Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2) (12 page)

After the lab meeting Johnson came down to look at Ell’s setup for the double slit experiment. She demonstrated the apparatus and he scratched his head as he looked it over and watched the flux detectors at both slits react to the passage of a single high energy photon. “Humph. I’m not sure what you’re doing wrong. I’ll have to think this over. Have you blocked access to one slit to make sure that the flux detector, on say the right slit, doesn’t respond to passage of a photon through the left slit?”

“Yes sir. It doesn’t.”

“Well, I’ll think on it,” he said, turning and walking out of the lab without another word.

When Johnson was gone Roger excitedly came over, “Let me see it! Do you think Donsaii might actually be right?!”

A little later James and Al came in too, also wanting to see her dual slit apparatus in action. The other grads wanted to go to West 87 to celebrate. Ell, dismayed by the loss of an evening working on her “photon-gluon resonance” reluctantly agreed.

At Roger’s urging she even had “one sip” of his beer for celebration. “You might be writing a paper crucifying some of the sacred cows of physics! You should call Donsaii herself and tell her you might have some supporting evidence!”

Ell nearly choked on her Coke. “Call Donsaii?” she laughed.

“Yeah! I’m sure she’d
love
to hear about evidence that supports her theory. Wouldn’t you like to talk to the genius herself?”

“Sure,” Ell laughed, internally amused at the thought of speaking to herself. “But I thought you felt her theories were ‘full of crap?’”

“In physics, you’re only ‘full of crap’ until someone proves you right!” He turned serious, “Uh, Ellen? You really should take Johnson’s advice and drop that spin bumping stuff and focus on these dual slit results.
They
could make your career.”

“Uh…” Ell contemplated for a moment trying to explain her photon-gluon resonance results to the other grads. But if it didn’t pan out? She decided against it. “I need to get on my way, gotta get my beauty rest. Thanks for the Coke and the ‘sip’ of beer.”

Ell had actually intended to head back to the lab and spend a little time setting up the new laser she’d picked up that morning for her photon-gluon apparatus. However, Roger got up when she did and said, “Let me walk you home.”

Ell looked up at Roger and smiled, she liked him a lot. “Thanks. You do know that I can get home by myself don’t you?”

Roger shrugged self consciously, “Yeah, but what if the ‘Rigellians’ are active tonight?”

Ell raised her brows in surprise that James had told Roger about the “Rigellians,” “Well, OK, then.” She made a tiny curtsy and spoke with gravity, “I had failed to take the Rigellians into consideration.”

The walk home was pleasant despite the weather being pretty chilly. When they passed the “That’s Amore” pizzeria Roger asked, “Hey, you want to go in for a slice? I’ll buy.”

Ell realized she was pretty hungry so, even though it delayed her desire to get back to the lab, she said “OK.” They went in and got a table.

As they waited, Ell asked Roger about his childhood and was stunned to learn that he was from Morehead City! Ell realized her classmate Shelly Emmerit must be Roger’s younger sister and that Ell had eaten in his family’s restaurant many times. He ran a hand through his bushy hair, “You know that Morehead City is where Ell Donsaii grew up don’t you?”

“Um, yeah, I think I heard that.”

“My sister even knew her, they were classmates. I’ve been hoping that I might somehow get to meet her one of the times that I’m back home, but she’s not in Morehead City very often. Maybe I’ll see her over Christmas break? I did go to a talk she gave, but there were so many people there that there was no way for me to meet her.”

“Wait a minute. I thought you thought she was crazy?”

“Johnson said that, not me. I said her ‘math was incomprehensible.’”

“Wait…” Ell frowned, “she gave a talk?” Ell wondered what ‘talk’ he could be referring to.

“Yeah, she spoke at the high school graduation this summer.”

Goosebumps went up Ell’s spine; she’d never considered that someone like Roger might be there for the speech she gave at graduation. “Uh, what did she talk about?” Ell felt she needed to ask, in order to maintain her separate identity but also wondered if he’d paid attention.

“Believe it or not, she talked about the double slit experiment.” He raised an eyebrow. “Told the audience we should
all
work on it. I
know
she’d be excited to hear about your results. I really think you should contact her.”

