The entire room was silent, only the sound of the video projector cooling fan audible. Everyone present around the dark oak table, which was far older than any of them, watched the screen. Many of them had absolutely stunned expressions, a couple looked highly skeptical, and one or two were staring with barely hidden excitement and deep thought visible on their faces.
Eventually the recording finished and the screen went blank. The silence was broken after some seconds by one of the people there coughing quietly, along with a rustle of paper. All turned to look at the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University, who was now staring fixedly at Jerry.
The parapsychologist was wearing a slightly smug look buried almost successfully under a general air of pleased triumph. He met the other man's gaze with his own doing his best not to project his inner thoughts of 'I told you so' too loudly.
"I feel, Doctor Langham, that either you are the most blatant and unrepentant charlatan I have ever encountered, or a man who has the luck of the devil," Sir Richard finally said. "If it is the former I will with great delight see to it that you never darken the doors of any academic establishment in the English-speaking world again. In the case of the latter…" He sighed faintly as Jerry tried to keep his mouth shut. "You may well have somehow found yourself on the ground floor of a field of study that will shake the very foundations of science itself."
"I can assure you, Vice Chancellor, that I am not a charlatan. Despite comments some of my esteemed colleagues may have espoused in the past," Jerry replied when he judged the other man, the highest authority of the University, had stopped speaking, and carefully not looking at certain people there. "My field of study is a valid albeit remarkably subtle one. We have shown sufficient results over the years even if those results are annoyingly difficult to reproduce to amply demonstrate that far more than random chance was at play."
"Which is the only reason your department still exists," Sir Richard commented slightly acidly.
"Quite. However, what was brought to our attention two weeks ago has blown so far past 'random chance' that it's almost amusing. Completely reproducible on-demand telekinetic abilities in three separate individuals is, in my opinion and that of my team and associated researchers, a truly game-changing event we must devote any required resources to. As you rightly point out, this is a moment that will redefine so many fundamental assumptions about almost every aspect of scientific theory that it stands on a par with evolutionary theory or nuclear fission. More so, I believe."
"There are at least three Nobel prizes coming out of this work, just on what we found with one day's investigation," Peter Young put in next to him, his voice quiet but firm. Farouk, who was on his other side, nodded agreement. Sir Richard glanced at each man, then looked at the blank screen, before picking up the sheaf of papers in front of him and studying them again. He flipped through the pages, stopping in a few places, before putting them down once more and carefully straightening the stack. Meeting Jerry's eyes again he didn't say anything for a few seconds, before finally sighing very faintly.
"I would comment that extraordinary claims, which these very much are, require extraordinary evidence, but rather to my surprise you appear to possess exactly that. Despite it clearly going against almost everything I thought I understood about how the world works…" The older man shook his head in mild disbelief. "If it was just you, I would have a hard time accepting it, but either you've managed to pull the wool over the eyes of at least a dozen highly competent experts in various disciplines, or you really have managed to prove your case in a somewhat startling manner." He looked around at the other people there, which included everyone who'd been working with Jerry's team along with half a dozen researchers from other departments who had been examining his evidence with a wide variety of exclamations of disbelief and growing excitement.
"We've got hours of video from multiple view angles, hundreds of megabytes of computer sensor readings, the MRI scans, medical write-ups, biological samples, and every other form of data we could think of to collect and had the ability to at the time," Farouk said. "Along with at least two dozen eye witnesses. If there is a trick involved, it's one that two dentists and a ten year old girl managed to pull with no equipment or any other props, for an entire day, without slipping once." He shrugged a little as Sir Richard nodded slowly. "I admit I had a hard time myself, Vice Chancellor, but I saw it with my own eyes, over and over again. It's as real as this table is." He tapped the surface in front of him with one finger.
No one said anything for another couple of minutes as they waited for the Vice Chancellor to make a decision. Even the non-affiliated researchers seemed a little anxious by now, Jerry noticed. He was doing his best not to sweat.
Eventually Sir Richard leaned to the side and had a very quiet conversation with one of the administration people he'd brought, the woman pulling out a folder and looking through it, finally handing him a couple of sheets of paper. He read them, asked a question that Jerry didn't catch, nodding at the answer, before reaching into his pocket and retrieving a gold pen. With this he signed both sheets, handing them back to the woman who filed them away. As he put his pen back into his pocket, he met Jerry's eyes. "All right, Doctor Langham. You have your authorization to expand your department to include the study of the new field of Psionics, and a suitable budget for researching this phenomenon. Your evidence is sufficiently convincing. And I can hardly allow something of this magnitude to potentially slip away to somewhere like Cambridge, after all." He smiled a little thinly as Jerry held his breath, nodding as calmly as he could.
