Page 10 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Black Pinhole Nanofurnace

My first foray into the realm of psychoceramics aptly enough
involved a real test of fire. I had received my advance payment and a
file of personal and technical information related to one Lalo
Aitkens, formerly a research scientist at Delenda Dynamics. His
resumé delineated a brilliant beginning followed by an ignominious
end—not an atypical sequence, as I discovered in the course of my
own experience with the frustrated individuals I had contracted with
Al Magnus to assist.
Aitkens, after attaining a doctorate in high-energy physics before
he was old enough to drink in his home state, was recruited by
Delenda to work on particle beam weaponry funded by the military.
Having streaked past the normal phase of adolescent anxiety and
idealism, it came to him late, in his early thirties. Appropriations for
developing ballistic-missile-killing satellites had reached their zenith
and were beginning to decline against competing demands for anti-
terrorism personnel and materiel. Nevertheless, Delenda Dynamics
managed to keep the public funds flowing, largely on the strength of
Aitkens’ work. He had created a mechanical means of suspending
plasma in a magnetic field indefinitely, ready to fuel millisecond
bursts of electromagnetic energy in pencil-thin beams at multiple
targets in sub-orbital trajectories. The trick would be to preserve that
delicate device through the stresses of a rocket launch and a long-
term orbit peppered by cosmic rays. Delenda had enough confidence
in the young scientist to put him in charge of the entire multi-million
dollar Project Bull’s-eye.
Then Lalo underwent a conversion experience. Returning from a
badly-needed vacation at a tropical rain-forest resort, he became
acutely aware of the outside world and its ecological woes. How had
this happened? My informants guessed that one of the guides on a
nature walk had caught the eye of the man from the ivory tower, and
that she had imbued him with the conviction that building ever more
powerful and efficient armaments was not what the planet
desperately required. By the time he got back to work he was ready to
beat swords into plowshares, and made several attempts to convince
Delenda’s management of the economic, if not morally imperative or
8