The Fusion Cage

VI

‘Say that again?’

Amber sat down on the lawn of what had once been her home, the rifle resting against her shoulder and pointed at the sky as she spoke.

‘My father was an inventor who worked for the government for almost thirty years,’ she explained. ‘He worked on numerous projects involving nuclear fusion at the National Ignition Facility in California. I don’t fully understand exactly what it was that he did except that it involved novel ways of producing energy.’

Ethan nodded as he recognized the name of the famous facility in Chicago.

‘They're the guys that are trying to produce nuclear fusion on earth right?’

Amber nodded. ‘My father explained it in the sense that they were trying to create a small sun on earth. They have these chambers that are able to contain immense pressures and temperatures just like those found in the sun. If they are able to do so, then the energy produced is far more than the actual energy required to start the process in the first place: dad calls it the “ultimate free lunch”, getting more out than you put in.’

‘I didn’t think that was possible,’ Lopez asked, ‘something to do with the law of conservation of energy?’

Amber looked at Lopez with renewed respect.

‘Dad mentioned that from time to time, that it’s impossible to get more energy out of something than you put in. However, nuclear fusion is the same way that a nuclear bomb works except of course that in a bomb the energy is not contained but allowed to radiate outwards as a blast. He said once that this process is the conversion of matter into pure energy, E equals MC squared and all that techy stuff. That’s why nuclear bombs are so powerful, they convert everything back into raw energy.’

Ethan recalled from a previous investigation for the DIA of just how much power nuclear fusion was able to create. A scientist who had worked at similar laboratories once explained to him that if he was to take the button from his shirt and convert it into pure energy, it would explode with enough force to level an entire city block. Even the largest nuclear fusion bombs that had ever been detonated contained only a fist — sized chunk of matter, usually plutonium, and yet they were capable of levelling cities and laying waste to entire regions.

‘So what happened? Did this ignition facility finally manage what your father was working on?’

‘Not in his time working there,’ Amber said. ‘My father was at the forefront of the pioneering technology being developed to create true nuclear fusion on earth as a power source, but the new scientists coming through from the universities were overtaking him in the understanding of what was happening. My father thought it wiser to relinquish his position to allow them to continue the work while he pursued other avenues.’

‘Other avenues?’ Ethan echoed.

‘My father had become disillusioned with the idea of creating nuclear fusion on earth, chiefly because he thought it was an expensive and inefficient way of generating such vast amounts of energy.’

‘Inefficient?’ Lopez asked. ‘I don’t know much about nuclear fusion, but I did understand it to be very powerful and without any exhaust gases that pollute the atmosphere.’

‘That’s very true,’ Amber agreed. ‘And despite what the green movement says, nuclear fusion is in fact very safe. It’s the opposite of nuclear fission, which is the process of splitting an atom. In that process, if the cooling of the reactor is not maintained then the process can run away with itself. That’s what happened at Chernobyl in 1986. Nuclear fusion, however, is very safe because it’s the process of forcing the atoms together under high pressure. If the process should fail for some reason, perhaps the reactor chamber being breached, the first thing that happens is that pressure is lost and the process immediately ceases.’

‘So what was the problem then?’ Ethan asked.

‘My father was of the opinion that it was possible to produce nuclear fusion without requiring the intense pressures and temperatures of a nuclear fusion reactor. He had done sufficient research, or so he kept saying to anyone who would listen, that he believed it possible to build a reactor that was not the size of a small town but that you could fit in a boiler room at home.’

Ethan glanced at Lopez. ‘Something like that would be worth silencing an entire town for.’

‘If it existed,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘Did your father managed to build something like that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Amber admitted. ‘After he retired from the National Ignition Facility, dad spent countless months in his workshop labouring on something. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about and was really shady about revealing to anyone what he was doing in there. I didn’t really understand why until now.’

‘Understand what? And was it your father’s invention that was powering the town after it separated from the National Grid?’

Amber rubbed her temples with one hand as she replied.

‘According to dad, many people in the past have claimed to have invented devices that produce energy for free. Most of them are charlatans, snake oil salesman who have ripped off people for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and then disappeared. However, he said that a few people have created devices that have then suddenly disappeared, all trace of their existence vanishing and in one case their house actually being reduced to nothing but foundations literally overnight. News reports would then appear on the Internet claiming them to have been charlatans that had fled the country with others people’s money, or likewise slanderous comments made denigrating their reputation.’

‘Sounds like conspiracy theories to me,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘Any time somebody claims to have invented something spectacular and is then challenged to produce evidence to support their claims, they mysteriously find themselves unable to do so or simply disappear.’

‘My dad is not one of those people!’ Amber shot back. ‘He had a different plan in mind.’

‘Such as?’ Ethan asked.

‘My father was going to give the device away to the world for free.’

Ethan and Lopez remain silent for a long moment as they considered the implications of this. It was without doubt that anybody who could develop such a remarkable device, one that could power the world for free, would become incredibly wealthy in an instant. Like, Rockefeller or Gates or Branson wealthy. Literally every home and every vehicle in the world would want one of the devices, would relish being able to sever ties with power companies that made such gargantuan profits from the populations of so many countries. To give something so valuable away for free seemed literally insane.

‘Nobody ever does that,’ Lopez said. ‘Everybody sells out.’

Amber smiled up at Lopez as she replied. ‘So you’d imagine, but in fact the world is changing much faster than I think a lot of governments and corporations would like. Freeware and shareware is becoming the new norm, with people developing programs and software for computers and not selling them but simply sharing them for free across the Internet with peers.’

