Now it was time for the waiting game. Yes, Warden had already started keeping Blumenthal under observation. That, unfortunately, did not instantly translate into me finding out every one of his secrets.

Oh, sure, I could get lucky for once, and Mr. Sharpes would find something. I doubted it though. No, I did not believe that Sharpes was incompetent. At least not to an insurmountable degree.

But Blumenthal was too smooth for a random private eye to find out much.

That meant that waiting was the only thing left to do right then. Something I excelled at, as you might have guessed.

Yeah, I needed something to do. Looking over the possible options, I decided to continue my study of energy systems. Mostly because I expected Nate to contact me any moment to request help in redesigning S&P fusactors. I was, honestly, a bit surprised that he had not yet asked.

That was also the reason why I made the final step in learning how fusactors really worked. Oh, I did not get so far as to expect that anybody could tell me the physical processes. It involved Kobashigawa coils after all, and nobody, including me, understood those even partially.

However, I expected to learn the known nitty-gritty details of the technology.

And learning those details I did. The known nitty-gritty, dirty, ugly little details. It was, honestly, one of the very few times when I wished I had not learned something.

Why? Because fusactors violated the laws of physics as we knew them then. Not the known rules, but a couple of the few basic laws that we had managed to decipher.

Thinks we knew as facts. In total, learning more about fusactors made me doubt all of our physics.

Is it any surprising that I did the rationale, mature thing and wallowed in denial? For a time at least. I… well, I went to full compression, which with Archimedes was even higher at 250:1 than with Glory, and tried to figure it out.

I calculated the equations forward and backward and got at it from every conceivable angle. I looked at the known data and the published verifiable specifications.

I verified those specifications on every single fusactor I had access to. And when all that did not yield the results that I wanted, no, needed, I did it again. And again.

For two days I spent 12 hours a day in real-time going over the equations again and again. I exemplified Einstein’s famous quote, and I am a bit ashamed to say, I proved it to be true.

The problem was that as I said, fusactors violated a few of the known facts of how the universe worked that we had managed to carve into stone. In one sentence, everything I knew told me that fusactors simply could not work.

Yet they did. I simply could not reconcile those two facts, and so, on the third day, I decided to go straight to the source.

I contacted Nate.

It was always surprising for me how fast he reacted to my com requests. It had taken barely a minute before he appeared in our virtual meeting room.

“Hello Vivian.”

“Hello Nate.”

He smiled at me, while he materialized what I suspected was an iced tea.

“So… what do I owe the pleasure of you calling me to? Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against it, but it is a bit unusual for you to call just to say hello.”

I sighed.

“You are right. I… well, I expect that in the near future, you will want my help with incorporating the new grav coils into the fusactor design.”

He nodded and took a sip.

“You are right. We are not quite there yet, but yes, in a week or two, I would have asked. So you decided to become proactive?”

I shrugged.

“I was working on energy technology anyway. Just to keep myself entertained. So no skin off my nose to accelerate that a bit.”

“And you’ve already the core of a design ready? Is that why you are calling?”

I snorted derisively.

“Goodness, no. I am still far from it. No, I… just found out that fusactors violate physics.”

I looked genuinely surprised.

“Yes… of course. That is an old hat. My great-grandparents found that out, but could not resolve it. I am surprised that you are surprised though. I know it is not something that is publicly disseminated, but you have studied physics. You should know that already.”

So this was nothing new then? Well, of course not. It was too glaring an oversight for it to not have been discovered directly after the first fusactor began running.

“Honestly, I have no clue why. It just never came up.”

He raised both eyebrows.

“Seriously? Never? That can’t be… wait, who’s nuclear physics course did you take?”

“Dr. Englund’s. Why?”

He nodded while he pressed his lips grimly together.

“That explains it. Englund is… was, only still teaching because he narrowly avoided being dismissed by Apollo. And of course, because he is a friend of Joshua Knowles. He always had his… idiosyncrasies. And one of them is that he never even acknowledges the existence of the fusactor problem.

For him, it does not exist and is therefore not something he teaches his students.”

Oh, damn. I had hoped that with Apollo the Commonwealth would have fewer such political appointments.

“So… I’ve got the one nuclear physics course that did not mention it?”

Nate remained grim.

“That is not that surprising. Englund was a jealous teacher and pushed most other professors out of nuclear physics in the USW. He also managed to fiddle with his ratings so that he appeared to be the best teacher of the subject.

