Core Beliefs - Chapter 24 - Repeat Performance

Core Beliefs – Chapter 24 - Repeat Performance.

On Friday about 9:00 a.m., the crew assembled in the control room. Joe had brought food, coffee, and water. Matt was relieved when Suchet said, “We will ramp to 75% power and work our way from there.”

The feeling today was totally business. Matt recognized that this was how science worked. The glory comes after the grind. They again went through the detailed and precise start-up process, but this time, the team brought power to 75% in a matter of twenty minutes. It seemed to Matt that there was an air of expectancy and an eagerness to move forward.

Once again, as they approached the 80% level.

“We have a variance,” Ellie said. “It’s the same parameters as yesterday.”

The team double checked the data and increased the power by fractions of a percent.

At times, Suchet or Chris called for a decrease before moving on. The anomalies in the data became more frequent. Suchet’s energy level seemed to rocket with every boost to the beam generator’s power. He darted constantly from one terminal to another.

The power input reached 93.446%.

“We have major changes!” Ellie shouted.

“Output to the generator is constant,” Doug said, “but sensor response is erratic.”

Matt stared at the live video feed from the silo. A wavy appearance emerged, just like in the original video.

“Hey,” he asked, “anyone look at what the camera is showing?”

All heads popped up from their terminals, and Suchet walked over and stood directly in front of the monitor.

He turned to the rest of the team. “Now we cross frontiers and dare to see the unknown.” A strained grin on his face.

Matt felt the tension building, eyeing a bead of perspiration on Joe’s cheek. Charley stood behind Doug; his eyes fixed on the data scrolling across Doug’s computer screen.

Repeatedly, the team reduced power, then increased it until a new anomaly had appeared. Even the slightest variance was investigated, documented, and discussed before further increasing the power.

It was Joe who spoke out. “What on earth?”

All heads spun toward the video monitor. The beginnings of a dark, cloud-like orb floated on the screen, centered about five feet from the end of the generator, with a diameter of about three feet.

“This may be the other side of the universe or something totally new,” Suchet said, the excitement in his voice amplified by the reverberation off the concrete walls of the room, “but this is why we are here!” He almost shouted the last words.

Chris quickly switched cameras and asked Doug if anything was showing on infrared.

Doug replied that there were some very slight changes, but they were in a range of less than 1%.

They backed the power down and back up three times and watched the video screen as the orb appeared and vanished in direct relation to the power level.

Chris paced. Matt could tell it was all he could do not to jump to full power. Suchet was also ready to move forward, and the power was increased.

At a power level of 97.442%, the orb appeared to solidify into a black mass, still suspended five feet below the generator. No other change was visible. Then suddenly, it was gone.

The silence in the room was total.

“Have we lost power?” Suchet questioned.

“We have steady power input,” Doug said, “and the beam output is parallel.”

“It’s forming again,” Ellie said.

She said it calmly, her eyes fixed on her terminal, evidently spotting the change in the data and recognizing the characteristics.

They watched a black cloud formed in only seconds and then solidify in less than two minutes, only to disappear again. About thirty seconds later, the process started again.

“Let’s see what more power does,” Chris said.

As they increased the input energy, “The Event” repeated, and as the power approached 100%, it cycled more rapidly.

“What exactly is happening?” Matt asked.

“That is what we are trying to determine,” Suchet calmly replied.

After about thirty minutes, Suchet ordered them to shut down, and in a controlled manner, they brought the unit back to zero.

Everyone collapsed into chairs except Suchet, who paced.

Matt noted his scrunched brow and tense posture.

Pausing, the scientist said, “I wish to thank each of you for your efforts.” His eyes made the rounds, meeting those of everyone in the room before settling on Matt. “And most particularly to you, Matthew, for giving me the privilege of being a part and a witness to this. I will confess that I am troubled by what we have seen. I have several ideas, but I have no answers. The data we have collected includes much more than the original event, and we must take the time to decipher it and see if it unlocks clues to understanding this wondrous discovery.

“Dr. Martin,” Suchet said, “I salute you as the discoverer of this phenomenon and place you on the highest level of respect and admiration.”

Taking a breath and speaking softer, “Friends, I am sure we can bring this to our understanding, but right now, I think I can say that we are exhausted and need rest and reflection. Tomorrow, we will begin the task of analysis.”

“Suchet, why didn’t any material disappear like before?” Matt asked. The image of the hole in the Co-Digital lab floor had sprung to the forefront of Matt’s mind.

“There was no material in the area to be affected by the Event,” Suchet said. He paused, then continued with a smile. “But maybe material did disappear?” He walked around the room for a minute. “Each time the event occurred, there was a brief respite before it formed again. Each time, it exhausted itself, or possibly it exhausted something else.

“Air!” Ellie cried out. “It was the air. That’s what was disappearing!”

“Can we check that?” Chris blurted. “We have to be able to check that!”

“We have a spectrometer sampling the air from the test area,” Suchet said.

“The data was recorded,” Doug said, “but because it was delayed, we didn’t view it in real-time. I can have it up and ready to analyze in ten minutes.”

A new surge of energy flooded Suchet, just as it had the others.

