The Human Bullet. Joaquin De Torres
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that no one but her had ever seen. Just these personal notes could be worth millions to a history collector.
With the first crate emptied, she stood at the top of the center staircase and surveyed the documents laying across the floors on either side. Neat little stacks of papers. Precious stacks of history.
The larger drawings and sketches were laid by themselves as they were unique in their own designs. She smiled like a satisfied landscaper after completing a specially designed garden. She sat on the step, now calm but starting to sweat again as the afternoon sun on the fourth day began to bake the house. She had her fans, but they were nowhere near the stacks, so essentially, she was sitting in a sauna.
She was also getting hungry. She had eaten her last sandwich, and had one beer left in the cooler. No one delivers pizza in Raduč, she thought, I must go back to Gospić for supplies. She would need food, drinks, and a trip to the office supply store to buy plastic document protectors for each individual page and some security containers to keep them in.
She went downstairs to drink the last beer and prepare for her trip back home. She had planned to explore the second crate when she returned, but since she had an ice-cold beer in her hand, she felt she had time to take a peek at what contents lay within. She went into the hidden room where the fans were still going, giving her instant relief.
She took out a very small stack, perhaps 30 pieces of paper out of the crate and noticed that they were not protected in cover paper and ribbon as in the first crate. In fact, these pieces seemed haphazardly placed, thrown in and not organized at all.
Among the letters, wedged along the side of the stacks, was a large notebook. She looked at that first, leafing through the pages she saw that it was some new kind of contraption that Tesla must have been working on but never completed.
Every page had a headline scribbled in the inventor’s own hand: Gravitational High-Speed Travel. She didn’t read any of the writings or details; instead, she viewed the drawings of what looked like a space-aged contraption. The notebook was thick with drawings of strange parts of the contraption’s engine, its overall shape, various angles of the machine, internal schematics of its power plant, engine, fuel cells and numerous other transport equipment. It actually looked like a person was supposed to ride in it, or on it.
She kept turning the pages, fascinated, and there it was on page 34 – a sketch of a man sitting on the machine. There were even larger drawings, some as large as the table itself, showing more details of the same man in different perspectives and altered seating positions on the strange craft.
The notes attached to the drawings were puzzling – memos about safety, heat absorption, heat deflection, force fields, hovering, solid mass penetration, variable and immeasurable speeds, braking techniques, launching mechanisms, and the availability of special materials. This was something Irena had never before heard of. These things were representative of nothing that Tesla was famous for, nor mentioned in history. What the hell am I looking at?
What was even more interesting about the drawings was that in every rendition the machine had no wheels, skis or wings. It seemed to be levitating off the ground!
* * * * *
MIRA-CAL
“MPD,” said Gary Bell rubbing his own tired eyes.
“What?” asked Marko, stifling a yawn with his fist.
“Magnetic Propulsion Drive,” he repeated fully, “accelerating an object by the utilization of a flowing electrical current and magnetic fields.”
Gary Bell was MIRA-CAL’s only NASA-trained jet propulsion engineer and an invaluable member to Marko’s technical staff.
“I like the idea of using the magnetic fields of the Earth,” said Lana, “but like any scramjet, it needs a booster to generate the initial launch thrust.”
“And that booster is going to make a lot of noise,” added Marko. “It’s also going to generate a heat signature that will look like a Christmas tree on an enemy satellite screen.”
“It has to be electrical,” continued Bell, “to keep the infrared signature invisible, but powerful enough to supply the thrust-force.”
“Like shooting a man out of a cannon but without gunpowder,” mused Lana.
“Exactly!” smiled Bell, then dropped it. “Although we will be literally - shooting a man.” Lana bit her lip and looked away.
“Gary, you’re the NASA man,” said Marko, “is there a way to generate such thrust without a trace?”
“At ground level? No. But, when I worked there, we were experimenting with what is known as an Ion Thruster. It creates thrust by accelerating ions with electricity but for spacecraft. The term refers to electrostatic ion thrusters, but may be applied to all electric propulsion systems that accelerate plasma, since plasma consists of ions.”
“I don’t know,” Lana said shaking her head slightly, “maybe we could build an ionic core plasma system in the cycle.”
“Remember, guys,” interrupted Gary, “the prototypes for these have been experimented for space flight, not ground travel.”
“Then we go with electromagnetic gravity,” stamped Marko, clearly reaching the end of his patience.
“How about NASA’s electromagnetic drive?” asked Lana.
“The EM drive is for space travel, too,” said Gary without hesitation.
“Then we’re back to square one,” huffed Lana out of frustration. Suddenly, the intercom in the room came on; it was the front desk receptionist.
“Dr. Marmilic, you have a call on line one.”
“Everyone, let’s break for lunch,” Marko said to the relief and gratitude of all. As they dispersed out of his office, he picked up the line.
“This is Marko Marmilic.”
He listened intently for about two minutes before responding to the caller.
“I understand. I’ll let you know the details when I get them. Thank you. Good-bye.” He then pressed the intercom button to the receptionist desk.
“Yes, Dr. Marmilic?”
“Ana, I need a Lufthansa flight out of SFO immediately. I would like to leave tomorrow. First or Business Class, makes no difference.”
“Yes, sir. Will you be taking anyone else? Martina, perhaps?”
“No, Ana. I’m going alone.”
“And the destination?”
“Zagreb, Ana. Zagreb, Croatia. I’m going home.”
* * * * *
Raduč
While going over the papers for another two days, Irena recalled the bi-annual Zagreb Science and Discovery Conference that she attended some seven months ago. It was there where she listened to Dr. Marko Marmilic give several brilliant technical and business lectures.
Of all the topics, there was one that he talked about with great energy and equally great agony. It had to do with exploiting the power of the Earth’s magnetic fields for the use of mass teleportation of objects.
On her recent trip back to Gospić, she Googled Marmilic’s theory and read his research. The main thing that had evaded his grasp, thus his ‘agony,’ was how to make objects move so fast that they could get from one part of the Earth to another without using fossil fuel-based energy. His hope was to be able to teleport medicine and equipment to needy nations in a matter of minutes.
He mentioned that his corporation had been building a prototype for trials, but so far, it couldn’t generate the hypersonic speeds he desired.
“How