by Thomas Babak
“An electric motor has two main parts.” Sandy said to Mr. Bullock’s nodding. Mr. Bullock knew all about electric motors. They had hundreds, if not thousands of them all around the Yard. “The Stator is the stationary part of the motor.” At this, Mr. Bullock looked at the object in his hand, recognizing the word.
“The Rotor is the moving part. I didn't want any moving mechanical parts, so no rotors. What I did want was an electromagnetic field that would make any metal that came near it move away. If I could make something like that work, maybe it would lead to something...like maybe money to pay for bills, maybe college money or maybe just a new coat,” he said with a knowing smile while looking at Mr. Bullock.
Mr. Bullock chuckled and Sandy joined in and they both thought back to the first winter Sandy had worked for Mr. Bullock. Mr. Bullock was trying to jump start the old pickup truck he used for plowing the Salvage Yard he owned and Sandy worked at. The sub-zero temperatures in Minnesota had killed the old battery on the even older truck with the probably even older plow hanging off the front of it.
That cold winter’s day, Mr. Bullock showed him how to hook up the jumper cables in order to start the truck from another battery.
“Red clamp to positive” with Mr. Bullock pointing out that “the positive terminal on a battery is always bigger than the negative terminal.”
“Black clamp to negative” Mr. Bullock said. He continued with “you should clip it to the frame instead in case there was a spark because batteries can let off gas,” but he connected it directly to the battery terminal anyway.
There had been a spark and the battery exploded. Sandy had been leaning over watching what Mr. Bullock was doing. The next thing he knew, he found himself on his butt in the snow. Even though pieces of plastic from the battery top had shot everywhere, only one piece had hit him. It had bounced off his doubled up ski hat without any harm.
Mr. Bullock had looked down at him at first with a look of concern, but as he saw that Sandy was okay, cracked a microscopic grin and said nonchalantly, "Accidents happen. And that’s why you connect it to the frame."
They'd eventually gotten the truck started after changing the battery out from the stack of others they had around the Yard. That’s how Sandy learned that electricity and chemicals can be dangerous.
Sandy did have to wear the battery acid splattered coat the rest of that winter with its small holes all over the front from where the acid had eaten through the cheap polyester fabric. It had been a reminder to both of them of them about the incident until Sandy had grown out of it.
That was over two years ago when Sandy was in the ninth grade. Some of the kids made fun of him for that ratty coat. The teasing hadn't bothered Sandy. There were bigger and more troubling things to think about back then. There was the other big secret he had been keeping. The secret he would still keep from Mr. Bullock.
Mr. Bullock looked closely at Sandy, thinking back to what Sandy had looked like back then: small, skinny, dark haired kid with bright blue eyes that had nothing but pain in them. Sandy was now six feet tall and threatening to grow taller. His physique had thickened from all the hard work around the yard but, the boy needed a haircut. The long black hair came down to his shoulders fell over his eyes. As Sandy spoke, he constantly flicked it back or moved the hair behind one ear or another.
“Anyway,” Sandy continued after the short pause, “I took what seemed like miles of copper wire from a pile of burned out starter motors and wound the wire around the Stators I’d created. I’ve never seen Stators like this, no matter how much I searched online, so maybe, just maybe I’d created something new and different. Hopefully valuable.”
Sandy looked over at Mr. Bullock. Mr. Bullock was still listening closely, so Sandy continued.
“I created a couple dozen Stators by wrapping them so that their fields were directed to one side when electricity was applied. I stumbled upon this concept when researching Feedback Loops and Lenz's Law online and with some trial and error in the workshop.”
Mr. Bullock, who had no idea what research Sandy was talking about, remained silent.
