Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2)

by Laurence Dahners

  To his surprise Roger heard his own voice saying, “What if you used very high energy photons and detected them with flux sens…”

  Ellen’s eyebrows shot up and with an excited exclamation of “Yes!” she proceeded to detail a possible method, using the new “flux sensors,” much more fully fleshed out than the fuzzy idea Roger had just had. Roger could hardly believe that she had just heard his suggestion a moment ago. Johnson, leaned back a moment with his lips pursed, then without saying anything appeared to be mollified. He nodded and turned to his next target.

  Weeks passed with Ell working weekdays on the double slit experiment, then evenings and weekends on her entangled particles. She’d given up on the condensates and moved on to other particles and was back to carbon macromolecules. This Friday evening she had entangled some long carbon nanotubes and was stimulating the near one with various means, not just spin bumping. She was heating the nanotube with a laser while varying a magnetic field around it when the laser developed an intermittent fault. Ell swore and slammed her fist on the counter, then unplugged the laser; she’d couldn’t replace it now, the supply room was closed. She started shutting down her equipment. It was as she reached for the switch on the detector module that she noted the spikes on its screen. Ice flooded her veins as she slowly reached out and began turning the apparatus back on. It took another hour to reestablish the magnetic field at the strength it had been before. Then more minutes to reset the laser at the correct frequency. With a sensation of her hair standing on end, she realized that the laser emission wavelength was a multiple of the length of the nanotube. Spikes then again showed up on the detector, replicating the intermittent faults of the laser though they were much larger than spin bumping should produce. They continued to appear after she picked up the detector and moved it into the other room. When she broke the circuit to the laser it caused the same spikes on the detector. Slowly she turned everything off and wandered dazedly out of the lab. She walked to West 87, pondering what she had just witnessed and contemplating how it fit into her theory? She knew serendipity had played huge roles in some of the most important scientific breakthroughs in the world, had she just witnessed a massively serendipitous event?

  As she entered the bar, it suddenly came together for her. The laser wasn’t causing the “spin bumping” she’d been working on, rather the resonance between the nanotube and the laser was activating the secondary “photon-gluon resonance” phenomenon also predicted by her math!

  When it came to her Ell’d stopped where she was and closed her eyes trying to visualize it in her mind. A bouncer grasped her elbow and gently moved her out of the flow of traffic. After a bit she opened her eyes and, looking up at her AI’s displays, she started having Allan run simulations of what she thought was happening.

  Dr. Johnson had chosen this evening to go to West 87 with the grads as he did occasionally. Over at their regular booth, he turned irritably to Roger and asked, “What’s gotten into Symonds now?”

  Roger noticed Ellen for the first time when Johnson nodded her way. He watched her standing immobile, apparently watching her AI monitors for a minute. He said, “I don’t know, I’ll go check on her.”

  When Roger got there Ell didn’t notice him until he tapped her shoulder, “Ell?”

  “Huh? Oh, hi Roger. I’ll be over in a minute.”

  In fact it was more like fifteen minutes before she shook herself and walked over and sat down, still with a dazed appearance as her mind continued to jump from implication to implication of what had happened and to consider experiments to be done when she could check out more equipment.

  Johnson said, “What’s with you Symonds?”

  “Uh, I just got a weird result out of the spin bumping apparatus that has me rethinking the whole…”

  Johnson interrupted, “Oh damn! Not more of that crap! You still haven’t given that up?”

  Startled by the vehemence of his reaction Ell said, “Uhhh…”

  Johnson interrupted again, “No, no, don’t tell me, I can see you’re going to keep wasting time on ‘spin bumping’ until Hell won’t have it. As long as you’re making progress on the double slit experiment, I’ll pretend I don’t care.” His tone abruptly shifted to pleasant, “Anybody up for a game of pool?”

  Ell leaned back in her chair but James and Roger signaled assent. As they got up, James said, “Ellen, we need a fourth. Be my partner?”

  Ell had been glaring at Johnson’s back and shook her head “no.” She didn’t want to hang out with the professor.

