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The Power Source by Larry Simpson ISBN 1-891429-00-0 Fiction, 177-pages $7.50 |
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ONE Delbert Montebaume briefly met John Gibson for the first time in the physics section of Midwest University’s huge library. Unlike most of life’s little human interactions, this short encounter in the stacks was what might be termed a radical bipolar schism, like splitting plutonium in an atom bomb—only bigger—and would ever change both their lives and affect many others, including most of the people in the developed world. Disheveled, John Gibson was in a cubicle studying between trucking runs. He was heavily involved in a self-created synfuel problem. Considering what factors might be involved in the use of spent nuclear fuel rods as the heat source for both the alcohol distillation and the catalytic-zeolite process of his problem, he was also exploring a few bizarre atomic battery ideas that had been simmering in the back of his mind. Wiping grease off his notes page, he realized he probably should have washed up before heading to the library. Oh, well. Del, a sharply-dressed, preppie grad student, was amused and slightly outraged at the sight of this ragged, greasy, blue-jeaned, threadbare, work-shirted type in what he considered his personal section of the library. He thought he’d see if he could give the waif a bad time. Brazenly interrupting John, he jabbed, “So, you here to pick up coeds, huh? You won’t find too many dressed and smelling like diesel oil. I think you’d do better with the sophomores in the sociology section.” “Excuse, me?” sneered John, jilted and extremely miffed by the tone of the stranger’s rude interruption. If ever there was hatred at first sight, this was it. John evaluated Del, with his “well-cared-for” attire, snobbish, round glasses, snotty attitude, perfect features. And just immediately, firmly hated him with a primal vigor that filled him with a deadly rush of male battle-hormones. Del personified an atmosphere, an arrogance, that John had been sensing on campus recently. He’d been seeing more and more of the Del types around, and he didn’t like their false, plastic perfection. To him, they represented a bad trend—fakery and duplicity—something in direct opposition to the unpretentious ideals of higher learning, what John thought should be enlightenment and honest communication. “What has happened to the old-fashioned, cooperative, humanitarian courtesy of academia? And what has happened to veritas?” he wondered, trying to calm his adrenaline. “These people don’t even look real. And this guy doesn’t even act real. What planet is he from? And where’d he get his script? Too bad we’re not living in the primal world, where turds like this would have to get real, really fast, or get spattered.” If it had been a jungle, Del wouldn’t have had a chance against John. Though John was smaller—just average height—he was far stronger, from working, and was charged with a power spawned from his harsh, younger years of silent struggle. As John quietly burned, he wished for a post-apocalyptic, jungle world—a world without the decorum of civilized restraint. He wished circumstances would have permitted him to take that perfect face and gym-sculptured body of Del’s and turn it into as much maggot-food biomass with his bare, work-roughened hands. In three moves, John could have broken Del’s neck, with less effort than turning the big steering wheel of a semi truck. The Del types of the world should learn to be more respectful of John and his brethren. “You’re holding the book upside-down,” Del said with a haughty giggle, not fully aware of the tightly-set trap of violent hostility harbored in John. “Hey, dude, I don’t know what your trip is, but excuse me, I’m looking for something. Please leave me alone, man.” John quietly answered, grinding his teeth, making an heroic effort to hold his temper. “You don’t really understand all this complicated physics stuff, now admit it,” Del coaxed, thinking it might be fun to spike John’s anger. John fumed, “Hey, what I do understand is that you’re going to get punched in your pretty face, if you don’t knock it off. Do you understand the physics of a knuckle sandwich? Do you have any notion of the number of kilograms per meter that this can exert on that cute, little, upturned nose?” he asked, displaying his clenched fist, decorum or not. “Well, are you a student here? You don’t look like a student.” “Hey, I’m an alum, man. Now if you don’t mind leaving me alone,” he said, raising his fist again. John was tired and cranky. He and his trucking partner Scotty, had just made a three-state run and were scheduled to do another the following day. He needed sleep, but hungered for knowledge. Often, as he was driving the long hauls, he’d go over ideas in his head, and with Scotty, and then go to the library while the thoughts were still fresh. The result was that he’d have something to digest and expand on for the next trip. “What? You’ll punch me? I’m really scared, man,” Del sarcastically feigned. Then he softened, “I’m in the master’s program, on track for a doctorate. Maybe I can help you find something. What are you working on?” Del thought he could kill two birds with one stone—totally hassle this guy and maybe gain some useful information by “working him” as he knew how to do so well. “Kindly fuck off.” “No, come on. I’m interested. Maybe I can help. What is it you’re working on?” “Ok, man, it’s just an energy problem relating to gasoline. Something I’m sure that is way below your intellect, you being a post-grad and all. So kindly buzz off.” “Gasoline? Yech. Petroleum is so passé. I think you need the chemistry section. What are you really working on?” he insisted. John, himself, wasn’t without an ego. He thought he’d both show this jerk that he knew a little something and throw him off the synfuel track at the same time. He’d been toying with another idea, to do with atomic energy, but didn’t think it was very important. Although John always felt that knowledge and understanding was something to be truthfully, openly shared, he dodged, “Ok, I’m interested in atomic batteries. I think that spent fuel rods can be used as a source of electrical energy, by direct utilization of the radiation as a source of magnetic flux. “This literature says, ‘A maximum of an estimated seventeen per cent of the energy of the average nuclear reactor is utilized as thermal energy in the production of electrical power. The remainder is lost as alpha, beta and gamma radiation, and finally as unproductive, unused potential in spent fuel rods.’ That means that nearly eighty-five percent of the total resource is wasted,” John pointed out. He read on, “Listen to this, ‘Despite reprocessing, much of this energy is not presently extractable, and many by-products require neutralization in fast reactors prior to disposal.’ And it goes on to list some of the by-products, which include Strontium-90 and Cesium-137. Anyway, I plan to use the radiation of the waste by-products, not the heat of the reaction, to produce electricity,” John proudly bragged. “Let me see that!” Del said grabbing for the book. This was his ticket into the high energy lab. Something so simple, yet so overlooked, was what this trashy-looking fellow had just shown him. And he, Del Montebaume, had the resources, or potential resources, to exploit such an idea. He also noticed some diagrams and calculations in John’s notebook. He tried to quickly memorize them, like cheating on a test, but the previous night’s gin fizz party precluded that possibility. “Well, everybody knows that,” Del glibly declared. “If there were any possibilities, they would already have been exploited. I’ve read scads of papers on the subject. It’s nothing new. Oh, and you’re wrong, it would be eighty-three percent, to be precise. Anyway, you’re wasting your time. And mine.” “So just buzz off, mister precision,” said John, mildly regretting that he’d even spoken to the soft, pretty-boy. “I’ve got plenty to do, and not enough time.” |
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The Power Source by Larry Simpson ISBN 1-891429-00-0 Fiction, 177-pages $7.50 |
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The Case of the Pack-Rat Park Adventure of Charlie Series #1 by Rae Lowery. ISBN 1-891429-25-6 Youth Fiction, 87-pages $9.95 |
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CHAPTER ONE Okay, Here’s the deal.
I didn’t mean to cause all this trouble, but sometimes I end up doing things that seem rational at the time, and end up being a major pain in the you-know-where. This mess is so big I hardly know where to start explaining it all. I guess the horse stable is as good a place as any.
I have never ridden a horse, so I like to go to the horse stable around the corner from my house to watch the ponies. So one day I was at the stable sitting there minding my own business, when I overheard the people next to me talking about a horse that was going to be for sale. Like I said, I love horses, but I have never had one. So my ears really perked up at this. The name of the horse turned out to be Lucky, and that seemed to be a good omen to me. The sale price was only six hundred dollars. Okay, I admit that I said “only” six hundred because that is what they said. But sometimes horses cost millions of dollars if they are really fast, and I thought maybe I could buy this horse and make a bunch of money and buy my mom a house and show her that owning a horse was not an impractical thing after all.
I was so excited about the horse, I left the track extra early so I could talk with my super-best friend about it. Her name is Delight Thompson. I call her my super-best friend because I have another best friend that is almost as good but since he is a boy he can’t have the same status or there would be trouble. See, I’m eleven, and by the time you are my age people just assume things if you say your best friend is a boy named John.
So I rode my bike to Delight’s house, and when I got there she was outside on the porch combing her cat. Some people just love cats. I am not one of them. In fact, Delight calls me “no-cats-Charlie” because my name is Charlie and I don’t like cats.
Anyhoo, I ran up to tell her about the horse, figuring she would finally believe that I am NOT an animal hater after all, since I want one for myself. But there is something you have to know about Delight. She always talks nonstop for about 10 minutes when you walk up to her. So you have to keep your mouth shut and listen before you can tell her anything important, or she will just mow it right over and not hear it anyway. Yes, this is quite annoying, but she is my super-best friend anyway, because after all, that is not her only quality. But in her ten minute monologue, I learned something that made me forget all about my horse, and was so shocking that I almost got the wind knocked out of me I took in such a sharp breath.
Her parents were getting a divorce. ... |
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The Case of the Pack-Rat Park Adventure of Charlie Series #1 by Rae Lowery. ISBN 1-891429-25-6 Youth Fiction, 87-pages $9.95 |
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The Case of the Lost Kid Adventure of Charlie Series #2 by Rae Lowery. ISBN 1-891429-26-4 Youth Fiction, 111-pages $9.95 |
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CHAPTER ONE Okay, here’s the deal.
I only wanted to go to the store and get some gum. Just a simple bike ride that would change my life forever.
Let me back up. My name is Charlie, and I am 11 years old.1 People tell me I am a tomboy, but I just think of myself as a regular kid. I do like spiders though. And climbing trees. And going on adventures. Plus, I collect words. When I hear a word I’ve never heard of, I try really hard to remember it until I can get to a dictionary and find out what it means. I will save you the trouble of having to do that because when I use one of my spectacular2 words I will tell you what it means at the bottom of the page.
Anyhoo, my mom was kind of getting on my last nerve so I wanted to get out of the house and get some gum. Sometimes it helps to put a huge wad of gum in your mouth and chew away your stress. I got on my bike and rode to the corner, and I was just about to cross the street when I saw a kid in the back seat of a long gray car. That wasn’t odd by itself, but, I don’t know, just something in the way that kid looked at me made me stare at him. It was like his eyes were telling me he needed help or something. I looked at the license plate on the car and told myself to remember it. KNH831.
I tried to think of a sentence or a word that used those letters. Then I thought of “kid needs help” and made a face out of the 831 by mentally turning it sideways and making the 8 eyes, the 3 a nose, and the 1 a mouth. Pretty cool, huh? ... |
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The Case of the Lost Kid Adventure of Charlie Series #2 by Rae Lowery. ISBN 1-891429-26-4 Youth Fiction, 111-pages $9.95 |
