Vaz

by Laurence Dahners

  When Dante got back to his seat, Steve said, “Where the Hell did you go? See a girl or something down there?”

  “I went…” Dante suddenly didn’t know if he should tell Steve. Probably his Dad didn’t want everyone to know or he wouldn’t be fighting under a pseudonym. But this was just too cool to keep bottled in. He desperately wanted to tell someone! “Down to see if that really was my dad.”

  “Hah! Funny! Check out this next guy…”

  Dante never told Steve after all. Probably for the best. He didn’t tell Steve that it had been Silvy’s Jack either. He grinned a little. His dad had gotten even with that asshole for him, even if no one but Dante knew about it.

  Dante kept his eye on the walkway to the dressing rooms thinking surely that his dad would come back out that way to watch the other fights. But his dad never came back in. If he was interested enough in MMA to participate, why wouldn’t he watch the other fights?

  The other fights had seemed a blur to Dante. When he got home his dad was down in the basement like he’d been for weeks. Dante thought about knocking on the door and going down to talk to him, but what would he say? “Dad, I watched you knock a guy out in that amateur MMA fight tonight. Thanks, that guy’s a jerk. How did you get so ripped?”

  Dante had enough trouble talking to his dad normally. This just seemed like a conversation he didn’t want to start. He couldn’t decide if this whole thing made his weird dad really cool, or just even weirder.

  ***

  Vaz got up early in the morning, too excited to sleep. He made himself take time to nuke a breakfast burrito from his little fridge and eat it. Then he went to check the numbers for hydrogen absorption in his two chambers. Both were over 1,500 times the volume of the alloy disks. So far, so good. He made himself wait until his family had left the house before he switched on the hammering current and sat back to monitor.

  He had installed temperature and radiation monitors on the outside of the old version. The new chamber of course, had the monitors built in. He worried more about the old chamber because the responsiveness of the measurements would be delayed by the time it took heat and radiation to make its way through the walls of the chamber.

  Fortunately, this time he’d installed safety trips in the software that he had monitoring the system. He’d become so fascinated with what he saw on the broad spectrum video of the inside of the chamber that he didn’t notice the sudden upswing in the readout of the x-ray detector. The software powered the experiment down, catching Vaz by surprise.

  Seeing the x-ray graph in the red zone he noticed that several of the other detectors had suddenly jumped up and had approached their own safety limits. Large currents had developed in the frames of both test chambers and the heat levels were on their way up. Though the neutron detector had remained nearly silent it had definitely crept above zero too.

  He sat back, stunned. Each hydrogen-boron fusion should produce three positively charged “alpha particles” (helium nuclei) which would induce large currents. Hydrogen-boron fusion should also produce x-radiation, but unlike deuterium fusion, it should produce only a few of the highly hazardous neutrons through “side-chain” reactions.

  A few calculations confirmed that both devices had produced far more energy than he’d pumped into them, also suggesting that fusion had occurred.

  Vaz thought for a while, then after carefully saving records of everything to do with this run, began designing his next experiment, aimed at seeing if he could harvest useful current from the phenomenon. The charged alpha particles would need to be directed into coils that would extract electrical current from them. Cooling to prevent meltdown had to be designed into the setup. Though in a working fusion reactor you could think of it as “harvesting” heat that could be used for other purposes, for this next run he would just cool it to prevent meltdown and waste the heat.

  Most importantly, he needed to shield the device so that he could work around it while it was running. The shielding would have to include water and boron to absorb the low and high energy neutrons that would be emitted. Even though there wouldn’t be high numbers of neutrons like there would with other fusion processes, they were still dangerous. Neutrons converted surrounding materials into radioactive ones so they had to be absorbed and water and boron were among the best materials for that. He also needed metal in the shielding to absorb the x-rays. Correctly done, the metal shielding should also be able to convert the x-rays into additional electrical current, but that would also be for future iterations.

  Vaz had been working frantically for hours, planning the next experimental device. Trying to keep the costs down, he worked hard to find as many components as possible “off the shelf” from various vendors and then design his device around them. Trying to figure out how he would be able to cobble those together to make a workable testing apparatus with as few custom components as possible was mind bending but would save a lot of money. Several times he was tempted to just pay extra to get parts made from scratch, but he persevered.

  His AI interrupted him, “You have a call from Dr. Smint.”

  He pondered refusing it. He really didn’t want to think about anything else right now. But, Smint had been very good to him when he’d been the department head over at Querx and Vaz really liked him. Vaz sighed, “OK.”

  Vaz heard Smint’s voice, “Vaz?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Jack Smint. I heard from Vangester about your troubles with Stillman Davis.”

  “Who?”

  Typical Gettnor, doesn’t even know the name of the man that fired him, Smint thought to himself. “Davis, the man that replaced me as head of R&D at Querx.”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s a jerk.”

  “Sorry to hear about it, I contended at the time that he was a jerk and the wrong man to head up R&D. I argued against letting him be my replacement but I was overruled.”

  “They should have done like you said,” Vaz said sulkily, but distractedly as he kept staring at the unfinished design up on the big screen.

