Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (14 page)

***

Roger and Ell were dropped off by his car at the
Medical
School
. She’d slumped low in his passenger seat as they left Quantum Research and the one paparazzo still following her after months of “boring” hadn’t seen her go. In the cooler weather of
early October
she was wearing a ball cap which covered her
strawberry blond
hair
. She hoped that
helped
disguise her
some too.

They walked to the
Neuroscience
Research
Building
through the crisp morning air. Despite the
hat
one wide eyed student recognized Ell and turned to watch her climb the stairs. Inside Roger led the way to Dr. Bynewicz’ lab
and knocked on the door.

Bynewicz looked up and said, “Roger! Come on in, and who’s this with you?”
Benewicz thought
he’d
brought
an undergraduate. Or was this just someone
who’d
come
to visit
Bynewicz
at the same time as Roger?
Bynewicz’
eyebrows rose, “Oh! Sorry Ms. Donsaii. I didn’t recognize you in the…” Bynewicz
gestured
at
Ell’s
head.

“Oh, sorry Dr. Bynewicz,” Ell said taking off her hat. “Trying to look anonymous.”

Bynewicz gaze stuck to her for a moment
,
surprised to see
that
she was just as pretty as she looked in
the
photos that Bynewicz had always assumed were retouched. “Well,” she looked at Roger, “did you bring me the big port?”

Roger grinned and pulled out a 5 centimeter port pair.
“Did you get the heavy
duty circuit put in? It draws eight kilo
watts.”

“Yeah, I got it. Right over here.
” She waved Roger over. They plugged in the port and watched the opening appear and disappear when Roger switched it on and off.

They all sat down and Bynewicz said, “
So what we’re finding with the mice is that they
do
appear to be having seizures
as best we can tell
. We’ve tried a number of differen
t anti seizure medications. The meds
don’t seem to be able to prevent the seizures
though they diminish the visible convulsions
. We’ve even given general anesthesia like for ECT.
Under anesthesia
of course,
the mice
d
on’t have an observable seizure
,
but they still appear to be postictal when they awaken from the anesthetic.”

“ECT?”

“Electro convulsive therapy. A treatment still used for a few patients who do not respond well to
the new
er
anti depressant medications.”

“Postictal?”

“A drowsy and confused state experienced after a seizure.
” Bynewicz frowned,
“
Essentially I wouldn’t want to put my head through a port unless my life depended on it. I can envision it being used for rescuing people from the Space Station or a sinking ship or something but not for routine transport.”

“Any other ideas on means to prevent the seizures?”

“Not so far
,
but we might
learn
a
lot
about seizures by inducing them with your port
s
. Maybe that’ll give us some ideas. I
have
had a medical
idea for your ports that’s unrelated to transport and seizures though.”

Ell put up a finger, “Sorry, I have a call. Y
ou guys keep talking,” she stood and stepped back
.

Roger was distracted because
Ell’s
AI
rarely
put calls through to her when she was talking
to people. I
t must be pretty important. He tried to focus back on Bynewicz but heard
Ell
say, “Yes sir. Thank you sir.”
They glanced at
Ell
who was smiling
. “Yes sir. Of course sir. I’ll be there. Thank you sir.” She stepped back over and sat down again, focusing on Bynewicz, “So what’s your idea Dr. Bynewicz?”

Bynewicz smiled at her, “Looked like you got some good news?”

Ell stared
contemplatively
at her for a moment, then shrugged and grinned
shyly
, “Nobel.”

Bynewicz brow furrowed, “Who?”

Roger leap
t
out of his chair, “Holy shit! You got the Nobel?!”

Ell
nodded minutely and
made little downward pushing motions with her hands
as if to calm him
.
She turned back to Bynewicz and smiled ex
pectantly, raising her eyebrows to indicate attentiveness.

Roger jumped into the air, pumping his fist. “Yes!!!
I knew you’d get it!
” He
shouted and
turned back to her, “We’ve got to go celebrate!!!”

Ell’s brow furrowed slightly despite her irrepressible crooked grin
, “OK, but first let’s hear what Dr. Bynewicz has to say?”

Roger said, “You’ve got to be kidding!” He turned to Bynewicz, “
With all due respect, Doctor
, but,” Roger turned wide eyed to Ell, “
holy crap
! We’ve
got
to go celebrate!”

Ell made more tamping motions at Roger, “We
can
celebrate.
But
I want to hear what Dr. Bynewicz has to say.” She turned back to the wide eyed Bynewicz.

Bynewicz
’ eyes were wide. She
said, “The Nobel Prize? For your ports?”

“
Oh…
no
Ma’am
. For the original paper a few years back
about
the math
describing
the
5th dimension that quantum effects occur through. The
PGR
chips and the ports
are
based
on that math though.”

