Halting the reaper, p.15
Halting the Reaper, page 15
Lanis’ eyes had widened, “Oh, ’cause Stade’s frictionless, right? You load casks on a platter and spin it up when you have extra power, then use that kinetic energy to generate power when you need it?”
Seba nodded.
They were being seated in a Greek restaurant that didn’t look promising, though both Seba and Lanis assured Prakant the food was good.
Once they’d ordered Lanis said, “A flywheel would be a fun project! What else?”
Prakant couldn’t help but wonder at the confidence of such a young engineer. Is she going to be capable of handling such a diverse array of projects? he wondered.
Seba said, “You could work with Lee on her project to build a space tower. She’s gonna need a hell of a foundation. By the way, we’ve already tried your idea for a foundation of big Stade screws. They wanted the dry casks we’re stazing for Surbury fixed in place so no one can steal them. So, we used a commercial post hole digger to drive in some big screws and welded them to the cask.”
“‘The’ cask? Only one?”
“Uh-huh. They’re doing tests on that one, then they’ll have us do the rest of them.”
She nodded, then narrowed her eyes, “So how’s this space tower supposed to work?”
Prakant could hardly keep from goggling as Seba described an enormous tripod, ten to twenty miles high. A two-hundred-kilometer limb of the tripod would start at Staze East and head southeast up into the sky at a thirty-degree angle, braced by the other two limbs.
“Wait a minute,” Lanis said, “How are you going to hold up these ten-mile-long limbs before they get attached to one another to form the tripod?”
“Um, that’s part of what we need a good civil engineer for. They’ll be made of buoyant Stade so holding them up won’t be a problem, but they’ll still tend to blow around in the wind.”
She blinked, “Of course! I’ve got to get used to working with weightless materials! We could fly a weightless chain from one to the other and just pull them together until they line up.”
Seba grimaced, “Drones aren’t going to fly very well at ten miles altitude.”
“Correct,” Lanis said, undaunted, “you’d have to fly the chain over at something like a mile of altitude, then run it up that limb of the tower to the height you’re going to join them at, then pull them together. I’d love to help with that project too.” She frowned, “Are you planning to launch everything off the rail in the same southeasterly direction? Or, are you planning to change the length of the southern and eastern limbs to angle the southeast limb toward different orbits?”
Seba said, “I hadn’t considered that possibility.” He looked at Prakant, “Would changing the direction be helpful for space launch?”
Prakant nodded, “Hugely helpful. Depends on whether you want a polar orbit, an equatorial orbit, or one of the various inclined orbits. You could launch them all to the southeast and correct them with second stage rocketry, but launching them closer to the angle you eventually wanted to achieve would save a lot of fuel.”
Seba turned back to Lanis, “We should figure on that then.”
She frowned, “That’d take a lot of hydraulic fluid.”
Seba shook his head, “You’re using frictionless Stade. Always try to figure out whether there’s a way to use its bizarre properties. In this case, you could install a kilometers long screw-drive system that pushes an inner piston out of an outer shell.”
Unembarrassed, Lanis laughed delightedly. “Of course you could!”
Their food arrived and they worked on getting set up to eat. Once that was underway, Lanis held up her fork and said, “Not that I don’t want to hear all the other projects you might want me to work on, but can I suggest some of my own?”
Unfazed, Seba just said, “Go.”
“Ms. Vaii said you were going to be looking for a new place?”
Seba nodded.
“Your new building should be constructed of Stade. It’ll serve as advertising of the material, demonstration of its properties, and a new home, all at once.”
“Oh! Good thinking. You have ideas?”
She shrugged, “I’m full of ’em. It should be mounted up in the air on a screw-in foundation so it can provide a shaded outdoor area beneath. Employees can enjoy the area on nice days. It should be planned so it can be extended when the company gets bigger. You could always make it taller since you don’t have to specially design the lower floors for them to be strong enough to add upper floors later. Duh, it’s made of Stade. But you should also be able to expand laterally. The ability to extend it requires that the openings into potential additions need to be planned into the starter building.
