Leaving Earth Vol. 1 (Leaving Earth Omnibus)

by Kaal Alexander Rosser

  To add to that, was the discovery that his autonomy wasn't quite as complete as he'd hoped. He was currently staring at a new staffing directive from his boss back in the USSMC Tech Centre. It seemed that although his staffing levels were within government guidelines regarding gender and ethnicity, the main office wanted to show some positive discrimination. To that end he was to be given the budget to increase his SciEng staff to the tune of two full staff and three PhD students to whom he would have to assign mentors. All five would be women and from varied ethnic backgrounds. All five would also be supplied or at least vetted by the VP.

  Grum crumpled the memo after the third reading and launched it with a fair amount of ferocity at the door just as Stewart, with perfect comic timing, walked in. The intra-compartmental ballistic missive bounced off Stewart's head and back on to the desk.

  'Trouble?'

  'Interference,' Grum growled, chucking the balled paper back to Stewart more gently. 'Read it.'

  Stewart read. Stewart grinned. Stewart frowned.

  Grum was still fuming as he spoke and he stalked over to the coffee machine in his office.

  'Five more on the team is fine. I don't care where anyone is on the spectra of sex, gender identity, orientation, skin tone, or even if they are small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, so long as they can do the job. What gets my goat is that they're going to be supplied to us and I've gotta fit them in somewhere. Then there's the fact that three of them will need mentors.'

  'Doesn't your research assistant start soon?'

  'Amy Mayfield, yes. Next week, but I can only farm a bit of admin work her way. Most of what she's going to be doing is organising the research we'll be conducting on the run up to go-live and afterwards. She's a real research assistant, taking a break between converting her MPhil to a PhD. She graduated from Dar Es Salaam University, Tanzania, with a first in Electro-Mechanical Engineering, which will help. Still leaves me holding the bag for administration. Unless you…'

  'No fear! You know my workload! Until we get the new scientists and engineers bedded in I'm trying to be both and getting it in the neck from the real contract engineers. That's actually what I came to see you about,' Stewart waved a hand in the direction of the coffee machine. 'You wouldn't have another mug going a-begging, would you?'

  Grum smiled. 'I would, sit down and talk.'

  'Thanks. I need to know when we're likely to get some of our core engineers here. We've got some good make-weights, but not the intellectual muscle we need to get this right.' Stewart accepted the coffee with a nod.

  'I know. These three should be turning up this week,' said Grum, handing over three file folders.

  'Cheers.' Stewart looked them over. 'That'll do nicely.'

  'I'm looking out for temporary apartments near Vegas, but it's a fair old commute. The way it's going we're going to have to build an apartment annex.'

  'Do we have the budget?'

  'If the boss is going to force five more staff on me, he will have to find the bloody budget.'

  'Fair enough. But do we really have to take on the extra staff? It's not like they'll actually make things better. The amount of extra work that the two staff could take on will be taken up by the amount of time the mentors will have to spend on the PhD students.'

  'I know this, you know this. I'll make the case back to him, but if he's determined to push this agenda I'll try and get something out of it.'

  'I'll let you get back to that, then. Thanks for the coffee, I'll go and get in contact with these,' Stewart said, waving the folders.

  'You do that. See you later.'

  'Yeah, later.'

  Chapter 8

  GRUM did not know how to even frame the question properly. Trying to define the research project to find a method of combining antimatter yields after storage was tricky. Especially as he had the strong suspicion that it was actually impossible.

  What could he do? He could give an order. Post-fact AM yield combination: make it so. But that was about as useful as a chocolate teapot. The teams would need some direction to go in or it would end up as one of those ballooning projects which costs an enormous amount in time and resources but produces nothing useful at the end.

  He could make a series of smaller projects which hared off in their own directions, but that, too, was wasteful of the resources he had at his command.

  No. The best thing was for him, as the Facility's Research Director, to recommend a course of research to himself, as AVP-in-charge. Thing was, he had no idea what that would be.

  The problem was quite simple: the production runs produced five-point-six-five milligrams of antimatter contained in magnetic "bottles". Disruption or alteration in the alignment of the fields would start an annihilation reaction. So, "opening" the bottle to shove some more antimatter in was risky in the extreme — and it felt wrong to Grum. It was not an elegant solution.

  In the few years prior to MITAMP, several projects at CERN had vastly improved collection and containment efficiencies — notably ELENA and GBAR — by a factor of nearly ten thousand over the earliest antiproton decelerator CERN had used. Grum had determined that a similar level of efficiency in the original production of the antimatter might be achieved if — and this was the key point — AM production was the only objective of the collider. It would require exclusive use of a multi-TeV accelerator, carefully selected materials, and a monster of a beam control, but… The maths said yes. So did MIT and USSMC, and thus was born MITAMP.

  At Nevada, Grum had even more control over the initial design of the whole assembly: accelerator, injection, collision, deceleration, collection and storage. According to all the reports it was giving rise to even greater efficiencies and an overall production rate more than fourteen times what MITAMP had managed. It was no mean feat to have got that far.

