by Laer Carroll
She looked off-dais and turned back to her audience.
"Fernando and Sofia will say Goodbye to Berkeley with this final dance. Sofia and Fernando!"
She gestured and the dancers entered the floor dancing, simple fast bouncing steps. The music was likewise simple, fast. and bouncing, a joyous noise.
Their costumes had changed once again. His upper body was covered just by a tight tee-shirt-like sweater with big black and white horizontal stripes such as a stevedore might wear. Hers was a simple faded blue (denim?) dress falling to mid calf which might have been worn by a woman going to work in a café or factory or as a maid. Her shoes were sandal-like flats.
The dancers ended in a pose, bowed, and gave huge waving kisses after kisses aimed at the audience as it stood and applauded. They ran off stage to be called by shouts and stamped feet and yells of Bravo! and calls for More! More! More!
The couple came again, bowed, and exited.
The audience would not be satisfied. More stamps, more calls of More!
The orchestra had meanwhile returned to the dais/stage and taken up their instruments. They set to playing "a media luz" --"In The Half-Light." The words when sung told of a lazy summer afternoon in a (likely) bachelor's apartment with the windows shaded to put the room in half light.
The music was slow and lyrical and the couple when they returned (clad in street clothes) danced that way. This time when they ended the dance they bowed and disappeared for good.
"What do you bet," Phil said, "that they're on the way to the airport right now?"
Rachel said, "I'd not take that bet. Probably taking a red eye to New York. Pro dancers are pretty much gypsies who have to fit some empresario's schedule. Got to be a young person's life. I'd die if I had to travel out of a suitcase all the time."
Tova leaned over to half-hug her mother. "And I'd die if you weren't around every week to harangue me about my diet or harass me about getting a husband and giving you grand-kids."
Rachel pushed her daughter away and mock-glared at her. "And when are you, Smarty Pants?"
Jane had been changing out of her dance shoes to street shoes. Now she laughed and stood. "Good night, all. I've got to get up early in the morning and go to work while Lazy Dog Phil sleeps in. It was good to meet you. I hope to see you again."
The two women had to stand and kiss Jane and Phil before the two could escape. Jane made her way around the dance floor to pass by the dais and shower air kisses toward Julio and his son and the other musicians.
Outside waiting for them was a Premium Flyt limousine which the ever-efficient Phil had called for on his vear. The two got in and the car moved off under the control of a human driver instead of the usual holo avatar of a robot. It needed no destination as Phil had already told it that.
Going up to their suite in the elevator they were alone, so Jane was able to turn to Phil and tell him the real reason she had left in mid-milonga: she wanted a private dance with her lover.
She burst out of the elevator laughing to escape his clutches. He strode after her, catching up as Jane mag-keyed open the door. He shoved her inside and grabbed her as soon as the door thudded closed behind them. He lifted her and strode to the bed to toss her bouncing onto the surface.
She lay watching him as he shed his clothes and dropped them to pounce on her, his erection poking her side as he grabbed her clothes roughly. Visibly he paused, then carefully removed all her clothing piece by piece, kissing each area of flesh as he uncovered it.
Naked now, he began to kiss her breasts and belly while one hand explored her center.
"God damn it Phil! FUCK ME!"
He entered her gently but lost control. His lovemaking was rough and fast and almost brutal.
Jane let go of all volition and let herself be carried away as if she were a leaf in the wind. She was all sensation, boneless, as he rolled over and placed her above him, draped like a rag atop him. Her body moved with him as her mind ceased for an eternity.
Afterward they lay together, she gathered in his arms with her own arms limp before her.
"God," he said finally. "I never lost control like that. Did I hurt you?"
Jane moved away from him to prop herself up on an elbow and gaze down at his face. She laughed.
"Remember I told you I might be a discarded experiment? Well, it succeeded in one way at least. My body is as tough as rubber when stressed. I could be thrown across a room against a wall and bounce back unharmed like those super-spies in movies."
She suspected she'd been designed to take dozens of gravities of acceleration and fight a slashing aerospace dogfight against enemies, her robot-enhanced mind moving a thousand times as fast as that of an un-enhanced human.
He stared at her. "Who could have made you this way? No one on Earth that I know of."
"One of the reasons why I want to go into space and make it mine. Ours. To find whoever made me what I am."
He thought about this for a time as she played with his hair. She thanked Chance that he'd let it grow long. The dark silver-shot lengths felt like silk to her touch.
Finally he said, "I hope you find what you're looking for. Right now I desperately need to sleep."
"Me too, Baby."
She plopped back down into his arms and soon both were in slumberland.
Chapter 11 - LB National Lab
Jane woke at her usual early hour. Phil and she had disengaged and he slept with his back to her. This made it easier to creep out of bed and take a shower. She dressed, planted a kiss on his exposed cheek, and left the suite, easing the door closed behind her.
She had a leisurely breakfast at the buffet, swished water vigorously in her mouth in lieu of brushing her teeth, and exited to enter the Flyt sedan waiting for her. She spoke to the robot's holo avatar.
"Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The Visitor Center, please."
The trip was quick as the Lab was a few miles away on a hilltop on the east side of the University. As she walked up the slight incline to the multistory grey Visitor Center she could see UCB and the city below her as well as the blue water of the Bay and San Francisco proper. It was a pleasant sight and she'd not mind working here. However JPL had equally lovely views and she was perfectly happy to work there.
Inside the reception area of the building Jane went through the usual visitor processing. As she was placing first one hand atop a slate computer screen embedded in the surface of the reception desk someone approached her.
Jane glanced at the newcomer. The woman was about her age and clad in jeans and a tee and tennies just as Jane was. The image on the front of the grey shirt was of a dolphin rising out of a blue ocean.
"Captain," the woman said, approaching with an outstretched hand. "I'm Doctor Karen Luong. Welcome to the Lab."
Jane raised her hand from the computer screen. It flashed briefly with a green outline of her hand. This was the hand she used to shake the cool hand of her greeter.
"Pleasure to be here, Doctor."
"Want a bit of breakfast? I just got in and haven't had any."
"I've eaten but would love some iced tea or hot chocolate."
"We can manage that. This way please. If you're finished?"
The receptionist/guard handed Jane a badge. "You're finished, Captain."
Jane smiled at her and followed her guide to an elevator a little further in the building. They went up three stories to the top story and entered a big room by way of an open double door halfway down a long hall.
It was buffet style with numerous cold and hot drink machines. Jane got a dispensed hot chocolate while Karen got a breakfast of a berry-filled croissant and coffee on a tray. They sat near a huge picture window with a good view of the campus and the bay and San Francisco.
"I love this view," said Jane's companion. "I sometimes have a snack or coffee break just to sit here and work on my laptop."
"So you asked me here to consult on a project. Let me guess: cold fusion. Or warm fusion?"
The terms fo
r the two different types of hydrogen fusion energy generators were misnomers. "Cold" was fusion in the range of 1 to 99 degrees Centigrade: so-called "room" temperature where water was liquid. "Warm" was fusion at or near 1000 degrees. Warm fusion was commercially viable but only with generators as big as a house. At that size they could produce power a maximum of no more than 5 percent greater than they used. Cold fusion also worked but still at a loss.
The woman looked around. No one was sitting near them. All the breakfast diners sat in clumps about the room and further along the picture window.
"Cold fusion. We think we have an approach using your induced magnetism effect."
"I'll be very interested to see the details. You set up a workstation the way I described in my email?"
"Yes." She paused and glanced at Jane's cup of hot chocolate. "I'm done here. You want to finish that? Or refresh it and bring it with you?"
"I'm done too."
The way to the lab facilities for the cold-fusion project was out a ground-level door to the outside. It had a badge reader on the wall beside the door entrance. Jane's badge would let her re-enter the Visitor Center if she wished to.
"In fact you can enter most buildings here at the Lab," Luong said as they walked a winding path on an uneven green lawn newly wetted by sprinklers.
"I'm leaving after lunch so that won't be many if any than your project building."
"Wish you could stay longer. But I know it'll take time for you to get back home."
"Not really. I flew in my group's private jet, so it's about an hour. Half of that time is just back and forth with the air traffic control at both ends of the journey. It's just that I want to get back to my boyfriend. If he stays more than a half day free he gets antsy and has to work. This is supposed to be a fun weekend with him."
Luong just nodded.
The cold-fusion project was housed in one of the many boxy grey buildings on the hilltop. The particular building was of the smaller variety. Jane was urged to try out her badge in the badge reader beside the single armor-glass front door. It buzzed the two of them in.
Inside she met several other project members. They had a brief meeting in a conference room, then Luong led her to a cubicle set up for her. It contained a mini-supercomputer and the three large flat screens that Jane had required be connected to the computer beside the desk.
She sat down, became JANE, and dived into the project database. Images flashed on and off on the three screens in lightning-fast succession, piling onto and over each other and dashing about the screen to stable positions--for no more than five seconds at a time. Numbers, text, images, diagrams: all came and went in a kaleidoscopic barrage.
"My God! Are you really that fast?"
"Hmm? Oh."
Jane dropped out of her cyborg state and turned her ergonomic chair to peer up at Luong. The woman was still standing in the door to the ten-by-ten foot office.
"Yes. This is my normal working pace. Quite leisurely, it seems to me. I go into a kind of meditation state. Been that way ever since I can remember."
"God," Luong said and turned to walk away.
Jane looked after her for a moment, wondering if she shouldn't have waited till the woman was definitely gone before going to work. But the screens were in the far corner of the cubicle opposite the entrance to the work space so someone was bound to have seen eventually.
She turned back to her work.
At 10:30 she group-texted the project personnel. They gathered in a conference room, a dozen and one people all told.
Jane sat at the end of the table closest to the wall screen and furthest from the door and the head of the table. There sat an older man who was the project head. To his right was Luong.
Jane sat while the head thanked her for her visit and asked her if she had some good news.
She stood.
