Tiona (a sequel to "Vaz") (10 page)

***

Zack White strapped on the body harness, tightened the tension straps, and started jogging on their little treadmill. They were only a little way into their trip to Kadoma and he was already sick of it. Sick of the food, sick of weightlessness, sick of the tiny closet they were riding in, sick of Ralph and sick of the daily updates from mission control.

Ralph turned and looked at him. Zack thought Ralph looked a little frazzled too. Ralph said, “How you doing Sunshine?”

Zack spread a big smile across his face, “Freakin’-A great! Couldn’t be any better! Nowhere I’d rather be! Wanna go have a beer?”

Ralph snorted, “You lie about as well as you make love.”

Zack arched an eyebrow, “So you’re sayin’ I’m the world’s greatest liar
too
?”

***

Vaz turned back to his notes. He read them carefully, line by line, making sure he hadn’t skimmed over anything important.

Next he examined his set up again. It seemed just like he remembered Tiona’s set up. It looked like the video recording his AI had made of Tiona’s set up. The graphene membranes Tiona’d given him were sitting in a glass dish that was a little bit different than Tiona’s, but Vaz couldn’t imagine how the shape of the glass dish could make a difference. Vaz had purchased exactly the same brand and model of high-frequency current generator that Tiona was using in her lab. The settings were the same. The wires from the current generator to the electrodes weren’t just the same gauge and specifications, they’d come from the same manufacturer. The electrodes were the same model and manufacture as the ones Tiona had in her lab.

Vaz closed his eyes and thought for a moment. He opened them and looked around the lab without seeing anything he thought could be affecting the experiment. His right hand reached out and idly switched on the current again. His eyes went to the membranes which lay calmly in the dish—none of the wiggling that he’d seen in Tiona’s membranes. Next his eyes slid to the readouts. His measurements of the conduction in the membranes showed less resistance than Tiona had found in her experiment.

Essentially, Vaz had replicated Tiona’s experiment as perfectly as he could. The results were the same except the membranes didn’t move and conduction in the membranes was better. He pursed his lips, then switched off the current generator and closed his eyes again. If the current was moving the membranes in Tiona’s set up, it only seemed reasonable that some of the power would be consumed to move them. Such a power loss would look like increased resistance to the instruments.

But why aren’t the membranes moving in my set up?!

Vaz got up and walked over to the corner of the lab. He started with 40 pull-ups, 80 pushups, and 80 sit-ups. Then he quickly pulled on his gloves and started pounding his heavy bag.

No endorphin release yet, so Vaz started over on the pull-ups. He got all the way through the cycle to pounding the heavy bag again before endorphins suddenly poured into his system.

He stopped, gently dancing in place and thinking about Tiona’s experiment, hoping to experience the transcendent state that endorphin release sometimes gave him. Hoping that such a transcendent state would let him understand what had gone wrong. He felt good, but comprehension never came.

When his breathing had slowed, Vaz spoke to his AI. “Please connect me to Tiona.”

A few moments later Vaz heard his daughter’s voice. “Hey Dad, what’s up?”

“They don’t move in my set up!”

“What?”

“They don’t move!”

“
What
don’t move?”

“Your doped membranes. I’ve replicated your set up, but when I run your experiment your doped membranes lie still. Either the membranes you gave me are different, or something else is different in my set up from yours.”

“Oh. Well, I’m not sure what it would be.”

“Tiona! This is important! Can you bring home some of your membranes that you’ve actually seen move for me to try in my set up?”

“Sure. I’ll be home at the end of next week. I’ll bring them then.”

There was a long pause. Vaz didn’t want to go to Chapel Hill, but he
really
didn’t want to wait until the end of next week either. Finally, he said, “Can I bring the membranes you gave me back over there and try them in your set up?”

“Sure,” Tiona said with some surprise. She knew how much her dad hated going places and had been astonished when he came over the first time. “When did you want to do it?”

“I could be there in an hour.”

Tiona laughed, “It’s late! I’d be leaving to go to dinner then. How about tomorrow?”

“Okay,” Vaz said reluctantly. “What time?”

They settled on 11 o’clock. Tiona had a lab meeting earlier in the morning.

***

As they waited for Dr. Eisner to arrive for their lab meeting, Nolan glanced at Tiona several times. He wanted to open a conversation with her somehow, but couldn’t think how to start it. He’d considered telling her that he’d seen her at the Cat’s Cradle, but now that several days had passed he felt like it would be a little weird to bring that up.

Just as Nolan had opened his mouth to ask Tiona how her project was going, Eisner came in. Then Nolan realized that asking her how her project was going right before Eisner came in to hear about both of their projects would have seemed odd in its own right.

