Warren Murphy: Brain Storm

As the young mortgage officer watched in disbelief, the thief stuffed the wad of bills into the pocket of the old man in front of Andy's desk. Moving on, he found a patron who was standing nearer the door and went through the same motions.

Eyes straining to catch every movement at the limits of his peripheral vision, Andy saw the other thieves stuffing money into satchels and jacket pockets. While they seemed to carry out this task grudgingly, their leader performed it with unreserved joy.

One bank patron was dressed in only jeans and a T-shirt, but the gang leader carefully wrapped up a tight roll of crisp new fifty-dollar bills and tucked it neatly into the pocket of the man's torn shirt.

Oddly the Butler Bank employees seemed to be the only ones who were left out of this bizarre re-distribution of wealth.

When all was done and the bags were once more empty, the thieves clustered back around their leader.

There was something cultured, almost regal about him. He raised his hand in a casual gesture that would have made the Queen of England feel as if she'd just rolled off the back of a turnip truck.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he called happily to the crowd. "My name is Lothar Holz, and you have just been privileged to witness the premier nonlaboratory test of PlattDeutsche, America's Dynamic Interface System."

Andy felt the strange sensation at the back of his head return. He realized immediately that he could move. All around the bank, patrons and employees alike were coming to the same conclusion. The guards were in the process of unholstering their weapons once more, but Andy saw that the bank president, Clive Butler, trailed by a clutch of VPs, had entered the lobby from the rear elevator and was now circulating among the crowd, calming concerns and exhorting employees not to succumb to panic.

A smattering of applause went up around the man who identified himself as Lothar Holz, led by the blond man at the door and the rest of the robbers.

They were joined in their enthusiasm by Clive Butler and the other executives. With the urging of the suits from upstairs, it wasn't long before all of the junior employees were applauding the man who moments before had brought terror to an otherwise ordinary day. Amazingly most of the bank customers also joined in. It was a classic example of mob mentality, de-duced Andy, though he suspected that their enthusiasm for the would-be robber was mostly motivated by the cash in their pockets.

Lothar Holz stood in the center of the crowd, soaking up the admiration as if such a display was his birthright

Clive Butler moved to Holz's side, quieting the crowd with a raised hand. When he spoke, his words had the clipped intonation of an old-money New Englander. It was as if the sounds were produced in his sinuses and every word had a gasping, affected qual-ity that suggested each syllable would be his last. As he spoke to his customers, his teeth never parted.

"I want to thank Mr. Holz on behalf of the entire Butler/Lippincott family of banks for the privilege of witnessing his remarkable new technology firsthand.

And I am certain that we are all thankful that it is PlattDeutsche who has developed our new security system. I know my money sleeps better at night knowing PlattDeutsche is on the job."

Andy was about to call the paramedics until he realized the painful series of groans emanating from Clive Butler's throat was the man's version of laughter.

A brief round of fresh applause ensued.

"Thank you, thank you," Holz said to the now genuinely enthusiastic crowd. "You will all be relieved to know that the technology used to temporarily immobilize you is a harmless neural linkup that connects the human brain to a computer. And thanks to the kind cooperation of my good friends at the Butler Bank of New York, we are now ready to offer our invention to the government of the United States.

All of you will surely agree that the scientific potential for such a device is limitless. As it happened, this test was necessary to prove to our government that this is a viable technology.

"And a very personal thanks to my good friend Mr. Clive Butler for the generous use of these facilities to introduce our product to the world. And to further thank each of you for your cooperation in this most successful enterprise, my company is going to deposit five thousand dollars in each of your accounts. I thank you for your invaluable assistance."

The ensuing applause was deafening. Whistles pierced the staid lobby. A call for the amount to be doubled was pointedly ignored.

Like a prince after a tour of a peasant village, Lothar Holz exited the building, surrounded on all sides by his coterie of thieves. The blond man pushed the door open and fell in respectfully behind him.

Outside, a gaggle of press descended, as if they, too, had been frozen off at some distant point and only now released. They circled around Holz like a swarm of buzzing flies.

Andy Frost watched all of this with a mixture of confusion and relief. The bosses were making the rounds now, gathering information for the PlattDeutsche deposits and instructing employees to put the best possible face on this bizarre event.

Not wanting to appear either flustered or lax in his work habits, Andy turned back to his desk. Remembering the old man, Andy reached for the bankbook he had dropped in the confusion. It was gone. He glanced around and found that the old man was gone, as well.

On Andy's desk was a handful of crumpled

twenty-dollar bills.

HOLZ CLIMBED UP into the back of the van half an hour later. His delicate fingers were wrapped around the neck of a chilled bottle of champagne, which he had retrieved from the trunk of his car once the crowd of expectant reporters had departed. His young assistant wordlessly passed out crystal stemware to the elated collection of scientists.

"It all worked flawlessly, Mr. Holz," a nervous man said.

"Let's not delude ourselves, Mervin, hmm? It worked out very well. That's why we celebrate now." Holz downed his glassful of champagne in one gulp. With giddy looks, like schoolchildren proud to have come in first in a spelling contest, the gathered scientists followed suit.

His assistant offered the bottle to him once more, but Holz declined. While the others still reveled in their success, he waved his empty glass around the cramped interior of the van, indicating the complicated machinery with the offhand gesture. "That moment when we lost contact—what went wrong?" he asked.

"A radio signal, Holz. There was a truck out here with a powerful CB transmitter. It garbled our signal."

Holz tipped his head boyishly. "Mervin, your garbled signal almost got me shot," he admonished the programmer.

Mervin Fischer looked nervously at the others. "It wasn't a fault in the program. It's a design flaw. I warned you this could happen, Mr. Holz. We should have done more lab testing."

"How long would you suggest we take, my friend? Ten years? Twenty? The Japanese will easily outstrip us by then."

"Germany is the only country we have to worry about right now. No one's deeper into interface technology than they are."

Holz gave the man a paternal slap on the back.

"No one is ahead of us," he announced. A nod of his head, and his assistant returned with a fresh bottle of champagne, filling the programmer's glass.

One scientist sat far back in the van, still staring intently at a monitor screen. His hands were flying across a compact keyboard as he sifted through all of the raw data they had collected in the previous hours.

Holz left the others and stepped over to the man.

"I had hoped you would revel in your success, Curt. Aren't you going to join us for a drink?"

Dr. Curt Newton didn't tear his eyes away from the screen. "This is amazing," he said, shaking his head.