Nothing happened.
He tried pressing it a couple more times. Still nothing. Kevin checked the battery. It was inserted correctly and the battery LED seemed strongly lit. This camcorder was much different than the old one they used in the lab, so he began to inspect the Sony more carefully, holding it up to the light to better read all of the labels.
“May I help you,” a deep voice said behind them.
They turned to see a towering black man dressed in a dark gray suit. He wore a Sears name tag that said ‘Phil’.
When Kevin hesitated, Erica spoke. “Yes, we were trying to figure out how this one works. We brought our own tape so that we could compare the performance of this camcorder to others we’re considering.”
Phil took the Sony from Kevin. “Videotaping with this camcorder is very simple. You just press this button…”
Kevin put his hand on Phil’s arm when he realized he was about to tape over what was on there. “No, wait!”
Phil gave him a slightly startled look.
“What I mean is,” Kevin went on, “the picture quality of the LCD panel is very important to us, so we brought a tape we previously made.”
“I see,” Phil said. “In that case, you have to move this switch here to Playback and then press PLAY. See?” He gave the camcorder back to Kevin.
“Perhaps you could tell me what price range and features you were looking for,” Phil continued. “Some of the features of this camcorder include video editing, a remote control….”
“Thanks a lot,” said Erica. “I think we just want to see the tape for now.”
Phil, sensing that they wanted to have some time alone, told them where he’d be and left.
Kevin pressed the PLAY button.
A few seconds of static and then an image of a room filled with an array of technical equipment appeared on the screen. In the middle of the room, a man was hunched over one of the instruments with his back toward the camera. In the corner of the screen, the time and the date ‘January 20’ glowed in red.
“That’s Ward’s lab!” Kevin said.
A second later, Kevin saw himself walk away from the camera. Through the speakers, he heard himself say, “It’s rolling.”
The second man in the video turned toward Kevin and said, “Good. Then let’s get going. We’ve got a lot to do today.” The man was Michael Ward.
Kevin turned to Erica. “The next day, I wanted to watch this to see if we could tell what happened, but Ward told me he taped over it. Asshole.”
The next twenty minutes was more setup, so Kevin fast forwarded through the tape. It was almost amusing seeing himself and Ward rushing around at high speed assembling apparatus. When it reached a point near to the start of the experiment, he put the tape back in playback mode.
Kevin and Erica watched hunched over the four-inch wide screen.
Ward, standing at the computer control terminal, asked Kevin if they were ready. Kevin, who was standing near the test chamber, nodded affirmative as he walked back to the control terminal. Ward pushed a button on the keyboard.
At first, nothing seemed to happen. Kevin was peering at the CRT display while Ward looked at the test chamber. Suddenly, Kevin was yelling “Shut down! Shut down! Overload!” and a bright flash blanked out the screen. When it cleared, a piece of apparatus on the far side of the room was burning and smoke billowed to the ceiling. Ward frantically flipped switches on the emergency shutoff panel, while Kevin raced across the room, yanked a fire extinguisher from the wall, and blasted the fire until it was out.
The next ten minutes were spent trying to ascertain what went wrong with the equipment. Kevin again fast forwarded through it, then hit PLAY.
“I think this is where I turned off the camera. I had a class to get to.”
Almost as he said it, the on-camera Kevin glanced at the camcorder and said, “Oh yeah.” He walked toward the camera and the screen returned to static. The two of them watched the static for a few moments, and then Kevin stopped the tape.
“This isn’t going to help very much,” said Erica. “Why would Ward hide it with the notebook?”
“He must have just wanted a record of the events leading up to the discovery. Maybe he wanted it as evidence. I don’t know.”
Footsteps approached from behind. They turned to see Phil.
“Well, what do you think? Does it have everything you wanted?”
“No,” said Kevin. “It’s not what we were hoping for.”
As they dejectedly walked back to the car through the mall to avoid the heat outside, Kevin tentatively reached for Erica’s hand.
“We’ll get out of this somehow,” he said.
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” she said confidently.
“I’m glad one of us does, because I was just saying that. As far as I can tell, we’re screwed.”
They passed a window display at Helzberg’s Diamonds and Erica stopped. A neat row of diamond rings and pendants rested on the velvet shelves. A picture of an enormous blue diamond hung above the display. In big letters at the top, it said, “Why not get her the next best thing?” In smaller letters at the bottom, the caption read, “The Hope diamond. At 49.5 carats, it’s the world’s largest blue diamond.”
“It’s hard to believe,” she said, “that people would kill for something that makes rocks.”
“No it’s not. Look at how much some of these stones are going for.” He pointed at a 1 carat diamond ring on sale for $2499. “Besides, they’re more than rocks. Think of what the car companies alone would pay for windows not just coated with diamond, but actually made of diamond. Windows that never break, never scratch. Not to mention tools that never wear out, unbreakable dishware, faster computers. Any one of those things would make somebody rich. But together? That person would have more money than God.”
“Then why didn’t Ward just keep it for himself?”
“I’ve been wondering about that, and I think I know why. There was no way he could use it and make any money.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way I see it, there are only two methods for making money off of this. One, you could make the diamonds yourself. But to make them in any substantial quantity, he’d have to have his own manufacturing plant, distribution sources, patent attorneys. In other words, he had to have money to begin with. I don’t think there was any way he’d be able to convince the patent office that he’d come up with the process independent of the university. And if he had used university property to do the research, South Texas would own the patent. Ward would get his name on the patent, but the university would make all the money.”
“And if he made diamonds on the sly with the university equipment,” Erica said, “he couldn’t make them too big or he wouldn’t be able to sell them. And how do you sell a lot of small diamonds?”
“Right. After a while, he’d probably get caught. The only way he was able to work on it as long as he did was to fire me and get me out of the lab. By the end of summer, he would have had to hire new students. It would have been suspicious if he didn’t. And there’s no way he could take all of that specialized equipment. It would have been missed. Which leads to the second way of making money. Sell the process. That way, he could make millions all at once, and the university would never know it came from him.”
“But whoever he sold it to didn’t want anyone else to know.”
“Including Ward,” Kevin said. “They didn’t want to take the chance he’d talk. Now we’re the ones who these guys are hunting down, and the police won’t believe us.” He threw his hands up in exasperation.
Erica pointed at the ad in the window. “I bet if we strolled in with something as big as the Hope diamond they’d believe us.”