Stunned, Bynewicz
simply
said “Oh.”

“You had another idea for how we could use the ports in medicine?”
Ell prompted.

Bynewicz blinked slowly then said, “Uh, yes.
Diabetes. A port implanted in the body could be used to sample glucose levels and dispense insulin. Th
at
would avoid the
probe-
catheter
s
in use now. Those
have to be removed and reinserted every few days.

Ell said, “Oh, that
is
a great idea! Would you be able to develop such devices?”

Bynewicz appeared to be taken aback. “Oh no! I’m not a diabetes expert.” She paused, then said. “My best friend is though
…
Should I
talk to her?”

Ell said, “
Sure
! Let us know
...
we’d love to see something like that happen.”

Bynewicz said, “It can take years and huge amounts of funding to get something like that approved by the FDA. It might be best to try to sell the idea to one of the big pharmaceutical companies?”

Ell raised her eyebrows, “OK, but if you want to do it yourselves, I’m sure the investors that supported D5R would be happy to invest.”

They said their goodbyes to
a dazed looking
Bynewicz and walked outside, Ell
looked around
, “Did you call your car?”

Roger stared at her, “You won the
Nobel
girl! And all you’re thinking about is whether I called my car?!” He grabbed her in a crushing hug and started jumping up and down.

***

James Epaulding looked up at a knock on his door. Ed Candela stood there looking grim. Epaulding raised his eyebrows, “What’s the problem of the day Ed?”

“Hearth-Daster. Every time we refine its orbit and trajectory it seems to
get worse. Right now Earth is
off center in
the cone of its projected path
but our latest projections say it has about a
1
5% chance of hitting us.”

The color drained out of Epaulding’s face. “Oh Jeez!”

“Yeah,” Candela sighed. “It’s probably quite a bit worse
. G
ravitational stress
es
will probably break it up
so
even a near miss will result in some fragments hitting the earth.”

“Oh my God!
Couldn’t it
still be pushed off by out gassing as it passes the sun?”

“
Sure. It cou
ld also be pushed even closer. Bu
t
it
probably isn’t going to be turned into a no threat situation.”

“Word hasn’t gotten out has it?”

“No, but you know it’s just a matter of time before it leaks somehow.
Daster, the guy that found it, has been calling to ask if we’ve noticed that it’s a threat.
”

“How much does it mass?”

“
Well, it’s small as comets go, 8
00-
1,0
00 meters diameter. Still a borderline extinction event at
around
3
00 m
illion tons.
If the whole thing hits
us, some
people might survive but i
t would
certainly destroy civilization.”

Epaulding closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest of his chair, both hands on the armrests. “Have you looked over the
strategies laid out by McNamara
’s
committee back, what, ten years ago or so?”

“Not yet sir. I wanted to make you aware of the situation
first.  I a
m planning to get a team started reviewing the possible strategies as soon as we’re done.”

“OK, send me your current data and I’ll review the McNamara strategies myself. I’m going to need to prepare a presentation for the President.”

***

Emma ran her hands through her hair. “And you’re
sure
this worked before?”

Ell tilted her head and her eyes unfocused for a moment. “Pretty sure. The portal was microscopic so it’s pretty hard to be
completely sure. Tell me what you’ve
been
doing
so far?”

Emma’s head was tilted down and she turned her eyes to look balefully
up
at Ell through her bangs.
“
We’ve been
using the machine to spray
entangled buckyballs in
10mm diameter
circles like you said. Pres
umably a lot of pairs have one member near the inside of the circle and the other member outside the circle. Then we energize the metal the circle’s painted on, generating the waveform you specified.
Sweeping the frequency I thought I saw the center of the circle go fuzzy once
,
but I’ve never been able to repeat it.
”

Ell narrowed her eyes a moment then shrugged, “Can I see your setup?”

Emma blew out a breath that lifted her bangs a little and said, “Sure.”

Emma watched Ell study her one ended port, then lean back and study her HUD while talking to her AI. Emma
narrowed
her eyes
with a little envy
. Quantum
Research
had upgraded Emma’s AI to a near supercomputer model like the other scientists that worked
for
the branches of D5R. It was amazing what Emma’s AI could do with all that computing power. Especially since she didn’t need to carry the
CPU
around with her. Her headband was connected to the physical computer with one of the
PGR
chips that were based on Ell’s paper.  However, Emma had heard rumors that Ell’s AI was running on a true supercomputer, in fact one of the most powerful
computers
currently existing
in the world! Emma supposed that if she was running Quantum Research she’d give the resident genius all the computing power she could use too but she wondered what it could actually do? Her own AI seemed much more intuitive and able to grasp what she wanted with all that power available. What could Ell’s
AI
do?