Keira's Invention

Keira tried to fight the frown that was wrestling for control of her face. She didn’t want to look like a grouchy child on national television.

            “It’s cute. Really Keira, and I look forward to seeing what you do with your future, but-” Here came the truth following his lie. “It’s just not possible. Trust me, I’ve been in the energy business for decades pushing the technology to its limits,” he stopped to drink water from the table in front of him, “and this just isn’t feasible.”

            “Perhaps, Michael, the only thing you’ve pushed to its limits is yourself. This is possible. My results already show that.” Keira fought the impulse to swear or fold her arms across her chest. She had to be taken seriously. If she looked like a bratty eight-year-old no one would take her invention seriously.

            “I’m sorry Miss Omura but I have to agree with Michael. We have industries with the best scientists in the world testing the technology in laboratory conditions, you do not. You are an incredible young woman-”

            “Do not infantilise me, Jonas. There are many reasons your scientists have never found a better alternative to fossil fuels. The foremost of those reasons is that their jobs rely on it. Why should the world put its safety in the hands of men like you who profit from destroying it with oil and gas? Your industries are subsidised because they are long past the point of worth. Renewable energy was strangled in the cradle several times by corporations like yours to keep the money rolling in.” Though she had not crossed her arms or frowned Keira’s voice had become a growl.

            “Eloquent as your tantrum is Keira, it’s clear that you can see we’re right. Lashing out at us because your home-made toys look better than they are in heavily edited YouTube videos just goes to show you’re not quite the child prodigy you pretend to be.” He was smiling. Michael Boyd, CEO of the biggest oil conglomerate in Europe smiling with his fake teeth and his spray tan and the suit he’d bought with money made polluting.

            “I look forward to proving you wrong. Can I ask one last question before this is over?” She’d been saving this for the moment they crossed the line.

            “Sure,” Boyd smiled as if she’d asked for a lollipop.

            “What percentage of the 70-billion-dollar clean-up bill for the panama spill is being paid by your company? It’s completely responsible. Is that reflected in its commitment to the clean up?” She smiled. He smiled.

            “Well, I think this interview is over. Wonderful meeting you Keira. Good luck.” Michael Boyd stood, smiling a smile that did not reach his eyes. He straightened his tie and walked away.

            Jonas Fernandez, Acting CEO of the second biggest fossil fuel producer in Europe smiled as if Michael’s departure had been awkward. He held up his hands, thinking he was being winning. Sadly, Keira knew plenty of people watching the rich man dressed like a rocker would think he was being genuine. You had to be there in person to spot the signs of a sociopath.

            “You’re married aren’t you, Jonas?” Keira asked. She looked at the wedding ring on his finger.

            “Yes.” He smiled to the camera. “Six years now.”

            “Is that your assistant backstage in the black pinstripe uniform?”

            “Yes?” He looked very confused, and his cheeks were starting to flush as his fingers gripped the black pleather of the studio chair.

            “Maybe you should give her more time to shower in the mornings so that she doesn’t come to work smelling of your aftershave. Also, it looks like she needs a new skirt. Hers has a silvery mark on it as if it had snails sliding across. Does the assistance she provides you often end up slimy?”

            “Enough!” shouted Jonas. He leapt out of his chair and pointed a finger at Keira. She smiled sweetly back at him. Realising cameras were watching his outburst and the end of his marriage Jonas stormed off with more steam than Michael Boyd.

            “We have a few minutes left of the panel, don’t we?” Keira asked the presenter.

            “Eight minutes Keira,” said Johnathan Morpurgo who was smiling but red in the face.

            “Do you have something that can plug in but requires a lot of power?” she asked. “I have a new working model of my designs that I would like to demonstrate for the audience if that’s alright?”

            “Well, we can’t exactly have dead air, can we?” Johnathan said, his voice nervous. “Show us how it works please.”

            Keira asked for her suitcase to be brought in from backstage. The metal suitcase was covered with stickers of her favourite television shows, films, musicians, and mechanical diagrams.

            The studio audience were dim faces in the crowd, hard to see because of the stage lights on her. Despite that, revealing her new work was nerve wracking. More so than facing down spoiled, self-important man-children.

            As she unpacked the odd device from the suitcase Keira explained the problem with traditional green energy devices. Wind turbines only work when there’s wind. Due to friction windmills also destroy themselves slowly as they turn, requiring maintenance. Solar panels need sunlight but lose efficiency outside optimal temperatures.

            Half of those problems could be solved by combining currently available technologies. Keira lifted out what looked like a living room fan because it had been. She was given a studio light and handed the plug, which was dusty.

            She plugged in the studio light and flipped a switch on the body of the device. Sadly, the results weren’t instant.