"Please attempt to avoid anything that could bring the name of this august institute into disrepute. We have nearly a thousand years of reputation to maintain after all."
"Of course, sir," Jerry managed to say although he wanted to jump up and down in glee. "We intend to proceed with the utmost scientific integrity."
"See that you do. And we'll revisit this in six months when we should with luck have some firmer idea of precisely what it is that you've had handed to you." Sir Richard smiled rather more widely, causing several of them to chuckle.
"I'm looking forward to finding that out myself," Jerry commented wryly.
"Indeed." The Vice Chancellor picked up the other document that was sitting off to one side and regarded it with a raised eyebrow. "Ten years old, you say?" he commented as he leafed through Hermione's book with a somewhat bemused expression on his face. Jerry nodded. "Extraordinary…" He shook his head in respectful wonder. "See that you persuade her to do her higher studies here if you can. Regardless of whether she is factually correct she clearly has a first rate mind we should encourage."
"I'm almost certain she is factually correct," Jerry replied, glancing at Farouk who nodded agreement. "Everything in her thesis that we have so far been able to understand does seem to agree perfectly with our observations, and goes a long way to providing at least the outline of a theoretical basis for what we've recorded. She's put a lot of work into this field in the last two years, more in fact than I can easily believe." He shrugged almost helplessly. "I would say that at the moment she is the world expert in the field of Psionics, having essentially invented it from nothing."
Sir Richard nodded absently, still perusing one page, his eyebrows up. "Absolutely fascinating," he murmured almost inaudibly. More loudly, he added as he closed the book and slid it over to Jerry, "Subject to a little more verification I feel this is sufficient for a suitable academic recognition. Is she able to defend her thesis adequately?"
Jerry snorted with laughter. "We had half a dozen full professors questioning her on it for two solid hours and she answered every single query without hesitation, and with the aplomb of someone twenty years older. That girl absolutely terrifies me in some ways. If she's like that now what's she going to be like in a decade?"
"Impressive," Sir Richard said with a small grin. "A DSc candidate, do you think?"
"Definitely. It would also be hilarious to see the expressions of certain people when they found out." Jerry returned the grin, as a number of the others laughed.
"We'll have to see how we go, then," the Vice Chancellor remarked. He glanced at his watch. "I think in that case we're finished here for today. The relevant actions will take place in the next day or two, as usual. I would suggest that you consider your next move, and discuss with the Grangers when they would be able to attend for a longer period of research. I will watch your progress with great interest, Doctor Langham. Good luck." He stood, as did his two associates, nodded to them all, and left.
Jerry let out a long exhalation of mixed relief and joy, before Farouk slapped him on the back. "That went well," he said mildly, trying not to faint as the tension left him.
"Told you they'd give you all the money," his friend chuckled.
"You did. Hopefully it's enough." Jerry leaned back in the chair and reflected that while very stressful the meeting had gone much more smoothly than he'd expected. Especially after the complete chaos of the first meeting with the Registrar and several of the people currently discussing the subject around the table. There were still a few who weren't completely convinced that this was real, but most of them had decided the evidence was strong enough that it warranted further examination. He was pretty certain that by the time they actually saw the Grangers in action the holdouts would drop their objections.
There was something about watching an object lift off a table and float around the room while a small girl grinned at you that made a believer of almost anyone…
He wondered just how large an object she could do that to. An upper limit of several pounds seemed plausible, even if a little unexpected, but he'd live in hope.
"Going to have to work out who else we need for this work," Farouk put in, disturbing him from his ruminations.
"Yes," he agreed with a nod, turning to his friend. "I think we should get together later and discuss that, when we've had a chance to think about it. Right now I'm a little too keyed up after all this to really put my mind to it properly." He waved a vague hand at the room, making Farouk laugh.
"I'm not surprised. I was about to pass out myself until he agreed."
"We definitely need Hawking if we can get him here," Christine, who'd been silent the entire time but listening intently, put in, causing him and his colleagues to look at her then each other.
"Think we can?" Peter asked curiously. "I doubt we want to spread this too far at the moment, it'll attract far too much attention which will just get in the way. We don't want the papers turning up and being awkward right now, we've got work to do. And the spin they'd put on it wouldn't help anyone."
Jerry shuddered slightly, remembering the last time a reporter became interested in his department. That had taken months to go away.
"No, we do not want the papers poking around right now," he agreed with feeling, making Christine look mildly amused.
"That was rather funny but I can see why you would want to avoid a repeat," she chuckled. "Look, I have a few contacts at Cambridge in the physics department, and I've met the chap once years ago at a conference in Edinburgh. I can make some discreet enquiries and see if I can arrange to get him and a couple of his colleagues to come down for a meeting, without letting too many details slip. We really do need someone of his level to understand some of this. Our own people are beyond excellent but that man is in a class of his own."
