When the flash dissipated, the box was empty, and the nitrogen tube had been cleanly sliced where it entered the box. Even after hundreds of launches, the disappearing act never failed to impress.
“Tau is perfect,” Nala said, her eyes glued not to the plexiglass box but to her computer screen. A window popped up showing a live image returned by the webcam, now positioned in another dimension of space.
As it had done a hundred times before, the magic of expanding a quantum-sized dimension forced a corresponding compression of ordinary space. From the perspective of the camera, five hundred million kilometers had just compressed to almost nothing and the planet Jupiter was suddenly within camera distance. The giant planet appeared on cue, beautiful in its color but oddly flat in shape. More like a disc than a sphere, but any three-dimensional object looked that way from quantum space. Compressed, flattened.
“’Tis near enough to spit upon,” Thomas said, his Scottish accent returning. He checked another computer screen. “The 4-D volume looks right. Nitrogen density is 1.24 kilograms per cubic meter—plus the camera. About 10 percent higher than yesterday.” A silly grin appeared on his face. “No sign of any Pasquier waves.”
“Fuck off,” she said with a glare. “You know my opinion on that arrogant bullshit.” Using her last name was another part of the game. They were monitoring for gravitational waves, but Thomas was intent on renaming everything. Last week he’d threatened to submit the Nala boson to a certification board. The week before, the whole Standard Model would be renamed to the Donut Box, with each type of quark and lepton changing to Glazed, Sprinkles, Choco, and so on. Actually, she had kind of liked that one.
Her fake-glare morphed into a smile and she turned to her computer. “Be ready to monitor, my friend. Initiating collapse.”
She pressed a key, and within seconds the surrounding air wavered like heat waves coming from an oven. Her computer screen wavered too, even the surface of the workbench.
That’s not right, she thought. The gravitational waves they sought were so weak as to be nearly undetectable. A slight tremor. A wiggle. This was a sloshing bucket of water.
Ripples propagated through the air and within seconds had permeated the room. The walls, floor and ceiling pulsated in a slow oscillation. Waves penetrated her body, making her own bones feel as pliable as everything else. On an intellectual level the unnatural panorama was eye opening but there was no denying a far more primitive reaction—the feeling of slipping off the edge of a cliff. Both her mind and her heart raced.
“Anomaly!” Nala’s voice sounded like she was at the bottom of a well. She grabbed the handheld radio from its recharger and pressed the transmit button. “Cody, shut it down!”
The edge of the workbench pushed into her hip in rhythmic surges as if it were trying to get her attention. The computer monitors hanging on the wall above the workbench deformed like they were sheets of rubber. Then, as quickly as they had started, the waves dampened.
The air calmed, the floor and the workbench resuming their previously solid existence. On the other side of the lab wall, the enormous particle accelerator spun down until the loudest thing left in the room was Nala’s heart, pounding inside her once-again-solid chest. She leaned against the workbench and took a deep breath.
“Whoa. What the hell?” Any particle physicist routinely dwells in the realm of the bizarre; quantum physics is not for lightweights. But over weeks of experiments, she’d seen no precedent for today’s gymnastics.
Thomas stepped toward her keeping both hands on the workbench. “You okay?” he asked.
“Sure, you?”
“A bit queasy.”
“Yeah, me too.”
They stood in silence for a time. Anomalies are expected in groundbreaking science, even welcomed as opportunities for discovery. But lack of control was always disturbing.
Nala plopped into her chair and turned to the computer display. It showed a line graph that looked like it had just been through an earthquake. “Wow. Tau went crazy there for a minute, even sinusoidal.”
Thomas peered over her shoulder. “And here I thought you smarty-pants physicists had this four-dimensional stuff all figured out.”
Nala took another deep breath, her heart calming. She glanced back at her lab partner. “Yeah… I thought we did too.”
