Halting the reaper, p.7
Halting the Reaper, page 7
“Oh, I think she did. You think they’ll be helpful?”
“I think so, but it would be better if stazees signed POAs specific to being stazed so there’d be no doubt they intended the POA to be in effect in the case where they’re in stasis. The health care POA lets you make medical decisions while the person’s incapacitated. It would seem to me that being unstazed is the kind of decision that would have to be made by the HCPOA since the stazee is incapacitated, but that such decision-making power should be explicitly spelled out in the document.”
Kaem sighed, “Wow. This’s a lot to think about. Sylvia, can you come up with forms we can use for this?”
She nodded, “But, unless pressed for time, people should probably take our forms and use them as examples when consulting their own attorneys. If they’re going to be stazed long term they probably need to get a trust set up to protect their financial interests.”
***
After Grace and Dr. Jonas left, Arya returned to her desk to check her email before leaving for the weekend. She’d finished that and was getting ready to leave when Kaem came over. “Hey, can I take you out to dinner?”
Arya felt torn between a flash of longing for an evening out with Kaem and irritation that he’d asked her out at the last minute.
She smiled at him. “Sorry. I’m leaving town to visit my parents for the weekend.” Besides, if I’m getting out of Lee’s way, I can’t be going out to dinner with you, she thought.
He smiled back, a wisp of sadness in his expression, “I hope you have a good time.”
Chapter Three
Brad Medness entered another set of numbers in the computational engine he was using to test possible designs for a fixture he could use to fire ISEAP’s laser into a Stade tube—assuming the figures for the material’s properties weren’t total bullshit. He started the run and went to get a Pepsi.
When he got back, he gawped at the readouts.
I can probably improve these numbers with a few more iterations, but… They’re already good enough, he thought. I need to start trying to make contact with Seba. See whether I can fit whatever they charge for Stade into my grant’s budget.
His eyes tracked back to the diagram of his fixture, If I lengthen the chamber, the laser pulse should be further constrained and there’ll be even more hydrogen inside the cone to be accelerated into the boron… His hands had started to stretch out to the keyboard. No! he thought irritatedly, Time enough for that after I’ve tried to contact Seba.
He’d always had to force himself to invest the time necessary to deal with people instead of equipment, but asking Staze to build him a device required that he make contact himself rather than through one of his grad students.
Brad drafted an email, trying not to sound like he was begging. He strove to make it sound like working with him would provide benefit to Staze, not just to Brad and the ISEAP.
With a pretty good draft under his belt, he decided to start trying to find an email address to send it to. He could re-read and re-write again before sending the final draft.
Damn this website is sparse, he thought after finding Staze’s pages. There was an address listed for Seba, with a disclaimer that due to high volumes of incoming email, not every email could be given a reply.
He re-read the paragraph on Seba, thinking to slant his email to get the guy’s attention. What the hell?! He’s still an undergrad?!
A moment later Brad got the nagging sensation that Seba had said something to that effect at the beginning of his talk. The talk was still up in a window on his screen so he pulled it up. Sure enough, in his first sentence Seba had said he was an undergrad physics student. Brad hadn’t listened to that first sentence after the first time he watched the video since he’d focused on the meat of the talk during all his re-watches. Why would this company have an undergrad give this talk for them? he wondered. Is he just a PR person?
He went back and re-checked the website. Seba’s listed as CTO!
He re-watched the talk, focusing on what’d been said about the discovery rather than on what he himself might do with it. Stade’s based on a theory of Seba’s, though this Mr. X did the heavy lifting of making it practical. I’ll send my email to X as well. He pulled up the website again.
X had an email address listed with a warning that its inbox was heavily filtered. Brad decided to send his email to X and Gunnar Schmidt as well as Seba. Schmidt looked more mature. He decided that sending it to the CFO would be a waste of time since a bean counter wouldn’t take any interest.
After one more re-write, the email was on its way. I sure as hell hope someone reads it, he thought.
***
Mahesh Prakant walked across the huge concrete floor Staze’s people—Lee among them—had arranged to have poured in Space-Gen’s new vacuum chamber. He’d come out to “inspect the project” after he’d gotten a call from a Space-Gen engineer on-site in Texas. The man had excitedly described the methods being used to make the chamber and Prakant had decided he needed to understand them.
Lee was his guide on this inspection. He said, “So, you inflated a big Mylar balloon, temporarily stazed its interior—”
She interrupted. “We blew it up with water as well as air. The water flattens the bottom of the balloon onto the foundation.”
“Yes,” he said, “then you blew it up a little bit more and stazed the additional outer layer for the long term.”
“We put water in the outer layer too. We needed the stazed water in the temporary Stade to float the inner layer up so the newly stazed layer would extend all the way under the temp Stade.”
Prakant nodded. “And I understand you have some kind of mechanism that makes sure the temp Stade is centered in the long-term Stade?”
“Uh-huh,” Lee said. “There’re little inflatable posts attached to the inside of the Mylar balloon. They’re transparent so they get incorporated into the long-term Stade. We put metalized inflatables where we want openings in the final shell.”