“Maybe when I have more confidence in the results. What if Johnson does find a mistake?”

“Yeah, I guess you should wait a little. But I’d like to be there when you tell her.”

“Um, you really seem interested in her?”

“Yeah. She’s really, really smart, she likes physics and she’s
gorgeous
. What’s not to like?”

Ell was bemused to find that she felt simultaneously complimented as “Ell” and hurt as “Ellen.” On one hand, she realized that her sentiment was unfair; she had actually asked Gloria to make her unattractive. She shouldn’t be hurt that it had worked. On the other hand, shouldn’t Roger like her for her mind and not for her looks? “Hmmm, Roger, what am I, chopped liver?”

Roger ducked his head shyly. “No, Ellen. You’re great. I really like you a lot. But I’ve got hero worship for Donsaii. I wish Johnson wasn’t so down on her; I’d kinda like to work on some of the predictions her theory makes myself.” He chuckled, “At least, I’d like to work on it if I have you around to help me understand that weird math. When I first read her paper I thought it was so far out there as to verge on the ridiculous. It wasn’t until Johnson had you explain the paper to us that I started to admire Donsaii for physics instead of gymnastics.” Roger suddenly realized that he hardly ever thought about Ellen’s odd appearance anymore. She was his friend and more. He became conscious of the fact that he wouldn’t mind at all if she were much more than a friend.

The pizza came and Roger watched as Ellen wolfed down a couple slices. He’d often been astonished at how much she ate; thinking that if she just cut back a little, her butt might not be quite so big. Though, now as he sat across a table from her, looking at only her upper half, he realized that she didn’t actually look overweight at all, it really was “all in her hips” strangely enough.
Well,
he thought to himself,
I don’t care if her butt’s too big, I like her the way she is.

Ell found it strange, eating with a Roger who seemed so intensely focused on her tonight. She’d been finding his quiet intensity more and more attractive but had never expected it to be focused on her.
Or was it? Could I just be imagining that he is attracted to Ellen with the big butt and beaky nose? 

Pizza finished, they started walking the rest of the way back to Ell’s apartment. Roger asked about her childhood and Ell told him briefly about “Ellen’s” imaginary life before NCSU. Their hands bumped and to her surprise, Roger’s hand gently grasped hers and they walked on, hand in hand, her wondering just what “holding hands” meant in this situation. Ell began to worry about what he might expect when they got to her apartment but, to her relief, when she had opened the gate to the complex and turned to him, he bent gently and pecked her on the cheek. “Good night, Ellen, and congratulations on your experiment. Someday, I expect I’ll be telling my kids that I knew you.” He turned and walked off into the evening.

Ell went upstairs to get a change of clothes, and then started back to the lab, eager to start her new photon-gluon resonance experiments. She spent the night, sleeping a few hours in intermittent catnaps on lab’s cot, getting more and more excited about her results until it became almost impossible to get back to sleep. It really did look like she could send information from one entangled macromolecule to the other. She’d been able to confirm that information transmitted even when the receiver apparatus was in a Faraday cage so it couldn’t be occurring through some radio effect. Because it transmitted an “event” when the laser went on and off, she should be able to send very large files of binary information just like was done in fiber optic communication systems. She needed to be able to separate her sending and receiving elements farther than she could by just carting the receiver down the hall to be more confident that some other physical effect wasn’t responsible for the data transmission. After some excited thought she realized that she should be able to make very small units with the circuit fabrication equipment available in the Physics department “fab” lab. By seven the next morning she had designed a circuit and a chip with an “off the shelf” optoelectronic laser set to stimulate her entangled carbon nanotube, sending data as if it were going to stream into a fiber optic fiber.

In a bout of paranoia, before she sent the design file down to the circuit “fab” to construct a pair of her devices she “struck” a couple of bridge connections from the design. This left a circuit that would apparently function but would deliver an incorrect voltage to the EM field and appeared to use the laser only for heating. But two solder bridges would restore it to her intended design. Then she had Allan record all the details of the bench top setup. Once she was sure she could reassemble her bench top setup, she switched a number of things around, hooking the input up to the magnetic field and the laser to a simple power source. She modified settings and the laser frequency until there was no chance it would work. Then she looked at it for a few moments, wondering what had made her want to modify it to a nonfunctional state? No one knew about it, so no one could come in and try to steal her idea could they? She shook her head and set out to get breakfast and teach her introductory physics lab.

