DLM, Bk 6, Ch 3

“We have resonance.” Galatea reported, my own mind already delving into the sensor-readings, trying to make sense of what they were reporting. It was yet another experiment sparked by old observation, still trying to figure out just why, back in New Brunsburg, Voltic had been able to cause my power-storage crystals to explode on each attempt made. It had been something Galatea and I had tried to make sense of every-so-often, never making headway, partially due to the incredibly small sample-size. We did not even know if there was something to observe, or if the consistency was due to the small sample-size, but every time Voltic had tried to affect one of my power-storage crystals, they had exploded violently, unleashing all stored energy in a single burst of heat. On the other hand, my own attempts had never resulted in anything consistent, sometimes caused such a heat-burst, other times causing a destabilisation of the crystal as it melted into highly acidic, blazing hot sludge and there even had been a single event in which the crystal disintegrated into a soup of exotic, radioactive particles. Those different failure-modes had me stumped for the longest time and finally, my latest experiments had yielded results. Or maybe not results, but they had yielded something. Maybe just more questions.

The readings were interesting, to say the least. Energy fluctuations seemed to correlate to density-fluctuations, right before the tiny sample exploded in a burst of heat, causing the filters protecting my equipment to trigger.

“Any radioactive residue?” I asked Galatea, mostly speaking out of habit and in an attempt to keep a certain separation between our minds. Connecting our minds was fine, assimilating into one-another was decidedly not, I did not want to become Galatea and Galatea did not want to become me. Sophia had, at times, joked that we were just one short of a trinity, two beings that were one, but also two. We needed to remain two, or we would never be the same.

“No, nothing that I could detect.” she reported and I started to try to form a model to explain what had happened. The resonance we had observed could not exist when looking at things from the normally accepted model, which either meant that the model was wrong, that the equipment had failed or that something outside the previous model had interfered. Or a combination of all three. When no sudden spark of inspiration gave me insight into a new model, I decided to ascertain if such considerations were even necessary, by reproducing the earlier results. If that failed, Galatea and I could look into other models.

The diagnostic on the equipment quickly came back as expected, that everything was working as intended. Normally, I would have preferred to use a separate set of equipment for the reproduction, simply to eliminate the possibility that the equipment was malfunctioning in a way we were unable to detect, producing the same false results reliably, but we some of the more exotic sensors were simply unique, not only within my workshop but likely unique in the world. Galatea and I had designed and produced them, the effort involved prohibiting the casual production of back-ups.

A smile graced my face, when a muffled bang announced that the repeat-experiment had yielded the same explosive results and when the sensors reported that a similar resonance had occurred, the readings very much resembling the ones taken before, my mind began to race. Once could be a coincidence, but a repeated coincidence made it less likely by orders of magnitude.

Almost giddy, I placed yet another sample into the test-setup, after making sure no radioactivity had been released, and moved out of the way again. A third explosion, accompanied by the same resonance-readings made me decide that simply blowing up more samples, while fun in its own way, would not yield additional results, not without additional sensors or a different set-up. I had all the readings I could glean at the moment, and correlating results in three different experiments meant that there likely was some sort of connection.

“Love, you need to eat something.” Sophia’s words cut through the mental fog Galatea and I had been engulfed in, our mental and competitive processes fully engaged with the data we had gathered. There was a moment of disconnection, as I re-engaged with my body, noticing the signals of hunger coming from my stomach, and the distress-signals sent from my bladder, while, at the same time, Galatea quickly reestablished the processes she had put on a lower priority, making sure that nothing had been missed during the time we had checked out. Almost by conditioned reflex, I reached out, only now noticing that someone, undoubtedly Sophia, had supplied me with coffee, the temperature hinting that it had been a reasonably recent supply.

“How long was I out?” I asked, my electronic vocal system luckily not prone to getting hoarse. Even while asking, I mentally checked the clock, realising that after the experiments I had conducted in the morning, Galatea and I had been mentally engaged for a good eight hours.

“It’s dinner-time and I prepared some food.” Sophia simply prodded and my stomach, realising that someone was speaking in support of its call for food, was grumbling loudly in agreement.

“True. Thank you for that, and I apologize for being mentally distant today.” I admitted, standing up from my seat, pain lancing through my body as I forced stiff muscles into motion. It made me realise that Galatea had even neglected the constant monitoring of the mobile nanites within my system, only focusing on those directly connected into the processing cluster that had replaced my spine. Luckily, Sophia was close by, quickly moving up and catching me, before my protesting muscles managed to overthrow the supreme control and, in the process, throw me to the floor.

“I should not have sat still this long.” I admitted sheepishly, when Sophia raised an eyebrow while holding me tightly in her arms.

“Maybe you are just getting old.” she cheekily replied, giving me a quick kiss to take any sting out of her words.

“Maybe, I certainly feel it. And given that you are now a genuine University-graduate, maybe I should feel old, we are not students any longer.”

Together, we made our way to the kitchen, my nose quickly picking up the delicious smells and I was soon seated at the table, with some stir-fry over rice in front of me, bringing a smile to my face.

“So, what were you working on so intensely?” Sophia asked, as we were eating.

“You remember that explosive reaction my energy-crystals sometimes had? I have been trying to understand the mechanism behind the explosion and why it sometimes is an explosion and why it sometimes melts into acidic sludge.” I shook my head to indicate my lack of understanding.

“There is something there, something more, but I have yet to understand what it is. Today, I made a bit of a breakthrough, or at least I think I did. The data is inconclusive and needs some further study.” I explained and she got a distant look on her face, as she considered my words. While she lacked the hard-science background, I knew her to be insightful and an excellent source of inspiration.

“Well, if the outcome has changed, it obviously means that the input has changed, right? That means either your samples have changed or the process you use to trigger the failure. Or you have some outside factor interfering.” she reasoned, pointing out the obvious, to which I nodded.

“Outside interference seems unlikely, I repeated the experiment three times and the resonance I noticed was all internal to the sample. Or it was an interference my sensors cannot pick up.” I grimaced at that idea. Interference I could not measure would make further experimentation impossible until I managed to isolate the interfering force and either dealt with it, or accounted for it.

“Assuming that you didn’t change the process to trigger failure, it has to be the sample and if multiple samples reacted the same way, you need to find out why. Did you change the processes you use to make those crystals?” she reasoned and, again, I had to nod in acceptance, giving her a grateful smile. While I had focused on the recorded data, her approach had some merit, too. I would have to take a closer look at the data Galatea and I had recorded about the crystal-formation process.