The Eons-Lost Orphan

by Laer Carroll

  Klaus said, "There were some interesting stories about telemag propulsion. Oh, Hello, Valentino."

  "Hello all," said the black cadet ("potential structural engineer" Jane thought). "I'm happy to see we're starting early. I have something this afternoon I'm obligated to do but I'm here till lunch."

  He pulled up a chair and began to lay out his breakfast on a table.

  He was only the first of the six cadets from the previous Saturday who showed up ready to work on a second tech demonstrator. Only one did not. However, one of her friends said, "Wendy told me to tell you she's up for the project. She just has duty today."

  Jane let everyone chat. Most topics were about the floater publicity. The cadets were mostly focused on stories with a technical focus. They after all were headed for careers in one of the most technical of the US services.

  When the conversation lulled Jane spoke up.

  "The first step is establish a data base of skills and interests. I'll start with me. Then we'll go to Kate. You need to know her. She acts as my Exec.

  "First, my interests. I'm going to be an astronaut. I'm a music composer and performer, though I don't know how that might relate to this project. Yes, Ricky?"

  "It might just relate. Publicity will be an important part of publicizing this project when we near our end game. Music is an important part of subliminal persuasion."

  "Good point. So I'll also say I dance salsa and Argentine tango.

  "As for skills. There's little I don't know about math theory. In fact I've contributed to the cutting edge in that area. So you may want to come to me first with problems if they are of a high degree. However, we have plenty of math experts among us. Go to them first.

  "Physics. I'm at the cutting edge too. But a lot of you have had advanced physics courses. Chemistry, I'm pretty knowledgeable. But about theory not practical stuff like chem engineering.

  "I'm a whiz at computer practice and theory.

  "When it comes to organizational theory and practice I will depend heavily on the rest of you. I'm a total noob in this area. So help me organize us to get this job done. Me and Kate.

  "Kate?"

  Jane reminded them that Kate was her executive officer.

  Kate was the next to offer up a litany of skill areas and interests, then the rest of her staff. The newer project members of the team needed to know them well.

  It took time to get through the rest of the team. They ended midmorning. Kate called a break. Then the new members had to get acquainted with the lab facilities and the secure project database.

  When noon came Jane felt she had a solid team. They broke to go to the cafeteria during which she told them not to talk about the project.

  "We need to maintain security. Just as important, we've got to avoid fatigue. We burn ourselves out, we'll never finish."

  <>

  A month later they had two candidates which they might use to put their telemag jet to the aerial test. One had wings, the other did not. They were also ready to test three candidate types of jets, though only on the ground.

  They had the engine test setup ready on a Saturday but late in the afternoon. Then they quit for the day. Jane wanted everyone fresh for a lengthy process. And one which required alert minds throughout it.

  In the early afternoon they arrived at the lab with Ricky driving a U-Haul truck with Nicole as a passenger.

  They were followed by two vans which would carry the rest of the eleven crew members, five in one van, four in the other. They loaded the truck with all their equipment and set out for a vacant field a couple of miles away where cadets and others sometimes fired off toy rockets. Sometimes the rockets weren't so toy like. They lofted atmosphere probes with balloons primed to slowly land the rockets in the open land to the east, beeping their location via radio all the way down.

  The truck and vans were positioned about a hundred yards apart and yellow caution tape strung between them. In the middle of the triangle so formed they lugged the test equipment and set it up.

  Then they retired to the truck to control the experiments and view the results.

  Jane wanted to test the three models by increasing the power sent to each a little at a time and recording the results via instruments connected to each model. This took time even though the recording was automatic. After an hour only she and her staff still occupied the truck.

  "Think we lost them?" said Jane when the last of the new crew left.

  "Nah," said Ricky. "Just from this boring stuff."

  "You can, ahh, 'stretch your legs, too.'"

  "And miss this excitement?" He grinned and shook his head.

  Another hour and they were done. They packed up everything, headed back to the lab, and quit for the day.

  <>

  The test results yielded some mild changes to the designs of the three types of telemag jets. They were made, larger and sturdier models made and tested, and the engines integrated into model aircraft.

  Klaus and Ricky, who had a lot of experience flying drones, took the models out and tested them. One to destruction, at least of the airframe. The engine was fine. Telemag jets were sturdy beasts. The one engine was put into a new airframe and performed just fine.

  Meanwhile everyone was getting ready for the end of the semester. Kate and the other fourth year cadets bought the spiffy uniforms they'd wear on graduation day. They also had to study and practice the marching and other parts they'd play in the ceremonies.

  The fourth year cadets also had to buy ceremonial swords. The crew spent a whole hour admiring them and practicing the salutes required using them. Jane and the three third-year cadets in the crew watched and cheered.

  The crew also had to plan the presentation of the models. Jane said little about the script they worked out except the music to be used. Her crew had several experts in everything else. She let them use their expertise.

  <>

  On the second Saturday in May the telemag team put on their second show of the year. This time there were lots more onlookers. The first show had turned out to be very interesting. This one was expected to be same. There were a number of videographers including one from national television.

