29. A lampoon vacation on the Moon

A face appeared in the open doorway from around the corner.  “Hi Lian!” she said gently and softly.

Lian looked at her and said “Hi Barbara!”

Barbara walked through the doorway and spoke to the group “Junia and I went and inspected your vehicle.  It’s a little bit different than we are used to, but we figured it out.”

Violet replied “We just stole it.  We tried to disable communications and tracking.”

“We saw that.  Do you realize you almost ran it out of power?” Barbara questioned non-critically.

“Out of power?!” Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx reacted, surprised.

“We had some info, but never found reference to the batteries; never found them in our other unit either.  I guess you saw the drive unit on the floor in the back — we pulled that out of the other one before we abandoned it.  We were guessing that it somehow used gravitational energy to charge the batteries” Josy Lynx said.

“Good guess, but we’re not on the Earth.  Here it is about one-sixth of the Earth’s gravity.  And due to the inverse-square law, that means much less than a simple linear-proportional amount of energy we can derive.  Not one-sixth of the energy we could on Earth, but one-thirtysixth” old man Olof said.  “The gravitational energy we can collect in one day on Earth takes 36 "Earth days" of time here.”

“And the system is designed mostly to cruise around Earth all day, or in orbit for a short time.  Not engage in battle.  Or fly away to The Moon at high speed starting from a high altitude.  Or generate gravity for long periods away from a charging source.  Or slow down from a high-speed using a minimal gravitational field like The Moon here has” Barbara said.

“We looked but couldn’t find any reference to monitoring battery reserves” Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx replied.

“It’s not usually a problem that needs to be monitored” Barbara explained.  “It never needs a recharging time, typically.”

“Where ARE the batteries, anyway?” Josy Lynx questioned “I physically looked for any sign of them.  We wanted to look before we leaped, but …  We inspected the wiring diagrams and just found dead-end leads to power sources.”

“The hull is the battery.  It’s made of carbon-fiber.  I think you were lucky the computer here only had one missile left to fire at you.  Those black holes take a good current to generate.  Almost 20 amps” Barbara answered.

“On Earth, the gravitational field is dense enough to keep the batteries charged and power the drive unit.  At least when you are close enough to the surface” old man Olof said.

“Ah, like rear-differential oil.  You gotta take out the plug, unscrew it and stick your finger in to test the level.  Not something you do every day.  No dip-stick to check it” Josy Lynx said.

“I’m slightly confused, I think” Violet said.  “I’ve heard about this technology from the practical point of view for quite a while.  But no one has explained the tech side to me.  How does the gravitational field provide the energy to overcome itself?  AND charge a battery at the same time?!  That sounds like a free-energy device … a perpetual motion vehicle.  How does the law of energy conservation fit into all this?”

Old man Olof replied “The gravitron unit does not counteract the gravity with an equal amount of energy, like a traditional rocket engine does; or a helicopter with its spinning propeller, or the lift provided to airplane wings by the air as they slice through it fast enough propelled by a jet engine.  It "splits" the gravitational field — if you think about it in a 2-dimensional way — and the vehicle stays in the crack — so to speak.  Creating and maintaining that split requires very minimal energy, relatively speaking.

“Never-the-less, that small amount of energy comes from somewhere.  The gravitron unit is actually able to convert the energy from the gravitational field around it into electricity.  They have learned HOW to achieve that, through the tedious mathematical study of the interactions between gravity and quantum physics.  But you are correct, it seems the energy comes from nowhere, because, mathematically, the gravitational field remains a constant; no matter is converted or lost from the mass that is generating the gravity that is converted into electromagnetic energy.  Initial tests in space using small asteroids confirmed that their orbits around the sun did not change after drawing substantial gravitational energy from them.  That only amplifies the mystery that physicists have been probing for a hundred years or so now … why does God seem to play dice?” Olof concluded.

