<USS Cervantes> 23. A Scientific Odyssey/Dying into Life, An Intimation

23. A Scientific Odyssey/Dying into Life, An Intimation
by Chase Mallory

Scientific Definition

The Casimir effect is a small attractive force which acts between two close 
parallel uncharged conducting plates. It is due to quantum vacuum 
fluctuations of the electromagnetic field.

The effect was predicted by the Dutch physicist Hendrick Casimir in 1948. 
According to the quantum theory, the vacuum contains virtual particles which 
are in a continuous state of fluctuation. Casimir realized that between two 
plates, only those virtual photons whose wavelengths fit a whole number of 
times into the gap should be counted when calculating the vacuum energy. The 
energy density decreases as the plates are moved closer which implies there 
is a small force drawing them together.

* * * * *


Mallory avoided going to see Embot. She would have known about the entire 
incident and the medical examination Saskia had given him and all the other 
things going on and about the ship. Why she hadn't sought him out to 
complain, baffled him. He glanced up from his desk in the science lab every 
few minutes expecting the doors to hiss open and reveal an angry French maid. 
He should really make her speak French too. He chuckled at the idea, but it 
turned to a wince and a cough. 



Settling his breathing again, Mallory examined the readouts on his PADDs - it 
was data collected from the Cervantes' advanced particle sensory network, now 
that it was fully up and running again. Mallory went through page by page, a 
break down of all the quantum phenomenon happening in the local area of 
space. 



Against Saskia's orders, he had a cigarette in his mouth and puffed away. He 
tapped the ashes to the floor; and nearly dropped the butt. Wincing, he 
forced his body to jerk upright and straighten his leather chair. "What the 
fuck?" He scrolled through the contents of the PADD again and again. "What 
the fuck?" He mumbled to himself. He winced, his brain was in more pain 
trying to sift a grain of knowledge out from the sea of flotsam. Mallory 
gasped for breath, as he stood; momentarily, stunned and using the chair back 
to hold him steady. Able to stand on his own, Mallory paced back and forth 
dropping ash everywhere. "I know this one…" he told the wall. "What the fuck 
is it." He stopped and stared into a jet-black reflection of an unused wall 
computer. "Particles and antiparticles coming out of nowhere, what causes 
that to happen?" When his reflection failed to answer, Mallory prodded. 
"Well? Come on you stupid fucker, what's the answer? Ressei would know. 
Christ, Em would know…I did this in quantum lab…" He set his hands, palms 
facing one another before his eyes, and examined the space between them. 
"Virtual particle pairs are created...Casimir Effect. But what the fuck's 
that gotta do with wormholes?"



Mallory stared at his hands until the cigarette burnt to a nub and stung him 
with the heat from the burning paper. He flicked the stub to the ground and 
pressed it out with his foot. He stared at his hands trying to drag bits and 
pieces of knowledge out of his mind and cobble them together. He knew that 
Ressei would know all of these things and one call would reveal the entire 
Universe to him - Doc Ressei was just that good. He knew everything about any 
branch of science. "Doc woulda figured out that it was Casimir, then the 
virtual particles, but what the hell do I do about the wormholes? Where do 
they fit into this picture…" Mallory stared at the palms of his hands. 
"Computer, bring up wormhole engineering."



"Please be more specific, there are currently more than 3.4 million unique 
entries for wormhole engineering," the computer said.



"Computer, search Casimir Effect, Wormhole Engineering."



"There are 59,934 entries."



"Show me the top three." Mallory slid behind his console again. The articles 
appeared; Mallory sped through each one of them stopping every now and then 
to verify the use of Einstein's or Maxwell's equations. Mallory leaned back 
in his chair and sighed. "So, Kip Thorne thought that he could use the 
Casimir Effect to create some kinda capacitor of virtual particles and make a 
wormhole, but he's need a fuckin' lot of energy to do this shit." Mallory 
finished his tenth cigarette and tossed the nub on the ground. 



He stared at the image of the planet and the moon. Immediately, he set his 
hands to work trying to analyze the composition of the planet and the moon. 
"Holy Shit."



"You're still up?" Mallory turned to see his French maid enter and she looked 
none to pleased - yet, in her hands were a tray with a teapot and two cups. 
Mallory cocked his head studying the tray Embot set on the console; she 
couldn't drink, but maybe it was force of human habit.



"I think I figured out how those wormholes worked," Mallory said. 



"How?" Embot waited behind his arm chair.



