Fantasy & Science Fiction - JanFeb 2017

by Spilogale Inc.

  "I had just started MIT. I'd been homeschooled before that. When Mom and Dad thought I was ready for college, I knew that an 800 on the SAT wouldn't impress any of the schools I wanted to go to, so I took the Graduate Record Exam as well. That got their attention."

  Jerry paused to study the Go board, then snapped a white stone into place and continued, "I was thinking of majoring in math, but one of my physics professors suggested that I read your paper. It changed my life. As soon as I read it, I knew this was what I wanted to do. I really haven't done anything else since."

  This revelation felt so good that Harvey found the courage to mention something he rarely allowed himself to even think about. He said, "Around the time you graduated from MIT, my life began to fall apart. It's hard to concentrate on science when you've lost your job and are going through a divorce. It's not an emotion I can describe, except to say that it feels really bad and isn't like anything else I've experienced."

  Jerry said, "I didn't know anything about your personal life. I was just waiting for your next paper and designing experiments that would confirm your results. The more I thought about the implications, the more excited I got—but there was something missing, and without it, I knew none of my ideas were practical. I thought about getting in touch with you a few times but decided I should get my Ph.D. first. I did my dissertation on some stuff in high-energy physics that my major professor was working on, but it wasn't what I was really interested in. Physical Review Letters took the short version and the full paper went to the Journal , and somebody thought it was good enough for me to be offered a full professorship at Columbia. But to me, it was just a way of getting a degree. Then, almost by accident, I found out that you were giving a talk at the meeting in Ann Arbor and flew out to hear it."

  "You flew all that way just to listen to me. It's still hard for me to believe." Life is strange , Harvey thought. Am I really going to get a second chance?

  * * *

  The work went quickly. The theory was all there. The details fell into place. Some nights, after a few drinks, Harvey was in awe of his own brilliance. Then, just one day before the first actual test of the machine, he came to work feeling as if he had aged ten years.

  Jerry looked up. "You okay?"

  "We have to quit," Harvey said.

  Jerry stopped what he was doing but didn't get up. Harvey went over to him. It's strange , Harvey thought. I'm so much older than he is, and yet I feel like I'm the student and he's the professor. He looked down at the floor, pooled with shadows, and shook his head from side to side, which made him dizzy. Harvey clenched his jaw and forced himself to look Jerry in the eye. "We've got to stop. It's too dangerous."

  "No," Jerry said. "We're not going to stop. You're just tired—why don't you go back to the motel and get some rest?"

  "I don't need rest!" Harvey was surprised to find himself shouting. With an effort, he lowered his voice. He brought his left thumb and forefinger together to form a circle. "Here's our one-way screen." He moved the index finger of his right hand toward the circle. "Here's a molecule of water vapor. It starts to pass through. It can't back up. What happens?"

  "It goes on through," Jerry said.

  "Maybe. But think about it. We have an oxygen atom, with two hydrogen atoms coming off it at that famous 104-degree angle. That molecule of water is vibrating like a tuning fork. So, as it passes through the one-way screen, one of the atoms in the molecule is trying to go back. It can't, because the screen only allows atoms to pass through in one direction."

  Jerry said, "So it gets pulled through to the other side."

  "What if it doesn't? What if the one-way screen cuts the hydrogen-oxygen bond? What if molecular oxygen and hydrogen come out the other side?"

  "Then we have another interesting application," Jerry said.

  "Then we have an explosion!" Harvey's voice broke and his shout ended in a squeak.

  "How likely is this?"

  "Not very," Harvey admitted. "But we can't risk it. It's not safe. We've got to turn this over to someone who can take better precautions than we can."

  Jerry said, "Turn it over to who? The government? Big Oil? I trust us more than I trust them. Listen to me, Harvey. I'm taking your concerns seriously. Here's what we'll do. We'll make the field as small as possible and turn it on for just a fraction of a second. If there is an explosion, it will only be like a firecracker. Then we'll know."

