Discovery: Proton Field #1 Read online

  Steve snorted, “Oh come on!”

  Myr pulled her little wallet out and peeled off two fifty dollar bills. She held them out toward Vinn, “Hold these while I teach this boy a lesson.”

  A few minutes later, they were over at the side of the gym agreeing on the rules. When they actually started running Myr started out way too fast. Vinn, knowing she wouldn’t be able to keep it up, stepped closer when she got back down to the near end of the court and said, “Pace yourself.”

  She didn’t slow down.

  Instead, she kept up the same pace the whole time, sailing along unconcernedly as Steve lost the spring from his step, started to blow, turned red, and after the eighth lap— already lagging a length of the court—shuddered to a stop. He turned and, bracing his hands on his knees, watched as she finished the last two laps, still keeping the same speed. When she was done she stopped to pat Steve on the back. “You’re gonna need to get in shape if you wanna play league ball,” she said with faux sympathy.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  With some anticipation, Arlan Miller headed to his weekly meeting with Myr and Vinn. From something Vinn had said, Arlan expected to at least hear the results of Vinn’s measurements of the shape of the field. Arlan wasn’t quite sure what Myr’d been doing, but he hoped she had something interesting to report as well.

  They met in a small conference room. As Arlan walked in, Vinn was speaking to his AI, having it throw graphic images up onto several of the wall monitors. While Arlan was still looking at the screens and wondering exactly what was represented there, Myr walked in carefully carrying a huge ceramic pot. She set the pot down, reached into it and carefully pulled out a device that looked like one of the big D cell flashlights people used back before LED bulbs.

  Intrigued, Arlan said, “What’s that?”

  Myr nodded at Vinn, “Why don’t we hear about whatever Vinn’s learned first?” She uncoiled a cord from the base of the flashlight looking device and plugged it in to the wall.

  Vinn had been staring at the flashlight analog too, but at Myr’s direction, he launched into a description of what he’d learned about the fields. Arlan was fascinated to learn the effects that changes in voltage, current, and frequency had on the size and gradient of the field created. Most fascinating was the way that higher frequencies created a geometric gradient which promised extremely high proton compression at the center of the field.

  Vinn said, “As long as we align Myr’s cylinder so that the focal point of the field is in glass or steel or some other hydrogen free material, a lot of the bizarre effects we noticed on that first day aren’t present. The room air doesn’t dry out significantly although a slight dew gets deposited on the material. There’s no snowstorm when it’s shut down, and,” he looked back and forth from Arlan to Myr, “presumably no fusion.” They’d agreed not to speak of the fusion effect with anyone else, keeping the secret to the three of them for now.

  Speaking quietly as if afraid someone out in the hall might be listening, Vinn said, “I’ve also done some testing when the techs aren’t around. The field forms just fine in the middle of that spherical steel chamber I had made up. Measurements near the focal point inside the chamber are exactly the same as they are outside.” Vinn had had his eyes on his graph of the results. Now he looked at Arlan and Myr, “This means we should be able to achieve fusion inside a chamber constructed to block egress of the radiation.” In case they hadn’t grasped the significance, he said in an awed tone, “We have a source that can generate heat, and therefore steam, on a level small enough to warm homes or energize cars. Of course, it should also work at a size big enough to power entire cities but it would seem like many small plants would be the way to go. You’d save on electrical transmission losses.”

  Arlan felt a shiver crawl over his scalp and run down his back. “Have you been able to generate equations that describe the relationships between current, voltage, and frequency versus the strength, location, and gradient of the field?”

  “Sure,” Vinn said, treating the question dismissively, as if generating the equations had been trivial, though when he put the equations up on the screen, they didn’t look simple or intuitive. Pointing to the graph of frequency versus the gradient of the field, he said, “We’ve experimentally verified the changes in gradient at various points, but as you probably know, generating terahertz signals at some frequencies isn’t easy. There are various materials and crystals that generate certain frequency bands, but we can’t just spin a dial to generate any frequency we want.” Vinn pointed to the very high end of the frequency range, “Up here near infrared light frequencies the coil-plates no longer generate a proton field. Down here,” he pointed to a moderately high frequency, “we generate a proton field with a very steep gradient.” He shrugged, “We don’t know what happens in between those two points because right now we can’t generate those frequencies.”

