G -1 Read online

  “Did you weigh that thing?” I remind her when I get back.

  “Oops. Thanks.” She checks the weight. “Twelve pounds, four ounces,” she says as she writes it down. In another couple of seconds the wires are on. “Got the computer ready to record today’s session?”

  “Yep,” I reply. It is still on from showing Dad the video earlier.

  “Good,” she says as she plugs in the transformer. I hear the hum of power as I aim the camera. “Power on,” she confirms. “Containment field ready for G-bits.”

  “Camera on and recording. I’ll get the bits,” I inform her. “Kylie? We’re almost ready for some new converts.” About that time I hear the quiet popping and look over to see Kylie spinning the bottle back and forth with a wondrous look on her face.

  “This is so cool,” I hear her say to herself.

  I walk over to the desk where she is working. “Care to make a deposit?”

  She tilts the bottle neck up into the jar and we watch a small cloud of bits float from one to the other. “Should I do more? This is fun.” She starts right in before I can reply.

  I walk over to join Jennifer at the table. “Here you go.” I set the jar down, bottom up. It’s getting easier to think in opposite directions now that we’ve been doing this for a while.

  “So how do you think we should start out?” she asks me.

  “I think we should introduce bits into the field until the containment cylinder’s weight is neutralized,” I say. “Dang!” I exclaim looking at her, “I didn’t bring anything to measure a quantity of bits.”

  “Good thing I did.” She pulls a glass measuring cup out of her supply box and holds it out towards me.

  “You keep it,” I say. “I’ll do the scooping. How many do you want?”

  “Let’s start with a quarter cup.”

  She holds the measuring cup upside down while I scoop bits from the bottom of the upside-down jar with a smaller envelope. Individually you would never be able to see a bit with just your eyes, but as a group they float like a cloud, and we are able to see the quantity in the measuring cup. “That looks good,” she says after a scoop and a half. Then she pours the bits up into the containment field. “Wait! Where’s the funnel and another envelope to put over the top of this thing just in case the power goes out?”

  “Right here.” I rush to the desk, open a drawer along side of where Kylie is sitting and pull out a large envelope and some tape to secure the entire apparatus. I hand it over to Jen who quickly tapes everything over the top of the cylinder.

  “Can’t forget that,” she says sounding relieved. Looking at the scale the cylinder sits on, “We’re down to eight pounds and an ounce. Let’s add another half cup.” That uses up most of the bits we had and the new ones Kylie has created so far.

  “I need that,” Kylie says, coming over to get the nearly empty jar. She has finished converting every nanotube harvested from the plates and transfers them to the jar. “This upside down stuff is really strange.”

  “You want to see strange?” Jen asks. She nods towards the computer screen. “That is pretty much how it looked when we finished up last time; deep blue fading to that greenish-yellow.”

  “And the pulsing! What causes that?” Kylie wants to know.

  “We think it’s an indication of gravitational waves,” Jen answers.

  “Wow!” Kylie quietly responds.

  “The weight is just a little under four ounces now,” Jen announces, turning back to the experiment.

  “Add some power?” I suggest.

  Nodding, she turns the rotary dial. We watch as the ‘rocket’ lifts slightly off the scale. She turns it back down so the cylinder will land again.

  “Close enough?” I ask.

  “Close enough,” she agrees. “Let’s attach some weights. Start with a fifty so we can add more on top.

  I lift the disc up onto the table hoping the two girls don’t notice how heavy it is for me, but fail. “Need help?” Kylie asks.

  “Ha, ha,” I say sounding strained. The weight lands on the table with a thud. I double a section of rope over, thread the loop down through the hole in the weight before putting the loose ends through the loop again around the outer rim of the heavy disk. Kylie duplicates my effort the with another rope around the other side. We slide the weight over to Jen as she effortlessly lifts the cylinder off the scale and places it on top of the weight. She double-knots the ropes in the holes I had drilled earlier.

