Saturday, June 17th already... the alarm clock is buzzing in my ears... reaching over, I shut it off. I'm experiencing my usual coughing, and clearing my throat routine... allergies... none of the medicines I've taken ever seem to help! The alarm clock had been set for 7:00 a.m. It would have been nice to sleep in this morning but it's the weekend to pull maintenance on the lab's equipment. Usually, this is evening work, but I was notified earlier that the lab was off-limits this weekend in the evenings. That means I'll have to get my work done in the morning this time. I'll arrive at the facility at 9:00 a.m., so that will leave time to get cleaned up, read the paper, and have a good breakfast before hitting the road. Scanning the newspaper at the breakfast table, there’s the usual local articles describing the various types of violence and mayhem that we humans inflict on each other... nothing new there. The business section trumpets more mergers, consolidations, falling dollar... rising gas and home energy prices. It's the same old story... we must pay more and get less. On the world scene... endless wars in every corner of the world and chunks of glaciers breaking off from polar ice from global warming, toxic levels of mercury found in ever increasing amounts in the ocean's sea life, the loss of more species of mammals world-wide. Oh, almost forgot to mention this story... not all bad news! A study says that coffee counters cirrhosis of the liver. See, not everything is wrong in the world! ... Oh, brother...
Well ok. ... Feeling better after the typical eggs, toast, and bacon breakfast, it's time to hit the road. I grab my pc's removable drive for today's experimentation along with a sack lunch and I'm on my way. Nice thing about going to work on a Saturday morning is that the traffic usually moves pretty well. Most folk aren't even up this early... they're still sleeping in. It's another nice morning, temperatures in the lower 60's; and it's fairly sunny outside. If it weren't for all the hazy white streaks in the sky from the aircraft, it would be a bright sunny day. Doesn't get much better than this in the Midwest this time of year! Turning on the radio just for some noise, my mind drifts to the itinerary for today... arrive at the facility about 9:00 a.m.; go through security and get locked in the lab by around 9:20. Start about 9:30 and work till I take a break for lunch at noon.
After lunch, I'll commence work again and finish up around 2:00 o' clock. Then it's... my time! I'll run my experiment, and finish up around 3:30 p.m., sounds like a plan! I'm just now turning off the main highway onto the service road toward the facility. After a stop at the guard shack to flash my ID and let the camera see my face, I proceed to the set of buildings on the southern side of the complex. Pulling into the appropriate parking space reserved for the Lab Two team, I swipe the card reader to enter the building. The building has another set of doors about ten feet after the first set, and the card must again be presented to the reader. A camera is mounted to observe anyone passing through; the image is recorded and stored at the main security office. Passing through the second set of doors, I proceed to the right down a long hallway. The hallway is brightly lit and spotless. The janitorial service here is second to none! Finally, I'm at my destination. In front of me, is a heavy steel door with no windows. Recessed in the wall immediately to the right of the door is a heavy glass panel that is backlit with a soft glowing light. Placing my palm on the glass, a bright horizontal white line emerges from the bottom of the pane and quickly proceeds upward toward the top of the pane. As the beam extinguishes into the top of the pane, a soft beep can be heard from below the pane. A latch in the heavy door clicks and the door silently slides to the left leaving about three feet of entry to proceed through. Passing through, the door closes behind me as I hear the snapping of latch locks. Now in an elevator, I must again provide a palm print to the reader. Glancing upward, I notice another camera directly above my head. After the scan, the elevator descends a couple of levels. Fortunately, security hasn’t installed any cameras in the lab itself. They figured additional equipment would just be overkill at this point. At its stop, the heavy door opens and I'm finally in the lab. Heading for the refrigerator, I set my lunch inside. Well, time to get the manuals out. They're kept in a keyed filing cabinet. I remove the manuals necessary for all the units I'll be calibrating/testing today.
