90 MINUTES AGO
". . . I'm serious! That one Colonel guy from Stargate SG-1, he was MacGuyver, man!"
"No. No way. Don't believe it. MacGuyver was smart, man. Saw this episode where he made a smoke-bomb out of a toothpick, some elmer's glue, and like, Windex and stuff . . . Colonel Jack O'Neil's an idiot jackass in Stargate SG-1. Er, well, pretty much everyone there's an idiot jackass but . . . but anyway, Jack O'Neil is NOT MacGuyver."
"Dude, he so is, man."
"No way."
"Wanna bet?"
"Breakfast tab for tomorrow."
"Deal. You are so gonna get me the French Slam tomorrow –"
"Hey, you two, sharpen up a little, huh?" boomed a voice in the room. Both the control console security guards sat up on their seats and switched their attentive faces back on at the monitors again – their supervisor was in the room.
"At least LOOK like you've got stuff to do," said a rather heavy-set woman, whose dark-brown uniform was doing its best to hold itself together.
"Y-yes boss,"
"We were just . . . just-"
"Farting around? I swear, of any of the real head cheeses of this place were to come around here for a surprise visit, we'd all be out of jobs if they saw you two like this just now. I – oh, dammit?"
"What's up, boss?"
"It's your fifteen minute break, guys. Get outta here before I make you work through it."
The two guards shot out of their seats and made their way out of the control room, half-glad they escaped a fifteen-minute verbal barrage. . . .
------------------
"Well, it seems like we have a big surprise for you today – it seems that one of our lead engineers will be visiting us today and show you all one of our working samples of the Plasma-Gem! Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the chief engineers behind Questor's Plasma Gem, Doctor James Sergill."
The tour guide stepped aside as a middle-aged blonde male faced the tour group before him, which consisted of about thirteen random adults and a combined group of thirty high-school students from Midtown High, half- consisted by an advanced physics class and half by a life science class. Basically, a group evenly filled with geeks and with jocks.
Interesting group, Sergill thought, expressing his thoughts with a raised eyebrow.
"Good afternoon," Dr. Sergill said, "Every once in a while I get to have some time to show off my – show off Questor's – new toy. Since we cracked this design almost a year ago, I've been showing off this Gem almost every other week. But I can tell you right now – I am always excited to show off our new toy. I am glad to show you the Gem behind these doors and talk about how it all works."
Sergill smiled heartily as he slipped on his safety glasses. "Now, if you all can follow me through these doors, we can all check out the Plasma Gem."
It took a few moments while the group entered through the doors, but once they were all in the main chamber and saw what was in the middle of the room, Sergill saw the same look from each and every face that he saw from every other tour group he's seen.
The look of awe.
Before them, encased in a transparent, glass-like chamber, connected to an enclosed corridor, was a diamond, the size of a small fist, seemingly hovering above a slim column rising from the floor. The fierce, orange-red diamond was impressive by itself, but the various laser beams inside the chamber that penetrated the diamond diffracted into a seamless array of colors ranging from blue to violet to yellow. And the diffraction was pulsating, much like a small flame, or a small supernova.
It was a blue and yellow universe, with a red heart at its core.
"Whoa!"
"Dude!"
"Wow!"
"Amazing!"
"No way!"
"Awesome!"
Sergill kept his hearty smile. "Folks, I'm happy to present to you, the Plasma Gem, a stone capable of storing tens to hundreds of Mega-Joules of energy, almost completely in kinetic form due to its stored plasma state. A work of art that requires so much precision in engineering, design, and fabrication that each gem costs millions to produce, and is dangerous to make during the process. A diamond that, in final form, is nearly impossible to break due to its diamond shell, yet if ruptured could cause an explosion equivalent to the size of a small nuclear bomb, but has the capability of powering current machines for almost decades in just one run.
"But through all that, if you look at it, it's just one beautiful baby."
Moments of awe and quiet observation passed through the entire group. Even the tour guide was teary-eyed and in quiet amazement. It wasn't until a scrawny hand was raised before the silence was broken.
"Yes?" Sergill pointed at the hand.
