His mission was essential, even if it could sometimes grow rather monotonous. He had learned the quarantine game back in 1990 during Desert Shield, and knew how to make it work. Backed up by patrol aircraft out of Diego Garcia and satellite surveillance from the U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM) warfighting center at Colorado Springs, Colorado, Task Force 58 had the whole region under tight control. His force would keep it that way as long as the equipment, crews, and food held out. He was an American naval officer doing what he had spent a life training to do. Here in the Mount McKinley's Tactical Flag Command Center (TFCC), with the computerized equipment around him constantly monitoring every creature and machine larger than a gnat within the theater of operations, Connelly was exactly where he wanted to be. As he cleared his head for the morning video tele-conference with his ship and air unit commanders, he took a deep breath, drank some coffee, and reviewed the computer screen in front of him. So far, it had been a quiet morning. It was his job to be sure that it stayed that way.
University of New Mexico High Energy Physics Laboratory, February 5th, 2016
Jill Jacobs was a lovely blonde. She could have been a college cheer-leader in Texas, or possibly a starlet in Beverly Hills. She turned heads wherever she went; she had the kind of looks that made most people assume she got by on body, not brains. Most people would be wrong. She was a well-regarded doctoral candidate in high-energy physical chemistry, exploring rare earth properties for her thesis. It was slow, painstaking work, typically done at night when the lab spaces were open and she could mix and test the bizarre concoctions that were the basis of her ideas about superconductivity. Tonight's work was typical of what she had been doing for almost six months-another apparent failure. It had not generated any of the improvements that her computer models had projected two years earlier. Oh well, she thought, at least this batch didn't explode.
She stared then at the next batch on her list-samples of a hybrid copper-platinum-scandium mix that represented a sort of cul-de-sac in her projected family of superconducting materials. Always a low-probability set within her computer-modeled group, she had mixed it only because she had the time and materials at hand, and needed to try this particular formula out sometime. She took the samples, formed into lengths of wire, to her test bench to measure their resistance and conductivity properties. As she stepped up to the bench, she was tired to her bones. It was discouraging to work so hard without noticeable progress.
She knew the world needed metals that were superconductive at average atmospheric temperatures, but wondered if she would ever find them. If she didn't find them soon, would she ever make a difference with this work? Most likely, she would wind up in a corporate lab somewhere working on improved alloys for jet engines or household appliances. It was the first time she'd even allowed herself to visualize failure, and it surprised her. Maybe the sleep she was losing every night to acquire the lab time for her tests was taking its toll. Or maybe it was the news in the paper every morning. That was enough to depress anyone. But something wasn't right, she decided. She was normally an optimist with a rose-tinted world-view. She needed a break. Perhaps after she finished this test, she would take off for the weekend, and drive to Taos for an overnight visit to a spa, or up into the mountains for a camping trip. If she could get away for a little, maybe she'd feel human again. Maybe.
Turning her attention back to the sample in the test stand, she began to run current through it at a variety of temperatures. At first the readings did not seem out of the ordinary. At -200deg Centigrade, the sample had exactly the superconducting properties that one would expect it to have. But as the sample came up past 0deg C, it finally hit her what was wrong, or more properly, what was right. The sample had stabilized its conductive properties at 98 % of their optimum, and held them. She continued to ramp the temperatures up, and the material held up until it finally melted at about 300deg C.
She'd done it.
If her eyes and her machinery weren't lying to her, she'd found her material. Stunned, she cleaned up the chamber, recalibrated her equipment, loaded an identical sample into the test rig, and tried it again. Identical result.
"I've really done it," she whispered to herself.
As she fumbled in her purse for her mobile phone to call her faculty adviser, her brain was spinning like a pair of dice in Vegas. Her doctoral thesis was a done deal now. She could finally finish her degree and get on with her life in the real world. She'd realized her goals in her current research and could move on to new frontiers. But even as she called her adviser to share the news, she had no idea how crucial her new discovery would be to the rest of the world. She'd just created a practical high-temperature superconductor, and in so doing was about to change the face of civilization. "Power" and "wealth" would never be the same again.
Headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Near Mankulam, Sri Lanka, February 7th, 2016
Arjuan Ranatunga sat in the place he called his office and contemplated how to change the course of his nation's history. Grand thoughts for a man whose major passion had only recently been playing cricket. But the continued suppression of the Tamil sect by the Indians on the mainland and the Sinhalese on the southern half of Sri Lanka had no end in sight. This repression had drawn him to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), more commonly referred to as the "Tamil Tigers." The Tigers had always been a part of his country's political landscape-for as long as he could remember, anyway. He was a revolutionary soldier in a battle that had been going on for longer than he had been alive. Now, at age thirty-seven-an age when he should have been coaching a regional cricket team-he had become the leader of the LTTE. When events in his country had spun out of control, he had been unable to turn his back on the needs of the people. The final straw that had made his current occupation inevitable was the death of the previous Tiger leader, his brother Sanath. Sanath had been killed by an Indian helicopter gunship a few weeks earlier.
He was sitting in a tent surrounded by jungle near Route A9. His "desk" was a folding table and his office chair a ration crate. In front of him were a laptop data slate and his encrypted satellite cellular phone. Despite the spartan surroundings, he had the power to control considerable military clout from the humble resources at his fingertips. He could dispatch forces ranging from patrol boats to special assassination teams with just a few taps on his keyboard, or a simple phone call.
And yet, force wasn't doing the job. Decades of active resistance against the Indians and Sinhalese had utterly failed to give the Tamil Tigers the homeland they dreamed of. Already today, he had been advised by his regional commanders to begin a terror campaign in the south to avenge his brother's death. Yet revenge was not his objective today. He knew better than anyone did how futile it was. Nothing would bring back his brother. Instead of planning and setting into motion a campaign of terror, he'd chosen to spend the morning considering his options, and the options of the organization and his people. Though well financed by the Tamil supporters on the mainland, he could see no combination of military action that would ever result in Tamil domination of Sri Lanka. Even if they won the bloody civil war that would be necessary, they would inevitably lose the peace that would follow. The Sinhalese would start their own liberation movement, and the cycle would start again.