The Life We Lead: Ascending (27 page)

“I see. Well, I think you will find that I’m
not the only one exiting the room. Not to mention, I do not think a
simple request of …”

James was cut off by a red faced Dr.
Watterson, who shouted, “First, I doubt there are any original
thoughts rattling around in that storage compartment atop your
shoulders. As far as others not following, they too can depart. I
can lecture to an empty room as well as a full one. Calvin, see
this individual out!”

A slim, young grad student in the front row
stood up. James had already begun making his way out of the room,
and Calvin fell in beside him.

When the doors shut behind them, Dr.
Watterson began to lecture again, but Calvin stayed outside the
lecture hall with James.

“You must be new here, or hate the program,
to stop him in mid-lecture like that,” Calvin marveled. “Surprised
he didn’t take your name down. He must be getting soft in his old
age. The last person to do what you just did got tossed out of the
school completely, but then again, he had a full-blown argument in
the middle of the lecture. This was a few years ago, but everyone
still talks about it like it was last term.” Calvin spoke with a
lot of hand motions and weight shifting.

“Right, well, I won’t keep you from
returning.” James turned, still peeved. Now he needed to rethink
how to get information on Yan.

“Oh, no, I can’t go back in. He’d kill me.
Besides, I know the material, as it is my research. I can explain
what you were asking about. I really think he had me escort you out
to answer your question,” Calvin said, smiling. “The head of the
department has been on him about being too abrupt with pupils, but
there’s no way he was going to lose his reputation, so out you go.”
He pointed his thumb over his shoulder and stuck out his tongue to
blow a raspberry.

“Sounds like a great boss you have there,”
James said in a rather sarcastic tone.

“He isn’t so bad, once you get used to him.
Oh, and as long as you don’t disagree with him in public … or
private, really. Best to just let him think it was his idea all the
time. But then, it has to still go along with his theory.” As an
afterthought, Calvin added, “That’s where Yan messed up. Well, if
you want to go …”

“Sorry, who?” James stared at Calvin.

Calvin looked back at him. “Who what?”

“Who did you just say?” James asked. He
suddenly realized his entire demeanor had changed and consequently
put Calvin on guard. James forced his body to relax and said,
“Something about someone disagreeing with Dr. Watterson.”

Calvin’s eyes got wide for a second before he
said, “Oh, yeah, Yan. That was a fight, that. Shame, too; Yan had
brains. He was my brother’s roommate the first term we were here as
freshmen. We thought we’d try a little separation, so we just lived
next to each other, but with different roommates. Didn’t work out
too well, so we ended up swapping the next term. Things were better
after that. Well, not for Yan; a few terms later he got tossed
out.” Calvin jerked his thumb and made the raspberry noise
again.

As they began to walk, Calvin started to ask
James questions like, “So are you new here?” and “Where do you come
from” and “Are you majoring in particle engineering?”

Before James could really answer any of the
questions, Calvin was onto the next. It was rather annoying.

They walked down the hall and into a lab area
with a lot of equipment running in a very large space. It
surrounded an enormous circle of tubing with a variety of wires and
transducers hooked to it, which made it a little challenging to
walk around the crowded space at the edges.

There was only one other person in the room.
James saw a blond ponytail lying over the back of a white lab coat.
When they were a few feet away, the woman looked up and smiled.

Wow
, thought James. Just as it
registered how pretty she was, she walked up and kissed Calvin as
though he had just singlehandedly saved her family and all her
friends. As the passionate kiss broke, her hand disappeared down
Calvin’s front.

Based on his reaction, she must have grabbed
something she shouldn’t have, at least not in public.

Turning to face James and putting his arm
around the girl’s shoulder, Calvin said, “This is Regan. Regan,
this is uhh …”

“Hi, I’m James,” he said, reaching out and
shaking hands. Immediately, he realized he should have gone with
John, as that was the identification he had with him, but it didn’t
matter, as he was certain no one was going to check it.