Which we discovered after he had been… removed from a teaching position.”

He sighed.

“Still, we have no measure of how much damage that man has caused. But I doubt that you are here to complain about your nuclear physics professor.

So… what can I do for you?”

“I… wanted to ask if you still have the original notes from Jessica Proctor, Paul Simpson, and Jason Vandermeer?”

He took a deep breath.

“Yes, we have them. But what do you hope to find there? They could not reconcile what they’ve created with what physics had taught them either.”

I shook my head.

“Right now… I am grasping for straws.”

He shook his head, sighing again.

“You naturally can have everything they wrote. It’s your family heritage as well after all. But I fear you won’t find anything in there that will alleviate your problem.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back for a moment before I answered:

“I just can’t reconcile the facts with physics. It just doesn’t work. It can’t work.”

During the answer, I looked back at him, and I saw him nod solemnly.

“Trust me, I understand you fully. But think about it. If reality does not conform to your theory, then it is the theory that is wrong, not reality. It doesn’t matter if what we’ve known for centuries does not fit with our observations. We can’t adjust the universe to follow our rules and laws. We have to adjust our rules and laws to follow the universe.”

Of course he was right. Heck, this was such an evident truth that he should not have to make that observation.

“I get that. But… this goes so directly against everything I know, how can it be?”

I raised a hand in a warding motion.

“Yes, I know. Clearly what I know has to be wrong. But… I need a bit of time to wrap my head around it.”

He raised both hands in a helpless gesture.

“Unfortunately, I can’t help you there. You have to work through it by yourself. We all had to. That is what made Englund so… damning. Under any rational circumstances, any physicist should make that realization when help is nearby. But he deprived a whole generation of that assistance.”

Then he perked up a bit.

“But maybe talking to Jason and Gordon about it later.”

My deep confusion had to be apparent because he frowned and continued:

“I have been told that you have joined the K4 group that I’ve set up. Was that a mistake?”

What was he talking about? The K4 group was every second and fourth Saturday of the month. That should still be… oh dang.

“Is that today?”

He frowned harder.

“Wait, you don’t remember?”

I sighed.

“I’ve just spent the equivalent of eight months trying to figure out this ‘little problem’ with fusactors. So yes, I’ve lost track of time.”

He chuckled mirthlessly.

“You should be a little bit more careful. And from what I heard you had just finished designing the new surveillance gear two days ago. Are you really that fast?”

I nodded.

“The new research VR helps, but yes, I am that fast.”

“Ah yes, the new research VR… good that you bring it up. I understand that I have you to thank that I have to purchase nine new supercomputers.”

I shrugged.

“Hey, it is your decision. But unless you don’t want to get the most out of your K4, I would strongly suggest at least a few supercomputers. And seriously, they don’t all need a supercomputer each of their own. They can share.”

He had just taken a sip from his iced tea and snorted it out of his nose.

“That says the one who is the proud owner of how many supercomputers?”

Well, he had me there. I could only shrug.

“I don’t really know. A few. Not that supercomputers are that expensive anymore. You have NADAs. They make it way cheaper.”

“Yeah, but then you tell me that they could share. And why don’t you know how many you own? Shouldn’t you know that?”

Again, I could only shrug.

“Probably. The problem is, technically I own all the supercomputers that Warden builds all over the solar system. And she tells nobody, not even me, where they are. So I see no point in trying to find out how many she has.”

“Hm, a specific reason she doesn’t tell you?”

I shook my head.

“Not really. Me knowing would mean that I could decide to take her out. That is a threat to her objectives. She can’t remove me if I find out, but she can’t accept a threat to the objectives either. So she doesn’t tell me.”

“She is quite paranoid, isn’t she?”

“She is a VI. More important, she is a VI with many people not liking her existence. Anybody knowing where her servers are is a threat to her objectives.”

“Ok, I give her that. I am just happy that she is so hellbent on protecting you.”

I glanced at the clock in my HUD and noticed that it was just a few minutes until the K4 meeting. Would have been a bit embarrassing to miss it.

“Uh, I don’t want to be just running, but the meeting you were so friendly to remind me of…”

He chuckled.

“It starts soon. I know. That was why I was a bit surprised when you called me. Go there. We will talk later.”

I took the time to go into the real world and have a snack, along with a coffee. Something I had a bit neglected over the last couple of days, and then connected to the meeting.

I arrived at the same lounge setting as the last time, finding Rose, Gordon, Tamara, Nadia, and Tim already present.

