Lifter: Proton Field #2 Read online

  Before he could act on that thought process, Shelley clarified, “You said, ‘I can kid around with the other guys here at work…’ Like we’ve talked about, kidding around’s a good way to get along with guys but not so good with girls. So, I’m asking how you think you’re getting along with women.”

  “Um, I think I’m doing better… but once again, I’m aware I might not be a very good judge.”

  “I think you’re doing better too,” Shelley said. You don’t come off so obnoxiously arrogant as you used to. I think that’s really important.”

  “Um,” Vinn said, wondering how to broach the subject of getting some actual advice on his love life. Then he decided it was too important to be timid about it. “I’d like to do even better… Especially with… one woman. Can you give me advice on that?”

  Shelley lifted an eyebrow, “Are you asking me for advice on your love life?!”

  Disappointed, Vinn said, “I guess that’s not part of your job description, huh?”

  Shelley grinned. Putting on a manly drawl, she said, “Just busting your chops, man. Actually, I’m happy to give you that kind of advice. Dr. Miller’s happy for me to give it also. After all, a happy life usually makes for a good employee.”

  “Oh,” Vinn leaned forward, “so, what do I do to, uh, you know, ‘get the girl’?”

  Shelley widened her eyes, “Well, first you need to be roguishly handsome and a stunning physical specimen. Self-confident, with a good sense of humor and willing to listen…” She paused and grinned, “I’m just feeding you a laundry list of what people think women want. The most important one’s that last one about being willing to listen.” She tilted her head and looked him up and down, “Though, you’re not bad looking, and I hear you’re in pretty good shape. Also, I think we’ve been having these meetings because you might be a little bit overly self-confident, right?”

  Vinn nodded.

  “So, what does your leading lady like to do? I hope you’re not going to tell me you don’t know.”

  “Um, basketball and running.”

  Shelley gave him a mildly appalled look, “Since most women have other interests than just a couple of sports, it sounds like the first thing you should do is start asking her what else she likes.”

  Vinn’s initial reaction was to say that he thought those really were her two main interests, but then realized that—as Shelley had intimated— he’d never asked and actually had no idea. “Um, you’re right.”

  Shelley said, “Since you don’t know about her other interests, let’s go with what you do know. Since it’s not basketball season, you can’t take her to a game. I assume she likes to run herself, not that she goes to watch other people compete?”

  Vinn felt a little self-righteous that Shelley’d assumed Myr watched basketball rather than playing it herself, then remembered that he’d once thought exactly the same thing. He nodded, “Yeah, she’s really good too.”

  “Do you run?”

  “Yeah, but… I might not be in her league.”

  Shelley looked a little surprised. Vinn wasn’t sure whether she was surprised that this girl might be better than him at running, or just astonished that Vinn would admit it. She said, “Well, I’d try to go out on a run with her. Women usually don’t get as frustrated as men do when they find they’re engaging in a sport with someone who’s not at their level.”

  ******

  Los Angeles, California—Today the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced that they had successfully tested a prototype desalination plant that uses Miller Technology’s new proton fields. Such a field is capable of squeezing large quantities of water down into a nearly microscopic point. When it does so, the H2O molecules force other molecules—at least those that don’t contain hydrogen—out of the focal point. This desalinates the water because the exclusion of non-hydrogen containing molecules means that sodium, chloride and other minerals are expelled from the focus of the field, leaving only water and a small amount of bicarbonate (because the bicarbonate ion contains a little hydrogen). Bits of microscopic sea life including viruses, bacteria, and other unicellular organisms also contain enough hydrogen that some of them are collected in the focal point, however the process of crushing them down to a microscopic point apparently disorders large molecules like DNA sufficiently that the organisms don’t survive. Thus, the process sterilizes the water as well as desalinating it.

  Once the focal point of the field has collected a large quantity of relatively pure water, it’s then simply moved to a tank connected to the city water supply and the power is turned off to release the water from the focal point. Such highly pure, sterile water requires no further treatment prior to human consumption. The utility does, however, still chlorinate the water to prevent it from becoming contaminated with pathogens as it passes through the city’s pipes.

  This method of desalination does require power. However, it needs far less power than either the distillation or the reverse osmosis processes that have been used for desalination in the past. In addition, it’s expected that the construction and maintenance costs for proton field desalination will be much lower than those of distillation and far lower than reverse osmosis. Because Miller Technology has also recently begun licensing their proton field technology for fusion power plants (Duke Power recently disclosed that they have modified a previously coal-fired power plant to use fusion power), it is hoped that the price of electricity will soon drop. This would make desalination even more viable. It should be noted that the waste heat from a fusion power plant could also be used in “cogeneration” whereby the excess heat from a fusion power plant is used for distillation desalination. Estimates suggest proton field desalination will be cheaper than cogeneration, but since the fusion plant makes steam anyway, distillation of water could be considered a byproduct.

  Manuel Rodriguez, director of technology for the utility, expressed the hope that the desalination plant and cogeneration distillation can be successfully scaled up to levels that will reduce California’s dependence on water brought in over long distances. Though he did not reference the Colorado River Compact by name, this was certainly an allusion to the fact that Southern California is having difficulty living within the constraints of its current freshwater allocations.

