Deep Space - Hidden Terror (The Stasis Stories #6)

by Laurence Dahners

  Kaem shook his head, “You forget we’re working with Stade. Really high rpm are possible since the flywheel won’t explode. If we installed a single hundred-meter-diameter, one-tonne flywheel and ran it at ten thousand rpm, it would contain…” he paused a moment with his eyes unfocused, “686 megajoules of kinetic energy. Since that’s not a terribly meaningful figure to most of us, let me translate that to… that’d be 190 megawatt-hours. Or if you increased the rpm to a hundred thousand, it’d hold nineteen-gigawatt-hours. Wait…” He looked unfocused again, “No, a square mile of solar panels will currently only generate about 0.77 gigawatts. So, such a flywheel could hold so much power that the farm would only need to stop off and deliver power to the grid’s flywheels once every twenty days… Hmm, since we’d have six flywheels, they could be a lot smaller than a hundred meters.” He looked brightly at the others and shifted gears. “Since New York City consumes about six gigawatts, that means we’d have to have more than eight square-mile-sized farms up there to supply all of its needs… Wait, double that, since the panels only generate power during the day

  . I think the City’s about 300 square miles so we’d be shading about 5.3% of it.” He looked at Teri, “Is five percent enough shade to make a difference with the urban heat island issue?”

  Teri looked a little bit stunned. She said, “Um, I’m not sure. I’ll need to research that question.”

  Mahesh said, “Wait a minute, how fast will the rim of that hundred-meter flywheel be going if it’s doing a hundred thousand rpm?”

  “Oh!” Kaem exclaimed, his eyes unfocusing again, “Wow. It’d be going 524 kilometers per second. That’s, uh, 0.17% of the speed of light. Not relativistic, but up there. I don’t think it should cause problems, but we should probably deliver power more often so speeds don’t get that high. At least until we’ve done some testing with really high-speed flywheels…”

  ***

  AP Washington DC—The FDA announced today that, based on extensive animal testing, they are approving the stasis devices developed by Staze Inc. for use at the discretion of the treating physician. Though it is unusual to approve an entirely new device without randomized testing in humans, they have concluded that randomizing patients to a control group that does not receive a treatment that’s so obviously beneficial would be unethical.

  Simple follow-up studies of paired patients (ones having similar demographics and conditions) treated with and without stasis (before stasis units were widely available) have shown markedly higher survival rates with the use of stasis. This is not thought to be because stasis is good for you, but because medical treatment can be carried out in a measured and deliberate fashion, rather than the panicked rush that so often happened with emergency conditions in the past.

  Of note, one use of stasis that’s been rapidly increasing is in the field of organ transplantation. Rather than harvesting organs, rapidly testing them for disease, while desperately searching for a recipient who’s a good match and who can be available to receive the donation within hours; now they’re harvesting the organs and stazing them. With the organ in stasis, evaluation of the donor for communicable diseases, antigen matching and cross-matching of the organ, and then arranging for the recipient to receive the organ electively rather than under emergent conditions is protocol. Organs have waited days or weeks for the perfect recipient, often shipped thousands of miles, all with little time pressure. Investigators note that organ rejection rates have markedly diminished using this strategy. Hearing this, some patients in need of organ transplants have voluntarily placed themselves in stasis to await, not just a good, but an excellent organ match. This has paradoxically increased the need for organs as patients in need who would’ve died and departed the rolls are instead awaiting organs in stasis.

  In laboratory studies, thousands of normal animals have been stazed, and some of them have undergone stasis thousands of times. None of these studies have detected any decrease in the stazed animals’ average lifespan. Some of the animals have stayed in stasis for periods longer than the normal lifespan of such an animal. When they came back out of stasis they have, on average, lived out the remainder of a normal lifespan.

  In response to questioning, the FDA spokesperson admitted that they believe all stazing of humans and animals is, in fact, safe. This conclusion opens the way for stazing people with untreatable illnesses until cures can be discovered.