Chapter Seven

By the time she’d finished teaching the lab and stopped back by, the fab lab had finished her devices. When she arrived back in the research lab Johnson was sitting, staring at her dual slit apparatus, chin resting on his doubled fists. “Hi, Dr. Johnson.” She said brightly. “Have you found any problems with my setup?”

Without looking up he simply said, “No.”

“Do you want me to start writing it up?”

“No.”

“Uh, OK. Why not?”

“There
is
something wrong with it. I just haven’t figured out
what
yet. I don’t intend to be embarrassed by sending in a paper and having someone else tell me what you did wrong. First thing we need to do is replicate this with a completely different setup. Instead of 100 series flux detectors use the 109s, they’re better. Put Faraday cages around both of them to eliminate interference. Set up with a different emitter that can generate several different photon energy levels to see if you get similar results at different energies.”

“Yes sir, will do… Uh, I’d like to tell you ab…”

He interrupted her, “Next, my AI tells me you ordered a couple of chip circuits constructed by the fab this morning.”

“Uh, yes sir.” A chill went over her at his glacial tone.

“They were very expensive and I’m willing to bet that they are for your “spin bumping” bullhockey?”

“Uh, yes sir. I can pay for them if you want.”

“Damn right you’ll pay for them. I’ve let you slide on small items you’ve charged to the lab that I suspected were for that crap, but I’m done paying for this wild hare you’ve got up your ass. Make a transfer into the lab account to cover them and any other crap you’ve bought on our account
by this afternoon
.” He got up and left the lab without looking to see Ell’s white face.

Roger was appalled at the way Johnson had treated Ellen and even more worried as minutes passed with her still standing where she’d been when Johnson left the lab. He got up and walked over, putting his hand on her shoulder. When he did, she moved convulsively. Ellen violently struck his hand from her shoulder and dropped to a crouch. She stared at him wide eyed from down there. “Oh, Roger, I’m so sorry!” At least that’s what he thought she said; the words were so rapid fire he could hardly separate one from another.

Ell desperately tried to damp herself back down out of the zone that her rage had sent her into. With dismay she saw Roger rubbing his wrist where she’d struck it. She gradually stood back up, and carefully slowing her speech down to what she hoped was normal, she said, “Roger, I truly apologize. I was really pissed and you startled me. Did I hurt your wrist?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, actually amazed at just how bad his wrist actually hurt. “I’m sorry too. He shouldn’t treat you that way.”

“Well,” she sighed, “I did charge stuff to his account.”

“Everybody does for their projects. You’re the only one he’s ever called on it.”

“Still, I was in the wrong… Fred,” she said to her “Ellen” AI. “Figure out what I’ve charged to the Johnson account for my sideline experiments and make a transfer… Oh!” She grimaced. “Wow, I didn’t think they’d be that much. I guess it’s no surprise he was pissed. OK, transfer some money out of my savings then.” She looked back at Roger who was still rubbing his wrist. “Sure you’re OK?”

“Oh! Yeah sure.” he said, dropping his wrist. “Hey if you need any more circuits from the fab, you should talk to Emma, she’s a wizard at saving money by using off the shelf components, no matter what you’re designing.”

“Um, I should have thought of that. Thanks. Well I’d better get to re-setting this double slit apparatus.”

Roger looked at her pensively for a moment, “You might want to talk to Dr. Sponchesi. He’s really nice and very smart. Maybe not in Johnson’s league for brilliance but a great guy. He might be able to advise you on how to deal with Johnson, or publish your paper yourself… or something.”

“Thanks, I’ll ask Emma about him when I talk to her about my circuit. Working in his lab she’d probably have an idea of how he’d respond.”

At the lab meeting that afternoon Ell reported that she hadn’t finished the revised setup for the double slit experiment. “But I’ll get it done tonight.” She finished.