  His eyes tracking back and forth from graph to graph, Miller said, “Great work!” He looked at Vinn, “You have anything else to tell us?”

  Eyes on Myr, Vinn said with a slight smile, “Nope. Dyin’ to hear what Myr’s been working on though.”

  Myr gave Vinn a sharp look. Arlan thought Vinn had been genuinely interested in what Myr might have been working on, but that Myr felt he was implying she hadn’t been working. She picked up the flashlight looking device she’d brought. She waved it around a little bit. With a glance at Vinn, she said, “I’ve been working on a portable version.”

  Arlan immediately realized that the device had a cylindrical shape like the larger field generator she’d been working with for so many years. The end of it was a glass shaft that extended about eight inches beyond the main body.

  Myr continued, “This one has a dedicated circuit built into its base. You can’t vary all the parameters like we can with the big table top version Vinn’s been working with. But it’ll generate a proton field and a few of the parameters can be modified.” She held it out to Arlan and said, “Try waving it around. Um, don’t slash it around like a sword; just gently wave it out in open air.”

  Arlan took it uncertainly and waved it around in a circle like Myr had. It felt like a big flashlight, but he had no idea what she was trying to prove with the waving.

  Myr held out her hand and took the device back from Arlan. She pulled the heavy glass shaft off the end of it, then held it over the big ceramic pot and tugged a slider switch on the handle. With a “foomp,” a cloud of vapor exploded outward and the big pot was suddenly full to overflowing with snow. Arlan stared; the pot had to hold at least three gallons.

  Myr upped his estimate when she said, “That’s a little more than five gallons of snow, which came from about a half-gallon of water that had been held at the focal point.” Her eyes tracked to Vinn, then to Arlan.

  Arlan had the distinct impression that Myr was wondering whether he “got” whatever she was trying to prove. “Um,” he said, “it’s pretty cool that you’ve reduced the whole thing down to such a small device and it still works.”

  Myr handed the device back to him and said, “Swing it around again.”

  Arlan did, not noticing any change.

  When he handed it back to her, she held it back over the pot and switched it back on. A hole immediately appeared in the snow, then heat emanating from the focal point started to melt more of the snow. Lifting an eyebrow, she said, “Did you notice anything else?” She wiggled the handle around, sucking up more of the melting snow.

  Arlan slowly shook his head.

  “Did it feel like you were swinging a half gallon of water around?”

  Arlan felt surprise wash over him. “No!” he said realizing that both times it’d felt much like it would to swing a heavy flashlight. Even more importantly, swinging it the first time hadn’t felt any different than swinging it the second time.

  Arlan glanced at Vinn and saw his eyes were wide with realization. “No weight or inertia?” Vinn asked.

  “Nope,” Myr said. She loo
ked at Vinn, “Like you said, the field seems to warp space. The warp pulls the water to the focal point, relieves electrostatic repulsion so the molecules can get closer together, and squeezes them down to a point so small we have a hard time seeing it. And, if we move the focal point, the water just trails along after it.”

  “That can’t be!” Vinn suddenly exclaimed, “That’d break conservation of energy…” he trailed off, looking as if he was thinking furiously in the face of evidence that contradicted all expectation. His eyes went back to Myr and he lifted his hands almost helplessly, “You’d be able to lift the water up to a higher point while it was weightless and inertialess; then pour it down through a turbine generator, thus creating energy!”

