Disc

by Laurence E. Dahners

  The chancellor frowned with a sudden thought, “That reminds me, where is the saucer right now? We should put it on display.”

  Tiona cracked a grin, “In the garage.”

  Carver blinked, “Garage?” He looked at Eisner, “The Physics department has a garage?”

  Eisner cleared his throat, “I believe that would be the garage at Ms. Gettnor’s parents’ home in Raleigh.”

  “What’s it doing there?! University property shouldn’t be kept in someone’s home!” He turned to Tiona, “That’s just irresponsible! You need to get it back here ASAP!”

  The man in the suit barked a laugh.

  The chancellor turned on him and said, “And who are you?!”

  The man stood and extended his hand to Eisner first, “General James Cooper. Here at the behest of President Miles to represent the interests of the United States in these matters.”

  After shaking Eisner’s hand he turned and shook the chancellor’s.

  The chancellor blinked, “The interests of the United States?” He turned to Eisner, “Was this funded by DARPA? I thought you were funded by the NSF?”

  “NSF funds my research on graphene superconductors. The thrusters are unrelated to superconduction. They represent unfunded research.”

  “Unfunded! Where did you get the money to build that saucer?! It had to be very expensive!”

  “Ms. Gettnor’s father built it. That’s why it’s in his garage. Perhaps I could…”

  Eisner had been about to suggest that he and the chancellor retire somewhere where he could bring Carver up to speed about the whole thing, but Carver interrupted. “You let someone build an important University project using our intellectual property in their garage?!”

  Eisner felt a headache building and rubbed his forehead. “Chancellor, I think we should go somewhere for a talk. You should let me explain some unusual things about this intellectual property.”

  Carver narrowed his eyes at Eisner for a moment, then held up a finger for a pause, “Okay, but first,” he turned to the general, “since it wasn’t funded by the government, why are you interested in this IP, General Cooper?”

  Cooper smiled, “It has enormous potential for weaponization Chancellor.” He proceeded to succinctly describe a few ways it might be used. “The president has tasked me, not with suppressing something which has such tremendous potential for good, but with minimizing the dangers.”

  Carver, whose eyes had widened at the recitation of the technology’s threats, swallowed and said, “How do you plan to do that?”

  “Well, I’ve been talking to Ms. Gettnor here to arrange a meeting. If it’s okay with Dr. Eisner, we’ll meet at Dr. Gettnor’s house this afternoon at two.”

  Indignant, the chancellor said, “You’ll meet here at the University! I’ll have someone from our legal office attend the meeting to represent the University’s interests.” He frowned, “Why would all of you go to Raleigh…” he paused and frowned at Tiona. “Your father has a doctorate?” At her nod, he continued, “Why are all of you going to Raleigh to meet at her father’s house?”

  General Cooper said, “Dr. Gettnor does not do well in social situations. It’ll be much easier for him if we meet on familiar ground at his home.”

  The chancellor blinked a couple of times, then gave Eisner a confused look, “why is her father part of this meeting? Just because he built the saucer?”

  Eisner sighed, realizing that Carver was thinking of Tiona’s father as some kind of garage handyman. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about Chancellor. Dr. Gettnor made the largest contribution to this technology, recognizing the importance of the thrust effect and working out how to make use of it.”

  Apparently not paying attention, the chancellor brushed this off, saying, “Yes, yes, I understand that Dr. Gettnor built the first saucer in his garage. But we’re beyond that stage now. We’re ready for careful scientific study and proper development of the technology. Any meetings will be held here at the University with our counsel in attendance and if Dr. Gettnor doesn’t want to attend, that’s up to him.”

  Tiona lifted an eyebrow during this outburst. As the chancellor finished, she stood up, gave Eisner and General Cooper sunny smiles, and said, “Well, that’s enough for me. I’ll be heading back to Raleigh. I’ll see you gentlemen there if you decide to come.”