“Because it’s built of Stade, except for the windows, it’ll already be perfectly insulated. But we’ll put on panels that tilt up and down over the windows. Tilt them all the way up toward the sun and lots of sunlight comes in. On days that’re too sunny, you tilt them down like awnings to let you see out but provide shade. For storms, or at night, you bring them down to act as window coverings, giving complete insulation and protection.”
Seba said, “Don’t forget that you can’t have the exterior be smooth Stade. The sunlight reflections could be hazardous to others.”
She nodded, “The exterior would need to be textured, but in a fashion that allowed drainage so no dust accumulates and starts to grow stuff.”
Seba cocked his head, “Maybe letting stuff grow on the roof would be nice. The roots couldn’t hurt the roof.”
She shook her head. “The roof should be solar. If it isn’t, it should at least reflect sunlight back out to space to help with global warming.”
“Interiors?”
“The plumbing and fixtures should be Stade so they stay clean. Toilets should be Stade so they’ll self-clean without wasting water to flush. Except for the floors, industrial areas should be Stade so they stay clean too. I’d argue that all the ceilings should be bumpy Stade to cut the energy required for lighting. Otherwise, the interior designers cover the Stade walls with whatever they want,” she shrugged, “and that Staze can afford.”
Seba nodded thoughtfully. “That all sounds good, we just need to decide where we want to be located—”
Lanis interrupted, “About that. Arya Vaii already told us a little about the location dilemma. I’d like to suggest you consider drilling a Stade tunnel from one Staze location to the other. Evacuated of air, it could act as a hyperloop that’d be able to move people the hundred-mile distance from here to Staze East in ten to twelve minutes.”
Seba said, “Drill?”
Which was what Prakant was wondering, so he was quite happy to hear the question posed.
Lanis nodded, “You only have to start about ten feet below ground on each end because the curvature of the earth would put the midpoint of the tunnel about 1,500 feet deep. You drill with a conical Stade point rotating at high speed. Similar to friction drilling of metal, it’d generate heat that’d soften the material it’s going through, allowing it to displace the material outward. You’re pushing it in with the same large diameter Stade tube that ends up lining the tunnel. Since it’s completely rigid and absolutely straight, once you’ve got it aimed correctly, you can’t miss.” She grinned, “Of course you could still miss if your crap engineer doesn’t get it pointed correctly to begin with. Better drill from here toward that 1,700-acre destination to allow her a little room for error. Oh, and make her drill a small diameter pilot hole to be sure she’s going the right way before she does the actual tunnel.”
Prakant glanced at Seba to see how he was taking all this extravagant thinking. He couldn’t tell whether Seba trusted her or not.
After a moment, Seba looked over at Prakant. “What do you think?”
“Sounds doable,” Mahesh said, “but the devil’s in the details.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Seba said. He looked back at Lanis. “I’m impressed Dez. I’m sure you can’t do all those things, but I’m pretty sure whoever does the ones you don’t work on could benefit from that fountain of ideas that’s exploding out of your head. Why don’t you start thinking about which ones you’d like to work on the most?”
She grinned impishly, “All of them, but I’ll try to prioritize a few top choices.”
As they finished eating and walked back to Staze, Kaem told Prakant about some of the other things Staze was working on, or that he wanted Staze to take on. These included saving people’s lives by putting them temporarily in stasis. When Prakant asked him if he thought it was safe, he shrugged and said he’d been stazed himself and couldn’t even tell it’d happened… either of the two times he’d done it.
“And we need to start thinking about how to work with people who’ll staze industrial quantities of agricultural products to save stuff from surplus years, then dispense it during lean years. Staze foodstuffs with short shelf lives so they can grow in the summer and be eaten in winter yet still be fresh.” He grinned at Prakant, “Imagine tomatoes that haven’t had all the taste bred out of them getting them to last on shelves. We need a system to staze meals in restaurant kitchens while they’re hot… so they can be destazed a few years later to let you eat a chef-prepared, hot gourmet meal while hiking up a mountain. Make a box sized like a microwave that you could staze and unstaze your food at home.
