Whiskey Romeo

by James Welsh

  “It might look great now, Professor, but it’ll get old like any other toy,” a laughing voice said behind him.

  Startled, Chroma pulled his finger out of the projection – as he withdrew, the map zoomed back out to its normal view. He turned and was met by a man who was just entering his elderly years. With a subway map of wrinkles and a snowy goatee and a head that was otherwise shaved, the man looked to be the shock of the future. Chroma almost yelped from being confronted by his ghost from tomorrow. However, Chroma recovered well and said, “I assume you know who I am, then?”

  “They said they were bringing a professor, and you play the part well,” the old man said. He added, “Besides, you can always tell when it’s someone’s first time to Harbor. I’m Rego, by the way – Wales Rego.”

  Rego extended a veiny hand and Chroma shook it with his pearly hand, a mannequin’s hand. To Chroma, it felt like he was picking up a clod of dirt. “Nice to meet you,” Chroma mumbled.

  “As I understand it, you’re here with a new piece of equipment?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Rego.”

  “Please, just call me Wales. And that’s too bad that you’re bringing in new hardware – just as soon as I was getting used to those mirrors…”

  “Yeah, because as we all know, it’s not too often Wales here looks in a mirror,” said a man perched in front of a nearby computer, his eyes never leaving the screen. His face was polished and his silvery hair shined, although that may have been from the screen’s illumination.

  Wales turned Chroma away and whispered into his ear, “Don’t pay attention to Grant, although that may be the first time I’ve ever heard him tell the truth about anything.”

  Wales led Chroma on a walk around the three-dimensional projection. As they walked, Chroma could see the tiny model of the fused launches he was just on a few minutes before. He watched as the launches departed Harbor, heading towards the star Carina, towing Chroma’s precious invention.

  “So how, exactly, does that thing of yours work?” Wales asked, following Chroma’s gaze to the launches in the projection.

  Chroma turned, confused by the question. “I was told they already trained you all. Was I wrong to think that?”

  “Oh, they did, they did. It’s just that, well, I’m an old man. It takes me a few tries to get something down right, that’s all,” Wales said honestly.

  Chroma appreciated Wales being frank, although he didn’t appreciate the old man being so disrespectful towards his invention. But then he remembered what Professor Reynolds told him years before, about how the only way to live was by preaching the science to the non-believers. And so Chroma began another of his lectures.

  “The drill I invented works with the same principles that you see in the mirrors. You orbit the satellites close enough so that they’re hovering between the surface of the star and its atmosphere of pure heat. Unfortunately, there’s still no way around that, because Carina’s atmosphere – or corona, as the scientists call it – refracts the star’s electron neutrinos into a rainbow of different flavors. And we need electron neutrinos – just the electron flavor – in order to spin the quantum gears and power the power plants back home. The reason, the only reason, why the satellites don’t melt being that close to the surface is that they’re built to withstand an external temperature of 400,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the edge of the corona’s temperature. But there was something the scientists did not consider when they were slapping the mirrors together.”

  “And what was that?” Wales asked.

  “When they first designed the satellites, the engineers planned for the mirrors to be convex, or bulging outwards. Doing this allowed them to collect the neutrinos while bouncing away the light. But, somehow things got lost in translation from the planning to the construction stage. And so, instead of placing the mirrors convex, they put them in backwards. This meant that the mirrors were concave, or bulging inwards. And if a mirror is concave, it concentrates the light into a single, very strong beam. No one realized this until a few months after the mirrors were placed into orbit and a solar flare almost incinerated the satellites, and do you know why no one noticed? Ask me why.”

  “Why did no one notice?”

  “Because people are idiots, that’s why. That’s why you have to almost entirely shutter the mirrors during the solar storms, else they’ll simply combust.”

  “Oh, so that’s why,” Wales breathed, finally understanding.

  “…Right,” Chroma said, not understanding how a miner could not understand his own craft. “And so, I bypassed the problem with the mirrors by not using mirrors at all. The best way to treat a problem is to stop it from happening in the first place.”

  ***

  2170 AD

  “So,” Chroma began, “as you all are already aware, I have been looking into the relationship between geosteering and the observer effect. But before I go into those connections, let’s define what we’re talking about, just to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

  Chroma paused, taking in the professors’ parade of reactions. Some of the professors were confused, others slightly insulted that they would need everyday terms defined, as if they were undergraduate students again. But Professor Reynolds nodded approvingly, and the elderly lady in the back looked relieved, and so Chroma continued. He had to make her understand in order to make the professors understand.

  “With geosteering, the definition hides in the name. Essentially, it means that you’re constantly repositioning a drill as you crack through different layers on a surface. You steer the drill by imaging the ground. It’s no different from a doctor x-raying their patient to find the malignant tumor before cutting them open. You have to explore as you drill – otherwise, you’ll have to replace the drill bit every time you hit a vein of rock hard enough to grind down the drill’s teeth. So…well, that’s geosteering.

