The Amulet – Part 4.

PART 4.

By the next morning, I had a pulsing red light in my gut that the walls were closing in on me – but there was one more lead to run down.

I got into Berkeley Heights PD Headquarters early and – on a hunch – called the Personnel Department at Bell Labs. Because my Dad was taken from us so early in life, my Mom bent over backwards to always paint a picture of what kind of guy he was. She’d spontaneously share stories about how hard he worked, how he’d fix things around the house and how he doted on her. Once she busted out laughing and launched into a memory of him being driven home – drunk – by one his lab buddies, Norman Pierce.

Norm, Dad and a couple of other scientists had been celebrating an invention my father’s team had just perfected – some kind of sound machine that cut into things – and Dad had enjoyed one too many. According to Mom, he could never “hold his liquor”. They basically propped him up against our front door, rang the doorbell and ran – like a bunch of college kids. Mom smiled as she remembered his team mates cowering behind some bushes in our front yard watching her open the front door. Dad fell right into her arms.

Mom, of course, didn’t mind. She just waved at his nerdy friends and dragged her inebriated husband onto our living room couch. Norm was Dr. Norman Pierce, Physicist and Bell Labs Electronics maven. Unless I was dead wrong about my hunch – Norman Pierce was the guy with the Bell Labs badge around his neck that Eakley described in his letter to Stickel. He was the “toady” kissing Vannevar Bush’s ass at the Roswell crash site. It all made sense. Pierce would have been just about the right age, at the right place and right time. And right employer – Bell Labs.

Dad’s Patent Award for his “Sound Wave Cutting Apparatus” hung on our den wall. My father’s signature was witnessed by “Dr. Norman Pierce“. Pierce’s John Hancock was right next to a big gold seal from the US Government Patent and Trademark Office that made the document scream-out “important”. I’d admire it regularly growing up. Dad was cool. He invented things. Important things. Mysterious things.

“Hello. This is Detective Kovacs at Berkeley Heights, PD – I’ve got a missing persons case involving a guy by the name of Norman Pierce – seems he used to work at Bell Labs, way back in the old days – the 50s – a scientist or something. His kids can’t get in touch with him and I was wondering if you could provide a current address……”

They flipped me around from person to person until “Shirley” got on the phone, took my badge number and rank, and said she was checking their enhanced pensions roster.

I’d heard about this “enhanced pensions” business before. Apparently, Bell Labs scientists got a small “vig” or boost to their pension fund if they – or were on a team that – produced particularly lucrative patents during their tenure.

A team like my Dad’s…. It was part of their incentivized compensation package and was folded into their retirement payouts over the long term. This guy was probably still making a few bucks from my Dad’s patent. How nice……….”Shirley” soon jumped back on the line.

“I’m sorry for the delay, Detective. The only Pierce we’ve got still collecting his pension is named Norman Pierce – he’s getting direct deposits…. through Wells Fargo. You’ll need a Subpoena for the account number, though. I’ll need that for any further information. But I can tell you where he lives…” I could hear Shirley tippy-tapping away on her computer keyboard. “Looks like he resides at 233 Front Street in Plainfield, NJ”.

“Thank you so much, Ma’am. I’ll see if I can get a hold of him”. I said, already reaching for my coat. Plainfield was about a half-hour drive down through the Watchung Reservation and across Route 22. I was aquainted with Plainfield from numerous drug investigations- and Front Street was as bad as neighborhoods got. I clipped my .38 snub-nose “Dick Tracey” revolver onto my belt. I don’t usually carry a firearm – but where I was heading, better to be judged by twelve than carried by six. I fired up the Ford Crown Vic again. For this block-party I needed a vehicle that screamed Cop.

My trip “down the hill” was uneventfull. The Watchung Mountains are “Jersey Mountains”. Compared to say, The Rockies, the Watchungs are more like protuberances than official “Mountains”. Not exactly as minsicule as a case of bad acne on mother nature, but not a place you’d find Jeremiah Johnson wrestling with a bear, either.

