Discovery: Proton Field #1

by Laurence Dahners

  But before she flipped it, her hand stopped. She looked back at Vinn and said, “We think hydrogen is the common link between all the things that are attracted to the focus, right?”

  Vinn nodded.

  “And everything we’ve used so far is only had a little bit of hydrogen in it, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So, I think you’re a knucklehead for trying to stay in the lab the first time we test the field on the pure stuff.”

  Vinn snorted, “So you’re saying that you won’t turn it on till I come out there and close the door?”

  Her eyes narrowed, “No, I’m just conflicted about whether I should let a dumbass like you try to win a Darwin award. On the one hand, you can be pretty annoying, and it’d be nice to be shut of you. On the other, I’m sure there’d be a lot of paperwork to fill out.”

  Vinn appreciated her style in giving him shit, but reminded himself that pissing her off with a comeback zinger was probably not the best way to get along. Nonetheless, he couldn’t restrain himself from sighing as he walked out the door and closed it behind him. He turned his eyes to the screen as Myr flipped the switch.

  The glass globe vanished with a jerk. A puff of white appeared, not at the focal point, but on the far side of the focus from where the globe had been. A buzzing alarm started and Vinn wondered what the hell it could be.

  By the time these events had registered with Vinn, Myr’d slapped the power off with a violent motion that startled Vinn. The alarm quieted. Vinn said, “What was the alarm, did something blow a circuit?”

  Myr looked up at him, her face pale. “That was the Geiger counter,” she said in a shaky voice.

  Vinn blinked. “Geiger?” he said in a puzzled tone. “That one just makes a kind of a popping noise, right?”

  “When there’s a lot of radiation, the pops come so close together that it sounds like a buzz,” Myr said quietly. “You might actually have been well on your way to earning that Darwin award if you’d stayed in there.” She stepped to the door and cracked it open while Vinn tried to process what she’d just said. As the door opened a little wider, a puff of hot air flowed out over them.

  Like opening the door on a warm summer day.

  Myr shut the door and they stared at one another wide-eyed for a moment. She said, “Let’s watch the video.”

  With the video slowed down to its slowest speed, they watched as it only took a few frames for the glass globe to jerk up to the end of the malleable wire. The twist in the wire unraveled and the globe flew toward the focal point where it instantly imploded. The puff of white they’d seen in real time was a shower of shattered glass from the globe flying on past the focus. No puff of white appeared like it usually did when Myr powered down, but the focus had only been on momentarily. Vinn said, “What the hell set off the Geiger counter?”

  Myr didn’t take her eyes off the screen, as she said quietly, “Some hydrogen was being squeezed down to a point so small we can’t see it.” Now she looked up at Vinn, “This was done by a field that seems to block electrostatic repulsion. Then heat and radiation was released. I’m betting on gamma. What’s that make you think of?”

  “Fusion?” Vinn breathed.

  Myr nodded solemnly, “That’s what I think too.” She turned back to look at the screen as it cycled through the video again.

  After watching it through two more times, she stood and opened the door a crack. She stood up on her tiptoes and peered through the crack. Vinn said, “What are you looking at?”

  “The Geiger counter. Its lights are on and it looks like it’s working. Hopefully the fact that it’s quiet means there isn’t actually any more radiation being generated… Just a minute.” She went next door and came back with another Geiger counter. Pushing the door open, she walked into the room holding its wand out in front of her, but it stayed quiet. She set the extra Geiger down and started zeroing the dials and switches on her equipment.

  “What’re you doing?!”

  “Shuttin’ down for the weekend,” she un-jacked a couple of wires and plugged them into different locations.

  Vinn walked in and found himself staring at a slightly blackened area on the wood of the table nearest the focal point. Realizing she was going beyond her usual zeroing of the setup by actually rewiring it to make the setup even harder to replicate, he stared at her. Horrified, he said, “You’re quittin’ now! We’ve just made a phenomenally important discovery and you’re knockin’ off for the weekend?!”