  “It’s harder to pin down the observer effect with a definition. Essentially, though, it means that simply observing something has an effect on it – a profound effect. The facts of life will behave differently if they observed as opposed to being left alone. Yes, I did say ‘behave,’ as if they were people. A worker acts differently at home alone than he does in front of his boss. And in order to locate an electron, we have to knock a photon against it, sending the electron off-course like a billiard ball on the table. And so it leaves us with a paradox: the only way you can observe some things naturally is by not observing them at all.

  “But this, this is too simplistic. We talk about the observer effect as if the observer is left unscathed in the dilemma. But it’s morally wrong to ignore the observer. Let’s think of an example: say we have a drill with a diamond bit, and we are drilling into the earth when we hit a pocket of solid diamond. What happens then? Since it’s difficult to find something harder than diamond, both the drill bit and that pocket are left broken from the interaction. And let’s return to our earlier example, of measuring the electron’s path by hitting a photon against it. In that case, both particles are damaged, perhaps even destroyed, by that measurement.”

  Chroma saw that she was still having trouble comprehending the gravity of his argument, and so he stepped outside of science for a moment, to make her understand. “Or, it’s like being in the audience at the theater. The actors feed off the audience’s applause, and the audience applauds because they are moved and crying and cheering from the performance. The observer and the observer walk away from their interaction, forever changed by the other.” This, she understood – Chroma could see this and was pleased.

  But Professor Savile was far from pleased. Impatient, the professor demanded, “So, what does this have to do about anything?”

  Chroma wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed by the fact that Savile did not read the thesis ahead of time or by the fact that Savile did not raise his hand. But, out of the corner of his eye, Chroma saw Reynolds smile widely and nod in encouragement. Chained back to his anchor, Chroma repeated, “What does this have to
do about anything? Well, I propose there is a way to rescue the observer, to save them from being impacted by the interaction.”

  “And just how, Mr. Chroma,” Professor Savile asked, “do you plan on breaking the law of physics?”

  “It might be best to dust off the history books for that answer,” Chroma replied. “Back in the 20th century, researchers found a strong correlation between smoking and lung cancer. As a matter of fact, that was how they justified a worldwide ban on cigarette production in the early 21st century. And, while that ban ended after a few years and people went back to smoking themselves to death, the issue proves my point. There were a variety of treatments that the smoker could have undergone if they had cancer, but what was the best treatment of them all?”

  “Not smoking in the first place,” Reynolds offered.

  “Exactly. You tear up the track, and the train can’t get from one station to another. Prevention is the only treatment.”

  “But you’ll need the drill in order to break apart the rock,” Professor Outram insisted. “How else can you drill?”

  “It’s simple – you have the rock drill itself,” Chroma said casually.

  Arnodin snorted. “A paradox.”

  “It’s not a paradox. It’s a riddle, and a riddle always has an answer.”

  “And so what’s the answer?”

  It was becoming painfully obvious that none of the professors, save Reynolds, had bothered to read his thesis before the defense that day. But Chroma did not have the time to be furious – instead, he chose to step forward. And so, as calmly as possible, he requested, “Please turn to page thirty of my defense.”

  There was the sound of pages rustling, but there was silence in Chroma’s perfection. He had his thesis memorized, to the point where its soul was indistinguishable from his own. He continued, “On that page, you’ll see the materials – what I like to call the ingredients – for a magnetic drill. With this drill, you can make a diamond vein crumble to pieces, all by simply magnetizing and then dissolving the strong covalent bonds between the diamond’s carbon atoms. You can easily calibrate the drill so as to break the vein into chunks the size of your hand, all with the drill some feet away.”

  Chroma paused, letting the implications of his proposal sink into the group. Then, he said, “For centuries, we’ve been talking about a drill like it’s a strength, how it has to be tough in order to break through. No one’s ever really stopped to think about how a drill is simply the mineral’s weakness, an allergy if you will. You can turn the mineral on itself without ever dulling the drill bit.”

  For once, the professors could not offer a response.

  ***

  2195 AD

  “What makes your drills better than the mirrors?” Wales asked.

  “Well, if you look at the drill closely, you’d see that it is not smooth. Rather, it is built up in rectangular levels, with each level wider than the one before it. On the horizontal plane of each level, there are a series of incredibly strong magnets. Each of the magnets are made out of specially modified cobalt, else they would lose their magnetism from the star’s extreme heat. And running along the vertical plane of each level are trillions of microscopic dots that can absorb an incredible amount of heat before releasing it. There is a solar sail connected to the drill that will heat and start up the drill before disconnecting…

  “What would power the drill after that?” Wales questioned, baffled.

