Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story) (26 page)

Ell sat up straighter and scanned the document on her e-slate. “Don’t waste paper printing that. I won’t sign it. There must be other options?”

The clerk frowned as he stared at his monitor and mumbled to his AI. “Sorry Ms. Donsaii. This is the only option available in your file.”

“Well that just doesn’t make sense. In the first place I don’t think I should owe a full five year commitment for two years at the Academy and I’m not certainly not signing up for a three year additional commitment for each year of grad school. If I did four years of grad school I’d owe seventeen years! You were right with the first question you asked me. I’ll just sign up for early departure with no commitment at all!”

“Oh no. You can’t do that! You’ve graduated. You owe five years for that.”

“My original enlistment said that I’d only owe a commitment when I began my third year at the Academy. I haven’t begun my third year. The Academy can’t go back on that contract.”

The clerk’s eyes widened and he pulled up another document, presumably the original enlistment forms. After studying it for a moment he mumbled, “Let me get the Lieutenant.” He got up from his chair and beat a retreat to the back office. After a few moments he reappeared and motioned Ell into a back hallway.

Ell entered the office and came to attention. The chubby balding lieutenant behind the desk waved to the lone chair and Ell sat down across from him. “The airman says you’re trying to wiggle out of your commitment?”

Ell sighed internally. She hated confrontations like this and in the past might have just backed down, “No sir. I have two issues. First I don’t think I should owe five years commitment for two years of education here at the Academy and, second, I don’t want to accrue three years commitment for each year of grad school.”

The lieutenant’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve graduated. How many years commitment do other graduates owe?”

“They owe five years sir. But they spend four years at the Academy. I do feel it would be reasonable for me to owe a two and a half years active duty commitment.”

“You’re that special, eh?”

Ell winced, “No sir. But the Air Force only made half its usual investment in my education, I don’t think it is unreasonable to get only half the active duty commitment in return.”

“Well I, for one, am tired of you being treated like you’re better than everyone else Donsaii. You’ll owe five years or you aren’t getting that diploma. And if the Air Force is going to pay for your grad school you’ll owe three for one on that.”

“Begging your pardon sir, but I already have the diploma and I don’t want the Air Force to pay for grad school. You are welcome to simply discharge me per my original enlistment if you like.”

“Not gonna happen. You aren’t going to get things your way on this one Cadet, so you’d just as well sign on the dotted line.”

This time Ell sighed audibly, “Sir, do you want me to take this up the chain of command?”

“Are you threatening me Cadet?”

“No Sir. Simply exercising my right to take an issue up the chain sir.”

“You want to talk to Major Linz?!”

Ell shrugged, “Yes Sir.” The lieutenant got up and stalked out of his office without another word.

After a few minutes Ell turned back to her slate and began running more correlations between known experimental data and the math she had invented to coordinate her proposed extra dimension and quantum behavior. She was so focused that she was startled when the office door slammed back open and the Lieutenant stalked back in and sat down. “Apparently, Ms. Donsaii, it would be a ‘PR debacle’ if you didn’t get your way.” The lieutenant’s words were clipped but precise. “Would this document meet your satisfaction?”

A window popped open on Ell’s e-slate, she expanded it and read the document which released her from active duty effectively now, and would have her resume active duty for two and a half years once she left grad school. Essentially it was the same as if she were discharged, but with a commitment to reenlist and, of course she would have reserve status and could be called back up at the Nation’s need. The Air Force would not support her financially during grad school. “She looked up and said, “Yes Sir. This is fine. If you’ll print it, I’ll sign it.”

Icily the Lieutenant said, “You probably should read the whole thing to be sure I didn’t slip any ‘clauses’ in there that you don’t like.”

Ell’s clear green eyes met his and, realizing that he didn’t think she’d had time to read it in the past 60 seconds she icily said, “I did read it Sir. There is an inconsequential substitution of the homonyms ‘their’ for ‘there” in the third paragraph but I don’t think it needs to be edited. The meaning is clear as written. Thank you.”