Nolan brought Dr. Eisner up to date on some of the physical tests he’d been doing on his multi-monolayer graphene.

In return, Eisner sent him a file containing their proposed patent application. Eisner said, “Patent language is bizarre, so you’re probably going to feel like you don’t really know what they’re saying. You’ll especially wonder whether they’re really patenting
your
idea and whether the patent they’re applying for will actually protect you from infringement. Unfortunately, you’ll have to trust them. That’s their field; you have to hope that they’re good at it. What you want to do is try to make sure they’ve got their facts correct.”

Nolan nodded his understanding, thinking to himself that the patent’s wording couldn’t actually be that hard to understand.

Eisner turned to Tiona. Unfortunately, Tiona only had a series of negative results. She’d tried several different doping schemes without any real improvement in conduction, either at room temperature or at low temperatures. She and Eisner both looked pretty frustrated, but Tiona actually had some good suggestions for new doping schemes to try.

As Tiona and Eisner discussed possible strategies for her experiment, Nolan suddenly had an idea. It seemed to him that they should try titanium. Several of the “high temperature” superconductors had titanium in them and he’d just realized that none of the schemes Tiona had used had included titanium so far. By his understanding of their theory of graphene doping it seemed like titanium should fit the profile.

Nolan started to open his mouth and suggest titanium to the two of them, but then suddenly realized it was something he might be able to talk to Tiona about away from the meeting. Something they had in common that would let him carry on a conversation with her.

He was startled to realize just how much he wanted to have such a conversation.

After the lab meeting broke up and Nolan got back to the lab with Tiona, he turned to her to say something about titanium. Then he decided that she would wonder why he didn’t bring it up back in the lab meeting. Instead he turned back to his desk. He sat sightlessly staring at his paper on his screen for a moment. Then he realized he could check to see whether titanium might actually fit their theory like he thought it would. He began mumbling to his AI and pulling up different screens.

After working on it for about thirty minutes, Nolan decided that he didn’t really understand the math they’d been using well enough to know for sure whether titanium might fit. However, he felt fairly confident that it was at least worth a try.

Nolan turned to talk to Tiona, hoping she wasn’t just about to leave to take her final or something like that. He realized she might be studying rather than thinking about her experiment, but didn’t think she’d mind discussing an idea.

She was gone!

Nolan wondered how she’d left the lab without his noticing, but realized that he’d probably been deep in thought, trying to evaluate titanium as a possibility for her. When he was focused, he often lost touch with what went on around him.

As Nolan turned back to his own desk, the lab door opened. He looked back around and saw Tiona coming in. To his surprise, her hairless father was right behind her. “Hi Mr. Gettnor,” Nolan said.

Gettnor blinked at him for a moment, then said, “Hello.”

Nolan had the distinct feeling that Gettnor didn’t remember his name and wasn’t
quite
sure who he was. Nolan had a moderately autistic cousin who had trouble with that kind of stuff, so he decided to help. “I’m Nolan, Tiona’s lab partner that precipitates multi-monolayer graphene.”

Gettnor’s eyes widened in recognition, “Oh yeah! I’ve been thinking about your method. You should try energizing your copper disc with a low voltage. I think your precipitation would proceed much more rapidly.”

Nolan was surprised by the suggestion and sat pondering it a moment. When Nolan didn’t say anything, Gettnor’s eyes drifted over to Tiona’s set up. Once Gettnor focused on Tiona’s stuff, he seemed to lose all interest in Nolan and stepped over to begin carefully studying her equipment. He started murmuring to his AI.

Nolan looked at Tiona who appeared to be a little embarrassed by her father’s behavior.
And to think how embarrassed I was by my parents,
he thought
. At least my folks are pretty normal. I think Tiona’s dad must fall somewhere on the Asperger’s-autism spectrum. That had to be rough when she was growing up.

Tiona had turned to look at her experiment with her father, so Nolan turned back to his own work. At first he started looking through the patent application Eisner had sent him. Something about the application tickled his thoughts back to what Gettnor had said about applying a voltage. Nolan’s eyes widened,
that might actually work!
He looked back over at Tiona and her father who were mumbling over her set up. He turned to his own equipment and started thinking about how he could set it up so he could apply such a voltage.

Lost in thought, Nolan barely noticed when Tiona’s father suddenly exclaimed behind him.

Tiona’s embarrassment over the fact that her father barely seemed to recognize her lab partner had tripled when Nolan obviously realized that fact. It was even worse when Nolan made it very evident by introducing himself and reminding Tiona’s dad how they’d met before. She knew it was a kindness on Nolan’s part, which she appreciated, but she wished her dad’s idiosyncrasies didn’t make kindness necessary. She felt even worse about the fact that her dad had taken it upon himself to suggest applying a voltage, something that seemed so obvious that
surely
Nolan must have already tried it.

