Anaximander's Goggles Part the antepenultimate

"Take me to Dr. Whitney's things," Clark, still arrogant, demanded.

"Not a chance," Wallace replied pulling from his breast pocket the moleskine Dr. Whitney used, a foil gum wrapper marking a page. "What do you make of this?"

Thumbing through the book Clark looked puzzled and a little angry. "Gibberish!" he exclaimed. "This is the only thing I can read."

He pointed to a Greek word. "anaximander." Wallace looked at Forrester who adjusted her glasses and after a moment replied, "Anaximander."

Clark took the foil up in his hands, turning it around, staring at it while the two agents talked.

"He was a presocratic philosopher."

"I'm no philosopher Dr. Forrester. Why don't you put that doctoral philosopher's brain to work for me?"

"Well, he was a mathematician, he developed the sundial. He was also known for looking for the unified field theory of the sixth century BCE, the origin of the elements, kind of an early evolutionist."

"What could that possibly have to do with this twenty-first century murder? Could Anaximander be an alias for someone?"

Suddenly Wallace jumped at Clark. "What did you do with that gum wrapper?"

"Nothing," Clark replied, thrusting his hands in his pocket. Slowly he withdrew them, "I must have absentmindedly put it in my pocket. Tell me is it yours or was it Dr. Whitney's?"

"It was his, there must have been a dozen of them in his car," Forrester answered.

Clark's eyes widened and then he made a conscious effort to put on what he thought was a poker face. "Ah, so that is where you got the goggles? Dr. Whiney had them?"

"Care to share what you know?" Wallace asked.

"I suppose you'll find out soon enough on your own. The goggles are designed to see through the loosely bound particles that make up matter. Only Dr. Whitney knows how they work, some how they create a field that bends time and isolates the particles, something to do with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Like I said, I don't know the science behind it, no one in this world does now."

"Didn't he leave any notes behind?" Forrester probed.

"Just this … Gibberish!" Clark growled.

"What does this have to do with that gum wrapper?"

"This, agent Wallace is the first thing we could see through with the goggles. It dissolved into a dull glow and our protective gloves became visible. Whitney always dreamed of taking the device out side and looking through organic material, but removing it was impossible."

"Apparently not," Wallace replied. He and Forrester left an agitated and quiet Clark in the interrogation room.

Anaximander's Goggles Part 3

“I told you not to come here.”

“I don’t take orders, Clark. I told you that when you offered our… partnership,” Bustamonte retorted. “Someone hacked the system, email isn’t safe.”

“Relax, we’re on track. Just stay calm. We have to be in for the long haul for this to work.”

“I don’t know if you have the cahones, Clark. You worry me. You sure your experiment isn’t going to be discovered.”

Clark stung from the condescension. “None of us wants that Bustamonte. Time isn’t something to play with, if the company found out that I was making something on the side by revealing secrets to a slime such as yourself, they would hurt you more than me.”

Bustamonte’s red face was stopped short when he saw two figures approaching. The silhouette of a man wearing a hat, light glinting from polished toes, and the curves of a woman’s dress, her hair creating a halo around her head held pistols toward the two men.

***

“What are you getting from Gnomon labs Bustamonte?” Wallace questioned the man in a white room of blazing lights; his double-breasted blue suit and white carnation contrasting the captive’s disheveled clothes and nervous pallor. “we know you have been trafficking in classified information. That is a felony. A good prosecutor could make a case for treason. You had better start singing.”

Bustamonte rested a sweaty brow in his hands and slumped, silent.

In another room Ella Forester’s eyes shone behind lenses illuminated by the bright lights.

“You weren’t forthcoming with us Mr. Clark. It seems Bustamonte knows more classified information about Gnomon than we do. You will both rot for a long time, or worse.

Clark let a nervous titter escape.

“Treason is nothing to laugh off, Clark.”

“It’s not that agent Forrester. I’m willing to roll on that pig, Bustamonte. That is the word isn’t it? No matter. Bustamonte intimidated me into giving him any advantage. We arranged for thousands of commuters to pass through a Gnomon test area that is hidden.”

“Hidden?” Forrester repeated with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes, it works by… let us just say, it bends time.”

“What would Bustamonte get out of it?”

“Each pass through the area would alter a mag-craft’s chronometer. Over the course of a few years he would stand to make extra millions on early returns and maintenance. The impression on the stock holders was worth his compensating me handsomely.”

“Sound’s pretty damning for Bustamonte,” Forrester observed. “I have a feeling you are not so innocent, and the prosecutor puts a lot of weight into our report, I can make it go easy on you, or hard. Perhaps you can make a better impression yet.”

“How?”

“Tell me how you and Bustamonte murdered Doctor Whitney.”

“I don’t know… I mean we didn’t… I didn’t.”

“That is not a better impression.” Ella rose putting her papers in her folder.

“Wait… Wait, I’ll help you with your investigation—I can tell you what he was working on!”

Ella smiled and walked out of the room.

Part 4