The Thunder of Engines

by Laurence Dahners

  Focusing on the build kept Kaem’s mind off the impending results of his dad’s marrow biopsy much better than studying.

  Kaem was using a breadboard to set up a test version of the circuit. After he was sure the circuit he’d designed worked properly, then he’d design and order an actual custom printed circuit board. He’d left a gap in the tightly packed components where he intended to swap in a large induction coil—while swapping out a smaller capacitor—right before closing up the box. He’d do it when no one was around to see what he was doing. It was one of the several swaps only he knew about, that’d all have to be completed to make the electronics functional for generating stasis.

  Gunnar looked over his shoulder. “Is that big gap where we’re gonna put the exploding steam capsule?”

  Damn! Kaem thought, Forgot about that. He said, “No, I need that gap for… another reason.” Kaem felt certain Gunnar could see right through such a clumsy excuse. He said, “Wouldn’t it be better if I left you a gap in the middle of the board?” Kaem waved a finger over the central area of the board, simultaneously trying to figure out how to reposition parts to leave a gap in the center.

  “Sure,” Gunnar said. “Hey, while you’re working on that, do you mind if I mess around with some of the Mylar? I’ve been thinking about how we could use Mylar to form a stade dirigible.”

  “I thought about dirigibles too. If you made a huge vacuum stade it’d lift tremendous loads but the problem is that you’d have a hard time controlling altitude. As opposed to gas blimps, you couldn’t vent the lifting gas. Of course, you could dump water to increase buoyancy, but when you wanted to go back down, you’d have a problem.”

  Gunnar grinned, “We make a hollow stade. Pump it down to vacuum when we want lift. Let air back in when we want to descend.”

  Kaem slapped the side of his own head. “Of course! Great idea!” He shook his head. “How could I be so stupid?”

  “’Cause you’re just not very smart,” Gunnar replied with a snicker. “I don’t have any idea why so many people seem to think you are.”

  “Thanks, Gunnar.” Kaem said dryly, “You’re gonna give me a complex.”

  “Doubt it,” Gunnar said. He turned toward the other table. “I’m gonna work on my idea while you’re working your magic with the electronic stuff.”

  Kaem rearranged the components and connected everything to set up what he thought of as “test mode.” Ready, he powered the breadboard, applied certain settings through its integrated chip, and checked the outputs.

  The outputs were all wrong.

  Dammit! Kaem thought. He sighed, Probably a loose connection somewhere. However, the other possibility was incorrect assembly, placing components incorrectly, and that was more easily checked. So, he set about comparing the location of every part in the assembly against his circuit diagram.

  Ten minutes later he was glad he’d started by checking the circuit against his plan since he’d found two mistakes. He powered up again, this time getting different outputs.

  Different, but still wrong.

  After some creative swearing, Kaem carefully went through the schema all over again. This time he didn’t find any incorrect component placements. His circuit diagram was done on a software circuit emulator. He ran it again to check what the outputs of the board should’ve been under those settings—confirming that he wasn’t getting what he should be.

  With a sigh he set to work with a meter, checking connections and confirming that the various components met their specs and were correctly inserted—and not reversed, which mattered a lot with the diodes.

  Hearing a hissing sound, he turned and saw Gunnar had just inflated his Mylar blimp. It looked about six feet long and almost two in diameter—Kaem thought it was likely as big as could be made from welding together the edges of two six-foot strips of Mylar off the three-foot-wide roll. The balloon was bobbing at the ends of a couple of taut strings so Kaem said, “You filled it with helium?”

  Gunnar nodded, “You ready to staze the interior yet?”

  Kaem shook his head morosely, “Circuit’s not working. I’m checking for faults.”

  “You want me to do that?”

  “No, it’d take a long time to explain all the things I’ve already checked.” And, I don’t want you spending too much time looking at the circuit, Kaem thought.

  “How about if I run out and get us some gyros for dinner? There’s a good place down the street.”

  “Is it that time already?” Kaem asked, checking his watch. Seeing it was almost six o’clock, he said, “That’d be great. Hopefully, I’ll find the problem by the time you get back.”