  It also opens the door for some companies that have been trying to develop stazers for various emergency situations. Staze has been stazing people during space-launch, partly to enable them to tolerate the stress of high acceleration launches but also to make them safe should something go wrong during launch. This has been allowed on the basis that the risks of stasis are certainly much lower than the risk of a launch. A new company named “AirSafe” has announced a system for retrofitting aircraft so their interior passenger space can be stazed in the event of an impending crash. An airline “Travelstazed” has formed on the concept of stazing people and packing their Stades into cargo planes, only destazing them after landing. This obviates the discomfort of airline seats, markedly lowers the cost of a flight, renders the passenger completely safe during a crash, and can even avoid jetlag by destazing the passenger at their destination at the same local time of day as they were stazed before departure. Industry insiders are anticipating that Travelstazed will become the market leader, as it provides so many more benefits than AirSafe. “Fireman’s Helper” is building stazing systems that can be used to ride out fires or carried in by firefighters who would use them to staze people who cannot otherwise get to safety. The company contends the upper floors of every building over four stories should be outfitted with one of their devices.

  The FDA acknowledges that some people have been using stasis merely to “travel into the future,” for various reasons, some as mundane as waiting for their investments to prosper. While the FDA’s spokespersons said they do not condone such activity, they agreed such stazing should not be forbidden on the basis of any anticipated harm to the individual’s health.

  Mahesh watched the wedding party shuffling around as they tried to figure out where each was supposed to sit at the head table. His eyes kept stopping at the best woman. After virtually never seeing her wear anything but heavy-duty work clothes at construction sites, he was having a hard time adapting to this version of Dez Lanis. Finally, everyone else sat down, leaving Dez standing there, slim and sharp in her tuxedo, a microphone in her hand, her pale blonde hair—normally windblown—hanging in perfect ringlets. Her blue eyes, usually piercing, were softly angelic on this special day.

  My goodness, Mahesh thought. She’s gorgeous! Who would’ve thought?

  Dez raised the microphone and began to speak. “I know. I know. You’re wondering why Kaem has a best woman instead of the traditional best man.” She grinned, “You’ve all heard the rumors that it’s because he doesn’t have any male friends.” She waited for the roar of laugher over the idea of a friendless Kaem to settle. “You’ve heard the rumor about how he was afraid to have a real man up here on the dais with him for fear Arya would realize how much better she could do…” As this next roll of laughter calmed, Dez’s expression turned serious. “But the real reason is that, other than his sister Bana, I’m Kaem’s oldest friend. Bana would’ve been standing here if she weren’t also his oldest enemy.”

  Dez paused again for another laugh. Then she turned to look at Kaem. “You might have heard that Kaem and I were in grade school together.” Her voice caught, but she powered through, “We were both poor kids at a rough school. My mother was addicted to drugs, sending me to school in humiliating thrift store rags. And Kaem… he was afflicted with a terrible congenital blood disease that left him small and weak. To say we were bullied… that would be to gloss over the horror of our childhoods.” She turned back to her audience. “When my life at school was at its lowest points. When other kids were saying terrible things about me. When they were crushing my spirit…” Voi
ce rasping, she paused to swallow several times. A single tear tracked down her cheek as she continued, “At my lowest points I would look up and see Kaem standing there looking at me, seemingly just as broken-hearted as I felt. Sympathizing while other kids laughed. From the look in his eyes, I could tell just how horrified he was about what was happening to me. How his heart ached that he couldn’t help me.” She wiped her eye, cleared her throat, and said, “For, you see, he couldn’t help me any more than I could help him when bigger boys shoved and attacked him.”

  Dez turned and faced her audience. “The night my mother was killed in a fight over drugs I thought my world had ended. But then my mother’s wonderful sister adopted me, took me away from that school, dressed me in decent clothes, and gave me the chance to thrive. Despite now living in a better world, I thought often of Kaem, a kid I’d hardly ever spoken to, yet thought of as my only friend. Imagine how I felt one night when an engineering friend told me to watch a talk about a new material. One he said was going to change the way the world built everything… And, there on the screen…” Dez choked up again. She cleared her throat, looked at Kaem, and continued, “There on the screen I saw my oldest friend. He was talking about Stade. He’d been integral to the invention of Stade and it wasn’t just going to change the way the world built stuff. It was going to change the world. I applied for a job at Staze that night! Working with my first, and now my best friend, has been a dream come true for me.”