  Myr turned and focused on him with narrowed eyes. Quietly but forcefully, she said, “I believe… that we just induced a nuclear reaction that occurs in the sun and in H-bombs. Accidentally! While having not a single clue what we were about to do.” She advanced a step on Vinn with a look in her eyes so intense that he involuntarily stepped backwards. “This was with a setup that has not been at all optimized… Suppose for just a moment that a little different setup might have induced a reaction several hundred times more powerful. Imagine that we might have hit those settings by accident.” She paused for a second, evidently to let Vinn think, then she arched an eyebrow, “We came pretty damned close to killing ourselves, but I’ll bet we came almost as close to killing everyone in Kansas City.”

  “But…”

  Myr interrupted him by placing a finger on his lips, “There are no buts on this one. We need to spend at least the weekend and perhaps a lot more time than that, thinking and reading and trying to understand what might have just happened before we even consider doing it again.” She turned and jerked out several more of the wires that connected the various equipment on her cart, this time leaving them dangling. She took a picture of the whiteboard, then erased it. She pulled her jacket off the back of her chair and slipped into it. Stepping to her computer, she un-jacked the terabyte jump drive where the computer stored all her data and dropped the drive in the pocket of her jacket. She told the computer’s AI to overwrite all its temp files, then shut down.

  Glancing around the room, Myr turned back to Vinn and waved him toward the door. “Out,” she said.

  “But…”

  “Go home,” she said, “Or go to your office. Think for God’s sake. Don’t do.”

  Desperately, Vinn said, “If you get killed tonight, this’ll all be lost to humanity!”

  “That might be a good thing,” she said obliquely, entering the stairwell and heading down.

  Staring after her, Vinn thought, She’s right and she’s wrong. We do need to think about this, but if she gets killed, it’d be a freakin’ tragedy. He turned and headed to his office—like he’d intended at the beginning of the day.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Vinn had finished his email and electronically completed some tasks that Miller Tech had assigned him. With that done he spent a few hours reading up on fusion.

  What he learned was sobering.

  Each proton-proton fusion reaction—the nucleus of a hydrogen atom being a single proton—if that’s what they’d produced in the lab, would have released a neutrino and an antimatter positron. The neutrino, because it didn’t interact with ordinary matter would have flown away, but the positron should have immediately annihilated itself with an electron, releasing gamma rays and generating heat. Complete proton-proton fusion of the twelve milligrams of hydrogen they’d had in that glass globe could have released about half as much energy as a typical lightning bolt. If the hydrogen had gone all the way through the proton-proton chain reaction to helium like hydrogen does in the sun it would’ve released eighteen times that much. Nine typical lightning bolts, he thought with chagrin.

  Half a lightning bolt would have been plenty enough for me to win that Darwin award even without the gamma rays.

  The gamma radiation generated would have dropped off as the cube of the distance from its source and about fifty percent of it would’ve been blocked by the concrete block wall of the lab, but he still suspected he and Myr had absorbed more radiation than either of them would have wanted to. Guiltily, he wond
ered whether people in neighboring labs had been significantly radiated as well.

  There was a knock at his door. When Vinn turned, a young man said, “You’re Dr. Saigler, right?”

  At Vinn’s nod, the guy said, “And you work with Myr Sevii?”

  Vinn nodded again.

  Eagerly, the man said, “I can’t find her, but I wanted to let you guys know that we finally figured out that sample you sent us over in the chem lab.”

  Vinn remembered the snow that Myr had caught in the beaker. “It was water?”

  “Well, that much was obvious. But we knew you wouldn’t be asking about ordinary water so we did our damnedest to figure out what might be interesting about the sample.”

  Vinn shrugged, “Okay, was there anything interesting about it?”

  “No heavy water,” the man said a little bit triumphantly, as if he’d solved a puzzle that Myr and Vinn hadn’t thought he’d be able to.

  Vinn frowned and drew back a little, “What?”

