Warp speed

butt or hanging out your pants leg. Jim and I had long thought that the 'stiction' might be due to the Casimir effect instead of static electricity. So had a few of the other BPP scientists.

As I pulled into the parking lot of our lab at Research Park, I realized that I never returned Tabitha's call. 'Oh well, wasn't sure what she wanted anyway,' I muttered. When I got to the lab Rebecca was pacing outside the door to the lab. 'Did you finish?' I asked.

'It's done. Did Jim tell you this is the fourth one I've sputtered today? No, he didn't, did he? Did he tell you neither one of us has been home in thirty-six hours? No, he didn't, did he?!'

'Uh, no, I, I don't know. Maybe he mentioned it. Look, if you are tired, just go home.'

'Are you kidding? And miss seeing if this thing works or not? You gotta be nuts. What, are you trying to get rid of me? Do you want me to go home?'

I will never understand women. I guess Rebecca just needed to complain about something. She is like that. She shook her long black hair and rolled it back up under her paper hair hat. 'Well?'

I replied, 'Skip it. Let's just go have a look, shall we.'

She led me through the rat maze to the clean room and vacuum chamber area. Jim came through the airlock with a blue paper outfit on. I never could get used to those damn things, but I began putting on a similar garment. As I was putting on my paper slippers I asked, 'Jim, is it ready?'

'You're not going to believe what's in there. I think we've done it,' he replied

'If you two have, then we're going to stop and make sure you both graduate by May. That only gives us about two to three months to finish writing your dissertations and defend them and fill out all the paperwork.'

'Neither Jim or I have enough credits yet. We're both two classes short. How could we?' Rebecca objected.

'Well let's worry about one thing at a time. Okay, Jim, let's have a look.'

I could spend a while talking about what I saw here, but it would be technical and not real exciting to you. Or maybe it would if you are the techie geeky sort like me. Let's just say that the damn thing worked. There was a little box ten nanometers long on a side (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter by the way) and inside it were two moving pistons. One of them was attached to the other in such a way that the Casimir effect pushed on one and pulled on the other, then vice versa. This way the plates were never allowed to be pushed all the way together. Attached to the outer side of the box was probably the tiniest generator the human race had ever built. From the generator was a wire so small you could only see it with an electron microscope that was attached to a larger wire, which led to a microvolt meter. The resistance in the larger wire loaded the generator, allowing us to measure the power dissipated by it. We measured more than twenty times just to be sure. Each time we got one microwatt of power constantly coming from the generator. Energy for free right out of the spacetime! Now, mind you, this is in no way violating the law of conservation of energy. The nanodevices simply transfer from the vacuum energy via the Casimir effect to the nanogenerators. What an amazing concept. This could put OPEC right out of business. About time!

Of course, this was only one microwatt. The first step was to scale the thing up. Also, we had spent about two and half million dollars just to get this one little box. Of course, now that we knew how to build one, we could do it for say fifty bucks or so. A full up version would require 10²⁶ of them. Yikes! Way too expensive. But Jim reassured me that it would cost no more to sputter a hundred thousand of these things than it would to sputter one. After some arguing and a lot of cursing, I agreed with him. Rebecca backed him up. So, with some tweaking, we had the energy for a warp drive.

All I need to do now is figure out how to actually do the warp! I thought. So close! So close.

CHAPTER 4

We discussed the next step for at least two more hours. At one point I reached across the table to grab a pencil and something in my side moved too much making a popping noise. I grimaced and winced and cursed as I decided the pencil could be damned and stay right where it was.

Rebecca looked at me. 'Are you all right? Maybe you ought to go home.'

'Don't worry about me,' I said through clenched teeth.

'I think she's right, Anson.' Jim looked concerned.

'Okay, who am I to argue with the likes of you two? Let's all go home. Sleep in tomorrow and we'll get together Friday night. I'll call tomorrow and have the two of you retroactively registered in two special topics classes. We will talk Friday about our next step. How's that?'

Rebecca looked over at Jim and frowned. 'Could we just wait and talk about it at the grad student cookout Saturday, instead? I already have plans.'

'Oh crap! I forgot about that. Can you two come over Saturday morning and help out with that?'

'You already asked us once,' Jim and Rebecca simultaneously chimed in.

'Oh yeah, I forgot.' I paused, 'What did you say?'

They laughed. 'Your mother was right about you. You would forget your head if it wasn't attached to you.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'So, Saturday then?'

'Suits me.' Jim shrugged.

'Hey, I'm just along for the ride. Whatever you say.' Rebecca smiled cute as a button. That is the only way to describe her. Not that she is a supermodel, just cute—the kind of cute that makes the human race go round.

'Great. You two go home and get some sleep.'

Ring. I rolled over and looked at the phone. Ring. 'The machine can get it. I ain't movin',' I said. Ring. 'Hello, this is Anson. I can't come to the phone right now, but if you will leave a name a number and a message I will get back to you. Beeeep!'