  Dez turned back to the room, “Now, you may be wondering whether it’s breaking my heart that my best friend is marrying Arya. A lot of you don’t know I did go out on one date with Kaem. Worst, date, ever! That date wasn’t just a disaster, it was a catastrophe, a tragedy, and a cataclysm all rolled into one!” She paused again for laughter. “It’s the gods’ own truth that our date was so freaking bad the police were involved!” Dez waited for the crowd to settle down again. “I was carrying a gun that night or we might not have survived!” Dez looked over at the bride, “Arya, you’re welcome to Kaem. I’ll always be his friend, but I don’t ever want to have to date him again. It’s got to be even worse living with him. I wish you the best of luck dealing with that! I know you already had to bail his ass out in Italy, so I’m sure you know what you’re in for.”

  As Dez recounted a few more funny stories at Kaem’s expense, Mahesh reflected that Dez and Kaem’s date hadn’t been at all amusing at the time. But looking back on your trials and tribulations with humor… Mahesh thought. I think that’s the best way to deal with them.

  With a sudden thought, Mahesh looked around the room, wondering whether the reclusive Mr. X might be among the guests. Since no one knew who the man was, Mahesh suddenly wondered if X could be someone he saw every day, simply not knowing that he was looking at X. As his eyes started going from table to table, they caught on Gunnar. Gunnar’s old and wise in a curmudgeonly fashion, Mahesh thought. We know he helped Kaem build the first working model, which is what X’s role in this whole thing was supposed to be. Maybe he’s just hiding his genius behind that crusty exterior? After giving it more thought, Mahesh decided the idea just didn’t hold together. He felt sure Gunnar had been at meetings when Kaem was spewing ideas the way he did sometimes, claiming X fed them to him. If Gunnar had been whispering concepts and designs to Kaem over his earbud, someone would’ve noticed. But I’ll keep an eye out in the future, he decided.

  After the wedding dinner, the band started up and Ed Nagy, one of the young engineers, took over as M.C. At first, Mahesh wondered whether an engineer could be funny enough to pull off a stint as M.C., but Nagy was hilarious. He poked fun at everyone without hurting anyone’s feelings. When he teased Mahesh about how much he’d enjoyed working with Admiral Halser, even Mahesh found Nagy’s characterization hysterical. Whether the young man been asked or had volunteered, Nagy made the wedding more fun than any Mahesh had ever attended. He started wondering whether the company could call on him for other events. No, he thought. Nagy’s an excellent engineer. If we ask him to be our comedian it could get to the point that no one would take him seriously.

  That might ruin a promising career.

  When Mahesh and his wife left the reception, the young people were still going strong. As he looked around on his way out, it struck him just how young Staze was…

  ***

  AP Charlottesville, North Carolina—Today US HyperLoop said they signed a contract with Staze Inc. for the time-limited exclusive use of Stade in the construction of a new type of hyperloop. Over the two years since Staze returned from Italy, the two companies have collaborated on the construction of a Stade-lined tunnel extending from the site of Staze’s new Charlottesville headquarters to its southeast Virginia space-launch tower.

  This project used an entirely new tunneling system. First, they drove a Stade pin only three millimeters in diameter through the earth from the headquarters to the tower. Because of Stade’s extreme rigidity, they were able to aim the pin straight through the earth without it wandering out of alignment. A boring machine consisting of a Stade cutting head driven by a Stade tube followed that three-millimeter pin. Once they removed the cutting head, the tube remained as the hyperloop tunnel. Due to the curvature of the Earth, traveling a straight line sent it 1,500 feet beneath the surface at its midpoint. The government of Virginia provided them a special dispensation that allowed them to travel beneath people’s land without negotiating for rights with each property owner. Instead, they paid by the foot traveled beneath a landowner’s property, following a sliding scale that lowered the cost the further beneath the surface the tunnel traveled.

