Balance of Power Shifted (10 page)

Ano
ther test I ran, that I named for a lack of a real technical term, was the ‘shake test’.  Theorizing that in some manner, the specimen organized itself top to bottom as positive and negative I wondered what would happen if the liquid became stirred or agitated.  I have to admit I thought it would disrupt the steady state voltage and current that I had been observing so I was surprised that there was just a slight fluctuation in voltage and amperage, which steadied it almost instantaneously upon cessation of the agitation.  The last test I performed, which was late Friday afternoon, was to change the shape of the container to see if the characteristics were the same for fluid being one inch high and spread out horizontally rather than four inches high and spread vertically as in the original container.  Once again, I was surprised to see that the characteristics remained the same.  This implied to me that the organisms have some organization capability so that they worked in unison to a master plan or common state.

To get Bill’s attention, I called over
, “Hey Geek boy,” since once again had his eye pressed into the viewer of the Microscope.  With a silent chuckle to myself, I made a mental note to apply some pencil or other black color to his microscope eyepiece to see if I could catch him with an age-old gag where Bill would walk around with a black circle around his eye.  “What are you smirking about” he replied and then asked, “What’s up?”  “I don’t know about you, but all work and no play makes Rico a dull boy.  How about we go out tonight and eat and have a few cold ones.”  “What do you have in mind Bill asked?” “How about some authentic Mexican food…from Mexico, I added.  Let’s finish up here, head to Tijuana for some food, drink, and check up on the senoritas. “I’m with you,” Bill chimed in with no hesitation. I just have to finish my notes for the day.”

Bill thought to himself that getting out was good for the brain
and he had never been across the border so was hyped about the trek. The week, and especially today, had been very productive.  The specimen once again proved very adaptable.  In every test case, the organism was able to reproduce and reach a certain saturation point.  In the last test he ran, he diluted a four-ounce sample of the specimen with four ounces of seawater for a 50% dilution.  At last look the organism was heading to the saturation level expected when viewed under the Microscope.  Part of the observation was not very scientific at all and relied on viewing a sample on the slide and estimating that it had fully reproduced itself.  After the initial dilution, I could see spaces around the organisms, which progressively got denser as time went on, where it was expected to reach a steady state.  Upon higher magnification, it seemed that the organism just split itself into two.  One thing I know, Bill thought to himself, was that the specimen did not like fresh water.  The testing of one ounce of specimen to one once of fresh filtered water resulted in the water turning brown after only an hour and the organisms appeared to have dramatically died off in an additional hour.  The chemical composition of seawater had a direct correlation to the health of the organism.

Before logging off the laptop
, Bill checked to see when the server backup routine kicked in.  Little data was stored on the local workstations and was all stored in a server in a utility closet on the other side of the lab.  The way that Rico set this up, the server not only had a storage area network behind it with about 10 terabytes of storage, but it also replicated to an online storage cloud where all the data was encrypted and stored.  Replication ran continuous, but he also had a local disk-to-disk backup as a tertiary copy, which based on the schedule was set to run at two o’clock in the morning.  If there was one thing Rico knew, it was how to build an impressive computing environment.  I did not hurt to have the bucks to do it.  Rico was not private about his finances and openly told Bill he pretty much did everything on his salary, which was in the $150,000 range, and except for buying this building, had not touched his inheritance and insurance money.  Friends and family are everything, Bill mused to himself, and friends like Mike were rare.  As long as I have known him, he has had a philosophy of what is mine is yours and more than once has helped his friends at a moment’s notice. 

Hearing
a rumbling sound behind him, Bill turned to find Rico pushing a large rolling trash barrel.  If we want to be professional lab rats he quipped, we will need to keep the lab up to standards.  Both started throwing a week’s worth of pizza boxes, Thai food containers, and junk food wrappers and of every kind water, soda and energy drink container into the trash.  Whew, I guess I tuned out the smell,” Rico said as he twitched his nose at the same time, but when you put all this garbage together it’s not pleasant.” Rico rolled the can out though the side door for trash pickup tomorrow and when he came back in he said we are rolling in 30-minutes.

