Duncan Long - Anti-Grav Unlimited

The alarm was silent when I got back: A welcome change.

After another cup of caffinex and a good-sized meal from the instawarm, it was—finally—time to get down to some worth-while work.

The first project would be creating my own power company. Don’t laugh. I told you these rods had potential. The work I had in mind later was going to take a lot of electrical power and I was already paying an arm, leg, and some other major body parts just to keep the light, 3V, instawarm and van recharger going. An electrical generator made a lot of sense.

As I soon found out, it would have been easier to have left the electric engine in the van.

Instead, acting rashly, I had the labbot jerk the engine out of the van; only after it was out did I realize that it would be hard to get it back in. Too, I should have experimented with an old motor-

-if I’d failed at my task, I would have ruined a perfectly good van. But by now, caution had been thrown to the wind. I wanted to get to the nitty-gritty of practical use of the rods. I dived into the job knowing that failure was not an option, unless I wanted to get another job and save up for a new van. Which I did not.

After the bot had placed the van’s engine on the concrete floor, we went to the corner where the rods were, anchored them more securely in place, removed one, and clamped it on its side to the vise on the work bench.

The idea was to slice off several sections of rod so that they could be mounted on the electric motor of the van. This would enable me to power the van and—since the motor would also become an electrical generator if it moved on its own—would become a source of electricity. (I told you these rods had a lot of potential.)

You’ll notice I didn’t say “just” slice off several sections of the rod. That’s because the force exerted down the length of a rod is pretty great. Though the metal that the rods were made from was relatively soft, if a regular synthadiamond saw were used to cut into them it would soon become all but locked in the gravity field. Though it could be moved, the friction would melt either the rod or the saw blade before the job was done (unless you wanted to take sixteen years doing it or had a waterfall to cool the metal).

So I used an industrial laser that I’d “borrowed,” compliments of Weisenbender and company.

Even the laser was tricky to use since the rod tended to reflect the light and burn holes in the work bench and me, but the laser did its job fairly quickly.

The bot and I got most of the rod sectioned, though one small piece did get away. It was spinning with a slight wobble when it escaped so that it went twisting off on a zigzag tangent that finally ended when the projectile lodged in the rafters of the garage.

Even the bot followed the action with its unblinking camera eye.

By noon my able—if dimwitted—electronic assistant and I had gotten the lengths of rod welded to the armature of the van’s motor. Standing back from the plane they’d be operating in, I crossed my fingers and had the bot remove the restraining chains (I figured I’d rather lose one bot than some important part of my anatomy).

The rods started right up in their tight little orbit and very quickly the shaft was spinning at its maximum speed.

I sprayed it liberally with sililube and started taking measurements of how much electricity and mechanical power the thing was giving off. It put out quite a bit of power. Only then did the full impact of the last six years’ work set in. Generators like the one I’d created could be the solution to any number of mankind’s energy and travel problems. Those who had invested in public utilities would be fit to be tied; the rest of us were going to be enjoying almost free, unlimited power.

Now the cynical among us would probably figure I had wired myself into a corner: the motor was going lickity split without a load on it and the van’s motor pod was empty. But it wasn’t quite like that. The problem of stopping the motor had—more or less —been planned on ahead of time.

Remember that the greater the load that is placed on a generator’s circuit, the more slowly it tends to turn. Short the thing out and it practically stops. That was the theory. And I had also already connected a load to the motor’s shaft just to be on the safe side.

My problem was that the rod-driven generator I’d created from the van’s electric motor put out a lot more energy than I’d expected. Shorting the thing out was a little dangerous and tended to melt the heaviest of cables. Finally I got the bot ready to latch onto the motor when I gave the order and then I used a pry bar to short out all the cables I’d connected into the generator.

Somehow we managed to stop the metal whirlwind I had set into motion, and we did it without burning down the garage or ripping the bot apart. (Since the gear box of the van would slow down the motor/generator in the future once the motor was back in the van, I knew getting it stopped would be easier once the motor was in place.)

After a short break to collect my wits and replace one of the bot’s arms with a spare stored in its chest, we carefully chained the lengths of rod so they couldn’t start spinning, and the motor was placed back in the van.

Easier said than done.

At this point I realized that I would have saved a lot of time if I’d left the motor in the van and modified it there, but there was no way to undo what I’d done. Many curses and skinned knuckles later, it was back in place.

The motor mounted, the shaft was connected into the transmission and I was ready to say good-bye to the household vehicle transformer (I hoped). I left the rods locked in place while I removed the batteries from the van, leaving just one small bank for back-up power, though—if the rod-driven generator went down—the batteries would do little other than power emergency lights or the like since the motor would probably be shot in such an event and beyond the help of battery power. But I knew the batteries would be of use for the project I had planned several days later.

I cannibalized the van battery charger to create some outlets inside the van to create an inverter to supply regular household current for appliances or my shop tools. Finally, I placed a water-proof outlet inside the front bumper so that I could power appliances with electricity generated from the van’s motor. With a long extension cord, the van’s generator could even be used to run household appliances when the van was in the garage—and thereby lower my utility bills (I didn’t want to quit using the government’s power completely since that would attract too much attention).

The bot risked life and limb once more to remove the restraining chains and the motor again hummed to life. Though it sounded a bit more beefy than a normal van’s electric motor, it wasn’t strange enough to attract attention—I hoped. (It would be a little strange if I had to park since the motor would continue to hum along when I left it. That would attract notice, so I decided I’d have to figure something out on that count but decided not to worry about that until later.) I tested the outlets and found that they furnished all the electrical power I could ever need.

The job finished, I stood back and was thankful I didn’t own any stock in the major conglomerates. Or—worse yet—was a member of the great business minds who had decided to sack my team’s six year’s of work just as we were achieving success. They would be lucky to keep their heads connected to the proverbial neck bone.

For some reason, that reminded me that I’d failed to get in touch with my lab team. They had to be on pins and needles wondering what had happened to me and whether I’d be forming a new team. I thought it all over for a bit and decided to bring them back together with me later, but at this point I wanted to keep them in the dark about our success. It would be better for them and my