The tension gripping the professor’s cheeks melted. “Thank you…I was counting on your understanding. I don’t know…” He stopped speaking, and then with his eyebrows reaching for his hairline, he said, “I’m ready. Let’s do this!”
Dr. Breaux headed toward the Q. The bulk of the apparatus was rectangular shaped, with one end morphing into a tube resembling the barrel of an alien cannon. Opposite of the tube side, a small desk with two computers operated as the control center.
Bridget followed behind and watched as he called the two computer screens to life.
“Okay, so the computer on the left is tied into the electrical grid. It takes a lot of power for the entanglement experiments. To use Q for transporting, it takes even more. So, I had to hack into the regional power grid and divert electricity to our substation,” Breaux said. “Do you remember a couple of months ago when we had that bad rain and Lakefront, the French Quarter, and other areas flooded because of the water pumps in the pumping stations didn’t work?”
“Sure, the mayor took a lot of heat over that.”
“Well, it wasn’t Mitch Edwards’ fault. He blamed the Sewerage and Water Board, and they blamed the power company. Those pumping stations didn’t have power because of me.”
“Why did you do that?” Bridget asked.
“The program is designed to put a load on electrical substations with excess capacity. Most of those substations include the pumps. Unfortunately, there was a glitch in the program that shifted loads across the power grid, cutting off power to a good number of pumps. The bad part of it all, I didn’t know how to un-do the error. It took me a couple of days to find the problem and fix it. By that time, the power company found ways to bypass my interference and set the grid straight.”
“It’s a good thing it hasn’t rained in two weeks. A lot of people flooded during that storm.”
“Bridget, I’ve beat myself up over it ever since. At this point, all I can do is say I’m sorry in my heart and say a prayer for forgiveness. But I’ve come this far, and I intend to see it to the end. The transportation process will take less than a minute. Interruption of services on the power grid will be minimal.”
“The computer on the left is flashing START. All I have to do is click on that icon, and it’ll redirect the power?” Bridget asked.
“Correct. Then, the computer on the right, you’ll have three different prompts that will begin and complete the transporting process.”
“Where will you be transported to?”
“Ah, yes,” Breaux said and nodded. “I considered testing distance for the first experiment but decided not to push my luck. I set the machine to move me backward one millimeter. So, it won’t appear as if I’ve moved at all.”
“You said there were three prompts. What should I expect at each?”
“After engaging the first, Q will send a positronic beam that will measure and record the spin direction of every particle in my body. The second will change the organic components in my body into energy. The third takes the recorded information of my cells, with the patch I put in that will convert my cancer cells to normal cells, and reassemble me back together good as new.”
Bridget closed her left eye, and her lips scrunched together like she had eaten something sour. “You make it sound so simple, but I know if you really broke it down it would sound dangerous.”
“You’re right. I did leave the worst part out.”
“The worst part? You mean how every cell in your body might cook like fried chicken?”
“No, the part where I have to take off my clothes before we do this.”
“I’ve got to see your skinny, white ass naked? I’ll pass.”
“Where I’ll be standing, Q will block your view from the waist down. You’re safe.”
“Okay, I’m back in.” Bridget sighed, and her shoulders slumped. “Dr. Breaux, I don’t mean to be making light of the situation, but I do that when I’m nervous. Seriously, what if your body catches on fire or Q turns you into a heaping mass of organic material? I’ll have to call the police, and they’ll blame me for your murder.”
“I’ve thought about that. I’ve set up an email to send an hour from now where I explain that I set all of this up on my own and take sole responsibility. I’ll delete that email if all goes well. If the worst happens, you can tell the authorities I called you right before the experiment, and you came to check on me. The phone records will prove that’s true. If I die, you can call the police and simply say you found me dead.”
“Since you are risking your life, it does seem like you’ve thought this through,” Bridget said, knowing arguing another point wouldn’t change the professor’s mind. With a deep breath and setting her shoulder blades straight, she said, “Okay, I’m ready.”
Breaux’s eyes widened in excitement. “Thank you. I’ve made my peace with God, and there’s no reason to continue the suspense.” He stepped over to the computer on the left side and set the program running. Without saying another word, he bolted over near Q’s barrel and began undressing.
Bridget hovered behind the two computers and watched the hack divert electricity between substations. As each sequence completed, the electrical hum from the breakers outside increased.
Naked, Breaux took his spot in front of Q.
It pained Bridget to look at him. Clothing had hidden the emaciation of his body as cancer robbed nutrients from muscle to feed its voracious appetite. The sad sight hardened her resolve to carry through. If the experiment killed the professor, she would consider it an act of mercy and not murder.
The breakers outside screamed with overload. The power hack program registered complete.
“It’s ready, Dr. Breaux,” Bridget hollered over the noise.
His chest swole with a deep breath of fresh air. “Begin positron mapping.”
The sequence started, Q woke like a ferocious animal, deeply growling, and threatening anyone in its path.
Dr. Breaux seemed to freeze in time. Unable to move and oblivious to anything around him.
Bridget’s insides shook; feeling the energy of the powerful machine in her bones. If she could have moved her legs, she might have run.
The computer screen showed the first sequence complete.
