Tuesday, October 21, 2014

So A Psychic and Rocket Scientist Walk into a Bar

Clair finally asked. “Is there any reason to believe that someone would want to hurt you?”
He nodded quickly. “Yeah, this project that I’m here for is under much scrutiny and debate.” He leveled his impressive eyes at her. “There are people who would rather not see it done.”
“How pertinent are you to its completion?”
“There’s the thing Clair, without me, it doesn’t happen.”
“You want to talk about it?”
He hesitated for only a moment, “Virgin launch.  The ideal has been humming around the aerospace industry since we first got people on the moon.” His eyes started to glow again as he started talking with his hands. “What if we could charter people into space, like airline carriers charter people around the world?  It’s a huge undertaking because you would have to be able to eliminate a bulk of the physical limitations to being in space that astronauts train years for.”
“Okay.” Clair inserted following.
“What is the one thing missing from space that makes it so damn difficult for people?”
Clair thought for a second. “Gravity.”
Sergei smiled at her then. “I have developed a rather crude and preliminary gravitational system that would not alter regardless of the gravity, or lack thereof, of space. Currently it can be isolated to a single hub.” He shrugged, “So far I’ve only been able to stabilize a hub the size of a Lear jet, but that’s just the beginning.”
Clair felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. “You’ve found a way to create gravity?” she said in a disbelieving fashion.
Sergei shrugged. “Sort of, I’ve mostly found a way to borrow gravity.  Gravity is one of the big four forces of the Universe, it just exists, the trick is tapping into it.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “Same way it exists now, orbiting bodies in a circular pattern, cyntrivical force meeting rotating atoms.”
Abruptly he grabbed a napkin and pulled a pen out of his jacket pocket.  He drew a crude looking cigar shaped vessel and drew several rings around it.  On each ring he attached various circular objects of varying size, and with arrows he displayed the directions each ring would move and the directions each circular object would rotate in.
He showed her the crude drawing. “Mankind’s problem is that we always think we need to reinvent the wheel. We don’t need anything new. The solution is in the application.”
Clair’s mind wrapped around it instantly. “A roving solar system, with the hub as the sun.”
Sergei nodded. “It would move in space just like our galaxy does, creating it’s own gravity as it goes.”
Clair shook her head. “That’s so simple it’s brilliant.”
Sergei nodded. “I had this thought for quite a while and I often thought that it really couldn’t be this simple so I never brought it up.  But people are chomping at the bit to get into space.” He shrugged. “So I put a little more time and planning into it, mapped out the physics of it all and I was able to generate a gravitational field on a model airplane.”
Clair was holding the napkin, staring at it blankly not really believing how unerringly brilliant this man was. “Talk about thinking outside of the box.”
“I find the only issues with science are all the rules. We’ve made things too complicated.  None of us can see the forest for the trees.” He shrugged. “God had it all right in the beginning, why mess with that.”
Her thoughts got captured by his mention of God. “Don’t tell me you’re a scientist that believes in God.”
He fixed her with a very serious look. “No true scientist can look at the evidence and not.  It’s too balanced, everything is.  I don’t know if religion has it right but I do know that something holds this all together.  We’ve broken things down to their smallest component and we have no ideal why everything doesn’t just fall apart.  That’s either magic or some other divine force.” He fixed her with a knowing look. “And I don’t have to tell you about all else in this world that is inexplicable.”
Clair stared at him more than a little transfixed. “You’re not surprised that I understand.”
His expression showed a large amount of confusion. “Why wouldn’t you understand?”
“I’m a musician.”
To his credit he laughed. “Clair you don’t play an egg, you play the piano and you compose concertos.” He shook his head. “The ideal that artists, musicians in particular, are not bright people is without merit.  Music is the finest thing math has ever created.”
Looking at her with a touch of awe he said gravely. “The ability to look at nothing and fill it with something that was only just a thought is the greatest genius of all.  Math, Science are easy, there are guidelines and charts, mapping and theories.  Creating something with just the raw materials given is what the pioneers of science, math, and language did, not us, we just work with what has been found.  People like you still dabble in actual creation, not us.”
Clair smiled at him as the waiter sat their plates in front of them.

“I stand by my previous assessment of you.” She said candidly after thanking the waiter.


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