Calvin began to explain what had happened
during the lecture, but James wasn’t sure Regan was listening, as
her right hand was groping Calvin’s backside. James didn’t
understand her interest in him, but then again, who was he to
judge?

When Calvin got to the part where James
questioned Dr. Watterson, Regan gasped, as if Dr. Watterson were
going to walk in and somehow associate her with James’s evil
deed.

“See, told you, mate,” Calvin said
smugly.

Not sure what to say to this, James merely
smiled.

Just then two more people entered the lab,
and James did a double take. It looked like Calvin and Regan had
just walked in. Either this was the twilight zone, or someone had
figured out cloning or had created a time warp. Not only were the
newcomers identical to Calvin and Regan, but the new Regan was
walking with her hand in the new Calvin’s back pocket.

“How did it go?” the original Calvin
asked.

“Fine. You know how he is. Got through the
rest of the material, announced he was heading to the pub, and that
was it.” The new Calvin made the same raspberry tongue sound and
did the same thumb jerk, while the new Regan giggled.

“James, this is my brother Raymond and this
is Regan’s sister Regina. We’re all twins. Though Regan and I are
the cute ones,” Calvin said with a big smile. Regan gave a small
“Aw” and proceeded to kiss him.

“Calvin tells me you were roommates with the
last student to interrupt Dr. Watterson,” James said as a way to
introduce the topic and break the ice.

“Yan? Yeah. That was a bad day, wasn’t it?
Well, he had it a lot worse than you. Always banging on about
creating an artificial zone for a sustained electro-magnetic pulse,
remember that?” Raymond said to the room at large.

“Well, he did sort of demonstrate it on the
accelerator,” said Regan, turning her head to look at the encircled
area.

“Right.” Raymond looked disinterested, but
James looked at everyone in turn, silently asking “And?”

They failed to pick up on it. James felt he’d
better not push it for now; he’d have to circle back to it later.
“So can you explain the lecture to me, please?” he asked
instead.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Calvin said with a
smile.

“Have at it; I have to go check my video
feeds,” Raymond said, walking away with Regina.

Regan kissed Calvin on the cheek. “Go be
brilliant!” she told him with a giggle.

Calvin blushed. “Sorry,” he said as he led
James to a room just to the side of the lab. “She can’t keep her
hands off me. Pure animal magnetism. Get it? Kind of appropriate,
since we work in magnets.” He had a huge grin on his face, but then
looked serious.

“Actually, it can be a bit annoying. She’s
bright and all, but she wants me all the time.” He shook his head
as they sat down at a desk. James felt like shaking his head, too,
but he resisted the impulse, as he didn’t want to insult
Calvin.

Over the course of the next few hours, Calvin
walked James through the finer points of the lecture and what they
were doing in the lab. The focus was on creating better power
sources for batteries through magnets, and they were making a lot
of headway from the traditional 60:1 ratio to a few tons of
magnetic force into the size of a baseball. The drawback was that
the temperature had to be extremely low.

“This is similar to superconducting ceramics,
where there’s essentially no loss of efficiency in conducting
electricity over any distance in a cold enough environment, but not
one seen in nature, right?” James asked.

“Exactly, yes. It’s just that we’re storing
the energy for release as we see fit, not just transporting it.”
Calvin leaned back in his chair.

“So what happens when that energy is released
from a high capacity substrate? Say if it were to come out
extremely rapidly?”

“You’d get a rather large electromagnetic
pulse, then. Funny you say that; it’s exactly what Yan kept
pushing. Kept asking about sending electrical fields through a high
conducting substrate to generate a sustainable EMP. Dr. Watterson
said it couldn’t be done, not at a normal temperature at least. Yan
seemed to think it could.” Calvin drank some tea.

“What do you think? Could it be done?” James
asked.

Calvin paused. “I think it might. Yan seemed
to be getting some results, but he never shared his methods. I
would like to believe it could be done. It could accelerate what
we’re trying to do here by years and years.”

