The Day Gravity Became Irrelevant

by Ralph Rotten

  “I was right?” Stunned by the revelation that he had actually been on the right side of a dispute with his brother, Jack’s mouth hung open.

  “Well, Jackie, the membrane was too thin for the kind of acceleration you exposed it to yesterday.” Holding a socket driver as if it were a microphone, Jamie never missed a beat as he dragged his brother over to the workbench. “Intended to be used at a constant rate of seventy-seven kilometers per hour, as opposed to the illegal drag race you subjected it to, the device failed miserably. However, when it did, it fractured the membrane, allowing the viscous fluid to leak into the reaction chamber which interrupted the process, so instead of harvesting energy from the silver atoms as they were being sequentially split, the resulting particles and energy were captured in the viscous fluid until it was so saturated with energy that it turned into this.” Jamie sang out a cheerful ta-daaaa before holding out a curious object roughly the dimensions of a cell phone battery. With a glowing blue tinge to it, the tiny gel-pack in Jamie’s hand seemed to illuminate his palm.

  Stooping over to view the glowing package, it immediately occurred to Jackie that the material could be hazardous. Recoiling, he looked to his younger sibling for reassurance that the blue stuff was safe.

  “I call it Blue Plasma, which seemed much more marketable a title than Inelastic Spallation Plasma. This little vial holds the equivalent to nine hundred kilowatts of energy. What’s even more amazing is that I have not actually split the atom, but stretched it.”

  “Stretched it?” Jack was surprised to hear his brother speak in such unspecific terms.

  “Well, you know how much space is between the nucleus of an atom and its orbiting electrons, right? It’s equivalent to the distance from the sun to Pluto, quite a bit of empty space between them, really.” Raising an eyebrow, Jamie stayed in his gameshow announcer mode as he explained. “Well this new process simply stretches that distance…a lot.”

  A look seemed to wash over Jamie’s face. Standing ramrod straight, his eyebrows climbed his forehead as he assumed the mantle of the unflappable Professor James.

  “The real beauty of this system,” His precise English accent flowed smoothly. “…is that I can hold these molecules suspended in this stretched configuration indefinitely. The atoms are just straining to reunite, in fact they’re working so hard to get back together again that they actually emit this curious blue glow as a byproduct of the process. But the real energy comes when the atoms are reunited across the collector membrane. As the atom springs back together, it sacrifices a neutron, converting it from silver one-oh-nine to one-oh-seven.”

  Convinced that there must be a downside somehow, Jackie’s mouth moved silently for a second before he actually thought of an objection.

  “How do you know you aren’t getting cancer just holding that stuff. You remember what happened to Curie?” Raising an eyebrow, he was sure it had to be toxic somehow.

  Like someone had flipped a switch, Jamie’s demeanor changed noticeably as he transitioned from Professor James to Gameshow Jimmy again.

  “Studies indicate that this Blue Plasma emits no harmful radiation or seepage. However this substance is not intended for internal consumption and may include such side effects as explosive diarrhea, incontinence, itchy scalp, and death. Blue plasma should only be used in accordance with prescribed instruction; any deviation from this process could be hazardous to your health.” Jamie’s rapid fire announcer voice filled the room as he gestured to the dry erase board behind him. Filled from corner to corner with calculations, the penmanship was clearly British James’. There was no mistaking that much. Not only did his various avatars use different speech patterns, but they each embodied their own peculiarities, including hand writing.

  Taking a moment to examine the figures there, it occurred to Jack that his brother rarely wrote things down. With his highly refined eidetic memory he had no need for note taking, and simple chemical calculations like the one on the board could have been crunched in his head. Hence, the only reason for him to have prepared these calculations was for his dim-witted older brother. Pushing the thought aside, Jack concentrated on the resultant compounds that were derived by the process.

  “Hmmmph.” Giving a grunt, he had a hard time concealing his surprise. It amazed him that despite the eerie glow, the material was no more hazardous than metallically-infused vegetable oil.

  “Nine hundred KW, eh?” Plucking the gel-pack from his younger sibling’s open palm, Jack eyed the substance warily.

  “Enough stored energy to power an average home for a month.” A genuine smile stretched across Jamie’s face as his voice boomed. It was obvious that there was more he wanted to say.

  “So let me see if I got this right; you created a highly portable and compact form of energy by holding silver atoms in a spallated state while capturing the fragments in suspension fluid…” Jack trailed off as he examined the little gel-pack of blue plasma. Turning to the dry-erase board he looked at his brother’s calculations. It amazed him that the real energy came not from splitting the Ag109 atom, but in reassembling it through the collector plate. Even more incredible was the fact that the device’s resulting exhaust was Ag107, a lower form of silver that resulted from sacrificing a neutron in the exchange process. It was a truly beautiful system; even the waste was valuable.

  As Jack’s mind continued to study the blue plasma, something occurred to him.

  “But this stuff didn’t make my Stang fly, did it?” Delicately placing the gel-pack on the nearby desktop, Jack looked to his brother for a further explanation. He knew Jamie well enough to know when he was bursting to reveal a secret.

