It was a problem which had led Suzi to a second-floor bistro in Peterborough's New Eastfield district on a muggy day in January. She was thankful for the bistro's smoked glass windows and air conditioning; the building opposite was buffed white stone, inlaid by balconies with mock-Victorian ironwork. It gleamed like burnished silver from the low sun. The street below was a flux of people, men in spruce shirts and shorts, salon-groomed women in light dresses, most of them with wide-brimmed hats, all of them with sunglasses. Silent cars glided down the rain-slicked road, bumper to bumper Mercs, Jags, and Rollers. New Eastfield had been ascendant even in the PSP years, but since Event Horizon cracked giga-conductor technology and reindustrialization went into overdrive the district had become a beacon for the smart money and the brittle, propitious lifestyle which went with it.
"Morrell have developed a cold-fusion solution to ionic streaming," said the man sitting opposite her. He was in his late thirties, with a gym-installed muscle-tone to compliment his salon manicure. An image as tabloid as his power-player attitude. The name he gave her was Taylor Faulkner.
Suzi's tame hotrod, Maurice Picklyn, had run a tracer on him for her, and that actually was his name. Working for Johal HF in their orbital refinery division, executive rather than technical.
"Cold fusion?" Suzi asked.
"Pie in the sky," Faulkner sighed. "Too good to be true. But somehow they've done it, boosted efficiency and lowered power consumption at the same time. Old story; small companies have to innovate, they don't have the research budget that shaves off a percentage point each year."