Discovery: Proton Field #1 Read online

  Discovery

  Proton Field #1

  By

  Laurence E Dahners

  Copyright 2017 Laurence E Dahners

  Kindle Edition

  Author’s Note

  This book is the first in the “Proton Field” series

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue 1

  Prologue 2

  Prologue 3

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Epilogue

  The End

  Author’s Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue 1

  Arlan Miller walked amongst the projects displayed at the Greater Kansas City science fair. Somehow he’d expected that the majority of the projects would involve actual experiments, designed to find answers to various kinds of scientific questions. Instead, he felt quite disenchanted by the sheer number of projects that were merely demonstrations of known scientific effects or phenomena. They were interesting in the sense that they educated the observer about scientific principles, but, to his way of thinking, they didn’t embody the scientific method wherein a student asked a question and then did an experiment to obtain an answer.

  Arlan was supposed to judge this science fair. At present, he and the other judges were supposed to be wandering around looking at the projects on their own. In a little while they were supposed to go around as a group and listen to presentations by each of the students.

  He was finding that even the projects that did claim to be experiments, frequently only used those experiments to prove once again that known scientific phenomena occurred. For instance, he thought dismissively, this project showing that plants grow more rapidly if they’re provided adequate light!

  As Arlan kept walking he saw a sign that made his heart leap even though he didn’t believe its claims could be true. The sign boldly said, “A New Field Which Suppresses the Electrostatic Force.” Even though the student couldn’t have actually discovered some new kind of field, the fact that she was even trying to find something new heartened him. The student was a girl about sixteen to eighteen years old. She had on a feminine and pretty short skirt that contrasted markedly with heavy boots and very short light-brown hair. What he could see of her thighs and arms looked as if she were very physically fit. Some kind of athlete, he thought. Subconsciously, Arlan decided he was looking at a tomboy who was trying to realize her feminine side with the skirt. Chiding himself for thinking about that rather than whatever science she might be displaying, he said, “What’ve you got here?”

  The girl glanced at him and down at his judge’s badge, then said, “Just a minute.”

  She turned and flipped the switch on a stack of electronic equipment sitting on the table behind her, then rested her hand on a large metal ball protruding above it. Arlan stood, irritatedly wondering what she was attempting to prove, but then noticed that her short hair was rising to stand on end in a brushy halo. Ah, static charge, he thought.

  The girl said, “As you can see, I’ve induced a significant static charge that’s causing my hair to stand on end. This is because my hair’s become positively charged and the like charges on the individual hairs repel one another.”

  Arlan nodded impatiently. Making people’s hair stand on end looked interesting, but this was starting to look like just another example of a student demonstrating a well-known phenomenon.

  The girl flipped another switch on the assembly of electronic equipment on her table then stepped over to a post holding a vertical cylinder just a little bit above the height of her head. She glanced at Arlan and said, “This cylinder contains my field generator.” She stepped underneath it and the hair on top of her head immediately drooped. The hair on the sides still stood outward a little and Arlan noticed that even the hair on top seemed to have retained a little fluffiness. She studied him for a moment, then said, “As you can see, the field has suppressed the electrostatic force which was producing the repulsion between the fibers of my hairs.”

  Arlan smiled, “I think all you’ve done is discharge the electrostatic buildup.”

  The girl looked irritated, “I have not. I’m wearing these big rubber soled boots,” she said, lifting them up so he could see there weren’t any conductors in the soles, “and I haven’t touched anything except the insulated handle of that switch. Besides…” she said—as she stepped out from beneath the cylinder Arlan saw her hair immediately rise back up—“As you can see, I’m still statically charged.”

  Arlan stared; then he stepped to one side to look behind her and see if she was trailing a wire. “How’d you do that?”

  “The cylinder’s generating my special field.”

  Arlan’s eyes were drawn back to the cylinder, “Does it have a coil in it or something?”

  “Can’t tell you.”

  Irritated, Arlan said, “What you mean you can’t tell me? How am I supposed to judge your project if you won’t even tell me how it works?”

  “It’s proprietary,” she said, looking mulish. “If I was showing you the world’s first transistor, I’d expect you to find it scientifically important whether or not I was willing to tell you how to build one before I got my patent. The same applies here.”

  Arlan grinned at her, amazed by her chutzpah. “You think this is as important as the transistor?”

  “More,” she said.

  “More what?”

  Speaking like she was explaining something to someone particularly dense, she said slowly “More important than the transistor.”

  Arlan barked a laugh and headed for the front of the room. It was time for the judging to begin.

  As Arlan and the rest of the judges made their way slowly around the room, spending a few minutes listening to a presentation at each of the students’ exhibits, he found himself distracted. His mind kept wandering off to the electrostatic force exhibit and the cocky young woman showing it.