  Gunnar’d only been gone a couple of minutes when Kaem found a bad connection at one end of a capacitor. When he inserted it more firmly the circuit produced the expected outputs.

  He set to swapping components to the arrangement that’d staze.

  This time, probably because he was more careful seating each connection, the board produced the correct outputs. He closed the cover of the breadboard’s case, screwed it, and laid out the cables so their ends were close to Gunnar’s blimp.

  Kaem’s phone chimed, “You have a call from Bana.”

  “I’ll take it… Bana, what’d they say?”

  It was his mother’s voice he heard. “Hello, Kaem. My phone’s dead and Bana’s… She’s upset. So, I’m the one calling. They say it’s a B-cell lymphoma. That’s a blood—”

  “It’s a blood cancer,” Kaem said, the words bursting up out of him as relief flooded through his veins. “I know. I’ve read about it. You don’t have to explain.”

  “You already heard about his diagnosis from someone?”

  “No, I just read up on the things that might cause his symptoms, especially the ones that’d need a marrow biopsy for full diagnosis.”

  After a brief pause, his mother said, “You must’ve done a lot of reading.”

  “Not that much. What’ve they recommended for treatment?”

  “Radiation and chemotherapy,” she said, dread tinging her voice. Her tone changed to upbeat, but sounded forced, “They say it’s not a cure, but that it’ll help a lot.”

  “Wait. What about CAR T-cell therapy?! It’s supposed to cure a lot of people!”

  His mom sighed, “She mentioned that. But she said it’s really expensive. Without good insurance, Emmanuel can’t get it. She said he might get approved as a charity case, but only if regular chemo and radiation didn’t work.”

  “Oh…” Kaem said, his mind spinning. Why haven’t I been checking into this already? I knew lymphoma was a likely diagnosis! To his mother, he said, “Wait! Radiation and chemo aren’t very good for you so he’d a lot rather just go straight to CAR T-cell. Don’t do anything yet. Let me find out if they have a program at the medical center here at UVA. One that treats B-cell lymphomas with CAR T-cell therapy.”

  “Kaem,” his mother said soothingly. “You’re grasping at straws. We might be able to get on Medicaid here in West Virginia. That’ll pay for a lot of Emmanuel’s treatment. The chances that he could get any kind of charity care in Virginia is…” she sighed, “the chance of that’s nonexistent.”

  “When do they want to start treatment?”

  “As soon as possible, though we have to have applied for Medicaid first.” As if speaking confidentially, she said, “I think they’re worried that if they don’t insist, we’ll run up a big bill without ever putting in the application.”

  “Okay. That should give me time to check into things. Just don’t let anyone start treatment until I get back to you with what I find.”

  “You’re wasting your time, Kaem. We can’t get treatment in Virginia. You should be focused on your studies. Your dad and I’ll work our way through this, never fear.”

  “Mom! Promise me you won’t let him start treatment without getting back to me?”

  “Okay, okay. We appreciate your efforts, but please, don’t waste too much time on it. I talked to the financial people here
and they say there’s no way.”

  Gunnar returned with the gyros shortly after Kaem hung up. Kaem was deep into Google searches on his laptop. Distractedly, he took a gyro and started eating while still reading.

  “Um, Kaem? Did you get it to work?”

  Kaem nodded without looking away from the screen. Then he turned to look at Gunnar. “I assume so anyway, as best I can test it. I didn’t have a mold to test it with. Can we use your blimp?”

  “Sure.”

  Kaem was back to reading. “Can you hook it up?” He waved at the cables he’d laid out.

  “Okay…” Gunnar said, picking up the cables and starting to hook them up to the blimp. “What’s so interesting there?”

  “Um…” Kaem glanced at him, wondering if he should burden Gunnar with his problems. We’re a team, he thought. “My dad’s been sick. He just got his diagnosis and I’m trying to read up on it.”

  “Oh,” Gunnar said, freighting the word with consequence. “What’s his diagnosis?”

  “B-cell lymphoma.”

  “Oh…” Gunnar said, standing stock-still a moment, then suddenly pivoting and walking to the door. He opened it and left.

