Away Saga

by Norman Oro

  As for the second bunny, it looked very similar to the first one. However, in order to expand and contract the Allen field it generated, Dr. Rys had built in an attenuator, which could be adjusted using a new remote control. His first experiment had ingrained a healthy respect for what the field generator was capable of. In this case, that respect translated into physical distance between him and the bunny during experiments. To generate the additional power he’d need to begin sending matter, he’d also integrated a large rechargeable battery into its base. As a result, the new bunny stood about a foot taller than its predecessor. For safety’s sake, he planned to calibrate and field test it out of the synchrotron lab’s control room, which was well shielded in case anything unforeseen occurred. As an added precaution, he’d built in a timer that would automatically turn the generator off after fifteen minutes.

  When the time came to resume lab work, almost a year had passed since his first Allen field experiment. Eager to get going, Dr. Rys woke up just before dawn, had some coffee, toast, bacon and eggs then headed to his study, which was close to the garage. The field generator was plugged into a wall socket there where it had been charging overnight. He unplugged it, put it on a dolly and, despite being larger than the first bunny, had little difficulty fitting it into the family station wagon. He often joked to himself that if the synchrotron room wasn’t available, he could’ve run the test inside the Roadmaster. He loved his car. Professor Rys then placed the remote control in front of the bunny, went back into the house to get an icebox and set it beside the remote. As he pulled out of the driveway, it was foggy outside; and on his way to campus, a very light drizzle had started while he was on California Boulevard. However, just as he was about to get an umbrella before stepping out of his car in the parking lot, it stopped. He pulled the dolly out from the station wagon then gently eased the new prototype onto it. After placing the icebox and remote control on the field generator, he began walking to the optical shop.

  Like the year before, it was quiet on-campus. Aside from it being early morning, students were away on summer vacation. Dr. Rys continued taking pains to maintain a low profile despite stumbling on a breakthrough with profound implications not only for high-energy physics, but for human affairs in general. He felt this was more than justified given his still tenuous understanding of the Allen field. Also he worried about the technology’s potential military applications, only one of which he’d experienced firsthand. If this trial were successful, though, he’d probably require government funding to further his research. He decided then that he’d cross that bridge when he got to it. It wasn’t even certain yet whether the new prototype worked.

  He arrived to find the synchrotron room in the optical shop much like it was when he entered it nearly a year earlier. It was as though nothing had ever happened. In fact, looking at the reinforced concrete backstop, it was impossible to tell where the divot that the first bunny had dug into it had been. He wheeled the field generator in front of the backstop and carefully backed the dolly away, placing the generator, the remote control and the icebox on the ground. He then got the generator’s power cord, plugged it into a nearby wall outlet and adjusted the bunny’s position so its cradle was visible from the synchrotron’s control room. After placing a Geiger counter beside the generator, he took a head of lettuce out of the cooler, broke off a sprig and placed it in the device’s cradle. Assuming the Allen field teleported somewhere, it was the most innocuous thing he could think of sending to a random location. He folded the bunny’s rabbit ears down so the sprig was enclosed on four sides, picked up the remote control, walked back to the synchrotron control room and closed the door behind him. Then he checked his numbers.

  Although he’d already gone over the calculations many times, there was no way to be absolutely sure they were right. Dr. Rys had that same queasy feeling in his stomach that he felt several years earlier when he heard his colleagues on the Manhattan Project discuss whether the bomb they were building could ignite the atmosphere. Their understanding of nuclear fission then was far more advanced than his knowledge of the Allen field; and since that first series of experiments, he often asked himself, “What can this technology do?” The response always was that it could do both splendid and terrifying things. He imagined the instantaneous transport of people, food, medicines, information and even energy around the globe. He also saw bombs, missiles and bullets being shunted harmlessly away from their intended targets. And that was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

  On the other hand, he also imagined the lightning and thunder that he’d inadvertently called down the year before, but purposefully magnified a hundred or even a thousand fold. He imagined corpses on sidewalks with holes burned clean through them. He saw explosives materializing in people’s homes, in their bodies and detonating. What it could do and what it would do were, of course, two different things. Professor Rys was determined to have at least some say in the latter. Nevertheless, these thoughts gave him pause because at that point he could still conceivably have walked away. Aside from his wife, no one knew what he was working on. If he wished it, no one else would ever know. He could’ve just walked away.

  He didn’t. And once Dr. Rys checked his numbers and was certain he could do no more, he picked up the remote control, looked at the field generator and activated it. To his wonder, the scrap of lettuce then unceremoniously disappeared. Unlike the first experiment, there was no fanfare, no noise or light. It just vanished. The Geiger counter needle was still. He set the remote control down, entered the lab, grabbed the Geiger counter from the floor, and ran it all around the Allen field generator. There was no radiation to speak of. He then took a closer look at the bunny. Yes, the sliver of lettuce was in fact no longer there. In its place was a small, identically shaped void. There appeared to be literally nothing there, not even light. He left the Geiger counter turned on, set it down beside the field generator and pulled a lidded pot out of the icebox. He then returned to the control room and closed the door. Turning toward the bunny, he switched the generator off. To his astonishment, the sliver of lettuce reappeared with nearly as little fanfare as when it vanished, accompanied only by a barely visible blip of light. The Geiger counter’s needle hadn’t moved the entire time. There was no radiation generated before, during or after the event. Just shunting of matter and energy. He couldn’t help but smile. Walking to the field generator, he uncovered the lidded pot, which contained chlorine bleach; and gently placed the sprig of lettuce into it using a pair of tweezers from the icebox. Then he walked outside and sat down for a few minutes, just taking in the day.