  “As the drill spins, with each of its many levels whirring at a different speed, the cobalt magnets are positioned in a way to repel one another. And so the drill will perpetually power itself. But the magnets are there for another reason: to induce a magnetic reaction in Carina’s corona, not unlike an allergy. Just point the drill at the corona and turn it on, and watch as the drill pulls plasma and wraps it around the drill bit. As the plasma knots around the drill, the dots filter and store the electrons, and you can manipulate when they release that energy. From there, you route the electrons to the quantum gear, spin the gear, and power all of Earth from light-years away.”

  “That…makes sense,” Wales said with quivering confidence. Chroma suddenly realized that this was the first time he had ever explained the art behind his quantum drill to a non-believer.

  “You’ll have to forgive me for not being as confident as Wales here,” a voice said suddenly. Both Wales and Chroma turned and saw Dart standing in front of them. Dart continued, “But you engineers like to make simple things so difficult. The system we have now is simple…”

  “It’s crude,” Chroma interrupted.

  “It’s simple,” Dart persisted, “and it’s beautiful for it. For every moving part you added to that drill, that’s just one more thing that will break down in the future. Not to mention the fact that this drill of yours hasn’t even been tested yet.”

  “It will be today,” Chroma said, and then smiled. “And I’m proud of how complicated it is. It’s as complex and hopeful as its inventor.”

  “Give the Professor a chance, Alaois,” Wales said, standing up for the engineer. “If you want to make a fool of him, you can at least wait until the drill fails. Because now if that drill succeeds, you’re going to be the only fool walking away from this.”

  Dart scowled and walked away towards his computer screen. Chroma turned to Wales and said softly, “Thank you for that.”

  “No need to thank me, Professor. I figured that something this major would have been tested countless times before today. You wouldn’t have put all of this work into something just to watch it fail.”

  “Who knows? Maybe a part of me wants it to fail,” Chroma joked darkly. “At least then I’ll be guaranteed a job for the rest of my life just from fixing the drill.”

  ***

  2170 AD

  “So, Mr. Chroma, if what you are proposing can work, what would be the implications?” Professor Chenoweth asked. “Sure, it could break down a diamond, but it’s a narrow victory. A drill has to work on a variety of surfaces, else what’s the point?”

  “I do see why you would question it, professor,” Chroma shrugged. “But a diamond is only one representation of carbon. At its most basic, chemical level, all life on Earth owes its existence to carbon. If it wasn’t for stars exploding and releasing their stores of carbon billions of years ago, the play of our lives would have never been written. Carbon is one of the most common elements in the universe, alongside others like hydrogen and helium, and it is found in everything from the stars to humanity to a lonely diamond ring. If we could grind up diamonds with this drill, we can do the same with stars. Imagine how far we could go by mining the breath of a star?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Chroma,” Savile said, “It still sounds like all this drill of yours is good for is ruining a good diamond.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, Professor Savile,” Reynolds said, injecting his self into the debate. “Mr. Chroma has a point. If you could break down a diamond, who says you cannot break down a star? Remember, none of us would have gotten nearly this far in our careers if we just looked at what we couldn’t do. If we had listened to the laws of physics all of our lives, we would be weak. Breaking the laws of physics is like breaking a bone – it hurts in the moment, but we’ll be mended and stronger than ever. Professor Savile, what would the world have done without your work in exoskeleton armor? And Professor Outram, what about your research into roads that can heal themselves. Professor Chenoweth, your advances in wireless electricity? Don’t you see…?”

  “What about me, Professor Reynolds?” Arnodin interrupted.

  “Well, your talent for cheating in poker games is unparalleled,” Reynolds said readily. “But don’t you all see what I’m getting at? The only law of physics that can never be broken is that nature walks the path of least resistance, and it certainly takes more energy to walk backwards than it does forwards.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a philosopher, Dr. Reynolds,” Outram laughed.

  “It doesn’t pay a
s well as being an engineering professor, but that doesn’t make it any less true,” Reynolds growled. “Just give Mr. Chroma here the chance to prove you wrong.”

  Savile, Outram, and Chenoweth all grumbled, not so much accepting as they did surrender. Chroma could not decide whether this was a good reaction or a bad one. He would not feel the impact of that day until years later, when the shock waves finally rolled over him.

  ***

  2195 AD

  As the hours passed and the fused launches neared the drop point near Carina, Chroma could feel a nervousness building. He wasn’t sure whether the electricity inside of him was from joy or fear, but he could feel his legs short-circuiting and he had to sit down. He took deep breaths as he watched the launches on the projection, a nausea sloshing in the pit of his stomach. He was absolutely confident that the quantum drill was going to be successful – that was not what he was worried about.