  “Gunnar?” Kaem said to the empty room. After a moment he decided he shouldn’t go after the crotchety man. There was no telling what kind of mood he’d be in. Kaem returned to what he’d been reading.

  About five minutes later, the door opened again and Gunnar entered. His eyes were red-rimmed and Kaem immediately knew the man had been crying. However, he didn’t know whether to acknowledge it or not. In the best of circumstances, a conversation with Gunnar seemed to have a lot of land mines. When he’d just been so emotional… Kaem didn’t know how to handle it. He sat, eyes on Gunnar, wondering what to do.

  Gunnar crossed the room and dragged up a chair close to Kaem. “Sorry about your dad,” he said in a raspy voice. “My wife… she died of lymphoma and I can have some trouble with my feelings when I think about… Sorry, that’s not your problem. Does your dad have good insurance? There’s this treatment called CAR T-cell therapy that cures a lot of people. Evelyn didn’t get it until they’d tried a lot of other stuff and… things didn’t go so well for her.”

  “Yeah, his insurance isn’t so good, so they’re wanting to start with chemo and radiation. I’m looking for other options.”

  “The CAR T-cell therapy guy you’ll want to talk to here at UVA’s a Dr. John Starbach.”

  “That’s what I saw online. I’m trying to figure out how to get my dad an appointment.”

  “They have an online appointment system.”

  “Yeah, but when I go on it, my dad gets rejected for being uninsured and out of state. The appointment system’s AI keeps saying he has to get his treatment in West Virginia.”

  Gunnar stared at him for a moment, then barked a sudden laugh. “And the system doesn’t have any way for you to tell them you can pay cash for his care, does it?”

  Kaem blinked a moment, then realized that probably was the problem. He said, “Ah. Now I think I understand.”

  Gunnar grinned, “You’re gonna have to actually talk to someone over there.”

  “Huh?”

  Gunnar shook his head, “You young people are so used to doing everything online you never think about talking to someone. Give it a try.”

  Kaem looked down at the appointments page on his laptop. Sure enough, a phone number was displayed. “Okay. I’ll try it.” He grinned, “Much as it pains my young self to do so.” He gestured at the cables. “If you hook up your cables, we can see if this thing’ll make some stade.”

  Gunnar started hooking up the cables while Kaem placed the call. He was immediately placed on a hold line that provided frequent verbal reminders that appointments could be made online.

  He got up to study what Gunnar was doing. The Mylar was cinched around a microwave emitter on one end and Gunnar had already connected the cable to that. The older man tucked the other end of the blimp under his left arm and said, “I’m just gonna have to hold the light conduit up to the Mylar on this end.”

  “You’re ready now?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Kaem stepped back over to his new stazer. He changed the settings so it should create a stade, specifying one that’d last a kilosecond (16.7 minutes), and depressed the switch that’d give it power. “Done,” he said.

  Gunnar squeezed his blimp. Even before Gunnar said, “Yup. It worked,” Kaem could tell there was no longer any give to the Mylar.

  Struck by a thought, Kaem asked, “How’re you planning to cast a stade around that one?”

  “I’ll just blow in a little more helium. Stretch the Mylar a little. Shouldn’t take much, we only need an extra millimeter all around.”

  “But how’re you going to keep the old one centered in the middle of the new one? If you don’t it’ll probably be too thin on one side and the stade’ll be incomplete.”

  Gunnar shrugged, “I’ll worry about that if it happens.” He picked up the hose from his helium tank saying, “Wait one.”

  A young man spoke in Kaem’s ear. “Hello, how may I help you?”

  “I’ve been trying to make an appointment for my dad with Dr. Starbach. We’d like to get him CAR T-cell therapy.”

  “Your dad’s name?”

  Kaem gave the man his dad’s info. The guy said, “Let me just look… Oh, I’m sorry. Your father doesn’t have insurance. He’ll need to seek treatment in his home state of West Virginia.”

  “But we can pay.”

  “It says here you don’t have insurance.”

  “That’s correct. But we have money.”

