Porter (4 page)

             
Dans and Forst had
just watched a split screen video with two views at right angles of absolutely nothing but a black background. The start of the video showed the setup of the two cameras and the black cards and lights. The split screen views showed the black background for 20 seconds, then, suddenly a spray of water erupted in the middle of the space, shooting upward out of nothingness.
For that video
Allie had opened a port from a cold water pipe
in the lab
to the spot
a
t
the focal point of the cameras
.

             
Forst’s head jerked back, eyes wide. “What just happened?”

             
Dans looked at him intently, “Something like a wormhole was just opened from a vessel containing pressurized water to the viewing area.
The vessel was about 15 feet from
the
visible opening you saw on the video.
” Dans didn’t want to say it just came from a water pipe in the wall. Didn’t sound sophisticated.

             
Forst
raised an eyebrow
, “This is real?”

             
“Absolutely.”

             
“Because it’d be pretty easy to fake with a good video editing program
…
”
He trailed off tentatively.

             
Grimly Albert said,
“That video has not been manipulated at all. Not even an adjustment of brightness or contrast.”
He ran the same segment, and
then
others repeatedly to let Forst look for video editing artifacts.

             
Forst turned to Dans,
“Wow! Amazing.
Can you bring the equipment here? Or do I need to go to your lab to look at it? Will the University let you sell me the manufacturing rights?”

             
Albert looked dow
n at the table. His jaw bunched
and he muttered,
“I can no longer reproduce the phenomenon.”

             
“What?” Forst guffawed and slapped his knee. “’If you can’t reproduce it, it ain’t real.’ I’m pretty sure I’m quoting
you
correctly on that one!”

             
“It was reproduced hundreds of times and I col
lected reams of data!
” Dans said hotly,
“
I
just can’t reproduce it anymore…
”
He trailed off
.

             
Forst leaned back in his chair,
“You have
got
to be shitting me!”

             
“I’m looking for a collaborator that can go over the data
I obtained
, see what I’ve missed and help me figure out
how to do it again
.
And to do it bigger and better.
”

             
Forst looked up at the ceiling. An irreproducible phenomenon would be worthless. On the other hand if
he
could figure out what had gone wrong with the equipment, which
was
kind of his specialty,
and
they could scale it up - the possibilities seemed
tremendous
!
They started to talk over rights, how they would share them and the University’s inevitable piece of the pie since Dans was employed by them.

Thunder
rolled
off Joe’s fingertips
as
they drummed on the low string of his electric bass. A spotlight gradually illuminated him
dressed entirely in black,
standing in the center of the stage
,
back
slightly arched and legs apart
. The crowd, which had been gathering excitement during the agonizingly long bass note, started to whoop, holler and whistle. Shan
kicked the bass drum once and a powerful thump echoed back and forth across the
packed
medium sized
arena.
Another thump, then the crack of a snare lighted a spot on the snare drum. That spot gradually enlarged to encompass the entire drum set as Shan established a simple
but
solid beat. Joe’s
rolling
bass thunder developed punctuations to match the beat
established
on the drums and then a spot
faded in on
their big Leslie sp
eaker. The rotor spun up and a
Hammond
organ chord filled gradually in
over the beat
as another spot came up on
Davis
at the keyboards
. The crowd, frenzied now
,
began to chant, “E
-
va
!
E
-
va
!
E
-
va
!
…”
The unmistakable evanescent sound of Allie’s guitar faded slowly into the mix adding to the pulse of the sound but still
carrying
that first chord which had now been sustained for so long that the listeners were
anxiously
waiting for a change.
The pulse sped gradually and Allie and Davis added some higher notes to the chord but the
listeners’
anxiety
for a chord change
simply built,
and built
and built
. T
hen Joe raised
the long
neck of his
bass
guitar and chopped down with it, the
next
chord
finally
blossomed,
and another
spot
lit
Allie
.
I
t was hard to tell
how
slender and tall she was
in her trademark ripped baggy jeans and
heavy
vest festooned w
ith charms. Spiky black hair stuck up out of a visor
that shaded her face
. The crowd went wild as she leaned to the mike from
a
wide stance,

“Another may be

The m
aster of my fate

But I will be

The c
aptain of my soul

Over deep seas

I’ll sail this soul

Against the breeze

And t
hrough the shoals”

The crowd rocked slowly back and forth
as if in
a trance
. H
er eerie vocal
blended
perfectly
with
Davis
’s
simple baritone
harmony.
Some
ecstatic fans
had to be
carried
out
of the arena
after fainting. Hundreds
of others
had been turned away from the sold out concert.