The drive to Tijuana was a relatively short one considering that there was some evening rush hour traffic and a
minimal wait at the border crossing.  On the way there, Bill and I compared notes about our testing and by the end of our updates both of us were as pumped up as could be.  Bill looked at me, and said “Rico, do you know what this means?”  Without waiting for my reply, he went on in almost a whisper saying, “It means we have something here that is stable, can be replicated, can be controlled and can be harnessed to replace any electrical source to power homes, businesses, cars, boats and many others.  I do not want to use the phrase ‘game changer,’ but this could change the way the world runs.  Shit, this is not a game changer; this is a freakin ‘world changer’.  Just think about it.  Based on your testing we could build a system similar to solar panels, but would not need anywhere near the floor space to power an electric car or even an entire home.  Bill needed a moment to catch his breath, which gave me an opening to add a few caveats.  I started by saying, “I agree with what you are saying and I am really pumped about what I’ve seen, but we need to stay grounded and take one step at a time.  We do not know how stable this stuff will be over time, hell we do not even know what this stuff actually is.  I think more people need to be engaged to fill in some of the questions.  I also think we should incorporate ourselves and think about building a company around this and most important of all, keep this as secret as possible.”

Bill looked at me with a puzzled and
said, “Why do we need to keep it secret?  This is huge news and publicity could help us get moving and round up investors if needed.”  “Bill, Bill you silly little boy” I said, in my best motherly impersonation, “what do you think will happen when the people who produce oil from the ground, refine oil and sell oil and gas to run the world, see their livelihood go down the drain with our solution replacing theirs because it is cheaper and cleaner to use?  We could become targets and before we become targets I want to make sure we have everything lined up including security.”  As I was talking, I could see that Bill was realizing that what I said could literally happen.  I think the enormity of everything finally hit him because he got very quiet and remained so the rest of the ride.

We stopped at a little cantina on the outskirts of town that I had discovered on one of my weekend jaunts.  The food was
fabulous and we both ate piles of beans and rice, flautas, and large camerones in a variety of dishes.  The dark haired waitress was dressed in a black skirt and white blouse and her hair was pitch black.  She seemed to like Bill and spent most of dinner pampering him.  Bill had that easy gift a gab that women seemed to latch onto.  I have to admit I was a little jealous of the attention he was getting.  We finished a bottle of very good California white wine and paid our bill, and with Bill’s urging left a more generous tip than I would normally have.  We got in the car, drove to the more active downtown district, and parked the Camaro in a guarded parking facility since car theft was very common.  For the rest of the night we walked around and visited some shops and quite a few bars.  One bar had a very good Mariachi band playing and we hung out there the longest.  I made myself the designated driver, because it was obvious early on that Billy boy was going to pound a few cold ones.  I shared one shot of Herradura Tequila with a side of sangrita, but that was the extent of my drinking.  At this same bar, I did have to rescue Bill from the grasp of two people dressed as women who to me had questionable gender issues.  They were trying to lift his wallet from him as he came out of the bathroom so I had to intervene, resulting in a couple of words thrown my way that escaped my understanding.  I am not sure what they called me, but I am positive they were not calling me handsome.  My drunken companion was very cheerful and spreading his charm with the senoritas so it was hard to get him out the door and back to the car.

It was a quiet car ride back, since my passenger
had fallen asleep 30-seconds after getting into the car.  We did have situation about 20 minutes into the drive that necessitated the quick opening of the passenger window so Bill could exercise some demons.  Lucky for me his window could be controlled from my side or it might have got ugly…and smelly.

