Since submitting those corallaries scavenged from around the net, I find it interesting to contemplate what you could do with the whole, original, set.
You probably know them already, but just in case, Clarke’s Laws:
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
– RecklessPrudence
(#00295)
Katie had tried to explain what she was doing. Unfortunately for her, what she was doing went way beyond her Professor’s range of expertise.
Mind you, Hackmeyer’s range of expertise went little further than Newtonian Physics. It wasn’t hard to go over his balding head. Terms like “dimensional membrane” and “quantum tunnel” were so alien to him that she may as well be trying to explain it all in Welsch, for all the good it did.
And, to add insult to injury, he spent the entire interview staring at her breasts.
Katie couldn’t help pondering that she’d be getting worse if she was over eighteen.
Nevertheless, it was testing time.
She, Kev and Dave had triple-checked all the setting arrays. And kept Hackmeyer safely away from them in a shielded observation chamber. Not that Katie expected any radiation to happen - the geiger counters were all for show - but having Hackmeyer in the same room as a machine that could pierce the fabric of reality was equivalent to having a small, hyperactive child in the same room as a delicately-balanced display of fine china.
“Right,” she announced. “Let’s do this.”
Kev and Dave were on the less important primary and secondary arrays. Carefully flipping switches and watching dials.
The air filled with colours. Sparkles. An illusion caused by the Quantum Tunneling device bending the dimensional membrane they were living in.
One by one, the important needles came up to the butter zone. Katie put her hand on the big lever and watched the last one.
Almost…
Almost…
NOW!
She’d later find out that she’d cut herself, pulling that last knife-switch. She didn’t even feel it at the time. All three of them stepped back from the machine as the universe…
…blinked…
…and with a faint hum, the power from another dimension came into theirs, flipping indicators into the green.
Katie was not the only one jumping around and shrieking like a little kid.
And then Hackmeyer, the quintessential party-pooper, had to rain on their metaphorical parade.
“Is that it?” said his voice over the intercom.
“I’m gonna kill ‘im,” she muttered. “I’m gonna kill 'im, an’ I’m gonna make it look like an accident.”
“I’ll help,” said Dave.
“I’ll hide the body,” said Kev.
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