            “As you can see it’s less impressive with artificial light but all of the bright lights in the studio are powering the solar panels on the fan blades. The fan blades then turn, keeping them from overheating. On a windy day that momentum generates energy as well as maintaining solar generation efficiency. The problem of degradation caused by friction has been solved by creating free floating fan blades suspended by magnetic levitation like a mag-lev train. Without friction the only cause of damage to the materials are weather meaning this device could go years longer without maintenance. That saves a fortune which makes production of these devices more cost effective than traditional wind and solar tech. Both of which are already more energy efficient than fossil fuel technology.”

            The host nodded to words in his ear and moved into camera with a big smile. He put a patronising hand on Keira’s shoulder. His smile wasn’t so dissimilar to that of the oil executives.

            “I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for now. Thank you to Keira Omura for showing us this wonderful new technology. Thank you to Michael Boyd and Jonas Fernandez for being here with us today. Now it’s over to Ellen Summers with the weather forecast.” Johnathan Morpurgo pulled out his earpiece and removed his microphone. He frowned at Keira before looking away at the audience. “I hope you enjoyed that. Your little thing there probably just lost me my job. They’re both already threatening to sue.”

            “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” she argued.

            “Telling the truth isn’t always the right thing to do Keira. Someday you’ll understand that.” He looked at her. If that was the case, she never wanted to grow up.

            She packed her device back into the suitcase as her parents ran to see her. Her mum hugged her, smiling ear to ear. Her dad kept packing the device into the suitcase. He looked worried about something.

            “You were amazing. You really kicked ass,” said her mother Nabiya. “That first one that walked off called you a little bitch. I almost punched him.”

            “They want to sue us,” said her father, Keita.

            “For what?” asked Keira’s mother. “Telling the truth? Being awesome?” She looked at the studio audience beyond the lights and waved. “Hello. Oh my god. Keira. Does my hair look alright?”

            Nabiya tilted her head to show Keira the braids wrapped with gold bands she’d taken hours with the day before at the barbershop. Keira smiled.

            “You look beautiful as always mom.”

            “I knew it.” Nabiya winked. “Hey.” She nudged her husband. “You look really handsome as well.” He smiled but Keira could see he was worried. Jonas and Michael were clearly as spiteful as they were fake.

Keira’s parents drove her home, a four-hour journey. Their electric car, Japanese of course because Keita insisted, was almost silent so Nabiya’s exited talk all the way home bounced off Keira as she tried to sort through the consequences of the interview.

            Back at their house there were endless messages waiting for them. Family had called to say how proud they were. Keira had emails from her dad’s side of the family asking for links to the video of her big television debut. Keita had to translate the message because her Japanese was still basic. She could read hiragana and katakana, but kanji were beyond her.

            On her YouTube channel, followers had posted messages of support. There were a few trolls of course. She flagged as many abusive messages as she could be bothered to before logging off.

            “Time to get some sleep Keira,” said Keita. “You still have school tomorrow.”

            “Half-breed? Wow. Who the fuck wrote this? Well of course they voted for him.” Keira saw her mother was scrolling through comments on her YouTube channel. She’d warned Nabiya not to.

            “Mom. Leave it, please.”

            “Why should I? People like this think they can just say stuff like that and log off.”

            “First rule of the internet mom. Don’t feed the trolls. They want a reaction.”

            “You are so many kinds of smart.” Nabiya closed the window on her browser. “Your father is right. Time to get to bed. Your brains and beauty sleep.”

            After brushing her teeth and washing Keira went to bed. Looking up at the scaled constellations in glowing stars on her ceiling, she tried to remember pi to a hundred places because it always put her to sleep.

Keira was woken by screaming. She shot upright in bed and jumped to her feet. Running downstairs she saw what looked like smoke through the frosted glass of the front door. Keita was on the phone, telling the police that people were on his property and they’d started a fire.

            “What’s happening mom?” Keira asked.

            “Idiots. Same as always. They got our address somehow. Those CEO assholes I bet.”

            “Don’t say anything they really can sue us for Nabiya,” said her dad, covering the mic on the phone with his hand for a moment. “Yes. Please come as fast as you can.”

            There were a dozen people outside their house. Some had placards. GlobAl Warning is A lie. Save Oil Jods. God has a favorite color. Some of them were actually spelled correctly.

            The smoke was from a paper bag of dog shit that had been set on fire. As Nabiya began filming them on her phone at the window, eggs hit the glass.

            “That’s it. I’m getting it all on camera assholes! Keira, how do I live-stream this? I want the world to know who they are.”

            Explaining that you needed an application to live-stream, she watched her mother’s raw fury and her father’s pained depression. Nabiya was looking out of the window when Keira started crying. Keita hugged her, saying that the upside was she didn’t have to go to school.