  “I think we’re ready,” she says. “Let’s see if we can lift this thing.” She twists the transformer’s knob. We hear the hum slowly rise in pitch. On the monitor we watch the bits stretch out, their color changing in the same manner it had a couple of weeks ago. I see Jen’s reflection turn away in the screen. “That’s a full one amp,” she announces. Kylie and I turn to watch her push a finger under the fifty pound weight. It rises easily. “Almost as light as a feather. I think we should add another three-quarters cup of bits. What do you think?”

  “Can we try a little bit more power first?” I ask.

  “I guess, but if we have to keep power consumption under an amp and a half, to match the power available from the hy-ped’s fuel cells, I don’t see the point. We should test within the parameters we’ll have to work with.”

  She turns down the power as Kylie picks up the measuring cup. I look at her as I lift up the jar and scoop envelope. “My turn?” she half asks, half states.

  “Sure. Why not.” I scoop bits off the top of the jar and pour them up into the measuring cup. We barely have enough to meet the need. Kylie’s eyes are bright with anticipation as she turns towards the cylinder.

  “Right up the center now,” Jen softly instructs, watching Kylie add the new converts. I turn to the monitor to watch the reaction in the containment field. The gentle undulating unsettles my stomach for a moment, but there is beauty as the colors of the existing and new material jostle around to find a new equilibrium. Jen and Kylie turn to watch as the bits are beginning to settle down.

  “You missed the main event,” I tell them.

  “That’s okay. I can stay up for the rerun,” Kylie says, thrilled with the process.

  “Here comes the power,” Jen says, turning back to the transformer for a moment. A few seconds later she excitedly adds, “The weight’s up! I’m only at thirty-five milliamps.”

  Kylie and I turn around and, sure enough, there are about two inches of air between the table top and the floating weight. It rises and falls an inch or so while Jen nudges the dial slightly in one direction or the other to find the point where the weight will hover.

  “How can that be?” I ask. “If the weight doesn’t float with three quarters cup and one amp, why is it floating at one and half cups and less than one-half amp?”

  “Remember? The combined strength of the bits causes the lift to change almost exponentially,” Jen says.

  “Like 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 8?” Kylie asks.

  “Yeah,” Jen answers, calculating absently. “So we should easily be able to lift one hundred pounds somewhere between fifty and sixty-five milliamps. Tyler? Is there another fifty pound weight?”

  “There’s one more. Then a couple pair of twenties,” I reply, looking at her. I wait as she looks back quizzically. “Oh! I’ll go get the fifty.”

  By the time I get back, she has lowered the weight to the table but the cylinder continues to float a couple of feet above it. I place the new fifty on top of the first one. Kylie helps adjust the ropes before Jen turns the transformer dial. Both weights rise off the table.

  “Sure enough,” Jen says with satisfaction, “Right around sixty-two milliamps. Let’s do another forty pounds.” We place the twenties on top. Jen turns the dial again, a little more slowly this time.

  The ropes creak under the added pounds and the weights immediately begin to sway left as they break contact with the table. The load is out of balance! The two twenty pound weights aren’t centered well. They slide out to the edge of the larger,
fifty pound weights, swinging like a pendulum. The cylinder tries to follow, jerking the wires connected to the transformer taut, sending the weights more forcibly left. Jen quickly turns the dial to decrease the power but the weights are already over the edge of the table. I reach for them, knowing one hundred and forty pounds is way beyond my strength. Jen adds power to try and lift them back on to the table. The change pulls on the wires breaking one of them off the cylinder.

  The weights crash to the floor, dragging me down with them. The cylinder lifelessly flops down on the table, the broken wire curling itself around whatever is in its path. Had there been any less rope, it probably would have come down on me, too. I look up in time to see the manila envelope, now filled with bits released from the magnetic field, float quickly up into the rafters above the table. The room is silent.

  I slowly raise myself up off the floor wincing in pain. One of the weights had partially landed on top of my left hand. Kylie helps me up and seeing me favor it, lifts it to have a look. Instinctively, I pull it back to control the pain, flex it a few times to test it and get some motion back. Then I let her have a look.