"Doctor Sergill?" said the owner of the hand, the same skinny boy who asked the questions earlier during the tour, "diamonds are bound together by extremely strong molecular geometries that defines their extremely rigid and stiff material properties – they'd fracture if you apply a strong enough force rather than break, right?"
"That is correct," Sergill replied.
"Well, given all that, how are you – er, how is the gem able to contain excited particles in plasma form without the particles slamming into the diamond case geometry the wrong way and say, accidentally fracture and blow up in our faces?"
"Whoo man," Sergill sighed in delight, "good question. You sure you're supposed to be in high school, Mister –"
"Parker. Peter Parker," said the brown-haired boy, "and I think so, though sometimes other people make me think otherwise."
"Dweeboid," said a tall, blonde teenager in a football jersey, chucking a ball of paper at the back of Peter's head. Oddly enough, Peter dodged the shot, which ended up hitting the back of a blonde-haired woman's head.
"Hey! Jerk!" said the blonde-haired girl.
"Flash Thompson, you're talking to me RIGHT after this tour," barked one of the adults in the tour group, obviously one of the teachers.
Sergill patiently waited for the brief scene to end before continuing. "Well, Mr. Parker, diamond geometries are surprisingly easy to manipulate, since they obviously tend to be planar. So, basically, the trick to this is not designing the container around the energy system, but design the energy system within the diamond.
"You design your own diamond, then within the diamond actuate a plasma state. See, Diamonds already have Mega-Joules of energy due to bonding alone, so breaking those up into another form is the trick. And, by doing that, by laws of conservation and equilibrium, the plasma creates the geometry inside the shell, inside the diamond so that it won't blow itself out."
Looks of awe were then mixed with general looks of confusion, with only Peter seemingly understanding the blurb Sergill just said.
"It's kinda like a half-baked cake. The outside's all baked and hard and ready to go, but the inside's still all gooey and sticky. Only, in the plasma gem's case, we bake the cake so that the inside is still all gooey."
Half the group showed signs of understanding. Batting .500 was good enough for Sergill.
"To further expand on Mr. Parker's question, one of the reasons why we're currently pummeling this gem with lasers is so we can check the geometry of the diamond case inside, to make sure that the plasma particles don't find a way to fracture and go kaboom. Since light diffracts differently as it hits a certain mirror or glass in different angles it – "
Someone dressed in a white, plastic protection suit entered the glass chamber.
"Looks like one of our lab technicians is checking on the gem right now. Let's see how he's doing."
Approaching a microphone resting a control panel nearby, Sergill spoke, "So, how's the gem looking so far?"
The safety suit pulled a thumbs up towards the crowd as he hunched over the diamond. ". . . um, looking good so far, boss. Seems that everything is in order so far. I . . . wait, wait a minute . . . "
"What's up?" Sergill said.
"Er, um, I think –"
Fuff. Smoke suddenly filled the glass chamber rapidly, engulfing both the safety suit man and the diamond. The blue-yellow light filling the room disappeared, and as if in rapid succession, the fluorescent white light that lit the chamber suddenly turned deep red as an emergency light flashed on and off.
"Wh-what the –"Sergill uttered. "Hey, hey! You all right?" he screamed, white-knuckle gripping the microphone. "Oh god, oh god, I'll get someone over as soon as-"
"DOCTOR SERGILL!"
A heavy-set woman in security garb burst into the chamber. "We have to get these people out of here, sir!" The woman pointed at the tour guide. "You, get this group out of here, right away!"
"Uh uh, okay!" replied the tour guide, obviously rattled by the situation. "Um, um, if you all could please follow me in a quick but – er, orderly fashion, I'll take you back to the entrance lobby. So, um, er, if you could, uh please follow me . . ."
"You should go along with them too, Doctor," said the security guard.
"Nonsense. I will stay here and help resolve the situation."
"But sir –"
"I WILL NOT LET THIS PROJECT OR ANYONE WORKING ON IT FALL WHILE I'M AROUND!!!" barked Doctor Sergill.
"Okay, okay, yes sir," said the security guard. She pointed at the rapidly escaping tour group. "But we must first get these people out of here!"
