04-11-2003, 16:18
A hush fell over the audience in the auditorium as the general stood and walked to the pulpit. There was some scattered applause and a few whispers, but for the most part it was quiet.
"Most of you probably don't know who I am," he began. "Actually, I am the highest ranking military officer in JCE. It's just that with a military with ours, you don't make the front page very often." There was some laughter, but most in the audience were too cold to laugh. The general, in short sleeves, didn't seem to mind. "Since our nation was founded--some time ago--our military has had a significant portion of the countries budget. However, we have had no standing army--no army at all, in fact, except a highly trained militia. The few military employees work full time either in administrative work or in our disproportionately large Research and Development division."
"For the past couple years, we've had a team of some of our best scientists working with some folks from the corporate world who had a little idea they thought might interest us. It did." He was really getting into it now; he obviously had a lot of practice speaking. Probably because he had to justify every cent that he spent to the Budget committee, and doing that without having any real physical results to show required good orating skills. "This project was known by the code word Iron Wind."
"It works something like this. We have a compound with a special semi-crystalline structure. Actually, this particular compound can form two distinct structures, which means that if formed naturally it would not look very crystalline. These two structures are differentiated by the density and the number of bonds each molecule makes to every other. By increasing or decreasing the number of electrons in a given sample, we can decrease or increase the density, to a certain degree."
He paused for a minute to take a sip of water, and let the audience absorb the last words he had spoken. Then he continued. "As the mass of the sample is the same in both forms, this means that we can effectively increase or decrease the size at will. Once the sample has taken one or the other of the structures, it is stable--it will not suddenly change back unless it has some reason to."
"In the crudest form, results are not excellent. A block of the compound will increase or decrease only by at most 8% from the median. However, through a number of techniques, which I don't think our corporate colleagues would be too happy if we shared, we were able to push that to nearly 30%."
"Because of the strength of the intermolecular interactions taking place, this compound can lift a large amount of weight--we have not yet been able to ascertain the maximums. The more weight we add, the slower it goes; but we have not yet tested a weight so large that it was able to break our inch diameter testing cord. It's expensive to make, and we aren't particularly keen on breaking it anyway."
"Of course, this technology has a multitude of possible uses, many of them civilian. However, it also has military applications, and we have another project using it under way which we will hopefully be able to reveal before too long."
"Our corporate partners, Intelligent Metallics Incorporated, owns all the patents and intellectual property rights to the product and the manufacturing process. They have licensed the technology exclusively to the government of JCE, with rights to sublicense or sell as they see fit, with an appropriate amount of the profits going to IMI. If you have any interest in this technology, please get in touch."
The general sat as polite applause sounded through the auditorium. The CEO of IMI stood and said a few words, after which the meeting was adjourned and all parties were released into the warm afternoon air.
"Most of you probably don't know who I am," he began. "Actually, I am the highest ranking military officer in JCE. It's just that with a military with ours, you don't make the front page very often." There was some laughter, but most in the audience were too cold to laugh. The general, in short sleeves, didn't seem to mind. "Since our nation was founded--some time ago--our military has had a significant portion of the countries budget. However, we have had no standing army--no army at all, in fact, except a highly trained militia. The few military employees work full time either in administrative work or in our disproportionately large Research and Development division."
"For the past couple years, we've had a team of some of our best scientists working with some folks from the corporate world who had a little idea they thought might interest us. It did." He was really getting into it now; he obviously had a lot of practice speaking. Probably because he had to justify every cent that he spent to the Budget committee, and doing that without having any real physical results to show required good orating skills. "This project was known by the code word Iron Wind."
"It works something like this. We have a compound with a special semi-crystalline structure. Actually, this particular compound can form two distinct structures, which means that if formed naturally it would not look very crystalline. These two structures are differentiated by the density and the number of bonds each molecule makes to every other. By increasing or decreasing the number of electrons in a given sample, we can decrease or increase the density, to a certain degree."
He paused for a minute to take a sip of water, and let the audience absorb the last words he had spoken. Then he continued. "As the mass of the sample is the same in both forms, this means that we can effectively increase or decrease the size at will. Once the sample has taken one or the other of the structures, it is stable--it will not suddenly change back unless it has some reason to."
"In the crudest form, results are not excellent. A block of the compound will increase or decrease only by at most 8% from the median. However, through a number of techniques, which I don't think our corporate colleagues would be too happy if we shared, we were able to push that to nearly 30%."
"Because of the strength of the intermolecular interactions taking place, this compound can lift a large amount of weight--we have not yet been able to ascertain the maximums. The more weight we add, the slower it goes; but we have not yet tested a weight so large that it was able to break our inch diameter testing cord. It's expensive to make, and we aren't particularly keen on breaking it anyway."
"Of course, this technology has a multitude of possible uses, many of them civilian. However, it also has military applications, and we have another project using it under way which we will hopefully be able to reveal before too long."
"Our corporate partners, Intelligent Metallics Incorporated, owns all the patents and intellectual property rights to the product and the manufacturing process. They have licensed the technology exclusively to the government of JCE, with rights to sublicense or sell as they see fit, with an appropriate amount of the profits going to IMI. If you have any interest in this technology, please get in touch."
The general sat as polite applause sounded through the auditorium. The CEO of IMI stood and said a few words, after which the meeting was adjourned and all parties were released into the warm afternoon air.