Bill was trying to comprehend where he was and thought d
amn, who was making freakin that racket outside, Bill’s fuzzy brain tried to comprehend the noise and why his mouth tasted like crap.  Bill sat up even as he was grasping to answer those questions and realized that he was in his room, fully dressed and did not remember squat about how he got there.  Glancing at the clock, he was shocked to see that it was just after eleven in the morning.  It was dark outside for eleven so he gingerly got off the bed feeling somewhat queasy, wandered over to the window and saw that there was a rare rainy day outside.  He also saw the garbage men toss the cans back into the bin, which provided another cacophony of sounds to Bill’s sensitive ears.  While looking out the window he espied an old style quilt hanging off the back porch of an apartment a couple of buildings over.  At first, he was not sure what drew his attention to it, but then it began to dawn on him why it piqued his interest.  With renewed vigor, he stripped out of his clothes, which smelled strongly of smoke and jumped into the welcoming shower.

Boy that felt g
ood Bill said to himself as the hot water cascaded over his head.  His thoughts drifted back to the issue at hand. How to design a prototype that would provide the proper voltage and wattage needed to run the average household.  Based on the results Rico had finalized yesterday, it was as simple as the math that would determine the ultimate design.  We know the steady output of the specimen and we know how much liquid is needed to produce the amount of amperage needed, so using those assumptions I can create a design similar to the quilting in which the quilt was just the sum of stitched in squares of the same size.  Each square, rectangle or whatever geometric shape, will hold the same amount of liquid.  The quilted panels, so to speak, are wired with positive and negative leads and will be linked in parallel or in serial with other panels to achieve the voltage or amperage levels need.  Somehow, the wiring connects back to a central console.

Getting out of the shower, he continued to work the puzzle in his head.  Since the organism needed light to function
, the sun-facing surface of the electrical quilt had to be transparent, durable and flexible enough it could be used anywhere.  Keeping with the quilt concept, he concluded that a rigid design similar to a solar panel would be too inflexible for the applications in his mind.  He pictured a quilt or a series of quilts laid across the average rooftop that were tied back, using a direct current to an alternating current or AC converter to a home’s electrical panel similar to how emergency generators are installed.  Another concept he considered was that excess electrical output, channeled back into the electrical company’s power grid allowed for use by others.  A snowy rooftop flashed in his thoughts typical to a New Jersey winter.  Hmmm, he thought and moved onto the next obstacle as he concluded that a simple imbedded heating coil could keep snow and ice melted.  Not sure of where to go with batteries, he assumed that some instances required them if not for anything else but to allow for maintenance functions.  Theoretically, unless there was a complete absence of any kind of light, the organisms would continue to generate electricity but at an amperage correlating to the lumens of light available.

Bill finally found his way out of his room to find Mike gaming in his chair. 
Screw you, Rico thought to himself, I am going to blast your ass as soon as you show your face in that building.  He had been playing Call of Duty for about an hour and one particular antagonist seemed focused on taking him out.  This time I took it more careful and was very patient.  Scanning my backside a few times, I kept my eye on the window across the street, which appeared to be the asshole’s favorite sniper vantage point.  Just then, a form slid into the window frame and I immediately took the shot.  Bingo, he was down and out.  With some slight vindication on my poor performance, I looked up as Bill came out of his room whistling.  I was a bit surprised that he was so chirper after the night he had.  “Hey dude, how ya feeling,” I taunted.  “Let me grab some cereal first, but I need to run something by you” he said.  Logging out of the game I came over and sat next to him while grabbing a banana from the bowl of fruit I had bought earlier in the morning.

W
hile Bill munched on his Cheerios, I reminded him that the MMA group was coming over around six tonight for some light sparring.  “Cool” Bill said. “Is Jenny coming to spar?  Bill knew I had the hot’s for Jenny, and who wouldn’t.  She was pretty but not beautiful, which made her even more attractive and about six foot in height, which was tall for a woman.  She had subtle shade of red hair and a light sprinkling of freckles.  She was also a bit of a comedian and could hold her own in a group of macho guys.  She was a good boxer, but her kicking ability was fantastic.