  When he and the other judges arrived back at her station, the young woman again used her hair to demonstrate suppression of the electrostatic repulsion. She also rubbed a balloon with a plastic stick, causing them to be statically attracted to one another. Holding those under the cylinder caused the balloon to fall away from the stick. The other judges didn’t seem to recognize that there was anything particularly astonishing about her hair drooping or the balloon falling under the influence of her field. Or whatever was actually going on.

  Arlan didn’t try to ask any questions after his previous experience. He did however get her name, Myr Sevii. He got out one of his business cards and wrote “call me” on it. He handed it to her as they moved on to the next station.

  When the judges had seen all the exhibits, they gathered to make their selection. Arlan wasn’t surprised to find that none of the other judges had thought there was anything particularly interesting about Sevii’s exhibit. He argued briefly that it was the only real science they’d seen that evening, but the rest of the judges gave him blank looks. Eventually the judges voted for a very artistically done exhibit describing the effects of altitude versus latitude on biomes.

  As the science fair began to close, Arlan made his way back over to where Myr Sevii was breaking down her exhibit. She didn’t notice him standing there so he cleared his throat. He had to clear his throat a second time and say, “Excuse me, Ms. Sevii?” before she turned.

  “Yes?” she said, continuing to pack up her equipment.

  “Um, I thought your exhibit demonstrated the only real science at this entire fair, but I couldn’t make the other judges see the light.
Sorry.”

  She shrugged, “Yeah, I could tell they didn’t get it.” She banged a digital signal generator into the crate on her little hand-truck with a bit of excessive force.

  “What year are you in school?”

  She looked at him suspiciously, “Senior, why?”

  “Where are you going to college?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re not going to college?!” Arlan said, appalled.

  She turned on him, obviously angry. “Not until I save some money!” Turning back to her equipment she muttered, “If I can.”

  “Can’t you get a scholarship?”

  She jerked the handles back on the hand-truck, kicked the axle forward with one foot and started pushing it toward the exit. “Yeah, I’ve got a partial in Track and Field. It isn’t enough for me to be able to go.”

  “And your family can’t help you,” Arlan muttered to himself.

  She obviously heard him though. She turned angrily and said, “No! Single mom, crippled brother, deadbeat dad, working-class grandparents… Is that enough family history for you?”

  Arlan trailed uncomfortably behind her, thinking he should just let her go. She obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with him. When she slowed a little at a logjam of students waiting to exit, he got close enough to say quietly, “Call me at the number on that card. I’ll want you to send me your grades and scores, but then I’ll look into scholarship possibilities.”

  “Sure you will,” she said, sounding completely unimpressed.

  As Arlan got into his car, he saw Myr wheeling her little hand truck all the way out to an old beater of a car in the parking lot. He realized with some surprise that the car was probably old enough that it wasn’t self-driving. The girl must have had to apply for an actual driver’s license, he thought, something that was still possible but that few young people opted for, preferring just to let their cars drive themselves.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Myr’s mother Carol Sevii looked up when Myr came in carrying her crate full of the odds and ends of electronic equipment she’d gathered over the years.

  Connor, Myr’s brother, yelled excitedly from over by the couch, “Did they like it?!”

  Myr made a little shrug as she turned toward her bedroom, “They didn’t have a clue.”

  “Aw,” Carol said, getting up. “Sorry we couldn’t be there for support. Is there more stuff to carry in?”

  “Yeah, it’s in the trunk.”

  As Carol carried in another crate of equipment she wondered whether there actually was anything of value to her daughter’s “static suppression” field. Carol certainly found it interesting, but it didn’t seem like Myr had been able to get anyone else excited about it. Her high school science teacher made interested noises, but Carol suspected that—just like Carol—he thought there was some mundane explanation for the way the field made hair droop and balloons fall. Some simple scientific principle they just didn’t understand. Carol had hoped that exposure to a number of more scientifically inclined people at the science fair would gain it recognition—if it deserved it. If none of the people at the fair thought it was important, it probably wasn’t.

  Though Carol couldn’t help but wonder whether her daughter’s prickly personality might have turned away some of the judges. Sure, they’re supposed to judge purely on a project’s scientific merit, but they’re people, just like the rest of us.

  When Carol got up to the room, she found her daughter sitting on the bed facing the wall. Myr’s shoulders were shaking as she sobbed. Carol sat down and put her arm around Myr’s shoulders, “Didn’t any of the judges seem interested?”

  “One,” Myr said in a choked voice. Then bitterly, “The rest were a bunch of ignorant assholes.”

  “What did the one think?”

  “Probably just liked my legs,” Myr said sullenly.

  About a half an hour later, Myr came back down the stairs. Carol was surprised to see Myr had managed to erase all evidence of her crying jag off her face. “Hey monkey,” Myr said, plopping down on the couch next to where her younger brother’s wheelchair was parked. “You ready to watch some Dumbed?”

  “Bring it up!” Connor said happily.

