an eBook in EPUB format (a ‘short’ novel at 80,000 words).  An electrician, who has inherited a small industrial estate – so can afford to pursue his hobby interests – experiments with various electromagnetic fields under widely varying conditions over more than a decade, and finally discovers what seems like a resonance effect when combined with radio transmissions on a frequency that resonates with a specific field size and shape.  A further five years of experimental work leads to a primitive transport system for small items only, but with fairly serious limitations.

His ‘Hub and Cage’ shows great promise, but developing it into a commercially-viable device would demand huge resources – far beyond his modest resources – so his wife, who manages the business side of their small estate complex, suggests applying to a government incubator agency to assist in this phase of the invention’s development.  The agency readily supports the project and the prototype ‘device’ – such as it is – is renamed.  It is now known as a Flicker, because it ‘flicks’ small items between fixed-location Hubs.

Like early automobiles or aircraft, the Flicker device has plenty of potential but also plenty of problems.  It is expected to take years, or even decades, to evolve into a transport system that will be commercially attractive.  Patent protection lasts only 20 years, so the inventor cannot expect to profit much from his radical new idea, and he is already in his sixties by the time the agency starts researching the Flicker.  Like all government agencies, political direction is an issue, and cooperation with three overseas agencies is initiated to keep local research costs low and speed up development.  This becomes important, since the inventor frequently makes public statements critical of local political decisions relating to his invention.  He prefers to discuss new ideas with associate agency researchers rather than his local agency staff, because local staff work under more rigid political guidelines.

This attitude, especially when he helps associate agency staff to make improvements, to avoid local politicians claiming credit, makes him a political ‘Pariah’ at home.  Eventually, agency research continues, but his Consultant status is revoked, so he can’t work with the local agency at all.  He is being sidelined from development of his own invention, so is forced to deal only with associate agencies, making his research work more stressful.

Interested in reading?  Available in EPUB format (NOT DRM encrypted or copy-protected) – DOWNLOAD (567 KB)

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