Swan Song

John jumped into his new role with gusto.  As predicted, he proved himself an incompetent and thoroughly corrupt administrator.  His first act as head of the Maths and Sciences department was to remove the handicapped signs from the front of the school and assign the area as his own personal parking space.  After that, he settled into a pattern of embezzled funds, misappropriated resources, and stolen office supplies.  But his virtually limitless budget was enough to deflect any criticism or close inspection.  Anything resembling work was delegated to his subordinates, who saw their workloads explode exponentially.  Over time, even delegation proved tedious.  So a new personal assistant was hired with the sole purpose of taking care of and delegating his responsibilities.

The only task he couldn’t pass off was the daily reports and updates the Super had requested.  But even then he put only the barest effort into them.  The information he included was intentionally misdirecting and often contradictory.  None of them were ever questioned anyway, so John sent them less and less frequently.  They were eventually nothing more than scribbles on the backs of cocktail napkins.  Finally, he stopped sending them altogether.    That left him with just enough time out of his day to figure new ways to screw with people who annoyed him.

Under his leadership, the Maths and Sciences department drained almost the entire school budget.  Arts and humanities faculty quickly found themselves furloughed.    Sports all but disappeared.  Anything that didn’t have anything to do with Maths and Sciences was forced from the building and made to have class in the parking lot, rain or shine.

The occasional gripe or complaint was handled with a re-reading of the letter from the Board of Education and a thinly veiled threat of what non-compliance would mean to one’s employment and health.  The teacher’s union, whose interests were deemed contrary to the policies of school administration and the Maths and Sciences department, was declared an illegal organization.  Its leaders were imprisoned and faculty was forced to signed oaths of loyalty to the CUSD.  The student council was deemed subversive and disbanded.  Every issue of the student newspaper was carefully scrutinized and censored.

The only group left to put up an organized front was the PTA, which was eliminated in an epic orgy of violence, turning several dozen students into orphans.  With no opposition left, the school was humming along exactly the way John wanted—as a well-oiled machine that needed no further intervention from him.  The only thing better than daytime TV was daytime TV on a giant flat screen in his own office.

But it didn’t last.  He eventually became what he dreaded most.  He became bored.

Bored with a giant pile of money and no one to tell him what he could or couldn’t do with it.  With him in charge,  it was a dangerous scenario.  It didn’t take long for inspiration to strike.

In their rosette in their vast underground hardened bunker, microscopic cameras and microphones recorded every conversation and nuance.  Emails were scanned and analyzed the Board of Education quickly assessed the situation.  From their subterranean bunker, they made a complete assessment of the situation.

It was good.

For a while, John was rarely seen at the school.  When he was, he shut himself in his office with the door locked and the shades drawn.  Then with barely any notice, he called a press meeting.  No details or information was given, only that attendance by the press, students, and faculty was mandatory.  There, among pomp and applause, and under a giant hi-definition video screen bearing his image, he announced the creation of the Central Unified School District Junior Achievers’ Physics Club.  Membership would be by invitation only, and only the best and the brightest would be recruited.  Somebody in the audience pointed out that the school’s budget was all but tapped out.  And that there was no money to fund anything, let alone fund the list of items that would be required.

“This…” John stated.  “Should clarify everything.”  He pulled an envelope from his pocket

BOARD OF EDUCATION

CENTRAL UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

CLASSIFICATION—PUBLIC

RE: CENTRAL UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT MATHS AND SCIENCES DEPARTMENT JUNIOR ACHIEVERS’ PHYSICS CLUB.

ALL FUNDING AND AID NECESSARY TO THE IMPLETMENTAION AND ACTIVITIES OF THE CENTRAL UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT’S JUNIOR ACHIEVERS’ PHYSICS CLUB IS TO BE MADE IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.  ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS ARE SECONDARY.

ANY AND ALL EFFORTS TO DELAY OR HAMPER THE ACTIVITIES OF THE CENTRAL UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT’S JUNIOR ACHIEVERS’ PHYSICS CLUB ARE EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN.

He pointed to the signature at the bottom of the letter.  He also indicated the watermark and medallion guarantee as being proof of the letter’s origin and authority.  With his next breath, he announced the creation of the Junior Achievers’ Physics Club bond issue.  It was approved overwhelmingly, as John knew it would be.

Club recruitment began in earnest.  Student transcripts, standardized test records, and disciplinary reports were studied.  Potential club members were grilled and interrogated without mercy.  Selection was made according to grades, tractability, and faculty recommendations.  Once admitted, students signed non-disclosure agreements under penalty of defenestration.

John soon had his cadre of handpicked recruits.  The club was housed in the newly repurposed ceramics classroom.  Kilns and throwing wheels were replaced with a networked series of powerful computers, built to his specifications.  Twelve of the school’s finest sat at nervous attention, most still nursing wounds from the selection process.  John faced them.  They weren’t the prettiest bunch the student body had to offer, but they would do nicely.  They were his tools, the instruments of his will.  He would lead them and they would follow.

Now, at last, the fun could begin.

“How many of you dumbbutts have heard of zero-point energy?”  Only one student raised his hand.  “Good, could you explain it to us, please?”

The student broke out in a sweat as stress pimples began to dot his face.  “I…I…only heard of…I don’t…”

“That’s fine, you can relax.”  John humphed.  This was actually going to require some work from him.  John broke open a new box of dry-erase markers.  They were the good ones, not the non-toxic kind.  He held one close to his nose and inhaled deeply.  His head began to tingle behind his eyes and he began.

“Zero-point energy, known more formally as rest mass energy, is the energy that remains in a system after all other atomic motion has stopped.  It exists everywhere, all the time.  It fills the entire universe.  And it, I maintain, can be harnessed and be made useable.  Do you see the implications here?”

John could see the light of understanding in their eyes, but no one spoke.  He continued.

“It has been proven that matter and energy are interchangeable.  The total amount of energy and matter that exists in the universe is constant and unchanging.  Right?  Right.  As a whole, it can never be subtracted from or added to, only transformed into some other sort of energy or matter.  From the laws of thermodynamics, we know it takes energy to create energy.  Dead dinosaurs get refined into chemical energy.  That energy gets transformed into mechanical energy.  And, thanks to friction, your car moves forward a few centimeters.”

Some students nodded.  He continued.

“With the harnessing of zero-point energy, those conservation rules still apply.  But with the transformation of energy into something useable, the system feeds back into itself.  In other words, any energy removed from a closed system is fed into its surroundings, conserved, and reused.   In keeping with the car analogy, it’s like an engine that it one runs off of its own exhaust and waste heat.  Instead of loss to non-conservative forces, the total energy remains constant and useable.  The second law of thermodynamics still applies, but the energy lost is still available to us.”

The entire assembled group leaned forward in their chairs in rapt attention.  The implications were enormous!  Free energy for everyone!  No pollution, no deforestation, no more reasons to kill anyone or destroy anything for it.

With it, just about anything is possible.  Forget about notions of relativity.  Spaceflight to other stars becomes possible.  An object’s mass reaches infinity as its velocity nears the speed of light.  And an object of limitless mass needs limitless energy to accelerate it, but that’s exactly what you have, right?  Just keep your propulsive energy ahead of the mass-velocity curve.  You may not reach the speed of light, but you’d come close.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we are here.  We are going to harness zero-point energy.  The project is to design and build a rest mass energy converter.”

A student raised his hand.  “Please, sir!”

“Yes?”

“What are we going to name the project?”

“Ohhh…lessee..how about ‘The Project?’”

The students stood at once and raised their fists in the air.  “THE PROJECT!  THE PROJECT”