  This hyperloop between Staze’s campuses has been in use now for several months, transporting employees over the one-hundred-mile distance in ten minutes. Now US HyperLoop plans to offer to construct similar tunnels or hyperloops for others who want them. They are also offering to drill narrower diameter tubing for pumping liquids or passing telecommunications wiring or fiberoptics. An especially exciting possibility is to use such tubes for superconductors immersed in liquid nitrogen. Stade’s infinite insulation value would make it so the cooling fluid didn’t need constant replenishment and the superconduction would markedly reduce transmission losses. This would substantially improve the efficiency of the power grid.

  Kaem was a little surprised to realize he felt nervous. He’d gotten used to feeling calm in situations others found stressful. Rationally, he knew childbirth wasn’t that dangerous anymore. Still, he worried about Arya and he worried about the baby. At the moment he was walking out to tell his and Arya’s parents that his little girl hadn’t been born yet. He felt guilty because he’d used the line, “I should let the grandparents know you’re okay,” to get a moment to stretch his legs on the way out to the waiting room. Well, and to get a moment away from Arya’s suffering.

  He stepped into the waiting room and looked over toward where Emmanuel and Sophia had been waiting. Someone was sitting in the place where they’d been waiting. He turned to survey the rest of the waiting room, then realized the people he’d passed over were Arya’s parents. He walked over and they looked up, rising to their feet, “She’s born?” Arya’s mother Priya asked worriedly.

  Kaem shook his head. “Just coming out to tell you everything’s okay, though Arya’s very tired as you might imagine. You just got here?”

  Priya shook her head. “About thirty minutes ago. Your parents just went to get something to eat. Can we get something for you?”

  Kaem’s eyes widened, “I’d walk over broken glass for a cheeseburger and fries.”

  Arya’s dad stood. “I’ll get it for you. Unless…” He grinned at Kaem, “If they have curry, I’m sure you’d rather I got you a bowl of that, right?”

  Kaem snorted. Rohan knew he didn’t like curry and always teased him about it. “Sure,” he said, grinning, “if you’ll get a pineapple pizza for yourself, we can eat together.”

  Rohan laughed, “Good comeback.” He turned and walked away, saying, “Be back shortly with
that cheeseburger.”

  When Kaem looked back down at his mother-in-law, she asked, “Will they let me visit Arya?”

  Kaem said, “They’ll only let one person be with her at a time and I have a feeling that a very important part of my husbandly duty is to suffer with her through at least ninety-nine percent of her labor. I’d better go back now, but maybe you could go back when I come out to eat my cheeseburger?”

  She smiled at him and arched an eyebrow, “Yes, you’d better get back.”

  ~~~

  Kaem was holding his daughter when they let his parents come back for a visit. Arya looked exhausted but had proclaimed herself ready to see family. When Emmanuel and Sophia entered, they came directly over to sit on either side of him.

  “She’s beautiful!” Sophia exclaimed.

  “She looks like a raisin,” Kaem countered.

  Emmanuel broke into laughter, “You’ve got more courage than sense, boy.”

  Kaem looked over at Arya who gave him a subtle smile, “She looks like the world’s most beautiful raisin.”

  Sophia was giving him a look, but she shook her head and said, “Now are you going to tell us her name?”

  “Raisin,” Kaem said, deadpan.

  “Kaem…” Sophia said threateningly.

  “We’re calling her Zaii Vera,” Kaem replied.

  “Zaii Vera Seba doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue,” his mother said.

  He shook his head, “Just two names. Zaii Vera. That rolls just fine.”

  “You’re not using Seba?” Emmanuel asked, sounding more puzzled than hurt.

  He shook his head, “Don’t want her growing up in the shadow. Living up to that name is getting harder and harder for me and I’m an adult.” He looked up at his dad, “I have a feeling that living up to that name was a big part of the reason you left Italy after you got hurt, wasn’t it?”