  Stunned, Carver said, “Wait just a damned a minute! If you blithely walk out of here, ignoring my directions, I’ll see you drummed out of your degree program!”

  Tiona paused, her hand on the doorknob, smiled at the chancellor and said, “I’m afraid, Chancellor, you’ve mistaken me for someone who needs another degree.” She opened the door and walked out.

  The chancellor turned to Eisner and said, “What the hell?!”

  “One of the many things you should have let me explain to you,” Eisner said letting exasperation creep into his voice.

  “What?!”

  “Dr. Gettnor is the inventor of those new hydrogen boron-fusion plants. He was wealthy before that, but now he’s a multibillionaire. His daughter wasn’t getting her degree as a way to earn money. She was doing it to broaden her research skills. She can do research in her dad’s basement if she wants. From some of the things she’s said to me, it seems that the lab he has down there puts any of the labs we have here at UNC to shame.”

  The chancellor looked stunned, but tried to rally. He turned to Cooper, “Well, General, it looks like you only need to deal with Dr. Eisner here. The Gettnors are out of the picture and the University will be developing this technology by itself.”

  Cooper looked at Eisner, “Will you be able to develop it without them Dr. Eisner?”

  Eisner shrugged, “Maybe.”

  Wide-eyed, the chancellor said, “What do you mean?! You patented it! Why wouldn’t you be able to develop it?”

  Trying not to sound exasperated, Eisner said, “Chancellor Carver, like many major inventions, this one took a lot of serendipity. The serendipity happened while Ms. Gettnor was working on my project. She, however, didn’t recognize the importance of the phenomenon she had witnessed, her father did. They developed the working prototype. University counsel patented the technology using broad language. This is typical, a patent doesn’t explain exactly how to do something. That would give away secrets to your competitors. It claims the right to sell an invention that is manufactured in such and such a way. The issue to which General Cooper refers is the fact that, although I broadly understand the principles of this invention, I don’t know the specifics. From my understanding of those specifics, only a certain formula for the membrane works, and only with certain electrical waveforms.” Seeing a confused look on Carver’s face, Eisner tried an analogy a music professor might grasp, “Supposing I gave a carpenter one look at a Stradivarius from about 5 feet away. Then I handed him some maple, some spruce, some sheep intestine, and told him to make one.” Eisner shrugged, “I’m not even sure he’d make something that produced any sound.”

  The chancellor swallowed, “But… surely… they’ll want to tell us how to do it so that we can develop it. They’ll want the royalties…”

  Eisner shrugged again, “Dr. Gettnor is an outside independent inventor. The contract the University signed with him gives him rights to produce and sell thrusters as long as he pays the University their share of the royalties on the patent.” Eisner tilted his head as he wondered whether the chancellor was following, “Whereas, the University may not be able to build and sell thrusters because we may not be able to work out the exact recipes to make the tech work.”

  The chancellor looked horrified. “What are we going to do?”

  Eisner snorted, “I suggest that the general and I go to the Gettnors’ house in Raleigh for the meeting she offered. Ideally, you won’t get involved, though I would suggest you offer an apology sometime soon.”

  The chancellor drew himself up, “I have nothing to apologize for!”

  ***

  As she
descended the stairs to her father’s basement lab, Tiona worried about how her dad would handle the news of their possible meeting with Dr. Eisner and General Cooper. “Hey Dad,” she said, opening the door at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Hi Tiona,” he said, glancing quickly back at her, then returning to his screens. Since this was typical behavior for him when he was focused on a project, she didn’t feel insulted that he didn’t give her more of a greeting. She suspected that he wouldn’t have even turned around for anyone else.

  “What’cha working on?” Tiona stepped up beside him and glanced to see which of the many screens on the wall of his lab his eyes were focused on.

  “Um…” he said, his eyes darted from one screen to another uncertainly. “A lot of different things… too many! Maybe you can help me focus on the ones that would be most useful?”

