Chapter 1: The Discovery

Jason Fowler liked to tinker and he especially liked to build electronic gadgets. Lately he'd had a strong interest in unusual and complex magnetic fields. Jason had recently received a small inheritance, which would allow him to experiment on his own for a while without the need of being employed or earning a living. Jason was determined that he would make the most of the opportunity that had just come his way.

He found a house in a small town which sat on a 5 acre parcel of land. Originally, the house had been the farmhouse on a much larger farm, but most of the land had been sold off separately years ago. The remaining land contained the house and the barns, shops, and garages where the farm equipment had been stored and repaired. It seemed to be a good layout for conversion to his workshop so Jason used part of his inheritance to purchase the place.

There was one building on the property that had formerly been used for repairing farm equipment by the previous owner. Jason felt this building was perfect for conversion into his workshop. He spent more of his inheritance repairing the building and installing his work benches and equipment. He spent a little more of his funds on fixing up the house to make a cozy living space for when he wasn't working.

It took Jason a few months of work on his new place before everything was ready for him to start working on his ideas. In addition to his electronics workbench, he also put in a small machine shop, and refurbished the garage spaces so that he had a clean and dry space to work on projects which were larger in physical size.

Jason picked up a used flat bed truck, one of the kind used by tow companies for hauling cars, very cheaply from a towing company that went bankrupt. He used this truck for hauling materials to his property while he was rebuilding. Jason thought the truck might be useful even after all of his construction work was completed.

When everything was ready Jason began construction of his first circuit module and the big coil that would be powered by it. He spent more than a week carefully soldering the parts and connecting wires onto a breadboard and then another week winding the coil. He spent a few more days troubleshooting the circuit, fixing a number of shorts and wiring errors.

Finally Jason was ready to start testing the unit. It was set out on the workbench, connected to an external DC power supply. With all the shorts and wiring errors fixed it was time to apply full power to the unit and see what would happen. He moved the unit across his work bench until it was sitting next to the DC power supply. Jason connected the power leads from the power supply to the appropriate terminals on the unit.

Jason watched the meters on the power supply carefully as he flipped the switch on the power supply to apply power to the circuit for the first time. The current meter quickly moved toward the middle of the scale and then suddenly dropped back to zero again. This was puzzling, since it didn't seem like the circuit had shorted, so the current should have risen to some level and then remained constant at that level.

He turned to look at the unit and was surprised to see that both power wires had somehow become disconnected and were lying on the bench. This was a surprising development since the power leads were supposed to be soldered to the controller inside the module. Jason still remembered soldering the wires into place only a few minutes ago. He moved over to inspect the module more closely and was astonished to discover the wires had not become disconnected, but instead had been cut a short distance from where they entered the module. Bending down to look at the offending leads closely he was astonished to discover they looked as if they had been neatly severed by a sharp edged blade.

With a sigh Jason spliced together the two severed wires and prepared to repeat the power on but this time he would be watching as well as recording what was happening with his video camera. He moved the power supply slightly so it was in a position which would make turning on the power easier while watching the unit. He turned on the video camera and made sure it was recording and then reached over and turned on the power switch again.

The unit seemed to flicker for a fraction of a second, almost as if the lights had suddenly been turned on and off really quickly. At the same time the power wires again parted and fell to the table. He found himself staring at the unit and wondering what was happening and most especially what was cutting the power loads to the unit every time he applied power to the unit. Several repeated subsequent attempts to apply power to the unit after repairing the wires had the same result.