  Professor Rys spent the rest of the morning testing the prototype, shunting progressively more substantial objects until he finished with a series of small iron weights. Everything disappeared and reappeared without fail and without a hint of adverse radiation. During each iteration he made notes on his clipboard from the control room regarding the object’s characteristics (weight, dimensions, etc.), the generator settings he used and what he observed. Each object returned as it left, neither noticeably warmer nor colder, heavier nor lighter; and he subsequently sterilized each one in the bleach he brought from home.

  When he felt confident that the generator worked, he took off his wristwatch and placed it on the device’s cradle. It was a 1935 Movado that his parents had given him as a gift when he graduated from high school. He noted that it read 9:15am. Dr. Rys then walked back to the control room, hit the switch on the remote control and watched as the bunny dutifully shunted his watch, leaving a void exactly matching his Movado’s dimensions in its place. He looked at his clipboard and began comparing his results with what his quantitative model had predicted. The model fit the data quite well. Using it, he estimated that he could shunt just about any object he could fit into the cradle, though the amount of time he could maintain the field would vary.

  Looking at the clock in the control room, he saw sixteen minutes had passed. He reached for the remote control and flicked the t
oggle switch back down. After stepping out from the control room, he walked to the generator, lifted his watch from the cradle and looked at it. It read 9:32am. That proved it. The bunny wasn’t shunting objects away into some timeless void. It was sending them somewhere. As with everything else he’d sent, there were no discernible changes to his watch. Dr. Rys then placed it into the bleach and began gathering his notes. He had a lot to think about.

  Undersecretary Scott

  With a successful trial run finally under his belt, Professor Rys dedicated the next few months to sharpening his theoretical model and conducting more experiments. His results confirmed that the power needed to send objects increased almost exponentially relative to the object’s mass. He found, for example, that he couldn’t send a 1½ lb. iron weight for longer than ten minutes before the field collapsed, causing it to return. Dr. Rys then examined ways to increase field-strength, but couldn’t find anything that would allow him to do the empirical work necessary to continue developing the technology. By September, it was clear that he’d need government funding to proceed. He’d worked on classified government projects before, so a background check would probably go quickly. Also he still kept in touch with former colleagues from Los Alamos who’d gone on to occupy senior positions in federal and state government.

  He spent a couple of weeks discreetly looking into where he could secure funding, while still retaining control over his research and the applications derived from it. The responses he received all pointed to Jack Garrett Scott, the Undersecretary for Transportation in the Department of Commerce. As luck would have it, Dr. Rys’s cousin personally knew Undersecretary Scott’s predecessor, Philip Fleming, when he was the US ambassador to Costa Rica. Through his cousin, he scheduled a personal meeting with Undersecretary Scott for mid-October, which gave him about a month to prepare.

  Professor Rys spent the weeks before the meeting modifying the generator, so it could be easily disassembled and reassembled. After his experience with the first bunny, he’d built the second one tough, so he didn’t anticipate any problems with transporting it by plane. A few evenings were also spent drawing up a preliminary budget to estimate the amount of funding he’d need to continue his research. His ultimate goal was to send a human passenger through the field; and based on his theoretical model, he’d need something on the order of one-hundred megawatts to maintain a field around a 180 lbs. person for five minutes. Put into perspective, the energy consumed in those five minutes would last all of Pasadena’s 100,000 or so residents for an entire day. That was a staggering amount of power, but given the field generator’s promise, he nevertheless felt confident he could secure funding. Keeping the technology secret to protect it from being turned into a weapon was also a concern. However, with World War II and the conflict in Korea still fresh in people’s minds, classifying it was probably feasible. Also, if worse came to worse, he had the leverage of being the only person with even an elementary understanding of how the Allen field worked. Hopefully that’d be enough to steer the technology’s development away from military applications.

  On the day before his meeting, he disassembled the bunny into several pieces, packing them into a pair of suitcases along with his clothes and journals. He then had breakfast with his family. Momentarily taking a break from any thought of field generators and mass-to-energy ratios, he couldn’t help but marvel at how quickly his sons were growing. Pedro, as usual, was asking him about his research. They’d be insightful questions coming from anyone, much less a fourteen-year-old. He had the same instinct and drive for science that stretched back for over three generations in the Rys family. Juan had the same aptitude, but lacked his brother’s passion for academics. He wanted to join the military, serve his country and see the world instead. Ironically, it was actually Juan who reminded Dr. Rys most of his own father in temperament if not in avocation.