Front Street was buzzing with activity. All sorts of interesting charatcters were milling about, glaring at the black Crown Vic slowly cruising by. Most ducked into alleyways, their heads buried deep inside dark hoodies. Cars were up on blocks, abandoned. Vacant lots were strewn with garbage and the usual detritus of disintegrating neighborhoods.

These now broken-down houses were built in the mid-eighteen hundreds – true Victorian masterpieces owned by lawyers, bankers and stock brokers who would take the train to New York City back in the day. Plainfield was called “The Rose City” then. It was toney, splendid and regal in its charm.

Today it was an apocalyptic nightmare of flith, crack dealers and gangs engaged in a block-by-block drug turf war. Decades of New Jersey Democratic Governors literally threw money at Plainfield, resulting in painfully abortive attempts to rehabilitate it. Every new trough of public money was stolen or bled away by Jersey mafia contractors or Jersey politicians or both. A lot of people got rich – but not Plainfield. Its time had passed long ago. Plainfield wasn’t just circling the drain, it was lost down the wastepipe.

I rolled up on 233 Front Street and gazed upon its fallen glory. Here was a posterchild for the real estate market of Plainfield. About one hundred and fifty years ago it must’ve had that “Meet Me In St. Louis” Victorian charm – intricate, scalloped moldings (unable to duplicate today), roof cuploas and wrap around porch for those breezy Summer nights.

Now it was a dilapidated, sagging and water-sotted mess of termite-infested wood, missing (slate) roof shingles, boarded up first floor windows and overgrown trees. In fact, some branches the diameter of a man’s wrist had grown into and under the moldy and rotted clap board siding, prying off entire sections. I couldn’t imagine Judy Garland singing on the front steps of this place. It reeked a sad, vampire(y) and haunted-house vibe.

At least the house had a – rutted, muddy – driveway, in which was a stack of old-timey rain gutters and drain pipes. At least I could get the Crown Vic off Front Street in case some young marauders felt the urge to vandalize a cop car in a display of fearless, gang-fueled machismo.

MS13 and Latin King “tags” were spray-painted on most of the remaining traffic signs and boarded up residences. Most were needle galleries for shooting up. Abandoned cars littered the lanscape, windows shattered. It was surreal.

I made my way up creaking, splintered front porch stairs slipping on years of accumulated grey paint chips that were curling off the wood. The porch boards weren’t much better and bowed downward with each step. A carved and arched front door that was once stained oak but was now streaked in a greasy, transluscent mold displayed an ornate (if tarnished) brass knocker.

I was certain if I slammed that door knocker hard enough to announce my arrival a really big guy named Lurch would open the door. I tried it – again and again. Its impacts made a resounding clamor outside and a hollow, echoing sound inside.

A slight, almost two dimensional man – a walking skeleton actually – opened the door and squinted at me. His clothes were as shabby as his house and a poof of urine scent emanated outwards through the door opening. Beard stubble, scraggly white hair in an absurd comb-over and what looked to be nicotine-stained, rotted teeth completed the picture. His displayed annoyance was almost palpable.

“May I help you?” He asked in a tone that was more than a bit passive aggressive. He studied me through the narrow opening permitted by the door chain. I could see he knew from the gitgo I was a cop.

“I believe so.” I said with as much authority as I could muster. “Are you Doctor Norman Pierce?”

“Why, yes….do I know you?” Pierce upped his squint but I wasn’t buying it. His eyes were just fine.

I held out my Police ID and Badge folder. Flashed him some “Tin”….

“Dr. Pierce, I am Detective Bill Kovacs of the Berkeley Heights Police Department. You knew my Dad years ago – at Bell Labs – and I want to talk to you.”

I purposely didn’t give him the impression he could decline my request because he couldn’t. I was going to get answers from him if I had to wring them out of his old chicken neck. I pitied him – but knew who and what he was. No poor old fart bullshit was going to dissuade me from getting my answers. And my clock was ticking.

“I don’t see how I can help you, Son….perhaps the public information officer at Bell Labs can be of some assistance…..now if you’ll excuse me….”