A message popped up on the wide screen computer monitor that now took up the majority of what used to be the dash in front of the driver’s seat. Sandy reached down and pulled up a metal tray attached to two metal arms on each side, bringing the tray up and locking it into place in front of him. On the left side of the tray was mounted a thruster handle. The right side had a flight stick mounted. He reached forward with his left hand and grasped the thruster handle, putting his thumb on a knob that acted as a mouse controller he moved a cursor over to the popup and clicking with the same thumb a button just below the knob. The popup closed and Sandy resumed his story without explaining what had just happened.
Mr. Bullock watched quietly, observing what Sandy was doing but not understanding. He noticed a small stuffed animal, a hippo, wedged between a couple of other smaller monitors and cracked a small smile at the odd sight of it.
“I created the Bubble Sphere first,” Sandy looked over to Mr. Bullock and almost apologetically said, “That’s what I call it. The Bubble. I’ve sort of been calling everything Bubble this or Bubble that. You’ll see why when I show you.” Sandy paused briefly gathering his thoughts.
“So I created the Bubble Sphere first. I found some Christmas decorations in the bay and tried to use the head of a Styrofoam snowman but it was a mess. Foam… dandruff… pieces, everywhere.”
Mr. Bullock thought for a few seconds. The decorations had been sitting in the bay for years. They had been last used when his son Andy was a boy. His wife and Andy long since dead now. After all these years, the mention of the decorations and thoughts of past holidays with his own family still caused a sharp pang of pain along with sadness.
“I didn’t really think through fully why I was using a sphere or some other shape or even just laying the Stators flat on my workbench. I just had some vague thoughts about them wrapped around a vehicle or… something. I looked online for a solution for mounting my Stators I eventually found an image of a rhombic dodecahedron.” Sandy looked over to Mr. Bullock and elaborated, “It’s a twelve sided sphere with each face being exactly the same size. It looked… cool so I used that," Sandy said with a sheepish smile, a little embarrassed about how he’d made his decision.
“Anyway, I created the Bubble Sphere out of cardboard and attached twelve of the Stators I’d made to it. I wired them all together and tested it.” Sandy went quiet as he thought back to the past fall when he started his experiment.
“And?” Mr. Bullock finally asked, when it looked as if Sandy was lost in thought.
“Sorry” an apologetic smile breaking out on Sandy’s face. “It kept failing. I couldn’t figure out why. Until one day the solution hit me. The wires I was running out to it to power the sphere kept on getting sheared off. Something was cutting them every time I turned on the power switch. The solution was that power needed to be supplied from inside the sphere field and not the outside. When I set it up so it would run on battery power from inside to the Stators the Bubble Field formed.”
“Bubble Field?” Mr. Bullock asked quietly.
“Yes… it’s the field that forms around the Stators when power is supplied” Sandy answered as if that explained everything.
“So the Bubble Field is what was making this” waving his finger around “float in the air and dance around?” Mr. Bullock asked.
“Well… sort of… indirectly. Once I created the Bubble Sphere, I started to experiment some more. I’ve created a few more things since. It’s all Bubble Tech, though. Let me show you the Bubble Field first.” Sandy chuckled and reached out to the flight stick in front of him.
He grasped the flight stick gently, and with his pinky finger, pressed downwards activating the “clutch.” The clutch was a button that allowed him to switch between modes, or software programs, that Sandy had created to control the Bubble Technology. What Mr. Bullock had seen when the van was floating off the grou
nd and rolling was ‘Lifter Mode’. Sandy clicked the clutch to ‘Bubble Mode.’
“Look up there, Mr. Bullock” Sandy said, pointing to a large curved mirror mounted inside and to the side of the barn’s large garage door.
Mr. Bullock dutifully leaned forward and looked at the mirror. The mirror allowed him to see the entire van with a warped perspective from the curved glass. He could see himself and Sandy sitting in the van clearly.
“Keep watching. Are you ready?” Sandy asked.
Without waiting for a response, he clicked another button. There was a brief, loud pop and Mr. Bullock observed a pale blue light in the mirror that quickly disappeared almost too fast for his eyes to follow.
