Chapter 12

When I woke up the morning after the final download of the motor-generator’s theory and design data, I had everything I needed to understand the theory behind the design of the motor-generator. I had not integrated all of the information included in the multiple downloads for that would take several days.

Other than being impatient, the lack of full integration didn’t bother me too much for Cathy and I had experienced this phenomenon before when we were learning our abilities and how to use them. Once I integrated and understood the technical information related to the design of the motor-generator, the Guidance Council would download the battery design data to my mind, and finally the solar cell design data.

Once I integrated the eight downloads of technical theory and received the design data of the motor-generator, I started receiving the theory and design data of the battery. The battery required two downloads of theory in addition to the batteries design data. Then I received nineteen downloads of technical information for the solar cell and two downloads of design data.

The morning after I received the last of the solar cell’s design data, I went into my study, sat down, and focused on the technical data. I asked Cathy to create a link so we could talk. About an hour later, Cathy contacted me.

Hi, Ward. What’s up?”

“Cathy, you mentioned ‘Jan’ before, what is her last name?”

“She doesn’t have one, Ward.”

“What do you mean?

“Ward, last names aren’t used in the Fourth Dimension. I was busy when you called, and have to get back to my remedial training. So that is one of several things that I think we can discuss later.

“Okay. I received the motor-generator, battery, and solar cell data, and it is causing me a problem. I will need to transfer the data from my mind to a set of documents and drawings that I can give to a supplier who will build the motor-generators, batteries, and solar cells.

“I could do the specification documents using Word, but I don’t know how to use AutoCAD or any of the other engineering drawing software programs. Even if I did know how to use AutoCAD, it would take a long time to transfer all of the three devices’ design drawings and technical data from my mind to paper using Word and AutoCAD.

“Does the Guidance Council have any suggestions on a quick means for me to produce the drawing packages and design documents for the three devices?”

“I don’t know, Ward. I’ll ask them and see what they suggest.

“The Council will want to know how much progress you have made in planning to build your car. Do you have any plans for how to proceed from here?

“Yes, or at least I have a basic plan developed. I will lease or buy a building suitable for use as a workshop. I haven’t decided yet how big of a building we will need or if we will need separate buildings for building the car and three devices.

“I will then hire an automotive engineer and a crew of mechanics to support him. I am planning to buy a suitable full-size vehicle to use as the basic vehicle for our first prototype. Once my crew and I have the car, we will strip out everything we won’t need in a solar-powered car and then rebuild it as a solar-powered vehicle.

“All right, Ward, I’ll pass your request and status report along to the Guidance Council and see what they suggest. I should be able to get back with an answer in several hours.”

“You have been in the Fourth Dimension for some time now, Cathy. Besides the four lessons explained to me, do you know what lessons we were supposed to learn here on Earth?”

“In my work with the Council and remedial studies, I have learned a few of them, Ward, but I am not allowed to tell you what they are. However, I have noticed that they all seem to have one thing in common. That one thing is, they are all related in some way to confrontational topics on Earth. If you were to select a topic that is very confrontational on Earth you would find that it is probably related to one of the lessons you are to learn.”

“I think I understand. I know that I have very strong feelings about things like capital punishment and abortion. I guess that you are telling me that there is probably a lesson for me to learn from those topics.”

“Yes, that is exactly what I mean. However, people look at those topics differently and hold very strong views as to whether ending another person’s life is right or wrong.

“So what lesson are you to learn, Cathy. Is it right or wrong to kill another person?”

“Ward, I said there was a lesson to be learned, but the lesson may not be related to the confrontational subject in that manner. I don’t know what the lesson is regarding killing someone, but it could be something like, the situation determines the morality of ending another’s life. Furthermore, the lesson to be learned may not have anything to do with the topic. For instance, for abortion and capital punishment, the lesson may be something like learning to tolerate another person’s opinion when it drastically differs from yours.

“One thing you have to remember, Ward, is your current opinion may not be the correct opinion. For instance, consider abortion. Somewhere between conception and birth, the fetus becomes a viable child. You and I believe killing a fetus, child, or adult is wrong. However, we supported sending soldiers overseas to defend our country by killing enemy soldiers; who were also people. In both cases, it is one person killing another. We can’t have both situations be acceptable, so what is the right thing to do?”

“Humm ... I guess I am going to have to think about things like that a lot more than I have, if I want to keep my remedial training to a minimum once I join you in the Fourth Dimension.”

“Sam, do you know anyone that has worked in the field of automotive design?”

“No, but check with Mary. She used to date a guy that worked for Ford’s design group, but I’m not sure what he did for them.”

