Harmonics: Rise of the Magician (Harmonics Series Season One)

by Chris Snelgrove

  "Oh shut your trap. This isn't astrophysics." Jackson started to carefully pour the contents of the methanol bottle into the glass jug.

  Sam was on her feet now, which caught Richard's attention. "Morons, you're only supposed to use a quarter of that."

  "Shut up, Palace. We're just going to make it a little more interesting." Phillips grabbed the bottle and emptied the contents into the glass jug, sloshing the liquid inside as he did so. He took up the jug and shook it acting like a bartender blending a martini, all to laughs from some of the class. He motioned for Jackson to grab the long match.

  "You're gonna blow us all up!" yelled Sam.

  "I told you to shut up. Just watch, this will be cool." Jackson lit the match then hesitated. He took a few steps back, and then threw it towards the jug.

  Sam could see it happening but she was too slow; too slow to do anything about it. The match sailed slowly across the mouth of the jug.

  Boom!

  A shockwave rippled through the room, sending debris and destruction with it. The buzz of a fire alarm blared in the background as smoke filled the air. Sam felt her body pinned to the floor, different types of pain shooting up and down her frame. Images of contusions and burns danced in her mind as the various points of pain registered. The heaviest pain of all was the unidentified weight on her chest and lower body. She couldn't see because she couldn't seem to get her eyes open. She tried to move but couldn't feel her legs. Fear started to overwhelm her. How hurt was she? And if she was hurt this badly, then how badly was Richard hurt?

  Fear forced Sam's eyes to pop open. What she saw made her even more confused.

  "Richard, get off me."

  The class was in total disarray. The teacher's desk, main holoprojection board, and terminal crackled with sparking wires. The rest of the room looked like it been through a riot with chunks of equipment, glass, and desks scattered about. Sam felt her face going red for about the twentieth time that day. She was really glad that no one could see her right now.

  Richard held her wrapped in a fat-insulated bear hug. His face was screwed up in fear, his eyes and mouth squeezed shut. He was breathing heavily.

  "You idiot," she whispered. "What are you doing jumping in front of me like that?"

  Richard didn't answer. People were at their side lifting Richard up, and Richard was pushing them away. Some of her classmates pulled her to her feet and caught her as her knees went weak. She must have hit her head harder than she thought.

  Teachers, security, and the medical staff showed up next. Most of them rushed to Richard first. After enduring a few moments of mothering, he started yelling, "I'm completely fine. Check Samantha, you idiots. Make sure Samantha is all right."

  Jackson and Phillips were beside themselves. Jackson's face was totally pale and Phillips had several large cuts.

  "Sam, we are so sorry, are you ok? You're not hurt are you?"

  The ringing in Sam's ears actually did hurt a lot.

  "I'm fine," lied Sam. "You two are both fools. You could have gotten us killed."

  Jackson and Phillips laughed uneasily. Jackson made a little cough as Phillips commented:

  "Yeah, you got lucky. Dick's fat blocked the blast. We're really sorry about that."

  Sam closed her eyes trying to shake the ringing in her head. "What do you mean, Richard's fat blocked the blast?"

  The two morons, trying to distance themselves from their stupid act, started to laugh again. "Come on Sam, it's just a joke. We didn't mean anything…"

  Sam stopped listening and instead glanced back to where she and Richard had been sitting. The spaced looked different. Something about it was…off.

  Then Sam realized.

  Their desk, no, not just the desk but also a space about two meters wide, was almost completely free of debris of any sort. No glass. No chunks of metal or pieces of equipment. Sam continued to look around.

  "No way," she said aloud. There weren't any scorch marks. How was that possible?

  A familiar light glared in her eyes, increasing her headache tenfold. She moved her head and refocused. Sitting directly under her seat, faintly glowing with eerie light, sat her school bag partially open. In it Sam could see the silver box she had found in the lake. The light from the box died out as darkness overwhelmed her and she hit the floor for the second time.

  The last thing she heard was a frantic cry of an unfamiliar voice.

  Pomp and Circumstance

  Time: Start of the new semester

  Scene: Lecture hall at an old university

  "Now, we see that despite the mental instability stigmas attached to Nikola Tesla in his later years, he was the inventor of a great many things that are the precursors of creature comforts we depend on today, mainly anything that uses electricity. Without his development of the induction motor using alternating current, cities would have been confined to a very small space. But you are not in this class to study history; rather, science.

  "Tesla was an ingenious inventor. Many of his inventions were way beyond his time, and still today are only represented by his theories. We will be discussing one of those theories that he put to some practical tests, but never had the ability to take to larger applications. We will look at how the engineering genius of Tesla combined with recent achievements in quantum dynamics have combined to create the world's greatest advancement of the human race."