The van was no longer there. All he could see was the empty platform and the back of the pole barn.
He looked over at Sandy and then back down the length of the interior of the van. He looked at the outside mirror again. There was no van. He looked back at Sandy with confusion on his face.
“Look at the mirror," Sandy said eagerly. He pushed another button again and the van suddenly appeared again, then dropped a few inches. Both Sandy and Mr. Bullock felt the van bounce a little on its springs as it settled down.
Mr. Bullock again looked at Sandy and said “I don’t understand. What just happened? Why did the van disappear?”
“Um…Mr. Bullock. The Bubble Field makes anything it surrounds, disappear. Actually...it makes things invisible."
As it dawned on him Mr. Bullock's face turned shocked again. He was starting to look like he did when Sandy first saw him standing at the door to the barn.
Sandy got instantly worried that what he’d shown Mr. Bullock was too much too fast. Maybe I should have told him what would happen first instead of just jumping into showing him Sandy thought to himself as he reached in concern to grasp Mr. Bullock’s shoulder but stopped short before he actually touched him.
Three
“Are you okay Mr. Bullock?” Sandy asked, the concern in his voice mirroring the expression on his face.
Mr. Bullock gave him a small, brief smile and said “Boy, you have to stop giving shocks like that."
“Sorry, Mr. Bullock. Are you sure you are okay?” Sandy asked again.
“Sandy, this is incredible!” he answered instead, reaching out and patting Sandy’s arm. He still held the Stator, clutching it in his other hand.
“Umm… Thanks Mr. Bullock. Should I go on or… ?” Sandy asked, a little concern laced in his voice even though Mr. Bullock looked as if he was beginning to recover.
“You made the… Bubble Sphere… which helped you discover the Bubble Field. Which turns what’s inside invisible. Did I get that right?” Mr. Bullock asked, leaning back in the plush seat of the van. He looked over the rest of the dashboard. All the original van instruments were gone. Even the big hump between the seats, normally the cover for the engine inside, was gone. It was covered over now with sheet metal, rivets circling the perimeter of the new steel. The dash was now mostly the widescreen monitor directly above the metal tray that held the controllers. To the right of it and in between him and Sandy were five smaller monitors, each displaying a camera view looking outwards from all sides of the van except for the front. Another display just above these showed a map.
“Uh… yes,” Sandy answered.
“From an accident I had with the Sphere, I found out that if a Stator is moved, the sphere would move. So I did so more experiments and I created the Bubble Drone.”
"Bubble Drone?"
“Yes. I can show you it later but…” Sandy hesitated.
“But?”
“It’s basically a remote controlled… drone… it flies. And, it’s invisible too” Sandy was looking over at Mr. Bullock and they both began to smile. It just sounded too crazy. Even to him after all of these months of creating and being around the new technology he’d invented.
Sandy started to go on, but Mr. Bullock held up his hand for him to stop. He needed a minute or two to process everything he’d just heard and seen.
“I saw the van, the Bubble Van, in the air and moving about. It wasn’t’t invisible” Mr. Bullock said quietly finally.
Sandy hesitated for a second and then said “Once I had the drone working and could measure the axis… ” Sandy paused again trying to figure out how to explain it simply “… once it was working I enclosed a smaller version of the drone in steel. I welded these to the frame of the van. I call these Bubble Lifters.”
“So that’s what I saw underneath? These Lifters can move the van around? Even in the air?” Mr. Bullock asked.
“Yes. The Bubble Field can enclose the entire van. And fly too. The Lifters can lift the van in any direction… flying too. The Bubble Motor can drive the wheels…” Sandy got that far before Mr. Bullock interjected.
“Bubble Motor?”
“Uh… yeah. I thought about that after the Lifters. If two Stators in opposition are tilted they’ll spin and I can control speed and direction by the angle of tilt of the Stators and the polarity of… Mr. Bullock held up his hand again stopping Sandy’s explanation.
