Discovery: Proton Field #1

by Laurence Dahners

  Seeing Myr on the video catching some of the snow in her beaker reminded them to look at what she’d caught. It’d all melted into a liquid by the time they looked at it and that liquid certainly looked like water. So far it hadn’t evaporated. They took turns smelling it, agreeing that it was odorless. Myr measured its pH at seven, which was what the pH of pure water should have been at room temperature. A rough weight showed that its density was about a gram per milliliter, also suggesting it was water. Dr. Miller had her cover the beaker so she could take it to one of the chemical analysis labs at Miller Tech. Those folks could tell them if it contained anything but water.

  The most fascinating thing on the video, however, Myr had to point out to them. She ran it back to when she’d stood on her chair to look closely at the ceiling. You could see her hair lifting up and pointing toward the spot where the snow subsequently appeared. They could also see a sudden startled look in her eyes right before she jerked back and nearly fell off the chair.

  They all sat and stared at one another for a few moments, then Miller said, “What frightened you?”

  “Um, it didn’t just pull on my hair. I could feel a tugging sensation in my face.” After a brief pause, she continued, “And it was hot up there.”

  Miller stared for a moment, then narrowed his eyes, “We need to remember that this might be dangerous. We’re dealing with a completely new and unknown phenomenon that might have risks that we just don’t understand. I’d suggest we stay far away from it anytime we’re powering it up and only approach it very slowly.” He looked back and forth between Myr and Vinn until he got a nod from each of them. He turned his eyes back to Myr, “And the next time you turn it on you should check for radiation.” Once Myr had nodded again, Miller said, “Okay, what’s next?”

  Myr said, “I need to build a chamber to focus the field into. Then I can measure changes in the humidity, pressure and temperature, as well as doing infrared photography to localize the heat. With a chamber, I’ll be able to safely put some objects near the focal point and measure to see whether there really is an attraction.” She glanced at Miller, “I’ll need more equipment, especially cameras.”

  Miller waived the cost issues away as if they were inconsequential. He turned and looked at Vinn, “Have you got any ideas?”

  While biting his tongue so as not to say anything about how some of these things should already have been done, Vinn outlined a plan to make detailed measurements of the shape of the field generated by Myr’s apparatus as well as evaluating the changes that occurred in the field at different frequencies, currents and voltages. After that he wanted to find out what happened to the field when the shapes of the coils and plates were modified. He finished by saying, “If I can mathematically describe the shape of the field and the effects of the various changes to the plates and coils, I may be able to help design an apparatus that generates a more powerful or a more focused field.”

  Myr gave Vinn an appraising look, looking as if she thought he might be helpful after all. But she didn’t say she’d let him see the arrangement or shapes of the plates and coils.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  When Carol closed the door behind her, she heard Connor’s wheelchair coming. This was an event since he usually waited for her to arrive in the living room. She worried that something bad had happened, but then he came around the corner looking excited, “Mom, Myr had a breakthrough!”

  Carol frowned, “What?”

  “With her field. She called and said that something big had happened. She said she’d call you later.” Connor looked wistful, “Maybe it’s finally going to pay off?”

  Carol shrugged and said, “I hope so honey.” Well, I guess it wasn’t something bad, Carol thought, but it wasn’t actually anything good either. After years of Myr reporting one failed experiment after another, Carol wasn’t surprised that her daughter would call if something positive happened. But Carol had long ago given up on Myr’s fields and she wished her daughter would stop pursuing that highly evident dead end.

  It was nine o’clock at night when Carol’s AI announced a call from Myr. “I’ll take it,” she said, happy to be getting a call from her daughter even if she doubted she’d be happy about the content. “Myr what’s new?”

  “Just wanted to tell you we finally got some breakthrough results with the static field,” Myr said, sounding about as excited as she ever got. However, then Myr began to describe snow in the ceiling, tugging on her hair, and decreases in the humidity—all bizarre events. Worse, it quickly became evident that Myr didn’t have any clue as to what was responsible for these unusual phenomena. She just thought that events so out of the ordinary had to be important.