  Still sucking up snow with her wand, Myr gave Arlan a sly grin as she jerked a thumb at Vinn. She said, “The boy’s a lot smarter than he looks.” She turned back to Vinn and continued, “You guys might have noticed that I carried it in here without it being plugged in, but I was moving slowly. That’s because it was just running on the lithium batteries in the handle. I plugged it in because of just the issue you’re pointing out. It takes quite a bit of power for the focal point to be strong enough to drag the weight along with it at any significant speed. Therefore, I needed the wall current for Dr. Miller to be able to move it very fast. He would have been able to wave it around slowly on just the batteries, but if he’d tried to move it as fast as he did, the field would’ve collapsed and the snow storm would have occurred out over the table,” she waved in the general direction of the middle of the table. “So, energy is conserved because the device needs a lot more power when the focal point’s moving a lot of mass around than when it isn’t.”

  Vinn made a little bow. He said, “I hear your words with great relief, though my spirit was crushed by the implication that I look stupid.”

  Myr rolled her eyes, “I didn’t say you’re actually smart. However, I might admit that you have a modicum of intelligence if you can figure out the practical consequence of this without a bunch of hints.”

  Arlan had just been wondering about useful implications of the effect she’d demonstrated. Now his eyes darted to Vinn while he worried that Myr’s attempted witticisms might have hurt the young man’s feelings. Vinn was frowning, apparently in thought rather than in anger. Thankfully, Arlan thought, guys got insulted by their friends as a form of affection. It happened so often that they their feelings didn’t get hurt very easily.

  Myr only gave them a moment to think, before saying, “Oh, come on guys. Just think how much easier it’ll be to lift water into space!”

  Vinn gave her a look, “Where are you going to get the power to run a proton field that’ll render a significant amount of water massless and inertialess?”

  She blinked at him as if surprised, “Weren’t you just telling me that you could build us a little fusion plant?”

  Arlan saw the light of understanding spread across Vinn’s face. Vinn said, “Oh, yeah! You could…” Vinn paused to frown in thought, “you could have a rocket that didn’t have a big tank because it carried its propellant in a field focus… assuming we can release stuff from the focus a little at a time…” he glanced at Myr.”

  She nodded, “We can, just turn it off for microseconds at a time.”

  “We let water out of a focus and into a fusion core where it gets superheated into steam and powers a generator. That power keeps the rocket-fuel’s focus activated so the fuel’s essentially volumeless and massless…” Vinn paused again to look at Myr, “Wait, we can use a proton field focus to shrink a hydrogen containing fuel like kerosene, but it won’t work on the liquid oxygen.”

  Myr shrugged, “You could use a mono-propellant like highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide, but why not just exhaust your fusion superheated steam through the rocket nozzle?”

  Vinn thumped his head with the heel of his hand and said, “Duh!” He looked thoughtfully out into space for a moment, then said, “So, we’d have a small, light vehicle—because it essentially didn’t have tanks—which generates its thrust from superheated steam. It’d divert some of that steam to generate the electricity that maintains the proton fields.” He thought for another moment, “And, rendering the water weightless and inertialess means we don’t need as powerful a rocket to lift us into space.” He shrugged, “Well, the power’s still needed, but instead of throwing it out the back as a rocket exhaust, we’re using it to run the generator.” He gave her a considering look, “Have you run the numbers to see if this’ll actually work?”

  Myr rolled her eyes, “You’re the numbers boy.”

  This is freaking amazing! Miller thought to himself. Aloud, he said, “Do run those numbers, but maybe we need to focus on one thing at a time. It seems like the biggest payoff’s in fusion?”

  Myr’s head turned like a turret to focus narrowed eyes on Miller. Speaking almost fiercely, she said, “I thought you were a man with vision? The kind of man who’d hock the company he had in order to build a company that could do all these things at once?”

  Miller stared at her for a minute; then he said, “You’re right.” His eyes went back and forth from Myr to Vinn, then he grinned, “We’re gonna change the world, aren’t we?”

  She nodded, then grinned, “Might even be bigger than the transistor, huh?”

  Miller barked a laugh as he remembered her making such a claim years ago.

  Vinn give Miller a puzzled look, not understanding what might be funny about that comment. Shaking his head, he leaned over to look down into the big ceramic pot that she’d nearly emptied with her device. “You’re using this heavy ceramic pot so that you don’t have to worry about the focal point sucking up the plastic walls of a tub?”