“Yea, what IS gravity?  We can describe how it interacts with our universe.  But how is its energy created?  We have learned to describe it mathematically and metaphorically as a curvature in space-time, and relate mass and energy based on that concept — you know, E=Mc².  But in a different perspective on reality, a different metaphor to describe the indescribable, it is ALSO an energy in and of itself.  We have learned to describe it in terms of quantum mathematics – "gravitons" – based on observations.  But we don’t understand how it relates to mass without modifying the mass.  Gravity is an endless source of energy pulling the universe together. Why? How?  Eventually, the universe should just disappear into gravity.  But it doesn’t.  So then what is "dark energy"?  Something is going on behind the scenes that we can not "see" or comprehend that connects local and non-local events.  Spooky-action is real, whether we try to comprehend quantum entanglement or gravity-matter-energy observations.  What IS the speed of light, anyway?  I mean, why is it what it is.  Why does the entire space-time-continuum warp to its demands?  Or warp to the demands of gravity?  We can describe mathematically what that warp does to our "real life" events and observations.  But what does it even mean to say then that space-time is a warped 4-dimensional continuum?  It doesn’t make logistical sense to us, but that’s the best we can do to describe it.  What ARE we NOT describing that we can not comprehend, that answers these questions?” Barbara summated.

“You’re a wise young woman” Josy Lynx said to Barbara.

“I’m a toolmaster” she said holding up her arms, smiling, while over 50 tools suddenly appeared from them, and then disappeared back below her mock skin.  “My job here is maintaining the power system.  They taught me through hypnotic nocturnal sleep sessions at first when I was young; that gave me the basics in terms I could understand back then.  Then they began the psychedelic training, where I just watched movies and we sat around and talked about the philosophy behind it all.  Then the math was easy to learn, as well as real-life training.”

“All the children here were screened back on Earth.  These are the truly intelligent ones of the migrant kids they kidnapped.  They used some machine based on the tech created by my dear departed friend, Valerie.  She was heartbroken when she began to learn of the nefarious ways they used her research” old man Olof said.

“Valerie V. Hunt?” Violet asked, already knowing.

“Yes! … You seem to know a lot of people!”

“I never met her.  She was a mythical legend at the F.B.I.  But the C.I.A. got her research” former special agent Maxine Violet Lefleur replied.

“Well, I guess that means … ” Olof looked at Barbara, then at the group of visitors from the Earth “ … you folks are stuck here for a while.  We barely have enough power for ourselves these days, as some of our generators were destroyed in the attack and revolt.”

Jasmine’s heart missed a beat.  Suddenly, she was back on Earth worrying about her daughter in Mexico.

Old man Olof shifted his gaze from the group to Barbara as he continued “We will give you all the extra power we can muster,” (Barbara nodded in agreement) “but it will be some time before you can physically manage to return to Earth.”  He looked back at the group, then back at Barbara “Can you estimate the time-frame to recharge?”

Barbara smiled a skeptical smile and responded “ah, like several months.  I guess it depends on Lilia and whether she goes into super-charge mode again.”

Jasmine’s heart missed another beat.

“That’s yet another mystery around here that was lost to destroyed records during the attacks and revolts” Olof said to the visitors.  “Supercharge mode.”

Violet put her hand on Jasmine’s back, right in the center.  Josy Lynx and Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx each gently took hold of Jasmine’s arms.  Violet said “don’t worry girl, we got you, and you got this.”

Jasmine’s head began to spin.  She was so happy she was able to help Jazmin re-unite with her children, but loosing touch with her own child in the process was as close to overwhelming as she had ever experienced.  And she had made it though some tough times before as a teen on the street.

“Come on lets get some food and rejoin Lilia and we can talk all about this.  Maybe this will re-prioritize our rebuilding efforts here.  The kids still have a lot to learn to engage with the tech here, but we are progressing.  Lian sweetie, do you want to put on your wetsuit and come have lunch with Lilia?”

Jazmin was still wrapped in Jasmine’s arms from behind.  She turned around to face Jasmine, and wrapped her arms around Jasmine, and opened her heart as love poured into Jasmine.  Jasmine re-wrapped her arms around Jazmin and the circle of Qi energy started flowing and spinning and growing and growing and growing.  No one thought to ask at that moment "where is all this energy coming from?"