1175. About technologies, 4
(Armylè)
On his side of things, Morhens got gradually better.
And he quickly forgot about that red haired girl’s existence and name. A few people asked about her unique appearance, as if she had been the doctor’s hidden child or niece; but Johann was first to nod negatively and say to forget about her.
Morhens was looking gradually better even. However he was still overexerting himself physically.
Being careless with himself, he clumsily caused an incident.
He had a moment of vertigo and fell against the wrong control panel at the wrong time.
A transformer for a workshop being installed was pushed out of balance and fell from a height. It caused a violent impact and he was hurt along by the weight and shock. No one was dead, but the impact and scattering of little elements hurt him and knocked him out.
After a moment of deep concern, the medical team organised his rescue and took care of him.
Possibly because he had foreseen this might happen, Johann had made extensive preparations around the complex for emergency care and more. He had built a small clinic and obtained over time quite an extensive collection of costly medical equipment to furbish it.
The joke they could hear around the corridor was, health care was not part of the research programs, yet.
However as the unconscious and bleeding man was being carried away, they understood why Johann had worked to have all that ready to go in insurance. It was not about future research on biology but very current concerns.
Johann had put his hands on a nuclear magnetic resonance imagery machine. And it was true that he had for the future some ideas of dismantling and redesigning these kind of machines with the increased efficiency allowed by T.I. But these thoughts were still far from his priorities and the machine was still wrapped in storage.
Morhens didn’t need it. He woke up while being stitched.
He immediately complained and began insulting the medics caring for him, abusing them to let him go.
His legs betrayed him with quite a sharp pain though. They were more hurt than he had realised.
He was grumpy, but eventually let them take care of him. He muttered complains and at least was put made to return to work rapidly, instead of resting as much as he should be. He was sat on a wheelchair and allowed to roll away. The doctor had tried, but Morhens wouldn’t hear a thing.
Because of scratches and cut around his face, his moustache had been shaved along disinfection. He had stitches afterward but weirdly, his changed look troubled people, more than the wheelchair he was now stuck in.
Not that he cared personally, nor Johann. But many people were troubled by that part of the change. Without that part of him that gave some historical look to the legend, the man wasn’t matching it anymore and it saddened some people a little.
Morhens would have been the first one to stop idling over such insignificant details and get back to work.
And in the meantime he moved around using the wheelchair without complaining about it.
Worse even, he even seemed amused pushing himself forward and around manually. For one to be pragmatic, they had expected that he would use the engines more than anything.
They had underestimated the mechanical physicist passion inside of him. Manually, he was able to control better and better the strength, speed and impulses he could give. He could shift his balance and play on it. Like a child learning to do tricks on a skateboard or a bike.
Morhens seemed pretty cheerful rolling around in balance over the two back wheels sometimes.
The only thing spookier than a physicist being amused, it was doctor Morhens being amused.
So there were some shocks. But Morhens wasn’t slowed down being on a wheelchair, and appreciated the new game stimuli working with the mechanics of it. Using his brain for games for once, that didn’t hurt him. On the contrary.
And since he was able to go around about as fast as when he was walking, that was bearable a constraint. He gave the time to his legs to heal. His medical doctor was probably thanking the gods heartily, as for once the man was doing something right for his health.
And then along the end of summer, after the minor delays caused by him, things felt like they returned to normal.
A gross calculus mistake was made and visible on a report brought to him.
He went mad. The recently hired technician involved had been a little too lax with his work, and underestimated the expectations of his new management.
And he yelled. A lot. Morhens was not putting the common city standards for his team. And the clumsy and distracted ones had no room for themselves in his kingdom.
Morhens berated noisily the embarrassed employee not used to this kind of behaviour.
Some of the people witnessing the event but not involved had a smile from twisted amusement. Hearing that vociferous noise, they realised how that odd music was back. Morhens was yelling.
It had been a long while. Some of the passer-by exchanged complicit gazes and nods at the situation. Some of them mimicked military salutations to acknowledge how their iron-fist ruler was back in command.
Morhens didn’t stop there. He then went to bollock two other technicians that had been apparently negligent as well. He then proceeded with a note to all personnel, stating he would not tolerate further delay to the test chamber completion. That meant no accident and no laziness.
