Tiona_a sequel to Vaz Page 4

  Finding himself at the shelter, he slowly ascended the steps. He found himself in a line behind a filthy, malodorous man wearing Army fatigues. He shuffled along behind the man, trying to keep his head hidden while peeking around the man for a glimpse of Tiona. From behind him a woman’s voice came with a snicker, “You’re dressed pretty nice to be eating at the shelter.”

  Nolan turned to look behind him, seeing an emaciated looking woman with bad teeth. “I’m, uh, looking to see if a friend of mine is working here.”

  “Well then, just scoot on in. You don’t need to wait in line.”

  “I, uh, don’t mind,” Nolan said, shifting nervously from foot to foot and trying to look past the man in front of him again. Suddenly he saw Tiona, sitting at one of the benches with a cafeteria type tray in front of her. Head down, she was spooning something brown, maybe chili, into her mouth. Nolan drew back, astonished to realize that his heart was thumping hard as if he’d just seen something horrific. He turned and went back out, mind spinning as he wondered what to make of this turn of events.

  ***

  Tiona stepped into the lab. Nolan Marlowe, Dr. Eisner’s other grad student, turned a brief, wide-eyed glance in her direction, then immediately huddled back over his desk. He seemed nice enough, handsome though dorky. She usually turned immediately to her own desk when she came in the lab to avoid starting a conversation. She wasn’t quite sure why. They’d had some nice talks and occasional spirited debates about physics. Once she started talking to him, she usually found him to be quite enjoyable.

  To her own amusement, she recognized that she just thought she was much too cool to be talking to someone as square as he was. His clean cut handsomeness meant that he couldn’t be her kind of guy. Edgy and troubled, that was her kind of man.

  Nonetheless, it seemed odd the way he’d stared at her wide-eyed for a moment and then gone back to his own project without even saying “Hi.” She felt like he’d avoided talking to her for some reason. Mentally, she shrugged to herself. It saved her having to avoid talking to him, so no reason to worry about it.

  Tiona turned to her own experiment.

  Twenty minutes later Tiona was gritting her teeth in frustration. She’d been using Nolan’s new precipitation technique to create graphene monolayers doped with lithium and copper. Using his system produced round sheets of graphene since he precipitated on copper discs. Her latest batch had just finished drying overnight, so she put two of the multi-monolayer discs of graphene, one atop the other in a big, flat-bottomed, glass dish. She attached electrode clips to the discs at opposite edges and measured their resistance. Typical for graphene the discs were excellent conductors and had low resistance. She switched her current to a high-frequency alternating current. Most superconductors worked best with direct current because AC induced magnetic distortions, but by Eisner and Tiona’s theory her doped graphene should do better with AC. The graphene disc continued to have low resistance. She poured some liquid nitrogen into the dish to cool the membranes. Absently, she noticed that the membranes were lifting a little out of the bottom of the dish before she poured in the nitrogen.

  She’d been hoping for a precipitous drop in resistance as they became cold. Such a drop would suggest the superconductivity that she was looking for. Doped graphene was relatively easy to make in the wake of Nolan’s findings, and of course very strong. If it would superconduct high frequency AC current at a reasonable temperature that would be awesome! The number of industrial applications would be enormous. Her calculations had suggested that this particular doping scheme should work.

  The problem with calculating such things was that the phenomena were inherently unpredictable.

  Instead of the straightforward measurement she had been planning, as soon as the membranes cooled in the liquid nitrogen, they started lifting out of the bottom of the dish even more! Turning down the current quieted them, but when she turned it up, the edges not bound down by the electrode clips flopped up out of the dish, splashing some of the liquid nitrogen out onto the floor so that Tiona had to dance back to keep it off her shoes.

  Conductivity had improved significantly, but certainly wasn’t the zero resistance of a superconductor. Conductivity seemed to fluctuate with the motions being induced in the graphene membranes which was weird and another thing she had no explanation for.

  Tiona sat staring at the experiment, confounded by the outcome. What the hell had just happened?! As the last of the liquid nitrogen evaporated off of the membranes in the dish, resistance in the circuit increased a little and the membranes calmed. But they were still squirming!

  Eventually, Tiona turned off her equipment and left for her class, still absolutely perplexed by what had happened. As she walked to class she considered the possibility of showing Dr. Eisner this weird effect, but she knew that the first thing he would ask—the first thing he should ask for that matter—would be, “What do you think is happening, Tiona?”

  No, I’m not going to show this to Eisner until I can explain it! Or, maybe I can just find a way around it? Maybe if I just change the doping scheme a little, the membranes will stop moving and I can simply avoid the issue?

  ***

  Houston, Texas - NASA today announced that their Bellerphon module has left earth orbit on its way to the near Earth object known as Kadoma. Astronauts Zack White and Ralph Abbott will then place a large ion drive on the asteroid in order to modify Kadoma’s orbit and place it in orbit around Earth.

  The unmanned Ajax lander found several large collections of frozen gases on Kadoma. The astronauts will place cone shaped “collectors” into some of these icy collections of frozen gas and heat them. Practically unlimited power will be available from one of General Electric’s new fusion plants. Once the ice becomes a liquid, it will be pumped into the ion engine which will accelerate it to about forty kilometers per second, thus creating a rocket.