  “I don’t think anything is broken,” she informs me. Jen shuts off the transformer before coming over to look.

  “It’ll probably swell up a little,” she adds. “Let me get some ice from the cooler.”

  I head over to the desk and sit down in the chair facing out, content to let the two girls play nurse. My hand hurts but I enjoy the attention. Kylie stands by my right side laying a comforting hand on my shoulder as Jen kneels to wrap the ice around my injury with some paper towels.

  “So now what?” she asks, looking up at me. I look up towards the rafters.

  “Get the ladder from the storage room and climb up there to see what’s left of the bits. Hopefully they collected in the top, and the envelope didn’t turn.”

  “What happened?” Jen asks.

  “I didn’t see the weights shift until it was too late,” I say, taking responsibility.

  “I guess we were working just a little too fast and didn’t consider all of the possibilities,” Jen adds.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to know what to expect,” Kylie offers. “Accidents happen.”

  “Carelessness happens!” I correct her. “I believe that if you plan things out carefully, try to think of all the options, accidents shouldn’t happen. Believe me. I learned that, or thought I did a couple of years ago.” I couldn’t remember if I had told either of them my story about the magnifying glass and the book on the window sill.

  “Just the same, one did,” Jen points out. “Let’s move on.”

  “Okay. I’ll go get the ladder then,” I say, attempting to rise out of the chair.

  “No, you sit a minute. Kylie and I can handle it. Where is it?”

  I wave a good thumb over my shoulder towards the attic. “There’s an old one in there.”

  The two girls walk around the corner to the storage area. A few moments later I hear the ladder being dragged closer. When they reappear, Kylie has hold of the top, with Jen carrying one of the legs. It’s the other leg that’s dragging across the floor. They stop in front of the table and look up to locate the envelope.

  “We’re going to have to move the table,” Jen determines. She pushes the transformer and her traveling box aside. Then the two girls slide the table out. Jen spreads the legs of the ladder, then together they lift it up. The ancient, ten foot wooden tool is heavy, but they manage okay. It had taken me a long time to learn how to leverage that thing.

  Kylie holds the ladder while Jen climbs up. She has to stand on the next to top rung to reach the envelope. “Looks like the envelope stayed inverted okay,” she reports as she starts down.

  “That’s good,” I reply getting up from the chair and going over to look at the equipment. One of the legs of the cylinder, now on its side, has broken off. I pick it up to look at the damage.

  When Jen is close to the floor, she hands me the envelope before helping Kylie get the weights back on the table. They each lift one of the twenty pound discs, but only together are they able to lift the fifties.

  I have to keep a pretty tight grip on the envelope. It has enough bits in it to lift almost twenty-five pounds without power. I haven’t given any thought on how to store a large number of them. Even with a twenty pound weight on top of the jar, it still won’t be heavy enough to hold all of these. I look around. “What are we going to do with these?”

  “What?” Jennifer asks, breathing heavily as she and Kylie place the weight with the ropes around it on top of the table.

  “I need a better way to store these things, especially if we’re going to need thirty or forty packages of them.”

  “Just let them do what they do?” Kylie suggests.

  “Huh?” I reply, turning to look at her. She sits down in the chair by the desk to rest.

  “Put small clasps on the flap to keep them closed and let them float up against something.”

  “Like the ceiling of a closet,” Jennifer adds.

  “I like it,” I say, “but there isn’t a closet up here.”

  “Then get a one by eight board or something and make your own fake closet ceiling,” Jennifer says.

  Sometimes I feel a little slow to understand other people’s concepts. “Heck. I could attach strings to the clasps and let them float all the way up to the ceiling,” I suggest, elaborating on Kylie’s idea.

  “But what if the string came untied or the clasp slipped off? You’d run the risk of losing the bits inside,” Kylie points out.