  “You are correct, Jackie Sparks of West Carson California! That’s just the beginning of the real magic!” Back to Game Show Jimmy, he used an arm to steer his brother over to the technical schematics on the desk.

  “With the regulator now consuming an energy stream that was ten to the eighth power more concentrated, it caused the emitter to fuse to the collimator wall so that the new output was no longer a harmonious flow of particulate matter, but rather a grounded-out field that created an effect I refer to as gravitational disaffinity.” Scratching out new figures at the bottom of the dry-erase board, Jamie illustrated mathematically how the effect would work.

  Jack realized he was gaping again. Instinctively he closed his mouth and pretended to be able to follow the factors his brother scribbled on the board. Though his math skills were nothing to scoff at, Jamie’s calculations were beyond anything he had ever seen. Silently, he wondered if that was what it looked like inside of Jamie’s head; complex algorithms and indistinguishable logic. Did his brother even speak English in that skull of his?

  Jamie had begun scribbling more calculations on a second dry-erase board when Jack realized he no longer understood any of it. Though he would never admit his ignorance to his younger sibling, Jack had always been in awe of his brother’s ability to calculate faster in his head than most physicists could with a programmable calculator. He knew from experience that there was no sense in checking his numbers; when it came to math Jamie was never wrong.

  “So in summary, not only did we just invent a new, environmentally friendly form of energy, but we also just discovered the secret of antigravity.” Stopping to flash that goofy, crooked grin of his, Jamie seemed truly pleased with himself. Gone was the awkward smile of a man pretending to blend into a world he considered a sociological mystery. It was here that the awkward savant was happiest; in the realm of pure science.

  Standing back, Jack watched his brother’s face as he took a moment to wipe the dry ink off of his thumb and onto his lab coat. While most people would not have thought twice about wiping a smudge on their shirt, it was completely out of character for any of Jamie’s avatars. Jack spotted something else; his brother’s expression seemed off somehow. Few would have even noticed the subtle difference, but after a lifetime of living with his brother, Jack could see that something was not quite right. It was almost
as if his brother were slightly intoxicated. Could he be drunk on science? Dismissing the thought, he realized that there was likely a simple explanation to it all.

  “Have you been up all night working on this?” Jack asked skeptically, a hint of concern to his voice. If there was one thing that he had learned about his brother it was that it was best for everyone if he stayed within the parameters of his rigid sleep schedule. Deviation from the routine was never a good idea with any of Jamie’s personas.

  Glancing at the nearby clock, Jamie gave a guffaw before smiling broadly. “Indeed I have.”

  As if it were insult to injury, Jack realized that even after working furiously for 24 hours straight, his brother’s intellect was still several magnitudes greater than his own. It occurred to him that even in a coma, Jamie would be smarter than he.

  “Worry not.” Raising a finger, Jamie promised more to come. “I was careful to structure my productive time precisely so that while I am recharging, you will be able to begin fabrication of the first prototype. Alexis will show you what needs to be built.”

  Giving a curt nod, Jamie flashed one of his plastic smiles before striding purposefully out of the room. Never one to ramble unnecessarily, the savant was extremely deliberate in anything he did. Jamie Sparks did not waste time on small talk, and always had a purpose to anything he did.

  Following a short distance, Jack watched his brother climb the stairs up and out of their basement workshop. Only after he was gone did he finally relent and call out to the silicon entity he was sure had been listening to every word.

  “Alright girl, show me.” Giving a defeated sigh, he called out to Alexis.

  Immediately the schematics began to render on the far wall, projected in 4K resolution.

  “This is what he wanted built first.” All business today, the synthesized voice pretended as if there had never been any friction between them. “After that he needs three of these built.”

  Jack recognized the first device right away; it was a blue plasma generator. The next drawings were individual anti-grav units. It seemed odd to him that the two assemblies were being built as separate devices.

  “He was specific that the two entities should never be combined. For security purposes, energy manufacturing and gravitational disaffinity devices should never share the same platform or schematic.” Alexis’s voice took on a hard tone, as if to forewarn him in no uncertain terms.

  Still scanning the blueprints he assumed that it was being done that way to maintain the scientific process. Separate the components and beta-test them individually. The alternative was that too complex a device could skew the test results. Breaking it down to individual parts would make it easier to study.

  Shrugging, he took a seat at his desk and began the long arduous process of translating his brother’s theoretical diagrams into printed circuit boards. After that he would need to figure out how to de-levitate his fabber that still hung in mid-air.

  As he worked, it had slowly begun to sink in the magnitude of these two discoveries. While any fool could see the potential of a new type of fuel, especially one so compact and enviro-friendly, it was the secondary device that truly awed Jack. Antigrav meant much more than flying cars; it was the kind of invention that would change the very fabric of their society. It would create a new world paradigm.

  Staggering in its potential applications, gravitational disaffinity opened up so many possibilities. As he examined it in a linear and logical manner he knew that flying cars would negate the need for expensive roadways, no more intersections, no more freeways, no more vehicle exhaust turning their atmosphere into a greenhouse. Even trains would be radically changed. Vast amounts of cargo would simply be levitated to an altitude where the jet streams would push it in the direction you wanted. With modern flight management systems the entire process could be easily automated; after all, it was far easier to use autopilot for airborne devices than it was for ground vehicles. There was no reason that humans even needed to be part of the process.