"True enough. All right, if you can pull that off I'll definitely owe you a pint or two." Jerry smiled at her. Glancing at the clock on the far wall, he added, "Speaking of which, it's close enough to pub time that I think calling it a day would be worth it. I need a drink after that, and time to let everything sink in. We can pick this up tomorrow."
"Fair enough, and I agree," she replied. "First round's on you."
With a nod he got up, feeling abruptly a little weary but under that incredibly excited. Things were going to move very quickly now, he felt as he followed the others out of the room and headed downstairs. Tomorrow, once they had a rough idea of their next move, he'd call Michael Granger and discuss when the family could come back for a much more extensive round of tests. Which they were going to have their hands full designing, but at least now money and resources weren't an issue.
He could hardly wait to see what they learned, and suspected that it was going to be even more remarkable than they'd so far discovered.
Yes. This was going to be a real wake-up call to the academic world, when he could eventually publish his results and prove once and for all that parapsychology was a real science.
He could hardly wait to see the faces of certain past critics…
Something to look forward to, he thought with a small contented smirk.
Leaning forward with a look of concentration, Hermione delicately soldered the last three wires onto the back of the veroboard construction sitting on the desk in front of her, then put the iron back in the stand having wiped the tip free of solder on the damp sponge. Holding out her hand she plucked the hovering multimeter leads out of the air before carefully probing the new connections, smiling to herself when she got the desired readings. A moment later she let the meter land on the desk and coil the leads neatly out of the way without really paying much attention as she picked the hopefully completed project up and turned it over in her hands.
"With luck this will finally work properly, Mr Boots," she announced to the cat who was curled up on her pillow watching her with one half-closed eye. He responded with a little mrrp and closed it fully, stretching his legs before curling up into a ball. She shook her head with a small grin. He was nice company, but he wasn't really a good engineer. No ability to keep his attention on things, that was his problem.
A few minutes work had the power rails tested once again, just to be safe, and the new chips fitted to their sockets. Snapping the board into the standoffs she'd mounted into the box that would house this system she plugged the ribbon cable coming out of the board into the 1MHz bus connector on the bottom of the BBC Master computer, then put everything into place on the desk. Turning the computer on she watched the holographic display come to life with a nod of satisfaction. She pulled out a drawer from her desk and flipped through a stack of floppy disks, finding the right one quickly, checked the label to be certain, and inserted it into the disk drive.
A quick command loaded the program she'd been writing and she started carefully scanning through it, while referring to her copious notes, along with the Birnbaum 6502 assembly language book. After a while she made a few more notes, then began typing.
It took her nearly an hour to make the changes she needed to her program but she finally got it into a state she was happy with. Running it, she watched the display as the assembler parsed, built, and executed the code, nothing obviously happening as a result although the printed message indicated it was indeed running. Satisfied that so far things were going well, she turned back to her prototype and picked up the logic probe her father had bought for her after they'd got back from Oxford. Prodding IC pins she noted how the LEDs on the probe blinked, smiling when all of the required signals seemed to indeed be present and believable.
Putting the probe down again she stopped the program and made some changes to it, commenting out a few lines with REM statements and uncommenting others, then ran it again. This time the cursor came back after the program executed, which was what she'd expected as in theory her program was now running in the background on interrupts rather than as a foreground task.
Taking a short piece of wire with stripped ends, she carefully poked one end into an empty 40 pin chip socket on the board, then counted under her breath along the other side of the socket until she found the right pin. She gently touched the free end of the wire to that point and yipped in glee when a row of A's appeared on the display. "It works! Finally!" she said happily, causing Mr Boots to raise his head and look at her as if he was mildly irked she'd interrupted his nap. "Look, Mr Boots! I made the keyboard scan circuit work properly and fixed the character insertion program!" She poked the wire into another hole and got a series of B's this time. "That's brilliant. It took a lot more work than I was expecting, you see. But I managed it in the end."
Very pleased with herself, she pulled the wire free and put it down, then leaned back with a sensation of a job well done. That was part one of this project sorted. The next bit was the complicated one, but she was fairly certain it would work.
Hermione retrieved a small piece of veroboard that had two rows of pins soldered to it on the correct spacing to plug into the IC socket on her main board. Putting it in front of her she began carefully creating a very complex HOP array, one of the most involved ones she'd designed so far, starting with a positional lock subsystem referenced to the little plug-in module. Building on that she set up a series of visible light emitting blocks, each of which would when active produce a specific symbol at a specific position. As she did each one, a translucent immaterial replica of one of the keys of the computer's keyboard appeared hanging in the air in front of her, making her feel elated. So far, so good.
