The Devil Comes Back to Retroville
by Gary D. Snyder
Part 12:
Despite Jimmy's grim announcement Cindy was not willing to relinquish her new-found hope so readily. Desperately she began offering possible solutions.
"Maybe you could blow it up, or disintegrate it."
Jimmy shook his head. "It would be like trying to knock down a brick wall with water balloons. I don't have anything that would work against something that dense. Stupid nuclear regulatory agencies," he muttered to himself.
"Well," Cindy tried again, "how about shrinking it?"
"That wouldn't affect the mass. Trying to shrink it might even create a singularity. It would be like the Tunguska explosion of 1908 all over again."
"You used your magnetic plates before to stop a meteor. Maybe –"
"Dark matter has no magnetic properties to speak of. There'd be nothing for the magnetic field to push against."
Cindy was running out of options but struggled gamely on. "Couldn't you teleport it?"
"There wouldn't be any way to fit it into the telepod. And teleporting that much matter would take a lot more energy than I could generate even if it did fit." Jimmy looked beaten. "There's no way for me to stop it, divert it, or destroy it. So what's left?"
Cindy, try as she might, couldn't think of anything either and seemed close to tears. "Only one thing, I guess. We've…you've tried everything else."
Jimmy said nothing but Cindy's words tormented him. He hadn't actually tried everything yet. Although he had done his best to rationally analyze the situation he hadn't tried generating a brain blast. One reason was that he wasn't sure that his mental faculties were really back to normal, although he felt fine. He had always feared that if he weren't a genius he would be nobody. If he tried a brain blast and it didn't work he would be forced to admit that what had made him special was no longer there. More even than the prospect of imminent annihilation the possibility of that failure terrified him, and he was reluctant to admit that to Cindy.
The other reason was something he would barely admit even to himself and could never bring himself to tell Cindy. Even though his mind and personality were back to normal he still remembered how he had felt when the rational part of him mind had been deactivated, allowing his emotions to come through unhindered. If he was able to invoke a brain blast he would be back to the way he had always been. What there had been between him and Cindy would be over, and a part of him didn't want that to happen. But if he did nothing some unknown menace lay waiting for Cindy. A look at her face confirmed that the fear of something worse than the meteor haunted her.
Was he afraid of failing?
Or of succeeding?
The choice before him was obvious.
All right, then, Jimmy told himself. If this is the way it has to be, then so be it. Think. Think! Think!
Well, I suppose you can't get hurt if nothing's there…
In some situations you just have to go through the problem…
The transphasal generator creates a field that causes anything in front of it to temporarily phase into another dimension…
"Brain blast!" Jimmy cried. "We can't stop the meteor, or turn it aside, or destroy it. So we do the only thing we can do."
"What's that?" Cindy asked. She had had her hopes up so many times in the past hour or so that it was hard for her to sound optimistic.
"We let it go right through the Earth!"
Cindy stared at Jimmy, wondering whether the strain had caused him to go insane. Or perhaps she was the one who had lost her mind. Maybe both of them had. "How's that? When the meteor hits –"
"It won't. Look." Jimmy picked up his velociball that was lying on the workbench. "My velociball incorporates a transphasal generator. The generator creates a field in front of the ball that shifts the air in front of it into another dimension, letting the ball pass right through it. If I mount the generator to the Strato XL, I can shift the meteor in the other dimension and allow it to pass right through the Earth without any harm."
Cindy was now hopeful but still skeptical. "But how much power would that take? And what about your rocket ship?"
Jimmy did some quick thinking as he hastily scribbled some diagrams and figures on his chalkboard. "A roughly cylindrical shape 300 feet long and 60 feet across would be about 850,000 cubic feet. The transphasal generator uses about 250 kilojoules to create a transphased volume of about one cubic foot, so allowing for a safe distance and the added volume for the Strato XL that comes to just over 300 gigajoules. At the rate it's travelling I'd need to sustain the field for about hour to keep it safely out of the atmosphere, which comes to a total of about 83 megawatts." He put down the chalk and dusted off his hands. "One of my energy cells will be more than enough."
Cindy still looked dubious. "How can you have enough energy to phase this meteor into another dimension but not have enough to turn it aside?"
Jimmy smiled. "Two reasons, actually. You've studied martial arts so you should know that it takes far less energy to slip an attack than to stop it or deflect it. We're just letting the meteor proceed on its merry way. The second reason is that the transphasal generator doesn't actually phase matter. The generator simply creates a field with a fixed volume regardless of the amount of matter contained in that volume, which means that the mass of the meteor is irrelevant. The matter is shifted indirectly into the other dimension because it's contained in the volume, which is why it's called transphasing instead of phasing."
"Are you…are you sure?" Cindy asked, hardly daring to believe it. "I mean, are you certain that this will work?"
Jimmy looked over his scribblings and verified his calculations. "The calculations are straightforward. I just need to adapt the generator to handle the power, charge up an energy cell, modify the rocket ship, and program Goddard to assist me during the operation." He looked back at Cindy. "What could go wrong?"
"Program Goddard? What for?"
Jimmy hadn't really wanted to discuss this, but felt he didn't have any choice. "I'll need him to monitor some of the equipment to make sure that the meteor is staying within the field. If the ship gets too far ahead the meteor will instantaneously rematerialize in our dimension and…well…" Jimmy paused. "It would be bad. On the other hand, if the Strato XL gets too close the gravitational pull of the dark matter could…" Again Jimmy paused. "Well, that would be bad, too." He sighed. "I don't have time to set up the Strato XL controls to do it alone, so I have to take Goddard along."
"Wrong, Neutron."
"Wrong?" Jimmy looked puzzled. "What do you mean, wrong?"
Now that Jimmy had done his part, Cindy knew that she had to do hers. "I mean I'm going with you."
End of Part 12