"Here's my theory." Mallory pulled a stylus from his pocket. "The planet and 
the moon here are both composed of a high amount of metallic material - dense 
shit. Think of both bodies as uncharged, neutral quantities - not 
gravitational masses. Now here's the fun, iffy part. You know what the 
Casimir Effect is?"



"Uncharged plates put close together generating virtual particles."



"Think of the planet and the moon as two uncharged metal 
spheres…theoretically, and experimentally, cause I got the data right here, 
they're creating virtual particles in the space between them. Now how about 
this, Kip Thorne, back in the 20th Century came up with a method to build a 
wormhole. Theoretically a Casimir capacitor would be used to create and hold 
a ton of virtual particles, like our planet and moon, and it would be used to 
possibly open a wormhole."



"It would crush anyone who entered."



"What if it didn't. What if this planet and that moon were in the naturally 
correct position to create a stable wormhole, that when the Casimir capacitor 
went off it would make the entire planet an event horizon, swallow it into 
some kind of hyperspace, remove it from reality where the past and the 
present thrive together and didn't crush anyone."



"Far-fetched. You're not seriously going to tell the Captain that?"



"What's your great theory then?"



"It's four in the morning and you're not in bed." She began to pour a cup of 
tea. "It's Earl Grey. Sugar?"



"A little." Mallory took the cup and saucer and sipped a little of it. The 
laboratory and office were too quiet; the hum of the ship's engines, the 
slight vibrations all became accentuated. Embot rolled the other cup in her 
hands; an algorithm, a packet of stored memory inside of her reminded her 
that she couldn't drink. Over the lip of his cup, Mallory could see her 
frowning at the cup in her hand and delicately replace it back on the tray. 
Unable to keep still, she opened the teapot lid and took a whiff of the tea 
and investigated her dirty, distorted chrome reflection.



"I thought you had taste buds," Mallory said.



"I have sensory nerves for my tongue." She stuck it out. "It's not a real 
tongue." She drummed her fingers and stared out into the lab. For another 
while they were both silent. "What's it taste like? Bitter? Sweet?"



"Bittersweet." Mallory rose his glass to toast nothing. "That's really too 
bad. So, can you feel anything at all? Or are you just a tin can with 
feelings?" Mallory took another sip. "Sorry."



"I'm almost human. I suppose."



"How about touch?"



"I can feel pressure levels, enough to know if someone is just resting a hand 
on me or trying to snap my arm off."



"So, what if a guy or gal starts to massage you? Then decides to get a little 
more…frisky and you know…playful."



"You're indecent." Embot swiveled the chair to face away from him.



Mallory snickered. "You wanna be human, or just a wannabe-human?"



Embot played with the extra tea bag on the tray. "That's right, I can't jerk 
off." Mallory could see her arm moving, her fingers probing between her legs. 
"I guess I never got the drivers installed."



"Sad."



"What's that feel like? 'Dying into life,' that's what they call an orgasm."



Mallory toasted again. "That's about as good a description as any. Get those 
drivers installed. Go down to the holodeck. I gotta few good programs that I 
haven't had time to play with."



Embot shook her head; Mallory couldn't see her face, but knew she must have 
been smiling. 



"Hey." Embot faced Mallory. "Fuck artificial intelligence." Chase raised his 
cup. "You got a bunch of guys and gals sitting in little labs across the 
galaxy trying to make human consciousness in software. They're so busy trying 
to emulate what it's like to be a human, cause it's so fuckin' important, 
that they forgot the part where humans fuck one another to really be human."



Embot snickered and broke into a laugh. Mallory leaned against the wall 
console; it was good to hear Emily's laughter again and to see her smile. The 
robot even mimicked the hand brushing over her lips in a girlish attempt to 
be adorable. "I'll never taste this tea, not the way you taste it, will I?" 
she said. Her body was crooked in the chair, and her eyes drifting, dreamily 
into the lights overhead. "I'll never die into life. I'm not even alive. 
It'll never be authentic either; just someone's imagination, someone's 
programmed response to a set of conditionals."



Mallory set his cup down. "Ironic you should say. That's just what we are. 
How authentic can I be as a man? I'm a man bred after billions of other men. 
I stand on the shoulders, on that incredible pyramid that goes all the way 
too I don't know where. I'm no more original. And maybe, I'm someone's 
imagination and I've got all these algorithms programmed into me to react to 
certain things with a set response. I think experience will give you 
authenticity. Just one guy's opinion…"



"It's late."



"I'll file the report and be back to sleep."



"I still think the theory's awkward."



"What's your theory?"



Embot took Mallory's cup, set it back on the tray, and picked the whole thing 
up. "It's late, and you ought to be in bed." She gave Mallory one last look 
and left the room.

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