  But as if replacing trains, planes, cars, and boats were not enough, it occurred to Jack that they could go much further with an invention like this. Antigravity would even change the real estate market. After all, if it were ridiculously cheap to stay aloft, then why not suspend other objects like homes or businesses or even sky scrapers. Giving a happy smile, Jack considered how much more practical the Sears tower would be if it were able to rotate slowly, absorbing sunlight on all sides evenly. Even more incredible, when the structure was finally ready for demolition, rather than a hazardous process of carefully containing the blast and commensurate destruction in a crowded urban scene, they could simply fly the building to a safe location for destruction or recycling. With this equipment, he could own a castle in the sky. Like the giant who chased Jack down the beanstalk, he could perch his home high in the clouds.

  Working steadily, he only paused to pour fresh coffee or relieve himself. As he slowly parsed the logic behind his brother’s theoretical schematics he began to understand more and more of the science behind it. While he understood the broad strokes to what Jamie had designed, it was only as he dissected it at the granular level that he truly comprehended his brother’s genius. Absolutely fascinated with the work he was doing, Jack’s mind took a while to finally stumble onto the greatest potential of the device: Space travel.

  It had occurred to him in a flash. He had been imagining futuristic express trains in the sky, autonomously riding the jet stream to distant destinations. Next he had imagined how the ability to hover effortlessly meant that they could even replace expensive satellites. While humans relied heavily on the devices, the sheer cost of placing a single pound of satellite into orbit cost nearly as much as a 2 bedroom house. Never mind the issues associated with these space-borne devices. Although geosynchronous satellites could be used for communication and entertainment, their orbital range of 37,000km meant that there was significant lag to anything they did. When a user requested data via a satellite network connection, the data had to travel more than thirty thousand kilometers to a band of distant satellites that orbit Earth like the rings of Saturn. Once there, the data query was processed, returned to an earthbound station, processed yet again, and finally the requested media was transmitted from earth to the satellite and back to the viewer. Though the signal travelled at a fantastic velocity, it had to go a whopping 148,000km before the user got a single byte of data; hence the laggy response of satellite based communications. But this was an inherent part of geosynchronous orbital mechanics.

  But with antigrav, they could simply hover a communications satellite in the upper troposphere. It would be well out of regular flight patterns, yet close enough to erase the lag factor associated with geosynchronous satellites, or the need to constantly hand off data as done with low-orbit satellites.

  It was here in his thinking that he realized that this device solved the greatest hurdle to space exploration. As anyone in the business would tell you, the hardest part about getting to the moon was the first sixty miles. As daunting as the task seemed, the vast amount of resources expended in lofting thousands of tons of vessel into space was mind boggling. Because it cost over $80,000 dollars for each pound of payload, space vehicles needed to be built extremely light. But therein lay the problem: the fabric of a ship in space had to be incredibly light, yet provide protection against extreme heat, extreme cold, radiation, and withstand the rigors of riding a rocket into orbit. In essence, a modern space craft needed to be made out of fantastically expensive materials, all due to the incredible costs associated with a mere 65 mile barrier known as Earth’s atmosphere.

  But the device Jack toiled on changed everything. With antigravity they were no longer bound to the weight issues of yesterday. So if they no longer had to concern themselves with super-light materials, space ships could be constructed out of much simpler compounds so long as they provided the essential protections against the ambient hazards of space. It occurred to him that they could theoretic
ally use materials as pedestrian as steel pipe. The only problem with weight was that it presented an increase in the vessel’s overall mass and would require slightly more energy to make course changes. But if it no longer required millions of gallons of hydrogen peroxide and oxidizer to get into space, then they could take as much fuel as they wanted.

  Sitting back for the first time in hours, Jack could not help but smile as he realized that the device he was building would easily reduce the cost of space travel to one twentieth of the current price tag; possibly even more. A trip to the International Space Station could wind up being little more expensive than a modern European vacation. While it pleased him to think that they could end many of the problems here on his own planet, it was the idea of space travel that truly excited him.

  To hell with Earth he thought with a grin on his face, I’m gonna go to the moon, bitches!

  Squinting to examine the progress of the fabber that chattered away on circuit boards, Jack wanted desperately to test them. Still laying down the sub-structure, the digital printer had a ways to go before it even began the laborious process of printing the next layer of components. Although the device was capable of running autonomously, the current design required a number of processor chips to be inserted into the feed. While his invention allowed him to print simple components like diodes, capacitors, and resistors, the more complicated silicon processors, with their microscopic circuitry, were still beyond the machine’s capability. He had been working on a 3D printer with the resolution to print chips, but with the cost of off-the-shelf chipsets it was simply more practical to have the fabber pause while he inserted EPROMS and control chips. The fabber would handle the physical connections, then fill the empty space around them with shaped components. It was a beautiful process that wasted no space; every bit of the internal volume was filled with components. The only downside was that there was no way to repair such a monolithic circuit, let alone disassemble the finished product.