  Harvey found his voice rising again. "What if that isn't all? The atomic nucleus is vibrating. Protons and neutrons have orbitals, you know. What if we get nuclear fission?"

  "Harvey, you're a little drunk, and you're worrying about things that are so unlikely they aren't worth considering."

  Appearing to change the subject, Harvey asked, "Where is everybody?"

  "Sam couldn't come in today."

  "That's not what I mean and you know it. Where is everybody? Why haven't we found life anywhere except on Earth? I'll tell you why not. Maybe there is some experiment, maybe it's an experiment like this one, maybe it's this experiment—" Harvey had to stop to catch his breath. "Maybe the reason there aren't any extraterrestrials is that every sentient race discovers science, and in the next microsecond, on a cosmic scale, conducts an experiment that wipes it out. Maybe this is that experiment."

  "Oh," said Jerry. "That. Harvey, I want you to sit down." Jerry took Harvey by the arm and led him to one of the tall stools. "They worried about that at Los Alamos. They wondered if the atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere and destroy all life on Earth. They went ahead with the test anyway."

  "That was different. We were fighting Hitler."

  "That was human nature. Harvey, suppose you're right. I don't think you are, but suppose you are. Suppose we don't do this experiment. Suppose we burn your papers and never tell anybody. Don't you think somebody else is going to make the same discovery? Don't you think somebody is going to carry out this experiment, sooner or later?"

  Exhaustion washed over Harvey. The energy he had felt earlier that day was wearing off. He put his head down on his hands.

  "We are going to do this, Harvey. This is your big discovery, and we're going to test it right now. While you've been talking, I've been thinking. You know what a ball-bearing switch is?" Harvey lifted his head off his hands. "It's a simple idea," Jerry continued. "A ball bearing rolls down a trough and passes between two electrical wires, making a connection, closing a circuit. As soon as it rolls past the wires, it breaks the circuit. Like this. Watch."

  Jerry was excited now. He began gathering up equipment. "I was planning to do this tomorrow, but we're not going to wait. We'll do it now. Everything is ready. You aren't the only one who has worried about an explosion. I've replaced the original loop of wire with a loop less than a centimeter in diameter. Now, where's something we can use for the trough?" Jerry glanced around and pulled a glass tube from a wooden rack full of glass vessels. He lit a Bunsen burner and heated a thin metal rod. When the metal glowed bright orange, he used the rod to poke a hole all the way through both sides of the glass tube. Then he took two wires, shaved off the insulation, and put them through the holes. He held the ball bearing at the top of the tube.

  The wires led to the small device that Sam had so cunningly crafted. The centimeter loop that would hold the field was connected to the other side of the generator. "No guts, no glory," Jerry said.

  Harvey felt paralyzed. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. He stared as Jerry dropped the ball bearing. There was a faint whirr as it spun down the glass tube. In an instant, the electrical connection was made and broken. Nothing happened.

  "It didn't work." In spite of his fear, Harvey was disappointed.

  "We don't know that," Jerry said. "What we do know is that you were worried unnecessarily. There was no explosion, no mushroom cloud. Not even a firecracker." He pulled the two wires out of the sides of the glass tube and twisted them together. "Listen!"

  There was a tiny whistling noise. Harvey stared at the loop
. He held his hand in front of it and felt a cool draft as the air in the room rushed through it—one way.

  * * *

  NEITHER HARVEY nor Jerry realized it at the time, but they would discover that the one-way screen had not stopped working when the rolling ball bearing broke the circuit. It took just as much power to turn the screen off as it took to turn it on.

  The first person they showed the one-way device to after Sam was a lawyer named Micah Holstein. He was in his early thirties, degree from Harvard Law, and he had agreed to give Harvey and Jerry an hour of his time.

  Jerry had discovered Micah through a network of friends. He put the word out that he was looking for an honest lawyer, and while most of the responses were horselaughs, Micah's name came up more than once. He was the youngest full partner in a well-respected Wall Street law firm, and he managed the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations Charitable Trust. People who had made their fortune and who wanted to give something back came to Micah.