  Such an ion engine does not generate the kind of force that is obtained with chemical rockets. Instead, the engine relies on higher efficiency and the ability to provide prolonged thrust, as long as it has electricity from the fusion plant and ions from the frozen gas.

  Unfortunately, mining the frozen gas is not something that NASA believes can be automated, so our two intrepid astronauts are expected to be in place on Kadoma for many months. They will return to earth once Kadoma’s orbit has been shifted sufficiently to bring it close to earth. A second mission will be necessary to put Kadoma into Earth orbit once it arrives in our vicinity.

  Tiona climbed the stairs to her apartment. When her door came into view she saw Ronnie sitting there again, strumming his acoustic guitar. Her feelings were mixed; he’d been gone long enough that she’d found herself wondering what he was doing nowadays. Still, he was almost always a pain in the ass. “Hey Ronnie.”

  “Hey babe,” he said smiling up at her, “just came by to let you know me and the guys will be playing at Local 506 tonight.”

  She raised an eyebrow, “You coulda sent me an email.”

  He shrugged and grinned boyishly, “Yeah, but then I couldn’t have seen your pretty face.”

  Tiona grinned back at him, “Ronnie, I swear, I’m starting to think you might be sober?”

  He nodded, “I’ve cut way back on the drinking. Took to heart what you said last time and I think it’s making a big difference. You gonna come listen tonight?”

  Tiona tilted her head as if thinking, even though she’d already made up her mind. After a moment she frowned and said slowly, “Yeaahh, I guess I could do that.”

  Ronnie gave her another grin, then lifted his chin, “Wanna hear the latest version of the sappy love song I wrote for you?”

  Tiona snorted, but then she sat down and said, “Play on MacDuff.”

  ***

  Tiona came through the door into Local 506 at 9:05, wondering whether Ronnie would be refusing to play until a crowd showed up like he had in the past. To her astonishment she realized the music she’d been hearing as she paid her a
dmission actually was Ronnie. He was sitting on a stool in the middle of the stage playing his acoustic guitar.

  She hadn’t heard the piece before. It was mellow. A gentle picking arpeggiation interrupted by an occasional strum. He thumped the body of the guitar for rhythm and Tiona saw many of the patrons bobbing their heads gently to keep time. This is a radical departure, she thought, on time, mellow, playing by himself!

  When Ronnie finished that piece, he started another but this time he sang along. She was surprised to recognize a quiet, peaceful version of one of his songs that he’d always played full out, screaming into the microphone and flailing his guitar. She’d liked the energy of the way he used to play it, but found she liked this version even better.

  Ronnie finished that song and started another. This time, while he was playing a conga started keeping rhythm for him. A light came on back by the drum set and Tiona saw another man sitting on a stool with a few percussion instruments around him.

  On the next song a bass player joined him, then on the song after that their percussionist started playing drums. Next, Ronnie picked up his electric guitar.

  The sound kept getting fuller and their play more aggressive until they were playing the kind of fast, hard-driving rock Tiona had always associated with Ronnie. They played full-on for a while, then gradually slowed, moved to mellower instruments and softer music, and finished up with a gentle acoustic piece that had mild percussion in the background.

  Tiona was astonished to realize that midnight had arrived and they were breaking down for the evening. Ronnie not only hadn’t taken any of his excessively long breaks, he hadn’t taken any breaks at all! The whole evening built to a crescendo and then mellowed back out, reminding her of a “concept album” with a theme carried out over multiple songs. The audience seemed to get into it, enthusiastically clapping along with the fast songs and swaying to the slower ones.

  That was amazing! she thought to herself. She headed backstage to tell Ronnie how excited she was for him.

  There were quite a few people back there. By the looks of them, several were relatives of the drummer and bass player, but quite a few looked like serious fans. Ronnie saw her and worked his way over to her, “Hey babe, what’d you think?”

  “I thought it was great! Amazing! Like some songs start quiet and build to a peak with a release at the end, but you did it over the entire show!” She gave him a hug.

  Ronnie squeezed her hard, then pushed her out to arm’s length and looked deep into her eyes. “I think you really did like it. Sometimes in the past I’ve thought you were only saying you liked the music because I wanted you to.”

  Tiona nodded, “I think you’ve really got something here. I hope you can keep it up.”

  “Wanna come help me celebrate?”

  Tiona frowned at him, “No, I have class tomorrow. And, I’m hoping you won’t celebrate either. If you want to succeed, I think you need to stay sober.”

  Ronnie looked over at his two bandmates and chewed his lip for a moment. His eyes came back to Tiona and he said seriously, “I think you’re right. We’re just getting started, that’s not the time to celebrate.” He grinned, “We’ve got a gig at the Cat’s Cradle in a few weeks. Maybe you could come support us then too?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “I’m going to get back in your good graces, you just wait and see.” Ronnie winked at her and gave her another little hug before she left.