  The lecture hall was filled to the brim with preppy-looking students of all races. While each of them typed away on their various screens and holo-boards, others sat as their recording apps converted the professor's remarks into notes as he spoke. Only two of the attendees in the room seemed not to belong at the university.

  "First we'll start with mechanical resonance. Mechanical resonance is the tendency of a mechanical system to absorb more energy when the frequency of its oscillations matches the system's natural frequency of vibration, what we call its resonant frequency, than it does at other frequencies. In other words, everything that is around us has the ability to move when subjected to waves. Even the Earth itself has a resonant frequency. Most of the time these waves do not match the resonant frequency of the matter in question and thus the vibrations are imperceptible to the human eye. Yet once in a great while we observe in nature when that special sweet spot is hit with just the right wave; it's almost magic. A common example of this phenomenon is pushing a child higher and higher on a swing or better yet, watching the plump opera star sing at a crystal glass. As soon as the frequency of her voice matches the resonant frequency of the crystal, it begins to vibrate. Amplify the wave oscillations enough and…"

  "The glass shatters," interjected a cute student sitting on the second row.

  "Precisely," replied the professor. "The waves seem to crash into the crystal at just the right speed to amplify the vibration each time it rebounds. This is mechanical resonance. We have known about this for centuries now. Engineers use the mathematics of mechanical resonance to design buildings that sway and bridges that move, but not to the extent of our poor shattered crystal. They employ the use of dampeners to prevent resonance disasters. But alas, this is not Engineering 101, and Professor Talmut wouldn't like me very much should I choose to teach his material in my class." The students all gave a courteous chuckle.

  "So, keeping this concept of mechanical resonance in mind, we look to some more modern work. Late in the 21st century, M-Theory was an attempt to describe the theory of everything. Almost two centuries earlier, Einstein, after his breakthroughs in relativity and light, had focused what some call wasted efforts on a theory of everything. He believed that everything should be able to be explained, measured, and observed. Heisenberg showed that we could either know where a particle is or how fast it is moving, but not both at the same time. Einstein just could not accept this and worked on a counter theory until the day he died.

  "Today, we have never been closer to completing the theory of everything. But more importantly, it has led us to the concept of the string. The bas
is of this theory is that everything is made up of smaller and smaller things. Grains of sand become molecules, which become atoms, which become protons, neutrons, and electrons, which in turn become quarks, leptons, and so forth, which eventually become strings. Now, strings are thought to only exist in one dimension, meaning they have length, but not height or width. In my own theorizing, I proposed that they have no 4th dimension, or space-time, as well, because strings make up space-time itself. My theory of everything is just that, a theory of every single thing in our universe: empty space, dark matter, anti-matter, electricity, the entire electromagnetic spectrum, all matter and energy is made of the same thing. I also believe that this principle applies at both the macro and micro levels of matter and energy. Further, it is how these strings vibrate that determines what it is that it is."

  Confused looks crossed everyone's face, except for the two men sitting quietly at the back. "Sorry professor, what was that again?" asked a student off to the side.

  "The vibration of these strings determines what it is that it is. Meaning, if it vibrates a certain way then it is dark matter. At another frequency of oscillation, it is sodium. Yet another it is UV radiation. If the oscillations of these strings were to change, so does what it is…uh, change."

  "What was it that led you to develop your theory in that direction, professor?" asked another student.

  "What a beautiful segue into what we will be studying this semester. My theory developed through my work with the metal known as harmonicum. Now, if there are any budding astrophysicists in the room, they could tell you that harmonicum is a rare element thought to be transplanted here on earth from comets and asteroids long ago. The total quantity of the element is extremely small and we have yet to synthetically produce it in a lab."

  The students in the room looked on with interest. One raised his hand. "So what work could you have done with an element that is so rare? I mean, how do you even find the stuff?"

  "Most excellent question. In fact, most harmonicum comes from a single source. It is found in a crater recently discovered in the Northwestern wilderness in the middle of the providence of Palin. This particular crater is millions of years old and was so overgrown with trees and vegetation that it blended in with every hill and valley surrounding it, until recently. It was in this crater that harmonicum was discovered." The professor paused for effect.

  "Now you may ask yourself, what does this rare metal do that justifies it being the focus of a theoretical physics course? Oh, my young eager minds, I answer that harmonicum does everything. As its naming convention suggests, harmonicum has a peculiar tendency to harmonize with other elements that are in proximity to it. We first thought that this metal merely had radioactive properties similar to uranium or plutonium. As a result of its radioactivity, we saw how it would break down nearby elements and change their molecular makeup in the process. It wasn't until we looked closer at this process that we saw something extraordinary."

  The professor clicked a few buttons on his remote and the lights dimmed. A projector created a central video image above him.

