Otherworlds by Jonathan Moeller

Author:Jonathan Moeller [Moeller, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Driven

Driven

No one could figure out how the car worked.

The story was like something from a chain email, and Alfred Carnicera himself seemed like a character from a bad political thriller. He had once been an environmental entrepreneur, selling eco-friendly products, until his company went bankrupt. Before that, he had been a “spiritual consultant”, promising to channel positive energy into his clients’ lives for seventy-five dollars an hour, until the FBI investigated him on racketeering charges. And two years ago, he founded Carnicera Motors, and released the Anima, the world's first car without a conventional engine. It seemed like every other scam in Carnicera's checkered career.

Except for one difference.

Carnicera’s car actually worked.

The car had no motor, and it still worked.

Where a conventional car or a hybrid would have a motor, the Anima had a hollow steel sphere perhaps a foot across, suspended in an aluminum cradle. Remove the sphere, and the Anima became inert. Return the sphere, and the Anima ran again. Needless to say, people pried the spheres open. Inside they found a heavy steel nail, six inches long, held in place by copper wire.

And nothing else.

It caused a frenzy.

Overnight, Carnicera Motors became the most valuable company in the world. Every government, corporation, and university on the planet tried to figure out how the Anima worked. They dissected Carnicera's sample cars, rebuilt them, took them apart again. They subjected the cars to every known physical test, and even invented a few new ones. And every last test, every single one, indicated that the metal sphere was nothing more than a hollow metal ball with a nail in the center.

Yet when the researchers removed the sphere, the car stopped running.

Several scientists investigating the Anima wound up committing suicide, no doubt from sheer frustration.

More than one thief attempted to steal Carnicera's secrets, but the meteoric rise of his company had given him the money to hire competent security, and the thieves wound up dead. Or were never seen again.

In the end, the researchers concluded that some hitherto unknown property of electromagnetism powered the Anima, and gave up in disgust.

No one cared. Dozens of governments entered into negotiations to host Carnicera's first factory. Carnicera claimed to build each car himself, producing only a few hundred a month - but soon he would go into mass production. And the Anima, he argued, would put an end to pollution, to global warming, to wars over oil.

The United States won the bid, and Carnicera started his factory in Arizona, not far from the border with Mexico. The press praised him as a new Henry Ford, a man whose genius and invention would remake the 21st century.

But not everyone was convinced.

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