Charisma- The Devil's Gap- Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

“It’s the very technology which gave the Pharaohs the power to be Gods among men!” Peter Doleman exclaimed.

“So, you’re a God now?” Liam Yager asked, the sarcastic skepticism echoed in his tone as he eased himself back, the soft leather chattered as the high back office chair molded around his athletic frame.

Sunlight, sliced by the micro blinds from the floor to ceiling window on the right, cut across the left side of Peter’s face, illuminating his sharp Elvin like features, slightly creased by his middle age. Only somewhat deflated by the sarcasm, he leaned towards his nephew’s desk, placed his hands palm down on the cool mahogany and slowly lowered himself into the customer chair. “Of course not, Liam. Understanding this will take time, a lot of time. It’s like taking someone from a lost tribe in Africa and giving them the keys to a sportscar.”

Although Peter was of no blood relation, he had been a close friend of the family for as long as Liam could remember. He was uncle Peter. Strange and awkward and this kind of a conversation was typical. Liam often felt uncomfortable.

Leaning forward, Liam put his elbows on the desk, his chest muscles flexing and stretching against his black, mock-neck polyester shirt, “how did you come to discover this technology and if the Pharaohs were Gods, then how did the Romans conquer Egypt?”

“Moses stole it from them, that’s why.” Peter retorted.

“Moses?” Liam asked, but he didn’t really want to know and regretted pressing the conversation. He knew it was going to lead to a long and confusing rant, and Liam was busy. This was his place of work and as an Oil company executive, his time was limited, and his focus couldn’t be misplaced on fantasies.

“Okay, forget Moses, that’s a long story and it isn’t that important, let me tell you what happened and then you be the judge. Fair enough?” Peter said. After a lengthy exhale, his pale green eyes focused on Liam’s.

Heading up the wholesale fuel division for a national oil company was big business and took a great deal of time and although uncle Peter was technically a customer, Liam didn’t have a lot of time to waste on a Thursday afternoon.

Peter came to Liam a few months ago asking for a good price on fuel for some emission experiments they were doing in Seattle. Peter worked as the lead engineer for Prism Environmental. Prism had been awarded a large Federal Government contract to do tests on diesel fuels and their effects on climate change. They built a large geodesic dome to create a controlled environment with which they could introduce emissions and measure their effects.

In the grand scheme of things, fifty thousand gallons over three months was not a big sale for Liam, as a typical wholesale customer would by in the millions of gallons. Nevertheless, he could humor uncle Peter for another ten minutes.

Liam’s hands slapped the desk. “Okay, give me the quick and dirty.”

“Alright, so, we had conducted a few runs with the dome and pumped in emissions, but the results were peculiar, and I mean in the sense that they weren’t consistent. It left us scratching our heads, we decided that maybe the initial environment wasn’t as pristine as we thought. There had to be something skewing the results. We stripped everything down and couldn’t find anything, then we turned to the water we were using. After a few tests, there seemed to be a high particulate count, mostly metals. I knew we had this giant electro-magnet sitting in the warehouse from a previous experiment so I thought we would use it to pull the metals from the water”

“You think it was maybe a little overkill?” Liam said, checking the time on his Rado watch. It was a quarter past two.

“Probably a huge understatement, but you’d be surprised by the amount of material that the magnet pulls from the water,” Peter said. Standing up, he unzipped his blue Columbia jacket and wiggled, causing the jacket to fall to the chair, revealing his small, thin stature. He sat back down, extended his legs and continued, “at first we didn’t see any reactions, but then again, we didn’t expect any. After three days, we were getting ready to introduce emission contaminants to the now pristine environment,” he pulled his legs in and slid his body forward on the chair, “and that’s when I saw the prism going crazy.”

“Prism? Is that for monitoring light refraction in the test dome?”

“No. The prism was just the company logo for Prism Environmental Laboratories. It was pretty much a big piece of art, made from glass and quartz. It was mounted on a pedestal just inside the entry,” Peter explained.

“Oh, okay. What was it doing?”

“It was flashing, almost like a camera flash was stuck inside it, bouncing around!” Peter said with the same conviction as a man who just discovered religion for the first time. “Somehow we generated a large amount of Orgone and it was trapped in the Prism!”

“I still don’t get it. I mean, it’s kind of cool, but what’s this got to do with,” Liam’s tongue tripped over the word, “Orgone?”

“Don’t you see? We confirmed that Orgone does exist and we trapped it in the prism!” He delivered it like a pitchman at a carnival.

At first, Liam didn’t react to Peter’s statement, causing an awkward silence to fill the room.

“What exactly is Orgone again?” Liam asked, but before Peter got the chance to answer, the black Inter-Tel phone on Liam’s desk rang. Looking at the call display Liam said, “Oh, shit, Uncle Pete, I have to take this call, it’s really important. Can we talk about this at Sunday dinner?”

Snapping up the phone receiver, Liam answered, “Marty! How are you?”

Liam watched Peter stand and grab his coat. Liam feigned some apologetic faces amidst the breaks in his phone call.

Flinging his coat over his shoulder, Peter left.