  As Ardis left the restricted area of the terminal at Kansas City International Airport, he saw Ellen Mitchell waiting even before his AI designated her on his augmented reality display. Brock Harden was standing about ten feet behind and to her left. Ardis could tell Brock was keeping an eye on her.

  I should have known that Harden wouldn’t have introduced himself to her. That might have been because of Brock’s normally reserved personality around strangers, or just his taciturn fear that she might want to chit-chat. Or, because of his chronic professional paranoia that would’ve had him wanting to keep an eye on what she was doing before she knew who he was.

  Ardis walked over and, extending his hand, he said, “Hello Dr. Mitchell. It’s good to meet you in person.” Once they’d shaken hands, Ardis waved Brock over while continuing to speak to Mitchell, “I’d like to introduce you to Brock Harden, a friend of mine who mustered out of the Special Forces last year. He’s from the Kansas City area, and he’s one of the guys I’m hoping might help me in the Philippines. When I learned where you lived and that I was coming here to look at your tech, I asked him if he’d join us.”

  Ardis saw the startled look on her face when she turned to see Brock looming over her. At six feet seven inches, one would’ve expected that the man might have played professional football and one would have been right, though his career had been brief. He’d quit after two years, claiming the sport was too dangerous. Instead, he joined the military and worked his way into the Special Forces. Most people found the fact that he’d quit the “dangerous” sport of football to enter a field where he’d get shot at rather amusing. However, if you tried to tell the laconic Brock that you found it odd, he’d give you a disbelieving look and rumble
, “what’s funny about that?” He folded Ellen’s hand into his immense paw and said, “Pleased to meet you ma’am.”

  “Glad to meet you too,” Ellen said, darting a questioning glance at Ardis.

  “Let’s head for your car,” Ardis said. Correctly interpreting the question in Mitchell’s eyes, Ardis said, “I’ve told Brock everything there is to know about our little problem. After all, if we decide to attempt to intervene out there at the sharp end, and we want him to help, he has to have a good grounding in the facts.”

  As they walked out into the dark parking lot, Mitchell leaned closer, “Shouldn’t we be trying to keep any thoughts about a physical rescue kind of secret? It seems like it probably breaks some…” she wobbled a hand, “breaks some rules or something…”

  Ardis said, “Not only would I trust Brock Harden with my life, I already have trusted him with it on a number of occasions. He’s got a lot of experience in the field and will, at the very least, be a great resource for evaluating your… flyer, you call it?”

  Ellen nodded and pointed, “This’s my car.”

  They only had to drive a little way south of the airport to come to some dense woods, but they went several miles further than that so when they lifted into the air using the flyers they could be sure they wouldn’t be in any of the runways’ flight paths. Pulling off the edge of a little side road Ardis and Ellen got out as Brock Harden’s truck pulled in behind them. Seeming nervous, Mitchell opened her trunk and got out two of the lightweight vest-backpacks Ardis had seen her wearing in the video clip. “These are the only two we’ve got right now. The company’s making more though. We should have quite a few soon.” She started shrugging into one of them.

  As Ardis started putting on the other one, he said, “And they’ll let us have some if we need them?”

  She shrugged, “I’m pretty sure they would. If they refuse, I’m almost positive I could borrow some without anyone knowing.” After a moment’s hesitation, she continued, “At least they probably wouldn’t know until after we were out of the country.” She started explaining how to control the vest-packs in the light from the opened trunk of her car.

  Brock stood and listened. As she finished up, he said, “It looks like you guys are about to take off. I’ll head into the woods so you can have someone to look for.”

  Ardis turned to Ellen and said, “If we can’t find a massive hunk of meat like Harden, we won’t have any chance of finding a Filipino, they’re small.”

  As he walked away, Brock called back to Ardis, “I heard that. I don’t know why you think I’d help you after you disparaged my physicality.”

  Ardis called after him, “Just getting ahead of the game. I know it isn’t going to take you long to start dissing me for being small and talking smack about my Filipino heritage.”

  Ellen stared at Ardis in the dim light. He was just as handsome as she’d thought from seeing him on the screen in her den. She thought he was probably five foot nine which would be pretty tall for a Filipino. She still didn’t think he was all Filipino, but wasn’t going to ask him. Still, he’d looked dainty next to Brock. She said, “How’s Brock going to find his way in dense woods when it’s so dark?”

  Ardis laughed, “He’s got on some low-light night-vision goggles, but even if he didn’t, the guy’s got some kind of natural radar that lets him sneak around in the dark.”

  Ellen pictured the massive man in her mind, “Don’t you mean ‘blunder’ about in the dark?”

  With a chuckle, Ardis said, “Seriously, the man may look like a tank, but he tiptoes through the darkness like a butterfly ballerina.” He held out some headgear, “Here, I’ve got two sets of these new infrared imaging goggles we’re trying out tonight. You’d just as well wear a set.”

  Ardis showed Ellen how to use the infrared imagers. He said, “I’ll fly high, but you stay about twenty feet above the trees. That way, by watching you, I can get some idea how high I can be and still see someone with these new goggles.” A couple minutes later they both took off and lifted into the sky. As they went up, Ardis said, “Oh! That’s weird!”