A loud cracking sound caused them both to jump. It came from the plexiglass test box at the other end of the workbench. A tiny light hovered in the center of the box. The light hadn’t been there at the beginning of the test.
It was a pinprick, nothing more, but far more brilliant than any dot ought to be. Nala shielded her eyes and drew closer. A fine mist slowly circled the point of light, forming a disc shape that spiraled inward. It gave the appearance of a miniature galaxy only a few inches across.
“Fascinating,” she said.
As they watched, there was another crack, and a bit of the plexiglass case broke away. The chip joined the mist to be drawn into the point of light. Yet another crack followed, splitting the far side of the box.
“Holy shit,” Nala said, stepping back. “Whatever it is, for such a little thing it’s got some punch.”
And then, as quickly as it appeared, the light silently faded away. The mist twisted delicately for another turn and then evaporated, leaving the box empty once more.
Thomas stood behind, watching the last wisp of the gracefully pirouetting mist. “Kind of pretty,” Thomas said. “But unexpected.”
Nala concentrated her stare into the test box, searching for answers. Both the waves and the pinprick of light were anomalies, no question, unseen in any previous test. Were they related? Could they be re-created? The effect would need more study. They could be on the brink of a landmark discovery. A breakthrough.
Of course, it could be dangerous too.
2 PVC
One month before…
Davis Garrity ran a hand through his wavy gray hair and checked that his tie was straight. There wasn’t enough time to stop by the men’s room before the meeting, but his reflection in the polished metal of the elevator doors was sufficient. There was no point in achieving grooming perfection anyway—salesmen did that, and he was certainly no salesman. Davis made deals. Nobody was better.
The elevator doors opened at the twenty-fourth floor of the office building, one of many gleaming glass towers of the downtown core of Austin, Texas. Davis strode down the hallway, briefcase in hand, and pushed open one of the double glass doors etched with a stylized logo featuring a lightbulb and the company name, ElecTrek.
“Davis Garrity for Stan Wasserman,” he told the receptionist.
“Welcome to ElecTrek, Mr. Garrity. Mr. Wasserman would like you to join his team in the east conference room.” Davis signed in and the receptionist pointed the way.
The conference room was directly across from reception, a space designed to be more public than the interior hallways and offices behind secured doors. It was also designed with visitors in mind. Photographs straight out of a shareholders’ annual report adorned the walls. One provided a view of scenic rolling hills with an occasional wind turbine dotting the idyllic scene, almost like an industrial decoration. Another showed a sea of solar panels glinting in the sun. A third displayed a modern power plant with a young family strategically positioned in the foreground, apparently ready for a tour from a smiling guide wearing a hard hat.
Davis set his briefcase on the table, took a seat and waited. He knew it wouldn’t be long. The client was aware he’d already signed one of their competitors. Naturally, their interest was piqued.
A few minutes later, two men and a woman walked in. The taller man reached out with a hand. “Davis, glad you could make it. Stan Wasserman, nice to meet you in person.” Wasserman introduced the others, Teri Barker, chief environmental engineer, and Jake Schroeder, ElecTrek’s vice president for Texas Power Operations.
“Thanks for your time today,” Davis said with an elegant bow of the head. “I can assure you,
it’s going to be the best meeting you’ll have all week.” Lesser dealmakers might set expectations low to give the appearance of delivering high, but Davis could afford to start high and stay there. Final delivery would be stratospheric.
Wasserman responded with his own play. “Let’s hope so. Things are getting tight around here, and we’ll need to find cost savings in every process. You said on the phone you could give us more than just nickels and dimes.”
Davis was impressed with the I’m-just-a-poor-man counterplay, but of course, it was all an act. With electricity rates fixed by friendly Texas commissioners and with oil, gas and coal prices still depressed, ElecTrek’s financial position was rosy for the foreseeable future. Still, a good dealmaker doesn’t embarrass his client with facts. If Wasserman said things were tight, they were tight. The meeting would require the full pitch, and Davis was prepared.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to save you a billion dollars, maybe more… right now, right here in this meeting.”