“Hey there. Good to see you Viv.” Nadia was, as seemed to be usual, the outgoing one.

“Hello there.”

That made Gordon chuckle, and he reacted with:

“General Kenobi!”

I just groaned.

“Let it go, man. That movie is more than 200 years old. Get some new material, please. That had to be the worst meme I’ve ever heard of.”

“But you’ve heard of it!”

That was it. I rolled my eyes and shook my head.

“Get real. That one is even older.”

He chuckled.

“Hey, it is not so often that I meet somebody who gets those old memes. Hell, I did not even know that it came from some movies.”

I crossed my arms and shook my head again.

“The first one comes from one of the early Star Wars movies. II, III, or IV I believe. The second comes from one of the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies.”

Rose sighed, and walked over to me, hugging me.

“Please, don’t feed the troll. He will just get worse every single time. And how do you know those ancient movies?”

“You know that that was an ancient meme on its own, right? And why not? I always liked sci-fi and fantasy. However, it is hard to fully categorize Star Wars into one or the other. And honestly, I had to look it up what all the fuss was about. Why they still make those abominations of shovelware movies in those series.

And the first few of each of them are actually pretty good. You just have to be careful to stop when the quality drops too much.”

We were interrupted by first Kelsey and then Logan arriving in quick succession.

Kelsey waved at us and then called out:

“Hi folks. What did I miss?”

Tim, who had materialized himself some soda, shrugged.

“Not much. Mostly that Gordon found another victim for his ancient meme attack.”

“Ugh, we have to be breaking him from that nasty habit.”

Over the next few minutes, the others arrived, and after all the greeting rituals had been observed, Danny came up to me and hugged me.

“The new computer is awesome. Thanks Viv.”

That made Jason make a sour face, and he asked loudly:

“Wait, what? The new computers come from her? For real?”

Rose slapped him lightly on the back of the head.

“What did you think where they came from, Idiot? We complain that the computers we have are not so good, Vivian promises to look into it, and a couple of weeks later each of us gets a brand new Enki VR research computer.

Where did you think they came from?”

He glared at her.

“I don’t know. I did not really care.”

That led to Gordon, Tamara, Nadia, and Danny throwing popcorn at him. It was telling that each of them independently materialized Popcorn just to throw it at Jason.

Danny lit into him verbally as well:

“For somebody who claims to be one of the smartest people alive, you are really stupid, you know that? You know that she works with Enki. Probably owns a chunk of it as well. You get a shiny new toy that has the Enki logo molded into the casing.

So of course it has nothing to do with Vivian, right? Asshole!”

The rest of them glared at Jason as well, and after a few uncomfortable seconds, Harry cleared his throat.

“So… to not quite change the topic, how do those new Archimedes systems rate, in terms of power I mean.”

I shrugged.

“The ones I’ve given you all are top-of-the-line. Well, I’m expecting your employer to give you access to a proper number cruncher so I did not include that in the box, but otherwise, it is the best that I could come up with.”

Tim smiled evilly with a sideglance at Jason.

“And where does this stack up now compared to the Seraphim Mk. V? Or the Mk. VI?”

I rolled my eyes and sighed.

“Apples and Oranges. For pure research, the Archimedes is quite a bit better. If you remember my analogy from last time, the Archimedes is the race car. Nimble, lightweight, fast.

The Seraphim Mk. V, as well as the Mk. VI, are tanks. Not slow, no, but cumbersome, heavy, and well-protected.”

I paused for a moment as I thought about something.

“That reminds me, just a warning here. To make the Archimedes so fast and reactive, I have let out virtually every protection system that a cyber-combat board has. So do not, under absolutely no circumstances, ever try to do a combat dive with it.

Even something as ‘harmless’ as pranking the local Cricket’s menu-holos will likely kill you.”

Jason was, naturally, the only one who had something to complain about here.

“What? You don’t trust us? Do you think we can’t do it? If you can do a combat dive, then we can do as well.”

I shrugged.

“Knock yourself out. And if you use the Archimedes to do it with, I mean that literally. Do you have selective hearing problems?

I am sure, if you put your mind to it, all of you could do combat dives. Takes a bit to get used to it, but if you start small, there should be no problem.

The problem here is that the Archimedes is totally unsuited for the task. I go on combat dives with what I think is the supreme cyber combat board there is. I certainly won’t use the research system I have now, which, by the way, is identical to what each of you has.