Later, driving back to Aberdeen, James
thought about how he was going to get Calvin to evaluate the
fortress and tell him how to dismantle the system. It seemed the
logical thing, given his level of understanding, but it was also
risky. But simply telling him about the set up would create a
firestorm of questions, not to mention the fact that Calvin was
very much a part of what James called “the herd.”

James reminded himself that he was putting
the cart before the horse. Until he and the major worked out the
plan, it was impossible to say if expertise with the EMP was even
needed. Something just told him it would be.

James shifted his focus to thoughts of
Carissa and found himself back in Aberdeen in no time. It was past
11 when he crawled onto the couch that night, and he drifted off to
sleep with little problem.

***

Moving day came, and James stood inside the
flat Carissa shared with Judy. Judy wasn’t speaking much, so James
took his cue from this and concentrated on getting the truck
loaded. After they finished, James left the ladies to say their
goodbyes.

Carissa came out a few minutes later, her
eyes shiny.

“Listen, I am sorry; she seemed down, you
know. Just had a bit of family troubles of late. She really is a
sweet person and has always been there for me.” Carissa paused and
bit her lip, clearly trying to decide whether to say more.

James gave a weak smile. Normally, he
wouldn’t truly care about Judy’s problems, but as it was Carissa
explaining, he actually had some interest. “No worries.”

“It’s just hard for her is all,” Carissa
said, feeling a need to explain but not wanting to violate her
friendship with Judy.

“It must be hard to have a mum who is ill
with her dad passed on. I am sure the treatments at hospital will
help the cancer,” James said to be reassuring.

Carissa took a step back, puzzled. “How der
ya know that then?”

Oops,
he thought.

“Ah, well I saw the papers on the counter in
the flat for cancer treatment from two weeks prior. You had talked
about her coming back from the hospital the day you asked about
moving in. Just put it all together,” James said in a humble, but
sort of dismissing, way.

“Doesn’t explain that you knew it were for
her mum, though,” Carissa said.

“Aye, that is true. Well, the photos on the
wall show Judy with her parents every year on her birthday. The
last two are missing her dad, so I was thinking he had already
passed. Judy looks rather healthy, and she wouldn’t if she’d had
chemo just a fortnight ago. So I just guessed her mum has breast
cancer, because that last picture shows she had a breast removed
based on how the fabric was on her chest,” James said.

Carissa just stood there. This didn’t make
James feel any better. He should have just said he’d guessed
instead of trying to explain everything, but he hadn’t wanted to
lie. He felt guilty enough about all the lies he’d already told
her.

Finally she spoke. “I knew you tae be
brilliant, but can you go on pretending tae not know, please? Just
in case Judy were to say something ever. She doesn’t want others
tae know.”

“Of course,” James said, relieved. He was
even happier when Carissa didn’t go on and on about it, but just
let it go.

Three hours later, Carissa and James walked
through James’s apartment so Carissa could get her bearings. James
had done most of the packing of the vehicles on the front end and
had strategically placed most of the things he felt would make it
into the apartment where they could easily be off-loaded.

After looking around, Carissa turned to him.
“Well now, John, what lass you have in this place ‘sides me?” Her
tone was serious, but she had a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

“Oh, you got me. There are half a dozen a
week, you know. What gave it away then?” James asked, smiling.

“Simple,” she said, walking over to the table
and setting down the box she was carrying. “Never seen a lad that
had a place in order like this before. And this wasn’t a last
second dash tae clean, neither.” She gave him wink. “I pay
attention to things myself, you know.”

They both laughed.

They walked through the rest of the
apartment, discussing what they should bring up. When they got to
her queen sized bed, Carissa thought it would be too much
trouble.

“Well, I can just kip on the couch,” she
said.

“If anyone is sleeping on the couch, it’s me.
I sleep there a fair amount of time as it is. Didn’t you notice the
bed was made? I never make the bed.” The last part was true, but
given the rest of the apartment, Carissa didn’t believe him.

“John, this is your place. I can’t be having
you put out like that in your home, now. And this is just tae I am
able to find me own place, you know. Honest, Love, that is sweet,
but I can’t,” Carissa said.