  As before it was late morning and the day was bright and chilly. It began with the crew, now eleven strong, assembled outside the double doors to their lab. They stood in line to one side of the walkway leading to and from the doors. To the opposite side stood the same small group of Academy musicians with brass and drum instruments. Everyone was in uniform.

  The doors to the lab began to open. The music began, the same piece: The 2001 theme: Bom Bum Bom Bum Bommm. Trumpets.

  Klaus was again wielding a drone controller, a more sophisticated one this time.

  The double doors to the lab opened fully and the dimness inside was revealed. Then something zipped out of it to hover well outside the lab and above the biggest bunch of the crowd.

  It was two feet long and as the crowd peered under raised hands it could be seen that it was a white-painted quad-copter drone with a bright Red Cross on its sides and bottom. A small figure of a man dangled underneath on a rope.

  Jane stepped from in front of the line of crew beside the lab door and faced the crowd. She carried a wireless microphone. Behind her two sets of first-year cadets hurried out carrying two sets of speakers. They set them up to on the grass to each side of the doors to send out sound toward the crowd in front of her.

  "Some of you may recognize the body of the helicopter model we adapted to fly via telemag jet engines. It is the Boeing CH-47D Chinook widely used by the Air Force and other services.

  "You'll notice that the hump on the top front and the hump on the top rear have been replaced with a cross bar. At the end of the each bar is a telemag jet engine pointing down. This is like a lot of quadcopter designs as I'm sure you realize.

  "The difference is that instead of props we have jet engines. And not just any jet engines. TELEMAG jet engines."

  Klaus began to fly the jury-rig
ged quadjet slowly over the crowd, out to the cross street, along it, then back over the grass near the lab. It passed over Jane, ruffling her hair noticeably but not greatly. It reached a spot over the grass and slowly began to move back toward the street.

  The crowd and the videographers and photographers pivoted to follow the machine's flight.

  "The first-year cadets passing through you with flyers have more detail on the telemag jet and a possible real version of the crude one we constructed as a demo model. Let's have a big round of applause for our cadet helpers, folks."

  She put the microphone under one armpit and began to clap. Her crew and soon much of the crowd followed suit.

  Overhead the drone pivoted to return to the interior of the lab over Jane's head.

  "This last summer I and some other cadets elected to spend a few weeks at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas as observers. I was privileged to view an Air Force Search and Rescue practice operation first-hand. Meaning they took this scared cadet right in front of you out over a lake and dropped her in it. I stoutly insist I did not scream the entire ten feet down."

  There was much laughter at that.

  "Then they positioned a Sikorsky Shadow Hawk over me and an S&R airman dropped into the water trailing a cable. He picked me up, they pulled us up, dried me off and, brave but foolish airman that she was, she told them, 'That was fun. Let's do it again.' They were kind enough to indulge me in my desire."

  After the laughter she continued speaking.

  "I learned two lessons. Don't volunteer."

  She waited for more laughter to subside.

  "I also learned how much a flying windmill kicks up when it passes over water. With the quadjet design you just saw the air flow is directed in four different directions out from the target on the ground or in the water. This lessens the possible damage to the target. Also, since telemag jets run cool there is much less stress on the aircraft and the environment it functions in."

  Jane stepped back into line and another craft flew out of the dim lab and positioned itself over the crowd. Jane returned to her speaking position.

  "While I was at Laughlin I spent a week with the transport training group. There I learned that they are the unsung heroes of the Air Force. They make sure everyone gets avgas and toilet paper, both of which I insist are vital to the functioning of the strongest military on the planet. The force we belong to."

  There was cheer at that.

  "This model that we butchered for our demonstrator is the venerable C-130 Hercules. It's gone through so many letters to label newer versions I think they're up to C-130ZZ. I'm sure the version we created to showcase the telemag jet would have the engineers at Lockheed Martin butchering us if we weren't smart enough see them coming and hide. Because we dared replace the inboard engines with downward facing jets to give our C-130TD, for tech demonstrator, vertical takeoff and landing capability.

  "This works on our model but I've no idea if it would work on a real craft. Cadet Klaus Reinhardt is flying our model today. He is graduating from the Academy in two weeks, let's all hear it for Klaus."

  After the cheering and whistling Jane continued.

  "Klaus, let's see if our baby can actually land vertically. Make room people."

  The model slowly sank and eased onto the concrete walkway connecting the lab to the street.

  There was a great cheer at that.

  "Now let's see the last tech demonstrator model."

  Jane pivoted back into the line of her crew members. It wasn't much of a line now as her people had jostled to watch events. It quickly straightened out as the second demo model rose and flew back into the lab.

  Jane pointed at the band. They played the bars of the 2001 theme which loudly proclaimed Ta Da!

  Nothing happened. As planned.

  "Any time now, ground crew."

  TA DA!

  Nothing. Again as planned.

  TA DA!!!

  Something zipped out of the dimness and rocketed upward. Barely visible high overhead (a height carefully planned to be safe for this maneuver) it paused, then restlessly "paced" back and forth.

  "Aw," said Jane. "She's shy. Come on down baby. We just want to say Hello."

