Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11)

by Laurence Dahners

  Rescue

  An Ell Donsaii story # 11

  By

  Laurence E Dahners

  Copyright 2014 Laurence E Dahners

  Kindle Edition

  Author’s Note

  Though this book can “stand alone” it will be much easier to understand if read as part of the series including

  “Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story)”

  “Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2)”

  “Lieutenant (an Ell Donsaii story #3)”

  “Rocket (an Ell Donsaii story #4)”

  “Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5)”

  “Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6)”

  “Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7)”

  “Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8)”

  “Defiant (an Ell Donsaii story #9)” and

  “Wanted (an Ell Donsaii story #10)”

  I have minimized repetition of explanations that would be redundant to the earlier books in order to provide a better reading experience for those of you who are reading the series.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  Table of Contents

  Preprologue

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Author’s Afterword

  Preprologue

  An unusually gifted quarterback, Allan Donsaii had been widely recognized to be startlingly strong and a phenomenally accurate passer. During his college career he finished two full seasons without any interceptions and two games with 100 percent completions. Unfortunately, the pro teams never drafted him for fear that his size would allow him to be dominated by bigger opposing players.

  Extraordinarily quick, Kristen Taylor captained her college soccer team and rarely played a game without a “steal.” Usually she had many.

  Allan and Kristen dated more and more seriously throughout college and married at the end of their senior year. Their friends teased them that they were only marrying so that they could start their own sports dynasty.

  Their daughter Ell had Kristen’s quickness, magnified by Allan’s strength and highly accurate coordination. The child also had a new mutation affecting the myelin sheaths surrounding her nerves. This mutation produced nerve transmission speeds that nearly doubled those of normal neurons. With faster nerve impulse transmission, she had much quicker reflexes. Yet her new type of myelin sheath was also thinner, allowing more axons, and therefore more neurons, to be packed into the same sized skull. These two factors resulted in a brain which had more neurons, though it wasn’t larger, and a faster processing speed, akin to a computer with a smaller, faster CPU architecture.

  Most importantly, under the influence of adrenalin in a “fight or flight” situation, her nerves transmitted even more rapidly than their normally remarkable speed.

  Much more rapidly…

  Prologue

  Wichita, Kansas—AirDyne announced their plans to begin selling a port fueled and jet powered personal flyer. Consisting of a cylinder for the passenger to stand in which is surrounded by three AI-controlled jets mounted in pods, it isn’t exactly the “jet pack” of many people’s dreams. The passenger steps into the chest high cylinder through a small door. A joystick is lifted to take off, tilted to go different directions and twisted to turn the mini vehicle. Extremely unstable without AI control, it will be sold with a powerful enough AI that a license will not be required to fly it. The AI will not only maintain stability, but will also keep the vehicle away from flight lanes and prevent landings in areas where the jets might injure someone below.

  Critics point out that direct jet powered lifting like this consumes inordinate amounts of fuel, is extraordinarily noisy and will start fires if landed on dry vegetation. Nonetheless, the vid of a young woman demonstrating the flyer has gone viral and the company has been swamped with interest. Many orders have already been placed and there is said to be interest from several policing organizations as well.

  AirDyne is obviously taking advantage of the publicity afforded personal flying vehicles by Donsaii’s display of a model flying car during her now famous speech at the G-20 in Brazil…

  Acting FBI Director Sheila Rhodes waited outside the Oval Office with a sense of unease. She hoped that Stockton wouldn’t spend this entire meeting on Donsaii. Her first meeting with Stockton had nearly derailed Sheila’s career. She’d had to tell the President that Donsaii’s friends had escaped from prison somehow. Though Stockton had looked as if she desperately wanted to fire someone, she’d eventually acknowledged that, having only taken over a few days before, it was unreasonable to expect that Sheila should be held responsible. Nonetheless, Stockton had expended the remaining time in their appointment browbeating Sheila about the need for her to come up with a plan for capturing Donsaii.

  An aide appeared and ushered Sheila into the Office where to her relief Stockton came around to the front of the desk and shook Sheila’s hand. “Sorry we got off on a tense note in our previous visit,” she said. “Before we get into other business, I would like to talk about Donsaii again. My advisors have ganged up to convince me that I’ve got to let the Donsaii issue rest for a while. In the face of this ridiculous Nobel Peace Prize she’s been awarded, and the popularity of that fluffy talk she gave at the G-20, they think it would be political suicide for the party if we were to toss her back in the slammer right now.”

  “So, while I’d like you to continue efforts to find her, I want you to hold off on actually arresting her for a while. Figure out where she is, come up with an ironclad plan for taking her down, and when the political cauldron stops bubbling, then we’ll drop the hammer, OK?”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “OK, now brief me on what’s happening with the FBI’s other missions.”

  “Well, one of the items that you should be aware of is that we have finally located a few members of that South Carolina survivalist/terrorist cell.”

