Page 25 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Black Pinhole Nanofurnace

dominant casus belli plaguing the world, energy scarcity and
dependence on its foreign sources. It was in the interest of the
United States, Aitkens said he had told the trio, to let the free market
run its course; an American company controlling the nanofurnace
would assure the elimination of federal debt and deficit as well as air
pollution. Delenda could bid for that right along with other large
corporations capable of quickly ramping up production; it had no
prior claim on his work—the patent was in his name.
The same old resorts to ego, patriotism and greed had met his
objections. Aitkens would again be head of a large project with
unlimited resources, serving his country while lining his pockets. He
responded by pointing out that those inducements had failed before
and had no better chance of swaying him now. If the nanofurnace
was of no potential use to the military-industrial complex then, why
should it be worthy today? His interviewers, provoked perhaps by his
attitude, or in an attempt to impress him with their knowledge,
revealed some of their intentions for his contraption. They included
infiltrating enemy command and control systems with nanoshears,
the energy of a single concealed device directed as a disruptive beam
through solid-state circuitry; microbombs sown inconspicuously
throughout a target area, then simultaneously detonated via
conventional radio transmission, leaving no trace of origin; and a
restructured Project Bull’s-eye, to be code-named Haystack Needle,
designed to blanket a low-Earth orbit with killer satellites below the
threshold of perceptible space junk.
Aitkens testified that he had become furious. He ordered the men
to leave the premises. Instead they overpowered and drugged him.
When he regained consciousness he found his laboratory stripped to
the floorboards and all his notes and records gone. His assistants had
vanished and so had his financiers. So, too, his day in court was now
a yellowed clipping. What was the truth? Had he in fact failed, leaving
nothing behind but a self-protective fantasy? Or was the military now
in possession of a power source with a potential for damnation equal
to its promise of salvation? Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
survived the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar: would all humankind fare
as well in Lalo Aitkens’ inferno? This might become a test of fire for
more than just one crackpot.
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