Some of the trespassers were charged with criminal damage. Apparently, there were no laws against the racist abuse they began chanting just before the police arrived. Both oil CEOs tried to sue her for defamation. Jonas’ case lasted a week. Michael’s was thrown out after two hours.

            The assistant that had the odd stains on her suit eventually went public with accusations of coercion against Jonas. He denied the whole thing and countersued. Keira publicly apologised for any harm she might have caused Ariella Giovanni.

            A year later the green energy subsidiary created by the two unveiled a wonder of innovation which seemed very similar to Keira’s work. Her pay-out from the patent violation case was enough to start her own company. Her first hire was Ariella as her head of marketing. It took years for Ariella to come to terms with Jonas’ abuse and the hatred of people who stood up for him and called her a liar.

            Keira had to sue several fossil fuel subsidiaries for slander when their stooges accused her of fabricating results or stealing her technology. Yet again the pay-outs were funnelled into her work.

            Growth was slow. Keira relied on celebrities buying her technology to power their mansions for a while which was good for publicity but not sales. She needed government contracts to really make a difference. She didn’t want to compete with other green industry companies. She wanted to compete with the likes of Jonas and Michael.

            She refined her designs. She created models which could be integrated into ship architecture. She worked with cargo ship manufacturers to create ships running on renewable energy. No engine leaks would pollute. It was slow. From design to manufacturing roll out took years.

            In the end the shipping solution proved a faster way to alter humanities carbon footprint. She made connections with other shipping giants who didn’t care how their ships worked and were happy to look green for their advertising campaigns.

            One shipping magnate was a manufacturing tycoon as well. He, they were mostly old men, offered Keira a deal to mass manufacture her designs for a share of her patent. They haggled long and hard for several weeks until both would be satisfied in the short and long term.

            With a mass manufacturer in her corner, she could finally compete with the big fish. Keira was twenty-two. Six months later she received her first government contract to supply Germany with five thousand models for the grid. That many would supply up to half a million households on sunny or windy days, more if gusts blew on bright days.

            Instead of absorbing the profits herself Keira used them to lower the price. There were other interested governments looking to cut their carbon emissions to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement which many of them looked set to fall short of. The United Kingdom were negotiating the cost of two thousand units but were struggling to convince communities that their hilltop would better suit her turbines. If the other option was a nuclear power station or a coal powered plant Keira couldn’t see the problem.

            On home soil in the US interest in coastal states had been wavering for years. Claims were made but budgets were tight. Keira went on local TV to make interview after interview but wondered if racism was once again holding her back. Some of the same lawmakers who vetoed her products were the same that propped up draconian policing policies. As her mother said, if it walks like a Nazi and talks like a Nazi, it’s probably a fucking Nazi. They weren’t all Nazis, some of them were just assholes.

            Next came the biggest order of Keira’s life so far. The Communist Party of China threw itself a congratulatory propaganda party after ordering seven hundred thousand units which were going to sit in the Gobi Desert in the north. Keira didn’t care about the pat on the back they were giving themselves. That order took her business to the next level and them some. She had to buy out other manufacturers to keep up with the order.

            Eventually Keira put Ariella Giovanni in charge of marketing in the US. She wanted to focus on development. The next push was to increase the range of light frequencies her devices could convert to usable energy.

             Johnathan Morpurgo invited Keira for an interview on his own talk show at the age of twenty-four. He’d let his hair go grey and the laughter lines on his face were clearer in person than she had noticed watching him on TV. He had jowls and if he looked down his chin began to roll back towards his cheeks. He looked happy.

            “It’s good to see you again,” said the presenter. He shook her hand, careful to keep his face in shot and not turn his back to the camera.

            “Thank you, Johnathan. It’s good to be here. I see you still have a job.”

            “Yes,” he laughed awkwardly, throwing his hands up. Some of the studio audience laughed with him.

            “White men always land on their feet. Like cats.” Johnathan nodded and smiled. His teeth were whiter than they had been last time. It was almost uncomfortable to see them straight on.

            “You’re doing quite well yourself Keira, aren’t you? Do you have a suitcase with you today?” He laughed, though none of the audience got the joke.

            “Not a suitcase Johnathan but I do have a new prototype to demonstrate to you.” Someone wheeled in the box which rolled smoothly on the studio laminate. Keira thanked the woman who was already running out of camera shot. She gave the pitch as she unclipped legs with rubber feet that would clamp it to the floor.

            “The whole thing weighs just eight kilograms, sorry, seventeen point 6 pounds. It can fold out and be unpacked or packed in seconds. It’s as tough as the models that sit on hilltops, and it will generate enough energy to power two to three average houses every day. In good weather you will be able to sell energy to the grid and make an income for yourself. It can be mounted to the roof of your house or sit in the garden. We really pushed the limits for this one.” When Keira plugged in the studio light as planned the light was blinding, almost as bright as the smile on her face.