I found myself seated at a small table on the assembly room floor next to my attorney, Scott Schwartzberg, whose team of litigators occupied the first row of seats behind us. Behind them were my fellow defendants—inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs. The rest of the galley overflowed with private citizens, all of whom had to pass through security.

I wondered if the members of the media who were seated on the floor by my table had been subjected to similar scrutiny.

Scott pointed out the woman seated behind my research assistant. “Jaqui Billups; she’s from the New York Times. She’s been hounding me all week to set up an interview. Next to her is Dawn Warfield, a video columnist from The Huffington Post. She wants to do a podcast before we leave the building.”

“I’ll do the Post. Forget Billups. The CIA will redact anything positive in her article. What about 60 Minutes?”

“I’m still waiting for a confirmation.”

Congressman Boyd took her place behind the dais, adjusting her microphone. “The subcommittee will come to order. This morning we’re going to hear statements from members of the science community who oppose H.R. 1691, the Alternative Energy Fraud Act, sponsored by Congressman Jaime Watkins of Kentucky, and our esteemed co-chair, Lorey Schmidt. This much-needed piece of legislation will protect investors who have lost vast sums of money to charlatans who claim to have designed clean, abundant, and non-polluting energy sources, only to learn later that they were duped.

“Our first witness is Dr. Zachary Wallace. It should be noted for the record that Dr. Wallace is not a physicist. He is, in fact, a marine biologist who earned his fifteen minutes of fame resolving the monster mystery at Loch Ness. Seven years ago, Dr. Wallace survived a manned descent into Antarctica’s Lake Vostok. When the mission lost its funding, Dr. Wallace returned to his teaching position at Cambridge. At some point he left the university to work with John Searl, the British inventor who is best known for the Searl Effect Generator, a device Searl claimed could levitate like a flying saucer, though conveniently it was never filmed doing so. Dr. Wallace refined the design so that it functions as an electrical generator. He then used investor capital, most of it coming from the Tanaka Institute, to fund his own company, Wallace Energy, a privately held corporation with headquarters in Edinburgh and San Francisco.

“Dr. Wallace, you have been granted five minutes to explain to the subcommittee how this device works. Then we’ll open it up to questions.”

I waited while a large flatscreen television was rolled into position before the assembly and powered on. Using a DVD remote, I pushed PLAY.

Appearing on screen was a doughnut-shaped metal disk the size of a dinner plate. Spaced out along its surface were three one-inch-wide rotating rings.