SOLAR MAXIMUM NEARS
To us here on the ground, it's just a big ball of fire. It comes
up in the morning, makes our day unbearably hot or not nearly
warm enough depending on the time of year, and it goes down at
night. But to scientists, our sun is an only-barely stable
churning mass of superheated plasma - and it's getting more
interesting by the hour.
Every day, of course, it's sending helpful light and heat along
with not-so-helpful ultraviolet radiation and X-rays our way. But
like our own planet, the sun has its seasons - they just take
longer.
``The appearance of sunspots - this is an indicator of solar
activity, how likely it is you'll see flares and such - peaks
every eleven years or so, give or take.'' Dr. Alan Ledford of
NASA explains. ``Solar flares may look pretty, but in reality
they're billions of tons of matter, and they can reach speeds of
up to a million miles per hour. That's just the actual matter
part, they're sending even more radiation our way than normal.''
That radiation takes the form of X-rays, most often, and luckily
doesn't tend to reach us here on the surface. But it can wreak
havoc with sensitive electronics, especially those already in
space.
``Anything that's not properly shielded is vulnerable.'' the good
doctor points out. ``Sattelites especially, because they don't
have the benefit of the Earth's magnetic field which would
ordinarily protect them.'' Our helpful magnetic field poses
problems of its own, however: ``You've got to remember, flares
like this are small change to something the size of the sun, but
compared to the size of our planet they're massive massive
beasts. They're so large they can temporarily alter our magnetic
field. This results in power surges, outages, etc. This is
especially dangerous now given that so many more things have
electronic components than did ten years ago.''
As far as advice goes, ``There are a few basic precautions you
can take. Surge protectors are a good idea anyway, and having a
ready supply of drinking water is never a bad idea. This sounds
like a big event, but the worst we're likely to see is an outage
or two.''
1 Immobile
He'd been right. The crazy bastard had been right.
Over the years, Doctor James Caster had tried to maintain ties to
his old colleagues. One he'd fallen out of step with rather
quickly, however, had been ex-professor VonCannon. ``Crazy bastard''
was a description that suited him well, and Caster had no reason
to think he'd improved outside of academia... but there was
something about the theories that James just couldn't let go.
It'd been over a decade at this point, he knew. Whatever contact
information he had for the disgraced professor was likely to be
long outdated. But he'd been right!
Caster had himself long ago deserted the halls of his university
for the greater paycheck of private industry, specifically the
halls of Vervicom Software. It hadn't really been his job, years
ago, to oversee VonCannon's work, and it certainly wasn't his job
now. Something had taken hold of him, though. Perhaps it was
guilt over having to fire the old man, perhaps the sort of
old-fashioned scientific inquiry he'd had in his youth, whatever
the reason, Malachai's theories kept tumbling in Caster's head,
refusing to be shaken.
How long ago was it that he'd started his own experiments? He'd
begun shortly after the beginning of the year, at least begun
physically creating things. The checking of the math, the
interpretation of the theories, that had taken place on and off
since... well since he'd had to fire VonCannon. Perhaps his
'guilt' theory was more spot-on than he'd like to believe.
His attempt at re-creating the Disappointment machine had been a
monumental failure which, in the twisted logic it employed, meant
it was successful. He still had the thing, in fact, rusting in a
corner of his workshop. He didn't show it to newcomers anymore -
he could no longer stand seeing people let down by the thing. It
was around that time he'd started feeling more acute sympathy for
Malachai, because when word of the re-made Disappointment machine
got around he started getting quite a few strange looks and
became the topic of corporate rumor rather quickly. That hadn't
stopped him, though. He felt what he assumed was the same sort of
fever VonCannon had - the theories were right! He'd prove it, if
not with math that nobody else could understand, than with a
real, working prototype.
The Immobile Machine... that was a greater challenge. VonCannon's
math looked insane, but even to this date there were people
dedicated to studying it. The moment it became known around the
office that he was looking into it, in fact, the previous rumors
of his senility assumed a more cautiously optimistic note. A
number of people had stopped by to warn him, with greater or
lesser degrees of subtlety, that while his current research was
approved, he was dangerously close to following the path that had
damned the professor. Caster had reminded them that it was, after
all, him who had done the damning.
