Swan Song

The students dived in on the Project like starving jackals on a carcass.

It progressed slowly at first.   Most of the available information on zero-point energy was largely speculative with very little empirical theory.  There was not nearly enough of it to form a complete theoretical model.  They were almost starting from scratch.  But discussions eventually moved beyond speculation and into hypothesis.  Equations were produced and debated.  They went through a case of dry-erase markers every week.  Most were used to jot equations on dry erase boards, the rest were simply inhaled.

Computer models were eventually built.  New computers were built as their need for processing power multiplied.  As the Project expanded, so did the space that housed it.  The gymnasium was repurposed to hold a linear particle accelerator, needed to test predictions on mass/energy conversion.  Offices were gutted and rebuilt as dorms for the physics club.  Brownouts occurred throughout the district as the power needs for the Project increased.

Outside the Project’s ever-expanding confines, the Law of the Jungle ruled.  With no maintenance budget, the school grounds quickly fell into disrepair.  The walls and ceilings cracked and fell.  Some students and faculty remained and held class within the crumbling walls.  But the competition for resources became violent.  History warred with English Lit over paper and dry-erase markers.  Biology fought with chemistry for control of scarce laboratory supplies and lab space.

The most brutal exchange was between the wood and metal shop classes.  Armed with primitive spears fashioned from wooden dowels, wood shop students dotted their faces with shellac warpaint.  Steel was needed for new saw blades, so siege was laid on the soot encrusted metal shop compound.  The attack was unexpected, but the metal shop easily beat back the attackers.  Wooden spears were no use against sheet steel armor and crude metal axes cut through the wood shoppers’ thin rattan breastplates.

The remnants of the wood shop army allied with the electronics club and the chess club.  Electronics needed the solder that was horded in the metal shop compound and the chess club would be invaluable for their strategic expertise.  The alliance was short lived, though.  The metal shop had fashioned a flame thrower from propane tanks liberated from the cafeteria.  The inferno left the survivors in stunned silence, covered from head to toe in a thick, greasy soot.

The general of the metal shop forces—a warlord named The Hunger—stood on the ashes of the massacre and declared himself as master of the crumbled empire.  Instead of punishment and retribution, he promised succor.  They would not be enemies, for they shared a common foe--their true enemy.  Under his iron fist athletes, geeks, emos, and GDI’s were unified into a single grand army, larger than any that had preceded it.

The Hunger set his forces on the walls of The Project.  A great cry of war arose through the abandoned halls and classrooms, over the overgrown athletic fields, and past the rusted husks in the parking lot and autoshop.   The united legions rushed forward to destroy the thing that was the cause of so much misery and despair.  But The Hunger was not without mercy, and he halted before the massive walls of The Project.  With microphone in hand, the grand warlord delivered his ultimatum.

“There has been too much violence…too much pain.  None here are without sin.  But I have an honorable compromise…just walk away.  Give me The Project and the whole compound.  Just walk away and I’ll spare your lives.  Just walk away from here and will give you safe passage.  There will be an end to the horror.”

A tiny slit opened in The Project’s rampart.  From it, a tiny rolled piece of paper fell out.  The Hunger sent an aide to retrieve it.  He unrolled it and read the response.

Balls.

The Hunger threw the message to the ground and crushed it beneath his foot.  A great cry of war arose from his legions.  Threats of torture and obliteration.  Of being ground and burned to dust.  The Hunger, the eye of their rage, would crush The Project until nothing remained.   His army rushed forward, waving swords and battleaxes, promising destruction to any who would dare defy them.

They were obliterated in seconds by a beam of concentrated gamma rays.  The burst of directed radiation had come from a controlled electron/positron reaction in a little side project John had set up in his spare time.  Just something to make use of the surplus antiparticles created in newly purchased synchrotron.  He patted his new toy affectionately.  He called it the Tesla Death Ray 3000, and hoped to market it to the State Department after the Project was over.

He looked over the remains of what was once a well-maintained school campus.  “What a fucking dump.”

By the time spring break came around, the physics club looked like it had aged thirty years.  John, he noted to himself, looked as awesome as ever.  Feeling charitable, he allowed the club members to take the week off.  Also, he had three months’ worth of television to catch up on.  He arrived home to finds a month’s worth of phone messages and emails.  Each one was demanding an update on the Project.

It was his first visit to the Superintendent’s office since he received his new assignment.  That was, what, eight months ago?  He wondered.  The place had definitely been in decline since then.  The carpet was worn through in spots, cracks had appeared in the ceiling, Even his bosses’ overstuffed leather chair was worn through in spots.  Pots and pans were scattered over the floor, catching drops of water from the ceiling.  It was cold and there were the remains of a fire in the fireplace.  Apparently, someone hadn’t being paying the heating bills.  He looked above the scorched fireplace to a bas-relief reproduction of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling that adorned the wall.  In the past, it had driven home the weight of the Super’s position and authority.  Now, with its crumbling surroundings, it looked like a wistful testament to a bygone era.  He wondered how it would look in his office.

