Free Brain Storm by Richard Sapir, Warren Murphy

like the tiny hairless dome of an infant about to be born. He smiled at the simile. Captain Menk had always considered himself to be somewhat of a poet.
    As he congratulated his own cleverness, Captain Menk made a mental note to have his tailor strengthen the seams in both of his pairs of uniform gloves.
    Smith made himself surface from his own thoughts.
    Night had fallen.
    A few weak stabs of light were streaked in shades of yellow and white across the gently undulating waters of Long Island Sound.
    He checked his ticking Timex and was surprised to see that it was very nearly midnight.
    Turning from the window, he checked his computer. The dull glow of the buried computer screen stared ominously up from the heart of the onyx desk.

    Smith was mildly surprised at himself. He had been reminiscing.
    This was not unusual for most people, but it was nearly unheard-of for Harold Winston Smith. There was much too much real work to do during the day without cluttering up the mind with errant thoughts.
    Reminiscing served no useful purpose; therefore Smith did not reminisce.
    Yet he had.
    Captain Menk. He hadn't thought of him in years.
    So why had he now?
    The back of his head itched, and his immaculately groomed fingernails searched out the spot. It wasn't his scalp. It was an internal sensation. The remembered feeling of the Dynamic Interface System radio signal he had felt at the bank. He had been as helpless before Menk all those years ago as the bank patrons had been to the computer-controlled radio signal. That must be it. The reason for recalling those horrible events on Usedom.
    But there was something more to it than that....
    Smith was shaken from his reverie by a persistent blip of the cursor in the corner of his screen. Some new information had filtered into the PlattDeutsche file he had created earlier in the day.
    Smith scanned the text quickly. The PlattDeutsche story had made it to the local 11:00 p.m. newscasts.
    It was a rehash of all of the earlier stories with one hitch. Apparently some of the bank's customers were not pleased by the demonstration. There was already talk of a number of lawsuits to be filed in connection with the incident.
    Smith read the last line with a hint of sadness.
    More lawsuits. More wasted court time. More time for real criminals to exploit an overburdened system.
    Exactly what America needs, Smith thought rue-fully.
    His own reliving the past was irrelevant, he decided. This was the world in which he lived. Where everyone, it seemed, had hopes of scoring big without expending any effort whatsoever.
    There was no real connection between events of this day and those terrible events so long ago. It was odd, that was all. Just an old man allowing his past to cloud his present.
    Smith was never a man given to wallowing in his own morbid past.
    Menk was dead. As was the younger Harold W.
    Smith.
    Smith shut his computer down. It was only midnight. Perhaps his wife was still awake. He'd surprise her by coming home early for a change.
    Without another thought of his days in the OSS, Smith snapped off the dull overhead light and left his Spartan office.
    Night had taken firm hold on the most exciting day of Dr. Curt Newton's professional life. It was remarkable. Simply remarkable. Who would have thought?
    "Not me," Newton admitted to the dull pastel walls and carpeting of the empty office corridor.
    That was it He'd been working so long he'd started speaking to himself. He giggled as he strode through the half light. So he was speaking to himself?
    "So what," he announced to any ghosts that might be loitering in the darkened recesses of PlattDeutsche's R&D wing. "So I talk to myself. I'm a genius. I'm supposed to be eccentric." He giggled again as he stepped aboard the elevator at the center of the six-story structure.
    He hardly wanted this day to end.
    In the elevator, he checked his watch—12:26 a.m.
    It was already tomorrow. Oh, well. As someone once said, tomorrow is just another day.
    And