King of All I Survey
Chapter 91: A Professor Gets Schooled

Chapter 91: A Professor Gets Schooled

Four hours later, Professor Donaldson pushed his chair back from the table and raised his arms over his head to stretch as though he had just eaten too much at Thanksgiving. Wagner and I were still going through the pages of my notebook and discussing my work excitedly.

"This is the best thing since sliced graphs!" Professor Wagner declared. "You understand that this approach can be applied to a great many problems. It’s not just applicable to Donaldson’s issue. I take back what I said about Cheshire Elementary. Apparently, their math program is even better than their physics program!"

"You’ve found a real keeper here, Donaldson. This kid will keep you in grant money until you’re my age."

"So, about that," I started hesitantly, "as it happens, I don’t need grants. I need researchers."

"What do you mean?" Donaldson asked.

"I mean that funding is not a problem, I need researchers to work on certain practical applications of a related concept that I’ve been developing."

"It’s your field matrix structure thing, isn’t it?" Donaldson asked.

"To begin with, yes. There are a couple layers beyond that." Donaldson’s face showed his surprise.

"Beyond that? Good God! What could be beyond that? The strength potential of that field-enhanced matrix is almost beyond belief!"

"The boy’s got venture capitalists behind this," Wagner pronounced. "What’s this about field enhanced matrices?"

"It’s secret," I said giving Donaldson a stare, "as is the work I’ve presented today." I switched my glare to Wagner.

Wagner waved a hand in the air dismissively, "Of course, of course."

"My work can’t go forward without your technique..." Donaldson said slowly.

"I know." I said, I’m prepared to make your use of it a part of my offer.

Donaldson, who had been looking down at the notebook again looked up quickly. "Offer?"

"Yes, I’d like to hire both of you to work on a project related to what we’ve been discussing."

"So, you’re not only a math wiz, but you’re the project leader and hiring manager? At eight years old? Of a venture capital backed effort... Speaking as a professional mathematician, this doesn’t add up," Wagner.

"Um..." I stumbled over what to say next until Joe offered some advice.

Ask them to sign non-disclosure agreements before you tell them about the job details. I’ll draw them up and send them to that printer in the corner.

"Ah, ok," I started again, "I would be happy to share more details if you would agree to sign NDA’s regarding the project and job offer."

"Well, you ’ve tickled my curiosity, I’ll sign," Wagner stated quickly.

"I’ll have to read it first, of course," Donaldson said.

In my head, I heard Joe again, He’s waffling on not using the math we showed him to continue his work.

"Professor, I assure you, if you join us, you’ll have what you need to advance your own work beyond what you can imagine at the moment. You’ll also be very well paid." I offered.

Wagner jumped in, "He wants credit. He wants to be able to publish something groundbreaking to feed his ego. He might settle for money, but that’s what he really wants."

Donaldson scowled at him.

That tracks. Donaldson’s brain activity shows he mostly agrees with that statement, Joe supplied silently.

I looked at Donaldson, "I’m not going to mislead you, Professor. I’m not prepared to release the math techniques into the wild at this point. Some of this work is not possible without it, so it can’t be readily published. If you can work backwards from our results with conventional equations, you can publish theory and proofs. Practical applications and developed technologies will be kept as trade secrets for now, maybe forever. But I guarantee that the work this team does will be far beyond anything being done anywhere else. This team will have a better understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe than anyone else in the world."

The printer in the corner started spitting out documents. "I gestured toward it, "Those will be the NDAs. Read it and if you decide to sign, I can tell you more."

"I still don’t understand how an eight-year-old gets involved in something like this, never mind leading it," Wagner insisted.

I shrugged, "Sign the forms, and I’ll tell you."

"Hah! I’ve already told you I’ll sign, give me a pen." Wagner scooped the pages up off the printer as it finished and separated them into two piles.

"Here’s one for you," he said handing a set to Donaldson.

He grabbed the pen we had been using off the table and signed the indicated spot on the last page, tossing the pen down in front of Donaldson.

At Joe’s prompting I said, "I’ll need you to initial each page so there’s no confusion later..."

Wagner snatched the pen up again and scribbled his initials on each page.

As Donaldson read through the NDA, I picked up Wagner’s forms and tucked them inside the cover of my notebook.

He took some time to read it. When he finished, he set it back down on the table in front of him. "As a student, and a Research Associate working with a professor within the campus facility, especially since it is building on my previous work as a task I assigned you, cannot be considered other than University property..."

"Oh, for God’s sake, Donaldson," Wagner interrupted. Meanwhile, Joe was speaking in my head. I smiled at Joe’s advice.

