The Angriest Angel

Chapter 5

"Dr. Giovanni," the blonde woman in the business suit called across the room to him.  "The results are ready."

He walked over to her workstation, stepping around all of the special guests in the laboratory.  He eagerly pulled out his glasses and donned them in order to read her screen.

"Call me Shaky," he said.  "Everyone in engineering does; the government might as well do the same.  It wouldn't be—"

He stopped short, staring at her screen, as if the numbers might somehow change if he looked at them long enough.

"That's impossible," he said.

"What is it?" she asked. 

She didn't understand.  None of these people would understand.

"Have them run the tests again," Shaky said.  And then he looked around and shouted, "Eddie!"

His small assistant was at his side immediately, "I'm here."

"Look at this," he pointed to the screen.

Eddie's eyes darted back and forth as he scanned the numbers, "Nominal, nominal, nominal, nominal—wait," he adjusted his glasses.  "No.  That order of magnitude is impossible."

"I know," Shaky agreed.  "Unless it's measured on the quantum level."

Eddie looked at him, "But it's not operating on the quantum level."

"I know that," Shaky said, irritated now.  He turned his attention back to the woman in the business suit, looking at her sternly, "I said, have them run the tests again."

She nodded and started typing on her computer, "You're the boss."

"Eddie, do me a favor," he said, turning to his assistant.  "Have them connect the p-n junction diode directly to the top of that thing.  Don't use any rectifier buffers this time."

"Okay," Eddie responded, darting back to the test room.

"And run the numbers with the Boltzmann constant applied!" Shaky called out.

Eddie waved in reply, not stopping.

Shaky turned his attention back to the woman in the chair.  The obvious question had been on his mind this entire time.  It was the elephant in the room.  He had avoided asking the question until now only because he had been swept away by the marvel of the technology itself.

"Where did you guys find this thing?"

She looked at him, "Sorry, confidential."

"Confidential," he spat, disappointed, but not surprised.  "That's just great!"

"If it helps," she said, "its location wasn't very interesting.  It was turned over to the police because the guy who saw it had no idea what it was.  I can't say where, but it was found by accident."

"Uh huh," he said, completely dissatisfied.

"Well, what do you think, doctor?" she asked.  "You've had it for several hours now.  Do you think it could be Chinese technology?  Russian technology?"

Shaky let out a short laugh and whipped his glasses off, "That's funny."

She raised an eyebrow, "What's funny?"

"The amount of energy that thing produces could power a city, and it doesn't even get warm!  Think about it, uh—the mass to energy ratio, it's super-logarithmic!  And the forward bias voltage can't exist—well, at least at that size."

She looked confused, "What is your point?"

"We're hundreds of years from producing something like that!" he exclaimed, and then lowered his voice.  "When you brought this in, did you notice its gravitational field?  Eh?"