by Tim Blagge
“Where did you get this door?” I asked.”
“I got this door, the one on the other side of the room plus the hatch at the end of the escape tunnel off an old submarine,” Pops answered. “There used to be a marine salvage place in San Pedro that sold most of the stuff that I used here and real cheap too. Turns out, there wasn’t much demand for used submarine parts in those days. Today it would all be sold for scrap and sent to China for reprocessing.”
“Door on the other side? Escape tunnel? Hatch?” I stammered.
Pops rotated the large circular handle on the door and opened it with a hefty shove.
“Come into my lair Billy boy and mind your head,” Pops said in a serious yet joyful way.
I ducked down to miss the top of the door and stepped over the rail at the bottom. Once inside, Pops turned on the light, closed the door behind us and rotated the handle. I watched while the metal pins moved outward and secured the door to the frame. He then slid a large steel bar into the round handle effectively keeping it from being rotated from either side of the door.
“What in the hell are you afraid of Pops? It looks like nothing short of the direct hit from a nuke would get you here.” I commented.
“Let’s continue the tour. I’ll answer your questions later,” Pops responded.
Pops showed me around the 15 by 20 foot single room with concrete walls, floors and ceiling. There was a small, walled-off area in the corner that contained a toilet and a tiny sink. There was a large tank of water in the other corner with some serious filtering equipment attached. In between the water tank and the commode were two groups of bunk beds stacked three high with one row on each side of a narrow aisle for a total of six beds. A thin mattress, suitable for a jail cell, was rolled up, sealed in plastic and lying on each bed. A similarly packaged bundle of blankets and a pillow had been placed neatly next to each mattress.
“What do you do for back-up power?” I asked. “If there’s a nuke attack, the electric company will certainly be out of commission.”
Then Pops walked to the opposite corner of the room to a cabinet that looked like a closet about four feet wide by two feet deep and a little over feet high. When Pops opened the double doors, I saw it was filled with car batteries, all wired together.
Knowing Pops I commented “I’ll bet you salvaged these batteries too.”
“Yep, all of them have been refurbished,” Pops explained. “I check every one of them once a year and replace the weak ones. Remember when I bought those solar panels on the top of the barn? I installed them to supply these batteries. Even if the panels stopped working, this place would be habitable for about three months.”
“What about ventilation?” I asked “Those batteries put out small amounts of toxic fumes that would build up quickly in a small place like this.”
“True. I guess you didn’t notice the exhaust pipe above the battery closet. Also there is an elaborate ventilation system that filters all incoming air from all toxins including nuclear fallout. That’s where I had to spend some serious money. Turns out, there aren’t any salvaged nuclear filters available.” Pops said.
Then I turned around and saw something I hadn’t noticed when I first came in. It looked like a thick black metal post in the middle of the room.
“What’s that, Pops?”
Pops went over to the wall and flipped a switch. The pole in the middle of the room moved upward to reveal a periscope, right out of a World War II submarine movie.
“I bought so much stuff the guy in the salvage yard threw this in for two hundred bucks,” Pops boasted. “It was so cool I couldn’t turn it down. If you look through the viewfinder you’ll get a view of the outside.”
When I walked over and peered into the viewfinder, I grabbed the handles and rotated the apparatus around. I couldn’t resist the temptation.
“Dive! Dive! Take cover men we’re under attack!” I yelled.
Pops smiled, saluted and answered back, “Aye, aye Captain.”
We both had a good laugh while I continued to look around in wonderment.
“There is also a listening system that gives us ears to what’s going on outside.” Pops added. “You can use this switch to change between listening to the front entrance, the rear door and the outside.”
“Pops I’m amazed. I never knew you were so paranoid. So where does that door at the back of the room go?” I asked.
The back door was the same design as the front. When Pops rotated the handle and opened it, there was a small concrete room that was connected to a concrete drainage pipe about five feet in diameter. Pops grabbed a flashlight from a nearby shelf and motioned for me to follow him. We both bent down and stepped into the pipe turned tunnel. We walked down the tunnel about 80 feet and came to a wall. Then Pops shined the light on the wall and it revealed an iron ladder leading up toward the surface. At the top was a hatch. It had a large rotating wheel lock similar to the front and back doors. Pops climbed up the ladder, rotated the wheel, pushed open the hatch and climbed out.
After I followed Pops up the ladder and stepped out, I noticed that he had attached fake plants to the top of the hatch to camouflage it. The faux plants blended in nicely with the surrounding native plants.
As I stood there in wonderment at what had been revealed to me, I looked up at the night sky. It was a beautiful clear evening with lots of stars shining. At first I felt a calm come over me but that soon changed to a strong feeling of foreboding. I tried to imagine where my life was taking me. Something told me that even my most wild fantasies would pale in comparison to the perils my future held.
“It’s beautiful tonight Pops and nice to be outside again. I can’t believe what you’ve done here. This is an astonishing accomplishment” I commented.