  Carol decided it was just one more wild goose chase. She tried to make a few positive comments, while still attempting to temper Myr’s unrealistic enthusiasm and inject a little reality into the conversation.

  She could tell Myr’d been expecting her mother to be more excited and Carol felt sad not to be more energizing. On the other hand, Carol was old enough to understand the reality that life seldom fulfilled your dreams. She really wanted her daughter to stop wasting her life on some of the bizarre, poorly-understood findings she got out of her coil-plates and get on to performing predictable bread-and-butter research that’d pay bills without courting disaster.

  But now’s not the time to tell her how I think she’s wasting her life trying to buy a winning lottery ticket. I need to wait until she’s had another brush with reality. Unfortunately, it seemed like Carol was always waiting for the right time. I should have been more emphatic a couple of years ago when she wasn’t taking the job at Miller Tech. As long as I’d already made her mad by yelling at her to take the job, I should’ve emphasized how she was wasting her life hoping for her damned fields to prove useful.

  Chapter 2

  Vinn offered to help Myr in her lab.

  She immediately said she didn’t need any help.

  Vinn lifted his palms, “Oh, come on. I don’t have anything to do until we make some measurements. I need some numbers to give me something to start working with.”

  Myr shook her head, “The fact that you’re twiddling your thumbs does not mean I need help.”

  “You’ve got to move your coils so they aren’t establishing the field up in the ceiling of your lab. Before you do that, you need to make measurements so you’ll know exactly where the field forms in relationship to the generator cylinder. It’ll be a lot easier to do the measurements with an assistant. At the very least I can help you with that.”

  “Why would I need to make measurements before I move it?”

  Vinn very carefully tried not to sound exasperated, “I assume you want to reorient it horizontally?”

  Myr nodded.

  “And since we’re assuming that this new field might be dangerous, since it tugged on your hair etcetera, we wouldn’t want it to open up in a wall or table, right?”

  Myr gave him a sudden look of understanding, “Okay, you’re right. You’re saying we need to know exactly where it forms in relation to the generator so we know we’re not going to bring it up in the middle of something, right?”

  Vinn nodded. “Besides, working with the actual device will help me be more grounded when I’m trying to come up with a theory for it.”

  Myr got an irritated look, “You mean that before we even gather any data, you’ve already discarded my theory?”

  “No, no.” He said throwing up his hands, “I didn’t really mean a theory of how it works. My job is to describe the field mathematically and, since I have to hypothesize some possible equations or other math to do that, I think of that as its own theory.”

  Myr regarded him suspiciously for a few moments, then said in a disgruntled tone, “Okay. If we have to work together, I guess we’d just as well start now.”

  The first thing they did was to tape the sensor of a Geiger counter to a yardstick and held it up near the focal point to check for any radioactive emissions when they po
wered the setup on and off. It turned out to be fairly easy to localize the focal point because all they had to do was turn the field on for a couple of minutes, then turn it off. When they turned it off, they immediately got a small puff of frosty white vapor at the focal point. The Geiger counter didn’t detect any radioactivity so they just fastened it to the table near where they expected the focal point to be after the move and left it powered up to be sure nothing changed.

  Next they roughly measured the location of the focal point. They didn’t need precision measurements of its location yet, just confirmation that it formed coaxially to the coils and the distance from the end of the coil to the focus.

  At Myr’s request, the maintenance guys brought over a ladder and a metal tape measure. Vinn hooked the end of the tape measure on a cable clamp that held some of the wiring to the floor above and extended it down to the top edge of Myr’s coil. Then Vinn climbed the ladder with the video camera, holding it in a location where it could get a view of both the puff and the measuring tape. Myr turned her apparatus on, then a couple of minutes later, back off. The center of the puff was 148 centimeters, or about four feet ten inches, from the end of her cylinder.