‘Software is a bit different from a world — changing energy source,’ Ethan pointed out.

‘Is it?’ Amber challenged. ‘Where do you think the World Wide Web came from?’

‘The United States military,’ Lopez replied. ‘They were using it as a communication device and the technology trickled down to the civilian realm.’

‘Wrong,’ Amber replied. ‘The World Wide Web was invented by Sir Tim Berners — Lee, a British scientist who developed it to communicate with other scientists quickly and then realised the potential of what he had created and resisted all offers from major American corporations keen to profit from the technology. It was he, one man alone, who gave us the World Wide Web and thus the Internet for free. He surrendered the chance of becoming a multi — billionaire in favour of returning something to the world that would benefit the public in more ways than even he himself could have imagined at the time.’

Ethan crouched down alongside Amber in fascination.

‘Your father was going to develop a device that would power the world for free and then he was going to give it all away. What’s his name?’

Amber smiled again.

‘Stanley Meyer,’ she replied, and then her features saddened once more. ‘And my mother is Mary. She’s also missing.’

‘You’re Amber Meyer?’ Lopez asked.

‘Amber Ryan,’ she replied. ‘I was adopted. Stanley and Mary couldn’t have children, so they adopted me at the age of two. Mary was an electrochemist and they met as undergraduates at university. I think that because they couldn’t have children they made their careers their priority, and then later in life decided to adopt me.’

‘Philanthropists,’ Ethan guessed. ‘They were giving things back all the time.’

‘They consider acts of such altruism as the future of our species,’ Amber said. ‘Dad said that corporate capitalism, a price and a profit for any service, had become so grotesquely mutated that it no longer served a purpose for those who needed it the most. He didn’t want his legacy to be a billionaire’s fortune — he wanted it to be a legacy that would last for all time.’

Ethan shook his head in wonder. ‘That’s pretty amazing.’

‘I considered him an idiot for even suggesting it,’ Amber retorted with a shrug. ‘He could have become a billionaire overnight. He deserved the success. I’d have taken the money and then handed the device to somebody else, let them duck the bullets, but dad isn’t like that.’

‘Fossil fuel companies would become worthless,’ Lopez pointed out.

‘Not to mention the collapse of oil — bearing nation’s economies,’ Ethan added.

‘That’s what he was afraid of,’ Amber said. ‘I think that he felt that governments and major corporations would seek to silence him if they had discovered what he was working on. It’s why he came back here from Chicago, back to our hometown. It’s quite remote and I think he preferred basing himself here far from the prying eyes of Washington.’

Ethan sat back on his haunches thoughtfully as he considered what Amber had told him.

‘So let’s say Stanley was successful, and that bright object you saw being taken away by troops was what he created. He must then logically have revealed the device to the townsfolk and helped them disconnect from the National Grid.’

Amber nodded. ‘That’s what I figured. He had to prove that the device works, because they wouldn’t believe him otherwise. So he disconnects the town from the National Grid and wires it up to whatever he created. It looks like doing that was enough to alert the government to what he was up to.’

Lopez joined them as she spoke. ‘The government sends somebody down to take a look at things, realise what’s happening here and decide to shut it all down before word gets out.’

‘They make Clearwater look like a ghost town that’s not been lived in for many years,’ Ethan went on. ‘But then what’s happened to the townspeople? Surely they haven’t decided to murder three hundred people to cover this up?’

Lopez shook her head as she looked around them.

‘I don’t doubt that the government would want to keep this under wraps, but I also doubt they would murder so many people in order to do so. Washington has been behind quite a few alternative energy programs for some years now and everyone knows about climate change.’

‘Then they must have bought them out,’ Ethan said in amazement. ‘Every last one of them.’

‘No way,’ Amber said. ‘My father would never have agreed to silence over this, not for any money.’

‘Then your father is in a great deal of trouble,’ Ethan said, ‘because whoever is behind this would likely go to any lengths to ensure his silence. The question is, who?’

Amber looked up at the surrounding hills.

‘There is a major company that was involved in a legal dispute with the town’s council over mining rights out in the mountains near here. It’s something to do with the new mining process which literally slices the tops off of mountains in order to gain access to coal inside. Apparently the process has poisoned the fresh water supplies to many towns, and our councillors were fighting the company for the right to maintain the pristine wilderness around here.’

‘If that company found out about your father’s device,’ Lopez said, ‘then they would have had a very clear motive for ensuring nothing ever got out of Clearwater.’

Ethan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Who was winning the legal battle?’

‘The corporation, predictably,’ Amber replied. ‘They had access to legal eagles far more powerful than anybody in Clearwater or even St Louis. There was no way we were going to win that case … ’

‘Unless your father revealed his device to the world,’ Lopez finished the sentence for her.

Amber reached into her clothes and produced a cell phone. ‘I could call my mother, she could explain everything to you better than I could but I haven’t been able to reach her and … ’

Amber went to activate the phone and Ethan lunged forward and caught her hand. ‘No!’

‘Why not?’ Amber gasped, shocked.

‘She’s not answering because she can’t or doesn’t want to be found, and I suspect if you use that cell phone the people who shut down Clearwater will come for you too.’ Ethan released his grip on Amber, cautious of frightening her. ‘What’s the name of this company?’

‘Seavers Incorporated,’ Amber spat as though removing something unpleasant from her mouth.