  But… It was not enough. One run could produce sufficient material to generate over five hundred gigajoules in a perfect annihilation. In a hypothetically perfect generator it would create around one hundred-and-forty megawatt-hours, or sixteen kilowatts continuously for a year. Those were reasonably decent numbers. The trouble was the cost. The cost of running the Nevada plant was in excess of two hundred and twenty five million dollars per year. If the site could produce twelve generators in that time, that would give a cost-per-kilowatt-hour north of two hundred and fifty dollars. Pretty expensive electricity generation.

  The only way that Grum could think of to reduce that a little was to combine yields. Of course, increasing production efficiency would do it, but that would probably take another five-year programme of research, even if it were possible at all. He was pretty sure that they were already running into the eighty-twenty rule.

  All of this was assuming that they had perfectly efficient AM-fuelled generators. Which they did not. According to the Facility's brief, it was not even their job to make generators.

  The knock at the door was immediately followed by it opening. Stewart walked in, glanced at the papers covering Grum's desk, and sat down.

  'Assuming we can't get this re-combination to work in the next twelve months, we're going to have to have something to show for it except a stockpile of five-and-a-half-ish milligram lumps of AM in bottles,' said Stew, without preamble.

  'I know, mate, but our remit is AM production,' said Grum.

  'What is planned for the AM, anyway?'

  'Last I heard was that there might be some explosive uses for Mining and Exploration, maybe.'

  'Prosaic in the extreme. Anything else?'

  'There's always power generation,' said Grum.

  'Is that on the roadmap?'

  Grum shook his head, but stopped and grinned at Stew. 'Of course it is! You and Steve Branch put it there. With timings and everything. We were just thinking power station sized installations which really will need the re-com tech but even with the current masses we could generate a useful amount of energy for specialised installations. The sorts of places where the cost is a secondary consideration to guaran
teed invariable output.'

  'Bloody hell, you're right! That'd be one way to beat the timescales!'

  'What say you, then? Shall we build the better mousetrap?'

  'But like you said, it's not in our remit, strictly speaking.'

  'No one else in the company is doing it, so what the hell. I won't be treading on anyone's toes, and like you said we need to have something more that just a stockpile to show for the year's expenses.'

  'We'll need to design the whole shebang.'

  'Good job you've just got all-bar-one of the new staff settled in, then, isn't it?'

  'Touché.'

  Chapter 9

  LAVANYA Patel, or Vann as she preferred, was a recent PhD graduate from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, specialising in particle beam engineering. She was the last full-time member of staff to join the facility — and she made Grum nervous.

  It was not that she had a fearsome intelligence on par with Grum's own. That was why she was here, after all, and something he definitely appreciated.

  Her manner towards him was respectfully forthright, in no way hiding her light under a bushel but being unafraid to ask questions. She held in her eyes not only the light of intelligence but, Grum read, a spark of dark humour. Again, that was not a problem. It would make her easy to work with and be around.

  Grum realised he was musing and not working. That was the problem. He found her attractive. Her personality and abilities came wrapped up as a whole that meant he was looking for ways to increase the time he spent with her. But the time he wanted to spend was not Boss-employee time, and that could break things. To make it worse, she seemed to respond to him in the same way.

  Inter-office relationships were always risky, but…

  Damn. He was supposedly a smart bloke. There had to be a solution.

  He started guiltily. Amy had turned round from the desk she had in his office with her head tilted a little to one side, showing a questioning expression.

  'Sorry, Amy. Miles away. What was it?' asked Grum.

  'I asked what's up?'

  'Oh, nothing. Just thinking. Did you need something?'

  'Not, really.' She waved her hand at the screen. 'These reports will be ready for you in a few minutes. Should I send them over when they are?'

  'Sure. One batch would be better.'

  'OK, boss.'

  'More coffee?' asked Grum, heading to the pot.

  'Yes, please.'

  There came a knock at his door just as he started to pour, and Stew walked in without waiting for a response.

  Grum shot a sidelong glance at Amy as she turned, just in time to catch the flush on her dark skin.

  Then again, he thought, there was another situation shaping up. It would not be as bad, though. Stew was not in Amy's management chain, nor would it represent a conflict of interests. It would only be a problem if things went south. No, not really a problem. They were all adults.

  In fact, the worst thing about that situation, right now, as far as Grum could see, was that Stew appeared completely oblivious.

  Grum thought that he might have to have a word in Stew's shell-like at some point.

  'What are you going to do about Vann?' For Stew, preamble was a thing which happened to other people. Grum thought he had caught his expression in time, but Stew's eyes crinkled at the edges which told him that he had not.

  'What's up with Vann?'

  'Oh, nothing, as such, but she isn't attached, right now… To a project.' Stew's tone conveyed nothing except polite enquiry.

  Bastard, Grum thought, he's going to play this for all it's worth. At least he isn't making it too obvious in front of Amy.

  'I mean, have you thought about where you want her? What position would be best, do you think?'

  Grum could only respond to the questions as if they had been innocently delivered. 'I take it you were thinking of the generator design project?'

