by Gabriel Just
the problem,” Balaba asserted. “It might be best if we keep quiet about this particular scientific breakthrough. Just build an energy sink and tune it in such a way that it exactly compensates the effects of Hyperchloride. It might require a bit of fine tuning and you need to do this without raising suspicion, but I am sure you are capable of such a task.”
Tinwin agreed, “Of course. After all, you are talking to the leading expert in the field of energy sinks. I will start right away. You can expect results at the end of the week. And by results I mean positive results.”
“I will indeed expect results. Do not disappoint me!”
Tinwin nodded friendly, left the office and panicked as soon as the door closed. He pulled his Widget out of his pocket and asked, “Where is my assistant Kobb?”
The Widget displayed a map of the university and stated, “Kobb is currently in the mess hall.”
“Did he order yet?”
“Negative. He waits in line at food printer 7.”
“Excellent. Override his food privileges. We have no time to waste.”
“Override successful.”
Tinwin ran to the mess hall, where Kobb was in the process of kicking the food printer for not taking his order.
“There is no need for violence, Kobb,” Tinwin lectured him. “The printer is just following my orders. There is no time for a meal now. We have to head to Kemos 8 immediately.”
“What should we do there?”
“I have no idea yet, but we have to be quick. Either we find a way of reproducing ancient technology that was completely destroyed in the Madona-Epsilon-Prime incident or we convince the whole population of a planet to completely change their way of life.”
“I don’t understand,” Kobb said while trying to order food one more time.
“You don’t have to. You are just an assistant. So do some assisting and come with me. We can have lunch at Kemos 8. I heard they serve the best Hironian chilli in the whole sector.”
“Hironian chilli? Is that even safe to eat for Piki, like us?”
“Well, that will be only one of the many things we will find out on this trip. I would not worry too much. A Piki can eat everything, even things that are poisonous to other races. At the very least once.”
“Really? We drive with this old thing? Can’t you request a standard issue shuttle, just once?” Kobb asked while looking at the ship at the university's parking platform.
“After the Kevar 7 incident I was awarded the honor of travelling with the university’s vintage collection of shuttles. And although this one looks very old, it has exponential acceleration. We will be at Kemos 8 in no time. Get in, you drive,” Tinwin ordered.
Kobb entered the strange vehicle. It was made from a type of metal he had never seen before. The controls were unfamiliar to him, but intuitive. One lever controlled acceleration, while two other levers controlled direction. A fourth lever was purely decorational and preserved the shuttle’s symmetry.
“Well, here goes nothing,” said Kobb and pulled the first lever. The shuttle rose very slowly.
“Full speed ahead!” Professor Tinwin commanded.
Kobb pulled the lever to maximal acceleration. Still the shuttle rose very sluggishly. The back of the shuttle was still touching the ground.
“What’s wrong?” Kobb asked.
“Nothing,” Tinwin answered. “It works as intended. Evidently exponential acceleration means that we will spent most of the trip very close to the parking lot. But once we gain speed, we will arrive at our destination in the blink of an eye.”
Kobb shook his head. “Yes, Professor Tinwin. Thank you, Professor Tinwin. And once we are there, what exactly is our plan?”
“I am not sure yet. I will go through my lab book once more and see if I find anything useful about the Tinwin sink, so that we may be able to build a smaller version of it.”
“Can I help?”
“No, Kobb, you need all your concentration to pilot this vehicle.”
Kobb looked over his left and right shoulder and could still see the vehicles parked next to them. “Please! At least until we pick up speed.”
“Very well,” Tinwin said. “You might learn something by studying my lab book. I will send the relevant entries to your Widget.”