  He seldom did pro bono work because he was convinced it was not a good allotment of resources. Bust one crooked politician and you may help one city for one year. Change the system and you may help all the cities for a lifetime. But he agreed to hear what Jerry had to say.

  From Jerry's point of view, Micah was ideal. By all accounts, Micah was honest, and the potential for corruption that lay in Harvey's discovery was almost infinite. Micah was not a patent lawyer—he would farm that work out to an associate. Jerry wanted Micah to handle the money, and the many problems that always come with large sums of money.

  Micah Holstein had a round, bland face and a pleasant smile that gave no hint of what he was thinking. He wore a three-piece suit that was expensive but not flashy, and a deep maroon bow tie. Jerry's reputation as one of MIT's three youngest graduates was one reason why Micah had agreed to this meeting. Another was the fact that they had two or three mutual friends whose opinion Micah valued. When Jerry picked him up outside his Wall Street office building to drive him to the lab in Jersey, Jerry had said, "I'll fight you for that bow tie." Micah nodded and accepted the compliment.

  The lab was an untidy assembly of machines, none of which Micah recognized. Fat black electrical cables snaked over the floor. It looked nothing at all like the labs in movies or on television. Nobody wore a white lab coat. Micah shook hands with Harvey, whose gray hair was combed over his bald spot. Harvey looked very tired. Jerry introduced Micah to Sam Gleason, who had a grip that was painful and who said not a word. With an outstretched arm, Jerry indicated a metal ring mounted on a small wheeled table. The lower shelf of the table was filled with machinery. Wires of various sizes and colors stuck out all over it, like a work of modern art. Attached to the top of one leg of the table was a heavy switch.

  Harvey threw the switch. There was a blast of cool air from the metal ring and Harvey's worried expression was replaced by a wide grin. Jerry was grinning, too. Sam, on the other hand, looked as if he had been called away from important work and wanted to get back to it.

  The inside of the metal ring shimmered— Flash Gordon calling Ming the Merciless , Micah thought. The cool breeze was welcome in the hot warehouse.

  "A fan with no moving parts," said Micah. Jerry and Harvey were still grinning. "I can see the potential, but…" He stopped. Clearly he was missing something. "What?" Micah's eyes narrowed as he tried to puzzle out the mystery.

  "This," said Jerry, "is going to put every oil company on the planet out of business. We want your help to do the most good and the least harm."

  Micah had been hearing all his life about scientific discoveries that would put the oil companies out of business. Nothing ever came of them. People had been driving cars with internal-combustion engines for a hundred years and in Micah's opinion would still be driving cars with internal-combustion engines for the next hundred. The magic pill that would turn water into fuel, the flying car powered by fusion, the Douglas-Martin sun-power screens—all were science fiction. There were electric cars, of course, but so expensive only the rich could afford them. Micah was deeply suspicious of this new discovery and to his natural skepticism was added a determination not to be fooled by a clever swindle.

  "How much power does it use?" he asked.

  "Quite a lot to get started," said Harvey. "But once it's started, almost no power at all. The field is extremely stable. It takes the same application of power, in reverse, to turn it off."

  "Why doesn't that violate the laws of thermodynamics?" Micah didn't actually know the laws of thermodynamics, but he knew they were something physics types often spoke of in the witness box, to show that a perpetual motion machine couldn't work.

  "The molecules in the air are already in perpetual motion," Harvey explained. "The energy for that motion comes from the heat of the Sun. This is just a uniquely efficient way of harvesting that energy. The energy we take out makes the air a little cooler. If we use this in industry worldwide, maybe it will offset global warming, in addition to the advantages of not using oil. Think of it as a windmill that provides its own wind."

  The blast of air was still blowing from the metal ring.

  "Unplug it," Micah said.

  "Sure," said Harvey, and pulled several wires out of the base of the metal ring. The air continued to flow.