Tiona blinked, though the voltage idea seemed obvious now, she realized she’d never considered it before when thinking about Nolan’s experiments.
But surely Nolan and Dr. Eisner have,
she decided, turning to watch her dad study her experimental set up.

After a while, her dad got out the membranes she’d given him and carefully put them into Tiona’s set up. Mumbling to his AI to get it to record everything, both video images and his own description of every setting, he eventually reached out and switched on the current.

Her dad developed a positively beatific expression on his face when the membranes started to lift out of the bottom of the dish again. Vaz turned to her, “So, the membranes are fine! There must be some difference between your setup and mine that we just haven’t recognized.” He reached into the grocery bag he’d been carrying when he got out of his car and pulled out a glass dish.

Tiona frowned at the dish.

Vaz saw her look and shrugged, “This is the dish I used and it’s different from yours. I can’t imagine how a different glass dish could affect the outcome, but we’ve got to try everything, eh?”

The dish, in fact,
didn’t
make a difference. The membranes wiggled in his dish just like they had in hers. Next, Vaz got out a high-end multimeter and started measuring currents and voltages everywhere in her set up, apparently comparing each reading to what he’d gotten in his own set up back home. He had the readings he’d gotten at home displayed on his HUD.

Tiona had little to contribute and soon began to get bored with it. Also a little antsy, she could have been using this time to study. She’d just opened her mouth to tell her dad she was going to do some reading when he suddenly exclaimed, “Look at this!”

He was holding up one of the electrodes that she gripped her membranes with. Tiona leaned in to look closer. He was pointing at one of the grips, but she really couldn’t see anything exciting there. Tiona looked up into his eyes which were focused intently on her. “What?” she asked.

“Compare the bottom of the grip to the top of the grip.”

Tiona looked at it. The bottom of the grip had some kind of a yellowish discoloration on it as compared to the top. Her dad picked up the other grip and held it up. On that one the top of the grip had a yellowish discoloration. She wondered what it was.

Her dad said, “It’s a varnish!” He shrugged, “Or some other nonconducting coating. This wasn’t a new electrode was it?”

Tiona shook her head.

“For some reason, whoever used them before you insulated one side of the grip so that they would only conduct on the other side. So in your setup, the top membrane is energized by one electrode and the bottom membrane by the other! The current has to transfer from one membrane to the other!”

Tiona blinked, “So? I can see that that might raise the resistance a little, but why would it make the membranes move?”

“One question at a time! One question at a time,” Vaz said musingly, “I think
now
I can replicate your experiment. If so,
then
I can work on why the membranes move.” He grinned excitedly at her, “You should be trying to figure this out too! I think it will be very important.”

Tiona grinned back at her father and said, “Okay,” though she couldn’t imagine why wiggling membranes would be much more than an annoyance.

Knowing that being in a strange place around strange people made him uncomfortable, Tiona walked her dad back down to his car.

When she got back up to the lab she had the feeling that Nolan had been waiting for her. He flashed her a smile, “Your dad’s pretty cool.”

Tiona resisted rolling her eyes. “Cool” was about the last term
anyone
should ever use to describe her bizarre father. She thought Nolan had realized she’d been embarrassed and he was just trying to put her at ease. Which was embarrassing in its own right. She eyed him. A handsome guy like Nolan probably expected her to melt all over him.
Probably has nerdy girls draped all over him when he’s away from the lab. A couple of compliments are probably all he usually needs.

Nolan continued, “That was a great idea he had about applying a voltage to my precipitation system. In retrospect, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself, but I can’t wait to try it.”

Tiona said, “I hope it works.”

“I’ve been thinking about your doping schemes,” Nolan said.

“Uh-huh,” Tiona grunted, her mind already starting to track other topics.

“Have you tried titanium yet? I don’t remember hearing you talk about it, but it seems to fit the profiles of your dopants as I understand your theory.” He winced a little, “I tried to run the calculations you and Dr. Eisner have been running, but I’m not sure I understand the math. If I’ve got it right, titanium ought to have a pretty good chance.”

Tiona’s attention had almost completely wandered to other topics, but in an effort to be polite, she ran his last sentence back through her mind
. Titanium?
She glanced up at the periodic table they had mounted on the wall of the lab. She blinked; then looked at the formula she and Dr. Eisner had come up with, where it displayed in the upper corner of her screen. She ran a rough approximation in her head;  then turned to Nolan, “You might have something there. I may be just as embarrassed I didn’t think of titanium as you are that you didn’t think about applying a voltage to your plate.”

Nolan grinned and held up his fingers to make air quotes, “
Everything
, in retrospect, is obvious.”