R.A.E.C.E. Genesis

by Geoffrey C Porter

  Bill: "I'm looking at it now."

  Fleischman: "Where is it failing?"

  Bill: "The atomics module, either somebody is trying to build a nuke, or the sim is predicting an atomic reaction of some kind."

  Fleischman pulled up the identity file of the user who had generated the design that caused the automated message. A sixteen-year-old child prodigy working on his Applied Physics PhD…

  "Looks like legit data on the design side," Bill texted. "Some kind of particle accelerator."

  "Let's run it through the Machine. Make a copy of the design, and I'll meet you at the security door."

  The Machine worked just like the more public simulation that scientists all over the world used, except it included the components for making atomic reactions. Armed guards stood at the security door. Media cartridges could go in, but they couldn't leave. Fleischman waited at the door for Bill as scientists had to be in pairs or more to get in. Bill showed up, with a media cartridge in hand.

  They simultaneously pressed their palms down on the palm readers. An auditory signal pinged, and the door unlatched. Fleischman opened it, and they stepped inside. Bill popped the cartridge into a reader and pulled the simulation up on one of the terminals. The Machine rendered the device in 3D via a holographic display. They waited. Fleischman asked, "When does it break the toy?" They called the public simulation a toy, since it wouldn't simulate atomic reactions.

  Bill answered, "Five minutes or so…"

  So, five minutes they waited. The simulation spoke aloud, "Unknown Result."

  Bill countered with, "Give us the best guess results."

  The simulation spoke again, "Highest probable result is atomic collisions with escaping iron particle.

  The simulation spoke again, "Second probability is iron particles will impact inner lining and cut holes in inner lining, exiting the device.

  It continued in its monotone speech, "Third probability is iron particles will impact copper cube with enough force to destroy copper atoms.

  "Ten percent chance of unknown results."

  Neither man spoke.

  "Let's get some other scientists to look at this design," Bill said. "A very limited circle, see what they think."

  Fleischman replied, "I know what they'll say, 'Prototype it!'"

  "Well, we have the money don't we?"

  Fleischman stood up and moved towards the exit. "Let's get out of the server room. I want at least one of our scientists to approve prototyping it. I'm going to call the kid who designed it, and see if he wants a job…"

  Bill and Fleischman exited the secure area together. Fleischman went to the office of their top physicist. The bureaucrat opened the design for the scientist. He reviewed it and said, "Let's prototype it." Fleischman returned to his office and pulled the file on the kid who came up with the design. Hans Goldberg. He had a telephone number in the file. Fleischman called on the video phone.

  Fleischman said, "Hans Goldberg?"

  Hans wore a one-piece overall kind of body suit with zebra stripes on it and pockets all over: common fair for his generation. "How did you get my name?"

  "I pulled your file from the G.E.S.C. record."

  Hans let out an audible hiss. "Nobody is supposed to be able to do that. The G.E.S.C. broke."

  "That's why I'm contacting you."

  "What, do I win a prize?" Hans said with a quick, little laugh.

  "A job offer maybe, let me ask you something first."

  "I've got a lot of job offers. I'm finishing school first."

  "What do you think your device will do, when operational?" Fleischman asked.

  "Maybe a small atomic reaction destroying a few copper atoms, and a propulsion force, if the ceramic plate behaves properly."

  "Interesting."

  Hans' voice got surprisingly deep. "You know you haven't really said who you are."

  "I'm Peter Fleischman, President & CEO of G.E.S.C."

  Hans moved away from the video camera for a moment and returned with a bottle of tomato juice. "The Top Dog Himself."

  "You could say that."

  "So what do you want from me?" Hans asked.

  "Simple, come to America and help build a prototype of your device."

  "You have scientists there in droves. You don't need me."

  "It's your design," Fleischman said. "Don't you want to see what it will do? Everything regarding the prototype will be classified. If you're not in, you won't see the final outcome."

  Hans snapped his fingers. "I know there will be a propulsion force."