Forst was appalled. Dans had provided him with data out the wazoo but claimed that the apparatus that had created the ports had been destroyed. When asked for the remnants of the destroyed apparatus, Dans said that it
“
had been completely demolished
in one of the tests
and
had been
put in the trash.
”
Construction notes and diagrams? Didn’t exist!
It had been “an accidental side effect of a couple of unrelated pieces of equipment purchased for something else and misconnected.”
Photographs of the effect were abundant. Pictures of the device creating the effect? Nonexistent! Forst wasn’t just appalled, he was pissed. Dans was obviously hiding something about the apparatus.
This could be huge! H
e was sure he could make another device and
he
could make it work but Dans wouldn’t give him
any
idea how the first one had been constructed. Dans wanted them to “try to figure out another way to
create
the same
fields
.” What a crock of shit! If you’d built one working airplane, you wouldn’t send an engineer into a closet to “build something that flies” with no more guidance than “it’s been done before” would you?
Forst felt like a tight band was around his head and knew that his blood pressure was up again.
Dans was coming over and they were going to
have to
have a serious talk!

Albert knocked on Forst’s office door, hoping that Forst had
finally
been able to produce
a prototype that could generate
the
funny twisting electric field effects that he’d measured around Allie’s ports.
Forst had been getting really uptight and demanding though. Albert had begun
strongly
consider
ing
a different collaborator. Nonetheless, h
e was genuinely surprised to see the
bright red
look of fury on Forst’s face
when he stepped into the room
. “What’s the matter?” he began.

Forst exploded. “What’s the mat
ter? What’s the matter! For C
hrissakes! You’ve got me wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on an important project with both
of my
hands tied behind my back! That’s what’s the matter! What’s the matter is that you need to tell me how your first
goddamned
machine worked! I’m not spending another dime on this
piece of shit
project
while you pretend
you don’t ‘have any idea’ how the original device was constructed.”

Dans rocked back in astonishment. He’d seen Forst get pretty irritated when devices didn’t work as expected back when he’d been a grad student, but Dans had never seen this kind of rage before. And
never
directed
at
him
self
!  He swallowed and shrugged, “We
ll OK,
let’s
just
give
up on
it
then.” He thought
to himself that
he certainly
didn’t
want to
continue
work
ing
with someone who had this kind of temper. H
e’d
just have to
go ahead and
find some other
collaborator.

Forst’s eyebrows shot up his
crimson
forehead
. “Give up? Give up!
I’m
the one with hundreds of thousands invested! We are
not
giving up!
You
are going to tell me
how
the first
damned
model worked!”

Dans made placating motions with his hands, “Randy, I’ve told you, I don’t
know
how it worked.”

“
That’s a load of crap
!” Forst hurled a vase off his desk
and it
exploded against the wall behind Dans. “You are going to tell me! And you’re go
nna
to tell me now!”

Flinching
in startlement
from the vase, Dans turned
quickly
to the door
but to his surprise
found it blocked by a large man with a goatee.
He turned back to Forst, “Let’s talk about this some more when you’ve calmed down.”

His face dark,
Forst ground out, “I am
not
going to calm down. YOU
,
on the other hand
,
are going to provide some answers
today
. NOT after I’ve calmed down.
Today
,
d
amnit
all
!”

             
After signing autographs until their fingers ached
,
Eve of Destruction stumbled out to their tour bus. Allie turned on her phone and plugged it in. It immediately started chirping. She pulled off her shirt and peered blearily at the screen. It listed scores of calls from her mother.
T
here were almost always a few
,
but this was
way
more than usual. She v
irtually
never listened to
any of
them
,
though recently the cold attitude she’d held toward her parents had started to melt
. Then she saw there was a text from her little brother Stephen.
That
was unusual. Her heart skipped a beat as she touched the
icon. “Sis, pls call home. Dad
missing
for
three
days.
Mom
going crazy.” A chill ran down her spine. She leaned her head back against the wall.
Missing!? C
ould he have a girlfriend?
Somehow she knew that wasn’t true
. It just didn’t fit with his dreamy eyed focus on physics
.
Damn
! It
was the middle of the night. S
he’d call in the morning and he’d probably be home
by then
– save a lot of trouble.
She
pulled off her jeans and
crawled under the sheet but
then
lay staring at the roof of the bus. Finally, with a sigh, she
got up, hit the shower and started washing the black crap out of her hair
.
They didn’t have another
concert
for four days
and it was only a two hour drive home
from here
.