  The maintenance guys, who’d stood out in the hall at Myr’s insistence, came back in and carried off the ladder though Myr managed to get them to leave the tape measure. Apparently they weren’t supposed to leave their tools for fear someone would get hurt by them, but Myr managed to convince them that a tape measure wasn’t dangerous and that they could come get it the next day.

  Vinn and Myr moved the cylinder containing her set up off her rolling cart and laid it horizontally on one of the lab tables, positioned so that the focal point should form about two feet off the edge. She insisted on tilting it up a little bit so it’d form well above the table until they were sure that positioning it horizontally didn’t cause it to form non-coaxially. It didn’t, and shortly after that they had the coil cylinder repositioned so that the focal point formed about twenty-four inches off the edge of the table and three inches higher than its surface. The cylinder containing Myr’s coils and the plates was lying flat on its side on the table, and since it was six inches in diameter, that produced the three-inch elevation.

  At this point, Vinn desperately wanted to just mess around with it, but Myr reminded him how it’d frightened her by tugging on her hair and face when she’d gotten close to it. She thought she’d been about eighteen inches from the focal point when she’d felt the pull. So, every time they turned it on she’d insisted that they get no closer than three feet and that they wear safety glasses.

  Vinn set out to calmly and reasonably argue for doing a few rough tests of what was going on before they tried to build really sophisticated measurement equipment. “After all,” he said, “It’d be a real shame to have the field damage something we’d spent a lot of time and energy constructing.”

  Myr tilted her head and looked at him curiously. “Okay, I agree that it’d be nice to do some rough testing. But how do you propose to do that, yet keep ourselves safe?”

  With a shrug, Vinn said, “I don’t know for sure. I pictured us standing behind some kind of shield and reaching out with a stick or something.”

  Myr stared at him for a few seconds, then said, “That sounds stupid… but I have to admit I don’t have a lot better idea for quick and dirty testing.” She shrugged, “The guys in the next lab have a portable radiation shield with a leaded glass window in it.”

  Vinn frowned, “We don’t need a radiation shield…”

  “I know, but it’s a big metal shield with a window in it. I think it’ll do the job.”

  The people in Dr. Randall’s lab agreed to let them borrow the shield and they rolled it into Myr’s lab. They braced it in place about a meter away from the focal point so they’d be able to reach the focus with the yardstick they’d used for their Geiger counter testing. Vinn looked at Myr, “It seems to be kind of crazy to go to all this trouble to stand behind the shield when we’ve turned it on and off several times already without the shield.”

  Myr didn’t take her eyes off the equipment, “Yeah, but there wasn’t anything near the focal point for those tests. What if the first thing we put near it gets pulled in and explodes? Better safe than sorry.”

  Vinn stared at her, unnerved by the possibility. “Um, maybe we could watch it on video from outside the lab?”

  Myr turned to look at him thoughtfully, then said, “Good idea. But then how are we going to move something closer to the focal point when we’re testing?”

  Vinn shrugged, “We could just put it near the focal point before you power it up.”

  Myr continued to study him, “When I was talking about an explosion, I was thinking a little one. My equipment,” she waved at the stack of electrical equipment on her cart, “isn’t drawing a huge amount of current, so even if it’s storing all of it for a minute or so, it shouldn’t be that big of an energy release.”

  “Normally, I’d agree with you, but that pile of junk,” Vinn said, waving at her equipment too, but with a tone of awe in his voice, “is doing a lot of things I would have said were impossible.”

  “That’s not, a ‘pile of junk,’ ” Myr said tartly.

  Vinn quickly glanced at her, afraid he’d offended her once again, but saw the twinkle in her eyes. “Maybe it qualifies as a ‘stack of stuff’?” he said, then did his best to give a woeful shake of his head, “but I don’t think so.”