  Fleischman began to count dollar signs in his mind. "How much of a force?"

  "I don't know. I haven't done the math."

  Fleischman stopped counting the money. "You haven't done the math?"

  "No, computers do math. The G.E.S.C. should have done it: instead it just broke."

  "Come to America…"

  "What are you going to pay me?" Hans asked.

  "We'll pay you max what our scientists with Master's degrees make, and we'll put your name on the patent for the device."

  "I'll have my PhD in a year. You should pay me as a PhD since you'd be taking me out of school."

  "OK then, satisfactory."

  "Better," Hans said.

  "We'll get you a passport and on the plane in seventy-two hours. Is that enough time for you to take care of any loose ends you might have?"

  "I guess."

  "I'll make the calls I need to make to get you travel papers and a plane ticket."

  "Ok, bye."

  Fleischman phoned the G.E.S.C. travel office, just one secretary. She called the state department and the Netherlands embassy to get a passport for the kid in less than seventy-two hours. It all worked out, and Hans emailed from the plane. Fleischman arranged on-campus housing for him. They didn't plan to force it on him, but it had tight security, and they valued their brains.

  The materials team went over Hans' design in great detail. A one-meter by one-meter by one-half-meter tall box lined with one centimeter of lead. Seventeen high density magnets made up most of the other components with the odd magnet being circular in shape. It would provide the centrifugal force holding the particles in the loop. The other sixteen magnets accelerated the iron particles, set up like a two layered donut. The center magnet had a notch in it at the theoretical particle release point.

  At the other end of the release point, a cube of copper acted as the "target area" and a ceramic plate, which should absorb the force of the particles. They wrapped the magnets with superconductors. It took two weeks to assemble the components. The design called for iron particles a thousand times smaller than they used, but nanotechnology specific to making the iron particles would have to be built to make them much smaller. They piped 80,000 volts into the copper superconductor, and the flow of particles initiated at one percent capacity.

  Hans, Fleischman, and about six other pairs of eyes eagerly watched the display from the internal camera. They expected the first particles to reach terminal velocity in five minutes. They had a timer running.

  They started noticing bright flashes from the copper cube. It looked like tiny explosions. Within an instant the ceramic plate that should have absorbed the impact, shattered. Particles flew through the copper destroying a few atoms on the way and then impacting into the lead lining of the accelerator, biting chunks out of the lead and flying through the exterior of the case with deadly force.

  Hans said, "Cut off the flow of iron particles!"

  Fleischman shouted, "Pull the power from the magnets!"

  "No, you fool! That'll release all the particles at once. We'll be killed!"

  "Pull the plug! It's pointed at people already!"

  They pulled the plug and particles flew out of the accelerator in all directions at various speeds cutting into the legs of everyone present. Flesh wounds mostly, some impacted bone. Medics arrived quickly.

  One of the technicians asked, "How much radiation was that thing kicking out?"

>   Hans said, "It's not important."

  "It is important!"

  "Bah, a little radiation never killed anybody!"

  The technician tried to stop the bleeding on his legs.

  While the medics did their jobs, Fleischman accused Hans, "You should have known that ceramic plate wouldn't hold."

  "It's the toughest material I could find!"

  "You should have warned me it might fail," Fleischman said. "We have materials technology that is classified."

  "Seems we can share the blame then, since I didn't know there were harder classified materials."

  Once the medics had patched them up, they opened up the classified files for Hans to pick from. Hans skipped the math and just picked the most expensive material, molecularly molded steel mesh. The manufacturing process involved layering steel in a mesh like matrix, a four centimeter by four centimeter by one centimeter plate weighed just under eighty kilos. The plate had to be special-ordered. It took two weeks for it to be ready.

  They fired up the device with the new plate in place. The copper cube started casting off light and static discharge like last time. The device seemed to be trying to move across the floor, pulling on its housing. Hans shouted, "Woohoo!"

  "Measure the g-force it's generating," Fleishman said.

