Comet!

by Laurence Dahners

  Bynewicz looked up and said, “Roger! Come on in, and who’s this with you?” Benewicz thought he’d brought an undergraduate. Or was this just someone who’d come to visit Bynewicz at the same time as Roger? Bynewicz’ eyebrows rose, “Oh! Sorry Ms. Donsaii. I didn’t recognize you in the…” Bynewicz gestured at Ell’s head.

  “Oh, sorry Dr. Bynewicz,” Ell said taking off her hat. “Trying to look anonymous.”

  Bynewicz gaze stuck to her for a moment, surprised to see that she was just as pretty as she looked in the photos that Bynewicz had always assumed were retouched. “Well,” she looked at Roger, “did you bring me the big port?”

  Roger grinned and pulled out a 5 centimeter port pair. “Did you get the heavy duty circuit put in? It draws eight kilowatts.”

  “Yeah, I got it. Right over here.” She waved Roger over. They plugged in the port and watched the opening appear and disappear when Roger switched it on and off.

  They all sat down and Bynewicz said, “So what we’re finding with the mice is that they do appear to be having seizures as best we can tell. We’ve tried a number of different anti seizure medications. The meds don’t seem to be able to prevent the seizures though they diminish the visible convulsions. We’ve even given general anesthesia like for ECT. Under anesthesia of course, the mice don’t have an observable seizure, but they still appear to be postictal when they awaken from the anesthetic.”

  “ECT?”

  “Electro convulsive therapy. A treatment still used for a few patients who do not respond well to the newer anti depressant medications.”

  “Postictal?”

  “A drowsy and confused state experienced after a seizure.” Bynewicz frowned, “Essentially I wouldn’t want to put my head through a port unless my life depended on it. I can envision it being used for rescuing people from the Space Station or a sinking ship or something but not for routine transport.”

  “Any other ideas on means to prevent the seizures?”

  “Not so far, but we might learn a lot about seizures by inducing them with your ports. Maybe that’ll give us some ideas. I have had a medical idea for your ports that’s unrelated to transport and seizures though.”

  Ell put up a finger, “Sorry, I have a call. You guys keep talking,” she stood and stepped back.

  Roger was distracted because Ell’s AI rarely put calls through to her when she was talking to people. It must be pretty important. He tried to focus back on Bynewicz but heard Ell say, “Yes sir. Thank you sir.” They glanced at Ell who was smiling. “Yes sir. Of course sir. I’ll be there. Thank you sir.” She stepped back over and sat down again, focusing on Bynewicz, “So what’s your idea Dr. Bynewicz?”

  Bynewicz smiled at her, “Looked like you got some good news?”

  Ell stared contemplatively at her for a moment, then shrugged and grinned shyly, “Nobel.”

  Bynewicz brow furrowed, “Who?”

  Roger leapt out of his chair, “Holy shit! You got the Nobel?!”

  Ell nodded minutely and made little downward pushing motions with her hands as if to calm him. She turned back to Bynewicz and smiled expectantly, raising her eyebrows to indicate attentiveness.

  Roger jumped into the air, pumping his fist. “Yes!!! I knew you’d get it!” He shouted and turned back to her, “We’ve got to go celebrate!!!”

  Ell’s brow furrowed slightly despite her irrepressible crooked grin, “OK, but first let’s hear what Dr. Bynewicz has to say?”

  Roger said, “You’ve got to be kidding!” He turned to Bynewicz, “With all due respect, Doctor, but,” Roger turned wide eyed to Ell, “holy crap! We’ve got to go celebrate!”

  Ell made more tamping motions at Roger, “We can celebrate. But I want to hear what Dr. Bynewicz has to say.” She turned back to the wide eyed Bynewicz.

  Bynewicz’ eyes were wide. She said, “The Nobel Prize? For your ports?”

  “Oh… no Ma’am. For the original paper a few years back about the math describing the 5th dimension that quantum effects occur through. The PGR chips and the ports are based on that math though.”

  Stunned, Bynewicz simply said “Oh.”