He waited a few seconds for the words to sink in and then pointed to the pictures on the wall. “As a side benefit, by next week, I’ll hand over a new crowd-pleasing photograph you can hang on this wall that will change your company’s image forever.”
Their skeptical looks were standard and expected. Davis had no PowerPoint slides and no glossy brochures to hand out; those were bits and pieces that amateurs used. Much better to go straight for gold. He opened his briefcase, withdrew a small white plastic pipe and set it on the table. Eyes around the room squinted.
The pipe was open at one end and closed on the other by a rounded top, painted blue and orange. It looked like a short piece of irrigation pipe commonly found at any home improvement store.
“I give you the Garrity Cap,” Davis said with a flourish of his hand.
Wasserman picked up the plastic tube and held it close to his face, turning it in his hand. The others looked on with interest. It was the critical turning point of the meeting, where he’d either walk out with a contract or be thrown out as a con man.
Davis continued, cranking his pitch a notch higher. “This simple device—backed up by Garrity nanotechnology—will literally save the world. I kid you not. Once its larger cousin is installed at your power plants, operating costs will plummet, and profits will soar.”
Wasserman handed the plastic pipe to Teri Barker, who peered inside, looking for working parts. “You said on the phone you had a carbon-capture device. This is PVC pipe.”
“Funny, isn’t it?” Davis asked. “That sometimes the most innovative technology comes in such a simple package.” He pointed to the pipe. “With the Garrity Cap installed on each of your stacks, you can turn off your billion-dollar carbon-capture system; you won’t need it. And forget about building any more of these money-sucking showpieces. Let’s be real. A 6 percent reduction isn’t a realistic carbon-capture program—it’s just a very expensive public relations campaign. Are we in agreement on that?”
Their shrugs gave him the answer he had expected. Carbon capture at any coal-fired power plant had never made it past the demonstration phase, even with heavy government subsidies. Power plants across the US, even those that had converted to natural gas, continued to discharge large quantities of carbon dioxide daily.
Davis knew the industry well, including how their bottom line was calculated. “With the Garrity Cap on every stack, you’ll capture exactly 100 percent of the carbon and everything else you currently send into the air. By the way, you can turn off your sulfur dioxide scrubbers. You won’t need them either. Go ahead and burn local Texas coal instead of importing that expensive stuff from Wyoming. Hell, burn garbage, burn old tires, burn whatever you like—it won’t matter in the slightest. Your emissions will still be precisely zero.”
He pointed to Jake Schroeder. “By next week, you’ll be running the greenest electric power facility on the planet. Your EPA permit? Tear it up. Global warming? Climate change? Gone. Mr. Schroeder, you’re going to be a hero.”
Wasserman was shaking his head, but in a good way, more puzzled than negative. “Nice pitch. But empty claims aren’t worth much. Tell me again how all this magic is supposed to work?”
Davis reached out, and Teri handed him the plastic pipe. “I lied,” he said. “What I hold in my hand is a bit more than just your ordinary PVC pipe.” He held it out for their inspection, pointing the open side toward them and then turning it over to show the closed top. “This closed end is not closed at all.” He pulled a pen from his pocket and pushed it inside the tube. He tapped the pen on the cap’s top like a magician would knock inside a trick box. “We hear the pen tapping. Our eyes see this as a sealed end… but it’s not. This tube twists into another dimension, a place we can’t see, a place not even in this world.”
Davis’s grin broadened to a smile. “Yes, we’re using dimensional technology, the same technology you’ve heard on the news when they told us about all this crazy business with aliens.”
Schroeder contorted one side of his face. “That pipe is an alien device?”
Davis shook his head. “Nope. Not alien. Built right here in America. So is the dimensional technology. But instead of using this technology to find aliens, we’re taking the same idea to save money… and save the planet.”
