Firebird

Zero-3

Tokamak, Slava once explained, is a Russian acronym meaning “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils.” That says pretty much what a tokamak is: a giant doughnut wrapped with magnetic coils. What it doesn’t say is that inside this doughnut, fusioneers intended to create the center of the sun.

The naked eye is incapable of assembling Prometheus into a sensible whole because Prometheus was, barring perhaps ITER, the most complex device ever constructed. The product of fifteen thousand man-years of work, it was altogether too complicated. And now, Machuzak thought, as much as I am protesting, we are going to turn it on.

* * * *

By the time Krieg-Zuber steered everyone to the control room, located in a kind of underground bunker attached to the main building, 4:00 p.m. had come and gone. He directed the overflow crowd to spread out around the glass-walled visitors’ gallery while inviting a select few to take their places on the “captain’s deck” overlooking the command center floor.

Leonard merely waved to everyone and Zuber made his announcement. “Mesdames et messieurs,” he said with his most sparkling affectation while running his finger along the scar of unknown provenance he wore with pride on his right cheek, “Prometheus is the prototype of machines that will someday provide humankind with clean and virtually inexhaustible energy from ordinary water. This no person can doubt. The more modest goal of Prometheus itself is to bring fusion power to our lab. Although over the past months we have been testing the machine, we have yet to connect it CFRC’s grid. On the occasion of Prometheus’ commissioning, it seems fitting to make the experiment.”

Machuzak fumed. The great goal of ignition—a self-sustaining reaction—yes, that was the dream, but no one knew whether ASSET—or ITER—would ever achieve it. One thing was certain: with the machine in its thrown-together condition they weren’t going to get it today.

“Let us now dim the lights and wait for Prometheus to turn them back on.” The room went dark, leaving the onlookers bathed only in the star-glow of panel lights and monitors. With a nod Krieg-Zuber signals the COE to commence. Chief Operating Engineer Larissa Davidson sits before the controls; she has trained two years for this moment. All safety interlocks are engaged; around the room the scientists take their stations at a few of the hundreds of terminals, one poised to measure temperature, another pressure…x-rays, optical radiation…dirt.

“Two minutes, forty seconds,” announces the electronic voice and the countdown has begun. Instinctively, everyone turns toward the steady tick of the clock, but then they catch sight of the flashing digits on the big screen. The collective breathing slows.

“Magnet temperature, four-point-two degrees absolute,” Larissa says over the intercom. “Poloidal field magnetization commencing.”

Even at that point the whine is audible, not the protest of the flywheels spinning down as the tokamak saps their energy, but a screeching from the machine itself caused by rapidly changing magnetic fields.

“Ninety seconds…eighty-nine…eighty-eight…”

Today, Cyrus announces, they are counting down toward full power; launch will be at t-minus-sixty. It makes sense. No roar of engines will greet them, no majestic liftoff of a giant spacecraft. Only a blaze of light, a miniature sun created in their midst, then…

“Prepare for DT injection and current ramp-up.”

“Sixty-three…sixty-two…sixty-one…”

Liftoff. A crack resounds throughout the room as the screen monitoring the interior of the tokamak flashes red. The guests are transfixed by that flickering, incandescent glow, displayed for all in the gallery to see. At the same time the loudspeakers pipe in a great metallic wrenching as Prometheus groans under the immense magnetic forces attempting to tear it apart. From the audience there is oohing and aahing, but the scientists remain silent. Liftoff is not what counts in this game. How hot. How long. How much power…

“Beginning current ramp-up.”

Nothing has f****d up. Ten seconds into the pulse and they’re still sailing. Slava turns to Nathaniel with astonishment written across his face. “Bozhe moi,” he crosses himself, “the thing may work.”

My God, Nathaniel thinks, he may be right. As images fly to the corners of the world, he finds caution slipping away.

“Tap thirteen. One hundred fifty thousand volts. Rf heating, lower-hybrid drives engaged.” Larissa has begun walking the taps of the high-voltage transformers, engaging some of the auxiliary heating systems. “Thirty seconds to full-power injection.”

“Tap fourteen. Three hundred thousand volts.”

“Twenty-five seconds…twenty-four…”

Machuzak and Archangelsky both glance over to the display wall. Five million amps of electric current are circulating in that doughnut, some fusion reactions have begun. The main beams are on the ready, prepared to bring the process to fruition. God, let us not disrupt. The two men find themselves clenching their fists and urging Prometheus on. Theresa on the captain’s deck holds her hands to her face as she watches the digits mutate. “Preparing for full-power injection at tap fifteen.”