Pierce tried closing the door. I thrust my shoe into the opening and then threw my weight into the moldly door panel. It burst inward with a loud crack and impacted Pierce. He wobbled and staggered backward until he hit the side of staircase bannister directly behind him.

Pierce got indignant.

“Just who in the Hell do you think you are???” He backed away from me towards a tattered couch. He nearly tripped on an open Clorox bottle that spun in place and sloshed some yellow liquid over the pock-marked hardwood flooring. Another open Clorox bottle was on the couch. This guy probably had pee bottles everywhere. I could tell by the fetid smells now wafting through the heavy, stagnant air that Dr. Pierce had urological and probably prostate issues.

“Who do you think you are busting in here like some criminal? I do not wish to speak to you, understand? ….Now Leave!”

It was time for a different approach. The last thing I wanted was to give him apoplexy.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Pierce. I truly am….. Please forgive my rather insistent intrusion.” I deftly reached under my collar and pulled off my necklace and dropped it on a crusted coffee table. I gestured with my hand for him to sit down on a couch covered in stained blankets a few feet away.

He paused….then complied.

“You and me are going to talk.” I said in measured, almost soothing tones.

Much as I didn’t want any of my clothing touching any furniture inside this stinky place, I perched myself on the edge of a old cane-back chair that was rather incongrously positioned in the center of the room. Here I waited in the tomb-like silence of the house. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a black-robed and hooded figure with a sythe floated in from the kitchen. It was that creepy.

The windows were so occluded by ancient, faded draperies that sunlight barely crept in. Nothing had been cleaned or washed for years. In what little sunlight that was getting through you could see streams of dust particles, like a fog. Pierce’s face looked almost etherial in this funky miasma. The smell – and general ambience – was awful.

“Like I said, Sir, we’re gonna’ talk about this little bauble here on the table and why it can’t be cut, scored, burned, scratched, dented or otherwise damaged by any means known to man. Got it?”

It was eye contact and poker-face time. I made sure my body language conveyed the proper message. Still, my heart dragged me back. He was so frail, spent and pathetic. I just couldn’t be cruel to this old wreck. I softened my tone.

“I know you were on my Dad’s dream team at Bell Labs. I know you know things about him. You both had the same security clearances, drank together and you both reported to William Shockley. You were both on the Transistor project. I’ve got a problem and I need your help…..Please.”

The old man stared at his peeled ceiling. He slowly shook his head back and forth in disapproval as he spoke.

“You not only look like him – you act like him!! A real bull in a china shop, aren’t you Detective Kovacs?”

His voice – although still edgy – was, at least, calm.

I smiled at the comment. This was a good “new” beginning. Dr. Pierce continued speaking after shifting his glance in my direction. If he’d collapsed any further into the couch he would’ve been absorbed by it. He was a talking clump of lint.

“Son, does it look like I’ve done well in life?”

I confess, I was unprepared for the question. I certainly didn’t want to give him an honest answer. Mercifully, he rescued me from the dilemma.

“I live in a dump and I’m broke. I didn’t play ball in my lifetime. What you see is the result. Your Dad was a Lawson Scholarship Fellow at MIT – I did similarly well at Princeton. At Bell Labs we were rubbing elbows with the giants of physics and electron research. It was exciting, heady time for both of us. We were young, gifted and furiously struggling to bend science to our will!! At least your father took his dignity with him…….I was condemned to a lifetime of obscurity and derision.”

Pierce’s voice lost any hint of its former belligerance with each word he spoke. Like an old toy winding down. He seemed ready to talk.

“And you’re wrong about the Amulet – that’s what your Dad called it. That little bauble, as you call it, can be quite easily cut. Dr. John Kovacs, your father, discovered how. He was credited with a Bell Labs patent for his invention. I was on his team. We all shared the glory….”

Of course, I thought…….my father’s patent. The one I’d always admire on our wall…..

Pierce stared out, unfocused, into the general ether of the dusty room. He looked tired and wheezed as he spoke. Congestive heart failure, probably. His complexion resembled wax paper smeared with lard. He was severely underweight, to employ delicate vernacular. Truth be told, Bag o’ Bones was more like it. He wearily sighed and continued.