  Many people on the Asperger’s-autism spectrum exhibit high intensity focus on single tasks and that was usually the situation with her dad. But Tiona had seen him hop from project to project before—not getting much done on any of them. She studied the many screens he had up and picked the most familiar looking one, “It looks like you’re working on a modified saucer?”

  “Um, yeah. That saucer’s 50 meters. It has almost 40 times the area and thrust of our original 8 meter saucer. It seemed to me that if we wanted to be able to bring bigger asteroids into Earth orbit we’d need more power. This one should generate 4 million pounds of thrust if we supply it 312 megawatts from a bigger fusion plant. You’d lose some efficiency, but if you gave it 780 megawatts, you’d get 8 million pounds of thrust. The disc needs to be eleven feet thick for a fifty meter diameter so I’ve designed a 2,000 square foot living area into the middle of it. A team of astronauts could stay on board for quite a while pretty comfortably.” He frowned at that screen for a moment, then said, “I think… You know I have a hard time telling what other people want. Otherwise, that project’s pretty much done.” He got a distracted look, “Though I’ve been thinking about trying to improve the shielding electromagnetically.”

  Tiona stared at it, considering how their original saucer had been scaled up. “Wow! You’re right, one that size would be really helpful for moving asteroids, but it could also be great for lifting stuff to orbit.”

  Tiona saw that Vaz’s eyes had still been surfing from screen to screen. Now he focused back on the big saucer and said, “Yeah. I designed those big arms on top for manipulating things out in space. The legs on the bottom can also serve as traction points to attach cables for lifting things to orbit or for towing asteroids. You could probably use a big saucer to move a lot of stuff right here on earth too, water for forest fires and big items for construction. I’ve sent in specs and an order to Costa and Sons for them to assemble the first one.”

  Tiona’s eyes widened, “Really?! What are you going do with it? Sell it?”

  Vaz looked uncomfortable, “No, I just wanted to make one. Assuming it works, do you think you could sell it for me?”

  “No! I’m not any good at that stuff. Dante’s the one with the business degree.”

  Vaz didn’t look at her, staying focused on his screens. “Is it OK to call him Dante now? I’m still not sure.”

  “Yeah, he wanted a more normal name like ‘Don’ in high school, but in the business world he feels like having an unusual name is an advantage.”

  “Okay. Do you think Dante would like to sell the saucer?”

  “He’d probably like it better if he could make and sell a lot of them. The company he works for, Axel VC, is a venture capital company that capitalizes new high-tech companies founded here in the Research Triangle. He’s probably got some experience with what it takes to start up a new business like this.”

  “Okay.” Vaz said, still scanning his screens.

  The conversation seemed unfinished. For a moment Tiona considered talking more to her dad about different versions of the big saucer and the specifics of such a business. Then she realized her dad really didn’t care about that topic at all. She thought of a problem, “Um, could we keep the technology of the thrusters a secret for a while longer? Or did you already tell Costa how to precipitate membranes and generate the correct currents?”

  Tiona had her eyes on her dad at the moment, so she saw his eyes stop tracking from screen to screen for a moment when his thought process bobbled. He blinked, then said, “Why? The university already applied for a patent.”

  Embarrassed about her pique over the way the chancellor had treated her, Tiona found herself reluctant to explain. She felt like she should have dealt with it better and wondered how to explain it to her dad. “Um, the University’s Chancellor and I got in a little argument…”

  “Oh, okay,” Vaz interrupted her. He obviously didn’t care what her interactions with any chancellors might be. “If you don’t want anyone to know how, we don’t have to tell them.” He blinked a couple more times, then frowned, “The plans I sent Costa don’t have the membrane precipitation details so no one knows how to do that. The current generator they’re installing could produce almost any signal depending on the software. It would be really hard to figure out the signal, frequency, and bias without the software.” He paused long enough that Tiona had opened her mouth to speak, but then he continued, “If we’re keeping it a secret, can you work out how to do the membrane precipitation for Costa? If we don’t have them do it, it’ll require us to hire a team and show up out there with some equipment when the saucer is ready to be precipitated.” His expression didn’t change much, but Tiona could tell he was very uncomfortable, he continued, “I really don’t want to do that part.”

