‘I wondered why you had come all the way out here,’ he said to his fellow scientist. ‘I thought that you’d given up on that pipe dream a long time ago.’
Stanley offered his friend a tight smile. ‘That’s the thing — I didn’t, and it paid off.’
Hans shook his head. ‘That’s what you said the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. You do realise the entire Department of Energy has been studying cold fusion for years and they’ve come to the same conclusion as I did: it doesn’t damned well work.’
‘They fudged it all,’ Stanley argued in desperation. ‘It worked, Hans. I powered an entire town for weeks with it and everybody had all the power they needed for nothing more than the water I was siphoning out of the stream that ran through the middle of Clearwater.’
Hans peered at Stanley for a long moment and then looked at Ethan.
‘It’s true,’ Ethan said, ‘as far as we can make out. Their only mistake was to disconnect from the National Grid and draw attention to what they had achieved. A few days later, the entire town was paid off to disappear and remain silent about what had happened. Stanley here fled, along with his wife, and Amber witnessed the whole thing.’
Hans looked at Amber in surprise, and she nodded.
‘They made the town look as though nobody had lived there for decades,’ she said. ‘They’re covering it up, Hans. They don’t want this out because they know what it will mean for projects like this, for the amount of control that governments have over their people.’
Hans looked across at the massive construction site to his right and then back at Stanley once more.
‘Why are you here, Stanley?’
‘We need your help,’ Ethan replied for Stanley. ‘There’s no way that this is going to get out without somebody on the inside. Every scientist, every builder, everybody working on this project would be likely opposed to anything like Stanley’s device getting out. The fusion cage is the greatest threat to all energy producing corporations in the world, not to mention every oil — producing nation and countries like Russia with vast gas reserves. Every single ounce of those fossil fuels will be worth nothing, less than bare rock, if Stanley’s fusion cage goes public.’
Lopez stepped forward. ‘We want you to help make that happen,’ she said.
Hans took an involuntary pace back from them and his pale skin turned even whiter than his eyes as they wobbled in their sockets.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ he uttered in disbelief. ‘Even if Stanley had managed to do what you say he has done, it would require months or even years of testing to validate, to ensure that there was no mistake. Such a delay could call into question this entire project and many others like it. The public would jump upon the chance to have free energy, and there would be a massive outcry and political pressure to stop investing in major projects that are so essential to our survival. If Stanley turned out to be wrong, or even just mistaken, or if the reactions could not be sustained for long enough, or if the devices are found to blow up due to the heat and pressure over time, and proved themselves unsafe and incapable of commercialisation, then ITER would have lost years of research data, perhaps even the chance to develop a new form of energy before oil, coal and gas run out or a runaway reaction occurs in our atmosphere and environment. It’s just too damned risky.’
‘No risk without gain,’ Ethan observed quietly.
‘That statement that makes no attempt to measure the sheer magnitude of the consequences of failure,’ Hans shot back. ‘Many Western countries are already facing blackouts during periods of high demand due to the fact that we simply cannot maintain an energy supply across such a vast population addicted to electrical devices and in need of heat and light. ITER is not some immense monstrosity designed to keep the populace under the thumb of their politicians: it’s a potential lifesaver for the entire planet and it operates on the basis of physics that is well understood. Nuclear fusion does work, whereas Stanley’s supposed fusion cage is based on a science that has long ago since been invalidated by peer review.’
‘There was no peer review!’ Stanley almost shouted. ‘There was a whitewash!’
‘There always is, when a scientist begins to believe instead of needing to know,’ Hans replied quietly. ‘You say that it’s a conspiracy against you, but the whole cold fusion science debacle has continued ever since the Fleischmann and Pons experiments of the 1980s. They give it a different name now, low — energy nuclear reaction research or something, but it’s the same thing.’
‘Doesn’t that validate what Stanley’s saying?’ Lopez argued. ‘That’s it’s real science after all, worth investigating?’
‘No, it reveals only that we’re desperate as a society for an alternative to fossil fuels! It’s not about the environment, some noble crusade by governments to clean up our planet no matter how they might choose to dress it up. It’s business. Governments make money from fuel, and they’ll be powerless if the lights go out worldwide. Fossil fuels are running out, and they’re terrified of the consequences of that happening.’
‘Everybody is,’ Stanley replied, ‘all the more reason to help me.’
‘All the more reason to ignore you and work here at ITER!’ Hans retorted. ‘This is the future Stanley, real science, a chance at real change! Independent laboratories continue to research cold fusion and attempt to replicate the results because it’s just too valuable to ignore if there’s any truth in it. There’s not a government in the world that wouldn’t want to get its hands on a free energy device such as the one you’re describing, one that could be assembled on a desktop, to power the world, but they wouldn’t hide it. Hell, they be the first to package and then sell it, to slap a label on the box and ship it out to billions of people. You’re living in the past, Stanley, in a dream world of conspiracies that simply don’t exist. If your device was so amazing, why the hell did you waste your time powering some backwater in Missouri? Why not build a couple of hundred of the damned things and ship them out to friends across the country and get the ball rolling? Why didn’t you send one to me to test out for you?’
‘I didn’t have time,’ Stanley lamented. ‘We shouldn’t have disconnected from the National Grid, I know that now. I fully intended to build more of them, to create a wave of the devices that would not be stopped by any government, but they were on to me before I was able to do so.’
‘Isn’t that always the way?’ Hans lamented. ‘Somebody supposedly invents something amazing, and then they do something stupid and it mysteriously disappears into thin air.’
‘The big corporations are intent on shutting me down!’ Stanley yelled. ‘They’d be insane not to!’
‘That’s crap!’ Hans snapped back. ‘They’re as interested as anybody in developing alternatives. The electric car maker Tesla in America is about to commercialize batteries that store solar energy as back — ups for consumers during blackouts. They’re rechargeable lithium — ion units, designed to be paired up with solar panel energy supplies. General Electric and LG Cherm in South Korea are also now in on the emerging energy — storage market. Even the environmentalist groups have started singing the praises of these companies for what they’re doing. The whole thing is a move away from fossil fuels and away from government controlled energy supplies. You really think that would be happening if there was some shadowy corporation hell — bent on keeping us slaved to their whims?’
‘Battery storage isn’t quite the same as free energy,’ Stanley snapped. ‘You’re talking about products that will take years to filter into use, that require major investments! I’m talking about a device that people can install for themselves, overnight, and never need buy a battery again!’