My work will consist of calibrating all the units to exacting specifications. The specifications concern three areas... power, frequency, and phase shifting. All the units must meet stringent requirements to produce the sort of results that can be counted on in our experimentation. If the units can’t be counted on to act exactly the same way in controlled situations, the results obtained would be meaningless. After the units are calibrated, I'll bring each one of them on-line, one at a time, and ramp them up to full power. The units will be tested at full power for the specified time... usually about a half hour. All parameters of operation previously mentioned should hold their tolerances within certain specifications listed in the manual for the half hour of full output testing.
Later …
I've run all five units through their paces by 11:30 a.m. The only unit needing re-calibration was the REF (Rotating Electromagnetic Field) unit. Fortunately, it wasn't a hardware failure; just a simple adjustment of the unit was all that was needed. Finishing up, I put all the manuals and test equipment away. I'm getting hungry! Proceeding to the refrigerator, I take out my sack lunch. Today's cuisine is a ham and cheese sandwich on rye, some potato chips, and a coke and candy bar. Spreading out the contents of the sack on the table in front of me, it's time to pull up a chair and grab the television remote. The facility was kind enough to supply satellite television in the break room... nice large screen too! Kicking back in the chair, I place my feet up on the table with sandwich in hand. O.K., let's see what's on! Surfing through the channels provides the usual shopping networks and inane reality shows. Stopping on one of the "surviving nature" type reality shows, I watch the hapless contestants endure silly physical challenges while attempting to lie and stab each other in the back to win the big prize. Yea, that's how I want to spend my time! Since the show is the last in the series, I watch the winners eyes bulge out as his prize is announced. One million dollars they say, as he feigns humility in front of the losers. I'll bet after the IRS gets a hold of those earnings, he won't be quite as overjoyed! Don't quit your day job, I chuckle to myself!
Well, back to work. Having finished the maintenance on the equipment as well as lunch, it is time to put the equipment through its paces on my own experiments. I proceed to power up three of the five main units, and let them come up to operating temperature. One piece of equipment I haven't mentioned before was the super computer that actually interfaced all the units. The team affectionately named the computer Ginger. To say Ginger is quite a machine is an understatement. There are only a few of these in the U.S., all of them in facilities similar to this.
The five power units are actually unable to do any real experimentation without the computer. Ginger has several dozens of miles of fiber-optic and copper wiring tied to a wide variety of sensors and power terminals in the units. Every operating parameter, every change must be precisely measured and recorded. Ginger keeps track of everything flawlessly... not only coordinating the activities of all five units simultaneously, but also providing a digital accounting of every phase of the experiment. From the moment that the start button is pushed, until we power the whole system down... every fluctuation of energy and timing in atomic clock precision is faithfully recorded. This massive amount of data is saved to a storage device in Ginger's memory.
It's time for the experiment! The program for the experiment is on my personal removable drive. I pretty much guard this drive with my life. I'm quite paranoid about the thought of having it stolen, and used by some dangerous operatives or someone who wishes to profit from my work... I guess the paranoia comes with the territory of working in such a secretive place! I'll insert my drive into a port wired directly into Ginger's temporary RAM, not into her main storage. Once she runs and completes the experiment, another program will execute to dump the temporary ram... the results will be gone forever. Another built in safeguard for the equipment is that Ginger will power everything down if the time allotted for the experimentation is exceeded. My experiment is timed for shutdown after only a fifteen minute duration. It's better to be safe than sorry with millions of dollars of equipment at stake... and I really don't want anyone to steal my experiment!
For my purposes today, I need to use only two of the five units in this lab. The first will be the RF pulse generator; the second is the REF generator. I'm planning to have the RF unit generate very high amplitude radio pulses to pass through the center of the magnetic power coils of the REF unit. The combined field output of the two units will be directed by waveguide to a special chamber. In this chamber I'm going to place crystals doped with rare-earth compounds that will resonate with the REF and RF output in the chamber. I had grown these crystals in another part of the facility while I was working part-time in anticipation for using them in just this sort of experiment. In this experiment, I'll be looking for any anomalous effects around the crystals such as re-radiation of quantum energies or some rather interesting time-space displacements. In plain English, this means that the crystals may start "winking" in and out of our present time-space, and disappear from our present physical existence. Or possibly, the intense energy into these crystals might create what is commonly referred to as time warps for short periods of time.