  Myr nodded ruefully, “It gets close to a plastic one and it pulls the wall of the tub over and starts chewing away.”

  “You should put a heavy duty stainless steel mesh over the focal point. That way you could suck water or gas into the focus for your experiments without having to worry about sucking up part of the tub.” He glanced up at her, “Or having the focus eat your finger.”

  Myr looked at him for a moment and Miller thought she was going to try to claim she’d already thought of it, but she simply said, “You’re right… thanks.”

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Aleks stared unbelievingly across the table at Joe. “You mean to tell me… you set up this meet to tell me that Miller’s really excited about what the static suppression team’s been finding… even though you don’t have any idea what they’ve learned?!”

  Joe shrugged, “I heard the new guy say something about fusion, but I have no idea what they might be fusing.”

  Aleks purposefully widened his eyes, “And you think I want to know this?!”

  “You said you wanted to be kept informed about what was going on. I’m letting you know they’ve had some kind of major breakthrough.”

  “I hope you don’t think I intend to pay you just to learn,” he lifted his fingers and wiggled them around while rocking his head from side to side and speaking like a little girl, “that they’re all excited? I need to know what they found, and if it looks important, I need to know how it works!”

  Joe looked completely unconcerned, “No problem. You originally told me you only wanted to know what they were working on. I usually don’t have any way to get you any more info without sticking my neck out, so I can only tell you those kinds of things when it’s completely safe for me to get the information,” he shrugged, “and that’s not very often. I’ve been worrying that this whole thing with you has been getting a little bit too… deep for my liking. Why don’t we just call an end to our association? That way we can part as friends.”

  Aleks narrowed his eyes as he stared thoughtfully across the table at Joe. Does he really want out? Aleks wondered, Or is he just trying to shake me down for more cash? I guess he could just be trying to get the same amount of money he used to get—even though he’s no longer giving me any useful info. Aleks leaned forward an
d spoke conversationally, “Interesting thing, isn’t it, how having to wear body cams really changed the way the cops behaved?”

  Joe looked surprised by the apparent non-sequitur, then his eyes focused on Aleks’ finger where it was tapping the pin Aleks always wore. The one with the jewel in the center that was actually a lens. Aleks had always made a show of disconnecting the lens of his regular body-cam so Joe wouldn’t feel like he was being recorded. He’d always refused to talk to Joe unless Joe also had his cam visibly disconnected. Joe’s eyes took on a haunted look as he looked back up at Aleks, “Hardball, huh?”

  Aleks gave him a slow nod, “I need better information.” He looked away, then back, “Soon.” Slowly, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and peeled the plastic off the top. He tore open the top in a way that let him wad up the little piece he’d pulled off and stick it in his pocket. He shook the pack so a single cigarette stood tall and produced a fake smile, “Smoke?” He figured that giving Joe a single money-cigarette instead of the entire pack Joe’d gotten used to would send another powerful message.

  Joe worked his chin back and forth a little, giving the cigarette a contemplative look. He reached out and took the cigarette. As Joe’s hand returned to his side of the table, Aleks noticed with some irritation that Joe had managed to not only take the cigarette that stood tall, but the one next to it. Joe said, “I’ll see what I can do.” He got up and walked out without a backward glance.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Despite her assertion that Vinn was the numbers guy, Myr found herself trying to calculate the energy efficiency of accelerating a mass using a focal point. Even though those kinds of calculations weren’t her strong suit, she’d decided to try to work out the energy required to accelerate a half-gallon, or two liters, of water. Essentially the amount her portable focus generator had been moving in order to let Dr. Miller wave it around the day before without his feeling like he was moving a significant mass. By her figures, accelerating those two kilograms of water up to a walking speed of five kilometers per hour should have required about two joules of energy. Trying to get a feel for it, she waved her hand around a little while and decided that she’d probably been accelerating the device to that speed in about a half a second. Since a watt is a joule of energy per second, she figured four watts of power would have been needed to accelerate two kilos to five kph in just a half second.