------------------
"Hey Lyss, what's up? What's the rush?" remarked the receptionist, as the tour group hurriedly entered the lobby.
"Don't you know?" the tour guide cried out, "there's like, an emergency in Lab 8B?"
"You serious?" said the receptionist, "Security's showing that everything's just fine, In fact, things are running smooth –"
"The GEM CHAMBER's going up in smoke! And they DON'T know that?"
"Um, let me go and check –"
A cackling radio sound boomed open before a voice from the receptionist's hand-held blurted – "Sergill is down! I repeat, Doctor Sergill is down!"
The receptionist reeled back in shock. "Oh my . . . .I'll call the paramedics – "
"Already called EMS. They should be there right now, in fact. I'm on my way down."
"But –"
A set of doors burst open as the heavy-set security guard woman dashed across the lobby with a wheel-stretcher in front of her, desperately trying to cut through the tour group in her way.
"Outta the way, outta the way!" said the security guard, as, just outside on the street, a red and white van came to a screeching halt, with white letters "EMS" etched on the side of the van.
"I'm going with Sergill!" barked the security guard.
Two medics exited the ambulance as the security guard burst through the front doors with what seemed to be Sergill on top of the stretcher. As she made her way to the back of the ambulance, all three helped the stretcher inside the ambulance, and the security guard followed in. The two medics shut the back of the ambulance, dashed to the front, , and as quickly as the arrived peeled out into the road, jetting south as fast as the ambulance could take them.
A few minutes passed as the group slowly dispersed into smaller cliques, half-confused at what just happened.
"Er," Lyss the tour guide uttered. "Um, uh, I apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for touring our facilities . . . "she scratched the back of her head. "Um, now if I could get you all to go to the front desk and –"
The heavy-set security guard kicked the back door to the lobby open. However, her uniform was missing, and her hands were bound behind her back, her ankles bound together as well. She blew away a half-dangling piece of tape on her lips as she shrieked in horror –
"THE GEM! THE GEM IS GONE!"
". . . I'm serious! That one Colonel guy from Stargate SG-1, he was MacGuyver, man!"
"No. No way. Don't believe it. MacGuyver was smart, man. Saw this episode where he made a smoke-bomb out of a toothpick, some elmer's glue, and like, Windex and stuff . . . Colonel Jack O'Neil's an idiot jackass in Stargate SG-1. Er, well, pretty much everyone there's an idiot jackass but . . . but anyway, Jack O'Neil is NOT MacGuyver."
"Dude, he so is, man."
"No way."
"Wanna bet?"
"Breakfast tab for tomorrow."
"Deal. You are so gonna get me the French Slam tomorrow –"
"Hey, you two, sharpen up a little, huh?" boomed a voice in the room. Both the control console security guards sat up on their seats and switched their attentive faces back on at the monitors again – their supervisor was in the room.
"At least LOOK like you've got stuff to do," said a rather heavy-set woman, whose dark-brown uniform was doing its best to hold itself together.
"Y-yes boss,"
"We were just . . . just-"
"Farting around? I swear, of any of the real head cheeses of this place were to come around here for a surprise visit, we'd all be out of jobs if they saw you two like this just now. I – oh, dammit?"
"What's up, boss?"
"It's your fifteen minute break, guys. Get outta here before I make you work through it."
The two guards shot out of their seats and made their way out of the control room, half-glad they escaped a fifteen-minute verbal barrage. . . .
------------------
"Well, it seems like we have a big surprise for you today – it seems that one of our lead engineers will be visiting us today and show you all one of our working samples of the Plasma-Gem! Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the chief engineers behind Questor's Plasma Gem, Doctor James Sergill."
The tour guide stepped aside as a middle-aged blonde male faced the tour group before him, which consisted of about thirteen random adults and a combined group of thirty high-school students from Midtown High, half- consisted by an advanced physics class and half by a life science class. Basically, a group evenly filled with geeks and with jocks.
Interesting group, Sergill thought, expressing his thoughts with a raised eyebrow.