Normally Kobb was not very keen on reading things Tinwin wrote, but in this case it was better than watching the shuttle accelerate adiabatically. Kobb skipped the first few paragraphs, since they always consisted of unnecessary introduction. Then he came to the important part:
“We activated the energy sink. I think I will call it ‘Tinwin sink’. Or maybe ‘Tinwin’s sink’. This sounds more like I own it. But what if more of those will be found in the future? In that case ‘Tinwin sink’ would be better as it has a more intuitive plural. I will decide on nomenclature later. The basic function of the Tinwin sink is that it siphons energy from all the devices on the planet. How it does this remains a mystery, which I will solve soon. But first I should decide in what journals I should publish my results. ‘Advances in Ancient Technology’ might be the best choice, but I am sure also ‘High and then all of a Sudden low Energy Physics’ would be interested.”
Kobb read over the next paragraphs but was unable to find any useful information about the sink. Not even a sketch or any hint on how it works. After lots of pages about nomenclature and the advantages and disadvantages of publishing in different journals, the lab book ended in: “Sadly we had to destroy the Tinwin sink to save the planet, before I could collect more data. This has to great advantage that I will forever remain the leading expert in this field.”
But now even Tinwin himself wondered if that was really an advantage or just lead to more chores.
“To sum up, you have no idea how the Tinwin sink even worked,” Kobb pointed out after reading the whole lab book.
“Quite the contrary,” Tinwin protested. “I have many ideas. I am just not absolutely sure which of these ideas are correct and which of these are not. But I am sure I will find a solution. One way or the other.”
“We started to move!” Kobb yelled, surprised.
“Well, technically we moved since we began acceleration. It is only now, that we move at a speed accessible to our senses.”
Kobb had no time to answer since the ship got faster and faster. He had great problems staying on course.
“We should probably start decelerating now,” Tinwin suggested.
Kobb pulled the lever in the opposite direction but soon found out that also the deceleration of this vessel was exponential and therefore not fast enough to prevent an impact with a Transsteel landing platform on Kemos 8. Obviously the engineers of the shuttle anticipated such landing maneuvers, because whatever the shuttle was made of, it was even harder than Transsteel. It left a big crater but itself remained unharmed. So did Tinwin and Kobb.
Before getting out of the shuttle, Tinwin explained the most important part of the plan one more time. “Whatever we do, Kobb, we have to keep a low profile. Nobody should find out, that the university made a mista- I mean a breakthrough here.”
As Tinwin left the shuttle, he was slightly worried that the big crater they caused would arise suspicion. To his relief this was not the case since Kemos 8 was a typical factory planet where a single crater did not catch any attention. The whole planet was riddled with craters, small holes, fissures, and other signs of industrial progress. The landscape was dominated by large factories that emitted black fumes and rudimentary tenements for the workers that for some reason emitted even more of those black fumes. The biggest sight in the city was the statue of industry, a gigantic sculpture, made completely from Transsteel, of a robed lady holding a health and safety manual in her one hand and a big welding torch in the other one.
Many people squeezed through the narrow walkways. Most of them wore some sort of safety equipment like helmets, gas masks or even complete hazmat suits. The population of Kemos 8 was largely Hironian, a fact that Tinwin attributed to their preference for plai
n, physical labor. The walkway was also used by some Dranik, most of which shouted at somebody over the intercom or in person.
“Let’s go, Kobb,” said Tinwin. “Building a sink is out of the question. I guess we have to convince these people to stop using Hyperchlorine without telling them why and the problem is solved. Let us take a look around, see how many factories even use it. I don’t think it will be difficult to persuade them. After all, we are much smarter than them, right Kobb?”
“For some reason I don’t think that this helps. And I doubt these people are interested in our opinion. Especially when we are not allowed to tell them the truth.”
“Don’t be silly. Everyone listens to scientists. All we have to do is prepare some graphs and maybe even some formulas and show them to the people in charge. Because they will not understand anything, they will have no choice but to do what we say. But first we should find out how many factories there are on this planet. We should count those on this street, then extrapolate to the whole city and then extrapolate this number to the whole planet.”
“Yes, Professor Tinwin. Thank you, Professor Tinwin.”
The two followed the street and while Kobb counted all the Transsteel factories on the left, Tinwin only counted the first one on the right and decided to extrapolate from that value. After a few minutes Kobb reported, “I counted seven factories that produce Transsteel. What about you?”
“I counted one during my first step.