The last of the 49 flat screen monitors and associated servers, had been set up and tested. The monitors formed a 10x5 matrix, covering the back wall of the rented second floor office overlooking Hamilton Harbor, Bermuda.
Jason Sterling surveyed the array of screens, slightly irked that the 50th was not in place. It disturbed him more that the symmetry of the large rectangle was broken, as much as the fact that the potential donor to which it would have connected, was dead.
The man was a leading drug lord in Guadeloupe, who died in a fire at his home just as Sterling’s agent, Dan Carson, arrived there to tie up details of the fund raising project.
Over the last five years, Jason Sterling had led a double life. The few he was close to knew him as he actually was, a charismatic entrepreneur and a product of Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT as it is known. Everyone else saw him as an affable dreamer, an intellectual nobody.
Sterling strived to make his mark in history, not for power or ego, but the purity of purpose like Einstein, and definitely not a corrupt presidential type.
***
A number of issues had become glaringly apparent to him, probably the same issues as most working class people in the civilized world realized, but ignored. Energy demand would continue to increase, despite efforts to increase efficiency.
Practical fuels were running out fast, governments claimed they were dealing with the problem, but did not have the balls to lay it on the line for the consumer; well, who could blame them if they wanted to stay in power?
The consumer was happy to switch off a few lights and proclaim they were doing their bit, but actually nothing was improving. On top of this, the global warming issue had already gone beyond the point of no return, though no one would admit it.
Methane Clathrate, also called Fire Ice, was the obvious solution to the problem; put very simply, it is methane gas or natural gas, trapped within a cage of water molecules.
He remembered the early experiment when he put a lit match to the ice cube like substance; it burned quickly with a steady blue and red flame until it had all evaporated.
The technical challenge was to recover the substance from the ocean floor. It had to be over 350 meters down, in the seabed silt, where the water temperature was below 2 °c.
Experts claimed that more energy would be expended during the mining of it, than would be extracted from it. This problem, for the best minds in the world, was as insoluble as a two year old child reciting the eight times table.
For Jason Sterling, there was no problem at all. He had been producing methane gas commercially from the seabed silt, for the last six months, proving his concept was possible and financially a money-spinner. Sure there were a few snags, but this was pioneering stuff and his fund raising venture would solve them.
The monitors would go live at 12 noon Coordinated Universal Time or UTC, and the future of Jason Sterling and the world depended on a good outcome.