Using Archimedes for that would be tantamount to suicide. For you and for me as well.”

When Jason opened his mouth, likely to complain further, Rose shoved her elbow into his ribs.

“Let it go, Jase. You won’t win this. It is just her explaining that the tool she gave us is optimized for the work we do, but is really bad for something else.”

When he glared at first her, and then me, but said nothing, I relaxed a bit.

“Yes, thank you, Rose. That is exactly what I was trying to say.”

Jason rolled his eyes but then grumbled:

“Okay, fine. “

Then he narrowed his eyes and gave a nasty smile.

“By the way, your new grav coils don’t work with fusactors. Can you explain that?”

“So, you were the one Nate put to the task? And you have to be a bit more detailed. What exactly does not work?”

His smile faltered a bit but recovered quickly.

“It takes way more gravity to ignite the fusion process, it generates way less energy and it bombards the surroundings with neutrons. Not much better than a fusion reactor really.”

I looked him in the eyes, and then shrugged, smiling what I thought of was sweetly.

“Oh, okay. If that is all. I expected all of that, so nothing new.”

That took the wind out of his sails, and Gordon who had rolled his eyes at Jason’s complaint, exclaimed:

“What? You expected all that? Why?”

I sighed.

“Yes, of course. Think about it, the new grav coils are so much stronger gram for gram than the Kobashigawa coils because the K-coils generate not just the grav-bending field but dozens, maybe scores of other fields.

The new grav coils on the other hand only generate the grav-bending field. They don’t ‘waste’ energy on things that are not useful for that. Like for example violating the laws of physics.”

Gordon rubbed his chin, while he digested what I just had said.

“So… you think some of those other fields are responsible for the significant boost of the fusactors compared to the fusion reactors?”

“Yes, of course. I can even name one of the fields that come into play here already. One of the fields of the Kobashigawa coils reduced positive electrical charge by 6%. In a small volume, admittedly, but almost exactly of the size of the biggest fusactors.”

Jason then screeched:

“Wait, you knew about that and did not tell anything?”

I rolled my eyes.

“I learned about it just a few days ago when I looked up how fusactors actually work. But it is so obvious that I immediately understood that the pure grav-coils would not work. Not alone at least.”

When Jason sputtered incoherently, Gordon sighed.

“So… if you did learn about it a couple of days ago, why did you not notify us? Vandermeer I mean.”

I sacked down a bit and then sighed.

“Because I had the ‘pleasure’ of taking Thomas Englund’s nuclear physics course.”

Gordon screwed up his face in confusion.

“Uh… ok, but what does that have to do… oh… oh fuck, you were surprised by…”

I nodded.

“Exactly. And I could not believe it. For the last two days, I was… well on a bender trying to get to the ground of it.”

“Damn, my condolences. That had to be a hard wake-up. Damn that asshole.”

By now, we had left all the non-physics-buffs way behind, and Danny complained loudly:

“What are you talking about? What is so hard?”

I sighed again.

“The problem is that fusactors violate the laws of physics. They violate it hard. And professor Englund apparently believes that empirical evidence that challenges his worldview is not real. In other words, he completely left out that little factoid.

That meant when I stumbled over it, because it went against everything I learned, I could not believe it either and tried to reconcile my knowledge of physics with reality.”

“So? We refine our knowledge of physics all the time.”

Gordon nodded and answered her:

“Yes, you are right. But we hold a few things as absolute laws. Immovable, hard, and without exceptions. And fusactors violate a couple of them.”

“What exactly?”

I massaged the bridge of my nose.

“The first is that some of the heat of the fusion process simply vanishes. In other words, it violates the second law of thermodynamics.”

Rose frowned.

“But… isn’t that a good thing?”

I shrugged.

“Well, yes and no. Yes, it is as any engineer, any scientist would love to have something to simply shove any waste heat into. No, it violates the second law of thermodynamics, which is one of the few absolute laws of physics we have.

Heat moves, but it never vanishes. It will never go away, only grow. Except that in fusactors, around 3% of the heat energy simply… is gone. Nowhere to be found. It challenges our whole worldview, and makes us doubt the few hard truths we have worked hard to carve into stone.”

“So… it is more of a philosophical problem than a real one?”

Gordon sighed.

“It is a problem because it tells us that we have to reevaluate all of physics, that we don’t really know how the world works. We can’t trust anything. Which is why so many physicists try to ignore it.”

Danny frowned.