  “Anyway, Mr. Vangester would really like you to come back to work at Querx.”

  “Huh?” Vaz said distractedly.

  “Mr. Vangester would really like you to come back to work at Querx.”

  “Who’s Vangester?”

  Smint stifled a chuckle, “Mr. Vangester’s the CEO of Querx. He’d like you to come back to work.”

  “Oh. I don’t want to do that. I really hated working for… Davis, right?”

  “Yeah. Vangester is firing Davis. He couldn’t believe that Davis fired you. So, if you came back, you wouldn’t have to work for Davis. They’d pay you more. They’re willing to make a lot of concessions to get you back.”

  “That was a good idea,” Vaz said, referring to the firing. His focus had returned to the design again, so he really hadn’t paid much attention to the part about not working for Davis or the pay or the concessions.

  Smint recognized a distracted Gettnor from talking to him in that state many times before. He tried to bring him back on topic, “So would you consider coming back to work for Querx if you didn’t have to work for Davis?”

  “Huh? Oh, I don’t have to work for him now. In fact I’m not working for anyone and it’s great. I can spend all my time on this amazing new phenomenon. No meetings, no interruptions. You’re not going to believe this, but I’m getting fusion with excess energy!” Remembering how Smint had loved talking about his experiments with him, Vaz abruptly asked, “Do you want to come look at my setup?”

  Stunned, Smint said, “Fusion?”

  “Yeah! The day they fired me at Querx, my hydrogen absorption apparatus overheated and partially melted. It looks like what happened was that the hydrogen in it was fusing with the boron in a new alloy I’d been testing.”

  Staggered by what Vaz had just said, Smint said nothing for a bit. It was so absolutely typical for Gettnor. Anyone else would have kept any possible fusion a secret for fear of someone trying to steal the method and p
atent it themselves. They would never have considered inviting anyone to look at their apparatus. Certainly anyone with knowledge of how intellectual property law operated would never have admitted that some of the work on it had been done at Querx, possibly giving Querx some claim to the idea. Smint had been urging Vaz to return to Querx so one would think he had Querx’s interests at heart.

  Smint had been aware that Querx paid Gettnor less than he was worth and suspected that they might be screwing him out of part of his share of his previous inventions’ royalties. He’d always felt that it was a somewhat reasonable arrangement because Gettnor was just as clueless as he’d demonstrated a second ago and would never be able to negotiate a better deal for himself at another company, or bring his own ideas to market. Maybe Querx hadn’t treated him right, but he’d been better off than he would have been out in the world.

  But… fusion?! From everything Smint knew about fusion, it was absolutely ridiculous to imagine that anyone could have achieved it with any kind of small device like Gettnor might have in his home. On the other hand, no matter how clueless Gettnor might be about how the rest of the world worked, he was virtually never wrong about anything to do with physics. “Vaz?” he finally said.

  “Huh? Oh sorry Dr. Smint, I got distracted. Did you want to come look at my setup?”

  “Yeah, Vaz… I’d like that very much. Thanks. At your house?”

  “Huh?”

  “At your house?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Tomorrow morning, say 8 AM?”

  “Yep, that’d be fine.”

  “See you then.” Jack waited a bit for Vaz to say something else, but he didn’t. Smint eventually just signed off.

  ***

  That night Smint lay awake searching his soul. Querx had hired him temporarily as a “consultant,” just to have him try to hire Gettnor back. They were paying him on a “consulting fee” schedule that was much more than he’d been paid when he worked there full time. As an employee-consultant he felt he owed Querx something toward the goal they’d set him. On the other hand, he’d always liked Vaz. Smint found Gettnor’s incredible social clumsiness somewhat endearing and he loved talking to him about science. He thought of Vaz as a friend and sometimes wondered if he might be the only friend Vaz had. It just seemed so unlikely that Vaz would have made other friends. So many people were simply… “put off” by Gettnor’s… odd behavior. Few hated or actively disliked him, like Davis apparently did, but it was hard to think of anyone who’d ever expressed interest in spending any time with him.

  On the other hand, Smint had met Lisanne, Gettnor’s pretty blond wife. She seemed very intelligent and as normal as they came. And she truly seemed to care about Vaz. She’d borne his children so she must get along with him. Perhaps Vaz had friends and Jack just didn’t know about them?

  But, didn’t he owe Vaz something as his friend? Perhaps he owed Vaz more as his friend than he owed Querx as a consultant? Niggling underneath all these thoughts was a guilty feeling that perhaps he was considering helping Vaz stay out of Querx’s clutches with some hope of getting a “piece of the action” if the fusion claim panned out? That wouldn’t be ethical either.

  It was probably all moot anyway. There was no way that Vaz had really achieved fusion, no matter how much he hoped he had.

  ***

  Smint was surprised when his car announced that he had arrived at Gettnor’s house. Considering how many of his inventions Querx had patented—and made a killing from—Smint had been expecting something much more… ostentatious. This was simply one more ordinary house in a row of houses. Gettnor’s share of the royalties on his inventions should have been worth many tens of millions… shouldn’t it?

