Suddenly an idea pops into my head. I can use the mirror to look up at them in the envelope, through the magnifying glass! I wish I had more hands. I quickly close the envelope and set it down. I watch as it stays put, the weight of paper being more than the lift of the segregated bits.
I play the process out in my mind as I attach the magnifying glass to its stand. Would it be better to look into the mirror and through the glass, or look through the glass and into the mirror? I decide to try looking up through the magnifying glass so I adjust the angle of the mirror on the table. This isn’t going to be easy.
I open the flap on the envelope, holding it in place over the lens. In addition to handling something that’s going against gravity, I’m looking at it in reverse and upside down. I grin at the incongruity of the task. I look into the mirror at the magnified reflection of the envelope. I move the envelope slightly to one side, trying to orient myself. My brain seems to pull one way as my hand moves the other. Weird.
With my free hand I poke at the envelope. My huge finger is way too big for moving a single gray bit onto a slide. Would a toothpick work? There’s some of those nice flat ended ones leftover from a school project a couple of grades back in one of these drawers. I find them under a pile of pencils and pull a few out to make my second try.
The toothpick looks like a big nail under the magnifying glass. As I look through the mirror, practicing moving it around on the surface of the envelope, I decide this is probably the best option for the task.
Holding the envelope flap down, I set the toothpick on the table to pick up a microscope slide. “Dang!” I still need another hand. Setting the items down once more, I head over to the box where I think I saw some alligator clips. Pushing some stuff around, I spot the clips huddling in a corner. I take them out of the box, and scrape some hardened glue from the teeth with my fingernail. I must have used these clips as clamps on the toothpick project. I spot a small, oddly coiled scrap of wire. That will be useful too.
Back at the table, I add the new items to my setup using the wire to attach an alligator clip to the magnifying glass stand, positioning the clip just above the glass. Then I move the entire setup so it’s facing me with no obstructions for my hands. I carefully clip the envelope so its opening is centered in the glass. Looking into the mirror, I make some final adjustments. It will be easy to hold the slide now.
Picking it up in my left hand, and a toothpick in my right, I look down into the mirror, up through the glass at the envelope and the slide. What a pain! I’m just not used to looking at things in reverse, upside-down, and backwards! I look away to let my eyes and brain function normally for a minute, reminding myself that the slide will have to be on top of the envelope flap. I rub my eyes. They feel dry. I need a break.
I get up and walk over to the window. The world outside is normal with the sun bright in the light blue afternoon sky. A few wisps of cloud are coming up from the southwest. Hopefully they will bring some rain.
It’s a good day to be home by myself. It’s also a relief to be done with another school year and nice being dismissed after a half day. Mom’s at work, Dad’s been on the road since Monday, and Gramps is out cruising around on the motorcycle, testing the reconditioned clutch parts Willie had brought over.
I was hoping Willie might have come back with the spectrometer report on the gray bits. It sure was an eventful day, having the meeting, asking Willie if he would get involved, and then telling him the whole story. Everybody had been interested in that. It was the first time everybody had been together to hear everything. I think he considered it an honor of sorts, to be asked to be part of our group.
And after that, the barbeque had seemed more like a party than just lunch. We even got the volleyball net out and played a little. It had been boys against girls, with Gramps evening out the player count by agreeing to help the girls. It wasn’t a real game. Nobody kept score, but it had been a fun afternoon. And it seemed for the first time in my life, that age didn’t matter. We were all just little adults instead of Willie being the upper-classman, and Kylie being the younger sister of my best friend.
Kylie will be a freshman next year. For some reason it makes me happy to know she’ll be around school. We’d probably see each other in the halls. It was like she had crossed a line and wouldn’t just be Jared’s little sister anymore. It is a strange feeling, that happiness, difficult to put in words or understand. Maybe I’d ask Gramps. It was easy to talk to him about some things. At least easier than my parents.
I turn around and head back to the table, refocusing my thoughts on getting the gray bits from the envelope to the slide. I sit and look at my arrangement to see if there is anything else I can do to make the task easier.
I gaze down at the mirror and up through the glass at the envelope. No bits are visible near the flap. I move my head to one side to try and get a look into the envelope, quickly reversing my direction to gain the correct perspective. I see nothing. Looking directly at the envelope, I gingerly take hold of it. Raising it slightly to the up side, I gently tap the outside of the paper. Before the second tap, I look back down into the mirror. I tap again. Then again. Finally, my effort is rewarded as a single bit, looking smaller than a flea on Handsome, comes to rest on the flap. I look up to move the envelope back to a horizontal resting position.
I pick up the toothpick and, looking at the reflection in the mirror, gently coax the bit to the edge of the flap. Slowly I look away so I can pick up the slide thinking if I bounce the table too hard, that bit will find a new home on the ceiling. I place the slide in position above the flap with my left hand. Looking into the mirror again, I slide the bit over the edge of the envelope and up underneath the slide. Barely breathing, I set the toothpick down and pick up the slide cover and place it under the slide to secure the bit.