  “Yeah, you didn’t think we could figure that out, did you? At first we were a little surprised by how pure the sample was, thinking that might be the reason you wanted it analyzed, but then we thought to test for deuterium. There wasn’t any D2O. None, absolutely zip. And, there was about half as much DHO as normal.” The guy got a very curious look on his face, “How’d you do it?”

  Vinn blinked, then said, “New process. Still proprietary so I can’t tell you yet, but check back next year.”

  At first the guy looked really disappointed, but then he grinned and said, “I’ll be back.” He shook a finger at Vinn, “Don’t think I won’t.”

  After the guy left, Vinn sat staring out the window, No true heavy water with two deuterium molecules? And half as much water that only had one deuterium molecule? How the hell could that happen? he wondered.

  He would’ve called Myr to tell her what the lab found, but realized he hadn’t gotten her number yet.

  Though, if I’d asked, she probably wouldn’t have given me her number, he thought morosely.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Vinn decided that he wasn’t going to be able to sleep that night unless he tired himself out. Besides, it was Friday night. So, despite the fact that playing ball after the kind of day they’d just had would feel anti-climactic, he headed for the gym. This time he had his gear with him and hoped he’d be able to sub in on some pick-up games.

  Walking into the gym, he looked around. Though it was a Friday night, it didn’t seem as busy as it’d been on Thursday. He decided that most people were out trying to score a Friday night social life. As opposed to a loser like me, he thought unhappily. A couple of volleyball games were going on at the near end of the gym. Down at the other end five basketball goals were in use for half-court games.

  As he walked down to the basketball end of the gym, he realized that one of the goals really wasn’t being used for any kind of organized game. It just seemed to have a bunch of people shooting, playing one on one, or practicing in some fashion. He decided that was the obvious place for him to start.

  As he approached, his eyes were attracted to a pretty girl, dressed out in shorts and a silky tank top. Muscular legs and arms, yet slender and feminine, not brawny. She stood, casually holding a ball against a cocked hip while she talked to one of the guys. Something about her looked familiar. Then she turned, bounced the ball once and took a shot at the basket.

  It was Myr Sevii!

  Vinn stopped to stare. He remembered that during their first lunch with Miller, Miller had drawn them out on their lives away from work. He’d learned that both Vinn and Myr liked basketball. At the time, Vinn had figured that she liked watching basketball. He’d pictured her as a Jayhawk fan since she’d gone to KU.

  Until this moment, he hadn’t considered the possibility that she might like playing.

  Uncertainly, he sat down on a bench, taking a spot that hid him mostly behind some other guys but still let him see what Myr was doing. Her first shot had clanged off the rim. Vinn’s initial thought was that the guy who’d been talking to her would take off, uninterested in playing with someone who obviously wasn’t much good. Instead the guy stepped over to the free-throw line and took a shot. It went in.

  Myr stepped up to the free-throw line and took the same shot. They’re playing H-O-R-S-E! he thought. Myr’s second shot spun around the rim but flew out. Not as embarrassing as the clanger, but she momentarily buried her head in her hands, looking embarrassed and frustrated.

  This is bizarre, Vinn thought. She doesn’t act at all feminine at work, but she’s acting all girly here at the gym. It seemed to him that if she was going to act feminine somewhere, it’d more likely be at work than here in a male dominated basketball gym. As he watched, Vinn became convinced that Myr had just met the guy she was shooting with. Is she trying to pick him up? he wondered

  Vinn kept an eye on some of the other people, but mostly focused on Myr’s game of H-O-R-S-E. She did make a few shots, but was clearly outclassed, even though Vinn didn’t think the guy looked like much of a player. When they finished their little game, Vinn stood up, thinking he’d go over and say hi. He stopped when he saw Myr pull out a couple of bills and hand them to the guy she’d been playing against. She’s playing for money! he thought with astonishment.

  It looked like she was arguing with the guy now. Vinn sat back down to watch. After a moment, Myr and the guy shook hands and she took another shot. This one went in. The guy dropped his from the same spot. Though Vinn had never imagined he’d be watching a game of H-O-R-S-E rather than playing himself, this time he pretty much ignored the other games going on around Myr. He kept track of the score and this time it looked like Myr spelled H-O-R-S, though she did eventually lose. Again, she handed over some bills, looking quite frustrated.