They’d gotten back to the big opening at one end of the huge cylinder. He said, “So a metalized ring left us this opening we’re going to take our rocket out through?”
She nodded, “How are you planning to make sure the rocket doesn’t get away from you when you take it out?”
“You mean because it’ll be lighter than air?”
“Uh-huh, if it gets away it’ll become a long-term piece of upper atmospheric junk unless you can recapture it.”
“We were thinking we’d put just enough water in the oxygen tank to make it neutrally buoyant.” He laughed, “Then one guy could pull it over to the launch pad.”
“That’d work. Um, you could save a step and partially fill the oxygen tank with LOX (Liquid Oxygen).”
Momentarily surprised, he abruptly understood, saying, “Because the LOX won’t boil in a tank made of Stade, right?” When she nodded, he said, “It seems to me we could use this balloon technology, the same methods you used to build the vacuum chamber, to cast the outer shells of our rockets.”
“You could,” she said. “I can get you the contact info for our Mylar fabricator if you like.”
“I would like that.”
“One problem to consider,” she said. “If you want your balloon to be symmetrical, you’ll want to inflate it with enough helium in the mix to make it neutrally buoyant. That way it won’t rest on the floor and get a flat spot on the bottom.”
He nodded, “Good point… any chance you’re going to come back and work for us?”
She shrugged, “I like working for both companies. Seeing both technologies in action. I do think having me at Staze part-time is helping Space-Gen a lot. But if I had to choose, I’d go full time at Staze.”
He sighed. “I was afraid of that. Are they going to be doing cooler things than launching rockets?”
She nodded and that nod was emphatic. “Some of the things they’ve got in the works are just astonishing.”
“Any chance they need a CTO?”
Lee’s eyes widened at the implications. “Seba’s already got that position… but he might like it if someone took over the administration and let him focus on the technical stuff. Want me to ask him?”
Prakant nodded, “If you can keep it on the down-low?”
“I will. You need to realize that Staze is really small right now. That I and a guy that’s shared with GLI would be your only engineers and that we’re both working on other stuff besides space. Oh, and that they couldn’t afford a big salary for a while. In fact, they aren’t hiring anyone right now. Hiring an admin assistant who also acts as a receptionist was a big deal for them.”
Prakant felt surprised and wondered if this was a good idea. He squared his shoulders. “I think I’d like the challenge. I could even go without a salary for a while if I had to.”
“Hah!” Lee said, “I offered to do that when I started. I’ll ask them for you.”
They said their goodbyes and she left, on her way back to Virginia like Schmidt and the older Seba who’d left earlier that morning.
Prakant wondered if he’d just made a big mistake. You only live once, he decided.
***
Brad was lecturing and had just asked a Socratic question when his phone vibrated on the table next to him. He never answered his phone while teaching, but his eye strayed to the phone.
Seba’s calling! he thought.
His hand snatched up the phone of its own volition. “Dr. Seba?”
There was a little chuckle, then a voice said, “Just Kaem is fine. Certainly not ‘doctor.’ I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree.”
“I desperately want to talk to you, but I’m in the middle of a lecture… can I—”
“I hate it when my professors shortchange me in class. Call me back when you’re done.”
When Brad set the phone back down, he was surprised to see his hand was trembling.
One of his students asked, “Are you okay Dr. Medness?”
Eyes still on his phone, Brad said, “I have a feeling that was the most important call of my life.” He looked up at his class and tried to smile, “I hope you guys appreciate me putting it off for you.”
Typical for students, they didn’t seem at all impressed.
~~~
As soon as the class was over, he called Seba back. To his relief, Seba answered immediately, but he said, “Sorry, now I’ve got to put you on hold. Should be with you in a couple of minutes.”
Better than no answer, Brad thought.
~~~
It was probably three minutes, then there was a click on the line and Seba said, “Dr. Medness?”
Brad couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief. He launched into an explanation of his plasma research and how he hoped Stade’s properties might make significant advances possible. “Um, how expensive would it be to get a fixture stazed? I-I’m trying to figure out whether I can fit it into the budget of my grant.”
Cheerfully, Seba said, “We’re big believers in science so we’ve offered to staze items for the researchers at UVA for free, um, within reason, of course. We could do the same for you. But you’d have to fabricate the molds yourself. Or pay to have someone make them for you.”
“Oh,” Brad said, stunned. “Wow! Thank you. What’s involved in making a mold?”
Seba described it to him, then suggested Brad send his CAD drawings to him before he tried to have them cast, “To avoid errors of misunderstanding.”
***
Giles Turnberry had been listening to Kaem Seba answer questions from the physics faculty for over a half an hour. Many of the questions were phrased doubtfully, expressing their reservations about his theory of time, or of his company’s product Stade, despite the evidence of their own eyes. They often had the tenor of a professor lecturing a student, regardless of the fact that this particular student had made a Nobel Prize-worthy discovery. Stavros had tried to turn the questions toward learning what new physics could be done with Seba’s discovery, but the questions continued to come back to expressions of the faculty’s doubts rather than their curiosity.