  “Don’t want to do that,” I agree. “Okay then. I’ll find a board and mount it somewhere back there, as soon as my hand feels a little better.”

  “So do we need to try this experiment again?” Kylie asks.

  “I don’t think so,” Jennifer answers. “We got the answer we were looking for. When the weights shifted and everything came apart, the transformer was still under one amp, and I probably would have been able to push it a little further.”

  “So let’s say we had thirty lifters at one hundred and fifty pounds…” I try to calculate in my head, but the pain signals are interfering.

  “That’s four thousand, five hundred pounds!” Jen states, astonished by the number, “not counting any additional lift we might get from the pitch controllers.”

  “Is that going to be enough?” Kylie asks.

  “Probably,” I tell her. “I still have to get together with Willie on the weight estimates, but at this point that sounds good.”

  “And if we have to add another lifter or two or three, we’re still under our total available amperage, so we’ve got some wiggle room,” Jennifer adds.

  I look at them both. We all share a smile of satisfaction. Jennifer unties the ropes from the cylinder legs and begins to put her equipment into the traveling box one more time. “So do you think we’re going to have to do anymore of this?” she asks not looking up. She sounds tired.

  “Maybe, I don’t know,” I reply. Kylie and I carefully lower and fold up the ladder. Then we carry it back into the storage area. Jennifer is muscling the table back into its original position by the time we come back.

  “Okay then. I’m out of here,” she says, turning to Kylie. “Do you need a ride home?”

  Kylie looks at me with my damaged hand. “I guess,” she replies, turning back to Jennifer, “if you don’t mind. I was kind of hoping to look at some of the video, but I guess it’s too late, dinner guest and all.”

  “The recording!” I exclaim. I rush over to the computer and press the space bar to stop the program. Then I notice that the camera had flipped off its stand and ended up almost behind the desk. I walk over and pick it up with my good hand. “Still looks okay,” I say, setting it back on the desk.

  Kylie walks over to Jennifer to help carry some of the equipment out. “So who’s this dinner guest you and your brother have to stay home to meet tonight?” Jen asks.

  “Dad’s girlfriend,” Kylie a
nswers, sounding a little disgusted. They start down the stairs.

  “I wonder why Jared wouldn’t tell me,” Jen wonders absently.

  “Because he’s not too thrilled about it either.” I follow Kylie down, listening to them talk. The excitement of the day’s results has worn off.

  We say goodbye and they ride off on the scooter. I feel lonely, and my hand is throbbing.

  I go back up to the loft to make sure the camera still works before shutting down the computer. I notice a different smell in the air; one of electrically produced, fresh-smelling ozone mixed with the sweet scents that usually accompany girls. I miss them.

  I sit for about twenty minutes, first reviewing the experiment, feeling stupid that I didn’t think about the shifting weights. I look at my aching hand again. My thoughts drift, first to Kylie’s apprehension about tonight’s dinner and meeting her dad’s girlfriend. Then to Jen’s anxiety about her family’s troubles. I used to think my family had problems, and I suppose we do, but it always seems there is somebody who has it a little worse. And it changes all the time.

  My cell chimes. Mom is calling everybody for dinner with a text message. Sometimes that’s the easiest way. I smile. Sure, my parents have had, and probably would still have problems in the future. But I figure my life is what I make it, and if this summer doesn’t define that, who knows what the future holds.

  Construction Begins

  Only six weeks until school starts up again. Summer is half over and it’s going by way too fast. There is so much more we have to do. It helps that Jared and I are done with the jobs his dad had for us. All of our time can now be directed towards the construction of the saucer. Willie and Jen have their other jobs to work but stop by to help quite a lot.

  Kylie is often here, but she has the software to work on. We set up the computer that Jared had brought up from the storage area, in the back corner of the hangar. Gramps finished a prototype IC controller, so Kylie has begun testing it with the software. By attaching LEDs to the outputs on the IC card, she can visualize the power being sent by the software. If anybody asks, the lights are just part of the exhibit.