Davis held the pipe in one hand, his other hand a few inches away. “This pipe is really twice as long as it looks. We can’t see the rest of it because it makes a right-angled turn into a fourth dimension. My company created both the pipe and the space that it’s plugged into.” He waved his arms in the air. “That new space is right here, right in this room.”
“We’ve all heard the news stories,” Schroeder said. “Talking to cyborgs a million miles away? Pretty fantastic stuff, and I’m not sure I believe it all. But you’re saying the technology is real? How do we know this isn’t just a PVC pipe you bought at the hardware store?”
Schroeder was turning out to be a good straight man. Davis pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. “Mind if I light up?” he asked with a smile. Of course, the answer was predetermined.
“Sorry, Davis, we’re a no-smoking workplace,” Wasserman said. “Maybe you could just answer Jake’s question.”
Davis pulled out a lighter. “I intend to. With visual proof, if you’ll allow a one-time exception to your smoking policy.” Davis lifted his eyebrows and waited for the next response.
“You’re going to show us how this works, but you need a lit cigarette?”
“Yes, I do. It’s quite an intriguing demonstration.”
“Okay, whatever,” Wasserman answered. “Do what you need to do.”
Davis nodded, lit the cigarette and took a long drag. He blew smoke into the air, away from where the others sat. “My apologies for the smoke, but you did want proof.”
Wasserman pulled his chair closer and the others leaned forward with elbows on the table. “Okay, same draw, same amount of smoke.” He took another long drag on the cigarette, its tip burning bright red. He picked up the plastic tube and held its opening to his lips.
His audience drew in closer still. He puckered his lips and gently blew. The sound of his exhale was the same as before, but nothing came out of the pipe, not even traces of smoke around its edges.
Schroeder reached out with an incredulous look on his face. “Wait a second, that’s got to be a trick. You didn’t really take a draw the second time.” He took the cap from Davis’s hand and examined it once more.
Davis held out the cigarette. “Try it yourself.”
Schroeder looked at him and then Wasserman. He took the cigarette, sucked on it and immediately expelled the smoke in a fit of coughing. “Okay, the smoke is real,” he said when he’d regained his composure.
Schroeder took a second draw and blew directly into the short pipe, his lips not quite touching. Smoke came out of his puckered lips, but it quickly disappeared into the pipe and didn’t come out.
Schroeder held the pipe up to the light and peered ins
ide. “There’s got to be something absorptive in there.”
Davis tilted back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Do you see anything except the inside of an empty plastic pipe?”
“No,” Schroeder admitted. “I don’t. What the hell are you doing here?” He tapped on the very solid-looking rounded cap at the closed end. “Where’d the smoke go?”
Davis laughed. “Gone. No longer in our plane of existence, my friend. Permanently eliminated, just like your power plant emissions will be.”
Schroeder looked at the pipe in one hand and back to the cigarette in the other. He started laughing. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
The ElecTrek lawyers would be next, waving a memorandum of understanding and a joint nondisclosure agreement. The documents would clear the way for a full-scale demonstration at their Bastrop plant, which would then lead to a signed contract, renewed annually… and, of course, many millions of dollars flowing into Davis’s bank account.
The amazing thing about it all was this deal was just one power company in one state. Many more would follow, and Davis was quite sure he would soon become very rich.
3 Briefing
Daniel Rice sat in the hot seat in a stuffy committee room deep in the bowels of the US Capitol building. A row of stern-faced representatives faced him. Daniel had been here before. It wasn’t testimony. He wasn’t under oath; there were no cameras and only one microphone. A congressional briefing, conducted behind closed doors to maximize candor. He enjoyed this newest part of his job about as much as a visit to the dentist.
The weathered man at the center of the dais was the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He had asked questions that were vaguely science-oriented, but the follow-on conversation made it abundantly clear that his scientific knowledge was modest. Still, he was an improvement on the previous committee chairman. The years of prominent politicians openly hostile to science were thankfully over.
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