"I do. I've entered some suggested design changes into your project server. Follow those and you'll get energy outputs some 40 percent greater than your inputs.
"Oh, and by the way, I dipped into the warm-fusion data server and left some improvements in their conventional design which should at least double their outputs."
She sat down.
The people stared at each other and at her and made low-voiced comments to each other.
The project head lifted a hand and the room quieted.
"I find that hard to believe, Captain Kuznetsov. Some hundreds of people have worked on this project for several years and not accomplished what you say you have in half a morning."
Jane shrugged, not caring what he believed but willing to soften her presentation.
"I just came in when all the hard work was done and brought in an outside viewpoint. You were already at the tipping point to successful cold fusion. I just gave you a tiny push to get you over the edge. The benefit of not being buried in project details. I was able to look at the big picture and see what some of you would have seen anyway. I just sped the process along."
Karen Luong had been frowning at material on her vear which was invisible to others in the room. She flipped up the transparent vear screen atop her head.
"I believe her, Vance. I just looked at her suggestions and had one of those Why-Didn't-I-See-That moments. We'll have to dig into the details and double-check all the numbers but I think we've had our break-through. Thank you, Captain Kuznetsov. And can we persuade you to stay for lunch?"
Jane was happy the Cambodian woman was smart enough and pushy enough to overcome her boss's skepticism. Jane really didn't want to sit around and spend more time on this project. Phil would be up and about since an hour or two past. If she let him he'd get bored and begin working on some "paperwork" stored on his laptop and she'd have to use dynamite to get his head out of the clouds.
"No." She stood. "I really have to run. I have a lunch date I don't want to be late for."
The project head gave in to the inevitable. He stood too and said, "Thank you very much, Captain Kuznetsov. I see the reputation which precedes you is a happy reality. Have a safe and fun stay here in our fair city."
Jane accepted handshakes all around as they seemed each one to want to touch her and murmured replies to the (sometimes insincere) thanks. Soon she was out of the conference room and walking rapidly toward the elevator with Luong keeping pace with her all the way to the Visitor Center. There the physicist took her badge from her and handed it to the receptionist/security guard.
"This date must be a real hottie to get you to move so fast." She smiled for the first time.
"He is. And thanks for speeding up my exit." She stepped forward and hugged the woman. Startled she hugged back and laughed at the sudden move.
With that Jane trotted down to the waiting Flyt sedan and a quick trip back to the hotel. There she planned on a leisurely lunch and a short trip back to L.A where she anticipated staying at Phil's home, maybe dining out with some of his friends, and an early evening in time for another bout of energetic lovemaking.
Chapter 12 - The Moon
Several months later.
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Physics Today - breaking news
Today the Research Section of MIT's Physics Department confirmed the recent claim of sustained cold-fusion electrical generation at or near room temperatures. They did this by creating their own power generator using the same setup that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory did.
Dr. Sandip Gupta, lead experimenter of MIT's confirmation task force, said, "We congratulate our colleagues at the University of California for their ground-breaking work. They used a novel approach and got results. Building on their work, we created a generator that is 25% more efficient and confidently predict other researchers will produce even more advances now that the fundamental approach has been proven sound."
CONTINUED HERE.
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L.A. Times Science & Technology section - Sunday magazine
I caught Captain Jane Kuznetsov at a tango dance practica held in the Esmeralda Campbell Dance Center
in Beverly Hills. Dressed in gray sweats and ballet slippers she looks like any healthy freshman or sophomore at UCLA not very far from the Center.
"What do you say to the rumors that you are responsible for the breakthrough in cold fusion power generation recently reported?"
"Well, naturally such rumors were bound to surface since I was the originator with my father Dr. Alexander Kuznetsov of the induced-magnetism theory and have done some work putting it into practice. But the UCB Lab was the one which did all the work in this area and they deserve the credit for the breakthrough."
"Was it just coincidence that a few months before the Lab's announcement you visited the Lab?"
"Coincidences happen all the time. That's the definition of the word. Of course I talked to the people who did the work on this project since they are long-distance acquaintances and were using a variation of the induced-magnetism theory. But if you think half a morning's visit could produce such startling results-- Well, I'd say you have a career in screenplay writing!"
Just this moment Jane's boyfriend came up sweating and drinking from a bottle of Aquafina. Break time was nearly over and he wanted to reclaim her from this annoying reporter.
I could hardly argue with this tall built hottie who also happens to be the megaproducer Phil Newman. He could pick me up and throw me across the room. Not that I would have minded if he picked me up. At what I have to call a "MERE 48" this hunk exudes sex appeal.
Jane, it's interesting to note, is a dancer of such skill that she could easily be a professional. Check out THIS YouTube video of her dancing a tango which ends in her upside down with the top of her head an inch from the floor! (For more on the young man dancing with her check out THIS link.)
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By the time Spring came around "Gang Kuznetsov" had completed a detailed simulation of the "InduMag" shield and run many thousands of iterations in their office supercomputer of the several design variations and how they would affect efficiency and safety.