Pops said nothing except “Let’s get back.” From there we climbed back into the tunnel. Pops went ahead of me so that I would have to close and lock the hatch. As we reentered the shelter, he had me close and lock the back door. When we exited from the front door, I shut off the lights, closed the front door, rotated the wheel and we both proceeded up the steps to the barn. Then he had me rotate the coke sign the opposite way he had done it and the floor moved back to its role of just being a floor. We rotated the bookcase and it clicked into place. Everything again looked like it hadn’t been touched in years.
“O.K. Pops, I’m, dying to know. Why did you decide to show me the bomb shelter tonight?”
“That’s a story for another time. Let’s go to bed Bill, I’m tired.”
-3-
Pops, now sixty-two, kept in excellent shape by jogging five mile each morning. He was an ex Marine, just short of six feet tall and a trim 175 pounds. His full head of hair was always trimmed in a crew cut style. It was mostly gray with a little white starting to show around the temples. He was drafted right out of high school and did two tours of duty in Vietnam. Even though at times he demonstrated the gruff exterior of his Marine Corps Sergeant past, to me he was always Pops, my grandfather.
Pops and Grandma adopted my younger sister Joanna and me when our parents were killed by a drunk driver seven years earlier. Although devastating at the time, Joanna and I had made a home with Pops and Grandma and we were loved and we loved them.
Pops had recently retired from his job as a machinist for Lockheed Aircraft where he had worked over 30 years.
When they were young, Pops and Grandma invested in a small house on three acres in Altadena. He loved it because it backed up to public land that quickly rose to become the San Gabriel Mountains. He especially appreciated the fact that no one could build behind him.
Over the years he added on to the small house one room at a time. It ended up being a good size and very comfortable even though its multiple additions made it look a little out of character with the neighborhood. Some of the neighbors even referred to it as the ‘Burton Mystery House’.
Pops built the barn last complete with a bathroom and small office. In the barn he had one of the best mach
ine shops on the planet and went all over; to auctions, going out of business sales or anywhere he could find and purchase the equipment he wanted – cheap!
This is where Pops, according to my design, created the parts needed to build the anti-gravity machine. I’ll never forget the first time I explained the concept to him.
“Pops, I have an idea and a theory. I believe that with the right machine we can counteract the effects of gravity.”
“Is that all?” Pops commented. “Just for curiosity, when will your cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s come on the market? I’m old. I might need that cure for Alzheimer’s sooner rather than later.”
“I’m being serious.” I answered.
“So am I Bill. You know dementia isn’t pretty.” Pops replied with a sarcastic smirk.
“I get it. You think my idea is crazy. Well, maybe it is but if you will sit back and allow me to explain, I think it will make sense.”
“OK Rocket Boy lay it on me.” Pops said.
“Here goes and I want you to know that I’ve practiced this speech hundreds of times in my mind, so sit back and make yourself comfortable.”
“Gravity is the most pervasive power in nature.” I started. “It’s the amazing glue that holds everything together. It’s the thing that keeps our feet on the ground and the sun and stars in the sky. Without it, the earth and everything else that exists never would have.”
“I’ve read everything there is on the mechanics of gravity searching for what it really is and how it works, but nothing made real sense to me. It can be measured and predicted but what is it really?”
“When the earth revolves around the sun, it’s like a tether ball game where the ball is Earth, the pole is the sun and gravity is the rope. The dilemma is that with gravity, there is no rope. There is only an unseen, invisible force holding Earth, and all the other planets, revolving a certain distance from the sun. And it’s been doing it for billions of years.”
“Einstein’s Theory of Relativity says that gravity is a result of the curvature of space time caused by the mass of things, particularly massive objects like planets and stars.”
“Billy,” Pops interrupted. “I’m feeling like you’re a hypnotist and you are putting me into a trance. Before you have to count backwards from three to wake me up, what’s your point?”
“Pops, my calculations tell me that if we can create an electronic pulse with a small enough frequency, we should be able to neutralize the gravitons between the earth and the object creating the pulse, rendering it weightless.”
“What will the object do, float or blast off?” Pops asked.
“I’m not sure. It’s one or the other but I don’t think the household power we have here in the barn is strong enough to create a blast-off.”
“Not sure, power in the barn? What the hell are you planning, Bill?”
“You and I are going to create a mechanical gravity machine – here – in the barn. Just the right amount of speed and power, we have a floater. A lot more power, probably higher than what we have available here, we have an anti-gravity force. That’s when we have blast-off.”
“String theory predicts the existence of a graviton,” I continued, “the tiny vibrating string responsible for gravity. Some physicists do not believe it exists, but I do. That’s the particle we will be targeting with the machine we will build.”
“Billy, wouldn’t it be better to make your machine work electronically rather than mechanically?” Pops asked.
“That’s a great question Pops, very astute. The answer is, eventually yes, but there are two reasons why I’d like to go the mechanical way first. The first is expense. A lot of the parts that generate the pulses and the circuits required to drive them are expensive or not even invented yet. And to design and manufacture them would cost millions.” I explained
“So we’re stuck with the mechanical approach. If we can get the speeds up high enough, it should create enough particle chaos below our device to neutralize the gravitons.”