Once she had the entire keyboard designed and mapped out correctly, she paused for a moment to study it closely. Prodding a couple of the virtual keys she carefully felt the H-field construction, examining it for any problems. Her energy sense showed her that it was doing exactly what she'd aimed for, so she continued.
The next layer of the array was a mechanism to register a touch, which had taken her a while to come up with initially but was now functional. She thought for a second, then made a minor change to the whole design so each 'key' would change color as it was operated, to give a visible feedback that it was working. Again prodding a few of them the girl smiled as they did indeed briefly flash green, from the light blue the symbols normally were. "All right, that bit works too. Now to link it to the electrical signaling layer," she muttered mostly to herself, although Mr Boots was now sitting on the edge of the bed with his head cocked to the side, watching the translucent keyboard with apparent interest.
The last layer went together easily, as she'd already done something very similar before for the display interface, and once she'd finished she double-checked her work then tied it all off into a stable HOP array and relaxed. "Excellent," she announced happily. "It's done."
Reaching out with her mind she flicked the control inside the complex nested collection of H-field knots that deactivated the interface and the keyboard vanished. Picking up the little module she plugged it into the receptacle in her interface board, then flipped a small toggle switch that was dangling on a pair of wires to one side. The projected keyboard reappeared, floating a couple of inches above the desk. Hermione tried operating a few keys, and smiled widely when the characters she tapped appeared on the screen. "Perfect!" the girl exclaimed. After a few more prods, she frowned a little. "It needs some sort of tactile feedback though. It feels funny typing like this in the middle of the air even if you can see the keys," she commented to the cat. "Easy enough to fix though. All I need to do is this…"
It took very little time to edit the HOP array to have another section that added a small force-field subsystem under each key, set to be very weak so you could feel it but it wasn't a completely solid surface. That worked better, but after a little experimentation she finally settled on a pair of nested force-fields, one 'soft' one sitting a small distance above a solid one. The effect was remarkably similar to the physical keyboard, and allowed you to rest your fingers on it as easily as if you were typing on a real one.
Finally satisfied, she fixed her changes in place, then played with the keyboard she'd built for a while. It worked very well indeed, in her view.
Turning everything off, she unplugged the new device from her computer and assembled all the bits into the box she'd made for it, fitting the power switch into the relevant hole and tightening the nut, then screwing the lid on properly having neatly arranged all the wiring in the right manner. Finally she reconnected it and made sure it still worked, which it did.
"I need an EPROM programmer so I can put that program into a sideways ROM," she told Mr Boots, who flicked one ear at her and meowed. "It's very inconvenient having to load the program and run it each time, after all." That was the problem with her chosen field of study, it seemed to have a list of equipment and tools that only ever increased, she mused as she tidied her desk up and put everything away. Luckily for a lot of things she could cheat with telekinesis, which was certainly useful. When she'd done that she spent a little while making sure her notes were properly up to date as well, and that the schematic she'd drawn for the device had all the relevant annotations. She intended to send this one to Doctor Younan too, for his inspection and advice about whether it could be improved.
Sitting and looking at her floating display and keyboard, though, she felt that even if there was always something else she needed, on the whole she was quite pleased with how well she was doing. The keyboard was a good demonstration of some of the ideas she was working on for making the display itself interactive, allowed her to test them properly, and was actually useful to boot. Not to mention very futuristic and fun to use. The interactive display prototype was about two thirds finished by this point, but she'd decided to test some of the methodology she'd worked out which had led to this keyboard, and based on the results she was going to have to redesign a certain amount of the other project. On the positive side she now saw a method to simplify it a fair amount so it was hardly a waste of time. It all linked together in the end, and each aspect she learned showed her ways to do something else that much more efficiently.
She was convinced by now that not only was it entirely feasible to make a complete computer system as a HOP array, but that it wasn't going to take her as long as she'd initially thought it might. Admittedly her first attempt was still going to take months of work at least, and would probably be fairly basic, but her study of logic circuits had shown her it was definitely possible and relatively straightforward in some respects. H-Field manipulation really did correspond to electronic circuits remarkably accurately in a number of ways, which was undoubtedly going to be useful as she learned more of how to work with the field.
Taking the floppy disk out and replacing it with another one, she spent a while testing her work and also amusing herself by playing Chuckie Egg, occasionally giggling as Mr Boots tried to catch the little figures scuttling around in mid air. He had little luck but that didn't seem to dissuade him.
