Bloodless--An Anthology of Blood-Free Horror by Various authors

Author:Various authors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sliced Up Press
Published: 2022-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

SUNSPEAKER

Gustavo Bondoni

Hilda hesitated, her finger on the button. Twenty-five years of work were about to come to a triumphant conclusion. . .or fall down around her with a resounding thud.

Screens around her displayed a thick, vertically mounted metal cylinder, tubes running in and out of it. Audio channels filled the room with a high-pitched whine. Apparently, humanity’s salvation sounded like a giant vacuum cleaner.

“ISST-4, net power generation test starting. . .now.”

Her shaking hand mashed the raised red circle.

Nothing changed on the video screen. The whine just increased in pitch.

So far, so good. At this point, anything other than a large explosion was a positive sign.

Irina’s hand on her shoulder made her look away from the video. “It didn’t blow up.”

“No.”

“Now we wait.”

Her assistant went back to her own monitor, and Hilda watched the clock and the needles indicating power generation. The tokamak had often generated fusion power, but never enough or for long enough to garner a net positive. Simply stated, every time they ran it, the energy they were sending into the reactor was more than the energy coming out. So they’d pulled several consecutive all-nighters and made some last-minute modifications to the plasma ring configuration. Risky, but she’d had no other choice.

“First thirty seconds, power output nominal,” Irina said. Her main task during the test would be to keep Hilda abreast of the passage of time and warn her if any value deviated from the expected.

Two lines appeared on a smaller monitor: one, blue, represented the accumulated energy that they pumped energy into the system. That was their baseline, the 500 MW that they used in nominal running. It grew at a steady angle.

The other line was red. It was barely visible at the bottom left of the screen. That represented the accumulated output of the tokamak, measured as heat output.

Hilda’s objective was for the lines to cross within the first five hundred seconds, and then for the red line to outstrip the blue. Whether that happened and whether the machine could remain stable to a thousand seconds would determine if Hilda’s career was a success or a failure.

So much hinged on two colored lines.

“Two hundred seconds. All green,” Irina announced.

She thought the butterflies would subside as the minutes ticked away without incident, but they were approaching uncharted territory. No tokamak had ever generated this much power for more than seven minutes.

“Five hundred seconds. Still nominal.”

There. Even if they did have to abort, she’d have something to show the committee, proof of progress if nothing else. Proof that her deadline-mandated decision to forego the ramp-up tests with the new ring configuration were justified.

Unless it blew up, of course.

Hilda turned her head to study the numbers.

Correction. . .she tried to turn her head to study the numbers. Her head refused the command.

Suddenly, her career faded into the background. Confusion and immobility reigned and panic woke. Was this a stroke? Was this how a stroke felt? Like a huge hand gripping her brain?

Pieces of her life, barely remembered scenes, flashed before her eyes.

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