  James leaned back to her and said, “Oh come on. It’ll give you a chance to put the old man in his place. Don’t you want a chance to get even for all those drubbings he gives you at the lab meetings?”

  Ell tilted her head and looked at James speculatively. She narrowed her eyes, “OK.”

  Roger had almost finished racking the balls and Johnson was chalking his cue when James and Ell arrived. Johnson looked up at them, “So Symonds, you going to watch some ‘physics in action?’”

  James said, “Oh no, she’s going to play as my partner and we’re going to win some beers from you two.”

  Roger looked surprised. Johnson said, “James, I’ll admit you’re pretty good, but you aren’t good enough to hold up a novice.”

  James said, “Ellen’s played a few times. Or are you guys too chicken to play for beers?”

  Roger looked at them speculatively but Johnson snorted, “I generally don’t like taking grad students’ money but, I don’t mind taking “smart assed” grad students’ money. Lag for the break?”

  James won the lag and broke but didn’t get anything in. Johnson promptly put three balls in. Ell put in three to match him during her turn. Then missing on purpose she left Roger with a stymied “leave.” When she stepped back James whispered, “Why didn’t you run the table?”

  Ell turned to him and quietly said, “I told you that was luck the other night. You might have to buy some beer tonight.”

  James vehemently whispered back, “That was not luck!”

  Ell shrugged and pointed to the pool table where Roger had missed his attempt at a bank shot, “Your turn.”

  James shook his head and went to look the table over. He put two balls in before giving himself a bad leave. Johnson stepped back up to the table, “I sure am getting thirsty, you two might want to call a waitress over.” He chalked his cue and promptly put in three more balls. For a few minutes Ell thought he was going to run out the table but he missed a long cross table shot.

  Ell took a deep breath and pondered just going ahead and missing her shot. She thought to herself that she shouldn’t have gotten involved in this game with a man she didn’t like and who held power over her career. Then Johnson turned to James and quietly said, “Women can be very good at math but, unlike men, they don’t have the intuitive grasp of mechanics that you need for a game like this. You can see by the look on her face that she has no idea which shot to take.”

  Ell gritted her teeth, and then against her better judgment, she put their remaining two balls in and turned to the eight ball. As the eight ball dropped she regretted her action and said with false brightness, “Jeez that was a lucky run!”

  James had chills, every one of Ellen’s balls had rolled smoothly into the very center of the pocket with a precision like he’d never seen before. Each leave was perfect for the next shot. With absolute certainty he knew there was no luck involved. Nonetheless he turned brightly to Roger and the Professor, “Hey, I guess you guys owe us a beer!”

  Johnson scowled and turned to Roger, “I’ll buy if you’ll fetch.” Roger headed to the bar and Johnson turned back to Ellen intending to challenge another game but she was on her way out the exit. He turned to James, “What got into her?”

  James grinned, “We sandbagged you guys. She’s actually really good at pool. But she said she needed to get home.” He shrugged, “Women?”

  Johnson’s eyes narrowed as he looked after Ell, “She just got lucky. No
way was that skill. I want a rematch next time we’re down here.”

  Ell spent the weekend thinking and running simulations. Saturday night she went into the lab to test a couple of predictions that could be run despite the faulty laser.

  Monday morning it was back to double slit experiments and that afternoon at their three o’clock meeting she reported that her new apparatus demonstrated wavelike interference and documented field perturbations at both slits when a “single” high energy photon passed, apparently through both slits. To her this astonishing double slit result was a minor substantiation of her theory, far less important than what she was finding with her other apparatus. The other grad students looked at one another with wide eyes. It sounded like a result that could really shake up the world of physics!

  Johnson though, rolled his eyes and said, “OK, there’s something wrong with your setup. I’ll come and look at it after this meeting.”

  Ell said tentatively, “Uh, Dr. Johnson, I think you should let me tell you about some surprising results I got with my other setup.”