Eventually she heard her father calling her down for lunch so she turned everything off, jumped up, and went to wash her hands before eating. On the whole she was very satisfied with the weekend so far, and it was still quite early on Saturday.
"All right, Jerry, I'll discuss that with Helen and Hermione and work out how we can fit everything in. I can probably let you know later tonight, or possibly tomorrow morning, if that's acceptable?"
"More than, Michael. Thanks, and sorry for calling you on the weekend," the researcher's voice said, sounding a little embarrassed.
"Don't worry about it, it's fine," Michael assured the other man. "We're all quite excited about this whole thing ourselves. I'm very pleased you managed to get your funding sorted out."
"It was a rather fraught experience but in the end the administration saw the light," Jerry chuckled. "Although there are still a few people who won't fully believe it until we show them first hand."
"Easily arranged," Michael laughed. "Fine, then, as soon as we've worked out the schedule, we'll get back to you."
"Until then," Jerry replied happily. "Give your ladies my best."
"I will." Michael hung the phone up and leaned back in his desk chair, reaching out to pick up his day planner and flipping through it while making a few notes on the pad he'd scribbled various things the scientist had relayed. Nodding to himself he checked some dates, then got up, carrying the documents with him, to go in search of his wife and daughter. Both of them were in the back garden as it happened, enjoying the nice spring day which was a little chilly still but very sunny.
"Was that Doctor Langham?" Hermione asked, looking up from where she'd been lying on the grass reading a book. He nodded.
"Yes, he's keen on getting us all back soon to do a much more involved set of testing," Michael replied as he took a seat on one of the wooden garden chairs, putting his documents down next to it. He accepted the mug of tea his wife handed him with a smile, sipping from it, then rested it on the arm of the chair and looked at both of them. "By the sound of it he had a somewhat exciting time presenting his findings so far to the university administration, but in the end he talked to the Vice Chancellor himself who authorized what seems to be an entirely new department attached to the Parapsychology one." He grinned as Hermione looked intrigued. "Oxford now has a department of Psionics."
"Brilliant!" the girl said with a happy look. "I'm so pleased for him. I like Doctor Langham, he's a very intelligent and friendly man."
"And someone who will probably thank his lucky stars for the rest of his life that he met you, my girl," Michael chuckled before taking another sip of tea. "I suspect you might have saved his career with your own discoveries."
"That's nice," she giggled. "So now we need to work out when we can go back?"
"That's the plan, yes," he agreed, putting the half-empty mug down and retrieving the paperwork. "Your school doesn't let out for half term until the last week of May, so just over a month away. We can easily arrange a locum to cover our practice by then, and also rearrange various appointments, it's what we do for the holidays anyway. So let's see… There's that dental conference in Exeter we were going to go to on the second of June, last day of the term is the twenty fifth of May. Monday the twenty eighth is also a bank holiday. You go back on the fourth." He checked the calendar in his planner and nodded.
"How about this. We see if Jerry would like us to spend the week from the twenty sixth through the first at Oxford. We drive down on the afternoon of the twenty fifth. That gives us the weekend and all the next week. If they're up for working on the weekend we'd be available, or we could wander around Oxford or go and look around the area. Then on the next Friday evening when we finish up we drive down to Exeter and stay overnight there, letting us attend the conference on Saturday. That'll wind down in the late afternoon, and I don't really fancy the usual drinking session afterward, so we could leave then and pay a visit to your parents in Newton Abbot, Helen. It would only take an hour to get there."
Hermione had sat up and was listening with interest, while Helen was nodding slowly. "They'd like that, we haven't seen them since last summer. And we could explore Dartmoor again like we did then. A night and a day at Mum and Dad's and we come back here on Sunday night."
"Quite. A bit over a week off work for an early summer holiday with added scientific research," he chuckled, making a few notes. "Hermione? Does that seem reasonable to you too?"
"Yes, Daddy, it sounds fine, thank you," she replied, glancing to the side where Mr Boots had put in an appearance by falling off the fence between their garden and his home. She shook her head as he wandered over and dropped on his side next to her, purring, but reached out to stroke him even as she grinned. "Silly cat," she added fondly.
"And we could then take the holiday in France at the end of the summer as we'd originally planned, in late August," Michael went on, looking through the paperwork. "I can book the tickets on Monday."
"Which leaves most of the summer free, and if Jerry's group needs us again, we could go down over a weekend, assuming they're all right with that," Helen suggested.
"Love, they're so keen on us helping their research they'd probably agree to work midnight shifts without blinking an eye," he snorted, smiling at her. "He is very excited, to put it mildly."
"We could also, I suppose, visit for a weekend before then," his wife added thoughtfully. "We don't have anything critical planned this month, do we?"