I have the experiment planned to vary every component of the two units independently as the power levels ramp up to maximum. Ginger will continuously vary these levels while watching for anything anomalous. If there is anything taking place in the way of time-space warping, Ginger will zero in on that effect to maximize and enhance it.
All right! Ginger has given me the go ahead. Placing the removable drive in the port previously mentioned, Ginger speaks audibly... "Upload complete." Removing the small drive from Ginger, I place it in my pocket and tell her to proceed by voice command... (Ginger knows and recognizes all the members of the team by voice and name). Glancing down, I note the time on my watch... 12:28 p.m.
Hearing the units ramping up as Ginger is communicating with them, there is a noticeable low hum emanating from the power units as the demand for power increases. Digital bar graphs display the power levels rising. Colorful LED lighting panels are glowing all over the units indicating every status of the experiment as it is taking place. Ginger is carefully monitoring the status of all the critical functions. If a problem arises, she'll take the units offline, ramping them down carefully to prevent unit damage. Fortunately the experiment is proceeding as planned. No trouble lights or alarms!
Having satisfied myself that everything is proceeding as planned, I direct my attention to the crystals placed in the chamber. The chamber has a very thick quartz glass viewing pane, where I can watch the material being saturated by the combined output of the units. Noting the various gauges, I see that power levels have stabilized to allowable levels. At this time, Ginger is varying every parameter available in the units. The equipment can be heard, varying in pitch, along with Ginger's commands. Man, this experiment is really an audio/visual experience! Reminds me of the old TV program that had the catch phrase... "I love it when a plan comes together"!
Hmm... Looking through the quartz glass, a pulsing blue haze seems to be forming around the crystals. If I'm not seeing things, the crystals which were opaque seem to be nearly transparent! Ginger has already detected this anomaly and is starting to "zero in" to optimize the effect. The audible varying pitch of the circuitry in the RF unit in response to Ginger's commands cease and are emitting a constant frequency tone as she has found an optimization point. The REF unit circuitry can be heard varying... ok... now it locks steady. The blue glow has intensified and is pulsing brightly. Wait... something strange is happening! The pulsing blue glow is expanding in size... morphing from just a blue light into a clearly visible sphere. Hey, the crystals have vanished, but the glow is still expanding... now extending itself outside of the chamber! What's going on? I slowly back away from the chamber... trying to distance myself from the expanding glowing sphere. As it grows in diameter, I can hear the power units humming louder as Ginger is allowing them to consume more power to maintain the anomaly. I've got to stop this somehow!
Before I can take a step... yes... the sphere has stopped expanding! It seems to be maintaining a diameter of about ten feet surrounding and centering the chamber. It's morphing again... I can make out strange wispy clouds swirling, forming on the surface of the sphere. It's becoming opaque. It's still glowing blue, but I can't see through it anymore. It's just hovering... the surface still swirling. Man, this is really weird! My curiosity is getting the best of me. I slowly approach it, hoping to get a better "handle" on what is going on. As I approach, I feel a chill… it feels like the room temperature is dropping somewhat. I stop within a couple feet of it, just standing here in amazement. I feel a strange energy field emanating from the sphere at this distance from it. Slowly, I extend my open palm toward the sphere. As I do, the surface deforms slightly... the swirly surface attempts to rise toward my hand as I place it near. I pull my hand back quickly and the surface retreats. Man, this is strange! Once more, I move my hand even closer to the surface. I feel an intense pulsing cold sensation on the palm of my hand as the surface of the sphere leaps up to meet it!