With her heart in her throat, Bridget started the second sequence.
Q’s cry shifted to a frequency so low the floor shook.
Dr. Breux’s body faded as if it had turned into air.
The noise in the lab was such that Bridget didn’t hear herself as she screamed. Waves of energy surged throughout the room as if she experienced the power of elemental creation.
The second sequence had completed.
She quickly started the third sequence, damning all fear of the abominable machine.
Seconds ticked away like hours. At the crescendo of chaos, right when Bridget worried she’d breached the wall of sanity, Q’s roar morphed into a soft moan.
At this point, she realized her eyes were tightly shut. She slowly opened them and saw the power hack had reversed its sequence.
Bridget looked up in time to see Dr. Breaux standing as he was in the beginning, right before he collapsed to the floor.
“Dr. Breaux!” Bounding around the desk, she hurried over to his unmoving body.
Breaux’s eyes blinked as Bridget knelt by his side. “Dr. Breaux? Can you hear me?” She grabbed his hand and patted it. “Dr. Breaux?
His head turned toward her. He stopped blinking and focused on her face.
“Dr. Breaux? Are you okay?”
Opening his mouth, moving the stiffness out of his lips, he said, “Bridget, I’ve been on the most amazing journey.”
Chapter 2
“Pterodactyls? Are you nuts?” Mark Chaney, the air traffic controller, yelled in disbelief. His eyes wide and bottom teeth framed in dark tobacco.
Ritchie Lemoine dashed over to the radio and grabbed the handset. “Delta two-thirty-six, radar just picked up unknowns at your altitude. Any visual
s?”
*
“Negative, control,” Captain Wesselman said. “Southeast skies are clear.”
“Good. Bring up the bird and continue to twenty thousand. How’s the fuel?” Ritchie asked.
“Fuel’s not a concern for a few hours,” Wesselman said.
“Circle and await further instructions,” Ritchie said.
“Roger, over and out.” Wesselman adjusted the mic on his headset when a sudden movement in his left peripheral stopped him. What was that? Whatever it was, it was gone now.
He turned to Hall. “You inform the passengers. I don’t need the distraction.”
Without hesitation, Hall picked up the mic and pressed the button labeled cabin on the control panel. “Ladies and gentlemen: this is your First Officer, Jim Hall. The folks at MSY had a change of plans for us. So if you’re wondering why we stopped descending and have leveled out, you’ll be pleased to know it has nothing to do with the plane’s mechanics. I’m sure MSY will resolve the problem they are experiencing as soon as they can. In the meantime, the Captain will bring us up to twenty thousand feet, and we’ll circle until permitted to land. The fasten seatbelt sign will stay on until we touchdown. Thank you for your patience and understanding. And remember when it comes to flying, Delta is ready when you are.”
Hall looked over at Wesselman. “How was that?”
Wesselman smirked. “Textbook, son.”
Hall’s chest swole as a prideful smile curved over his lips. “Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t get too cocky. Textbook can get you killed. You have to trust your intuition as much as your training. There will be times in your piloting career where you’ll have to veer from protocol to save your jet.”
“How will I know when it’s time to abandon protocol?” Hall asked.
“Well, you won’t know when to avoid protocol. You’ll only know after you violate it if you’ve made the right call or not.” Wesselman let the comment hang in the air without any further elaboration. A pilot had to learn when to trust his intuition, and, there were no guarantees in life.
Hall stared blankly at the cockpit window. His face slowly lost color.
*
“I don’t care if Delta is ready to fly when I am. I want Delta to land when it’s supposed to,” a portly man, who had seen the brighter sides of youth years ago, announced to no one in particular. From the beginning of the flight, he had mouthed an unlit cigar, rolling the turd-like object from side to side in his mouth.
Kathy Stevens sat securely in her jump seat, doing her best to ignore the obnoxious passenger’s random comments. From the time he had stepped on the plane, he acted as if he were the only person in the cabin. About every five minutes, he had made a rhetorical statement loud enough for half of those riding in coach to hear.
As if that quirk wasn’t bad enough, he took the liberty to un-jail the confinement of his sweaty toes and had removed his shoes. The funky smell hovered in the air like a thick fog. Thus, earning him a special name in her mind, Stinky. She so wished she could have let him have it for being so rude. Instead, she forced a fake smile and thought about that extra week of vacation she’d be getting in a few months when she reached her tenth anniversary as a flight attendant for Delta.
At least she wasn’t held hostage like the bearded young man sitting to Stinky’s right, by the window. The young man leaned at a forty-five-degree angle away from him for the duration of the trip. Stinky had lifted the armrest between them. His fat thighs and bloated gut encroached the young man’s personal space to the point of physical contact.
Snap-snap. Stinky had clicked his fingers together and said, “Hey, you.”
She resisted the urge to look Stinky’s way in the hope he was speaking to someone else.
Snapping his fingers again, Stinky called out, “Stewardess.”
Kathy darted her gaze sideways through narrow eyelids. No one called flight attendants stewardesses anymore. Would he have called a male flight attendant stewardess? Strike three for Stinky in Kathy’s book. “Can I help you, sir?” She realized her tone was a little less than pleasant and hoped Stinky was smart enough to get the veiled message.