  Stew rolled his eyes. 'Yes. With some direct input from you, it would probably work out well.'

  'You think so?' Well two can play that game. And he's spent more time with her… 'Not a bit young, perhaps?'

  'Well able for it, I'd say.' Stew's eyes widened just a touch as he realised what Grum was doing and the mocking gleam vanished from his eyes. 'Very interested in going that direction, too.'

  'It won't be seen amiss?'

  'I doubt it. I think it'd actually be quite popular.' A wisp of thoughtfulness entering Stew's voice.

  'Thank you for your thoughts, Stew. If you could deliver the news to Vann about her appointment to the generator project, that would also be appreciated. We'll talk again later.'

  'Right you are, boss,' said Stew and left.

  For a change, both Grum and Stew were sampling the local brew. They had decided to share an apartment while the complex was being built, and the Las Vegas commute was a thirsty one.

  They were on a corner table a little way from most of the rest of the customers.

  'So you think my dating Vann would be safe?' asked Grum.

  'Safe as these things ever are,' said Stew, diffidently. 'The staff like you, mate. And… I know Vann's only just joined the team, but she's been well received. Hasn't shown an interest in anyone else that I could tell.'

  'OK. That's good enough. I'll see where it leads, then.'

  'Good.'

  'You, though, Stew, would do well to pay Amy a bit more attention.'

  'Amy?' Stew was clearly surprised. 'That would be punching above my weight.'

  'Not as far as she's concerned, if I'm any judge.'

  'Really? Well, well. She's lovely, don't get me wrong. I just didn't think…'

  'Do you ever?'

  'Ha, bloody, ha. Really interested?'

  'Obvious as the sun, mate.'

  'I guess we both have things to think about, then.'

  'Let's finish the beers, first.'

  'Good shout.'

  In the end, Grum decided that the best way to handle the yield combination problem was to own it himself. He had precious little of his own science to do these days and everyone else was fully occupied with either running the facility or on the generator project.

  First things first, then. Test the assumptions. Actually, the first thing was to identify the assumptions, then test them. That was where Stew had been invaluable at MITAMP. Forcing Grum to explain his reasoning and levering out into the open any hidden assumptions. But Stew was busy, just like everyone else.

  So what assumptions was he making about the yield combination? They had identified one the other week, when they had decided to press forward with building generators. The assumption had been that it was necessary at all, which for some applications was not true. So, did he even need to work on this?

  Could all applications be covered by varying the size or number of generators? The answer was probably yes. Was it a good answer, though?

  What were the drawbacks to abandoning this line of research? They seem to have plateaued the efficiency gains from scaling to a larger facility, if any more could be wrung from that direction, it would most likely need the facility to be redesigned in its entirety. Bad plan.

  Would larger overall yield actually deliver better efficiency? Good question. It would be possibly more efficient to make one large generator than several small ones, there would doubtless be some loss in whatever system the generators were connected to in combination. So, yes, in generating terms there may be efficiency gains.

  Anything else? It would make a bigger bang… So if the mining guys were looking to blow apart asteroids or comets, they would need big lumps. Kind of an expensive way to go about things, though. He did not really want to go down the weaponry route. Yes, you could theoretically use the same bang to blow up buildings or people, but, again, it wasn't a particularly pleasant reason for continuing the research. He would rather give his attention to something else if that was all the reason there was.

  Rather than get bogged down in a potentially depressing ethical debate with himself, he
decided to look at the cost benefit scenarios for different types of application. Also what adjunct technologies would be necessary in addition to fulfil those application requirements?

  A fundamental problem in most of the scenarios was that power demand tended to be spiky, and the AM generators would have a constant output. There were two ways of dealing with that.

  Firstly, you could approach the problem the same way that renewable energy had — back in the day — solved a different but related problem. Renewables tended to produce power at times which did not match up well with peak demand. Storage had become the preferred — and most sensible — solution as battery technology caught up with generation. Residential, built-in, batteries could be charged from the grid or local micro-generation. That meant spikes in demand were handled locally by the battery banks while the various generating sources could charge as they were able.

  The other way to deal with the problem was overcapacity. Just build so much generation capacity that even some hypothetical peak demand could be handled at the minimum supply. Legacy non-renewable supply would turn whole power stations on or off in anticipation of demand. Overcapacity was used to do its own version of storage — which generally involved pumping megatonnes of water uphill for later release through a hydro-electric generator or twenty.

  Overcapacity was inefficient. Best avoided where possible. So, their AM generators would have to approach the same solution to spiky demand as renewables but for the opposite reason. Or the uses to which they were put would have to be those where a constant, unvarying, output was ideal.

  As Grum ran through the uses for AM generators, it became increasingly obvious that individual generators of the size that they could produce had limited applications. Similarly, he was thinking of more and more uses which might use smaller yields, as well as the combined output.

  The current design did not allow for different sizes of yield, and that would have to be thought about some more. For now, though — rather than concentrating on recombination — the next job should be working on combining generator output. And they had not yet even finished a prototype generator.