“It’s ironic that in outer space – which is a perfect vacuum – there is no sound. Dr. Kovacs rightly surmised that given the environment wherein this metal was to be employed, the only attack it did not have to overcome was sound.

Space debris impacts, micro and macro, all manner of space particles, forces and stresses of acceleration and de-acceleration, light speed – were all threats to this alloy. He hit upon modulating super frequencies of sound waves and focusing them in new and exciting ways – and Viola! The debris pieces started to bend – then break. Finally, he concentrated those sound frequencies in a hyperbaric chamber and precise cutting was achieved. The commercial applications were endless. The sky was the limit – no pun intended. The Kovacs Patent became a huge cash cow for Ma’ Bell…..even my pension today is ever sweeter because of it. It was the gift that kept giving…..all courtesy of your father.”

Dr. Pierce pointed at my necklace.

“This Amulet was his first proof of concept experiment. Dr. Kovacs wore it for good luck – nobody knew, of course, that he’d kept it. Big Brother was watching us like hawks…….. Eventually we perfected the sound device.

We ultimately improved it to the degree that any space metal the Army gave us – that is, alloys from any of the umpteen UFO crashes the Military had retrieved over the years – could not only be sliced like paper but actually reformed on a molecular level.

The Kovacs patent machine seamlessly melded space metal into itself – so that whatever we formed out of it, of whatever size, the final product looked like it had been poured in to a mold and allowed to cool. No joints, seams, rivets, welding or connective hardware was required.

Construction of objects from space metallurgy could be accomplished via continuous sound-frequency manipulation, weaving together spider-webs of alloy material from their insides out – molecule by molecule. Alloys stronger and more impervious than any substance known of here on Earth. Our last UFO alloy experiments looked like they were grown from larvae rather than built in a lab. Oh, yes. Your father’s device worked brilliantly.”

Pierce paused and moved his gaze to the floor. His head bobbed as if from a slight tremor. I used the moment to ask a question.

“And what of Shockley? How did he figure in?”

Pierce let out a surprisingly robust guffaw.

“They hated each other! Your father used to joke about Shockley demanding updates on the metal cutting machine project, screaming for access to the Lab Shopkeeper’s Notebook we’d all have to update.

Once, after a particularly bitter exchange, your father handed Shockley a King James Bible and calmly uttered the words Joshua’s Horn. Shockley was stunned and completely flummoxed until your father explained his biblical allegory. Joshua destroyed the walls of Jericho by instructing Priests to blow rams’ horns while they marched around the city.

Shockley saw no humor in it – he was a rotten, vindictive Son of a Bitch – but that’s what we called our Top Secret research and development project – Joshua’s Horn.

“But our Joshua’s Horn project was just a sideshow. The real main event was Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain’s baby: the Transistor.

You see, electronic equipment – radios, calculating machines, radar machines – were extremely cumbersome and unwieldy because of their vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes were necessary for all types of electronic circuitry but they were delicate, large and generated oppressive heat. The infamous ENIAC computing machine in 1944 generated so much heat its wires melted. Insects used to roost inside of its warm innards and short-circuit connectors – which is why today we refer to fixing anything that breaks down repeatedly as getting the bugs out of it.

Physicists had theoretically proposed conductive materials that could replace vacuum tubes, however the electrical properties of such semiconducting mediums were determined by their atomic structures. Atomic research at government facilities was needed to complete the picture. Like it or not, the government had to be brought in to our research.

The economic stakes couldn’t have been higher – every manufacturer of electronic devices around the world coveted the Holy Grail – the engineering miracle that could replace the vacuum tube. Enormous profits were a given. Bell Labs took on the challenge. But it had an edge. It had deep connections in Washington, DC, and got everything it asked for, including access to atomic research.

And the price? Washington called all the shots – and brought into the mix a few surprises of its own.

The biggest surprise that Bell Labs got was Dr. Vannevar Bush, FDR’s and Harry Truman’s super scientist. He struck a devil’s bargain with Shockley and – in 1948, Bell Labs became a beehive of activity. I’d briefly dealt with Bush in 1947 – but that’s something I can’t talk about…..