“Yeah,” Stinky said and removed the cigar from his mouth with his left hand and held the wet end toward the ceiling. “Am I going to make my connection?”
You might as well have asked me for the winning lottery numbers. Maintaining her professionalism, she said, “I don’t have that information, sir. What time does your departing flight leave?”
“It leaves forty-five minutes from now.”
“Sir, even if we didn’t have a landing delay, there would be no way for me to assure you would make your connecting flight. You should always plan at least for a two-hour layover between flights.”
“I paid big bucks for a ticket that had the times of arrival and departure plainly printed on them. If the airlines kept their schedule, there wouldn’t be any problems making my connection.”
“Sir, I assure you all the airlines do their best to keep the planes running on time. Delays cost the airlines money as well as displeasing their customers,” Kathy said, thinking the man had the reasoning ability of an eight-year-old.
“How’s about a shot of whiskey then when we level out? Put it on the Captain’s tab for—”
BAM!
The Boeing 737 jolted, slinging the passengers forward, and Kathy backward—ramming the back of her head into the partition. People screamed, children and babies cried, and the jet’s right wing dipped.
*
“Flameout right engine!” Jim Hall yelled from the co-pilot’s seat.
“Son-of-a-gun! We’ve hit something! Get that engine restarted, pilot!” Wesselman commanded, keeping a tight grip on the control wheel with his left hand while his right adjusted the throttle. “Come on, baby. Hang in there. You can do this,” he said in a low voice.
The situation was dire, but it was no time to panic. This is where all those countless hours of training paid off. A pilot never stops piloting the plane—no matter what! At least they had only lost one engine. Limping into an emergency landing was a walk in the park compared to losing both engines.
Wesselman watched his altitude indicator as he smoothly lifted the right wing out of the roll and trimmed the rudder, leveling the jet again.
“The engine’s not responding, sir. We’re losing fuel,” Hall said, he heaved air in and out like he had run a marathon.
“Shutting fuel off right engine now,” Wesselman said as he flipped a switch on the panel. “Get back on the radio and explain the situation to MSY. Tell them we already have a route plotted for Lakefront and to get us in over there pronto!”
*
“AHH! It’s the monster from Twilight Zone on the wing!” Stinky yelled as he unsuccessfully tried to stand, his seatbelt holding him firmly in place.
“Sir! Calm down. You’re scaring the other passengers,” Kathy yelled as another round of screams followed Stinky’s outburst. She had no idea what he was talking about, as the passenger obscured her view of the right wing.
“That’s not a monster. That’s a pterosaur,” the young man next to Stinky said. “See the head and the wing? The head’s triangular shaped at the top, and its bill is long and flat. There’re about ninety conical shaped teeth that are larger near the jaw and get smaller at the front of its beak. Most people erroneously refer to any pterosaur as a Pterodactyl. Pterodactyl, from the Greek, means winged-finger.”
“We’re all about to die here, and you wanna give me a lecture on dinosaurs? Hey Einstein, how’s about you put a lid on it?” Stinky said, somehow managing to keep the cigar in his mouth.
“How did you know my name?” the young man asked.
“What? Your name really is Einstein?” Stinky said.
“Dave Einstein. I’m a student at Tulane University,” Dave said. “Oh, and pterosaurs aren’t dinosaurs. They’re reptiles. They were the only flying reptiles known to exist.”
The plane had leveled, and
the passengers silently caught their breath when the Captain’s voice came over the radio:
“Ladies and Gentleman: this is Captain Wesselman. I apologize for the rough ride. We’ve unfortunately struck some birds or another foreign object with our right engine. The engine is no longer operational, but that is no cause for alarm. We can fly safely with one engine with little to no additional risk on landing. MSY has cleared us to set down on the Lakefront airport in fifteen minutes. Please remain seated and calm until touchdown. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience.”
The passengers in the cabin had quieted for the most part, with only a wail of an infant pricking nerves already set on edge.
Kathy removed the cabin mic from its perch, but before she followed protocol, Stinky said:
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
Rolling her eyes and wanting to curse him in three different languages, she said, “No, I’m sorry, sir. It’s not safe for you to leave your seat.”
“But I really need to go.”
“No, you can’t do that.”
“Well then, can you get me one of those little bottles of whiskey? I don’t need ice or anything. I’ll drink it straight.”
With possible death only a few minutes away, Kathy ignored the buffoon, keyed the mic, and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen: Even though the captain doesn’t expect any problems upon landing, we must take every precaution for our safety. At this time, please check again for any loose objects and secure them underneath your seats.
“A life jacket is in the pocket under your seat cushion. Pull the jacket out and place it over your head. Clip on the waistband and pull it tight. Please do not inflate it while you are still inside the aircraft. An evacuation slide and life raft are at each door. The crew will direct you to your door.
“Before we land, I will tell you to assume the brace position. You will lower your heads to your knees and keep your legs tucked straight and un-crossed. We’re trying to avoid broken bones, so you must be sure to assume the brace position. I’ll tell everyone to do this when the time is right.”
One Dinosaur One Bullet Page 9