"Good afternoon," Dr. Sergill said, "Every once in a while I get to have some time to show off my – show off Questor's – new toy. Since we cracked this design almost a year ago, I've been showing off this Gem almost every other week. But I can tell you right now – I am always excited to show off our new toy. I am glad to show you the Gem behind these doors and talk about how it all works."
Sergill smiled heartily as he slipped on his safety glasses. "Now, if you all can follow me through these doors, we can all check out the Plasma Gem."
It took a few moments while the group entered through the doors, but once they were all in the main chamber and saw what was in the middle of the room, Sergill saw the same look from each and every face that he saw from every other tour group he's seen.
The look of awe.
Before them, encased in a transparent, glass-like chamber, connected to an enclosed corridor, was a diamond, the size of a small fist, seemingly hovering above a slim column rising from the floor. The fierce, orange-red diamond was impressive by itself, but the various laser beams inside the chamber that penetrated the diamond diffracted into a seamless array of colors ranging from blue to violet to yellow. And the diffraction was pulsating, much like a small flame, or a small supernova.
It was a blue and yellow universe, with a red heart at its core.
"Whoa!"
"Dude!"
"Wow!"
"Amazing!"
"No way!"
"Awesome!"
Sergill kept his hearty smile. "Folks, I'm happy to present to you, the Plasma Gem, a stone capable of storing tens to hundreds of Mega-Joules of energy, almost completely in kinetic form due to its stored plasma state. A work of art that requires so much precision in engineering, design, and fabrication that each gem costs millions to produce, and is dangerous to make during the process. A diamond that, in final form, is nearly impossible to break due to its diamond shell, yet if ruptured could cause an explosion equivalent to the size of a small nuclear bomb, but has the capability of powering current machines for almost decades in just one run.
"But through all that, if you look at it, it's just one beautiful baby."
Moments of awe and quiet observation passed through the entire group. Even the tour guide was teary-eyed and in quiet amazement. It wasn't until a scrawny hand was raised before the silence was broken.
"Yes?" Sergill pointed at the hand.
"Doctor Sergill?" said the owner of the hand, the same skinny boy who asked the questions earlier during the tour, "diamonds are bound together by extremely strong molecular geometries that defines their extremely rigid and stiff material properties – they'd fracture if you apply a strong enough force rather than break, right?"
"That is correct," Sergill replied.
"Well, given all that, how are you – er, how is the gem able to contain excited particles in plasma form without the particles slamming into the diamond case geometry the wrong way and say, accidentally fracture and blow up in our faces?"
"Whoo man," Sergill sighed in delight, "good question. You sure you're supposed to be in high school, Mister –"
"Parker. Peter Parker," said the brown-haired boy, "and I think so, though sometimes other people make me think otherwise."
"Dweeboid," said a tall, blonde teenager in a football jersey, chucking a ball of paper at the back of Peter's head. Oddly enough, Peter dodged the shot, which ended up hitting the back of a blonde-haired woman's head.
"Hey! Jerk!" said the blonde-haired girl.
"Flash Thompson, you're talking to me RIGHT after this tour," barked one of the adults in the tour group, obviously one of the teachers.
Sergill patiently waited for the brief scene to end before continuing. "Well, Mr. Parker, diamond geometries are surprisingly easy to manipulate, since they obviously tend to be planar. So, basically, the trick to this is not designing the container around the energy system, but design the energy system within the diamond.
"You design your own diamond, then within the diamond actuate a plasma state. See, Diamonds already have Mega-Joules of energy due to bonding alone, so breaking those up into another form is the trick. And, by doing that, by laws of conservation and equilibrium, the plasma creates the geometry inside the shell, inside the diamond so that it won't blow itself out."
Looks of awe were then mixed with general looks of confusion, with only Peter seemingly understanding the blurb Sergill just said.
"It's kinda like a half-baked cake. The outside's all baked and hard and ready to go, but the inside's still all gooey and sticky. Only, in the plasma gem's case, we bake the cake so that the inside is still all gooey."
Half the group showed signs of understanding. Batting .500 was good enough for Sergill.