  Ellen assumed he was talking about the spine stretching sensation of being lifted mostly by your upper body as well as the disorienting sensation from having your inner ear flipped. She found it pretty difficult to tell how far above the trees she actually was, but then remembered she could ask the lifter’s AI to set her altitude at twenty feet above the surface as detected by its radar buttons. She had her AI connect her to Ardis, “Should we be following some kind of search pattern?”

  “No,” Ardis responded in a whisper, “I know where he is, so I’ll guide us pretty much over him. Our objective’s to determine whether we can see him when we pass over and for him to let us know if he can tell we’re up here. So, speak as quietly as you can. Turn about twenty degrees to your left and keep moving slowly forward.”

  Ellen turned left as directed, feeling like it was cheating to use Ardis’ GPS to fly directly over Brock. She turned and looked back and above herself to see if she could see Ardis with the goggles. To her surprise, he wasn’t behind and above her, rather he was off to her right. Then, when she tried to turn and look forward and down, she found she’d become disoriented. It’d been somewhat difficult being up in the air at night with her ears telling her that she was upside down and her eyes just seeing the lights out at the horizon—it being dark beneath her in the forest and the sky being cloudy with just the dim reflection of the city’s lights. But, when she’d turned her head to look up, then rotated it again to look back down, she’d become thoroughly discombobulated.

  To reorient herself, she closed her eyes and hung motionlessly, cognitively focusing on the fact that she should feel like she was hanging upside down—with the fluid at the tops of her semicircular canals—but with her head pointing down toward the sky above, a statement which seemed wrong in almost all senses. She reminded herself to think of it like she was “falling into the sky.” When she reopened her eyes, she’d recovered her equilibrium, but over their AI connection Ardis was saying, “Ellen, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I’d tried to look up and see where you were and it wrecked my sense of balance. I’ve got it together again now. Which direction do you want me to go?”

  Ardis said, “I can’t tell what direction you’re pointing from up here, but if you can have your AI send you slightly north of west, that’s the direction we want to go.”

  For a second, Ellen considered just telling the AI to move her that way, but then decided she wanted to control it herself. She told the AI to designate west for her, then turned that way. She looked downward and a minute later saw a faint glow in the trees beneath her hand to the right. “Um, I’m seeing something that’s lighting up on the IR. Could that be Brock?”

  “If it’s a little to the right of your line of travel, yeah. I can barely see it from way up here, and I’m a little worried that I’m only seeing it because I know where to look. But, since I’m pretty high I think it’ll probably work in the Philippines. We might just have to fly a little bit lower than I am now.” She heard him tell his AI to maintain the connection with Ellen and to connect him to Brock. “Brock, good buddy, we’re picking you up on IR, are you hearing us?”

  “Nope, it looks like we finally found a way for even you to sneak up on someone. Turns out when you’re up there you not only can’t break sticks, scuff pebbles, fall over limbs or breathe like a steam engine, but for some reason, I can’t even hear you yakking.”

  “Don’t listen to him Ellen,” Ardis said, “he’s just embarrassed because I’m normally so much quieter than he is.”

  “Quieter than I am playing my guitar with the amp turned to eleven,” Brock muttered. Then speaking a little louder, he said, “I just wish those lifters could pick up a reasonably sized human like me.”

  Ellen said, “How much do you weigh?”

  In a faux feminine voice, Brock said, “That’s not a nice question.”

  Ellen snorte
d, “It can lift you if you’re not much over 500 pounds. It just won’t be able to keep you up as long.”

  “All right!” Brock said in an excited tone, “I’m going for a ride!”

  “Um,” Ellen said, “it might be that the vest pack’s a wee bit dainty for a sturdy set of shoulders like yours.”

  “Damn!” Brock said, disappointedly.

  “However, it doesn’t have to be solidly attached, just held in approximately the right position.”

  In the end, they managed to tie the vest to Brock with some light rope he kept in his truck. He took a brief ride, whooping excitedly the whole time.

  While Brock was up in the air, Ellen reached into the trunk and pulled out a device she’d assembled since Ardis told her he was coming. She was officially calling it a “proton field capture device,” but to herself she just thought of it as a “tangler.” A number of things had brought the idea to mind: Myr making Vinn nearly fall down by pulling him over sideways the day she’d first shown them you could fly with a proton field; an offhand conversation in which Myr had mentioned that she thought you could make pretty good handcuffs with a proton field; the day she’d fallen into Myr when Myr was testing the first fuel cell powered lifter out on the green… Then, of course, there was the day when she’d been out with a flyer and had reached up to wave. She’d gotten her own hand stuck in the proton field…

  While Brock landed and was undoing the ties holding the vest on to him, Ellen stepped over and set a generator and fuel cell package in the grass at the edge of the road. The generator was oriented obliquely inside the package so that it would cast its proton field about two feet up in the air as well as about two feet out over the road.

  The two men were excitedly discussing the potential the flyers had for silent overhead nighttime surveillance. As they wound down, Ellen said, “There’s one other thing that I thought you guys might find useful?”