Many of his friends, and most of his colleagues, referred to him jokingly as a rat bastard.
He’d recently considered going back to grad school to polish off another Ph.D. The only question was in what. Asshole physics, astrophysics to the uninitiated, was out. The whole field was filled with eggheads who couldn’t tell reality from fantasy and most of them put their fantasies squarely on the liberal side of the political divide. Maybe atomic level engineering, but the only school that had a department, yet, was MIT. Bleck. Among other oddities in his field, Weaver was a staunch and outspoken political conservative of a seriously military bent. A year, about what it would take despite the “recommended” three years, in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts was more than he could stand.
Maybe genetics or molecular biology, branch out a little.
But that had been yesterday, before “the event.” If there wasn’t a whole new branch of physics about to open up, he didn’t have a nose like a hound dog. And he was in, practically, on the ground floor.
The math was probably going to kick his ass, though. At certain levels even the top-flight physicists sometimes had to resort to pure math guys. Ray Chen, for example, had been a go-to man for gauge boson and multidimensional field equations but even he bowed his head a few times and consulted with a pure mathematician in Britain. What was his name? Gonzales? Something like that.
Bill was coming up with a mental list of people he might need to consult with when he realized the plane was already flaring out to land. It had hardly banked at all and done a power-on approach. They must have cleared every other plane out of the way for the fighter. The pilot flared out, hit reverse thrusters and turned off the runway so hard it seemed as if they were going to fall over.
“In a hurry, Colonel?” Bill asked.
“Very,” the pilot replied. “I got two in-flight requests for ETA. Somebody wants you pronto.”
“Well, thanks for the ride, hope we can do it again some time.”
There were soldiers waiting for the plane who obviously had no idea how to unhook all the umbilicals and straps that held him in the seat. The pilot unstrapped and got him unhooked, then he clambered out of the plane and onto the runway.
“Mr. Weaver?” one of the soldiers said. “I’m Sergeant Garcia. If you’ll come this way?”
“Can I get out of the flight suit?” Bill asked, unzipping same. He reached up and managed to get open the small compartment he had seen his bag disappear into. He stuffed the G suit into the compartment and retrieved the backpack, then headed to the waiting Humvee.
“I understand you know what’s going on here,” the sergeant said as he climbed in as driver. The other soldier climbed in the back.
“No,” Bill replied. “But I understand what might have happened, somewhat, and I’ve got some theories about what is happening and what might happen. And I know some of the questions to ask. Other than that, I’m in the dark.”
The sergeant laughed and shook his head. “Can you explain it in small words?”
“Not unless you know what a Higgs boson particle is,” Bill said, aware that he was going to have to explain it over and over again.
“A theoretical particle in quantum mechanics that can contain a universe,” the sergeant replied. “But you can’t form them unless you’ve got a really big supercollider. Right?”
“Right,” Bill said, looking at the sergeant in surprise. “Did somebody call ahead?”
“No,” the sergeant replied, making a turn onto the Greenway. For once it was nearly empty of traffic. He took the Sunpass lane despite not having a transponder. “I was working on my masters in physics and then things went awry. Optics, actually.”
“I’ve got a Ph.D. in optics,” Bill said. “And physics for that matter.”
“Sorry, Doctor, I didn’t know that,” the sergeant said, wincing.
“I don’t make everybody call me Doctor, Sergeant,” Bill said, grinning. “I’m just an overeducated redneck, not some soi-disante academic. So how’d you end up in the National Guard?”
“Long story,” the sergeant replied. After a long moment he shrugged. “I was working on my masters, working with blue-light lasers. One of my classes I had to have a peer reviewed paper published. You know the routine.”
“Sure.”
“Didn’t have my experiments in lasers as far along as I wanted so I made the mistake of branching out. I got tired of everybody mouthing off about nuclear power so I did a comparative study of radioactive output from the Turkey Creek nuclear power plant vs. the big coal plant east of Orlando.”
“Forgone conclusion,” Weaver grunted. “Coal’s nasty stuff.”
“I knew that and you know that, but I’d done the research and there wasn’t a single peer reviewed comparative.”
“None?” Weaver said, surprised.
“Not one. So I did the tests, no detectable radiation outside of the plant itself for Turkey Creek and enough to cook a chicken in the tailings of the coal plant, which were, by the way, blowing into a nearby stream, and submitted it. To Physics. Got a response in a month. The paper was rejected for peer review and was not accepted for publication. My credentials were in optics, not nuclear physics.”
“That’s… odd,” Bill said. “I smell a fish.”
“So did I. Especially when I was summarily dropped from the master’s program shortly afterwards. Nobody would talk to me except one of my professors, who made me swear not to say who it was or make a stink. Not that it would do me any good. Know the senior senator from West Virginia?”
“Oh, no,” Weaver said, shutting his eyes. “King Coal.”
“You got it. He apparently made a deal all the way back in the 1960s. Florida got NASA stuff but to power it they had to build a coal-fired power plant. And keep it running. He protects coal like it was his own personal child, which in a way I suppose it is. Anyway, a lowly master’s candidate had attracted the personal ire of a senior senator. Said master’s candidate needed to go away now. Please, don’t bother submitting at other institutes of higher learning. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.”
“I hate politics,” Weaver said, then shrugged. “But that’s why Huntsville has the Redstone Arsenal and Houston has the Space Center. Since I got my education because of the former, I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much. But, yeah, that’s a shitty story. On the other hand, it’s good for me.”
“Why?”
“Well, we’re going to have to measure this thing and I’ve got my very own soldier who can handle laser equipment. That’s going to help.”
“Okay,” the sergeant said, chuckling. “Do I get a pay increase?”
“Doubt it,” Bill admitted. “But we’ll see. Ever thought about going to other planets?”
“You’ll get me through that thing kicking and screaming,” the sergeant admitted. “I saw those bugs. I don’t want to be on any planet that has them on it. Worse than arachnophobia. I just wanted to curl up and scream. I don’t know how Crichton and Grant could stand to touch them.”
“Touch them? What about contamination?”
“Wait until we get there, if you don’t mind, Doctor, sir,” the sergeant said. He had turned off onto the ramp to University boulevard. They had been waved through a checkpoint and the ramp had been roughly cleared of rubble. But it was still a rough ride.