  “NO! Damn it! I am not interested in any weird results you are getting out of that crap. I won’t have you waste my time on it!” He sighed in dramatic exasperation, “It’s bad enough that I have to spend time trying to figure out how you’ve screwed up the double slit apparatus.” He moved on to crucifying James on his experiment.

  After the lab meeting Johnson came down to look at Ell’s setup for the double slit experiment. She demonstrated the apparatus and he scratched his head as he looked it over and watched the flux detectors at both slits react to the passage of a single high energy photon. “Humph. I’m not sure what you’re doing wrong. I’ll have to think this over. Have you blocked access to one slit to make sure that the flux detector, on say the right slit, doesn’t respond to passage of a photon through the left slit?”

  “Yes sir. It doesn’t.”

  “Well, I’ll think on it,” he said, turning and walking out of the lab without another word.

  When Johnson was gone Roger excitedly came over, “Let me see it! Do you think Donsaii might actually be right?!”

  A little later James and Al came in too, also wanting to see her dual slit apparatus in action. The other grads wanted to go to West 87 to celebrate. Ell, dismayed by the loss of an evening working on her “photon-gluon resonance” reluctantly agreed.

  At Roger’s urging she even had “one sip” of his beer for celebration. “You might be writing a paper crucifying some of the sacred cows of physics! You should call Donsaii herself and tell her you might have some supporting evidence!”

  Ell nearly choked on her Coke. “Call Donsaii?” she laughed.

  “Yeah! I’m sure she’d love to hear about evidence that supports her theory. Wouldn’t you like to talk to the genius herself?”

  “Sure,” Ell laughed, internally amused at the thought of speaking to herself. “But I thought you felt her theories were ‘full of crap?’”

  “In physics, you’re only ‘full of crap’ until someone proves you right!” He turned serious, “Uh, Ellen? You really should take Johnson’s advice and drop that spin bumping stuff and focus on these dual slit results. They could make your career.”

  “Uh…” Ell contemplated for a moment trying to explain her photon-gluon resonance results to the other grads. But if it didn’t pan out? She decided against it. “I need to get on my way, gotta get my beauty rest. Thanks for the Coke and the ‘sip’ of beer.”

  Ell had actually intended to head back to the lab and spend a little time setting up the new laser she’d picked up that morning for her photon-gluon apparatus. However, Roger got up when she did and said, “Let me walk you home.”

  Ell looked up at Roger and smiled, she liked him a lot. “Thanks. You do know that I can get home by myself don’t you?”

  Roger shrugged self consciously, “Yeah, but what if the ‘Rigellians’ are active tonight?”

  Ell raised her brows in surprise that James had told Roger about the “Rigellians,” “Well, OK, then.” She made a tiny curtsy and spoke with gravity, “I had failed to take the Rigellians into consideration.”

  The walk home was pleasant despite the weather being pretty chilly. When they passed the “That’s Amore” pizzeria Roger asked, “Hey, you want to go in for a slice? I’ll buy.”

  Ell realized she was pretty hungry so, even though it delayed her desire to get back to the lab, she said “OK.” They went in and got a table.

  As they waited, Ell asked Roger about his childhood and was stunned to learn that he was from Morehead City! Ell realized her classmate Shelly Emmerit must be Roger’s younger sister and that Ell had eaten in his family’s restaurant many times. He ran a hand through his bushy hair, “You know that Morehead City is where Ell Donsaii grew up don’t you?”

  “Um, yeah, I think I heard that.”

  “My sister even knew her, they were classmates. I’ve been hoping that I might somehow get to meet her one of the times that I’m back home, but she’s not in Morehead City very often. Maybe I’ll see her over Christmas break? I did go to a talk she gave, but there were so many people there that there was no way for me to meet her.”

  “Wait a minute. I thought you thought she was crazy?”

  “Johnson said that, not me. I said her ‘math was incomprehensible.’”

  “Wait…” Ell frowned, “she gave a talk?” Ell wondered what ‘talk’ he could be referring to.

  “Yeah, she spoke at the high school graduation this summer.”