  “Those sons-a-bitches that shot the people going into the abortion clinic in Greenville?”

  “Yes Ma’am, and blew up the clinic in Charleston. And planted a bomb in the Thurmond Federal Building in Columbia. That one would have killed hundreds if it had gone off.”

  Stockton shook her head, “How the hell can they call themselves ‘pro-life’ and then kill people to enforce their beliefs?”

  “Our assessment is that they’ve fallen under the sway of Dupree Fallon. He’s unbalanced but extremely charismatic.”

  “That sick son of a bitch is with them? I thought he’d disappeared?”

  “He has disappeared from the net, but AI analysis suggests that much of the rhetoric on the website for the South Carolina Defense Force, or SCDF as they call themselves, was in fact written by Fallon. We think that the SCDF is not just his mouthpiece, but also his ‘action arm.’”

  “And you know where Fallon is?”

  “No Ma’am, but we’re pretty sure we’ve identified some members of the SCDF. We’re planning to arrest them and then hopefully sweat the location of Fallon out of them.”

  “Good, go after those bastards!”

  “I wanted to warn you that their site claims they have plans for massive retribution against the government if it interferes with their operations.”

  Stockton had turned to look out the window, “Well, you just interfere them right out of existence and we won’t have to worry about it, will we?” She turned back to Rhodes, “That
reminds me, what progress have you made on taking out that syndicate in Boston?”

  ***

  Intently focused on her CAD for the new VLGC (Very Large Graphend Chamber) it was a few moments before Viveka felt a presence behind her. She turned and looked back over her shoulder. It was Dr. Pace, apparently studying her graphics.

  “Hey, that looks good!” he said, still intently focused on her CAD. “Is that a row of ports all along one side of the chamber?”

  “Yes,” Viveka said shyly, “you might prefer to use lasers, but you know how we need to quickly boost the temperature to get the allotrope formation dynamics to favor diamond?”

  Pace nodded, still staring at the diagram.

  “I’ve had this idea that when we’re trying to form graphend, we can just rotate our template in the chamber and send heat from a solar parabolic mirror in through these ports to warm the area where we want to form diamond allotrope. The rest of the chamber would be kept at graphene forming temperature and as the template spun it would be making diamond on one side and graphene on the other.”

  “That… could be a stroke of genius! Or of course, it might not work at all if the transition from one temperature to the other is too slow. We need to try it with something smaller than the VLGC.”

  “Well,” Viveka tilted her head as she concentrated, “if solar parabolic doesn’t work we could also send laser beams in through those ports, rather than mounting the lasers directly on the VLGC. Then we could use the lasers for other projects when the VLGC wasn’t in production.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea.”

  “I’ve also been thinking…”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “How about if we built a VLGC up in orbit? Then there wouldn’t be gravitational stress deforming the template. We could use lighter templates.”

  “Oh, now that’s a great idea! I was just coming over to ask you if you wanted to go up to the habitat with me. Get a feel for the issues out there in space so to speak? I’m flying out to the island in about an hour and going up this afternoon.”

  Viveka turned excitedly in her chair, “Really? Don’t I have to have training or anything?”

  “No it’s pretty routine now. The flight crew will put you in your emergency suit and you can review habitat safety on the flight up. You’d need to go home and pack for a couple of nights.”

  The flight out to the island was Viveka’s second experience with flying, only after her trip around the world from India. The small Lear jet was very different from the large planes she’d flown around the world in and she excitedly spent much of the time at the windows where Gary pointed out the sights.

  After they arrived at the island, it turned out that they had an hour and a half until the flight up to the habitat. Gary took her to the big house where they sat out and enjoyed the sea breeze under a big canopy. The staff brought them a lunch menu. Gary looked at her over the menu, “I wouldn’t eat much if I were you.”

  Viveka looked at him, surprised that he would be so rude as to suggest she go on a diet. She didn’t think of herself as fat, but knew that some men liked women who were extraordinarily thin. However, it wasn’t as if they were romantically involved so that he should think he could tell her what to do like so many men did to women. Or, does he think that because he is my boss at work that he can tell me what to eat? Will he start telling me what to wear next? She had a sinking feeling. America’s supposed lack of such a patriarchal attitude was a big reason she was glad to be out of India.

  Suddenly, Gary looked at her and seemed to realize that she was unhappy. His face reddened. “Uh, I’m not trying to tell you what to eat, just warning you that many people get sick when they first go weightless. That’s much more unpleasant if your stomach is full.”

  “Oh,” Viveka said, embarrassed that he had somehow seen what she’d been thinking. “What would you suggest?”

  “Uh, their fruit smoothies are really good and you’ll absorb a smoothie before you get up to orbit.”

  “OK, thank you,” she said.

  The flight up was on one of the space adapted 747s. It had a small compartment for passengers which contained luxury seats for people going up to the Habitat’s Hilton for vacations. Most of the 747’s space, however, was dedicated to cargo. This trip it carried a “living quarters module” which would be spun up to provide g forces to keep people healthy. Turning away from where she’d been pressed to the window, Viveka asked excitedly, “How many of the living quarters modules are there up here now?”