  "As you can see, we conducted experiments with harmonicum by placing different elements in close proximity to it. In incredibly short amounts of time, the new element would begin to change. We were dealing with very minute sample sizes, so the changes were subtle but noticeable. It wasn't until we were able to use more advanced measuring equipment that we found our theory of harmonicum's behavior to be completely wrong. We discovered that in fact, the harmonicum was assimilating the elemental properties of the nearby element. It seemed to be a mimic, taking on the structural and physical qualities of what was around it."

  "You mean the metal changed to whatever it was placed next to?" asked a woman at the back.

  "That would be a simple way to state it, but more accurately the metal seemed to be able to synchronize itself with the properties of the other element. It was still harmonicum, but with a shade of the other element as well. Later we realized that this happened only when energy was introduced. The lights and electricity of the measuring equipment increased this behavior. So we tried to see what else we could do by introducing stronger fields."

  "So what, you shocked the metal with jumper cables or something?" interrupted a young man at from the side. The students laughed at his question.

  "Not quite that raw, but you're on the right track. Here, let me show you." The professor tapped the remote again and the vid changed. A large clear container filled with water sat atop a small metallic disc. Wires ran all over the remainder of the screen.

  "This is an early experiment with harmonicum. We attempted transversing states of matter to have the metal assimilate a gas, specifically hydrogen. We altered the frequency of electromagnetic energy fed to the disc to see if that would change anything. As a result we stumbled upon something extraordinary."

  The students looked on as the clear container sat on the screen not doing much. Then the water line clearly started to fall. The water was disappearing somewhere.

  "Professor, I don't underst – " started a student.

  "Just watch, it will be over shortly."

  The students continued to watch the screen as the water line faded to the bottom of the container. As soon as the water was gone, a probe with what looked like a spark plug at the end entered the container near the top. The spark flashed and a millisecond later a fireball erupted out of the container. The collective gasp from the students was followed by comments of excitement and surprise.

  "Professor, what happened?" she asked.

  "The harmonicum was able to separate hydrogen from oxygen and convert water into two gases, as evidenced by the explosion. This was just a demonstration we produced for the media, since just watching sensor read-outs doesn't produce the same 'oomph'. We conducted many experiments with the harmonicum, each showing the same result. Harmonicum can adhere to the resonant frequency of every element we have tested it with. In other words, harmonicum is the physical incarnation of the theory of everything. These early experiments were crude in their design as we had yet to apply what we knew from the principles of string theory and from Tesla. In later experiments we were able to map two or three more elements and their harmonic frequency."

  "Harmonic frequency? What's that?" asked a student.

  "Oh, that's just something we coined in the lab. It combines the idea of Tesla's mechanical resonance with the theory that everything is vibrating at a different frequency."

  "So harmonicum affects the other elements on an atomic level," replied the same student.

  "No, the atomic level is too macro. My theory states that harmonicum taps into the ultra-quantum level – the vibrating strings themselves."

  "But there is no way to prove that, right professor?" he inquired.

  "Some may think that applying normal everyday physics to quantum mechanics is a little insane, but as Tesla himself said, 'The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.'"

  The student shifted uncomfortably in his seat, obviously not sure how to respond to this last statement.

  "You see, there is no other element in the known universe like harmonicum," the Professor continued. "Its atomic structure is like nothing we have ever seen. Thus our knowledge of how the element works is limited by our understanding. It's thought that it can be molded and shaped, but even at high levels of radiation and energy exposure, the atomic structure seems to remain intact. No other element possesses that conservation ability."

  The two suits in the back of the hall seemed to perk up at this reply.

  "So how did you learn to control the frequencies?" came the question from the other side of the hall. "I mean, was it all just guesswork?"

  "At first yes, it was. But I believe as we continue to document our findings, we will be able to map the frequencies of the universe. Think of it as universal DNA coding. To know what everything is made of is to know how to make anything. I
n the far distant future I can see the use of an interface that would be able to use a harmonicum synthetic to give people back their sight, their hearing, bring motion back to the paralyzed. Forget all the problems and setbacks of stem cell research. Or we could use it to change harmful elements such as radioactive waste into more productive things. We could live the dream of the Alchemists of old and change one thing into another. Think of it. What if we could change sand into wheat to feed the hungry, dirt into clean water for the thirsty? The possibilities would be endless."

  "But these are decades away, right?" asked another student.

  "Oh no, not decades. Centuries. Anything approaching a simple practical use, even on an extremely simplistic scale, would be at least sixty or seventy years out. We would need to come a long way after that before we could tackle these global issues. For now, we'll build the foundation of the future one experiment at a time. Plus, who knows what our space program in the future will yield. Perhaps Mercury is riddled with harmonicum from its many impact craters. Only time will tell."