  "I bet it's pulling close to five g's. I sat down and did the math."

  One of the scientists punched a few buttons on a control panel. "He's right, Doctor Fleishman. Five gravities of acceleration on 500 kilos, not to mention the energy discharge."

  Chapter 4

  AD 2130

  Artemis, after the failed invasion…

  Jack ran and ran. He steered his course to take him past the school. Wondering about his sister, his friends, thinking to himself, why would they destroy the school? When he turned the corner, the school was a rubble pile. People sorted through the debris, pulling out bodies, identifying bodies, stacking them like cord wood. Jack didn't want to help sort through corpses of children and smashed brick. He wanted to see the science compound. He assumed his sister had died, or he could catch up to her later. Maybe she hadn't made it to school before the shelling started. He ignored the nagging doubts and ran on.

  The science compound stood taller than the other structures around it, and one could see it from a fair distance. As Jack ran, steel girders reached up into the sky. Jack knew that the compound had been devastated. He knew which building his mom worked in and where to find her office in the building. He found his way to the wreckage and started digging, that is, until he found an arm. He checked for a pulse, and he found none. Jack examined the arm, his mother's, for sure. The rest of her body remained under debris. He left her that way, nothing more he could do but grieve. His dad might still be alive. He would be outside the city in the groves that day. Jack took off in a run.

  He reached a peach orchard. They happened to be in season, and his dad would be working that section today. Jack breathed in the smell of fresh fruit. He ran down the rows shouting "Dad!" at the top of his lungs.

  "Jack! Over here!" His dad cried out.

  Jack turned to his left and ran through a row of trees. His dad sat up against the wheel of a harvest truck. Jack noticed a laser burn mark on his left chest, and his stomach bled--they stabbed him in the gut with a knife…

  Jack took off his shirt and kneeled down in front of his dad, pressing the shirt into his stomach wound to try and stop the bleeding.

  "It's no use, son. I'm a goner…" his dad said.

  Jack still wore the comm gear from the dead soldier. "Nonsense. I'll call an ambulance…" Jack touched the mic on the gear and said, "Medical, please."

  "Transferring," and then a click. Then, "Medical."

  "I need an ambulance in the peach tree fields, immediately. My dad has a bad stab wound to the stomach."

  "We've got six ambulances and more stab wounds than that. It's going to be a while. Try and stop the bleeding."

  "The bleeding isn't stopping!" Jack exclaimed.

  "It's going to be a while. There's nothing I can do."

  Jack looked to his dad. "They're on the way. Just hold on."

  "Don't lie, Jack. You're not very good at it…"

  Jack looked him in the eye and kept applying pressure with his shirt to the wound. "There's no telling when the ambulance will get here. They acted like it might take hours."

  "What about your sister? And mother?"

  "I don't know about sis. The school was leveled. They were pulling bodies out when I went by. Mom's dead. I found her body in the science compound."

  Jack's dad closed his eyes. His face showed his pain. "Jack, my lung is burned through and through. It's killing me. Every breath I take. I'm bleeding out. I can't wait for an ambulance."

  Jack said, "There's nothing we can do but wait."

  He seemed to notice for the first time that Jack had a blast rifle and grenades strapped to him. "Where did you get the rifle, son?"

  "From a dead Fleet soldier."

  "Did you get to use it?"

  "I killed a few of them."

  "Good."

  Jack soaked up more and more blood with his shirt. His dad grimaced every time he breathed. He said, "Earth better act on this invasion. The Lithor can't keep invading our colonies and not expect reprisals."

  "Earth's gone, Dad. The Lithor nuked it. All that's left is the commonwealth, and other colonies were invaded the same time they tried to invade us. Fleet is going to evacuate us, to Orion I think."

  Jack's Dad grimaced in pain as he spoke, "They're gonna put all their eggs in one basket then I guess. I'm dying. I'm not going to make it."

  "You're gonna make it. The bleeding is almost stopped."