“Ten, nine, eight…”

“Go! Go!” Krieg-Zuber shouts while Leonard beams.

The audience is counting: “Six, five, four…”

“Go!” Nathaniel and Slava shout with the others. “Go!” the cry fills the air.

“…zero.”

Zuber jumps and punches the air in triumph. “Yes!” he cries, slapping Leonard on the back. The room explodes in wild, hysterical applause. But what’s this? Ten, twenty seconds go by and Nathaniel sees no lights, fails to hear the speakers broadcasting the roar of the turbine. From the corner of his eye he glances at the display wall and sees zero helium pressure in the heat exchanger. An operator’s finger points at a terminal and a flashing red bar. Indeed, anticipation has overtaken reality and everyone is cheering the emperor’s new clothes. Nathaniel and Slava finally nod to each other; something has indeed f****d up. As a minute passes without a spark or flicker, the applause turns to tweeting and the world is alerted that all is not right.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Cy at last announces, “there appears to be a difficulty. We will track it down presently.” He turns and snarls something to Andy Lipman, one of the technicians, who runs out of the room. Machuzak sighs.

* * * *

Despite Leonard’s halting attempts to distract the crowd by explaining tokamak operations, before long everyone was back to video games. A half hour crept by. Finally Lipman reappeared and whispered something to the deputy director. As Rasmussen made another apology for the delay, assuring everyone “the problem will be solved within minutes,” Krieg-Zuber angrily stormed out of the room.

“They forget first pancake is always flat,” quipped Slava. “Now Cy will prove he can do more than talk on phone.” Nathaniel nodded. Cyrus the Great intended to show everyone that he could fix tokamaks.

“What do you think’s wrong, Mac?” asked Theresa, stepping down from the captain’s deck. “You must be gloating, ‘I told you so.’”

Hardly. “Theresa, probably close to a million things needed to go right for this to work. I’m sorry, it must be embarrassing for you.”

She shook her head and touched Nathaniel’s arm. “We’ll survive.”

Lipman seemed to be hesitating and Machuzak managed to catch him before he left the control room. “What’s up, Lip?”

The tech answered with a shrug of resignation. “Dunno, Mac. Got a level-three fault in the neutral-beam system. Something down in the surge rooms. Maybe an old switch… You know how it is.” With another shrug he ran out after Krieg-Zuber.

“I wish we had a computer from 2020, even,” one of the diagnostic team was growling as he pounded on a terminal.

Another fifteen minutes crawled by as the caterers began distributing refreshments and the visitors complained that ASSET operations lacked a music track. Suddenly an agitated Lipman reappeared and whispered to Leonard, who went wide-eyed and attempted to rise, only to collapse back onto his chair. Only after a few minutes did he manage to grope for the microphone, drop it, then, when his wife handed it to him, find enough composure to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said slowly, “there a…appears to have been—” he stopped—“an accident. The…ceremony is canceled.”

As everyone rushed to the captain’s deck, Lipman waved Slava and Machuzak after him. Followed by others, they sprinted three hundred meters through the big tunnel to the neutral-beam power system. The safety door to one of the surge rooms was open. There on the floor amidst the maze of electrical equipment lay Cyrus Krieg-Zuber. Nathaniel guessed that he had accidentally hit one of the capacitor terminals, which sent his heart into fibrillation.

A technician straddled Zuber and was pumping his chest while another administered mouth-to-mouth through a pocket mask. Machuzak snapped on a mask as he and Slava relieved the other pair. The belated wail of the lab emergency medical team siren grew higher, louder.

“I’ve never seen The Terminator so angry,” Lipman was saying. “When he opened the door the safety interlock should’ve discharged the capacitors. He must have slipped or something. Jesus…”

“Do you mean this stuff is still hot?” Machuzak asked in disbelief, rows of high-voltage capacitor terminals not a foot from his head. “What the hell!”

“Interlock failed?” asked Slava, staring at Nathaniel for a moment before resuming mouth-to-mouth.

“Screaming like a madman but he didn’t jump it,” answered one of the techs. “We even racked out the breakers.”

“You did?” This was impossible.

In that breath the EMT arrived and took over with its defibrillator. Nathaniel got up, feeling dizzy and nauseated, and stumbled out of the surge room. To the incessant ring of phones, he made his way to his office and fell back into his chair. Mail was coming through.