Titans of Chaos

A mouth like a vise opened in the forward part of the structure, and a set of metallic lens-shapesclicked into place in the aperture. A line of white-hot steam erupted in the midst of the waters,joining the lenses with a distant sunken wreck Victor was using for target practice. I wasmomentarily blinded by the shock wave. When I could see again, I noticed the wreck had been cutin half, and an undersea mountain five miles farther beyond now had a neat hole drilled into it,large as the entrance to a coal mine, from which bubbling steam and mud poured.

He sent off a set of magnetic signals, which one of my higher senses could interpret. "Amelia, youare throwing off my results. When you are around, I cannot accelerate particles faster than thatvelocity you arbitrarily designate as the speed of light. Instead the energy required for theacceleration simply increases. My beam focus is distorted."

I could not answer him on his own wavelength, but I could dip a tendril-tip from the fourthdimension into his ear to carry sounds. "You are not taking into account that the acceleratedparticles increase in mass as they approach light speed."

"Illogical. Nothing comes from nothing; how could the particles be picking up mass withoutpicking up additional substance? No, your paradigm is overwriting my results. I should be able tofocus a beam more tightly, and use the different velocities of light-atoms so that the reflections ofthe faster-moving light-atoms will attract and correct the paths of the slower-movinglight-atoms."

"Light doesn't come in atoms," I explained. "It is a wave-particle, which, to outside observers, allseem to travel at the same speed in a vacuum. It-"

"Please, Amelia," he interrupted. "You are throwing off my results. We are short on time."

He was right I turned and sped off in a rush of accelerated water. Our final exam was only a weekaway.

I am sure I was not crying. It's stupid to cry. Besides, the water would have hidden it.

The three weeks were nearly done. My reports at night were even more incomprehensible thanVictor's or Quentin's. Simply, no one could follow what I was saying. They could not imagine ahypercube, or follow the math used to describe one. I was tired of Vanity and the boys giving mefunny looks: I had to try experiments whose results they would understand. Something plain.

Something clear.