  "Yeah, but now I think I tore something in the burn in my lung. It feels like it's bleeding in there too now." He coughed up blood all of a sudden. "Yup, definitely bleeding in there."

  "The ambulance will come…"

  "What are you going to do in two years, Jack? When you turn 21, they'll let you in Fleet. Are you going to join up?"

  "I can't see myself doing anything else."

  "Good, make me proud."

  Jack was about to say, "I will," when his Dad's head slumped down, and his eyes closed. The bleeding stopped. Jack felt for a pulse on his Dad's neck, and he didn't find one. He cursed the Lithor.

  * * *

  Overhead, three colony ships flew towards the center of town. Fleet must have gotten them operational again for the trip to Orion. Jack started walking towards civilization. He didn't put on his blood-soaked shirt. He headed towards home figuring maybe some stuff would be salvageable. He found his backpack in the street where he'd left it. He dumped the books out of it and started sorting through the rubble that was his house. He found his chest of drawers intact, and he fished clothes out and packed them. He found a picture of his family and stowed that as well.

  Jack walked towards city center. The three colony ships stretched into the sky. He hadn't eaten since breakfast, and hunger got to him. He figured Fleet would have food tents of some kind set up. He asked the first uniformed Fleet soldier he saw about food, and the soldier pointed to the biggest of the tents. Jack ate two cheeseburgers and french fries.

  Jack walked up to the counter and asked the man serving food, "When are the colony ships due to leave?"

  The man had a kind of lost look about him. His shirt cuffs were dirty, and the knees of his pants had grime on them: what may have been blood. He looked up at Jack. "They're still loading supplies. I think two of them will leave at dawn. The third will be for the most wounded and any stragglers that are out there. You should go and help them load supplies, if you're done looking for your family…"

  Jack thought again about his sister, and he wanted to be sure one way or another if she lived. "No, I'm not done looking for my family. I just needed food."

  "Good luck, kid."

  Jack left the mess hall and headed towards the school. When he got there, he counted at least fifty civilians s
orting through the rubble, and they had corpses stacked everywhere. Jack looked at the piles of the dead first, looking for his sister. He didn't find her among the bodies, and he interrupted a man digging. "Have you found anybody alive in there?"

  The man stopped working for just a moment. "Yeah, a few made it under their desks, a few just got plain lucky…"

  Jack started digging like a man possessed…

  * * *

  The sun set on Jack and the others. Jack pulled two survivors out of the rubble, kids. Fleet personnel arrived with a sonar device that they programmed to search for beating hearts among the rubble. The device showed four of them within the debris. The search teams dug straight and true to the survivors. Jack didn't find his sister. He started walking back to city center. He went to the tent where he'd left Lexi. He didn't know why. It's not like they were really friends. He wanted to be with her. He didn't find her in the tents. He picked out a cot and lay down to go to sleep.

  He woke the next morning before dawn to the town's emergency beacon sounding off. It alternated between a siren and the message, "Boarding colony ships now, evacuation in progress, board now." Jack grabbed up his pack, rifle, and ammo belt and headed towards the ships.

  Jack walked to the closer ship, and a ramp led up into the bowels. A Fleet Sergeant checked colonists on their way onto the ship--at least Jack thought three stripes meant Sergeant. Jack walked up to the man, who eyed him up and down.

  "You have to leave the blast rifle here on Artemis, kid. I don't know where you got it from, but you shouldn't have it in the first place. It'll punch a hole in the hull of this ship. You gotta leave the grenades too."

  Jack almost decked him in the mouth, then he figured he better not. A Fleet Sergeant could likely hold his own in a stand up fight. He didn't want to give up his rifle just yet though. He figured he'd give the other ship a try. He crossed a field and walked up to the Corporal watching the loading ramp.

  The Corporal gave him the same spiel then paused like he heard something on his radio. The Corporal said, "Ok, kid, you've got a friend in a high place… Let me have the grenades. You can keep the blast rifle and the ammo clips."