  Goosebumps went up Ell’s spine; she’d never considered that someone like Roger might be there for the speech she gave at graduation. “Uh, what did she talk about?” Ell felt she needed to ask, in order to maintain her separate identity but also wondered if he’d paid attention.

  “Believe it or not, she talked about the double slit experiment.” He raised an eyebrow. “Told the audience we should all work on it. I know she’d be excited to hear about your results. I really think you should contact her.”

  “Maybe when I have more confidence in the results. What if Johnson does find a mistake?”

  “Yeah, I guess you should wait a little. But I’d like to be there when you tell her.”

  “Um, you really seem interested in her?”

  “Yeah. She’s really, really smart, she likes physics and she’s gorgeous. What’s not to like?”

  Ell was bemused to find that she felt simultaneously complimented as “Ell” and hurt as “Ellen.” On one hand, she realized that her sentiment was unfair; she had actually asked Gloria to make her unattractive. She shouldn’t be hurt that it had worked. On the other hand, shouldn’t Roger like her for her mind and not for her looks? “Hmmm, Roger, what am I, chopped liver?”

  Roger ducked his head shyly. “No, Ellen. You’re great. I really like you a lot. But I’ve got hero worship for Donsaii. I wish Johnson wasn’t so down on her; I’d kinda like to work on some of the predictions her theory makes myself.” He chuckled, “At least, I’d like to work on it if I have you around to help me understand that weird math. When I first read her paper I thought it was so far out there as to verge on the ridiculous. It wasn’t until Johnson had you explain the paper to us that I started to admire Donsaii for physics instead of gymnastics.” Roger suddenly realized that he hardly ever thought about Ellen’s odd appearance anymore. She was his friend and more. He became conscious of the fact that he wouldn’t mind at all if she were much more than a friend.

  The pizza came and Roger watched as Ellen wolfed down a couple slices. He’d often been astonished at how much she ate; thinking that if she just cut back a little, her butt might not be quite so big. Though, now as he sat across a table from her, looking at only her upper half, he realized that she didn’t actually look overweight at all, it really was “all in her hips” strangely enough. Well, he thought to himself, I don’t care if her butt’s too big, I like her the way she is.

  Ell found it strange, eating with a Roger who seemed so intensely f
ocused on her tonight. She’d been finding his quiet intensity more and more attractive but had never expected it to be focused on her. Or was it? Could I just be imagining that he is attracted to Ellen with the big butt and beaky nose?

  Pizza finished, they started walking the rest of the way back to Ell’s apartment. Roger asked about her childhood and Ell told him briefly about “Ellen’s” imaginary life before NCSU. Their hands bumped and to her surprise, Roger’s hand gently grasped hers and they walked on, hand in hand, her wondering just what “holding hands” meant in this situation. Ell began to worry about what he might expect when they got to her apartment but, to her relief, when she had opened the gate to the complex and turned to him, he bent gently and pecked her on the cheek. “Good night, Ellen, and congratulations on your experiment. Someday, I expect I’ll be telling my kids that I knew you.” He turned and walked off into the evening.

  Ell went upstairs to get a change of clothes, and then started back to the lab, eager to start her new photon-gluon resonance experiments. She spent the night, sleeping a few hours in intermittent catnaps on lab’s cot, getting more and more excited about her results until it became almost impossible to get back to sleep. It really did look like she could send information from one entangled macromolecule to the other. She’d been able to confirm that information transmitted even when the receiver apparatus was in a Faraday cage so it couldn’t be occurring through some radio effect. Because it transmitted an “event” when the laser went on and off, she should be able to send very large files of binary information just like was done in fiber optic communication systems. She needed to be able to separate her sending and receiving elements farther than she could by just carting the receiver down the hall to be more confident that some other physical effect wasn’t responsible for the data transmission. After some excited thought she realized that she should be able to make very small units with the circuit fabrication equipment available in the Physics department “fab” lab. By seven the next morning she had designed a circuit and a chip with an “off the shelf” optoelectronic laser set to stimulate her entangled carbon nanotube, sending data as if it were going to stream into a fiber optic fiber.