  “You had another idea for how we could use the ports in medicine?” Ell prompted.

  Bynewicz blinked slowly then said, “Uh, yes. Diabetes. A port implanted in the body could be used to sample glucose levels and dispense insulin. That would avoid the probe-catheters in use now. Those have to be removed and reinserted every few days.

  Ell said, “Oh, that is a great idea! Would you be able to develop such devices?”

  Bynewicz appeared to be taken aback. “Oh no! I’m not a diabetes expert.” She paused, then said. “My best friend is though… Should I talk to her?”

  Ell said, “Sure! Let us know...we’d love to see something like that happen.”

  Bynewicz said, “It can take years and huge amounts of funding to get something like that approved by the FDA. It might be best to try to sell the idea to one of the big pharmaceutical companies?”

  Ell raised her eyebrows, “OK, but if you want to do it yourselves, I’m sure the investors that supported D5R would be happy to invest.”

  They said their goodbyes to a dazed looking Bynewicz and walked outside, Ell looked around, “Did you call your car?”

  Roger stared at her, “You won the Nobel girl! And all you’re thinking about is whether I called my car?!” He grabbed her in a crushing hug and started jumping up and down.

  ***

  James Epaulding looked up at a knock on his door. Ed Candela stood there looking grim. Epaulding raised his eyebrows, “What’s the problem of the day Ed?”

  “Hearth-Daster. Every time we refine its orbit and trajectory it seems to get worse. Right now Earth is off center in the cone of its projected path but our latest projections say it has about a 15% chance of hitting us.”

  The color drained out of Epaulding’s face. “Oh Jeez!”

  “Yeah,” Candela sighed. “It’s probably quite a bit worse. Gravitational stresses will probably break it up so even a near miss will result in some fragments hitting the earth.”

  “Oh my God! Couldn’t it still be pushed off by out gassing as it passes the sun?”

  “Sure. It could also be pushed even closer. But it probably isn’t going to be turned into a no threat situation.”

  “Word hasn’t gotten out has it?”

  “No, but you know it’s just a matter of time before it leaks somehow. Daster, the guy that found it, has been calling to ask if we’ve noticed that it’s a threat.”

  “How much does it mass?”

  “Well, it’s small as comets go, 800-1,000 meters diameter. Still a borderline extinction event at around 300 million tons. If the whole thing hits us, some people might survive but it would certainly destroy civilization.”

  Epaulding closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest of his chair, both hands on the armrests. “Have you looked over the strategies laid out by McNamara’s committee back, what, ten years ago or so?”

  “Not yet sir. I wanted to make you aware of the situation first. I am planning to get a team started reviewing the possible strategies as soon as we’re done.”

  “OK, send me your current data and I’ll review the McNamara strategies myself. I’m going to need to prepare a presentation for the President.”

  ***

  Emma ran her hands through her hair. “And you’re sure this worked before?”

  Ell tilted her head and her eyes unfocused for a moment. “Pretty sure. The portal was microscopic so it’s pretty hard to be completely sure. Tell me what you’ve been doing so far?”

  Emma’s head was tilted down and she turned her eyes to look balefully up at Ell through her bangs. “We’ve been using the machine to spray entangled buckyballs in 10mm diameter circles like you said. Presumably a lot of pairs have one member near the inside of the circle and the other member outside the circle. Then we energize the metal the circle’s painted on, generating the waveform y
ou specified. Sweeping the frequency I thought I saw the center of the circle go fuzzy once, but I’ve never been able to repeat it.”

  Ell narrowed her eyes a moment then shrugged, “Can I see your setup?”

  Emma blew out a breath that lifted her bangs a little and said, “Sure.”

  Emma watched Ell study her one ended port, then lean back and study her HUD while talking to her AI. Emma narrowed her eyes with a little envy. Quantum Research had upgraded Emma’s AI to a near supercomputer model like the other scientists that worked for the branches of D5R. It was amazing what Emma’s AI could do with all that computing power. Especially since she didn’t need to carry the CPU around with her. Her headband was connected to the physical computer with one of the PGR chips that were based on Ell’s paper. However, Emma had heard rumors that Ell’s AI was running on a true supercomputer, in fact one of the most powerful computers currently existing in the world! Emma supposed that if she was running Quantum Research she’d give the resident genius all the computing power she could use too but she wondered what it could actually do? Her own AI seemed much more intuitive and able to grasp what she wanted with all that power available. What could Ell’s AI do?