“I need nourishment! Here!” Chris proclaimed. “I’m working on!”

A variety of cheers and positive nods made it evident that everyone was ready to keep going.

Joe drove to the farm and told Eldridge and Marcy what had happened and that the gang would work through the night.

“You should be so proud of Ellie,” he said. “She had a lot to do with this being successful. I know she’s young, but she is contributing right along with two of the smartest men in the world. And that is saying a lot!”

Marcy packed lunchmeat, bread, and condiments into a large paper grocery bag. She added coffee to a jumbo thermos.

“I was hoping there would be something to celebrate,” she said, “so I fixed a little something special.”

She went to the kitchen and brought out a large, decorated sheet cake.

Eldridge helped get the goodies to the silo and met Matt topside. He asked Matt if he could help. Matt told him that none of this would have happened without him and that he had been a huge help.

“Tonight,” Matt said, “the Fantastic Four, Chris, Suchet, Doug, and Ellie are going to do the real work. The rest of us are just here to cheer them on.”

While Matt was topside with Eldridge, he took time to call Ling. He had not really thought about her all day and felt a bit guilty.

“Hello, my love!” he said when she answered.

 “Ditto,” she replied. “I was just about to call you.” Matt felt the warmth in her voice. He missed her so very much.

“Are you somewhere we can talk?” he asked.

“Give me a second, and I’ll duck into the doctor’s lounge.” It took a ten count.

“Okay, all alone, and damn it, I hate being all alone. Matthew, I miss you so much.”

“Me too, beautiful,” he responded. “Are you sitting down?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s official, and it’s repeatable. The team duplicated ‘The Event’ and collected tons of data.”

“Suchet and Chris are bouncing off the walls like schoolboys. It’s totally amazing!”

Matt went on for several more minutes and was exhausted when he finally said, “I really feel we have our hands on something special, but I’m still not sure what.” An audible sigh escaped his lips.

“Matthew, you can go back and play with the other boys for now. I just want you to remember that from April 18th through the 20th, you are mine, and mine alone! I want you to make my world amazing, too!”

Matt smiled. The thought of three days alone with Ling had him excited, physically excited. He and Ling ended their conversation with promises of love.

Matt realized he couldn’t go back to the control room until he calmed a little.

Chris stood nearby, chatting with Charlotte and letting her know they were staying the night to crunch the data.

Matt overheard Chris expressing his love for Charlotte and knew Charlotte was saying the same.

The two returned to the control room together. Doug had his computer screen up, and the air sample data was streaming. Only the “Fantastic Four” had any hopes of seeing anything.

“Stop here!” Ellie said.

“What is it?” Chris asked.

Ellie stared at the frozen lines of data on the screen and then had Doug continue scrolling the data.

“Stop,” she shouted. “Can we graph this section? This is where we hit about 93% power, and the cloud effect started.”

Doug didn’t want to screw up the master data, so he copied the segment to a thumb drive and transferred it to his laptop. He’d formatted the original data files for the experiment and, in fifteen minutes, was ready to execute a graph of the section of data that Ellie had spotted. Just before he hit the execute key, he grinned at Ellie. “What are we going to see?”

“We’re making hydrogen,” she said.

Chris and Suchet stopped cold in their tracks. “What?” both said in unison.

“Hydrogen,” Ellie grinned.

Doug hit the execute key, and a spectrographic comparative analysis began to assemble on the screen. It showed oxygen, water vapor, ammonia, formaldehyde, nitrogen, almost no hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide—over forty gases identified by the spectrometer.

Ellie pointed to a place on the graph. “Here is where it starts; the level of water vapor drops first. The wavy appearance in the air was due to water molecules being excited by frequencies closest to those used by microwaves. I thought maybe we were breaking water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.”

She pointed to another point. “But here is what’s different. See the hydrogen going up, but look, it’s not just H2O dropping; it’s everything. It’s like we are breaking every molecule down to the simplest stable element, hydrogen.”

Suchet was rapt, fixated on the chart, repeatedly mumbling, “This is not in the laws of physics. There should be energy released. We should see free electrons and protons, and our other sensors would have detected them.”

Chris smiled at Ellie. “You go, girl. You nailed this big time.”

Doug reached out and took Ellie’s hand. “My hero.”

Ellie whacked him on the back with her free hand, laughing, “Don’t you forget it, Bub!”

Matt was Mr. Reality and asked. “Okay? We get hydrogen from the other available molecules. Suchet, you say that this is not behaving as you would expect, but I believe that is the very reason we are here. This experiment has never behaved in a normal way.”

“Let’s look at the air sample data closer to the point where the orb disappeared,” Chris said.

Doug copied another segment from the master data and plugged it into his laptop.

The hydrogen concentration continued to increase, while the concentrations of the other molecules decreased. In fact, they reached a point where hydrogen accounted for almost 15% of the total, and then something very strange occurred.

Suchet spotted the change. “What just happened?”

Doug asked, “What do you mean?”

Suchet said, “There is a gap in the data, almost a second when the equipment did not draw a sample.”

Chris asked, “Is it parallel to the moment the orb disappeared?”

Doug looked at the timetable. “Yes, exactly the moment.”