I turn the slide over. Holding it under the magnifying glass, I can see that the bit is secure. I’m pleased with my success. I hold the slide in front of my face to look at it more closely. I can’t see the bit trapped on the slide anymore and hope the cover is heavy enough so that it can’t escape.
I move over to the microscope and place the slide on the stage. I spin the least powerful lens into position, turn the light on and put my right eye to the eyepiece. I can’t see anything but light. I reach around for the course adjustment knob and back it all the way up. I hold the slide lightly and, while looking through the eyepiece, move it around until I can see a spot. I adjust the lens distance again until I finally bring the bit into focus.
The small cylindrical object, which is laying on its side, doesn’t even begin to fill the view through the eyepiece. It appears to be deep blue at one end, fading to gray at the other, with copper colored specks which seem to sparkle, running the full length in between. Then it pulses! At least that’s what I think I see. I back the adjustment up and switch to the next higher powered lens.
I move the slide just a touch to bring the image into full view. Now there is only a small slice of light at either end of the object in the eyepiece. I adjust the course knob to get a better look. The copper colored specks now appear to have a faint, continual vibration. Then it pulses again. The dark blue end produces a bright blue wave, which travels down to the gray end, where it disappears with a dark grey hue. I watch until it happens again about a second later.
I sit back from the microscope, absentmindedly looking at the wall in front of me, trying to comprehend what I’m looking at. The only theory I can come up with is that it is generating its own power. Then it occurs to me that I’m looking at gravity being captured and directed down the length of the bit. What else could it be? I look again. The pulse is regular. After a few more seconds I sit back again. I should make some notes.
I pull a spiral notebook out of the drawer to write down everything I’m seeing. I look several more times at the bit under the microscope. I even try to draw, with the best detail I can, the pattern of the copper colored flecks indicating their movement. After twenty
minutes, I’m done. I turn the microscope light off, leaving everything set up so I can look again later.
It’s late afternoon. I feel hungry, but know dinner won’t be for a while. I stop at the top of the stairs before heading to the house for a snack. I look around my loft. It seems to be transforming into a lab. I’m surprised by how much fun I’m having.
Mom gets home around 4:45. “How was your last day at school?” she asks as she comes up the steps to the porch where I’m sitting.
“Pretty dumb,” I reply. “I don’t understand why they have us come in for a half day and pretty much just send us home. Seems like a big waste.”
“I’m sure they have their reasons,” she offers. Then she leans over to tweak my cheek. “Maybe they just want to see your pretty faces one last time.”
“Yeah, but...” is my only response as she walks into the house.
“Your father said he’d be home around 7:00. Can you wait for dinner ‘til then?” she calls back through the screen door.
“That’s fine, I guess. I don’t have any plans,” I yell back at the door, though I’m not sure she hears me.
The clouds are gone from the sky now. There will be no rain tonight. The sun is low enough in the west that it comes under the eaves of the porch. It feels good on my skin as I sit in the porch chair with my eyes closed. I think about the gray bit I had looked at under the microscope. I wonder what causes it to be able to glow like that. I think back to my physics class but no generally known law comes to mind.
My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Jen’s scooter coming up the driveway. I open my eyes and wave as she gets closer. She turns off the engine before pulling her helmet off. “Hey,” she calls with a smile.
“Hey,” I answer back. She comes up on the porch and sits in the chair next to me. “What’s up?”
“Not much I guess. Stopped by Jared’s but nobody’s home there,” she says sounding bored.
“They probably left for Kylie’s graduation already. It starts at 6:00.”
“Oh yeah. I should’ve known. Jared went too then, huh?”
“Yeah. His dad made him. He says it’s something the family should do together.”
“I suppose,” she responds dryly. Then, after a look over towards the shed, “Heard anything from Willie about the gray bits yet?”
I look at her a little alarmed. “Not yet, but…” I lean over to peer through the screen door.
“What?” she presses, following my gaze.
“Mom’s home and I don’t want to talk too loud,” I whisper. “I did look at them through the microscope.”
“Cool,” Jen whispers back. “Can we go up to the loft?” she asks.
“Good idea.” I get up out of my seat and cross to the door. “Hey Mom?” I yell, “I’ll be up in the loft if you need anything.” There’s no response.
As soon as we get up the stairs, I turn the microscope light on. “Look at this.”
She looks at each side of the microscope to locate the adjustment knobs. Then she looks into the eyepiece. The expression on her face turns to amazement as the corners of her mouth rise. “What’s it doing?”
“Do you see the pulse?”
“Oh yeah! There,” she confirms. “I see it.” And a moment later, “It’s alive,” hanging the ‘v’ for several seconds longer than necessary. She looks up at me, quizzically now, and for just a couple of seconds her jaw drops. Then she takes a second, shorter look, concluding with “Wow!”, and steps back.
I can tell she is thinking furiously about what she is seeing, trying to understand what it is. I have seen that look in physics class several times over the last year. She loves to try and solve these kinds of problems.
“Call Willie,” she says suddenly. “We have to know what it’s made of.”
“I tried a couple of times but he isn’t answering his cell. Probably doesn’t want to be bothered. Or maybe he lost the specimen we gave him the other day. I almost lost one earlier.”
“How?” she asks.