Mary’s boyfriend wasn’t interested in going to work for a start-up company, and based on his attitude, I wasn’t interested in having him as an employee. However, he did refer us to several automotive designers who might be interested in working for us. I followed up on his recommendations and I may have found the key member of my design team. He is considering my offer of employment.

I switched my focus to finding and interviewing the leading designers in the motor-generator, battery, and solar cell industry. They would know the direction in which the current research on these devices is focused. I didn’t want to get into a patent dispute when it finally became time to patent the devices.

I asked Sam, “Can you find out who are the top designers of batteries, solar cells, and motor-generators?”

“All right, Ward. When Mary and Karen are available, I’ll get one of them to help me.”

Sam eventually got back to me and I contacted the people she suggested. I told these people that I had an idea for a highly advanced design for the device they were working on that may take me years to develop and didn’t want to get into a patent fight after years of work. Most of them were as helpful as they could be considering neither of us wanted to give the other information about our designs. We mostly discussed what we knew about what other companies were doing. As we talked, I learned the names of other people in the respective fields that I should talk with. Based on this research, I determined that no one was working on devices that followed my intended path.

After breakfast two days later, Mary and Karen cleaned up the breakfast mess and got the kids dressed and organized for the day. Sam and I went into my home office to have a conversation with Cathy.

“Cathy, my wives and I are working on defining the workshop that we will need to build a prototype solar-powered car. When we find a workshop I will hire a crew to do the work.”

The Council will be happy about your progress.”

“The main thing holding me back from making real progress is me producing a design package for each device. Did the Council have any ideas?”

“Yes, they did. The Third Dimension has its version of my dimension’s Guidance Council. About fifty years ago, the Third Dimension’s Council needed some advance technology that could do the same thing that you need to do.

“The Fourth Dimension’s Guidance Council sent them the design of a device that can read an engineering drawing from a person’s mind and convert the drawing to an AutoCAD drawing file, and store the file on an Earth computer. The device can also read a device’s specification data from a person’s mind and convert the data to a Word file.

“The Council is making arrangements with the Third Dimension’s Council to provide you with one of their translation machines. Sometime next week, someone will deliver the machine to you and teach you how to use it. We will be sending you engineering data for other devices in the future, so the machine is yours to keep.”

“That’s great, Cathy. I was afraid I would have to learn how to use AutoCAD and spend the next few years transferring the engineering drawings from my head to paper.”

“Oh, one more thing, Ward, you have to buy the latest AutoCAD program and install it on your computer.”

“Okay, I’ll do that this week. Would you let the Council know that I decided to go straight into limited production of the three devices? I plan to produce enough of the devices to build three prototype cars and test them. If anyone asks about the development of the devices, I will tell them I developed the prototypes privately over the past several years.”

“Okay, Ward, I’ll pass all of that on to the Council. They may think that your plan is pushing the schedule too fast. If they have a problem with what you plan to do, they will undoubtedly have me let you know.”

Last week a man stopped by the house and handed me a fairly heavy box. All he said was, “The Translator is very simple to set up and use. The directions are inside the box. I’ll call you later in the week to see if you are having any problems.”

He didn’t introduce himself or give me any way to contact him. I took the box to my study and opened it. Inside was a large black metal box that was labeled Translator and a plastic bag containing: a power cord, an eight-foot USB cable, a headband with a sixteen-foot USB cable, and several sheets of paper stapled together that were the instructions for setting up and using of the box and headset.

The first thing I did was sit down and read the instructions. The man was right. The machine was very simple to set up and should be easy to use. So I decided to try it out. I connected the power cord to the Translator and plugged it into a wall socket. I used the USB cable to connect the Translator to my computer. Then I connected the headset’s cable to the Translator and set the box’s power switch to ON.

I made myself comfortable in my recliner, put the headset on, and adjusted it. I wanted to start with something simple, so I focused on linking my mind to the box as described in the instructions. I had to make several attempts before I was able to visualize the Translator’s Main Menu. The Translator them displayed a dot in the middle of the screen and directed me to move the virtual pointer to the dot. At first, the pointer moved to the right when I tried to move it down.

According to the instructions, the Translator had to synchronize itself with my brain waves and thought patterns. So when the Translator finally synchronized its movement of the pointer with my mental directions, I was ready to use the Translator. I may have been ready but the Translator wasn’t ready for use. It needed me to calibrate the motion of the pointer to the edges of the screen. It moved the dot to the four corners of the screen and directed me to click on the dot with the pointer. I had to do this several times before the translator was satisfied. Then, it displayed a Continue button and I clicked it.