"Don't think so, no," he replied as he checked his diary again. "Let's see… I've got another visit to London penciled in for the twelfth, but it's not something that's desperately urgent. I could easily rearrange it, it's only picking up some supplies and dropping off that broken compressor for a service."
"Followed by a visit to a certain bookshop, I assume?" she asked lightly, making him smile. Hermione giggled a little.
"Most likely. I expect Hermione would be up for another trip too." The girl nodded vigorously when he looked at her.
"I suppose I'd better come along to keep an eye on you both in that case," she sighed with mock irritation. He stuck his tongue out at her which made her laugh.
"Fine, that sounds like we've got it sorted out nicely, in that case," he said as he wrote a few entries then closed the book, dropping it next to the chair and putting his pen on top. Picking up his mug he finished the now rather cool tea and held it out with a beseeching look, causing his wife to roll her eyes but refill it. "I'll call Jerry back a little later and let him know."
Flopping onto her back, Hermione smiled at the clouds above them. "I can hardly wait to show Doctor Langham some of the more interesting things we didn't have a chance to mention last time," she said with a small giggle.
"Do try not to totally break the poor man's mind, sweetie," Helen commented as she picked up her own book and opened it. The girl raised her head and gave her parents a tiny evil smile, making Helen shake her head and Michael laugh.
"Oh dear. Poor science, I fear it doesn't know what's coming to confuse it," Helen mumbled. Michael and his daughter exchanged glances then collapsed laughing.
Mr Boots sat up, looked puzzled at the noise, before becoming distracted by a butterfly and running off to chase it around the garden.
Of course this inevitably resulted in him once more falling off the fence, this time ending up in the rain barrel accompanied by a great wailing and scrabbling. Hermione had to retrieve him while grumbling about cats that gave their species a bad name as her parents laughed again.
"Wow." Farouk looked around with a somewhat impressed feeling. "This is much better than I expected."
"I know," Jerry breathed, rubbing his hands together in glee. "So much space! It's enormous, we've got half the floor available. We can set up the EM shielded room in there, it'll be far larger than our old one, that can be for the computers, biology lab over here, electronics there…" He was grinning like a six year old on the morning of a particularly good Christmas.
They were standing in the middle of a substantially larger series of rooms and laboratories in the Biomedical Sciences building, next door to the Tinbergen building where Jerry's original department was. The university administration had arranged for them to take over this space which had been free for a couple of years since a previous research project moved offsite, since they were undoubtedly going to require more room for some of the experimental protocols that they'd spent the last three weeks designing. The sign on the door only said 'Parapsychology Adjunct Laboratory,' not mentioning Psionics at all as they were trying to keep the whole thing discreet for the time being. A lot of researchers were aware of what they were up to but they didn't want everyone knowing under the entirely sensible attitude that they could hardly get their work done if just anyone could wander in and get in the way.
And, as Jerry had worried, if the press got wind of any of this before they had all their ducks in a row there would be absolute chaos. They were annoying enough when some editor or reporter got the bright idea to do a piece on fortune telling or something of that nature and started asking idiotic questions while not listening to the answers.
Farouk had seen Jerry scowling and grumbling to himself having read the results of that sort of thing more than once before and it left his friend in a foul mood for days, while not exactly doing his reputation any good, no matter how carefully he phrased things. So the desire to avoid the same thing happening again was entirely reasonable. Obviously sooner or later everyone would find out about it, but the hope was to postpone that until they had a fully documented and rigorously peer-reviewed paper, or series of papers more likely, ready for publication.
He strongly suspected the chaos that would follow such a publication would be absolutely ridiculous, but for now, they had work to do. And somewhere to do it.
Walking through the rooms the pair made copious notes on where each sub-department should go, which facilities would need to be moved, changed, installed, or upgraded, who would best be situated where, and all the other tedious details of creating a project this complex. Jerry was almost vibrating with suppressed excitement the entire time, as to be honest he'd been doing since the moment the Grangers fell into his lap like a gift from above. Farouk could understand this as it was a life-changing moment if ever he'd seen one. He himself was still almost feeling like it was unreal even though he knew full well it was anything but.
"Good grief, this place is enormous," a familiar voice said from behind them, causing both men to look back. Christine was peering about with an expression of curiosity. She stuck her head into one of the side rooms, looked around, then walked over to join them. "You've certainly managed to fall on your feet with all this, Jerry," she added, waving at the area around them.
Jerry grinned happily. "I know, it's brilliant, isn't it? We've got about twenty pages of ideas for how to set everything up and where already and we've only been at it for two hours so far."
"Will was looking for you about twenty minutes ago," she commented, "He said he had some ideas of his own for experiments he wants to try."
