to direct messages to actors on stage; and thusly available, for fun to use on others who were not cognizant of the technology. Since everybody knows that if you "heard voices" ... that is, voices that somehow, like the "voice from across the crowded room" seemed to be for you and did not come from a phone, TV set, or loud people next door... that you must be crazy; so, in the wrong hands, its signals would make the unwary believe they had the classic "hearing voices" of schizophrenia, and for those who did highly classified work, some felt there was no way out but oblivion, lest their secret knowledge fall into the wrong hands during medical processes. It had something of the flavor of the ancient "Chinese Water Drop Torture" technique, its combo of helplessness and ever-surprise gradually wearing at the victim.

Another tool was a binary-value signal remote medical monitor, that from a distance could determine if a person was subconsciously saying yes or no to something, thus a game of "20 Questions" could be played, patiently weaseling out the target person's reply to almost any question, given patience and time. An instrument on which a DNA sample from the target was placed, with a skilled operator, could also ascertain the "yes/no" value of the bit of data, occuring after some environmental stimulus change.

A third tool, not always usable, was a sublingual speck that would transmit the small muscles moving as a person spoke out loud or thought silently to themselves. With these tools he could have negative affirmations said to Jero as he drifted off to sleep and when awakening; Krindahl could ask a question of Jero and see the response, yes or no to the question, a patient "20 Questions" game; and when the sublingual pellet had been placed, could even hear Jero's covert speech to himself, thus essentially his "thoughts."

When the cameras would show Jero alone and thinking about some improvement, Krindahl would transmit on the Tartinni-based waves to Jero's ears alone, such as "mental hospital!", "Police department!", "outa California!", "castrate!", words ever surprising Jero as they seemed to come out of nowhere, startling him and disrupting the previous train of positive thoughts. It was a great game for the power-drunk bully. The same group of tricks were used to copy over every phone number, password and PIN number, contact name and address that Jero used. Krindahl almost wished he had the sharp claws of a cat with which to further torture the mouse he had caught, driving it insane. Why didn't Jero give up and die?

A rival movie producer, who made movies for fun too, but financed from a foreign family's wealth, had managed to arrange a lunch group meeting where Jero was there and would give a copy of the KESTS to GEO concept to him, since it was said he had an interest in it. Jero thought it was an interest to help build it, not knowing the producer only was looking for basis for scripts for movies; although any interest by anyone was a hopeful sign to Jero. Krindahl was informed of all that, and could not let a movie be made using KESTS to GEO as it would make it difficult later for Kirdahl to claim the concept was Krindahl's idea, after Jero was out of the picture. The other producer was well known, dating a princess from another country, so the arranged accident that killed all who might know about the KESTS to GEO, was thought to be an accident or maybe political. How clever, how powerful to make those things happen, Krindahl rewarded himself, especially having himself been a key player on the motorcycle's duo car-driver-blinding stunt itself, the helmets hiding identities, supposedly were on sudden Hawaiian vacation far from there. All was going per plan.

Jero had learned that a single glass or two of alcohol a day was beneficial to health and longevity, as well as making life a bit more pleasant. So he had an evening cup of wine, his one treat for himself remaining, since no woman would come near him to receive his love. The wine bottles gathered for recycle collection, and the pile of wine bottles were great props for Kirdahl's proclamation that Jero was an alcoholic too.

Jero could not afford normal health insurance nor medical services, so he spent part of his time learning about the "alternative" healing systems. Anecdotal most were, yet it cost but little to do the experiment on himself, being perceptive of subtle effects. Some of the processes worked, many had no help for him. But one system, which was especially interesting since Jero ws able to use his electronics technical skills to design and build simple things, showed that a small 9 volt signal at 34 kHz passed through the body hand to hand, was able to prevent some sicknesses. No theory as to why, it did work even beyond any placebo effect could. Jero was able to be healthy, despite poverty thereby. Kirdahl watched all this, and noted that the electrical signals were put through short pieces of pipe, wrapped with wet paper towel, to provide the currents that kept one healthy. So Krindahl had some people put explosives in similar pieces of pipes, people would not n otice that Jero's were copper, not the steel pipes of pipe bombs, and set the pipe explosives off to harm people in various places. So people were on the lookout for anyone with short pieces of pipes, that was not being a plumber at the moment. Thus Jero had to hide his electrical healing gadgetry, and surely could not take it aboard an airplane on a trip. How clever Kirdahl was! The pharmaceutical companies could not make a profit from the electrical devices that competed with some of their drugs, so they were interested in suppressing it too, in any way they could help Kirdahl block the public from knowing what Jero had to offer, it might cut into their profits, and they had bills to pay.

But Krindahl sometimes wondered, why was Jero still on his feet and moving? All that should have crushed him beyond recovery long ago. This was like a big fish to be hauled in for dinner, fighting sport was this.

And so, the tremendous potential options for civilization that were being unified and integrated for humanity by Jero, were methodically squelched by the master of the snare, Krindahl, mostly for the sport of it. When technology's civilization finally collapsed, it was going to be Krindahl and his kind, with trained muscles and cunning ruthless assaultiveness, that were going to survive in the collapse to inherit the world; and the gladiatorial sport of bullying all the way down, was the greatest thing of all appealing to Krindahl.

Meanwhile, humanity had to increasingly deal with insufficient energy, decaying worldwide environment, toxins even in seafood, mineral depletion of land crops, high priced housing, poor jobs, rainforest destruction, traumatic cutbacks in population. It was as if mankind's civilization was like a rocket powering almost into orbit where it could easily stay once there, but something causing failure of its engines just before orbital attainment, and so it had nowhere to go but down, with no safe landing possible. Without mankind uniting to produce the economical and huge capacity continuous pathway to expand civilization into GEO, it was not going to reach a high sustainable civilization utilizing the vast resources of nearby space. But then, people had not well used their earthsurface environment very wisely either. Would people spot Krindahl, the monkeywrench in civilization's orbit-bound engines, in time to solve the problem?

posted by Unknown @ 7:02 PM