Her Royal Madness

Her Royal Madness Part 19

Juna continued, "Now we come to one of the most important developments of our society. Centuries ago, our people developed advanced mental abilities. The problem, as you have discovered, was that these abilities give us an awesome amount of potential power, but they require a source of energy. Many people suffered permanent damage, or even death, from overexerting themselves, just as you almost did. Sometimes the solutions people tried were worse than the problem. Various radioactive materials were tried. That works until the radiation sickness starts. Some people carried bulky motors, which was not only inefficient but unreliable. Several people electrocuted themselves. They thought that by touching the outputs of the generator directly, they could absorb and store the energy directly in their bodies. Unfortunately nobody's body has the capacity to store that much energy. 

"Finally one of our citizens discovered a means to store a vast amount of energy in a safe and convenient form. You're wearing one right now." 

But I wasn't wearing any power source, all I had was a metal jumpsuit and - Ohhh. "This big diamond! I can feel it pulsing with the stored energy. What is it - some kind of a battery?" 

"That's a crude way to put it, but essentially correct. Called a T'Pauch crystal after it's discoverer, it's organically based with a pseudo-life that tunes itself with your brainwaves, to strengthen all your mental abilities including telepathy and psychokinesis." 

"So, this 'T'Pauch' crystal thing - how much energy does it store? And how do you charge it up?" 

"When fully charged, a crystal like this has enough energy to power a city the size of yours for eight to nine months." 

Wow! We didn't live in a very large town, but that's a lot of power. 

"As for charging," Juna continued, "any form of energy will do: electricity, heat, light, radiation, kinetic, anything. Normally they're charged by technicians at an anti-matter matter reactor. Sometimes, however, a power station isn't readily available, such as now. In a case like that, the fastest and easiest way to charge the T'Pauch is to connect it directly to a source of electricity. But you could also leave it in the sunlight or even toss it into a fire. Something a little more complicated is to drop it. To do this, you must tune yourself to the crystal and convert the kinetic energy into stored energy as it drops. Like this." 

Removing the crystal from her neck, Juna held it above her head and dropped it. Six inches above the floor, it abruptly slowed down landing light as a feather. 

Juna picked up the crystal and replaced it around her neck. "That's useful as a demonstration only. It's a very inefficient process that barely adds more energy than it takes to control the T'Pauch. Plus the source of the energy is your body, which you have discovered is a limited supply. Although I do remember a time when I had to jump out of an atmosphere ship at a height of twenty-seven thousand feet. My crystal was drained, I was out of ammunition, and I was badly outnumbered. So I used my last bit of power to punch a hole through the skin of the ship, and jumped. By the time I landed, there was a pretty good charge on the crystal. Remind me to tell you the rest of the story when we have more time. It was quite an adventure." Apparently, this was Juna's idea of a happy memory. She was smiling contentedly. 

"There's a couple more things to add. The T'Pauch must be in direct contact with your skin to operate most efficiently." 

That explained the low-cut neck line and the gaudy jewelry. I thought it was too decorative for her. 

"And it can affect your personality. In fact, I'm almost certain it has changed your personality, Maddie ." 

"What do you mean, changed my personality? It's just a dumb rock."