“Okay, so it puts you onto your ass. Fine. We all get something like that from time to time. But what is the second problem?”

I took a deep breath.

“The second problem is arguably worse. I don’t know if you are aware of it, but fusactors usually use pure hydrogen one or bog standard hydrogen for fusion, in the so-called proton-proton-chain.

The same process that happens in the sun. In there, six hydrogen atoms, well, the cores of them, the protons in question, fuse, and the end product are one helium four atom, and two hydrogen one atoms. The whole process releases 26.196 megaelectron volts. Or around 4.19 nano Joule.

Around 75% of that energy is released in the form of a fast-moving neutron, which is bad as it tends to irradiate the surrounding materials. But all of it increases directly or indirectly the heat of the universe.

The problem we have now is that somehow fusactors not only capture that fast-moving neutron and slow it down, converting the kinetic energy of it to electricity in the process, but at the same time, generate overall electricity to the tune of 31.43 MeV to 36.67MeV.”

Most of them began frowning as well. Only Rose remained confused.

“Uh… so it gets more energy? Is that not good?”

Jason exploded:

“It violates the law of conservation of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. But here it appears out of nowhere. It bugs scientists, real scientists for centuries now. It drives us nuts so that we tend to not talk about it.”

“But… why is that bad?”

I softly spoke:

“Because everything else we know tells us that conservation of energy is inviolate. It is absolute. Even black holes, the one big exception to virtually every single rule and law in physics that we know of follow it. And now we have here those things we build, and they spit on that fundamental law of physics, ignore it, play with it, and then leave it bleeding in the dust.

Where the violation of the second law of thermodynamics is disturbing, this is way worse. This makes us lose trust in all of physics.”

Jason sneered at me.

“So… welcome to the club. Now you all can worry about it as much as we do. And hit your head on the problem for years and years to come. Without finding a solution.”

Yeah, that was Jason, always trying to go with the head through a wall. Of course, I could not hold that against him. I was the same way. I just could not stand to be caught in the box with nowhere to get out…

Nowhere to get out…

“That’s it!”

My excited call brought all attention to me, and I sat back down from where I had jumped up.

Danny, more patient today than at the last meeting, asked softly:

“What is it?”

“I think I know how we can reconcile the behavior of fusactors with the laws of physics.”

For a moment, they all just stared at me, and then Jason derisively sneered:

“So, just like that, you get the big inspiration. The big revelation? So how about you let all of us in on the secret, hu?”

Gordon rolled his eyes and sighed.

“Come on Jase. If she really has an idea, maybe it will help us. But yeah, Viv, what is it that you figured out?”

I smiled broadly.

“Well, how about you recite the second law of thermodynamics?”

He looked at me incredulously for a moment and then shrugged.

“Fine. For a spontaneous process, the entropy of the universe increases. Are you satisfied?”

“Mostly, yes. And how about the law of conservation of energy?”

He frowned now.

“Seriously? But okay. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Only converted from one form of energy to another.”

I nodded.

“Again, mostly correct, but what I am thinking about are different phrasings of the same. For the second law, the wording I think about is, that in any isolated system, entropy always increases.”

“Yeah, that is what I said.”

“No, not quite. But for the conservation of energy, what I was looking for was that the total energy in any isolated system remains constant.”

He frowned even harder, while all the others just looked confused.

“Again, that is what I said.”

“No… again, not really. You were talking about the universe in the second law, and in absolutes about the conservation of energy. That meant you left out the important words.”

“What important words?”

“In an isolated system.”

“Yeah, that is what the universe means.”

“Is it? Classically we assume the universe is an isolated system, but what if not?”

“You really want to go there? That is the realm of science fantasy.”

I sighed.

“Think about it. If the universe, at least the part we can observe, is not isolated, but there are other parts, maybe other universes, or some form of hyperspace, or whatever. Important is, if there is something else, and some part of the Kobashigawa combined field opens up a connection to those other parts… it would explain the fusactors.

Where does the heat go? Into someplace, that is way colder. Where does the speed of the neutrons go? Someplace else. Where does the additional energy come from? From where the heat and the speed of the neutrons go.

The heat does not simply vanish into nothing but moves somewhere we can not observe it. So the second law is not violated.

The fusactors do not create energy out of nothing, but transfer it from somewhere we can’t observe. It was not created but just moved. If we assume that there is someplace else and the universe we can observe is not an isolated system, the fundamental laws of physics remain intact.”