When I finished explaining my theory to Pops, I saw the strangest look on his face. It was that cocked head, squinty-eyed, ‘you must be crazy’ look. But then the wonder of a small boy crept into his face as he organized his thoughts and got a grip on what I was saying.
“Do you realize Billy boy what you are actually saying? If you could actually pull this off, it would be the greatest discovery of all time, of all time!” Pops repeated. “Do you really think you can out think most of the greatest thinkers in the history of the thinking world? You must have lost your marbles. And you want me to help you how? Billy I’ve got to think about this”.
There was a small pause of about ten seconds during which time Pops seemed to look right through me. I’d triggered some center of imagination in Pops brain and he was deep in thought. I kept quiet while he went through this mental exercise.
Slowly he turned away from me and I could hear him talking softly to himself. Suddenly he whipped around and calmly announced, “I’m in! When do we start?”
Pops decision to help fired an elevated level of excitement in me and I began to explain my concept to him speaking more rapidly than I normally did.
“The anti gravity machine will include five pods with rotating orbs inside,” I explained to Pops. “There will be four smaller ones, one on each corner in a frame about four feet square. Then there will be a center, main orb twice the size of the outer orbs. Each orb will have a reflective shell or pod made of a metal or alloy that will direct the ‘gravity confusing’ pulse downward toward the earth. The outer orbs will direct their beam at the beam of the larger middle orb. This will effectively chop the primary pulse into smaller and smaller vibrations. At just the right combination, bingo, we have lift-off!”
“The power required is far beyond the ability of any battery available so we’ll have to hook our prototype up to the 220 Volt power available in the barn,” I added. “If the thing actually works, its flight radius will be limited to the length of the extension cord.”
“The center orb needs to revolve at very high speeds - above 100,000 RPM’s. The outer orbs must spin at half the speed of the middle orb. It will take a machinist of extreme skill to create such a precise machine and Pops you are the only man I know who can do it.”
“Billy, STOP!” Pops yelled. “You’ve filled this old brain beyond its current capacity already. Get me some engineering drawings to study and that should help me understand the hardware requirements even if I don’t understand the other mumbo jumbo.”
It took an intense few weeks in my spare time to create the engineering drawings.
As Pops studied them, he said “Billy, these are some really hard parts to manufacture. You’re using beryllium which is brittle and unless everything is perfectly balanced, these parts will be subject to breaking, especially at the rotation speeds you are planning.”
“And you know Pops,” I added, “beryllium is toxic so you’ll have to use some heavy protection gear including a good respirator when you machine it. Then we come to the really big question, how do we pay for the stuff? Beryllium is somewhat rare and expensive.”
“It may break the bank a little my young Frankenstein, oh sorry, I mean Einstein, but I’ve got a little loot stashed, away from your grandmother, waiting for a rainy day. By the way,” Pops said with an impetuous smirk as he looked out the window, “is it raining outside?”
I hadn’t seen Pops with that look on his face since before my folks died. I could tell that Pops was as anxious to get started as I was.
-4-
The next morning after Pops gave me my first tour of the bomb shelter, we went back into the barn to clean up the mess we had made. “
What was it you wanted to tell me last night Pops?” I asked and apparently hit a nerve.
“Well let me tell you!” Pops started sounding like an evangelist on Sunday. “Just as we discussed before, when we get a working prototype, all of us, you, me, Joanna, Grandma, your friends, associates, professors �
� everyone you know could be in danger. The entire world will see the monumental potential of your device. I believe not only the evil, but lots of the good people on this planet will do anything that needs to be done to possess it. The device not only represents great wealth, it represents something even more seductive – Power.”
“There you go again, Pops. Sometimes I think you’re turning into a drama queen. All we’ve got to show for our efforts right now is a pile of junk.”
“True, but we have to agree right here and now. We can’t tell anyone,” Pops demanded.
“Not even the guys at the ‘In-N-Out Burger?” I asked.
“Keep going young man. You know I think I’m going to rename you Billy Smart Ass. Yeah, that sounds good – like some wise old Indian Chief, ‘Billy Smart Ass’. I think I like it.” Pops said with a broad smile.
“Now if you can get serious for just a moment, I’d like to elaborate on what the bomb shelter means to gravity, anti-gravity and Chief Billy Smart Ass.”
The next ten minutes I listened to Pops recap the dangers surrounding my device. Pops concluded this second dissertation by saying, “So, for now, we agree to let no one in on our project. It will take me at least a couple months to get the material and machine all the parts we need to get the ‘Flying Wallenda’ working again.”
“What’s that mean? What’s a Flying Wallenda?” I asked.
“Billy, I forgot how young you are. The Flying Wallendas were a family of circus performers in the early and middle 1900’s. A few of the descendants are still doing it today. They were a group of high-wire walkers who amazed the world. They would string a wire between buildings, at the umpteenth floor, in the wind and proceed to walk across without a net. I thought naming our device after them was appropriate.”
“That works for me.” I said.