Chris laughed. “So, we break the laws of physics and convert various molecules to hydrogen without releasing energy, and then it all disappears.”

The “Fantastic Four” plowed on.

Matt found his eyes unable to remain open. After nodding a few times, he climbed the stairs to the upper room and fell asleep on one of the air mattresses.

*** 

“Matt, you need to come down,” Joe gently roused him from sleep. “They have the answer.”

He struggled to push the fog from his head and to force past the stiffness in his body. He was overly cautious as he made his way down the spiral stairs to the control room. Chris and Suchet were shaking hands, and Doug and Ellie happily hugged.

Chris spotted Matt and called for quiet. “Okay, everyone, let’s settle down and let Mr. Lehman know what he has unleashed upon the world!”

Matt looked around and could tell that Charley and Joe were also in the dark. ‘What I’ve unleashed?’ The thought troubled him.

“We have analyzed but a small portion of the data,” Suchet said, “but the portion we looked at is the critical part that held the keys to understanding what we experienced yesterday.”

Matt glanced at the clock on the wall, which read 4:24 a.m.

“Doug generated differential programs,” Suchet said, “which tracked and isolated the changes and identified unique points. He, with Miss Coblentz, created sorting and sequential markers that enabled Dr. Martin and me to take this unique and isolated data and analyze it in detail.”

“We knew we were outside those expected responses to the laws of physics,” Chris said, “and therefore ignored them, looking for the simplest explanation supported by the data.

“It was as we viewed the combination of five elements, working as a single function, that the most likely answer presented itself.”

“The interacting components were the beam,” Suchet said, “composed of multiple energy frequencies, the conversion of assorted molecules to hydrogen, the magnetic field generated by the beam, the overall interaction with the atmosphere in the test area, and finally the appearance of a small but strong gravitational field the instant the orb disappeared.”

Suchet paused, walked over to a table, picked up a bottle of water, and took a drink. Walking back to Chris, he asked, “Is this what you call the punch line?”

“Yes,” Chris smiled, “this is it.”

Suchet gazed at the gathered group. “Antimatter.”

“I didn’t know antimatter existed,” Charley stuttered. “I thought it all disappeared in the Big Bang.”

“It doesn’t naturally exist where there is matter present,” Suchet said. “We have created a few positrons at the large nuclear accelerators, but they are only one part of an atom and occur for only microseconds. The energy it takes to create a single anti-tron is enormous.”

“That’s why it has never been practical to try to produce antimatter for any purpose other than scientific research,” Chris said.

It was Chris’s turn to pick up a bottle of water and take a swig. “Now, here is the difference: the antimatter we produced was not just a random positron. Dr. Kumar and I are convinced that we produced several hydrogen atoms in their antimatter state. These were held in check for a moment by the frequency beam itself and the resulting electromagnetic field.” Chris turned it back to Suchet.

“The core truth of the explanation,” Suchet said, “is that the antimatter hydrogen atoms could not be contained for more than a millisecond. The nature of such elements is to be attracted to their opposite, and in this case, it was the molecules all about them. The simplest explanation for the reason that matter was disappearing is that when matter and antimatter contact, they nullify one another, and both cease to exist. Thus, we have a valid explanation for the most critical element of ‘The Event’.”

Suchet smiled. “Now, this is only part of the puzzle. We still have to determine what, about Dr. Martin’s beam generator, actually triggered the conversion to hydrogen and the materialization of antimatter molecules, not to mention a gravitational field. The important thing is we believe we accurately know what happened. Now, we need to create the tools to discover how it happened.

Matt leaned against the wall, numb with what he had just heard.

Joe swiped his forehead, trembling, but at the same time had a huge smile. “Damn,” he said, “if I just heard correctly. You four have unlocked secrets to the universe that the greatest scientists in the world can only dream about!”

“Joe,” Chris said, “we have stumbled on a process that has revealed to us a whole new way to look at matter and energy, and this opens a number of possibilities. The key thing is we now have a foundation to go forward, but there is so very much still to discover before this has any viable use.”

“It’s like we found a door,” Doug said, “and a key, and we’ve put the key in the door and turned it. We have not even begun to open the door, much less walk through it, like Chris said. There’s a long way to go.”

“Was your first instinct right about the dangers inherent with this?” Matt asked Chris.

“Yes,” Chris said, “there are as many, if not more dangers than I ever dreamed, but now that we know what this really is, I know so many things can be created for good, and that makes it worth going forward, but still in total secrecy.”

“Does everyone agree with Chris?” Matt asked.

The heads were all affirmative.

“We now have to be even more careful,” Matt said. “I recommend that we declare today a day of rest, and we will convene at the Elsberry house on Monday at 10:00 a.m. to discuss the next step in this adventure of our lives.”

Matt turned to the four. “Ellie, Doug, Suchet, and Chris, you all amaze me, and I am convinced that no other team could have made this happen.”

Looking at Joe and Charley, “I know you don’t feel like you contributed much the last 48 hours, neither did I, but you both have contributed immensely and have an irreplaceable part in the success that we have seen. Please let us all remember that we are strong because we have one another. Now, let’s get some proper sleep.”