  Jerry said, "That doesn't prove anything, of course. If this were a hoax, there are a dozen ways we could power the machine that you couldn't discover. We're asking for your valuable time, with payment deferred. You tell us what you need to be convinced. If you want a demonstration on your home ground, tell us where and when. We'll supply as much power as you can handle. We can power an automobile. If we had a big enough generator, we could power a city. We'll turn the machine on for you and go away. It will keep running until we come back and turn it off. Power isn't the only thing this is good for, but it's the application that will bring us the working capital we need."

  Micah said, "Let me see if I understand. The molecules in the air are constantly in motion, up and down, left and right, every which-a-way. Your field, the one you've put across this ring, allows molecules to pass through, but only in one direction. So the wind coming out of the ring is just all the molecules on the other side that happen to be moving this way."

  "Right," said Jerry. "Without the field, these same molecules would still be coming out of the ring, but they'd be balanced by an equal number of molecules going into the ring, so there would be no net flow of air. But now the molecules that try to go into the ring can't get through. They bounce back, so all the air flows in one direction. That's all there is to it."

  "What would happen if I put my hand through the ring?"

  For the first time, Sam spoke. "I wouldn't do that if I were you." Micah looked at Sam, but he had nothing more to say on the subject.

  Jerry said, "Every molecule in your body is moving back and forth all the time. Your blood is flowing through your veins and arteries. My hunch is, if you stuck your hand into that thing, it would fall off."

  "So it's a weapon," said Micah.

  "Everything is a weapon," said Jerry. "It can also slice salami."

  "Have you actually tried?"

  "I shouldn't tell you this. We could get into a lot of trouble. We put a cockroach through."

  "A cockroach!"

  "You laugh, but the laws against unauthorized animal experiments are very strict. If I stomp on a cockroach, that's perfectly legal. Nobody objects except the cockroach. But if I want to experiment on a cockroach, I have to fill out more than a dozen forms and allow federal inspectors into the lab to make sure that no cockroach has been needlessly harmed. It's the law."

  "They say that laws aren't for lawyers," Micah said, "but I've got some friends in federal prison who can testify that isn't true. So I didn't hear anything about a cockroach. What happened?"

  "I dropped it in one side, and out the other side came a fine black powder," Jerry said.

  "So this is a weapon," Micah said.

  "And a water purifier—it kills pa
rasites, even microscopic ones," Jerry said.

  "I think I need to sit down," Micah said.

  "I need a drink," Harvey said.

  "Does anybody mind if I get back to work?" asked Sam.

  * * *

  Summer was almost over and Harvey dreaded the necessity of going back to his old job of teaching large freshman sections and grading papers. Jerry paid all their expenses. As a full professor at Columbia, Jerry earned a good salary for nine months of teaching and research, with summers off to pursue his research as he pleased. Even so, he had to borrow money from his dad. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was still somewhere in the indefinite future. Now there were bills to pay. Harvey's nine-month salary (with no benefits) depended on him showing up for work the day after Labor Day.

  Harvey could almost smell the bourbon hidden away in the desk drawer. He set aside the legal pad filled with equations and slid down from the tall lab chair. Jerry was sitting at the old desk, tinkering with a penknife, some wires, and a screwdriver. With a mixture of shame and bravado, Harvey pulled open a drawer, took out the bottle of bourbon, and poured himself a drink.

  "How long before the hit men from Big Oil come after us?" Harvey asked.

  "I read that story, too," said Jerry. "Not going to happen. If we went public, announced your discovery to the press, and then gave the oil company executives six months to think about it, the idea of a hit man might cross somebody's mind. As it is, before we announce anything, we're going to have the patents locked up tight. As soon as the patents are filed—and that's what is taking so long—killing us wouldn't do any good. It might make some Big Oil man feel better—and make no mistake about it, we are going to be called communists, anarchists, liberals, and every other dirty name in the book—but in practical terms, we get to enjoy our ill-gotten gains."