  Ell’s eyes dropped down from her HUD, unfocused and staring off into infinity for a moment. She shook herself and said, “Let’s try having Manuel cut out the 10mm disk and coat the outer edge with polyethylene then insert it back in the main plate or in a new plate so it’s a good fit. We want the polyethylene to be about 10-20 microns thick. That should create some capacitance to boost our voltage. Then spray it with buckyballs and let’s try it again.” Ell’s eyes unfocused a moment again then she picked up an e-slate and said, “And look at this circuit…”

  ***

  In Ell’s ear Allan said, “You have a call from your mother.”

  Ell said, “Put her on! Hi Mom!”

  Kristen’s voice said, “Is this the daughter who promised to keep me better informed about her life?”

  “Oh!” Ell’s voice took on an embarrassed tone. “You heard about the Nobel?”

  “What! No! I was upset because Phil mentioned that you’d visited him in Houston! What do you mean Nobel?!”

  “Um,” Ell found her shoulders rising in an self-conscious shrug that her mother wouldn’t be able to see, “They’re giving me the prize for Physics.”

  “What!? And you didn’t tell me?!”

  “I’ve been meaning to call. I just got distracted.” Ell almost squeaked. “Sorry?”

  Kristen sighed long and hard. “Gram and I were gonna drive up to visit you for your birthday tomorrow night. But now there’s no way I’ll be able to think of a present that’ll impress you. Maybe I’d better stay home?”

  Ell laughed, “You know that merely gracing my life with your presences will far outshine any Nobel Prize! You’d better come up.”

  Kristen giggled, “We were going to surprise you but Phil also told us about how he had to wait four hours for you to leave work when he tried to surprise you. We’re not that patient.”

  “Can I invite Roger and Emma?”

  “You’re still dating Phil and Roger?”

  Ell laughed, “Mom, I’m not even twenty yet! I’m not ‘dating’ either one in the sense you’re giving the word, as if it were a lifelong commitment. I do ‘go out with’ one or the other of them sometimes. I’m kinda hoping I’ll get to date someone else before I settle down for life!”

  “You’re gonna be twenty tomorrow.” Kristen said ominously.

  Ell giggled, then sniffed, “I know, and I’m so sad to give up my teenage years. I think I’m just going to keep telling everyone I’m only nineteen.”

  Kristen laughed, “OK, my wild child. I’ll call Roger and invite him. I don’t know Emma, you’ll have to invite her yourself. We’ll made reservations at 6:30 at Bin 54.”

  “Ooh! I hear they have the best steaks!”

  ***

  President Teller stared at Epaulding. “How likely is it that this thing will hit us?”

  Epaulding shrugged, “About 15% is what we’re projecting, but we really don’t know that much about projecting the likelihood of something this size hitting us. It hasn’t happened since the dinosaurs.

  “We’re guessing 15% for a direct strike, but if it comes close, gravitational stress is likely to pull it apart and so there’s a pretty high likelihood that some fragments will hit us even if the main body misses. It also is going to pass pretty close to the sun and that might pull it apart too.”

  Teller shut his eyes tightly. “Which side of the earth will it hit?”

  “Sir?”

  “If it hits.” Teller said with irritated patience, “You know what day and time it will hit, right? Is the United States going to be on the side it hits or is it going to hit the eastern hemisphere?”

  “Uh, sir, the Pacific will be turned that way but it could hit to either side. And, sir, if it hits anywhere, it will destroy civilization.”

  “Is the human race going to be extinct?”

  “I think so, sir. If the entire thing hits us, the likelihood of large animals like humans surviving is pretty small.”

  Teller leaned his chair back, staring at the ceiling. “What are we doing about it?”