  To Vinn’s amazement, it looked like Myr and her basketball buddy were having a really heated discussion after the second game. Vinn thought she was challenging the guy to yet another game. Though Vinn couldn’t actually hear their words, he got the impression that the fellow she’d been playing against really didn’t want to take any more of her money. Probably just wants a date. Vinn hadn’t thought the guy was trying all that hard on either of the first two games, missing some shots that Vinn thought the guy probably could have made.

  A couple of minutes later, Myr was shaking hands with the guy again. She turned and dribbled the ball a couple of times. Vinn realized something had changed. When she’d dribbled it before, she’d bounced it high and hadn’t looked like she had much control. Now she dribbled effortlessly, no longer keeping her eyes on the ball like she had before. She stepped up to the three-point line and drained a high arcing shot.

  A glance at the guy Myr’d been playing against made it obvious that the guy was just as surprised as Vinn. Myr’s friend put up an air-ball from the same spot. Vinn watched wide eyed as Myr dropped ball after ball from even longer distances.

  Looking more and more frustrated, despite appearing to try his very best this time, her opponent only spelled H. This time the cash went the other way and Vinn got the impression that it was a painfully large amount of money.

  The guy walked away red-faced, looking embarrassed and angry. He was going to pass near where Vinn was sitting and, curious, Vinn was about to get up and ask him about whatever had just happened. But then Vinn glanced over and saw Myr watching the fellow walk away with a smirk on her face. Vinn didn’t want her to see him talking to her victim, so he stayed sitting until the guy had gone by and Myr had turned back to shooting baskets.

  With the coast clear, Vinn got up and walked on over to the court Myr was on. As he got close, he called out, “Hey, Myr, I see you really do like basketball.”

  She glanced over at him, grimaced, and said, “Yeah… I figured, ‘cause I’m a girl, you thought I could only be a fan.”

  Although that’s exactly what he’d thought, Vinn put his hands up in protest, “Do you think everyone with a Y chromosome’s a jerk?”


  “Pretty much,” she said disgustedly. She eyed him, “And I suspect you’re probably worse than most.”

  “Wow!” Vinn said, trying to sound unjustifiably hurt. He had a sudden thought. He turned away and dribbled his ball a couple of times. As he took a shot, he said, “By the way, after you left a guy came up from the chemistry lab. He had the results on your melted snow.” Vinn’s ball caromed off the rim and he trotted off after it.

  When Vinn caught up to the ball, Myr was right behind him. She said, “What’d he say?”

  “The water was really pure, but that’s not the interesting part.” Vinn took another shot. This one banked in and Vinn trotted after it.

  When he got his ball, Myr was right there again, looking frustrated. “What was the interesting part?”

  Vinn dribbled out to the top of the key, turned and shot a jumper. He winked at Myr and said, “I’m sure he’s probably sent you the results by now.” That shot bounced high but did fall back in. This time when he caught up to his ball Myr wasn’t there with him. He glanced around and saw her standing on the baseline talking, presumably to her AI. Trying not to make it obvious that he was watching her, he took another shot while glancing at Myr often enough to see frustration bloom on her face. Vinn retrieved his ball and dribbled back out onto the court.

  When he turned toward the basket Myr was striding angrily toward him. Trying to act as if he hadn’t noticed her coming, he went up for a shot but she slapped it away. “What’d he say?!”

  Stunned by how casually she’d blocked his shot, Vinn started to trot after his ball, but Myr jerked him up short by a solid grip on his shirt. “What did he say?”

  How’d she do that? Vinn thought. He had to weigh more than she did and would’ve expected to pull her along if she grabbed his shirt. Her stopping him so effectively seemed… impossible. Trying not to give away his surprise, he turned to her with a grin and said, “He didn’t send you the results?”