"Haven't seen him yet," Jerry replied, glancing at the door. "I'm sure I'll bump into him later though."
"All right, just thought I'd mention it." The woman looked around again then shook her head a little. "Not bad at all. Oh, while I remember, would you like to meet Steven Hawking?" She smirked as both men snapped their gazes to her instantly.
"What?" Jerry squeaked.
"I made a few calls like I suggested after the meeting with the Vice Chancellor. We got lucky, Hawking is currently doing a lecture tour around the UK, and his next appearance is at Bath University on Monday. I managed to persuade his people to let him know we had something that he'd find interesting, and don't worry, I didn't say what it was, not in detail." She held up a hand even as Jerry started to say something, then dropped it when he aborted his comment. "It took some fast talking and a couple of favors, but the end result is that they'll stop in on the way to Bath tomorrow afternoon around one. He can spare four hours to look at your data. So I'd suggest you make a really convincing case."
Jerry and Farouk exchanged glances, then the former stepped forward and put his hands on Christine's shoulders. The woman met his eyes with his own, a tiny smile on her lips. "Christine, I think that almost makes up for all the ghostbuster comments," he said gravely.
Then he grinned like a lunatic. "Thank you."
"My pleasure, you twit. Let go of me."
He did so, still grinning. "I suppose we should probably put together a presentation, and work out what to say to persuade the greatest mathematician alive to work with us, in that case," he went on with a very cheerful note to his voice.
"To be honest I doubt you'll have all that much trouble when you show him the floating pen video," she chuckled. "That alone breaks so many theories it's bound to get his interest. As long as you can prove it's real."
"The only way to prove that is to get him to meet the Grangers," Farouk suggested thoughtfully, causing them to look at him, then each other.
"Tomorrow is a Saturday, isn't it?" Jerry queried. Farouk nodded. "It's short notice but we could call them and see if they can come down, it's only an hour or so from here," he continued. "I'm certain Hermione at least would jump at the chance to meet Steven Hawking aside from anything else. And they could give a live demonstration right in front of the man. If that doesn't convince him nothing will."
"Worth a shot," Farouk replied.
"All right, then, let's finish up here, then I'll call Michael and see what they say." Jerry looked satisfied and excited all over again. "This is going to be good."
"Try not to break the mind of the most famous scientist in the country," Christine commented, shaking her head, as she followed them on their way to investigate the last two rooms of the new department.
"I make no promises," Jerry retorted, making her sigh but smile as well.
Lying on her bed in the early evening, Hermione stroked Mr Boots with one hand while she cast her mind outwards via the energy sense, pushing it to the limit slowly and carefully as she did every night. Innumerable knots in the H-field passed through her purview, each one representing a specific object or living thing, many of which she by now was so familiar with as to almost consider them old friends. All the people surrounding her stood out against the dimmer background H-field disturbances of plants and animals, right down to bacteria if she concentrated hard enough. And below those were all the non-living things, power lines in buildings and underground being easy to sense, with other structures less so but still obviously artificial if nothing else than because they tended to be much more organized than nature provided for.
Even now she was absolutely fascinated by just how detailed the image she could draw in her mind through only this method was. Each night it got clearer, and went that little bit further. By now she was up to a good three and a half miles if she really pushed it, and certain things were detectable even further than that if she 'aimed' her sense in a specific direction.
Curiously she tried pushing her sense out as far as possible directly towards London, letting it collapse back everywhere else, just to see if she could feel the Charing Cross anomaly from here. After a few minutes of effort that left her slightly sweating with strain, she was almost convinced that there was something there, but it was so remarkably faint it might well have been her imagination. That didn't surprise her as it was a terribly long way past her normal range, although on the other hand the strange pseudo-hop in use there did radiate energy like it was going out of style.
Relaxing she gave up on that, as it was only a distraction, and she was fairly certain that in time it would become possible considering that her range was still steadily growing even if somewhat slowly. Idly she tried the same trick towards Oxford and whatever was going on with the H-field around there, but didn't feel anything which she'd more or less expected. That anomaly was so subtle that even in the middle of it, she had barely been able to tell it was there. And she still had no idea what the cause was even after a lot of thinking, and looking at maps of the area to see if anything odd stood out.
Tickling Mr Boots under the chin and smiling at the purr, she returned her attention closer to home and mentally poked around in the general area. Her parents were obvious downstairs, watching the telly, and she could have picked them out from miles away due to their unique and considerably stronger than everyone else's H-field imprint. She could tell her father was doing something much like she was although on a much smaller scale and felt pleased. Both of them were practicing regularly with their telekinesis, which was coming along nicely, and the energy sense. She had a huge head start on them but even so they were progressing well. Hermione made a mental note to see how her grandmother was coming along as she hadn't seen the older woman for a couple of weeks now.