  Epaulding had seen the President’s eyes shining, now he saw a tear trickle down his cheek. Was the President going to decompensate? “Sir, to some extent that depends on you.”

  “On me?”

  “Yes sir. If we start mobilizing resources we’ll start a panic. The panic will likely kill thousands to millions of people. Then if the comet misses us…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it. But if we don’t do anything and it hits and there was something we could have done…” He sat up, “I need to know what’s possible. What can we do?”

  “Well the McNamara commission studied it eight years ago. The popular notion that we could blow it apart with a nuclear bomb has the problem of turning it into a shotgun blast of smaller projectiles. Some would then be small enough to burn up in the atmosphere, but probably some would still hit us and even if they were a lot smaller than the original comet, they could still be big problems. If we break it into hundreds of pieces it will be pretty hard to track them all down. A better strategy would be to set off a nuclear weapon beside the comet in an effort to deflect it and make it miss. We have to worry that it will break up doing that too.”

  “Why not just use a rocket to push it to one side?”

  “Well, it’s almost certainly rotating, so first we’d have to attach a rocket to stop the rotation, then use a rocket to deflect it. Otherwise the pusher rocket would just spin around with the comet, pushing it all different directions.”

  “So, you’ve been studying this. What should we do?”

  Well ideally we want to be out there and start deflecting it now. Since it’s nearly four months away, if we deflected it to the side now at just four kilometers per hour we could deflect it the diameter of the earth over those four months. Of course, to be safe, we’d like to deflect it many times the diameter of the earth, and we want to move it the right direction. We could move it twelve kilometers per hour for a total of three times the diameter of the earth with the energy in two hundred tons of TNT. If we did it now...”

  “But I assume we can’t do it now?”

  “No sir. It’ll take us months to get there. If we got there in two months, which would be very hard since we’d be building the mission from scratch, we’d need to deflect it 24 kilometers per hour. The closer it is to us the higher the rate that we need to deflect it and when it starts getting close to us we can only get those kinds of deflections with nuclear weapons.”

  “OK.”

  “OK?”

  “Yes, OK. Start building missions to get out there and deflect it as early as you possibly can. Assume that you’re going to have to use nuclear weapons. Talk to Sec Def. Keep it secret so that we don’t incite a panic.”

  “Yes sir.” Epaulding said, getting up, “We’ll have
to pretend that we’re developing some other kind of mission.”

  “OK, do you think Donsaii could help?”

  Epaulding paused and narrowed his eyes, “I think we should use D5R’s ‘ports’ to fuel the rockets… But I’d rather not get her company involved.”

  The President narrowed his eyes, “You heard the announcement that they’re going to award her the Nobel prize in Physics?”

  Epaulding’s eyes widened. “No, but I think she deserves it. However, her company is… civilian. I’m afraid they couldn’t keep this a secret.”

  Teller stared at him for a moment, as if he was going to say something else. But, after a moment he just nodded, “OK.”

  ***

  Roger set up a meeting between Fred and Brian from Portal Tech and Bynewicz and Bynewicz’ friend Dr. Jodi Mullis the diabetes specialist. They had an interesting discussion regarding the problems of implanting a sterile port and keeping it that way while injecting insulin through it. The glucose sensor should be easy to keep sterile but if the insulin arrived contaminated with bacteria that would be a big problem. Another issue that Mullis had brought up was the potential problem of encapsulation of the implanted port with scar tissue. Such scar tissue might slow diffusion of glucose to the sensor and release of insulin from the port. Part of the reason that insulin infusion catheters currently in use had to be moved from location to location was because of encapsulation of the needle tip. Mullis had some ideas for dealing with this issue and had already applied for permission to begin some trials in diabetic mice.

  The discussion had given Ell a lot to think about regarding implantation of a PGR audio transducer below her ear like she’d be contemplating. She hadn’t thought much about issues of sterility until she’d had this talk with Bynewicz and Mullis.

  She saw Emma waiting at her door. “Hey Emma, any luck with the new single end port?”

  “Manuel and I just finished putting it together and I thought you might like to be there when we turn it on?”