So months, then. He'd been working on the Immobile machine for
months. The only resources he had were Malachai's impossible to
follow publishings and flawed blueprints that he shouldn't even
have [(0x0018) Blueprints were made available to Vervicom's mainframe to create the appearance of unethical behavior on the part of Professor VonCannon and to further estrange him from industry, which it was discovered slowed progress to an even greater extent than academia had.] - blueprints he knew were wrong in some crucial area but which,
eventually, he had no choice but to follow. Taking his work home
with him as he had in this instance had been a violation of
professional ethics, his own personal code of honor, and any
number of NDAs he'd signed. He wasn't even sure why he'd done it,
other than to spare himself the humiliation of being discovered
working on a mostly discredited machine that was likely to fail
utterly. Regardless of the reasons, though, he had his own
workshop at home, and he'd constructed a fully functional
Immobile machine there.
Well, mostly functional.
He could see with his own eyes that it wasn't there. He'd flipped
a switch and there'd been a loud 'pop' - this was caused not by
the vanishing of the machine though it had indeed done so, but
rather it was the sound of all the electronics in his house being
destroyed by an electrical surge
[(0x0020) The surge was part of a secondary effort to dissuade
Caster from involving VonCannon in industry - though initially it
seemed to fail in this task, it was a vital part of later
changes.]. The machine certainly wasn't present now, so far as he could
tell, but whenever he'd think back he'd recall its presence. It
didn't take him long to realize that the machine had only been
immobile in time an instant before the surge had taken place, and
thus it was traveling along normally... a second behind
everything else.
The details of his failure didn't matter, though. Because even
though he hadn't replicated the experiment exactly, he'd gotten
farther than anyone else on the planet except for VonCannon
himself. Caster found himself admitting, over a decade too late,
that he'd been wrong.
He picked up the phone before remembering that it was likely to
be dead. He picked up his cellphone and began dialing, walking
excitedly around his work area.
``You've reached Doctor Malachai VonCannon'' the gravely and
unsteady voice of the ex-professor had not improved, but Caster
didn't care - the number was still good! ``I can't be bothered to
answer the phone at the moment. Leave a message. Maybe I'll call
back.'' The recording ended abruptly.
James still didn't care. He began speaking excitedly into the
phone. ``Mal - or Doctor VonCannon, however you'd prefer - I'm
sorry.'' he knew he'd have to get to this point quickly, lest his
message be erased in its first few moments of playback. ``I
buckled to the board too quickly, and I was especially wrong in
accusing you of colluding with Vervicom.''
He paused a moment to catch his breath and noted the smell of
smoke in the air. Probably just his computer or something equally
expensive smouldering from the surge. He continued not caring.
``More importantly, you were right.'' he spoke rapidly into the
phone, grabbing his coat as he left his workshop and entered his
kitchen. The air here was more hazy, but he paid it no attention.
He was leaving anyway. ``I'm guessing by the fact you haven't
changed your number that you're still in your warehouse downtown.
I'm on my way. If I could get ahold of the machine I'd bring it
with me, but I suspect you know how hard it is to move an
Immobile machine. I'll be there in no time.''
He hung up. His coat was on and he was out the door and, very
soon afterward, in his car. If he'd looked back at that moment,
he might have discovered that he had just left a building that
while not yet truly on fire, seemed to be inevitably sliding in
that direction. He didn't look back. He drove.
James Caster lived in the suburbs. His commute to the Vervicom
campus in the city normally took him an hour, but it was a
weekend and thus it took him half that to reach the city. During
the drive, he had time to wonder about the smoke he'd smelled
earlier. What if something had been more than damaged? Sure, he
was insured, but that was small consolation when one's house
burnt down. How would it effect the machine? That was the more
important question. Hell, what would the firefighters think of a
device they couldn't see but nonetheless remembered being there?
There would be some uncomfortable questions asked, he was sure.
He was certainly hoping that Vervicom would be willing to forgive
him for doing research on his own - given the amazing results
this was likely to be the case.
He couldn't shake the feeling, deep down underneath the heady
triumph and haste to share the news, that something was very very
wrong. The fact that the city's power appeared to go out
[(0x0040) The Mason Nuclear Power Plant had for years been
preparing to modernize their preparations for the next solar
maximum, however key e-mails had apparently been misrouted and
the project was delayed, thus enabling the power outage. Though
it failed, again, to stop Dr. Caster, it opened up an entirely
different and more fruitful path.]
the moment he exited the freeway did nothing to diminish this.
Two impulses fought within him. First, there was the need to go
faster, to reach Dr. VonCannon as soon as possible. Underneath,
though, the nagging worry got worse. Caster at first drove
cautiously, but as minutes went by and nothing lept out of the
cross streets to challenge him, his speed steadily increased.
Finally his caution was gone altogether, replaced by a third
impulse, one which combined the need to share the information
with the fear that if he didn't - and soon - it would be too
late.
He was right. One mile from VonCannon's warehouse, a streetcar
struck him
[(0x00C0) Regrettably, this was the only solution to the Caster
dilemma].
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