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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

 

Perpetual Motion, Type Two
New Yugoslavia, 2212 a.d. 

Our designers and architects had the preliminary designs done for a system of fallout shelters three kilometers down, and big enough to hold the entire population of the planet of New Yugoslavia.

To get the people down there in the simplest, fastest and most foolproof way, they had settled on cutting spiraling tubes down into the bedrock and lining them with polished metal. The faster you went down, the harder that centrifugal force pushed you against the outer wall. The added friction slowed you down, some. It was a blindingly simple speed control device, the kind of engineering I like. Also, a penetrating bit of radiation couldn't follow the curve, so it helped there, too.

It was a super amusement park ride, and we might have a few heart attacks on the way down, but there was nothing mechanical to fail at the wrong moment, so I approved it.

Actually, the plans had been done two weeks ago, but then my wife, a lovely mother of four fine sons, intelligent, caring and ungodly greedy, got into the act. Now, in addition to barrack space for everybody, with public latrines, communal chow halls and food that might satisfy a chinese coolie, there were two more, deeper sets of shelters.

One was for the moderately wealthy, and included private apartments, separate bedrooms, private bathrooms, private kitchens, and lots of storage space that you could stock with your favorite items.

The one below it was for the filthy rich, and was really very nice, if you could afford it. Kasia's plan was to sell these two posh layers for enough to pay for the entire installation. Then, she planned to talk the local governments into paying for the barracks, latrines, and chow halls, anyway.

That's my wife.

We had done other engineering projects on the planet that had required a lot of digging, like putting in a planet-wide underground highway system. In the past, we had simply flushed the dirt and pulverized granite into the oceans. It hadn't caused any ecological damage last time, but now we had a major ally living in those oceans, and I felt that it was politically advisable to check with them before we did it again.

With rolls of plans under my arm, I met Bellor floating in his swimming pool in my garage.

"Mickolai! It is so delightful to see you again. What can I do for you, my old benefactor?"

"Well, you can look over these plans for the planet-wide system of shelters to protect our people from the Mitchegai, and see if there is anything about them that would offend your people. Also, we'd like to know what we could do to protect the Tellefontu in case of attack."

"This is most courteous of you, Mickolai, but as to my own people, well, we have already made our own arrangements. When it comes to hiding, it is perhaps wise to keep your plans as secret as possible, yes?"

"Perhaps, but it is also wise not to offend your only ally. If you want to keep your own system secret, that's fine by me. But I'd like you to look over this stuff, to be sure that we do not offend you. Among other things, it involves dumping an awful lot of pulverized granite into the oceans that your people live in, and we don't want to cause you problems."

"Indeed? Let me look."

But instead of crawling out of the swimming pool and looking at the drawings that I was unrolling on the garage floor, he just sort of leaned back and floated for a bit.

"Yes, I see," he said. "Well, with your permission, I have a number of suggestions to make."

"I'd like to hear them, but before that, please tell me what you just did."

"I simply queried the good professor, and he downloaded the plans to me. I found it convenient to grow a data link to him, similar in some ways to the inductive mat that you wear under your scalp."

"Mine had to be surgically implanted," I said. "You just grew yours?"

"My people have developed that ability, yes. We know how to make and use machines, of course, but for many things, it is convenient to modify our body structure to do these things more easily. Please don't be offended, Mickolai, but yours is a very young race. In a few million years, it is quite possible that you will develop such abilities.

"Now then," he continued. "There is no need to transport the powdered granite to the oceans and dump it there. You may use our 'Disappearing Gun' to simply make the granite disappear. Oh. I see that your engineering group has not gotten the plans that I sent to New Kashubia. Well, there. They have them now. Next, I see that you have a very extensive system of power generators and electrical conductors going all over the place. It would be far simpler to simply generate the power where it is needed. In a closed system like this, you already have plenty of thermal power. Indeed, at three kilometers down, you will have a vast surplus of it, and I see that you were planning on an extensive air-conditioning system. That would involve a heat plume that the Mitchegai would undoubtedly notice."

"Wait a minute!" I said, "You are talking about using ambient thermal energy to generate power? Surely, that's impossible!"

"And why should that be so? Even with your primitive physics, you realize that heat is not a separate form of energy. It is simply mechanical energy on a very small scale. The individual atoms and molecules are vibrating and sometimes spinning. Their average speed is what you call heat. By slowing them down, one can extract useful energy. Surely, this is obvious. There are several practical methods of doing this, but I have just sent your engineers the plans for a simple light that gets its power from ambient heat. They will also need some larger systems to cool the housing units you propose, and I have just sent plans for those as well. They will have to put some resistive units in the oceans, to get rid of the surplus energy, but there are several volcanoes under the sea that will hide the heat quite nicely from our enemies. The rest of your plans seem workable enough, and I wouldn't want to upset your excellent engineers too much in one day.

"Please tell me," he said, changing the subject. "How soon do you think it might be before we can receive the rest of the Everclear you promised?"

I was too stunned to say anything but "Probably in about twelve days. After that, we can ship you a like amount every three months." They knew how to build perpetual motion machines?

"That would be most convenient. But you must please excuse me now, as there are several calls waiting."

I left the plans lying on the floor and went home.

 

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