MINDBRIDGE by Joe Haldeman

To this end they did a limited kind of geoformy on the moon, roofing over the crater Aristarchus and filling it up with air, water, crops, and farm animals. But it was too expensive a project to maintain, and so was abandoned after a few years.

Mankind might have lived on forever-however long that turned out to be-in this state of artificially maintained grace, and never geoformed any planet but Earth. But forty years ago today our universe changed, because of a random lightning bolt that struck a research building in the suburbs of College Park, Maryland.

9 – The Levant-Meyer Translation

(From Science for Everyman by Russel Groenke, Hartmen TFX, Chicago, 2059. Copyright © Hartmen House, 2059. R28, C10:)

The Levant-Meyer Translation is named after two American scientists, the one who accidentally discovered the process and the one who refined it into a practical device for interstellar travel.

Many scientific discoveries have come about accidentally. For instance, one of the times the element phosphorus was discovered, it was because an alchemist’s cook had forgotten to take dinner off the fire (see R12, C39). And Galvani’s dinner of frog legs-that twitched when touched by two different kinds of metal—led to the invention of the storage battery (see R21, C53).

The accident that happened to Tobias J. Levant was not culinary in nature, but literally a bolt from the blue. In his own words:

I had set up an experiment with a large (about two centimeters across) crystal of calcium bromide. Calcium bromide is an “ionic conductor,” and so conducts electricity only at relatively high temperatures.

The purpose of the experiment was to record changes in the lattice structure of the crystal as it was heated, with a small electric current going from one face to the opposite. A special kind of electron microscope was trained on the crystal.

There was a violent thunderstorm that night, and the laboratory lights had flickered several times, but I decided to go ahead with the experiment. The only part of the setup that was on line current was the small heating coil that encircled the crystal, which was not critical. The laboratory had an emergency generator that would go on automatically if the power failed.

A freak discharge of lightning struck the wall of the laboratory (ignoring the lightning rod on the roof) and a brilliant blue arc enveloped the heating coil, simultaneously with the thunderclap. The lights went out and there was a strong smell of burning insulation. I felt a sharp pain in my finger but had obviously been neither burnt nor electrocuted.

The lights came back on in another part of the laboratory-the wiring had been vaporized on my side-and I went over there to call the fire department. Once in the light, I could see that the tip of my forefinger had been sheared off. So I called a doctor as well.

I was a little stupid from shock and got the idea that I ought to go back into the laboratory-before it burned down-and find the end of my finger, so it could be sewn back on. I found a lantern and made my way through the smoke, back to my bench.

The heating coil was just a charred mess, but oddly enough the crystal itself seemed unharmed, glittering like a lens where it had fallen on the tabletop.

When the lightning struck, I had been adjusting the controls of the electron microscope, so I looked for my fingertip there. I didn’t find it, but did see an amazing sight.

A hole had been bored straight through the machine, in line with the axis of the crystal and exactly the shape of the crystal’s cross-section. At first I thought the lightning bolt had burnt through, but there was no charring or melt. That part of the electron microscope had simply ceased to exist.

It reappeared seconds later, in midair, directly over where the crystal lay, and fell with a great clatter. Pieces of metal, electronic components, and my fingertip, all in a jumble over the table-top.

With my good hand I retrieved the fingertip. It was frozen solid; so cold that it stuck to my skin and left a burn. The metal objects had become rimned with frost and were smoking-a kind of cold I had never seen outside of a cryogenics experiment.

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