“I’ve been working with Brad Medness, a scientist from Maryland who’s trying to induce fusion by laser-accelerating hydrogen protons into boron targets. I think with Stade to contain radial expansion he’s got a good shot at inducing fusion at low cost with low radiation emissions.”
After explaining H-B fusion and its direct production of electricity without needing a steam cycle—in more detail than Prakant understood—he moved on. “We need to be able to manufacture vacuum Stade at scale. I’m hoping you can shepherd some of the industrial and manufacturing engineers we’ve hired. We need them to figure out how to cast lots of small Stade parts in our vacuum chambers without having to bring the vacuum up and down for every stazing event. I’m sure you’ve already dealt with some of the difficulties of working in vacuum while you were stazing Space-Gen’s booster, but we want to move from stazing one big thing at a time to stazing thousands of them using some kind of assembly line that works inside an evacuated area where humans can’t work.”
“What kind of small parts?” Prakant asked.
“Well, for one thing,” Seba grinned, “a two-hundred-kilometer bicycle chain.” Prakant felt like his brain was cramping as Seba went on to explain how they expected to accelerate upper stage type rockets up their space tower with big sprockets and a really long chain.
“Not a linear motor?!” Lanis asked, surprised.
He shook his head and reminded her to always consider the advantages and disadvantages of Stade. In this case, how all the wiring and electromagnets would increase the weight and costs over chain they made out of vacuum. As he was explaining this, he mentioned that he wanted the motors mounted a couple of kilometers high on the tower so the sound wouldn’t bother people on the ground.
Lanis grinned, saying, “It’s gonna take a lot of electrical cable to carry that kind of power up to those big motors.”
Seba snorted. “A couple of kilometers of cable is a lot less than it would take to power a two-hundred-kilometer linear motor.” He turned to Prakant. “That’s another project we need to get underway. I’m pretty sure that if we laid superconducting cable inside Stade pipes, not only would the pipes prevent breakage of the brittle superconductors, but with Stade insulation, we could keep them cold for really long times with a single injection of cryogenic fluids. That’d let us get power up to our motors without losses. And, if that works,” he nodded at Lanis, “Dez could drill superconducting pipes cross country, connecting the grid with superconductors.”
Seba turned to Prakant, “Another project for a junior engineer is to figure out whether we can imbed Stade wires in glass. Then we could burglar and hurricane proof people’s windows.” He snorted, “Especially our own. We had a break-in recently.”
Prakant nodded, but he was thinking, I don’t think he sees Lanis as a junior engineer. I wonder if that’s going to be a problem…? Of course, after this conversation, I’m having a hard time thinking of her as a junior myself. He blinked, But I see Seba, who has to be the same age as Lanis as… not senior, but in-charge. This despite the fact that this “X” guy’s actually the boss. Hell, with me going in as CTO, Seba’s not even going to have a title anymore, but there’s something about him that… makes you feel like he is in charge. Is he going to take direction from me? After a little more thought, Prakant decided that Seba seemed like he should be in charge because he could think circles around most people. And, so, I probably shouldn’t be telling him what to do very often. Good thing he seems to be such a nice guy.
And a good thing I had my recorder on for this conversation. I’m gonna have to go over the recording and make a lot of notes to get myself organized.
***
When Brad walked up to his lab, he saw some huge boxes in the hall by his door. Excitedly, he stepped into the lab to find a boxcutter. His grad student, Jeremy, said, “Hey, Dr. Medness. I assume you saw we got a delivery? Those boxes may be huge, but they don’t weigh much. Do you know what they’re for?”
For a moment, Brad considered trying to keep it secret. That’s silly. I’m going to need Jeremy’s help. “Don’t tell anyone, but they’re molds to cast Stade.”