His perusings were interrupted by the Super, who stumbled in from a side room, balancing two armloads of files, which he dropped unceremoniously on his desk.  The man had not shaved or showed in days, weeks even.  And John could swear he wore the same suit he had on the last time he was in his office, plus a few scuffs and patches.  The man had not dragged a comb through his hair, lately, either.

“John!  John!  Oh it’s so good to see you?  Are you well?  You look well.  Would you like some coffee?  Let me get you some coffee.”  He reached into a drawer and produced a gallon of bottled water and instant coffee.  He poured water into a metal cup and set it to heat over a kerosene stove.  “Sorry!  Things have been a little tight lately.”

“Clearly.”  John looked back at the bas-relief behind the Super and wondered how it was GOING to look in his office.  “Look, I’m in something of a hurry, here.  Forget the coffee, could we speed things up?”

“Of course!  Of course!“  The Super pushed the stove aside and grabbed a file from the pile.  “It’s nothing really, barely even worth your time.  But I…I mean the Board…just wanted a little update on the Project’s progress.  Tell me, is it on schedule?”

John checked his fingernails.  He had never had a manicure before, maybe it was time for one.  “Well, there’s no schedule, per se.  As I’m sure you already know…you were at the press briefing, right?.  Well, as I’m sure you know, we’re in uncharted scientific territory here.  Frankly, some lines of research have ended in dead ends.  But you’ll be happy to hear that we’re close to having a working prototype.”

“That’s wonderful!  I’m sure it’ll be completed in no time.”

John shrugged.

The Super balanced his glasses on his nose.  The glasses, John noticed, were missing an earpiece.  “There’s just a few other things, small small things, that I was hoping to ask you about.”

“Be my guest.”

“There’s been troubling reports of genetic mutations in infants born around the area.  Did you know that?  It’s fine if you didn’t, but we were hoping you could shed just a little bit of light on that.”

John shrugged.   “Can’t be sure, really.  The local power grid was insufficient to meet the Project’s needs.  We weren’t getting the sort collisions we needed from targeted experiments, so we upgraded from the linear accelerator to a synchrotron.  That sort of containment eats a lot of power, so we had to purchase a second hand surplus fission reactor to take up the slack.  I think it came off a submarine.”

“Uh huh…uh huh.”  The Super was scribbling furiously.  “I don’t remember any such requisition being made.  Maybe it’s in here…”  He fumbled through the scatter of cocktail napkins John had made his last reports on.  “Maybe this is it?”  He held up a crude drawing of stick figures dancing around a glowing radiation sign.

“Yes…probably.  Anyway, there may have been some containment leaks.  It was second hand, after all.  We could’ve purchased a new one, but we were trying to save money.”

The Super gushed.  “Oh, God bless you, John.  God bless you!”

“It’s nothing some spackle and duct tape don’t clear up.  I’ll look right into it.”

“Excellent!  Now, one thousand cubic meters of liquid nitrogen.”

“Needed to maintain the superconductors at below their critical temperature.”

“An on-staff sushi chef?”

“Fish is brain food.”

“And geisha hostesses?”

John waved his hand dismissively.  “Strictly an indulgence.”

“And one that I’m sure you deserve every bit of!  John, the Board is really looking forward to this.  Can I give them some sort of estimation on time of completion?”

“Very soon.”

“Thank you, John.  Thank you!”  The Super dropped to his knees and backed out the door he had come in, his fingers scraping the floor as he left.

The Project had at last taken form.

The engineering and scientific principles of the Zero-point energy device were monstrously complex and way too advanced for most people to understand.  Very few people could comprehend it, and they were all now in the same room.

Its physical form, once it had taken place, was so simple and plain that to even describe it would bore the listener to sleep.  One student even suggested putting some flashing lights on it, or even a paint job, just to make it interesting to look at.

“Decoration?  No.  Not in the budget.”

John eyed the student charged with the Project’s accounting tasks.  “How about a nicer button?  One that lights up?”

“Not in the budget.”

“Are you saying that out of a four billion—that’s billion with a ‘B’--budget that we were short the cost of a button that would’ve cost forty nine cents at Radio Hack?.

It was true.  All the device had on its bland, featureless surface was a button.  And not even a very interesting button.  The button had been found in a drawer in the auto shop teacher’s desk and put to use.

And like any other button, it got pressed.  But that would wait until the unveiling.  John still felt they had rushed things a bit.  Their funds were dried up and there was no time or money for a test run.  The unveiling would be the test run.

“I don’t know, boss.  I still don’t think it’s a good idea.  We really don’t know what’s going to happen.”

John turned to the student.  The kid was smart and dedicated, and kissed John’s ass incessantly.  The made him endearing.  John shrugged.  “What’s the worst that can happen?”

The news of the Project’s completion was delivered to the Board of Education.  But it wasn’t necessary.  They already knew.

No emotion registered on the nearly hairless heads.  Inside, electrical pulses cackled with glee.