“So all of this,” he said waving his hand at the controllers and monitors “has been what those packages you been receiving are. All the extra time you’ve been spending here since last autumn has been working on this?” he asked.
Sandy didn’t say anything but just nodded his head, his hair falling back over his eyes as he did so.
Mr. Bullock went quiet for a moment before asking, “Anything else?”
“Let me show you,” Sandy said, moving the controllers by unlocking the metal tray and pushing it back down and out of the way. He pulled the van keys out of his pocket and looked over at Mr. Bullock, saying, “They don’t really do anything but lock the doors now and… you’ll see...” he didn’t finish the sentence as he opened his door and got out.
Sandy stepped quickly down the short flight of steps he had built on the side of the platform the van rested on. He rushed around the front of the van to Mr. Bullock’s door just as he was getting out and held his arm as he slowly walked down the steps Sandy had built there.
Mr. Bullock normally didn’t like Sandy helping him with physical stuff but didn’t complain this time.
“Stand over here,” Sandy said as he walked several feet away from the van, the keys still in his hand.
Mr. Bullock slowly walked over and stood next to Sandy, both of them facing the van. Sandy held up the keys. A small black fob rested under his thumb. He looked at the fob briefly, and pressed a button.
There was a loud pop and then liquid pale blue light covered the van quickly, almost too fast for their eyes to see. The van disappeared and even the pale blue light faded until nothing could be seen.
Mr. Bullock had jumped at the pop. Now, he just stood there looking at where the van had been.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“It’s still there” Sandy said as he held up the fob and pressed another button. The van reappeared and seemed, to Mr. Bullock, to drop down a few inches to the platform. It rocked for a second or two on its springs before the shock absorbers settled it into immobility.
“There’s going to be a pop,” Sandy said this time even though he’d forgotten to all the previous times. He pressed a button on the fob and the van disappeared as before.
Even though he knew it was coming, Mr. Bullock was still startled.
“Here’s what I wanted to show you,” Sandy said. He walked over to the seemingly unoccupied platform. Mr. Bullock followed slowly.
Sandy held up his hand and ran it across the invisible surface. Mr. Bullock reached out as well, his hand encountering… something… he jerked his hand back in surprise.
He reached out again more slowly. He felt it first with his fingertips. It wasn’t hot or cold as his fingers encountered… something. He reached further until his palm rested against whatever had happened to the van. It felt slippery. Impossibly slippery. Greasy without the grease, the thought passing quickly throug
h his mind. His hand slid over the surface with no resistance or friction. He tried to push on it but his hand would slide in one direction or another. He couldn’t get an angle on it where he could apply any sort of pressure.
While he was doing this, Sandy walked over to one of the work benches and grabbed a can of spray paint. He shook it and the noise agitator marble inside pinging on the can sides drew Mr. Bullock’s attention back to Sandy.
“Step back for a second Mr. Bullock” Sandy said.
Mr. Bullock walked back to where they had been standing before.
Sandy shook the can a few more times and then began spraying the Bubble Field. A small, curved area of the Bubble Field showed briefly as the paint mist came up against it, but then disappeared again as the mist cleared. The field was too slippery, or something, for the paint to stick to it.
Sandy went back to the workbench and put the paint can down. Mr. Bullock quietly watched as Sandy picked up a length of steel pipe and walked back to the platform. Taking a grip on the pipe with both hands he swung it lightly at the field several times. There was a muffled noise, coming from the pipe, as each swing seeming glanced off the field.
“The Bubble Field seems impervious to everything” Sandy said excitedly. “At least I think it is. I’ve crashed the drone and the van several times and nothing seems to hurt it or what’s inside.”
Mr. Bullock just stood there staring at Sandy.
Sandy after a few seconds, walked back to the workbench and put the pipe back down. He pulled the keys out of his pocket and clicked the button on the fob. The van reappeared suddenly and settled back down on the platform.