Chapter 28

The press conference started with confusion. Nobody I knew had ever run one before, so I relied on Dr. Schmidt for advice. She said to introduce myself, who and what SotH was, and leave the rest to Chas. Riiiight. I was gonna turn a partially autistic fifteen-year-old who was afraid of new people and new situations loose in front of a crowd of strange people, some of whom were journalists (and I meant that in the most negative way possible).

Chas had been practicing his initial presentation – a lot. So I was fairly confident of what he’d be saying. Then I’d take over the Q&A.

So ... I introduced myself as the president of Spirit of the Hunter, and then I spent a few minutes explaining what the SotH was, in general terms. It was a relatively new research company, headquartered in Burnside North, Arizona, backed by several AmerInd Tribes, including the Navajo, Hopi, Shoshone, among others.

I introduced Charles White Earth as our lead scientist. He was fifteen years old, from Canada, and had no formal training, but we were working on that – I laughed. I stated, “We have a short film, and some remarks from Chas, and then there will be some time for questions.” Chas was standing to my right, with a lapel microphone clipped to the jacket of his (brand new) suit.

We ran the video of the first experiment. It lasted under a minute.

Chas commented. “This experiment was done in the outside air of Arizona,” he started. He replayed it, stopping it at various points. “This film was taken with an infra-red filter. We also have ultra-violet and unfiltered, visible light versions. They show the same thing, until the event occurs. The raw materials you see here are crystals of lithium, we didn’t know what exactly the chemical makeup of the crystals were at that point.” There was some mumbles from the crowd. “Here you see two lasers that show up as colored light beams from various directions ... Then the lasers interact with the crystals.” He stopped the video at the exact micro-second of the reaction. Then continued. “Here is the result. What we’re calling a fusion bottle appeared. Only the infra-red can see it. As you can see, it’s about basketball-sized, and pops into existence suddenly.” There was more mumbling from the audience.

“Then, some dust was blown into the air by a gust of wind ... You can see the result. We later figured out that there was an implosion of the bottle. There was the sound of a gunshot and this is the result.” He ran the video a little more, showing a bare ceramic platform. “This was our first trial. Subsequent trials, in a more controlled environment shows the exact moment of implosion. Here you can see the exact instant that it implodes.”

“Here is a video that shows a more recent experiment. As you can tell, we have two bottles. The other equipment you see is to create a magnetic field that supports each bottle. This was taken in April of this year when there was a very small earthquake in Northern Arizona. As you can tell, one of the bottles imploded at that time. The other has not, and is still there ... This is a live video feed from my lab.”

He was finished and looked at me. I tapped into his mind. He was apprehensive. ‘How was that? Was it okay?’ and etc.

“Thank you very much, Chas. That was terrific,” I said. I didn’t care if the whole world saw me reassuring him. I’m sure other presentations went without praise in the scientific world. This was, after all, an unschooled child prodigy talking to a bunch of scientists he didn’t know. “Now, our first question. Dr. Mayberry of USC?”

Mayberry took the microphone that was passed to him. “I have so many questions. First of all, why was this experiment performed in the open air with untested raw materials?”

I answered that one. “I’ll answer the first part. We knew we were trying something that Chas knew was close to a fusion reaction. The only thing we knew about fusion was that it made bombs go boom. So we took it to the outside, ran the whole thing by remote control while we were miles away. You know ... in case it exploded. You’re seeing only the first result that produced anything. We ran scores of preliminary tests ... Chas, why did we use untested materials?”

Chas said, “Oh that’s simple. Since we didn’t do any theoretical work first, we didn’t know if it would produce anything. Immediately after the first successful test, we ran some analyses on all our test samples. Dr. Schmidt of USC, here...” he gestured at the professor, who was sitting on-stage to the side – she stood briefly. “ ... ran the tests for us, and has run many tests for us since then.”

I pointed to the science reporter for the L.A. Times.

“Ralph Harrison, LA Times. You didn’t do ANY theoretical work first? How did you know to combine lithium crystals and what lasers to use? Seems incredible.”

Chas said, “Okay, I fibbed a little. I figured out what I wanted to use with the help of my computer. That was the only ‘theoretical’ work.” He made the air quotes with his fingers.

The Times man said, “Just you?”

“And my computer. I call him ‘S2D2.’ He was a great help.” He laughed. The audience laughed. We’d discussed this beforehand, and decided that nobody would believe that S2D2 was the major contributor to this project. So, we’d make a joke of it.

“One more, if I may,” the Times man said. “The pamphlet we all got before the press conference said your schooling was at Canadian Native People schools near Lake Superior, and then a brief stay at McGill University. How long did you study at McGill?”

I stepped in here. “Chas didn’t take any courses at McGill. He was there only a few weeks. We met with him there, and convinced him to come to SotH.”

“And he just left a great university, like that?” Harrison snapped his fingers.

I ignored that, and pointed to the man from Physics Monthly. He asked a long, involved question about the magnetic fields that were present on the later videos. I shuttled that off to Chas.

Then another physicist from UCLA. He wanted to know about the argon and fluorine lasers and their interaction with the lithium. How did Chas come to define that mixture?

Chas gave a very Chas-like answer. “I was just working on S2D2 and it came to me, that that combination would work.”

“But ... but...,” sputtered the man from UCLA, “Science doesn’t work like that.”

“It did this time,” Chas smiled and shrugged.

The press conference was originally scheduled for thirty minutes. After two hours, Dr. Schmidt raised her hand with a question.

“Chas,” she asked, “what are you working on now?” She knew damn well what was next for us, but she wanted it out in the public.

Chas looked at me, and I nodded for him to answer.

“Well, we’ve got to make this bubble stable. That’ll take a while ... I figure that’ll take a couple of months.” That got a round of laughter from the attendees, which puzzled Chas. “Then I’m going to put a fusion reaction inside the bottle. I’ve got some ideas I want to try.”