The leader ordered, and everyone began to march in unison. Such a simplified and idealised or dramatized picture.
But work got that missing little nudge to do things well again.
~
Johann was merry.
The insensitive man cared mostly about results, and less about the costs that could be considered collaterals.
The manifest result was Morhens being back, so he was satisfied.
Thinking back about his idea, he indeed had found the one person able to reach the right angle against Morhens. Not the traditional ways, but the roundabout way that worked wonders.
He didn’t care what that had done to Néphéline in reaction. And even he had known, he probably would have done it and call it a success. Néphéline was damaged but Geder was getting better.
Soon enough the two men would walk side by side once more through the corridors to reach the control room of another test chamber. These pale corridors were the blood vessels of this extensive research centre. They made an organism able to change things further, and that was the only thing that mattered.
They would change everything.
~
Beginning of Autumn, they were finally ready.
The test chamber they had planned, meticulously built and finally completed was finally ready. It had been years of patience and perseverance to reach this room of possibilities.
Hydraulic systems were being reviewed. The heavy shell elements positioned into layers of scales were shaping the sphere encompassing another one. With this system they could adjust more than the electromagnetic field, they could also reshape dynamically the room itself. They could also change the sensors and replace elements over time during longer experiments. It was like a living organism ready to breathe.
That spherical organ could change size from a smaller volume of around twenty metres of diameter to more than double it, multiplying its volume more than height times.
In the middle of this space, an odd core was hanging, to be the fuel of the first experiment to come. It was another shell to contain the early nuclear experiment, a smaller heavy hollow sphere hanging there with cables and magnetic repulsion. The outer shell was not meant to be of use this time, but reviewed and readied nonetheless.
Everything was isolated and the experiment had its go.
They were going to measure and activate nuclear fusion for a brief instant. Even if it was meant to be small scale and short time, this was meant to generate a good flash of heat. The influence of T.I. they meant to evaluate required the outer chamber to be massive in consequence.
The experiment began. Morhens and Johann overviewed the operations from the control room. It had been built similarly to the ones of the existing reactors of the city. Some officials from the department of energy, the scientific council and the government observed quietly.
Johann had managed to get the support of many people from the departments of energy and nuclear engineering. They had required their help from all across the city to eventually bring this ambitious project to success. It was not so easy to proceed with live nuclear testing in an autarchic city. Yet they succeeded. Their presence mattered.
They had injected into the heart of the chamber the hydrogen meant to fuse shortly. It was sealed at maximum mechanical pressure in the city. They were going to use the tunnelling effect to inject more and rise the pressure further gradually.
On screens, the flows were visible and channelled to bring more gaz into the locked hohlraum. They met inside and then scattered, losing their effect but leaving some more hydrogen behind. They had summoned Maxwell’s very specific daiûa thanks to T.I.
The pressure was brought to its maximum and intended level. They were not going to cause the fusion just from pressure, as it would have required more T.I. than they could ever hold in their factory. They had to heat as well.
Therefore next were the mega joules lasers being gradually activated and increasing their intensity.
The numerous lamps focused in bombarding the chamber in the middle of the testing space. If everything was opaque to visible light, the suspended orb was transparent to these torches. They concentrated in heating one coordinated spot where to ignite the reaction.
The gigantic hohlraum was limiting the heat exchange with the outside chamber, that was not meant to be affected.
It was an obstacle on some perspectives, protecting most things; and permeable where it mattered, to T.I. and these plasmas. The temperature increased rapidly inside the smaller volume. The millions of kelvin grew.
The electromagnetic confinement was activated and growing in intensity, before the fusion reaction would start.
The researchers and scientists were all a little nervous. T.I. was still mostly impervious in itself to electromagnetic confinement, but could affect it in either way. If it were to reduce or neutralise the charge of the plasma created, the confinement through electromagnetic repulsion would become useless.
Plasmas and magnetohydrodynamics were already complex enough without adding the unknown effects of T.I. onto them.
Morhens and Johann were however rather confident.
The process continued, combining the aspects of older knowledge dusted for the good cause, and new research for the new world.
The ignition happened. Nuclear fusion began inside the chamber.
~