  “I am so starting to regret agreeing to work with you,” Myr said, picking up the video camera and moving it over closer to the focal point.

  With a great sense of relief, Vinn saw she still had a subtle grin on her face.

  They’d set up a monitor out in the hall and relayed the video camera’s image to it. Myr set a heavy-duty ring-stand on the floor about two feet from the focal point of the field and clamped a slender wire to it that approached to just within the eighteen inches where Myr estimated she’d felt the tugging sensation. At that point she put a ninety-degree bend in the wire and had it run six inches. They set up the camera so that it’d show them if the angled part of the wire bent toward the focal point to suggest some kind of attraction.

  Myr’s equipment was all set up and they’d brought the power supply out into the hall and put it on a shelf on the cart right below the monitor. Myr was reaching for the switch when Dr. Randall came out of the lab next-door and gave them an amused look. “Taking over our hall so you can have more space for your research?”

  Vinn wondered whether Myr would tell Randall that they were out in the hall because they were worried that their experiment was mysteriously dangerous. In a sense she did. She gave Randall an enigmatic look and said, “We’ve drawn a pentagon on the floor, inscribed some runes on the wall, and we’re getting ready to call a demon. Just felt like it’d be safer to be out here.”

  Randall snorted a laugh, gave them a dismissive wave and started off down the hall, saying, “You and your damned secrets!”

  Vinn gave Myr a curious look and to his astonishment, she winked at him. “Shall I power this bad boy up?”

  Vinn nodded, surprised at just how pleased he was to be getting along with her. Myr toggled the switch with both of their eyes focused on the monitor.

  Nothing happened.

  Well, that wasn’t exactly true. When she turned the switch back off a tiny puff of white vapor formed just as reliably as it had before. Vinn looked at Myr and saw her frowning in concentration. He said, “Do you think you might have been closer than eighteen inches?”

  She shrugged, “Maybe,” she said slowly. “Let’s try twelve inches?”

  “Sure, Vinn said, opening the door to the lab slowly and peeking in. Nothing seemed to have happened, so he walked in and moved the ring stand six inches closer. Stepping back out in the hall, he said, “Good to go.”

  Myr toggled the switch again and once again they watched as the wire did absolutely nothing. Vinn turned to Myr and said, “Six inches?”

/>   She nodded, looking a little frustrated. Vinn went in and moved the ring stand. Once again, nothing happened with the wire. He was looking at her when Myr looked at Vinn and lifted an eyebrow, “I did not imagine the tugging. You saw my hair lifting up in the video.”

  Vinn raised his hands, palm outwards, “I didn’t say anything. And yes, I did see your hair rise. I’m just as mystified as you are.” He looked back at the screen, “Let’s make sure we still see the puff of white when you turn it off. That’ll confirm that the apparatus is still actually working.”

  Myr turned the switch off, the puff of white appeared, and Vinn said, “Dammit!” He turned back to Myr, “Two inches?”

  Myr nodded and Vinn opened the door.

  The wire didn’t deflect at two inches, or at an inch, nor at a half an inch. Finally, with some trepidation, they put the wire actually in the focal point. Still nothing happened. The puff of white formed right around the wire and Vinn thought the wire felt slightly damp when he went back in to examine it. Vinn turned and grinned at Myr, “I think we’ve got to start over. I’ll just clamp your head at eighteen inches this time.”

  Myr snorted, “How about just a lock of hair?”

  Vinn shook his head, opening his eyes wide as if appalled. “You know we need to replicate the original experiment since we failed with our modified set up!”

  “Doesn’t have to be my head,” Myr said, lifting an eyebrow. “Could be yours.”

  “On second thought, a lock of hair sounds like a pretty good idea. I’ll get some tape.”

  Vinn moved the ring stand back to eighteen inches, and when Myr provided a tuft of hair, he taped it to the wire. This time, when Myr powered up her equipment, the wire immediately bent, the tiny bundle of hair at the end straining toward the focal point.