Abruptly her attention was attracted to a spot about two miles away, where one of the odd nearly-HOP things those unknown people carried had appeared out of nowhere. She fixed her energy sense on it, concentrating hard. Rather to her surprise she actually recognized this particular H-field distortion. It was the same one she'd spotted in London the first time, the one the older woman with gray hair and a severe expression had been carrying. Right before it had vanished, in exactly the same way it had now just appeared out of the blue. How had it managed that trick, she wondered. There had been no sign of it earlier anywhere in range and now there it was. Perhaps because whoever had it had turned it on or off? That seemed a little unlikely as the thing was fearsomely complex and turning it off would essentially mean deconstructing the entire array. Whether it was active or not would make little difference to how detectable the H-field distortion was. Or possibly…
She blinked in surprise halfway through trying to work out other answers to the conundrum. "Oh," she breathed in wonder. The specific and highly recognizable H-field signature of whatever the things really were had disappeared again, but at almost exactly the same time reappeared over a mile from the first position, slightly closer to her and now off to the south rather than the east.
"It's teleporting!" she exclaimed faintly, both rather shocked and very, very intrigued. "That's brilliant… I wonder how it does that?" Concentrating as hard as possible she watched every detail of the device she could make out from this range, wishing it was close enough to get a really good look at. The person carrying it was apparently now walking, as it was moving slowly down a street in the more rural area between her town and the next one over. A couple of times a complex H-field manipulation happened, clearly originating from the device, which she was even more convinced now was some sort of tool. Or possibly entire toolbox considering how complicated the thing seemed to be. A swiss army HOP, she thought with a giggle, still watching in fascination. A very, very overcomplicated and inefficient one, true, but still extremely interesting, both in outcome and implications.
Memorizing each of the discrete operations as they happened, as well as she could, Hermione monitored the progress of the tool's owner as whoever it was wandered around for a while, covering a few hundred yards, and finally stopping for about thirty seconds. After that it moved again, only a few yards, then went more or less stationary. From what she could tell they'd gone into a house, where they remained for about thirty minutes. Half a dozen more H-field manipulations occurred during this time. Eventually the person, presumably the old woman, left the house and walked back the way they'd come. She watched the entire time in complete fascination, devoting her whole concentration to observing every little detail she could extract from the opportunity presented. A hundred yards away from the house they'd visited the person went down a side street and teleported away once more, this time not appearing anywhere in her range.
The girl lay in bed for another couple of minutes carefully checking for any sign of the tool-wielder, without success, then abruptly sat up. Mr Boots complained mildly about the disturbance but rolled over and went back to dozing while Hermione grabbed for her notebook and a pen. Scribbling quickly she jotted down several pages of her observations, some notations on what she'd decoded of the various H-field manipulations for future examination, and a full two pages on her thoughts on how the teleportation trick had been carried out.
It gave her a lot of ideas, and linked rather nicely to some of her earlier ones. Quite a few of the more esoteric psionic concepts appeared more amenable to implementation than she'd initially realized, she thought as she put the notebook down again and lay back on the bed. Clearly these strange people had managed to work out a method to perform teleportation, which proved it was possible, although from what she'd seen they were again doing it in a way that seemed to use as much energy as possible in the process for reasons she really didn't understand yet.
While she was cogitating the phone rang and she was dimly aware of her father getting up to answering it, having a conversation, then climbing the stairs. He stopped outside her room and leaned in the half-open door, the cordless phone handset in his hand. He was wearing a somewhat odd smile. "Hermione?" he said.
"Yes, Daddy?" she replied, sitting up again and looking at him curiously.
"Fancy a trip to Oxford tomorrow to meet Professor Hawking?"
Her father smirked at how wide her eyes became. Putting the phone to his ear he wryly said, "I think she'll say yes when she recovers from the shock, Jerry. We'll see you there around eleven in the morning. No, it's no bother, I'm as interested as your people are to see what is behind all this in the end." He listened for a moment during which Hermione collected herself. "Quite. Well, I suppose we'll see soon enough. Bye." Pressing the disconnect button with his thumb he collapsed the short aerial and lowered the phone, looking amused at his daughter's attempt to not grin like a lunatic.
"Supper is ready in ten minutes too, by the way, so come on down."
Hermione hopped to her feet and followed him downstairs, still smiling madly. Not only did she have an opportunity to show her holographic keyboard off earlier than she'd expected, but she was going to meet one of the smartest people on the planet.
Tomorrow was going to be a good day to do science, she felt sure.