Despite the unpleasant undercurrent of the questions, Seba had remained unfailingly polite.
He’d used the e-board to quickly write out equations supporting his theory, working through them to surprising outcomes.
He’d written citations of relevant literature on the board as well, apparently from memory.
He’d handed out enough Stade samples that every faculty member could take several with him.
He’d offered to cast Stades for faculty members for free, providing they built the molds.
No one had expressed any gratitude for Seba’s time.
Turnberry had had his hand up for a while now and finally, rather than answering a question someone had posed without being called on, Seba had focused his eyes on Giles and said, “Dr. Turnberry?”
“Ah, yes. Thank you, Mr. Seba. Not just for calling on me, but for your kindness in making yourself available to answer our questions this evening. I’ve been intrigued by a comment you made when you gave your talk to the University and the world. You said you expected Stade to reflect neutrinos. Do you have proof that happens? Or ideas for other experimental physics it could enable?”
“No.” Seba shrugged, “But remember Stade isn’t a material, reflecting waves or particles in the usual fashion. It’s a segment of space-time in stasis and nothing can penetrate its surface. As far as we know everything bounces off, i.e. is reflected. We’ve measured its ability to reflect one hundred percent of light. We know it stops heat transmission, presumably by reflecting infrared as well as preventing conduction. It also reflects radiation of all types, alpha, beta, gamma, and neutrons. If it does reflect neutrinos, as I expect, then you could concentrate them with a concave Stade mirror, making detection easier. You could determine the direction they’re coming from by pointing that mirror in various directions and seeing which direction gave you the highest counts. You could funnel them into a Stade pipe and conduct them from one place to another. If tachyons exist, you should be able to do the same thing with them or any other forms of radiation.
“Because it’s a perfect insulator, it should make ultracold studies easier to carry out. And if they find something useful, commercial applications should be less expensive to keep cool.
“The same should be true for ultra-high temperature studies of plasmas and other phenomena including nuclear fusion…
Seba kept making suggestions until Turnberry felt like his head might explode. Turnberry could see numerous members of the faculty desperately making notes.
When Seba wound down, Giles’ friend Art Mandel shook his head and said, “I hope you know most of this is essentially unbelievable?”
Rather than getting angry, Seba merely smiled. “Prove me wrong if you can. ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,’ and all that. I’m sure most of these claims are true but we’ll all learn from it if you are able to prove some of them wrong.”
Seba glanced around the room, said, “Thank you. My time is up,” and walked out without a backward glance.
Turnberry stood and began to applaud. Seconds later, most of the other physicists in the room joined him.
***
Grace was out for a walk when her phone chimed. “Yes?”
“You have a call from Kary Welch.”
“Who’s that?”
“Simone Welch’s niece.”
“I’ll take it… Hello, Kary?”
“Hi, Aunt Grace. I’ve been trying to call Aunt Simone, but her phone says she’s not available. Is she okay?”
Is she reaching out? Grace wondered. Simone’s brother had become very distant after Simone married Grace. His kids, who hadn’t been that interested in their aunt even before the wedding, had been in even less contact. That’d faded to none once Simone got sick. Putting a cheerful tone in her voice in hopes of reuniting some part of Simone’s fractured family, Grace said, “Thanks for calling.” Then she toned down the cheer to say, “Unfortunately, Simone got terribly sick several weeks ago—"
“Oh my God,” Kary interrupted. “Did she die?!”
“No, she, uh…” Grace wondered how to explain, “she asked to be put in stasis. Do you know what that is?”
“No…” Kary said, a suspicious tone in her voice.
How can she not have heard about it? “You can find a talk about it on the internet. A young man name Kaem Seba—”
“What is it?” Kary abruptly interrupted, “Just tell me.”
“It stops time around the person. Simone’s going to stay in stasis until Arvinzamab, a new medication, comes available.”
“Stops time?”
Trying to keep an even tone, Grace said, “Uh-huh. So your Aunt Simone’s disease won’t progress while she’s waiting for the Arvinzamab.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Not till she comes out of stasis and feels better.”
“Doesn’t she come out of whatever it is a few times a day to eat?”
“Nooo…” Grace said, wondering how to explain better.
“Okay. Bye,” Kary said. The call disconnected.
Grace stood still; eyes focused in the distance. I’ve got a bad feeling about this, she thought.
***
Arya’s stomach roiled. It was payday and she didn’t have enough money in Staze’s accounts to pay people’s salaries. After paying $400,000 for the Mylar to make Space-Gen’s vacuum chamber, she’d been deep into the credit line from MBB. Paying salaries and buying supplies since then had pushed her close to the edge. It was too late to insist again that Kaem be more frugal. She’d already been riding Space-Gen to pay for the vacuum chamber, but they’d “been awaiting certification of the chamber,” which she thought was just a way to keep the money drawing interest in their own accounts for another week or two. Should I ask MBB to raise the limit on our line of credit? she wondered, thinking it unlikely they’d agree to increase a credit line with such a short track record. Or do I ask people to accept a delay in their salaries?