  “Dumbed” was their pet name for DMD, a TV show about a boy who, like Connor, had Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy. In the story, this boy had discovered his own cure. A cure that didn’t just make his muscles normal, but made him many times stronger than normal. The hero of the story hides his cured status, staying in his wheelchair as the alter ego to a superhero cryptically named “DMD.” As a superhero, DMD went around performing all kinds of good deeds, mostly for other handicapped people.

  The show was clumsily done and generally ignored the tragedies of being handicapped, acting as if the unfortunate people he rescued were practically cured by a couple of good deeds. The clumsy plots had led to their assigning it the Dumbed nickname, but hadn’t kept Carol’s kids from enjoying the escapism even while they made fun of it.

  Carol had an emotional love-hate relationship with the show, but fondly watched her children as they reveled in it.

  After the show was finished, Myr helped her brother with his homework for a while then helped Carol get him into bed.

  Later that night, as she waited to fall asleep, Carol decided she probably needed to stop encouraging Myr’s fantasy that the static suppression field was some kind of amazing discovery. Time for the girl to face up to reality.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  A week had passed and Arlan thought it was odd that he hadn’t heard from Myr Sevii. Having a sudden suspicion, he stopped by to talk to his administrative assistant. “Joe, I told a young woman by the name of Myr Sevii to call me about a scholarship. You haven’t been blocking her calls have you?”

  Joe shook his head, as mystified as Arlan should have expected that Arlan would have anyone calling him about scholarships.

  Arlan frowned, wondering what could have gone wrong. “She was one of the entrants in that citywide science fair. You know, the fair I was recruited to judge?”

  Joe nodded.

  “See if you can track her down. That girl needs to go to college, but she hasn’t been able to get a scholarship. I want to help her find one.” At Joe’s questioning look, Arlan continued, “She was the only one with any real science at the fair. Her name’s spelled M-Y-R.”

  Joe gave him a nod.

  “Last name is S-E-V-I-I.”

  “Okay,” Joe said doubtfully.

  “If you actually speak to her, ask her if she’s interested in that scholarship I talked to her about.”

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  The next day, Arlan again asked Joe about Myr Sevii.

  Joe got an odd little smirk on his face. “I found her alright. I wound up talking to her for a bit.” Joe paused as if a little bit uncomfortable but also a little bit amused by the next part, “I, um, got the impression that she thinks you’re a dirty old man who’s a little bit too interested. I told her she should google you.”

  “Oh…” Arlan said, feeling a little embarrassed and not knowing what else to say.

  “If I were you,” Joe said, “I wouldn’t have anything to do with her. A girl who thinks like that could cause you a lot of trouble.”

  “Yeah…” Arlan trailed off, not knowing what else to say.

  Joe didn’t let it drop, “What do I do if she does call back?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Tell me what she says, I guess.”

  About an hour after his conversation with Joe, Arlan got a message from Myr with her grades and scores attached. Looking them over, he could easily see why she hadn’t received any big time scholarships; they weren’t very impressive. The message itself said, “Here’s my contact info. Let me know if you’re still interested after you see these.”

  Arlan had a lot of other things he should be attending to, but he found himself staring out his window and wondering just what it was about the young Ms. Sevii that had him so fascinated. Am I ju
st a dirty old man? he wondered. Sure, she’d demonstrated something that appeared to be an interesting discovery. Yes, he’d always been fascinated by interesting scientific oddities. But really, he had no evidence that there wasn’t some simple explanation for the effect she’d demonstrated and, even if she really was creating a hitherto unrecognized field, perhaps all it was doing was… His thoughts came to an abrupt stop on the fact that he just couldn’t think of any simple explanations for the effect he’d seen.

  Maybe the cylinder that she claimed was emanating a field actually did no more than humidify the air nearby. That’d drain the static charge off her hair and let it droop. But if so, her hair wouldn’t have risen to stand back on end as soon as she stepped out from underneath the cylinder.

  Essentially, every way he could imagine making her hair droop should have made all the hair on her head fall at the same time, not just the hair up top close to the cylinder. Even if she were some kind of charlatan hiding an electronic device in her boot which generated a charge and then diminished it on some command or switch she controlled… He shook his head. Everything he could think of should have either affected all the hair on her head electrically, or if it drained the charge for some of the hair on her head, those hairs shouldn’t have recovered when she left the area of the cylinder.

  Still, just because she thinks it’s more important than the transistor doesn’t mean it is. So far, Arlan hadn’t been able to think of a commercially viable product you could make from something that suppressed electrostatic charge. Sure, it’d be nice for protecting electronics from static sparks, but that was more easily done with passive devices like conductive bags. However, Arlan had a deep-seated suspicion that something important could come from it.

  Arlan hated dithering. After spending a few more minutes circularly pondering Sevii and her field he decided he was wasting time. “Joe,” he called out to his assistant. “Tell Ms. Sevii there’s nothing I can do for her. Give her my apologies.”