  Thinking that had to be the understatement of the year, Tiona snorted and said, “No problem Dad, I can do that part. I don’t think I’ll be going back to school anymore anyway.”

  “Okay,” Vaz said, confounding Tiona’s sense that he should be concerned about why she wasn’t going to school. “Which of these other things do you think I should work on first?”

  Not only not worried about me dropping out of school, but totally uninterested in why, Tiona thought. “Um, I don’t know. What’s that one at the upper left?”

  “Oh, those are some thoughts I had for a better battery. It would be a fuel-cell, like the last one, storing hydrogen in my newest alloy but using multi-monolayer graphene membranes to generate the electricity. By my calculations, its energy density should be about 1.2 times that of gasoline,” he shrugged, “of course it might not be that good.”

  “Uh,” Tiona felt embarrassed to realize that she didn’t know much about energy densities. “How does that density match up to the old lithium ion batteries?”

  Vaz gave her a startled glance as if surprised by her ignorance, “Um, gasoline has more than 20 times the energy per weight than standard lithium ion batteries. My A7 batteries hold the current record for batteries and they only have about half the energy density of gasoline. This would be quite a step up if it works.”

  “Wow! That’d be huge! I’d think you should focus on that.”

  “Okay,” he said, however he sounded doubtful.”

  “Is there something else you think might be more significant?”

  His eyes flicked around, “Maybe the low-power fusion?”

  “Low-power fusion?”

  “Yeah, when I tested my latest version of the fusion device at low power it turned out to have extremely low neutron and x-ray generation in proportion to its creation of alpha particles. I guess at low power the side chain reactions fall off geometrically.”

  For a moment, Tiona waited for him to continue and explain what that meant. Then she realized that he assumed she would understand. Not wanting to ask him, she gave it some thought. The alpha particles generated by hydrogen-boron fusion allowed direct extraction of electricity. The x-rays generated could also be harvested to make electricity, but harvesting them required layers of metal. The metal would be needed to protect people from the x-rays anyway, but they added weight. The neutrons were
generated by side chain reactions and very undesirable because neutron radiation was so toxic. Frowning in concentration, she said, “So you could make a much smaller fusion generator?”

  He frowned, “The fusion generator would only be a little smaller, but there’d be a lot less shielding.”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s what I meant. The whole thing would be a lot smaller.” Vaz didn’t say anything, so she continued, “How much power are you talking about when you say ‘low-power fusion?’”

  “About a quarter of a megawatt.”

  Tiona’s eyebrows rose, “Wow! That’s somewhere around 350 horsepower?”

  Vaz only nodded.

  “So they could power cars?”

  Vaz nodded again, “And houses. And small thrusters. Say about a meter and a half. With two 1.5 meter thrusters and two fusion generators you could make a flying car. The generators would only weigh a couple of kilos each.”

  Holy crap! Tiona thought. That could make a huge difference for the entire world—in addition to giving us cool flying cars! It has to be the most important, but maybe I should find out what other projects he is working on. “What’s on the last two screens? The one on the bottom right looks like the flying car?”

  “Yeah. It’s probably silly to work on it before I finish the small fusion generators, but I got to thinking that I wanted to have something to put a small fusion generator in.”

  Tiona agreed with that prioritization. “What’s on the screen next to it?”

  “A personal flyer. Sixteen inch discs above and below the person riding it, joined by metal uprights on either side. Battery or a small fusion generator under the bottom one. Attitude discs top and bottom to make sure it stays right side up. Do you think it should have a seat on it? Or would people rather just stand on it? I was thinking people would just use it for short rides, like to work and back.”

  Oh, that’s so cool! Tiona thought. “Probably should make versions for both standing and sitting… or maybe one that can be changed from standing to sitting?” She stared at it, thinking.