***

Ell sighed as she walked out the concourse at the ILM airport in Wilmington. She’d spent much of the flight home from Colorado fending off the eager attentions of the two men seated next to her on the flight. They hadn’t recognized her as Ell Donsaii, just found her attractive. On one hand it was nice that they thought she was cute, but on the other hand their constant attempts to start conversations kept her from working on her quantum models. And the big one had bad breath. She picked her duffle up off the baggage belt and threw the strap over her shoulder. She turned toward the door but then heard her name, “Ms. Donsaii? Oops, I mean Lieutenant Donsaii?” Ell turned to see a mother with two daughters aged between seven and eleven hurrying toward her. “Please could I get a picture with my daughters?”

Ell smiled and nodded graciously. It had become irritating because she was recognized and stopped so frequently when she left the Academy grounds, but she always thought of Michael Fentis’ rude refusal to give her an autograph at the Olympics and had resolved to always be polite. Unfortunately, while the one picture was being taken, other people recognized her and they actually formed a line for pictures and autographs. Allan, El’s AI (Artificial Intelligence assistant), whispered through her earpiece, “Your mother is now waiting outside.”

She turned to the people in the line and said, “My Mom is waiting outside so I can take one more picture with all of you, but then I’ve got to run.” The group accepted the compromise and soon Ell was looking up at her HUD (Heads Up Display) screens that on her AI’s headband as Allan projected an arrow to direct her out to where her Mom Kristen’s old Nissan sat at the curb. She tossed her duffle in the backseat and jumped in. She leaned over to give Kristen a hug as the car pulled itself out into traffic. Kristen instructed the car’s AI to take them home to Morehead City after which they started excitedly catching up on each other’s lives.

“…so I owe them two and a half years active duty after I finish grad school.”

“How are you going to pay for grad school though?”

“Well I should get a full ride scholarship from most Universities and I’ve actually saved quite a bit of my Cadet salary because pretty much everything was paid for at Academy. You know how I pinch pennies. And grad students usually get a stipend of some sort for doing teaching or research. I can take out loans if I need to. If I just can’t make ends meet, I’ll have to go back on active duty which will bring me a full officer’s salary while I’m in school, but then I’ll owe a bigger military time commitment when I’m done.”

“I can help a little bit, but you know I don’t have a lot of extra cash or I’d be driving a better car than this.”

“No problem, Mom.” Ell thought it pretty sad. Kristen’s attorney husband Jake was fairly well off but had insisted on a prenuptial agreement keeping their finances separate and left his wife to get along on her low teacher’s and waitressing salaries. Ell wouldn’t be surprised if he was charging Kristen rent to live in his house that they shared. “Right now I’m more worried about financing some trips to various grad schools for the application process. The places I want to go probably won’t take me without an interview.”

“Ouch! That could be kind of expensive, maybe I could pay for one of those trips for your birthday?”

“That’d be nice, thanks!”

“Hey, do you remember Mr. Mandal, your old guidance counselor?”

“Sure, he was really helpful when I was trying to figure college out.”

“Well he’s the principal now and asked me if you’d be willing to give the commencement address for the high school graduation?”

“Accch! I’m still a year younger than a lot of the graduates! They aren’t going to want to hear me talk!”

“Believe me, no one thinks much about your age. You are much too famous for anyone to focus on whether you are ‘old enough.’ He said it would mean a lot to the school. You’re by far their best known graduate.”

“I didn’t even graduate! I left after my junior year. Besides, isn’t graduation in just a couple more days?”

“Saturday. They have another speaker who’s agreed to step aside if you’re willing.”

“What would I talk about?”

“Tell them about gymnastics and winning the gold medals, that’s what they’re most interested in.”

“But you and I know that I’m a freak. I can’t just tell them that gymnastics is easy for me.”

“Talk to them about physics then.”

“They’ll die of boredom.” Ell threw her head back on the headrest. “Let me think about it for a moment.”

“And…”

“And what? You’re not going to spring another speech on me are you?”

“No. But Jake… Well, you know how you and Jake have never gotten along? But he got to be such a big fan of yours when you were in the Olympics. And now he’s just dying to do something to make it up to you for how he behaved in the past. He’s been working hard on something for you all this last week. I don’t know what it is, but I hope you’ll give him a chance with it?”