I held up my hand for silence. "Please Doctor Wagner, clearly Professor Donaldson is making a terrible mistake... As an authorized agent of the University, he entered into a verbal agreement with an eight-year-old without a parent or guardian present. It was made clear to him that the eight-year-old desired to keep the shared information confidential and he certainly led the eight-year-old to believe it would be. Since he now professes to instruct the eight-year-old in the nuances of intellectual property rights, Professor Donaldson cannot claim that he did these things out of ignorance or that he, himself, is as naïve as an eight-year-old in the intricacies of this sort of agreement."

"That’s preposterous!" Donaldson exclaimed, pushing the NDA away from him.

"Is it? Shall we call the Dean and remind him of my family’s endowment before explaining the situation? Or should I just call our family lawyer and let him formally serve the papers to you and the University’s counsel? "Oh, Professor, when your phone rings, would you mind putting it on speaker so Professor Wagner and I can listen?"

"When... What?" Donaldson began before being interrupted by his cell phone ringing loudly from his pocket. He looked sharply at me, before reaching for the phone. He looked at the screen. It showed the incoming call was from Timothy Bailey. He looked back at me and set the phone on the table and pressed the speaker icon. My voice issued forth from his phone.

"I don’t know how things work in the university setting, but this is... kind of proprietary. I mean I ’m not ready for this to get around, yet."

Then Donaldson’s voice, "Oh, of course. Nobody will share anything about it, that goes without saying." Wagner looked at Donaldson and shook his head disapprovingly. Then my voice returned.

"Well, you know, I’m eight, so maybe it goes without saying for college professors, but, you know, my experience is limited..."

I knew that the audio was slightly edited, but I didn’t believe Donaldson would remember the entire thing word for word, and we did, in fact say the things in the recording. It just condensed the conversation a little it to make the point. Donaldson’s phone clicked and went silent.

"That’s not admissible!" Donaldson shouted, "You can’t record someone without consent in Massachusetts."

I shrugged, "Once, again you demonstrate your legal expertise in these matters. If it came to a court case, then that recording might be thrown out, but you would be put on the stand to testify. Would you deny it, if asked before the judge under penalty of perjury that such a conversation took place? Would you refuse to recount those exact words?"

"It’s against the law to make that recording, you could go to jail." Donaldson argued, his voice losing steam.

I smiled broadly. "Professor, I’m eight. Tell me which of the following scenarios is more likely: One: I get sent to prison where you, having been fired from the University, have ample time to visit me, or two: the judge simply says ’Don’t do that again, young man. Next case.’ That next case might even be my father’s suit against you and the University for intellectual property theft by willfully defrauding a minor. I’m sure it’ll make for very entertaining television on the evening news, and maybe even one of those court drama shows that are so popular in prime time these days, ripped from the headlines."

Wagner started laughing out loud. Donaldson glared at him. "Donaldson, sign the paper before the boy is offered a fellowship from the law school. Dean Michaels is not going to let you publish with the kid’s work if his endowment is at risk, anyway. You know that as well as I."

Donaldson scowled and looked at the NDA he had pushed away from him for a second before reaching out and drawing it closer.

"Before you sign, Professor, I want to be clear. You don’t have to sign that unless you want to hear my offer and some more details about the project I want you to assist with. Whether you sign or not, I will allow you the opportunity to work backward from the proofs I presented for your hypothesis, and if you can find a way to come up with the same results using conventional mathematics, you’re free to publish it without my name attached in any way."

Wagner snorted derisively. Donaldson’s face lightened a bit as he processed that. Then his brow furrowed as he realized that it probably could not be done, probably...

After a brief pause, I continued, "I would like to have you as part of my team, Professor Donaldson. I threw a lot at you today, and I could have handled this better. I hope you’ll accept my apology and we can move forward, but I understand if you decide to walk away now."

Wagner snorted again, "When’s the last time Dean Michaels apologized to an employee?"

Donaldson couldn’t help but grin a little at that despite himself. "I’ll sign it. Let’s hear your offer."

Then his brow crinkled, and his hand stopped halfway toward the pen. "How did you record the conversation and arrange that call to my phone at that precise moment? Somebody else is monitoring this entire conversation right now."

"I have an app for that. I’ll explain more if you sign the NDA," I smiled, imagining the look on his face when I told him about multidimensional quantum computing Artificial Intelligences.

He shook his head and picked up the pen. A moment later I picked up his signed and initialed NDA and slid it into my notebook with the other one.

"Gentleman, I’m going to be recording my explanation and any further discussion, so I don’t have to repeat it all as we add to the research team. Do I have your consent to begin?"

Wagner laughed. Donaldson scowled, but both agreed.