I was returned to the Main Menu. I clicked the ‘Create Folder’ button and created a folder on my hard drive for storing the drawings, and named the folder ‘Battery.’ I then went to the Main Menu’s ‘Storage Location’ menu and selected the folder I had just created. I was returned to the Main Menu, and I clicked the ‘Create AutoCAD Drawing’ button and its menu was displayed. I went down to the ‘Drawing Name” text box and clicked in the text box. A virtual keyboard was displayed, so I entered a name for the drawing and clicked Enter. A message appeared directing me to recall my drawing. I focused on the first of the drawings for the battery and clicked the ‘Create Drawing’ button and a progress bar was displayed.

As I have said in the past, the mental transfer of information is very fast. After about twenty seconds, the progress bar disappeared and I saw a check mark in the ‘Transfer Complete’ check box. The ‘Processing’ label and its check box were highlighted for close to a minute, before a check mark was displayed in its check box. The ‘Transferring to Computer’ message was highlighted for close to three seconds. Then the message changed to ‘Transaction Complete’ on the ‘Create AutoCAD Drawing’ menu.

Creating a drawing was simpler than I expected, however, it was mentally taxing. To verify the drawing conversion went okay, I started the AutoCAD program and called up the drawing. I compared the AutoCAD drawing with the drawing in my mind, and could not detect any differences. The battery had twelve engineering drawings. So for practice, I decided to start converting the remaining eleven mental drawings to AutoCAD files and store them in the same folder.

In slightly over half an hour, I completed two additional drawings, was mentally exhausted, and I had a headache. Creating those three drawings would have taken me at least four weeks, if I had tried to create the drawings using AutoCAD. I had to rest two days before I was fit to convert further drawings.

While I was recovering, I decided to convert one of the specification documents to a Word file. The process was the same as the process of converting the drawings to AutoCAD files.

I estimated that it would require six months to create all three design documentation packages for my three devices. That meant we could put the three devices out for bid within about six months. If I hadn’t had the Translator, it would have been years before I finished creating the three documentation packages.

I really have to give my three wives credit for their putting up with me and supporting me during the time I worked on producing the engineering documentation necessary for building the three devices. Thinking back on my mood during the past month, I realized that their forbearance qualified them for sainthood. The only time they even came close to asking about the work I was doing was the afternoon I told them I was finished creating the documentation of all three devices.

Mary asked, “Ward, the three of us are curious about how the devices and solar car work and why they will be so much better than the current designs. Could you explain it in terms that we can understand?”

Mary’s request came during the week that I was taking to recover from the mental strain of transferring design data to the Translator.

I said, “All right, I’ll try, but to really understand the design of the Solar Cell Tray, battery, and motor-generator, you need to understand magnetic field theory, metallurgy, chemistry, the conversion of electromagnetic radiation to electrical power, and several other things, which I am not going to attempt to explain to the three of you.

“Let’s start with the Solar Cell Tray, which is undoubtedly the most complex of the three assemblies. Basically, the tray connects a very large number of solar cells in a series-parallel network. Yes, Karen.”

“What is a series-parallel network?”

“Each solar cell is rated at one Volt with a maximum output of thirty milliamps of current. Each cell has a negative terminal and a positive terminal.

A series network is a string of multiple solar cells that is made by connecting solar cell’s positive terminal to the adjacent solar cell’s negative terminal. The output voltages of the solar cells add to generate a higher output voltage between the ends of the string of cells, but the string’s current is the same as that of one cell. A parallel network is made by connecting the negative terminals of multiple solar cells to each other and the positive terminals to each other. The output current of the cells add, but the output voltage is the same as one cell.

“For our Solar Cell Tray’s serial-parallel network, we create series strings of forty-eight solar cells. Each string provides a nominal output of forty eight volts and about thirty milliamps of current. We then connect enough of those serial strings in parallel to generate around seventeen and a quarter amps of current. The output of our serial-parallel network provides about forty eight volts at seventeen and a quarter amps of current. In operation, the voltage of the series-parallel network is constant at forty eight Volts and the current will vary according to the amount of Electromagnetic Radiation impinging on the cells.

“The maximum output current occurs when the Electromagnetic Radiation Spectrum provides its maximum amount of energy to the solar cells, which is during daylight hours with a clear sky, nothing between the sun and Solar Cell Tray, and the sun is directly overhead.

“As the sun begins to set, the Electromagnetic Radiation Spectrum’s energy decreases and the output current decreases accordingly. A similar reduction in current occurs when something like a building’s roof is between the sun and the solar cells or if there is a heavy cloud cover or fog.

“Since all of the energy in the Electromagnetic Spectrum’s frequency range is available for conversion to electricity, the Solar Cell Tray can produce a goodly level of output current, even during pitch-black nighttime conditions. However, the output of our solar cells is significant when compared to what the current solar cells would produce. The output level of our Solar Cell Tray with no moonlight should be in the range of two to four amps of current. With moonlight available, the output level can increase to about three to six amps depending on the phase of the moon.