“Oh Mom. I don’t know. Just hearing his name brings a picture of that condescending sneer back to mind…”

“Please, for me?”

“Well you love him and he is my step-dad, so I’ll cut him some slack. Not very much though. I just can’t picture him giving up his old ways.”

“Try to be nice. He might even help finance those interview trips you’re worried about.”

“Well, that actually would be nice.”

***

Ell’s heart started pounding while Mr. Mandal gave her a glowing introduction. To her dismay he focused on her gymnastic gold medals and her subsequent role stopping the terrorist plot to derail the Olympics. Ell had hoped that as an educator he would concentrate on her academic achievements and at least mention her physics paper since that was what she intended to talk about. She stood and, trembling like a leaf inside, slowly walked to the podium. Staring out over the gymnasium full of people she thought wonderingly to herself that neither competing in the Olympics nor facing terrorists had made her this tremulous. There was just something terrifying about public speaking, especially to a group of her peers. She grimaced; they were going to hate her topic.

Her fear went unrecognized by the audience who only saw a very attractive, slender, strawberry blond young woman in a black pantsuit get up from her seat and walk, apparently confidently, across the stage to the podium.

She stood silently at the microphone several long moments, wondering if she actually had the courage to give this talk. People shifted in their seats. Finally, she cleared her throat, “I suspect… that you want to hear about winning Olympic gymnastic medals.” She said weakly, then cleared her throat again and with more strength said, “Or that you want to hear about what it was like to be in that room with the terrorists.

“OK…

“The first was exhilarating, the second was terrifying…”

Ell paused. At first scattered chuckles, then a full throated laugh swept the audience. “Now that that’s out of the way, let me tell you about something much more interesting. At least to me.

“Young’s double slit experiment is one of the most elegant and exciting phenomena in all of physics and something that
I
lay awake at night thinking about. I think you should all be puzzled by it too, so I’m going to briefly explain it to you. If you send light, say a laser beam, at a narrow slit you will find that the beam spreads out on the other side of the slit, just like the waves in water do when they come through a narrow opening in a breakwater.” Ell was proud to have recognized that this analogy would be readily understood by people in this coastal town. “If you send that beam so that it hits two neighboring slits it will spread out from each slit and create an ‘interference’ pattern where the waves double up in some areas and block each other out in others. So light must consist of waves right? Well yes light does act like a wave. However, light also acts like a particle. You can slow down your light emitting device until it is only emitting one ‘quantum’ of these particles or “photons” at a time. Then they show up at the detector as a single spot, kind of like a bullet hitting a target, and just like a particle would they leave a mark at that one spot. And you can send those particles through the two slits one at a time and see each one appear on the other side of the slits one at a time, each arriving as a single little spot on your detector. Just like a particle should arrive. That’s not very wavelike! But after thousands of your photon particles have gone through the two slits, one at a time, you will find that they have arrived at the target, distributed in that same wave interference pattern! It’s as if the particles act like waves even when they are traveling all by themselves, one at a time! It’s freaking bizarre, but true.

“This phenomenon has given physicists headaches for decades and has led to weird terms like ‘wavicles’ to try to describe this tendency to act like both a wave and a particle at the same time. So I present this to you as a challenge. Figure this out! Or at least ponder it. You probably thought I would give a long winded speech or try to inspire you with stories of how hard I worked to achieve what I’ve done in gymnastics. Instead I’m telling you what I
want
to do. I want to figure this ‘wavicle’ thing out.

“The way I see it, there are two possibilities. First, light is neither a wave, nor a particle, nor a wavicle, but instead something completely different from either one and we need to come up with a different descriptive model than either a particle or a wave for what light really is. Or, my current pet theory, which is that light is made of single photon particles that can actually spread out like a bunch of particles. In other words, each particle can spread out like a ‘wave’ of particles and that all these spread out ‘subphotons’ are actually connected to one another through a 5th dimension that we can’t see, feel, or touch. Then when the photon arrives at its destination, having traveled like a wave of subphotons, it coalesces through that 5th dimension to become a single complete photon at the one point where we detect it at our receptor apparatus.