"To further expand on Mr. Parker's question, one of the reasons why we're currently pummeling this gem with lasers is so we can check the geometry of the diamond case inside, to make sure that the plasma particles don't find a way to fracture and go kaboom. Since light diffracts differently as it hits a certain mirror or glass in different angles it – "
Someone dressed in a white, plastic protection suit entered the glass chamber.
"Looks like one of our lab technicians is checking on the gem right now. Let's see how he's doing."
Approaching a microphone resting a control panel nearby, Sergill spoke, "So, how's the gem looking so far?"
The safety suit pulled a thumbs up towards the crowd as he hunched over the diamond. ". . . um, looking good so far, boss. Seems that everything is in order so far. I . . . wait, wait a minute . . . "
"What's up?" Sergill said.
"Er, um, I think –"
Fuff. Smoke suddenly filled the glass chamber rapidly, engulfing both the safety suit man and the diamond. The blue-yellow light filling the room disappeared, and as if in rapid succession, the fluorescent white light that lit the chamber suddenly turned deep red as an emergency light flashed on and off.
"Wh-what the –"Sergill uttered. "Hey, hey! You all right?" he screamed, white-knuckle gripping the microphone. "Oh god, oh god, I'll get someone over as soon as-"
"DOCTOR SERGILL!"
A heavy-set woman in security garb burst into the chamber. "We have to get these people out of here, sir!" The woman pointed at the tour guide. "You, get this group out of here, right away!"
"Uh uh, okay!" replied the tour guide, obviously rattled by the situation. "Um, um, if you all could please follow me in a quick but – er, orderly fashion, I'll take you back to the entrance lobby. So, um, er, if you could, uh please follow me . . ."
"You should go along with them too, Doctor," said the security guard.
"Nonsense. I will stay here and help resolve the situation."
"But sir –"
"I WILL NOT LET THIS PROJECT OR ANYONE WORKING ON IT FALL WHILE I'M AROUND!!!" barked Doctor Sergill.
"Okay, okay, yes sir," said the security guard. She pointed at the rapidly escaping tour group. "But we must first get these people out of here!"
------------------
"Hey Lyss, what's up? What's the rush?" remarked the receptionist, as the tour group hurriedly entered the lobby.
"Don't you know?" the tour guide cried out, "there's like, an emergency in Lab 8B?"
"You serious?" said the receptionist, "Security's showing that everything's just fine, In fact, things are running smooth –"
"The GEM CHAMBER's going up in smoke! And they DON'T know that?"
"Um, let me go and check –"
A cackling radio sound boomed open before a voice from the receptionist's hand-held blurted – "Sergill is down! I repeat, Doctor Sergill is down!"
The receptionist reeled back in shock. "Oh my . . . .I'll call the paramedics – "
"Already called EMS. They should be there right now, in fact. I'm on my way down."
"But –"
A set of doors burst open as the heavy-set security guard woman dashed across the lobby with a wheel-stretcher in front of her, desperately trying to cut through the tour group in her way.
"Outta the way, outta the way!" said the security guard, as, just outside on the street, a red and white van came to a screeching halt, with white letters "EMS" etched on the side of the van.
"I'm going with Sergill!" barked the security guard.
Two medics exited the ambulance as the security guard burst through the front doors with what seemed to be Sergill on top of the stretcher. As she made her way to the back of the ambulance, all three helped the stretcher inside the ambulance, and the security guard followed in. The two medics shut the back of the ambulance, dashed to the front, , and as quickly as the arrived peeled out into the road, jetting south as fast as the ambulance could take them.
A few minutes passed as the group slowly dispersed into smaller cliques, half-confused at what just happened.
"Er," Lyss the tour guide uttered. "Um, uh, I apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for touring our facilities . . . "she scratched the back of her head. "Um, now if I could get you all to go to the front desk and –"
The heavy-set security guard kicked the back door to the lobby open. However, her uniform was missing, and her hands were bound behind her back, her ankles bound together as well. She blew away a half-dangling piece of tape on her lips as she shrieked in horror –
"THE GEM! THE GEM IS GONE!"