  Gary rubbed his chin, “There are living modules rotating around the hubs at each end of each weightless module and I think there are more than twenty weightless modules now, so that would be about forty.”

  “And how much space in each one?”

  “Hmm, their interiors are 100 feet high by 55 feet in diameter. They divide that into ten ‘floors’ with each floor having about 2,300 square feet of space.”

  Viveka’s eyes widened, “That’s about 214 square meters per floor or 2,140 per module! They must have about 85,600 square meters of living space that has simulated gravity! Or,” she tilted her head, thinking, “about 921,400 of the square feet you Americans like to use.”

  A little astonished that she’d done that math so quickly in her head, Gary said, “Yeah, I think they’ve mostly got four rooms to a floor which could add up to about 1,600 rooms, but with some big luxury suites and using some of that space for restaurants, meeting rooms and exercise facilities, they actually only have somewhere around 1,200 rooms so far. Still, a lot of people are living up there now,” he shrugged, “if you count the hotel guests as living there anyway.”

  Viveka winked at him, “You Americans take up so much space though. You could have a lot more of us Indians living in that same space.”

  Gary grinned, “That’s certainly true.”

  Viveka and Gary pulled themselves down the central tube that passed through the weightless modules from end to end, connecting them to one another. Gary towed a large plastic bag as they went. Making Gary envious, Viveka had shown absolutely no evidence of space-sickness. The Allosci module was five down from the main airlock at the end of the string where the 747 had attached itself.

  When they entered the Allosci module, Viveka’s eyes widened. She could tell the space inside it was huge, but much of it was filled with what she recognized to be graphene spinners of all different sizes. “You don’t have room for a VLGC in here!”

  “No,” Gary said, looking around, “If your idea of making graphend on gossamer templates out here works out, we’d have to buy another module.”

  “But, modules must be very expensive!”

  Gary shrugged, “Our profits on graphene are surprisingly large.”

  Viveka looked around the module with a dawning realization. She glanced back at Gary and found him apparently admiring her. Whereas the gaze of many of the men back in India had angered her, she found she enjoyed Gary’s appreciative gaze. A little embarrassed she said, “What’s in the bag?”

  Gary snorted, “Little Styrofoam beads that Ell wants coated with graphene. She asked me to do it a long time ago but we just now got a small coating chamber installed up here. All the graphene up here has been made with spinners.”

  Viveka’s brow furrowed, then cleared. “You want to coat them in a weightless environment so their electrostatic charges will keep them separated?”

  Gary’s eyes widened, this girl is really smart! “Yeah, that’s why,” he said with a grin after a moment, a little embarrassed that Viveka had figured it out on her own when Ell had had to suggest it to him. “And we can try graphend coating some of your gossamer structures in the little chamber while we’re up here this trip.”

  Viveka glanced at him shyly, “Can I try flying around in here? I’d like to make sure I know how to use the harness.”

  Gary grinned at her and said with a wink, “It’s OK to just admit you want to fly.”

  “OK,” she grinned back at him and gras
ping the joyball at her waist she pushed it forward. The jets on the back of her harness pushed her forward into the big chamber. “I just want to flyyyyy!” She twisted the ball and rotational jets turned her back to face Gary as a huge smile split her face. Turning the ball upward slowly flipped her end over end. With a joyful shriek Viveka said, “This is so fun!”

  ***

  Roger and Ryan walked into the Evich Ophthalmology Research Lab where they were scheduled to meet with the director, Dr. Ulrich. Ulrich turned out to be a pleasant man in a wheelchair. After shaking their hands he smiled, “I’m excited that you guys are interested in connecting to the optic nerve, though I have to admit that I selfishly wish you were working on the spinal cord instead.”

  Ryan said, “We do have some thoughts along those lines for someday, but as you can imagine, reconnecting something as complex as the spinal cord will be orders of magnitude more complex than a simple peripheral nerve.”

  “And you’ve done peripheral nerves for your prosthetic arms already right? I suppose I should be glad to be helping you move up to the optic nerve, which in many ways is more like a part of the central nervous system than other peripheral nerves.”

  “Yes, we’re worried about that. All our experience is with myelin covered peripheral nerve axons. We’re able to get those axons to grow into our neurotrodes with a mixture of growth factors, but since the myelin of the optic nerve comes from oligodendrocytes rather than the Schwann cells of the peripheral nerves we’re worried that they might react differently.”

  “Well, only one way to find out, and that’s to try it with some real optic nerve axons. I assume you know that we’ve got a pretty good research model using the rat optic nerve?”

  “Yes sir,” Roger said. “That’s why we contacted you. We can make neurotrodes and Ryan’s attached them to peripheral nerves but we have no expertise in that kind of surgery.”