  “I’m sorry. CAR T-cell treatments cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

  “I know.”

  “You’d have to have insurance.”

  Frustrated, Kaem said, “We have the money.”

  “Sorry, but even if you had enough money for the treatment, what if there was a complication? What if the cost suddenly doubled? No, he’d be much better off applying for Medicaid and seeking treatment in his home state.”

  “No! We have more than enough money. We want him to have his treatment here…” Kaem trailed off as he realized he’d been disconnected. “Hello?” he said, checking to be sure the other man wasn’t just being unusually quiet. There was no answer. “Dammit!”

  When Kaem looked up he saw Gunnar watching him, sympathy in his eyes. “Sorry. Sometimes the bureaucracy seems worse than the cancer.”

  “Got any more suggestions?”

  “Try emailing Dr. Starbach from your university email account. If it comes from UVA and has a good subject line, he might read it. He might even sympathize enough to try to help.” Gunnar shrugged, “On the other hand, he may be just as hamstrung by policy as the lady you just talked to.”

  “Guy,” Kaem said.

  “Huh?”

  “I was talking to a guy.”

  “Oh. Sorry. They’re usually less sympathetic than the ladies.”

  “You ready to try stazing your blimp?”

  Gunnar hesitated a moment, then said, “Sure.”

  Kaem set the stazer for four megaseconds (46.3 days) and glanced at Gunnar. Holding the light conduit against the end of the blimp, Gunnar gave him a nod. Kaem pushed the button.

  Gunnar squeezed the blimp and said, “It’s hard. How long’s the stade in the middle gonna last?”

  Kaem looked at his watch, “About three more minutes. How are you gonna get the Mylar off that thing without destroying your pretty balloon?”

  Gunnar chewed a lip. “I don’t know. I need a Mylar zipper or something.”

  “That’d let your helium leak out.”

  “I’m planning to use air and a pump in the future. The helium tank was just an easy and available way to blow it up with some pressure.”

  “Yeah, but it’s gonna cause some trouble.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Once you blew the balloon bigger around the first stade, the inner stade would�
��ve floated up to the upper surface of your tied-down blimp because the extra pressure in the new helium would’ve made it denser. So, the inner stade would’ve been in contact with the Mylar at the top and you won’t have formed any stade up there.”

  Gunnar stared at him a moment, then said, “I’ll be damned. You’re not as dumb as I thought.”

  “Unfortunately,” Kaem said, “the fact I’m smarter than you doesn’t mean I’m not dumb.”

  Gunnar snorted, “You got that right.”

  “A zipper with a Mylar flap over the inside of it might work. The pressure in the balloon’ll tend to press it closed as long as it isn’t too high.”

  Gunnar looked thoughtful. “I’ll try that on the next one.” He got out his knife and started carefully slitting the Mylar longitudinally. A minute later he pulled out a blimp shaped stade that promptly got away from him and shot up to the ceiling. “Dammit!”

  They were still looking up at it when the inner stade vanished and the blimp suddenly moved up a little closer to the ceiling. A moment after that an irregular hole rolled into view as the blimp slowly rotated on its axis. The interior of the blimp was just as reflective as the outside but the hole was visible because the interior of the blimp was somewhat darker.

  “Looks like you were right,” Gunnar said irritatedly.

  Kaem shrugged, “If you’re going to pump a vacuum inside that blimp, you needed an opening into the interior anyway. Think of that hole as serendipity.”

  Gunnar blinked, then smiled, “Yeah. That was my plan all along.”

  ~~~

  Having reset the components in the stazer back to a nonfunctional state, Kaem was waiting for an Uber to take him back to the dorm. His earbud said, “You have a call from Arya.”

  “I’ll take it… Hi Arya.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Over at Staze, working on the new stazer.”

  “Kaem! I’m supposed to be with you when you go places!”

  “I, ah, took an Uber over here. Gunnar’s been with me. I’m sure I’m safe.”

  “Is Gunnar supposed to protect you?!”

  She really sounds worried about me, Kaem thought, getting in the Uber that’d just pulled up. “I just hate having you waste your time babysitting me. I know you need to study—”