Kristene was lucky enough to be directly in front of the door. The scorched, flying plate of stainless steel struck her in the face and chest, knocking her across the room and breaking her nose, two ribs, and her left collarbone and arm, but it also served as a shield against the worse part of the radiation. As it was, she received some rather nasty second-degree burns and nearly her maximum lifetime safe dose, but she was alive.
While the cone emitted its impossible blast of radiation, it also rocketed forward, propelled by the high specific impulse and thrust of the dense, mass-less, light-speed emission. The melted struts holding the cone in place gave way, and the fragile experiment accelerated forward at a rate of over a thousand gravities. There was no way for the array to survive this incredible burst of motion, but even after it disintegrated its shrapnel continued to carve swaths throughout the front half of the lab, leaving behind torturous shockwaves to bleed the debris’ sudden kinetic energy into the surroundings.
Leo received a chunk of copper cooling tube through one of his shoulders and then was blown back against the wall. Glass, metal, and concrete blasted outward, penetrating the walls and ceiling into the surrounding rooms. Fortunately no one else was injured. The jury-rigged, venerable linear accelerator, one of the last working parts of the failed SSC, was demolished, taking with it UTA’s last bid to remain relevant in the world of experimental physics in the 21st century.
In the next instant—after the blast wave passed and the dust settled—silence reigned. Minutes later, shouted voices could be heard, and then rubble began to shift as people started to dig through to search for survivors. Leo was found, logy and bleeding, but alive. Soon after, he was able to compose himself well enough to complain, loudly.
Kristene was pulled free of the ruins by paramedics soon thereafter. She was hurt, but alive and lucky to be so. The EMT’s saw the aftermath of the explosion and simply shook their heads in amazement. Part of their shock was due to the level of damage in the lab compared to her relatively minor injuries, but most of it was due to the broad, unconscious smile plastered across her face when they freed her.
July 29, 2039; Arlington Memorial Hospital; Arlington, TX
Kristene scooped up another spoonful of jiggly red goodness and began debating the merits of doing her dissertation on the recuperative, therapeutic properties of Jell-O. She had gorged herself on enough of the stuff in the last few days to become a subject matter expert, and it had some definite plusses in its favor. For example, it rarely, if ever, exploded and put you in the hospital.
That was one thing it had over physics.
Additionally, she could probably collect a large amount of data from the comfort of her bed, unlike the large amount of data and equipment that was now, no doubt, destroyed in her last and final experiment. Her K-Mart, her Blue Light Special, her bid to join the groundbreaking minds of the age was now irretrievably lost, along with her notes, her data, and her observations.
She smiled, even as the depression began to creep through the cracks in her will. She had spent far too much time since the accident crying over everything she had lost. At least her last try had gone out with a bang—a big, bright, blue bang. It had been an “event”, an unexpected, seemingly impossible … something, something which hinted at a deeper effect, some previously unknown facet of physical law.
She thought about it, obsessed over what she had seen, what she thought she had seen, and what it all meant, if anything. Like every other conscious moment since the accident, she bent her will to the mystery, but came up short. This time, though, Kristene was still for several minutes, then her eyes widened as all the puzzle pieces finally clicked into place.
She dropped the empty cup of Jell-O from her mostly immobilized left hand and reached out with the right for her pink, crystal encrusted suite. Opening the extensible screen from the handheld tablet and tapping on it with her stylus, she winced. It was unseemly to do such potentially important work on what amounted to a pink cell phone, but her primary computer had been lost in the explosion, and something was better than nothing. She began to scribble furiously across the screen.
An unknown time later, but long enough for the sun to set from the afternoon sky, there was a knock on the door. She looked up as it opened and saw a man in his late 30’s come in. She did not recognize him, but his plain, serious face brightened remarkably as a broad smile appeared, giving life to the laugh lines around his mouth and eyes, making him far more attractive and compelling. She smiled back. It was hard not to, given her usual preference for older men.
He nodded to her, still smiling, and opened his sports coat to put his hands in the pockets of his khakis. “Hi. How are you feeling?”
She gave a little half shrug with her right side. “Pretty good. I get to stay in bed all day and eat prodigious amounts of sweets. How would you be?”
He laughed. “That would kill me, I’m afraid.” He stepped forward and held out a hand. “Sorry. I’m Nathan Kelley, from Windward Tech.”
Kristene gave it a shake. “Kristene Muñoz, but you probably already knew that. I’ve heard of you. You’re Dr. Hastings’ boss, right?”
“Only in so far as you can be the boss of someone that can think circles around you. Let’s just say that I give Hastings a direction and then try like hell to keep up with him. He actually wanted to be here to check on you, but since I came in at the last minute, he’s checking out the remains of your lab instead. I figured if you went to all the trouble of blowing yourself up for Windward, it’s the least I could do to come out and see how you are.”
“Well, thanks! Protecting your investment? Or avoiding a law suit?”
Nathan frowned a bit. “You’re not going to yell at me like that Leo guy, are you?”
She relented and shook her head with a lopsided grin. “Naahh, just messing with you. Now, I may have to talk to Hastings about his priorities next time I see him, but I really do appreciate it.”
“I’m so sorry about your lab. We knew you were close to completion. It has to be frustrating to be so near the finish, and then have it all taken away.”
Kristene looked surprised. “Frustrated? That last experiment was spectacular!” She cocked her head to one side, and put on a devilish smile. “It was a blow-out, a smash success.”
Despite Nathan’s grin, he looked concerned. “How many meds are you on?”
“I am relaxin’ on a little tapentadol, but I’m not that doped up. I’m serious. The only problem with that last test was that I didn’t understand everything going on, so I miscalculated. It didn’t fail to work—it worked all too darned well!”
Nathan turned, grabbed a chair, and took a seat by her bed. “I’m starting to get a little behind here. Why don’t you take it back a few steps?”
She sighed and handed over her suite. Nathan accepted it gingerly and saw it was full of curves and equations, only about half of which he even recognized. She saw the confusion and relented. “Okay. I don’t understand everything yet either, but when has that ever stopped me? Basically, you guys asked us two questions: what kind of engine would produce a specific blue light of such and such spectrum and such and such energy, and was capable of massive thrust with very little or no reaction mass, and secondly, how do we create an engine capable of interstellar travel?”