Excerpt: Intellectual Property

Agnes McGintee stared at the representative in her hard bland way and repeated herself for the fourth time. This time with a full stop between each word so that the dolt in front of her could understand what she was asking even if he were deaf. Which he seemed to be.

"How... Does... It... Work?"

"Madam," the grey-suited young man before her allowed a small exasperated sigh to escape him as he leaned forward. "I can't explain the whole of the workings to you since this technology is covered by the laws of copyright, also intellectual property laws, not to mention patents pending on the physical equipment." He forced his shoulders to relax, whereupon they dropped two full inches. "I am not permitted to give you a detailed description of the procedure until you have signed our standard contract which includes a non- disclosure agreement."

He made a slight gesture with one hand toward the ream of papers on his left filled with so much tiny print that it looked more like a heap of small cheap placemats from a Bloor Street all-night breakfast dive, than a standard agreement between herself and Brain Power Corp. His sleight of hand didn't work as he'd hoped. Her unnerving stare remained firmly attached to his face, the skeptical frown in it, if possible, deepening.

He had tried to scope her out when she first walked into the meeting room
. She was slight, frail, even a little bird like. She was dressed modestly in a clean but somewhat worn dark navy blue pant suit and crisp blindingly white high-necked blouse. A tiny black hat perched on her head like an abandoned bird nest. She clutched a small black bag in her hands as if it had a life of its own and would cut and run if she so much as loosened her grip. Her sensible shoes were also black, matching the bag and the hat, as well as the gloves she had removed that were now laying smoothed flat in her lap. Her hair was wisp-thin and kept in a short, easily managed bob. Her nose was so thin and sharp, he wondered what else she used for breathing. Her cheekbones were high, her chin, defiant, her mouth grim. Her eyes were the colour of the sky just before the smell of snow turned into snow falling in shrouds.

Agnes had never been fat, so she had never got the sags and wrinkles some women did as they aged. Instead her skin had become more like translucent tan coloured crepe paper stretched over liver spots. Her bones showed through. What little bosom she'd ever had had long since been reabsorbed into her thin chest. But within three minutes the corporate salesman understood that her will was titanium; her energy limitless. The Brain Power Corp representative could feel that energy emanating from her like the coiled tension of a steel spring.

It was in her bones, her posture. It pulsed in mesmerizing waves from her bland skeptical stare. He tried again to distract that stare onto the contract on the small polished table between them, but it was unwavering. Her small, thin- lipped mouth opened again, allowing a dry crackling voice to emerge, much like the kind of voice one would expect to hear from a woman as far past her ninetieth year as was Agnes Anne McGintee.

"Yes, sonny, I read your contract. All for your side and none for mine. So you will supply through me some of the power needed to keep things going at Sunny Side, but what else?" She crossed her thin boney legs as if she were still a coy twenty year old. "You folks (she wasn't going to let him off the hook personally. In her books, if he drew pay from them he was one of them.). You folks want it all your way. Forty percent of my brain power goes to Sunny Side, who is then charged a "modest" fee for the use of it."

She wasn't finished. She recrossed her legs and lifting one skeletal hand from its choking grip on her bag, she pointed a finger at him that seemed to increase and focus the pressure of her piercing stare. "On the same hand, you people get to use the other sixty percent to rent out to businesses and the such for even more financial gain." She uncrossed her legs and planted both feet on the floor and leaned intensely toward him. "Now I ask you: what do I get out of this beside a piece of metal in my brain over which I have no control and the reassurance that my last days on Earth are in a place that won't fall apart under me? What's in it for me personally?" She sat back and waited for him to reply.