Remember More

Chapter 01

REMEMBER MORE

CHAPTER 01

Imagine a typical university. Typical university lecture hall. Rather large however, with seats enough for a thousand, though now only with about a hundred young men and women scattered around the hall in various groups. But a typical class. Of typical Physics. And as was typical of such a gathering, half of the students were paying attention to something else entirely. Some fiddled with their phones, texting their friends. Some were outright snoring. A select few were actually sitting up in rapt attention. Most of these were the Life Science students, sitting near the front of the class and taking Physics as a prerequisite for applying to Med School later on.

The professor at the front of the class was an older man still with hair on his head but all of it long gone grey. As he lectured up there on the stage beside the podium, he sat in a wheelchair, a motorized one. He fidgeted around in it every once in a while and it made a funny creaking noise when he moved, much to the annoyance of those who were actually trying to get some sleep.

Just now, he was addressing the class in his froggy, old voice, saying, "...what if we were able to impart these properties on things that up to now, have never been thought of as being 'magnetic'? We know it is possible by the equations that I've just shown you on the screen. And it also makes sense because intuitively, we know that subatomic particles—protons, electrons and so forth, have intrinsic magnetic properties to them by virtue of their very nature. What I'm proposing right now, is what if we could bring those properties to the fore? Interact with these substances that we have traditionally thought of as non-magnetic, as magnetic in and of themselves?"

Someone coughed and the sound echoed. The texters continued to text.

The professor glanced around, peering out into a few select faces. "I think everyone here is already familiar with maglev trains, correct? Like the bullet train in Tokyo, or the monorail in France? I want you to imagine what the world would be like if we could have the monorail without the rail."

The crowd stirred. Some the men and women in the audience turned and murmured amongst themselves.

The professor went on. "What if we could magnetize a piece of wood? Or water? Or the air itself? Or more simply, the road upon which we walk every day? Can you imagine a car, without wheels for it wouldn't need them, that could manoeuvre upon the street without ever having to touch it? As if it floated on air? But without the cumbersome noises and wind and dust produced by a hovercraft?"

A hand floated upward in the audience.

The professor acknowledged him.

The young man rose to his feet. "Professor, but isn't this all conjecture?" He gestured with his hand. "These things are only equations. They only exist on a piece of paper on the drawing board. Or in a program on a computer."

The professor nodded. As he continued to nod, he pulled back on the joystick on the armrest of his wheelchair. His ride correspondingly backed away from the pulpit, making that funny creaking noise all the while. He turned to one side and waved to someone unseen in the wings.

He began to speak but his words were for the man in the audience. "When I was preparing for the lecture, I knew a question exactly like yours must come up eventually. It is only logical. To answer you, I would first bring your mind to magnetic resonance imaging and other equipment in the medical science field. If you know what those are and how they work, you will realize that some of the things that we've been talking about have already been put to use by scientists for a long time now. However, today, I will show you an application of these same theories in a somewhat…more interesting way." He smiled at his audience. He waved again into the wing.