  ***

  Tiona stared at the membranes sitting in the dish on her bench top. She’d made up two new sets of membranes, each with modified copper and lithium doping schemes. To her relief, the first one she’d tested hadn’t moved around in the dish like her earlier experiment. At first she’d been happy, but then when she’d measured the resistance she’d found that that first set of membranes wasn’t a very good conductor.

  When she’d first started testing the second set, she’d thought she had a winner. Those membranes also didn’t move, and when she’d poured in the liquid nitrogen, their resistance had dropped quite a bit, though not to zero like a superconductor.

  But Tiona had been looking at the membranes when she turned off the current. She noticed that when the current came off, the membranes lifted slightly up out of the bottom of the dish. When she turned the current back on they sank down into the dish like a limpet sucking itself down onto something.

  Narrowing her eyes, Tiona flipped the current on and off, seeing the membranes squish down then float slightly up, over and over again. A niggling suspicion rose up.

  She switched the polarity of her electrodes and turned the current up again.

  The membranes flopped up out of the dish and tore themselves loose from the electrodes! This set was worse than the first set!

  Flabbergasted, Tiona simply sat there looking at the membranes and occasionally turning the current on and off again as she thought furiously. There were no significant electrical or magnetic fields around her lab bench for the currents in the membranes to physically react to.

  Were there?

  She left the lab to check out some equipment to measure field strength—on the off chance that something was creating a field and she just wasn’t aware of it.

  Tiona leaned back in her chair and thought through the tests she had run. The equipment she had brought in didn’t show any significant fields were present. She’d tested to be sure the equipment was working by bringing a magnet into the region of her lab bench. The highly sensitive field strength meters had reacted as expected. They also detected a magnetic field of a strength comparable to what would be expected from the Earth’s magnetic field.

  Musingly, she turned, “Nolan, have you ever run any currents through your graphene membranes?”

  “No,” he said, “do you need any help?”

  Tiona blinked. She could have sworn that, for some reason, Nolan had been acting like he was worried about her recently. Offering to help and asking if everything was okay. He’d taken to telling her that he’d brought too much food for his lunch and offering her some of it. She wondered if he thought she was anorexic. She knew she was thin, but it was mostly because she still ran almost every day. “No, I was just wondering because my doped membranes move around when I run current through them and I can’t explain it. I was wondering if maybe your pure membranes moved too.”

  Nolan shook his head, “I haven’t tried it. I’ve got some extras of my membranes here though if you wanted to try running current through them?”

  Tiona got up and walked over to his side of the lab, “I’d like to if you don’t mind? This is driving me crazy.”

  “Okay, let me know if you need any help,” he said, picking up a file folder from his desk. He opened the folder and slid a couple of the thin filmy graphene membranes out onto a sheet of paper for her. As he handed her the sheet, he picked an apple up off the desk, “Here, take this apple too. I won’t be able to eat it.”

  Tiona snorted, “Okay Grandma.”

  “Grandma?”

  She winked at him, “Yeah, my grandma’s always trying to feed me, just like you do.”

  Nolan watched as Tiona moved back over to her side of the lab. She represented quite an enigma for him. As time had gone by in the lab he’d recognized more and more just how whip-crack smart she was. At their lab meetings with Eisner it seemed like the discussions usually revolved around her ideas. He would swear sometimes that she knew more about Nolan’s project than he did. Certainly when Eisner quizzed her about her own research he never caught her lacking in knowledge.

  At first, when she’d set up the lab equipment to let him make his membranes without her help, he’d thought she was just being lazy. But, since then she had given him several good ideas on easier or better ways to do his project. He was embarrassed to realize that he really hadn’t been of much help to her on her project, despite her more junior status.

  Why someone as obviously brilliant as Tiona would have to eat at the homeless shelter was a complete mystery to h
im. He’d since investigated and learned that you didn’t have to be “homeless” to eat at the shelter. Essentially, you just had to show up at dinner time. They didn’t check to see if you could afford to eat somewhere else. Apparently, a fair number of low income people who had homes still ate at the shelter.

  Judging from the kind of worn, though clean, clothing Tiona wore, the frugal lunches she packed, and the fact that she ate dinner at the homeless shelter, Nolan thought she must be very poor. He’d decided she must be trying to get through grad school as cheaply as possible to avoid building up debt. Probably her family, if she even had one, didn’t have the money to help her get through school. Nolan’s family, though not wealthy, had enough money to help him get through school without going into debt. As he watched Tiona struggle he appreciated his own family’s help more and more.

  The only time he’d ever heard Tiona speak of her family was the time she’d attributed her expensive little speakers to her father. He wondered if she’d actually gotten them at a secondhand store or something and was just too embarrassed to say so.

  He also found himself respecting the young woman. He’d like to help her. In fact, he found her very attractive. Not just her pixie face, but her obviously brilliant mind. He chuckled to himself; I can’t be lusting after her body. With the clothes she wears I have no idea what her body looks like!

  Whether or not he felt attracted to her seemed to matter very little. It seemed like she hardly noticed that he was alive. He’d tried inviting her along when he went out for beers with a few of his buddies and to a Tar Heel basketball game he’d managed to get tickets for. She always had something else to do.