“Trying to prepare that slide. It’s not easy working upside down and backwards.” I point to the mirror and magnifying glass setup and explain how I had done it.
“What’s so hard about that? I do backwards all the time when I’m putting on makeup,” she jokes. Jennifer rarely wears makeup. “But I can see where upside down might cause a problem.”
“I’m not so concerned about what it’s made of anymore. The fact that an electro-mechanical process is occurring is what I’m wondering about. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to figure that out.”
“Maybe not,” she says, “but maybe we can figure out if it can be controlled. I mean, it’s obviously attracting gravity particles at one end and expelling them at the other, which is what causes it to rise.” She stops to think some more. “It may not be defeating gravity, but it’s surely displacing it. Kind of like the shape of a wing on a plane creates a difference in air pressure causing the plane to rise.”
I look at her and cock my head. She is thinking out loud.
“Well it does appear to be doing that.” She drops into thought again.
“Do you remember the chapters on the Earth’s magnetic field?” I ask a couple seconds later. As she nods, I continue. “Maybe it’s not gravity particles at all. Maybe it’s electromagnetic particles. Think about it! The magnetic pattern is almost like a blanket covering the Earth. If you were sandwiched in the middle of that blanket, because it’s really thick, and you start to take part of that blanket and push it underneath you, you’d start to rise, right?”
“Yeah,” she slowly agrees. “And what about the ionosphere? That’s loaded with particles. Maybe it’s attracting some of them, too.”
“Maybe,” I continue, “maybe somehow it’s all working together.”
“But how?” she asks quietly and walks over to the couch to sit down. “I wish we’d hear from Willie. It’d be nice to know what he’s found out, if anything.”
“We will,” I promise as I look over at her. She looks kind of disappointed or bothered by the fact that she doesn’t have an answer. “Hey. Would you help me put this thing away?” She nods. “Do you think I should keep this slide?”
“How hard would it be to set up again?” she asks, getting up to join me at the table.
“Well, once I figured out how to do it, it wasn’t too hard.”
“Then put it back with the others,” she says. “It would be best to keep them all together. So which envelope do you have them all in?”
“I’m not sure anymore. I think they all have a few at this point.” I unscrew the magnifying glass from its stand and hand it to her.
“Now that’s good scientific method,” she says lightly, sounding a little sarcastic as she examines the glass in her hands.
“Here.” I hand her one of the envelopes. “This one has the fewest. At least I’m pretty sure it does. Let’s put the one from the slide in here. Open the envelope flap upside down and hold it over the slide. And try to see if the bit rises up into the envelope.”
She sets the glass down to open the flap, and then picks it back up again.
I hold the slide flat under the envelope. “Ready?”
“Ready,” she confirms looking through the lens.
I begin to turn the slide up into the envelope carefully holding the edge of the cover in place. “See the bit yet?”
“Ummm, yeah. There it is.”
“Ok. I’m going to draw the cover down off the slide.” I begin sliding the thin slice of glass. “What’s it doing?”
“The bit is rolling between the slide and the cover,” she says, “but it’s getting closer to the end. Yep. There! It’s out from under the cover but it’s staying put. Nope! Wait! There it goes. It’s rising now. Ok. It’s disappearing into the envelope.” She closes the flap.
“That’s one. Let’s join them with these.” I pick up another envelope.
“Can I?” she asks, holding out a hand.
“Ok. You open your
s back up then I’ll open this one and hand it to you.”
She holds the envelope upside down and opens the flap again. I open the one I have and hand it to her. “I want to watch them float in.” I pick up the magnifying glass.
“Ready then?” She breathes softly, raising the envelopes over her head. I watch as the small blue-gray cloud wisps from one home to the other. “Done?” she asks.
“I think so.” I take the lower envelope from her and peer into it with the magnifying glass. It’s empty. “Yep. Next.” I pick up the remaining envelope, invert it and look in. “This one has the majority I’d say.” I hand it to her.
Just as before, she raises the envelopes over her head, stopping when they are horizontal. I stand to the side with the magnifying glass, focusing on the junction of the two flaps.
“Okay,” I say. “Start tilting.” She moves the envelopes together, lowering the one on the right, raising the one on her left. I watch as the tiny gray bits begin tumbling up. Some of them just slide along the paper. Others come rolling out end over end, righting themselves as they float into the higher envelope.
“That’s so cool,” I whisper as the flow of bits ends. I lightly flick the envelope’s edge. “I think that’s all of them.”
“That’s fun,” Jen beams, handing me the empty envelope, closing the flap on the other and setting it down. When she lets go of it, it begins to rise. “Oops,” she snickers, “I forgot.”
“Here,” I say, handing her the glass. “This is good for holding it down too.” She sets the magnifying glass on the envelope.
“Well I guess that’s it then. Thanks for letting me help Tyler.” Then she takes a step towards me, wraps her arms around my neck and gives me a hug.
My hands reflexively land on her waist. “Yeah. Sure.” I respond hesitantly. “An extra pair of hands can come in handy.” For a moment I smell a mix of scented shampoo and helmet sweat.
She backs away. “I guess I’ll get going then,” and turns for the stairs.
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