  The plane waggled its wings as if to say No."

  "Come on. We have JP8 jet fuel."

  The aircraft plummeted and halted as Klaus had practiced a dozen times, the last yesterday. It floated at chest height in front of Jane, who pointed at the crowd and made a shooing motion with a hand. The craft, a foot long model of a jet fighter, "sidled" down the walkway toward the street and then, at cheering, darted up to about ten feet height. There it hovered, then began to parade to left and right, tilting its wings as if preening.

  "This model we adapted most of us recognize, I'm sure. It's the F-35 Lightning. This is the B variant, capable of STOVL: short take off and vertical landing. As you know, one problem limiting the use of the B is the great heat of the exhaust. The telemag jet has no such problem. It is also much less fuel hungry.

  "Now, let's go get ready for graduation, cadets. Go Air Force!"

  <>

  The graduation ceremony was two weeks later. It included most of her friends in spiffy uniforms and wearing ceremonial sabers. Jane was also dressed for her graduation to third-year cadet in a spiffy uniform, though not as fancy as those of the graduating cadets.

  Her parents and Natalia had attended Jane's ceremony and checked into a Colorado Springs hotel. Jane had given them a tour of the Academy and shown them the now-empty lab where so much ground-breaking work had been done. They had returned to the hotel while Jane went for a long-scheduled interview with the Lt. General commanding the Academy.

  She entered the Superintendents' office in her dress uniform and the two of them exchanged courtesies. The general ordered Jane to be At Ease and to sit. Jane sank into one of the three comfortable leather-covered seats before the woman's desk.

  She examined Jane. Jane examined back, her face open and interested. She noted that the woman seemed tired. Jane felt stirrings of sympathy. She resisted saying something to ease the woman, her usual response to other's need.

  "You've had quite a year, Cadet Kuznetsov. First that extraordinary summer, then your time at the Academy. Your activities in the first semester suggest some interesting futures for you. For your math paper I'm reliably informed you might win a Fields Medal. With that or even a promise you could secure a tenured position any place in the world and coast for the rest of your life."

  "I'd be bored to death in a month."

  "Then you invented an improvement in batteries that is shortly going to make you a very rich woman."

  "Same reaction, Superintendent. I can't see myself living a life of luxury with nothing to do."

  "And this semester you come to understand a new physical theory so well that you invented not one but two ways to use it to fly an aircraft. Processes which if you patent them will make you twice over a very rich woman."

  Jane wondered where the woman was going with this monologue. She didn't seem to be hostile. Or not obviously enough to awaken Robot.

  "My father owns the rights to all derivatives of the telemagnetic process."

  "I got curious and checked. He assigned you half the rights."

  He had? Jane had not asked him to. But it WAS characteristic of him. If he died the rights would not be up in the air.

  Unless Malena would inherit them. On second thought, Jane was sure that would be the case. Alex would ensure his family was cared for after his passing.

  "All this leads me to wonder, Cadet. Why are you still here at the academy?"

  "I am obligated for lots of years to come. I signed a document that says so."

  "A billionaire could hire lawyers who'd find a dozen ways out of your obligation. Again, why are you here? Or more specifically, what are your plans?"

  Ah. Now the woman's comments made sense.

  "When I first joined the Academy I had one purpose: to become an astronaut. That's sti
ll important to me. But as I learned more about the Air Force I saw so many other goals which would let me...make a difference.

  "Ah, that sounds so clichéd. To...make things better."

  "You do remember that the job of every person in the military is to kill people, don't you, Cadet? It's a profession and we learn to destroy the enemy as efficiently as possible. We pride ourselves on it."

  Jane tilted her head.

  "Is this an ethics class? I know we have courses on this subject. I expect to take one this next year. Yes, I understand all that, but I also understand that sometimes we must do bad things because the alternative is even more horrible.

  "Where are you going with this, Sir?"

  "You are a very unusual cadet. I'm trying to solve the very difficult problem of finding a place for you in the Air Force which will serve you AND the Force."

  Jane sat and thought. The Superintendent waited.

  "I think it's too early for me, or you, to know what my place is or should or could be. I suggest we revisit this issue in a year's time. I'm still 'finding myself.' What a clichéd term. Ahmm.

  "It's like when tide runs out and a hidden bottom reveals itself. That's what it feels like for me. The bottom is still revealing itself to me."

  "A very vivid and a propos metaphor."

  Jane's smile was brief but brilliant. "In high school I studied all the rhetorical/poetic devices. I pride myself that I've mastered the metaphor, at least."

  Involuntarily the Superintendent smiled back.

  Interesting, she thought. This is how it feels to succumb to someone's charisma.

  "Very well, Cadet. A bargain I hope we are fortunate enough to be able to complete. In a year's time, we'll revisit this issue. Now, tell me, what are your immediate plans?"

  "I've signed up for two summer, uhmm, workshops? One is to shadow a bunch of Marines or Special Forces for six weeks. To be a glorified gofer and by watching get a deeper understanding. I want to do this because about all I know about soldiering is from TV and movies. Stuff that's not real.