Jeremy’s eyes widened, “That new material from UVA?” he breathed.
Brad puffed out a little laugh. “Wrong on two counts. First, it isn’t actually a material, though it is easier to think of it that way. And, second, though it’s from Charlottesville and some of the people involved are recent grads, it isn’t from UVA.”
Puzzled, Jeremy said, “I thought Seba, the inventor, was still a student?”
“Yeah, he is.” In a doubtful tone, Brad said, “He claims he came up with his theory before he started school. In any case, he offered to make us a Stade fixture for free.” Brad grimaced, “Well, we have to make the molds for it and they aren’t cheap, so it isn’t exactly free.” He held up the box cutter, “Wanna see whether we got what I ordered?”
After a bit of work, they had a bunch of mirrored acrylic parts out. Then, after more work, they’d assembled them into a gleaming fixture with an enclosed space inside of it. Brad found himself explaining how the interior parts would be stazed so they’d only last a couple of hours. Then they’d assemble the other parts around them, spacing them away from the temporary Stade with little pieces of plastic included for that purpose. They’d staze a more permanent Stade inside that outer mold, then wait for the inner Stade to disappear.
“Wow, how’d you figure all that out?”
“I didn’t,” Brad said, feeling a little embarrassed, “Seba looked at the plans I came up with and made enough suggestions that I had to do it all over.”
Jeremy frowned, “Would your original plans have worked?”
“No,” Brad said, trying not to sound resentful or embarrassed as he studied the assembled acrylic parts, trying to visualize how the Stade was going to form inside it. Then he started disassembling the mold, comparing the mold components to the drawings he’d spend so much time working out before he’d placed the order. He did not want his first stazing to fail. Partly because he’d already spent so much money on the molds. Partly because he was going to have to drive the molds down to Staze to get them stazed, a substantial waste of time. Partly because he was so tired of Seba pointing out his stupid mistakes.
“So, how do we get this bad boy stazed?” Jeremy asked excitedly.
“I’ll make an appointment with them and then drive the molds down there to make sure they don’t put them together wrong.”
“Cool! Can I go with you?”
“Sure. If they give us an appointment for a time you have free. I’ll call ’em now and we’ll see if we can arrange a time that’s good for you too.”
Brad got an appointment for Friday when Jeremy could go with him. Jeremy said, “That’s great!” He paused a moment, “Um… I’m realizing that in all my excitement over how Stade works and learning how it’s cast, I never asked you what our Stade device’s going to do?”
“It’ll give us something to talk about on the drive down there. Read up on Hora’s ideas for hydrogen-boron fusion.”
“I thought those didn’t pan out?”
“They didn’t. But he didn’t have Stade.”
Chapter Seven
When Grace got home, she found a FedEx envelope on her porch. She immediately got a bad feeling about it. Only legal documents got printed out and delivered anymore. The only legal document she could imagine receiving was something from Carl Welch, Simone’s asshole of a brother.
When she flipped it over to open it, she saw it was one of the envelopes that piggybacked onto the IoT to tell FedEx—and therefore the sender—that it’d been opened. For a moment she wondered whether she should call her lawyer before she opened it. To hell with it, she decided, ripping open the tab.
The papers inside were typically hard to read legal mumbo-jumbo, but as best Grace could tell Carl was requesting that the courts declare Simone legally dead, thus activating her will. I thought they couldn’t do that for seven years! Grace thought with alarm. As she read further, she found more obscure language that seemed to indicate the seven-year rule was only for missing persons. This complaint was angling to have her declared dead sooner on the basis that she wasn’t missing, but she was without heartbeat or respiration, i.e. dead.
There was stuff acknowledging the contention that she was alive but in stasis, followed by a plea to the court that any such claim be tested by reversing the stasis. Whereupon, if we can’t cure her, she’ll quickly die and prove their contention! Grace realized. Her brother’s essentially trying to murder her!