We’d already gotten pretty far into the nuts and bolts of conductivity ourselves at Bell Labs – for instance, we already knew before the Feds arrived that (at least theoretically) pure crystalline material would act at low temperatures as an insulator, allowing electrons to interact in a way that would facilitate superconduction. Controlled experimental proof of this, however, eluded us.

Once Dr. Vannevar Bush and his cronies got involved, all Hell broke loose. We were going around the clock, testing silicates and substructures they were bringing us almost daily. Crystalline lattices we’d never seen before. And metals. Strange alloys that couldn’t be scratched, bent, cut or welded. We experimented on everything. Bell had crates of the stuff already on site.

Then, in the later part of 1948, Shockley’s team hit pay dirt. A piece of metallic and crystalline lattice the military brought in controlled electron flow perfectly when they tested it.

Bell Labs ordered All Hands On Deck. We duplicated the mystery object’s basic structural configuration using materials whose molecular properties we were familiar with – like pure silicon and germanium – and achieved success. The Transistor was born.

To be fair, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain did a lot of work on it. Their contributions were elegant and inspired – but in the final analysis we all were just copying, or…..reverse engineering something Vannevar Bush and the US Government dumped in our laps.

All military materials were returned to them – except this little bauble here that your father had secretly draped around his neck – and Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain shared their patent for the Transistor and a Nobel Prize in Physics.

Shockely went on to make millions in California’s Silicon Valley Semiconductor and Integrated Circuit industries. Bardeen and Brattain got their fair share of notoriety and sordid lucre, too.”

Pierce’s narrative seemed complete, but my curiosity got the better of me.

“Dr. Pierce – just what exactly was that key thing the military gave you to test, leading you guys to hit the pay dirt you described? What was it that opened your eyes and paved the way to perfect the Bell Labs Transistor?”

He knitted his whispy eyebrows for a moment and responded with sincerity. Pierce the scientist had an analytical mind and was obviously moderating his comments to accommodate the high strangeness of his dialogue thus far. Our discourse – I agreed – was a lot to wrap one’s mind around.

“I’m certain – but can’t prove this, obviously – that what we were given to experiment on and re-create with our own elements and Earthly raw materials was a piece of solid state circuit board they’d pulled out of a space vehicle that crashed. It was definately wreckage. It looked like it had withstood significant stress and overload. It smelled burnt…..

Understand, Detective, that this was 1948! We wouldn’t have recognized an integrated circuit if it came up and bit us in the ass! But looking back on what we’ve seen since…the technological warp-speed research and developments, the inventions, computers – I’m sure what the US Government gave us was circuitry made somewhere far, far away.”

Pierce pointed up towards his ceiling for emphasis on his far, far away comment.

I painted an even more precise picture for him.

“Like from a spacecraft? Maybe something you’d seen while apprenticing for Dr. Vannevar Bush back in Roswell?” I asked.

Pierce just groaned and looked away, ashamed. He voice cracked.

“Son, your father spoke out when he learned about Shockley’s sweetheart patent-sharing deal between Uncle Sam and Bell Labs. He said he was going to the New York Times with the truth – that we stole the Transistor – not invented it! He knew the Transistors’ provenance better than anyone and was going to shout it from the rooftops.

God rest his soul, he was always direct, honest – and impolitic. Look where it got him…..

There were fortunes riding on the Transistor patent! We all knew life would change forever – that electronic devices would soon become an extension of our very beings! Perhaps even render humans irrelevant. What Turing proposed in his Imitation Game! Ray Kurzweils’ Singularity! Doctor Kovacs was right – and he’s no longer here…….I’m a broke, washed up old scientist. Please……don’t ask me any more questions……..”

I thanked him and left him sobbing on his filthy couch, my Amulet once more securely hanging around my neck. Feeling it under my shirt made me smile. I’d always been proud of my Dad’s accomplishments. Now I was in awe of him.

END OF PART 4.

(Copyright, Jon Croft, 2020)