  Smint identified himself to the Gettnor’s house AI. After a couple of minutes the door opened and Vaz said, “Dr. Smint! Come in. I’m sorry, coming up the stairs I realized I shouldn’t show you the device while it’s working because it emits a lot of x-rays and I haven’t set up any shielding yet. Right now I’m only designing the next iteration. But we could look at the data from the last run together if you’d like?”

  Smint uneasily suspected that the real reason he didn’t want to repeat the experiment was that it wasn’t repeatable. Or that it only worked in Gettnor’s imagination. Smint had spent some time last night looking into the science of fusion and according to everything he’d learned, the kind of fusion Vaz claimed was patently impossible without massive equipment. Nonetheless he smiled and said, “Please, Vaz, call me Jack. I’d love to see whatever you’ve got to show me.”

  He followed Vaz across the room and over to a door that proved to lead down into a basement. There was another door at the bottom of the stairs, Vaz opened it and they stepped into a large, well lit basement. Smint looked around in amazement. Typical Vaz, everything was impeccably arranged like for a catalog display. The basement appeared to be significantly better equipped than the lab Gettnor had worked in at Querx. Of course, at Querx, Gettnor had had access to other equipment in other labs so it probably wasn’t really better equipped than Querx as a whole, but, still, there was an amazing amount of very expensive equipment here. As he turned he saw in one corner a cot, a mini-fridge, a microwave, a set of drawers and some clothes hanging from a pipe running under the ceiling. “You sleep down here?”

  Gettnor looked embarrassed and shrugged, “Yeah, sometimes.”

  Jack also noticed a heavy punching bag and a speed bag like boxers practiced with, as well as a pull-up bar and some weights. They looked worn. “Looks like your son works out down here too.”

  Gettnor looked embarrassed about that too, “Uh sometimes,” he mumbled, then perked up, “Here, sit, let me show you the data from the run.”

  Smint sat in one of the two rolling chairs and looked up at the large wall screen. It lit with a strangely colored image. Gettnor pointed at it, “That’s a compressed spectrum video of the inside of the chamber. Over on the right you see graphic representations of the output from the chamber detectors for heat, alpha particles, x-rays, and neutrons. On the video image what you’re looking at is a disk,” he highlighted it, “of a new boron-vanadium-palladium disk which has already absorbed 1,500 times its volume of hydrogen overnight.”

  Smint’s head pulled back in surprise at the huge amounts of hydrogen absorbed.

  Vaz continued, “Which means that the boron atoms just have hydrogen protons absolutely packed in among them. The video starts when I turned on the pulsatile current that I had calculated would ‘hammer,’” here Vaz put up his fingers and made little quotes marks in the air, “more protons into the alloy.” Vaz turned excitedly to Smint, “And this is really freaky, it didn’t work when I tried the same experiment without an odd electrode I used in the original device. I’d used it just because I had that electrode lying around the lab. That electrode was mounted on a ceramic base that had a concave shape and that ceramic turned out to be piezoelectric. So, with the pulsatile current it generates ultrasonic waves in the compressed hydrogen. I mean, that’s just such a freak accident! Because of the concave shape, the ultrasound waves happen to focus on the disk. And, by my calculations they just happen to be about the right frequency to create a harmonic that should cause huge physical distortions in the molecular structure of the alloy. It would have been incredibly difficult to calculate how to achieve all these things at once if you were doing them on purpose, yet they all happened at the same time by accident!”

  “All these things?” Smint said bemusedly.

  “Yeah,” Vaz said, “I mean, I had calculated that, by my new alloy theory, this particular alloy should absorb huge quantities of hydrogen. I’d also calculated that this particular frequency in the current should harmonically force the protons into the alloy. But it was just freaky luck that the current would generate ultrasonic waves and that they would be the right frequency to harmonically vibrate that particular thickness of disk so violently!” He waved at the screen, “Look, you can see that the alpha detector is startin
g to rise, now the x-ray detector is starting to rise, heat had been going up for a while because of the electrical and acoustic energy being pumped into the system… wait… wait… There, that’s when the safety triggers shut it down because the x-rays had reached the safety limits I’d set. There already had been tremendous energy output in the form of alphas at that point.”

  Vaz turned excitedly to Smint, “Now I know exactly how much energy went into the system, just a little more than a quarter of a megajoule. My best estimate is that it put out about two megajoules, almost all of it in the few seconds after the x-rays appeared! There’s no oxygen in the system to oxidize the hydrogen and really no evidence of substantial chemical reaction of any type to power that output. Even though I really can’t believe it’s from fusion, nothing else makes sense.”

  Smint had to grin at the rapidity of Gettnor’s pressured speech.

  Vaz said, “I’m thinking something about the highly compacted structure of the protons in the alloy, along with surging motion imparted by the current and harmonic motion from the acoustic impulses is forcing the protons to fuse with the boron nuclei at a significant rate…” He’d finally run down, “Though… I still find it… hard to believe… really, it’s impossible.” He grinned, “But you know what they say about ‘when theory and calculation comes into conflict with data’… ‘you’ve got to go with the data.’”