  Professor Rys booked a morning flight out of Lockheed Air Terminal, which would arrive at Washington National Airport in the afternoon. It was foggy outside when the car came to pick him up; however, the ride to Burbank was trouble-free. The driver coincidentally had a son who’d just begun teaching mathematics at Caltech. He was Mexican-American, so they chatted agreeably in Spanish on the way to the airport. Professor Rys spent most of the flight going over his budget estimates.

  When the plane landed, he was pleased to see the weather outside was mild and sunny. He stayed in a room at the Statler Hotel where he continued to work on his proposal. The next morning, he went downstairs for breakfast, reading newspapers to unwind. There was a fair amount regarding the upcoming election. Although he had to admit that “he liked Ike”, he’d been a Democrat for many years and would probably continue voting along party lines. The fact that Stevenson, the Democratic candidate, came out squarely against the growing wave of red-baiting made his decision easier. After breakfast, he went back to his room, showered and shaved. He ran through his proposal one final time, put on his suit, pulled out the suitcases containing the field generator components and called for a taxi to the Department of Commerce.

  He arrived to find the building surprisingly quiet. After making his way to Undersecretary Scott’s office, he introduced himself, exchanged a few pleasantries then went over his proposal. When the time came for the demonstration, Professor Rys calmly assembled the generator prototype next to a wall socket. Once it was plugged in, he placed his watch in the cradle, took the remote control and flipped its toggle switch. The watch promptly disappeared. The look on Undersecretary Scott’s face was priceless. As for Dr. Rys, he doubted that he’d ever truly get used to seeing the Allen field in action himself. It was a thrill every time. After a few minutes, he returned the switch to its original position. His watch promptly reappeared, accompanied only by a muted flash of light.

  As the undersecretary slowly emerged from his state of astonishment, Dr. Rys dropped his watch into a thermos filled with chlorine bleach. Casually mentioning that he wasn’t sure whether any other nations had developed similar technology sealed the deal. Undersecretary Scott had a meeting with President Truman later that day and promised to see what he could do. At that, Dr. Rys asked whether it would facilitate matters if he were to stay for a few more days. Once he was assured that wasn’t necessary, he thanked the undersecretary for his time, disassembled the bunny and went back to his hotel room to prepare for the flight home.

  Later that week, he was pulled aside at the end of a lecture and told that he’d received a phone call from the White House. Once he reached his office, he learned that President Truman, members of the Atomic Energy Commission and Undersecretary Scott were on the line. Professor Rys spent three hours answering questions concerning the scope of his work and the likelihood of foreign powers developing similar technology. The president then thanked him for his time and said that they’d have a decision for him by the end of the following week. Dr. Rys received a phone call the next day.

  It was Undersecretary Scott who notified him that his proposal had been approved and would be funded out of his office. He then requested Professor Rys’s presence in Washington for a week in order to work through the project’s specifics. He agreed, said farewell then hung up. Since his research began less than two years earlier, Dr. Rys had been through an array of surreal experiences. After just receiving a $150 million budget to launch the government’s new teleportation initiative, that trend showed no hint of slowing.

  Pueblo, CA

  There was a lot to do after the call. Given his standing in the academic community, his classes’ popularity among students and the emergence of high-energy physics as a research priority, Dr. Rys’s conversation with Caltech’s president, Dr. DuBridge, concerning his resignation turned out to be more difficult than he’d anticipated. Though he spent over an hour trying to dissuade him, Dr. DuBridge ultimately accepted his resignation letter, congratulated him and wished him well. Dr. Rys then spoke with his wife that evening about the project’s approval. Knowing how much it meant to him, she was ple
ased to learn that his research would proceed. Since his work had started, they’d talked off and on about possibly having to move; and Undersecretary Scott had said he’d try to locate the project somewhere nearby if possible. Dr. Rys promised Abigail that she’d know as soon as he did where that might be.

  Though no stranger to hard work, Dr. Rys found his week in Washington, DC intense. Mostly he spent countless hours holed up in rooms with very smart people discussing ways to generate one-hundred megawatts of electricity. To his knowledge, no one had been given any specifics about his research except that the administration deemed it a priority and that it needed vast amounts of energy. Dr. Rys was very upfront about the fact that he wasn’t out to spend millions of dollars on a major infrastructure project unless he had to. In fact, he preferred a modestly priced and inconspicuous power source if at all possible. They discussed several options in detail. Many energy sources, like the Fort Loudon Dam, could supply 100 MWe or more; however, they provided electricity to local communities and were therefore off-limits. They also discussed possibly using conventional fossil fuels, but the estimated cost was prohibitive.

  After days of brainstorming, debating and subsequently exhausting all other possibilities, the consensus gravitated towards building a nuclear fission reactor. Fortunately, Dr. Rys still retained a working knowledge of nuclear engineering from his days on the Manhattan Project; and was therefore fairly conversant on the topic. Although his empirical results tracked closely with his quantitative model, he opted to increase the reactor’s power output to 150 MWe as a precaution. The resulting cost increase was relatively small; and more importantly, it created some breathing room. He didn’t want to arrive at the moment of truth in a few years only to discover that the power plant was a couple of megawatts short of the necessary capacity. Based on his specifications, the White House’s nuclear energy specialists estimated needing at least three years to complete the reactor at a cost approaching $70 million.